Julia Hardy - Girl Got Game

Full transcript: Julia Hardy on London Real

4:14 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Julia Hardy, who is a radio and television presenter, writer and live host specializing in technology, video games and YouTube. You recently finished a Radio One storage documentary called Rockstar Gamers. Yes, which looked at the new wave of youth making careers out of playing video games for a living.

4:36 It was extremely popular, started trending on Twitter. You’ve also worked for Jamal Edwards and his SBTV, fantastic story, fantastic network for the past two years doing their games and gadgets content. And on top of that, when you’re not doing all these things, you’re also a keen advocate for human rights. You lived in a Burmese refugee camp for a year. I want to hear about that.

4:55 You also gave up alcohol for 365 days to raise money it for Amnesty International. I mean, and you know, if you’re in Britain giving up alcohol even for 5 hours is an achievement, so I was treated like a freak for a year. So, oh yeah, I can believe that. So all those fantastic things, Julia, welcome to London Real. Hello, how are you doing?

5:14 How are you? More importantly, I am awesome. You know, I was thinking today you know, this is my job, somewhat of a job, and I get to learn about things I don’t know about, and this is one of them, because as we just, we just took this short video before this show, and Julia was just schooling me on my lack of knowledge when it comes to gaming, and she was a bit unimpressed with my only teasing, really, but I could feel it, and I, and I understand why. It’d be like if I talk to someone about, like, mixed martial arts, something I’m passionate about, and people were like, “Oh, those are guys in the cage,” and you’d be like, “No, it’s actually not about that.

5:45 There’s many more things. There’s nuances there, athletes, blah blah blah.” And I’m guessing maybe you feel similar about gaming, but I was just going to, I wanted you to tell me, what is, what is gaming? I mean, for the people that are watching here that have never sat down, that aren’t you, you know, fans of Grand Theft Auto or all these other pieces, you know, what is it all about? Is it a subculture, or is it now a culture?

6:05 And what’s the difference between these, these rock stars we know, like PewDiePie? My 10-year-old, she, she thinks Stampy Longnose is like the greatest thing ever. She thinks Minecraft is amazing. You know, Twitch just sold for a billion dollars to Amazon. I mean, this is happening and I need to know more about it.

6:21 So school me. Okay, well, first of all. I would contest the fact that, you know, I don’t think it’s a subculture thing anymore. Over 56% of the UK population games. I think it’s something in the region of 33.5 million people in the UK play games.

6:34 I think the problem is, is that people have a very stereotypical idea of what a gamer is. It’s the guy in his greasy pants eating crisps alone in a dark room, and it’s rubbish. It’s absolute and complete and total nonsense. Everybody plays games. You have a phone.

6:50 You, I’m sure, play games when you’re bored on the tube. Tell me. I hate to break it to you, you’re a gamer. You play games. That’s the only criteria.

6:57 I don’t, but a lot of people do never played a game on your phone. Someone showed me Candy Crush once, but it’s not on my phone. So really, well, see, you’re the… yeah, but Twitter is a game. All of these social networks are a game. It works on the principles of gaming where you know you do X and then you get Y.

7:12 This kind of, this sort of quick feedback, which is why gaming is sometimes, you know, called addictive, because, you know, let’s be honest, life’s a bit rubbish and confusing sometimes and you know, you might want to reach a certain goal, and, you know, in a game if you have to reach a certain goal, it’ll be a case of going, you know, do X and do Y, and you’ll get to Z. So here very clear-cut, very obvious what you have to do. And then in life, you could spend your entire time bagging away, doing X and doing Y, and you will never, ever get even remotely close to Z, and it’s that annoyance and frustration with normal life.

7:45 I think people quite like the simplicity of what gaming is. It’s like everything’s laid out really obviously. This is what you have to do, and you’re like, I can do that, and you go and do it, and you accomplish a task, and you feel really good about it. So there’s rules and structure and abely, it’s a game. It’s not just going and also we can be someone else.

8:01 Is that a big part of it? Yes, very much so. I mean, you think, you know, how many times, what was they did a really great PlayStation commercial, which was, it was, it’s the whole thing of like, you know, you’re a gamer, you don’t have a life, playing across this whole kind of like theme, and it was like, it’s not, I’m not a gamer because I don’t have a life, it’s because I want to you know, I want to experience lots of different lives, and that’s effectively what you’re doing.

8:21 You’re seeing a tiny, teeny, very watered-down glimpse of what it might be a little bit like to do something else with your life, you know, to be amazing. And, you know, most people aren’t going to be able to do a lot of these things, and obviously everything’s amplified because it’s in a game. You know, let’s be honest, if you wanted to, you know, become really good at freerunning, it would take forever and you’d probably break a lot of things, but in a game I can get a little taste of what that sensation might feel like.

8:46 And obviously with new stuff like virtual reality coming on the scene, you really are going to be able to experience exactly what it’s like, you know, first-person perspective of, you know, doing some really, really incredible things, and that will be very exciting. Right? And that was one of our questions. I, by the way, I got like 20 solid questions from a video we posted 24 hours ago. One of them is about Oculus Rift and what you think about that, and I’m going to hit you with a bunch of these later.

9:09 I first want to find out a little more about you, but you know people care about this stuff. 33 and a half million Brits, not to mention the Yanks. But you’ve also got to remember that, you know, I suppose gaming did start off as quite kind of like a small niche thing, and obviously it spread more and more into the mainstream. And one of my daily frustrations is the fact that, as an entertainment medium, it’s pretty disrespected by all other media outlets.

9:29 No one really takes it seriously. They always think it’s a bit stupid. The bane of my existence is trying to get, you know, video game programming on television. I have constant meetings and conversations with commissioners and people who work at production companies about it, and they still look at it, it’s this really niche thing, and I’m like, hang on, this is over half the UK population. We’ll make a show on, like, ITV4 or something about cycling, and I would hazard that there are probably less cyclists than there are gamers.

9:53 You know, it’s just not treated with the respect that it deserves, and it is the future of entertainment at the end of the day. And you only got to look at music. Music is just wrecked. They’ve wrecked themselves. They’ve wrecked their whole industry.

10:04 Well done, congratulations, guys. How did they wreck it? What do you mean? By Spotify, or by royalty issues, or what? No, okay.

10:10 In always, in business, in these huge periods of flux and change, right? It’s the same with YouTube and TV and things like this. You know, this new way of doing things comes along, and the people who have already kind of set out the business model and the structure and have bought into that system are like, no, we’re going to keep doing things this way because this is how we’ve made money, and we’re going to fight tooth and nail to keep it this way. They don’t adapt, they don’t change, and, in, what will happen is they’ll die.

10:33 They’ll die out because they’re not, some things are too big to stop. YouTube is too big to stop. And you look at TV, so most of the time, on television, the only people who really watch it appointment to view. So they’ll turn it on, they won’t watch catch-up. They’re kind of the over-50s, and I’ve had this conversation quite a few times with different production companies and I’ve said, you know, you’ve told me about all the things that we can’t do on television, which is apparently a lot.

10:58 And, you know, you’re talking about this demographic of 50 to 60 to 70-year-olds who watch TV. I was like, news flash, these people at one point will die. I mean, they’re the old of an older generation. If you haven’t made content that in some way engages with youth, you’re effectively, it’s the nail in your own coffin of your own business. You need to find something to put on television that people who are young want to watch.

11:19 I mean, it, don’t, it doesn’t have to be appointment to view, because that’s all dead anyway. Scheduling, the thing of the past, blah blah blah blah, all that sort of stuff. You know, you’ve just got to make interesting and engaging content, but if you don’t do that, you’re basically signing your own business’s death. Right? It’s a concept we call the Innovator’s Dilemma.

11:34 It comes up all the time in our tech show Silicon Real, because, you know, any old school business, even, they just don’t want to change, because that’s where all their profits are, even when they know they should change. You know, look at a company like Microsoft, you know, you, it looks like they’re dying a slow death, but they can’t do anything about it, and they still make a lot of money doing what they used to do. So you, I know one of your dreams is to get a gaming show on television in the UK.

11:55 Is that right? Because there isn’t one right now. Is that correct? There is one on Challenge, which is actually the sort of slot of the show that I used to do. But I think you know that that particular show, it’s more kind of for, like, hardcore gamers.

12:08 I’d say, like, less casual, and, like, one of my, one of my favorite things is to do programming and content for people who are kind of a bit in the middle. I like that idea, because, specialists, is, like, hardcore gamers. They will always love gaming. You’re never going to change their mind about that. Once they’re into it, they are completely into it.

12:25 I like bringing people over to the dark side, so the people who maybe just buy FIFA or Call of Duty, and I’m going to convince them that gaming is worth getting into, and it’s worth spending their time and money doing more of. So yeah, I want to do a more mainstream show that kind of caters a bit more to the sort of more casual audience. Okay. Why fixate on TV? I mean, we’re all, we all have this TV fixation.

12:44 When I started this show three years ago, I wanted to be on TV, but now you really couldn’t pay me to be on TV, because it just really, if I was to say right now, grand, someone tried to pay me for Silicon Real on TV and I said no because it just didn’t make any sense, and it had to be this crappy short format, and then I had to hope people watching it when they happen to be online. Are you saying that still is the golden goose, to be on TV? No, I think the entire thing is completely and utterly changed, but I don’t think it’s quite so cut and dry just yet.

13:11 I don’t think TV’s dead just yet. I think we’ve still got one more generation where, if they adapt and sort things out, we could actually make something work, because I mean, like, you know, scheduled TV, with Smart TVs coming in, you’re not going to have, like, scheduled programming. Everything you watch is going to be on demand. I mean, obviously that’s the only way it’s going to go, but you still got these production companies and these channels with these budgets that can actually make sort of more higher-end.

13:34 I think it’s, you know, it’s going to kind of disperse a bit more, so you’ll have kind of this sort of, like, higher-end stuff that will be on there, but you won’t be able to tell the difference, maybe, between something that’s been made at home, like in terms of, like, your dashboard, that will be alongside something that you know is made by the BBC. There won’t be that sort of, you have to go to YouTube to watch this and, you know, watch this on TV. But it’s more, for me, it’s, it’s about, I guess, it’s like a stamp of approval, and it is that.

14:00 Yeah, yeah. But it’s about for me. It’s not for me, it’s about for gaming to have it respected by these kind of more mainstream outlets and taken seriously as a, you know, a fun and engaging entertainment medium. And, you know, there’s a lot of content, gaming content, obviously, online, huge, huge amounts of it, and it would be really nice to make something that can pitch gaming in a way that engages new people and brings them into gaming. I would like to do that.

14:27 What happens when you tell people in UK and the UK television channels about Twitch? And I never heard of Twitch until it was acquired, you know? Okay. And it was, I mean, this is a site that purely has gaming video on it, right? And Amazon bought it for a billion.

14:40 It was rumoured to have been bought by Google, but I think they couldn’t agree as far as control, and so, boom, all of a sudden there’s this, you know, huge obvious show that there’s a demand here, but as the TV guys, they probably don’t even look at that anymore. So what’s really funny is that we would have this conversation all the time, honestly, for the past like five years, have had meetings about different things, and they’d be like, “People don’t want to watch people playing games. It’s boring.

15:05 It’s so boring. You have no idea.” And this is always what I would get told in all of these meetings, and you sort of explain that, you know, League of Legends sold out, like, Wembley Arena, and, you know, you know, YouTube, obviously the biggest channel on YouTube, PewDiePie, is a gaming channel. Actually, most of the top channels are to do with gaming, because obviously television doesn’t cater to it, so obviously these people have gone online and made their own content.

15:28 What does PewDiePie play, and where’s he based? Is he Swedish? Sweden. He actually, yeah, he was originally from Sweden, I think, God, yes, what am I saying? And but he’s in the UK now.

15:38 Okay. He’s got, he’s got millions and millions and millions, 34 million subscribers on YouTube, which is a huge number. Zoella, huge number, like, if you apply it to anything, if it was the amount of hats that you had, or a cat, that, well, here’s an example. I just mentioned Zoella, and she was on the billboards out here on Old Street roundabout in YouTube’s, like, recent marketing campaign, and she’s got 5 mill subs, and, but I didn’t see PewDiePie up there.

16:01 Why is that, no? Everyone’s hating on your gamer community, aren’t they? They’re not welcome. He’s very private. Out of all of them, he’s incredibly private.

16:10 He still kind of he’s not mainstream. Well, he also shoots and still edits all of his own stuff, and some, some of them do, some of them, same as Stampy does that too. And, also he doesn’t really need the money. Like, let’s be honest, I’m sure he’s all right, you know, and he’s in that position where he can kind of do what he wants now. He’s putting enough.

16:26 But again, like you said, people have this concept of the game, gamer, and it’s this, when, like, you’re saying everyone’s a gamer, it’s almost like, I hate to make this comparison, and I don’t mean anything by it, but it’s almost like porn. Everyone’s like, porn stars are bad, but, like, most people are consuming it in some way, shape or form, but yet they have to keep this separation. I mean, you know, it’s just that people don’t think of themselves as gamers even if they do play games on their phone.

16:46 If I said, you know, to, like, my mom, who sometimes plays a game on a tablet, I’d be like, “You’re a gamer,” and she’d be like, “No.” Okay. When you play games, and it’s not the same, right? Okay. I think people still think it’s, like, PC or console, and somehow mobile gaming doesn’t count, even though it’s, you know, almost coming up to as close as, you know, PC and console gaming now.

17:06 So Twitch didn’t surprise you that sale, and did it affect your industry? Did it, did it, did it say a big warning light to all the media companies? Yes, or did the old-school people just keep plodding along, saying the old-school people are still doing exactly the same thing? Pretty much. Twitch, yeah, it’s not, it’s not quite got to the sort of tipping point that YouTube did and has done.

17:28 But then, you know, YouTube, always, like, 10 now, isn’t it? It’s been around for quite a long time. Twitch is very, very new, all things considered, but I think it’s, it’s interesting, cause it’s still a little bit like the Wild West. I think a lot of people kind of joined on there thinking it’s going to be the next YouTube. Whether it is the next YouTube, I don’t know.

17:44 I mean, it’ll have to expand a bit more and get a bit more, the same with YouTube, you know, expanding out and kind of moving into kind of other territories, not just, you know, gaming and stuff like that. But, tell me about you. Are you, if you were, you a a, a nerd or a geek? I don’t even know what those words mean. When you were younger, I kind of was, to be honest.

18:01 I was on my Apple II Plus programming a long, long time ago, and, like, I was kind of in that. That wasn’t my gaming thing. Do you come from, like, a tech-interested background, or did you just kind of fall into this? And why did you stay in tech? You could have done anything.

18:13 That’s true. You’re much more positive- thinking than my parents. You should probably chat, basic, they’re like, what are you doing with your life, sorted out always still, still, still. I thought they would get over that, but no. Which, cause my brothers are like super sted, so I just looked extra zany in comparison to them.

18:32 Basically, my brothers always had two other brothers, and they always had consoles and were always doing stuff like that, so I kind of would always watch them playing, and also, being the only girl, I was like, I don’t want to do girl things, it’s rubbish, and you know, and it wasn’t really. I guess I was always, yeah, I was always fascinated with tech, I suppose. Well, my dad’s an electronics engineer, so my whole house was full of decaying vending machines for most of my life.

18:54 It was like something really weird, like out of the Nevada desert. There was just old bits of, like, broken cigarette vending machines everywhere, so I was kind of around electronics all the time. Although, because it was my dad, it seemed a lot less cool to, like, be interested in. And then I suppose really the tech route kind of probably came through more through, you know, doing gaming really. That kind of interest, but Then I don’t know, I did.

19:16 I was an early adopter of some really, really terrible technology. What was your first gaming experience, where you remember, like, where you were really hooked and you’re like, I want to do this? Was it, like, a 12 or 10 or 15? When did you cross another level of your gaming? Like, okay, so do you have a gaming tattoo on you?

19:33 Or, like, no? Okay, all right. So, I think the probably the first time I played something quite systematically over and over again was probably Sonic 2. That was because, my, was really weird. My brothers had consoles, but, like, I wasn’t allowed one, or something.

19:47 I don’t know, it’s really weird. So my friend Laura had one, so I’d just go around and, you know, play around her house. We play it a lot, and that, you know, in the old days, we’d have to basically press, like, pause, and then the console would, like, be overheating, and you’d be like, trying to fan it a little bit because, it just, yeah. What years are we talking here when Sonic 2? Like, roughly?

20:04 Oh, God. I don’t even know. Wait, how old was I then? Okay, so old school, basically. I was pretty young.

20:13 Okay, so Laura would have this concert. It was a bit like, oh wow, this is so cool, and so that was probably, like, my first kind of real kind of fascination. And then I remember a friend of mine had a really old Mac computer, and she would play, we’d play, like, LucasArts games when we were, like, really small and try and solve all the puzzles, cause we thought we were really clever, and that was probably, we’d, like, stay up all night playing the games.

20:36 This is before, you know, the internet was really, like, a super big thing, and you’d have to call up, like, these tip lines in America, and her dad was really, like, pay, like $3 an hour to get a tip, but we were calling from the UK, so can you imagine? But her dad was a bit like, don’t worry about it. So I was like, okay, all right, fine, but you know, you’d be on the phone for, like, 20 minutes trying to find out what to do with the hamster, and you’d be like, what’s going on?

20:57 Anyway, so that was probably, you know, the times when I sort of feel real kind of passion and draw to to get into gaming. And I guess, yeah, the, so, the tech side probably came about through the gaming, because as more and more kind of peripheral devices become, sort of, you become a bit more fascinated with it, and you know, phone. I was always a bit obsessed with phones, I have to say. Like, I had got, like, an 8210, and that was like the greatest moment in the world ever, because it had, like, white lights on it, and everyone was really excited, apart from, I near got mugged quite a lot for that phone, but that was, this was the old Nokia product, or whatever.

21:26 Yeah, yeah. So I got it. I was really, really lucky. I, like, saved up and bought it, and everyone had those horrible, what were the ones before that that everyone had that were, like, green, really weirdly green screen? Everyone had them anyway, and then the 8210 came out, which was, like, this big, and I was completely obsessed with it, and then ended up getting it, but then when you’d walk home late at night, it was really obvious that you had a brand new phone, because it had white light on it.

21:47 So the amount of times I got followed by people, I was like, maybe I should just get a different phone. And what did you graduate to game-wise? Are you, and if you had to pick your top three or four games? I know people are going to be hanging on your every word, but, like, what that have meant the most to you over the past five years? So, probably the one that I played with my friend the first time, which was Day of the Tentacle, which was, like, they’re remaking it now.

22:06 Thank God. I’ve been like waiting years for them to do this. Okay, only because it’s just, is this a lesser-known game? It’s a point-and-click event, so it’s like LucasArts. It’s about an evil tentacle that tries to take over the world, and it involves time travel and flushing things down toilets.

22:19 Okay, all right. Probably the, yeah, it doesn’t really make any sense if I say, okay, that’s one. What are a few others? Okay, do you do the classics? I mean, do you do the Grand Theft Auto, you know, do you do the big ones?

22:31 The ones? Yeah, of course, absolutely. I will always do the triple-A titles, Okay, it’s really hard to pick favorite games because it really depends what you’ve just played. Probably if I had to pick two others, and these are by no means my all-time favorite games, because it’s an impossible and an impossibly ridiculous question to ask as a gamer. Mass Effect 2.

22:49 I got, I’m really obsessed with that, like, really obsessed with that. I could have actually, if I, if there was a button to transport my life into that world and never come back, I probably would have. It’s not that long ago, as well, which is quite sad. And in more, even more recent years, probably my favorite game was The Last of Us, just because the story was incredible. Just unbelievably incredible, and it’s kind of like, it felt very much like when games, it had a really good pace.

23:18 It had a really, really good rhythm. So it’s kind of a survival horror game, post-apocalyptic world, a long time after the apocalypse. You’re kind of this grizzled old guy who’s basically going to take this young girl out of the city, out of the military zone, to find these rebel groups, and you’re not quite sure why you’re doing it. And so there’s these kind of weird things that are zombies, and they’re not, well, you’re not supposed to call them zombies, but they’re zombies.

23:36 Okay. So you like storylines as opposed to the live action? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s all, all, all about story, but you don’t mind a little live action too? Oh, yeah, well, you’ve got to, otherwise you’re just walking around, right, saying yes, no, maybe, sort of thing.

23:46 But it’s a good balance between it. So you’d have, like, moments of sheer panic where you’d be like, “C by all these zombies,” and then these huge epic sections where it’s very, very quiet, and you’re in this completely desolate universe where you have to scavenge for items, and it’s that kind of juxtaposition of, like, oh my God, why is this happening to me? To like, this is quite all right actually. I can cope with this, looking through desk drawers for old bits of scissors or whatever, you know.

24:10 And all the time, you know, the exposition in it is very, very, some of it’s done through cut scenes, but some of it’s just done through idle chat. Like, you’ll be walking through a house and it will just kind of progress the story on a little bit, and it doesn’t feel like it’s kind of too like well, you remember that thing that I said about the thing that we should have done last week? And you know, it’s all really the scripting was just incredible. And a lot of the successful games have, like, I know Red Dead Redemption had these things where you can kind of break away from the storyline and go, master a technique, and then go back to this, and it’s like an open world game like Grand Theft Auto.

24:41 So that’s, it’s, you know, The Last of Us was a lot more linear, like, yes, you could walk around the area, but effectively you need to go from A to B. You can’t just wander off and go and do something else. So like an open world game, something like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption, you have your plot points, which are the main backstory of the game, so you do these missions to progress the main game. But you can also then go off and go and play poker for a while, or you know, go off and do something else, or run people over in your car.

25:05 Should that be something that you would want to do? You know, so you’ve got all these different things, but, you know, Grand Theft Auto, go to a strip club if that’s what you want to do. I mean, to be honest with you, as much as everyone kind of, like, moans about how disgusting Grand Theft Auto was, and how thoroughly misogynistic, as a woman who has been to Los Angeles on quite a few occasions, and a woman who pens misogynist Mondays at the blog, which we get you later, maybe, I’m looking for it too much, I don’t know.

25:28 But I, I’ve been to Los Angeles quite a few times as a woman. That makes it sound like I’ve been there sometimes as a man, but it is like that. It’s horrible. It’s a really, really, like, very very nice. No, I just mean how men treat women out there.

25:43 Oh, in LA, yeah. Okay, so example, I was out there for the Call of Duty championships. We were staying in the W Hotel, and at the top of the W Hotel in Hollywood is this place called Drai’s, which apparently is, we were told, like, you know, the hot nightclub or whatever of the, don’t get me started about LA. I was just there two weeks ago. Don’t get me started.

25:59 Just, you know, whatever. Anyway, we’ve been to the Call of Duty champs. I’m like, quite tired. It’s been a long day of, like, shooting stuff. I got there.

26:05 Hard times, hard times in the video. Oh, well, you know, it was really stressful. A lot of people listening would die for even an hour at these events. No, I’m just meaning that, you know, I’m not, after you’ve done a shoot for a whole day, you tend to have a lot less energy than most. So you, I was kind of going there.

26:21 Like, I’m going, I’m don’t really that bothered, you know, sort of thing. I wasn’t kind of going out with party in my anyway. Okay, so I’ve gone up there, I’m wearing jeans and like a jumper, and yeah, like seriously, I had like a baggy jumper on. I was really not wearing anything to anything. Not that that really denotes how you should be treated, because that’s rubbish, but whatever.

26:38 I’d gone up there, and it was kind of like going into like what a school disco must have been like if someone had like punch, sorry, spike the punch with like Viagra. It was just really disturbing. It was kind of like all these people like getting off with each other, and like these women in like huge boobs in like Hervé Léger bandage dresses getting like grinded up against, against like a wall, and you’re a bit like, wow, this is really weird. I don’t know if I like.

27:00 Anyway, this was like at 3:00 in the afternoon. This wasn’t even that late. It was like 10, 10:00 at night, 11:00 at night. It’s not even, you know, why are you even there, drug… but so you don’t like LA. What so?

27:09 Okay, my point was, in this club, all this stuff was kind of going on, and every time I went to the toilet, it was like running the gauntlet. I would basically have guys like trying to push me up against the wall and like say things to me, and like say, and I’m not even like, I said it, it shouldn’t, you know, women should be able to wear whatever they want and not be sexually harassed, but I was like, I’m even, I’m wearing like the most disgusting jum… what’s wrong with these people, like God, it’s probably like a fetish or something, you know. Okay, so Grand Theft Auto is a perfect depiction of LA, far as I’m concerned.

27:35 Everyone steals cars, there’s a bunch of scumbags. Okay, I totally agree with you, and I’m from California, so and I could just feel the wave of complaints coming from the West Coast, crashing the servers and things like that. Well, it might just be my experience with it. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just got like please sexually harass me tattooed on my forehead and I can’t see it.

27:52 Okay, maybe that’s true. Now let’s talk about a fact that’s very obvious. You’re a girl. Okay, you’re a girl, and yeah, just check, just double checking. You’re in the, you’re in the gaming sector, you’re in a, in a sector.

28:04 Well, that’s then, that’s my question. Is this a male sector? Is it not a male sector? No, not anymore. What people ask you this question all the time, you’re tired of answering it probably, but what, what do you say when people say, “Oh, you’re a girl, what are you doing here?”

28:15 It’s still, it’s quite ridiculous. I mean, or do they say, “You’re a girl, thank you for being here”? No, that never happened. Oh, okay. I said it’s ridiculous.

28:23 What you mean? In terms of who plays games, actually, in the UK it’s 5% women, 48% men. I think globally actually those numbers are reversed, but effectively it’s kind of almost 50/50. Okay, well, you know, give or take, you know, a load of millions or whatever, but you know, it’s close. But in terms of actually who works in the industry, it’s still pretty… it’s pretty one-sided.

28:43 I mean, in terms of female games journalists, yeah, are you, are you the one? No, no, no, there’s a small crew of us that cling together like limpets to a rock in a storm. Why would you do this to yourself, why be a… why be a presenter and a host in the gaming sector? Because it’s what I was interested in. Okay.

29:01 And I can tell that if you’re listening to us on iTunes, when, when she’s talking about the games and the, the different things, she’s really animated. I mean, you, you do love this stuff, don’t you? Well, that’s … I mean, the only reason why I wanted to do presenting, and, and I’ve been very lucky, and that anytime I’ve done something, it’s always been in a subject I’m interested in. So I originally started in music, because that’s what I was super like, really into at the time.

29:22 And when I first started, I ended up doing, like, a show on there that was like music, movies and games, because I was interested in games, and all of my kind of gaming experience sort of presenting for Stuff sort of came from that. And it’s, I’m just interested in it. I don’t, you know, all my favorite presenters were always ones who loved their subject, like Ray Mears. I mean, I’m not going to go and, like, whittle a heart out of wood, and, like, you know, cook some salmon by a rocky shore somewhere, but look at his little face when he’s doing it.

29:46 He’s having the time of his life. I love that. I want to see people’s passion, and I got really sick of, you know, watching TV and seeing these people who will just talk anything to anyone, that never interested me. You. I want to present the National Lottery, because I have no interest in doing that.

30:00 I want to talk to people about things that I’m interested in, and my job allows me to do that. You know, I’m very lucky. What are the pros and cons of being a female presenter in this industry? Pros and cons. Well, yeah, you do.

30:15 Okay, so when I first started doing regular gaming stuff, and the first solely gaming kind of show that I did, I got a load of flak online, and every time the kind of show changed, it was always a bit like you’d have to sort of prove yourself again, and there’d be guys who were presenting as well who maybe didn’t know as much about gaming as I did. I’d find it very frustrating, because their credentials would never be called into question, not that they should have been, anyway, you know, but it was, it was always the case of, you’re a girl, you obviously, what are you doing here? And I always find it really frustrating that there is this kind of underlying sort of, like, suspicion of women in the industry.

30:57 And surely, right, as a guy who loves playing video games, I mean, these guys will go online, I’m generalizing here obviously, but, you know, will go online and be like, oh, you know, I moved him with my girlfriend and she’s made me throw out all my consoles, where, where, right? They’re moaning about this, and then, but then they’re b****ing about girls in the industry, and you’re like, why don’t you just find a girl who’s, you know, into gaming, and she’ll buy you games for Christmas? Why would you?

31:19 Why wouldn’t you actively encourage more women? Because it would be better for everyone and, well, ultimately, be a better place, and also you might find someone who shares your passion and want to share, you know, share your life with them because you have a similar passion. It’s just, you know, you can’t moan about being single if you’re frightening them all off. Okay, so that’s one of the cons. It’s a little bit of kind of hate early on.

31:38 Do people love you now? You must have a core fan following, that people like, “Look, she’s legit. Julia is the real deal. She’s still here, slugging it out.” Yeah, I think, I think now it’s, it’s a lot better, and you I think you sort of get to the point where you’ve proved yourself, and then people who kind of follow you online will sort of stick up for you and be a bit like, “What are you talking about?

31:56 She knows what she’s doing.” sort of thing, which is nice, that you don’t have to wade in yourself sometimes, and also, I like being right, so it would get a bit ridiculous. I get drawn into these really long conversations about nothing, you know. Okay, pros. Are you you’re, you, you’re different from the rest of the people.

32:11 You’re not the guy presenter, you’re the girl presenter. Is that a pro or is that not really a pro? I don’t, I don’t know necessarily, but there’s a weird thing about being a presenter where sometimes you’ll go to jobs and they will literally not want any of your input. You’re literally there. I will tell you what to say and you just say it, and I think maybe that happens more when you’re a girl, but then I’ve only ever had an experience as, as a female, so maybe I don’t know.

32:36 But, you know, coming in and having a lot of knowledge, I think it’s the same for any woman in any industry really. You tend to be met a lot of the time by people who think they always know better than you, not that you should be coming in thinking that you know better than them, but, like, my only goal ever has always been to make whatever I’m doing the best best it can be. I’m not precious about whether you don’t like my idea or not. I don’t care. Like, I really don’t.

32:58 I’m just throwing out there because I think it would make it better. It’s not about some sort of pride or, you know, being better than anyone else. I just want to make it really awesome, but I’ve been in places and some of the first jobs I had, where, you know, they were just immediately kind of think, or like, you’re being like a troublemaker, or, you know, and you’re like, I’m genuinely interested and have passion to make this really, really good. Why would you, why would you make me feel bad or, or, or think that I’m trying to be, you know, I don’t know like treading on someone’s toes?

33:26 I worked with them a chat on this, this, the channel, sorry, the show we did for Challenge, which was the Blur, the original iteration of the Blur, and this guy, he was a producer of ex-BBC, and by this point in my career I’d sort of figured out that sometimes people don’t like me to be involved in other sides of, you know, behind the… the problem is, is because I’ve done production as well, so I can naturally be a bit like, oh, you could do this or you could do that, you know, and I’m very mindful of how I pitch it, because I don’t want to come across as being rude, and, when he first started the show and I sort of came to him with some ideas, and then I was like, oh God, am I doing this thing where, like, you know, I’m being really annoying and telling you how to do your job?

34:03 And he’s like, no, he’s like, do you know how many times you come to a job and a presenter couldn’t care less about what it is that you’re doing? It’s actually really nice and really refreshing to have someone who, you know, is interested in what you do and wants to get involved and wants to pitch ideas, and then after that I was like, well, if he’s okay with it, he’s BBC-trained, so he knows what he’s talking about. Tell me about the Americans, because it’s a huge market.

34:23 Is the LA games creation space… is it based out of Los Angeles? Is that where all of the critical masses does it have a Hollywood tone to it? I guess is what I’m asking. No, not so much. I mean, then and then also like San Francisco as well.

34:36 I think it’s all, it’s all pretty, you know, with kind of how things are going at the moment in gaming. Yes, of course, you still have all these very, very big studios who are producing these very, very high, you know, high cost, high quality, known as the AAAs, right? Triple A. I got this term today on the on Triple A titles, the ones that basically rattle off some of them, so we know. Oh, okay.

34:56 So like Call of Duty, FIFA, Grand Theft Auto, the big, the ones that everyone will have heard of most. That’s what, that’s what would be your AAA title, but because indie gaming is becoming bigger and more kind of prevalent, and, you know, PlayStation have really really kind of brought this into sort of their kind of their key thing, with, you know, the new PlayStation, and even you know, with stuff like Steam on the PC, stuff like that, you’re seeing more and more of these, like, little titles, these indie games that are doing things really differently, and they can kind of take risks, and they can look at gameplay in a different way, and sometimes the problem with triple-A titles is, like, once you have a fresh IP, like a new story, a new product, it does quite well, so they’re like, oh, that’s great, let’s, like, do that every year, you know, and they kind of change it a little bit or change things around a little bit, and then it’s kind of the same game the next year, and they kind of, it’s, it’s difficult because they can’t change it too much, because change it too much, then that’s a problem, but if they don’t change it enough, right, back to that Innovator’s Dilemma a little bit, they have a stream of profits they want to keep it going, and the indies can just do crazy stuff.

35:53 They can experiment. What’s, yeah, exactly. But, you, it’s great for the industry as a whole, because you know you’ve got people kind of thinking about how you interact with games in different ways. And I mean, there’s this really, really so obvious, and I, I honestly never really thought about it before. There’s a game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, where it was really simple.

36:12 All you did was you controlled one brother with one analog stick and one with the other, and it was so simple, like really, really simple, and yet I’d never really thought about doing it. It made the whole game really really different, and how, how you sort of think about how you, or it made you really feel like you could know what you’re doing, you know? Sometimes when you feel like you’re going backwards when you’re going forwards, but, little things like that and just different ways to interact with games, and, and, and how you, as a, as a player, interact with the game.

36:39 Nothing will ever change, unfortunately, you know, when you’re talking about huge sums of money, which you’re, this is what you’re talking about with, you know, AAA titles. They’re not going to take any risks. I mean, sometimes they will, but generally speaking, it’s too much of a monetary risk to take a risk. So now that it’s kind of changing and, you know, these kind of indies are coming in, it’s almost like they kind of can test different ways, so at least they get a bit more diversity in gaming.

36:59 You maybe, more in AAA titles, they’ll be like, well, this kind of worked with this indie game, why don’t we adopt that, you know, for this title? And then a different AAA will be like, well, why don’t we do things a bit like this? Is there a comparison, like BBC versus YouTube, where the BBC was like, we’re doing it this way, and then the YouTubers come out and have success doing it the crazy way and getting feedback, and stuff like that? Is that kind of, the YouTubers are kind of like the indies, and obviously the BBC is, you know, like the main kind of publishers that have been doing it for quite a long time.

37:22 But I mean, I think there’s, you know, there’s space for everyone in gaming. It’s only going to get bigger and better, better, right? And if anything, it’s just for us gamers. It’s just great. I mean, let, let the business people worry about what they’re doing.

37:33 We’re, we’re all right, we’re going to get some great games out of it. What, what are you worried about? All right, then, talk to me about the Americans. Do you love the Yanks, and do they love you? In what way?

37:41 Well, I mean, when it comes to, do you go over there? You obviously spend some time in LA. Have you done presenting there? Do you have to acknowledge the Americans when it comes to the gaming industry, or can you just really live in the UK bubble and do you presenting over here, or is there going to be crossover? That’s my question.

37:54 And, and the Yanks love the Brits. This is very true. I mean, we watch Downton Abbey. Oh, is that, is that how you… We love the Brits, Downton Abbey.

38:02 Yeah, that’s my theory. My theory is that the Yanks, you know, why they watch Downton Abbey, do you know why? Why? Because they like the really posh accents. Well, because Americans, at the very core, they have no class, really.

38:13 And so, yeah, you do realize we’re recording this right now? Yeah, yeah. And I’m American, and but they look to the Brits because they say, wow, these people at least used to have class, and so they probably have more of an idea than we do, and so they look over here, and that’s why Downton’s big. That’s why they look to Paris for the catwalks, because they know they really don’t have it. And the Americans always have love for the Brits.

38:32 And I just wondered what their reaction was to you. So I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got people who follow me who are from. I don’t think I’ve ever done, like, a kind of dissection of where people are from. Particularly, I would.

38:42 The problem is, you know, the UK, it can be very easy to kind of get lost in, the UK game scene, mainly because it becomes part of your social life as well. It’s like, I can’t really differentiate between, like, most of my friends are in gaming. It’s very weird. It’s like, quite all, kind of consuming. I would love to do stuff in America, but it’s kind of finding, like, the right things, and there might be things this year that might happen.

39:07 Maybe, I don’t know. So, but that would be something that I would absolutely love to do. And actually, in terms of gaming content, I have had this discussion quite a few times before about it. It’s quite limiting in the UK, what jobs there are, and also TV in the UK doesn’t really have a lot of money to really do things properly, and if you’re a, you know, freelance presenter and your work is, like, there’s a certain amount of money you need to earn per job to make a sustainable living, because you can’t be working seven different jobs because there aren’t seven different jobs.

39:35 There’s maybe three or four. Yeah, so you need to be making that money doing those three or four jobs, and not all the time that they actually have the budget to do that. Whereas in America, there, I don’t know, like gaming content and kind of gaming TV, it’s, it’s much more accepted. It’s less dorky. It’s, you know, it’s kind of cool, and, yeah, there’s just a lot more work out there.

39:53 So I have had a discussion with myself and, like, some of my friends about whether I’d move out there if there was work out there, and I might, you, you could live in LA. You go to, tr, every night, and you, Los Angeles, go, San Francisco, or New York. I think. Okay, which read on Los, so you’re not feeling on Los Angeles. It’s obviously got the media industry there.

40:11 It’s got, like, a whole weird vibe to it. You wouldn’t want to live there? I mean, if I was working there and that’s where I was, I’m sure I could make it work and I could be happy, but, you know, from the outside perspective, I don’t know. I just don’t like that. I can’t walk anywhere.

40:22 It drives me crazy. It’s just forever in… If you’ve never been to LA, just go play Grand Theft Auto and it’s just the same. That’s what Julia Hardy says. Oh my God, I got a few questions for you.

40:32 I got a bunch of questions, but one of them is The $64,000 Question, and that’s an old, like, game show from the ’70s, so nobody will know what the hell that is. But how many hours of games should you play a day? Should you… Oh, who is this? Me, the viewer, the game?

40:47 Like, what people have asked me. They wrote in, and saying like, how much is too much? How much is enough? How much, where I don’t feel guilty? Okay, it’s completely it’s completely personal.

40:58 So first of all, the word “should” is the worst word in the English language, because it implies there’s some kind of, like, Galactic Council of people who make up decisions about what we should do with our life, and that’s absolute rubbish, because we’re all individuals and we all have different needs. So first of all, if you ever hear yourself saying the word “should” to yourself, change it to “could.” Immediately changes your entire life perspective.

41:18 This was a revelation for me. Anyway, no, it does, because also if you say to yourself, “Well, I should get this bit of work done in 20 minutes,” and you don’t, you get really angry, because you’re like, why didn’t I do it? What’s wrong with me? But if you sort of say to yourself, “I could have got this work done in 20 minutes,” if you do it in 20 minutes, you’re like, “I’m awesome, I did it in 20 minutes.” You know, you’re very Zen.

41:38 For a media, flashy, Hollywood type you’re very Zen. Well, I think you just have to learn how to cope with quite stressful things when you do my job. So, because you tend to, especially now that, you know, you do end up doing a lot of work online and a lot of things are so last minute. Like, I will get the script 20 minutes before I’ve got to do it in front of a room full of people, and you’re like, okay, I might go learn that now. You know, you tend to get chucked stuff.

42:03 Yeah, that’s heavy. So you just have to learn to enjoy things that don’t really matter so much anymore. Okay, so there’s no fixed number of hours. Is there any boundaries? Is there any boundaries?

42:13 I think, I think the really important thing for me is, like, I’m a big fan of working out. I’ve had, like, depression, like, for most of my adult life, and I’ve always tried to find ways of dealing with it. I don’t, I don’t medicate, because I’ve done it before, and it, it doesn’t really work long term for me, and exercise is the best thing that I’ve found. 100% best thing. So because I tend to sit in front of a computer quite a lot, if I’m not shooting or I play video games in my spare time, I realize that my life is incredibly sedentary, probably more so than most, so exercising comes doubly important, because I’m just sitting around a lot of the time, and I could just sit and eat crisps till they, like, come out of my ears.

42:48 If you just leave me alone to my own devices, that would be something to see. It would be, yeah, I’m not even kidding. I’m obsessed with crisps. Do you exercise daily, then? Yeah.

42:57 Wow. Okay, pretty much. I mean, minimum five days a week, minimum, but it’s only, like, for half an hour. It’s only just something to sort of wake you up in the morning. It hasn’t got to be anything too sort of stressful, but you just need something to kind of kickstart your day.

43:11 So I think any kind of… I don’t think there’s a right amount of time to game. I just think that with everything in life, it’s all about balance. Like, you could exercise too much. You could become obsessed with exercising.

43:22 I think if it gets to the point where you’re gaming and someone calls you up and says, “Hey, do you want to go out?” and you’re like, “Actually, no, I just want to stay in and play video games,” maybe then you need to think about, not spending so much time playing video games, because it’s all, it’s all about balance. It should enrich your life. It should bring something to your life, not be your life. That is a great point. So if you’re doing some exercise during the day, it’ll probably put you in a nice medium, where if you’re doing some, some work and exercise… sorry, so if you’re doing some work and some exercise, it’ll kind of get you into a happy medium.

43:55 Is kind of what you’re saying? It again, it’s like everything in life is all about finding balance and what’s good for you. And, like, sometimes I will treat gaming as kind of my reward, so if I get all the stuff done that I wanted to do during the day, then I’ll sit down and spend, like, a few hours gaming. Or a couple of hours gaming is, like, my reward, because it’s, it’s, it’s an enjoyable thing, you know, a really enjoyable thing. I mean, you could argue about the pros and cons of whether gaming is particularly bad or not.

44:18 I mean, I think really just sitting around doing nothing, you know, whether you’re gaming or not, is not a particularly great thing. You know, if you’re just going to sit around and watch TV. I mean, I people moan about gaming and how it consumes, like, all people’s time, and stuff like that, but you imagine these families where people just come home, they turn the TV on, the first thing they get in the door, they watch, you know, have their dinner as soon as they get in, they’re basically watching six to seven hours in an evening of television.

44:40 That’s not good for you either. You know, at least with gaming, you’re actually actively engaging your brain, your problem solving, you know, you’re experiencing something different, something that’s engaged you, and, like, it’s interesting, you’re not just, like, oh, I’m going to, you know, watch something on TV and then look at something on eBay on, like, my… you know, you’re not really doing anything. know. I contest. It’s a better way to spend your time.

45:01 I think you’re right. Talk to me about this book that’s come out recently. It’s called Hooked. We were talking about it earlier, and the whole thing is about, you do something that gives you this variable reward. You don’t know if you’re going to die, if you’re going to win.

45:11 We were saying you go to Instagram, you don’t know if you’re going to be disgusted or shamed or excited or inspired, and we keep miserable. Is for Julia, she finds it very miserable, that’s why she just posted our picture on Instagram. So do you ever think about this whole dopamine reward that we all get from games? I mean, email is a game, you know, Twitter’s a game, you know. Some people treat their dating lives as games.

45:32 I mean, you know, and so we’re gaming all the time, like you said. I mean, do you ever try to understand the game and why it works in your brain? Well, I think, I think it’s just about this. It’s about having this immediate feedback, you know? You do this and then you get this reward, and I think people like the idea of immediacy, and I think there’s a lot of really good things that you can learn from games.

45:51 I mean, all the things you’re talking about are things that have been kind of gamified in, in some way. And, there’s a woman called Jane McGonigal who wrote this book called Reality Is Broken, and it’s basically talking about how you can learn lots of really interesting life lessons through looking at how games are structured, so give some examples of… there’s a school in New York where they treat the school term time, and the in the curriculum as a game. So what?

46:16 Okay, right, here’s an example. Skyrim is a huge game, right? It’s a medieval kind of roleplay game. People have spent hundreds, and I mean hundreds and hundreds of hours playing this game. Now, like I was saying, for, like, a main story, you could maybe say, for example, there’s, like, 20 missions you have to do to, to start the game, to finish the game, to get to the end point of the game.

46:38 But actually, within the game, there’s hundreds of missions, but you only really have to do those 20 to complete it. The other ones are your choice. You choose to do them. If you had to do them, you would hate them, you know? What I mean is, you’re, you’re choosing to go and help some guy because he’s lost his chicken, or, you know, like, oh, I’ll just do that for a bit, you know, because you’re opting in, and I think that’s one of the key things to take away from that, is about this idea of opting in.

47:01 So in this school, I think they have, like, a base layer of things you have to do just to kind of pass the year, or whatever. So whatever these different subjects are, and whatever you have to do, but so, say for example, you wanted to get, like, the science exam, you know, for the end of the year, you’d have to have a certain amount of science points, so you’d have to pick jobs as they were effectively off the jobs board or whatever, which would have science portions or science points, and they might be 20 points science, 10 points maths and five points something else. So you basically pick and choose what ones you want to do to kind of get to the end-of-level boss, as it were, and complete that particular chapter.

47:36 And they, they kind of gamify the whole school. So they hide clues around the place, and they just make it really interesting and engaging and fun, and it learning is should be fun if you’re interested in, you know, the subject that you’re doing. And there’s just so much you basically argues that there’s lots of things that you could apply. I mean, imagine if you had, in, like, a working world you have a base salary, right, of 20 grand a year, right, for your job, which is effectively, I don’t know, 10 tasks that you have to do, answer the phones, you know, answer emails, and yeah, whatever it is, the 10 things you then have, like, a jobs board in your office where you have, like, different, like, larger-scale projects that you have to do, and one might be, you know, one man, two man, whatever it is, you effectively pick which ones you want to do.

48:15 And you need to pick four per year to get an extra 10 grand on your salary, or something like that. or maybe it’s a case of, you have, if you do this extracurricular one for points, you get two days off in L. There’s so many things you could do to make work interesting and exciting, and this idea of opting in. So people are choosing to work on these projects to kind of get these kind of rewards and points. I think that’s fascinating.

48:36 I think there’s something really interesting there that you could learn. I think we could learn a lot about that game. I mean they talk. Okay, gamification is the word that everyone’s using these days in businesses, but there’s a lot to it, because the typical life, especially 50 or 100 years ago, was the opposite of gamification. It was, you know, you’ve got to do this or’ll beat you or kill you or you’ll starve.

48:53 And so, like you said, when you give it the option, you see it with a kid, a 10-year-old kid. You tell them what to do, they don’t want to do it. You give them some options and some points, doesn’t have to be anything real, and then they’re like, okay, yeah, that’s exciting, exciting. Talk to me about being the host of these shows. You’re the person in front of the camera.

49:09 You talked earlier about getting a script 20 minutes before. I can’t imagine what that’s like. It was in a room full of people. It was room full of people, live audience, even worse. I mean, it’s kind of funny.

49:18 I mean, we don’t have the, we have, I guess, similar type jobs, but I think you have a lot more pressure when it comes to that type of stuff. But people kind of see me on with these people, and people think that maybe just people just dropped by you know, in my, in my… I was delivering a package next door, you want to talk to me? And so, like, and I hate people that complain about their job. So what I try to do is make my job look easy and make it look like Julia just came by today, and then we’re going to talk about this.

49:41 But what is it really like being a host and presenter? What’s the behind the scenes? Especially want to know, because there’s, you know, like 20-year-olds out there that are looking and saying, I want to do that one day. What can you tell them about what’s really required, because there’s homework to do, there’s dealing with directors and producers that have these crazy ideas, and they have no ideas, and then give you these scripts before you go on. Like, what is it really like?

50:04 Okay, right, top advice would probably be, prepare, prepare yourself. Never ever turn up unprepared. Even if they tell you there’s going to be an autocue, don’t believe their lies. Don’t believe their lies, because you look bad, right? Yeah.

50:21 Basically, as the presenter, if anything goes wrong, everyone always thinks it’s you. Like, you know, a producer could have really messed up, someone could have not checked some facts on a script, and you’re reading out, cause you don’t always have time to, you know, check all these things. You’re relying on other people, and, you know, when, especially when these things go out online, it’s all going to land at your doorstep. Right? Yeah.

50:40 So, never trust that you have an autocue. Never good advice. Do not trust that. I’ve been in situations and you’re just like, great, now I look like an idiot. Like, I just didn’t prepare, and always do your own research for interviews.

50:53 Like, even if they’re going to hand you a card with a load of questions, do it yourself, because if they don’t have it with you, you, again, you look like an idiot. Always, sorry, always, always, always prepare. See, your best advice? You, and that comes down to links that you’re doing as well, like on the day. Like, don’t you know, if you’re doing, like, a show which is link-based, studio time is really, really expensive, so you cannot be working through stuff and messing stuff up too much on the day.

51:20 Really, it’s expensive. It’s expensive for them, and also you’ll feel really the pressure, because about halfway through, your producer is going to start looking really wide-eyed, and then it’s going to make you mess up everything all the more. Right, because in the studio, the cameraman costs money, and everything costs money, and you book, like, a day or a half a day, and the whole thing, it’s very expensive time to waste. So I mean, it depends on what kind of show you’re doing.

51:39 I mean, I’ve done shows that have been really, really heavily autocued, like Game Face, the sh… St Bravo, that was unbelievably over-scripted, to the point where I couldn’t really chuck in anything, like even just, like, an aside to freshen up. They’d be like, no, it’s too long, do it again, Julia. And you’re like, well, so, yeah. So what’s, what’s that like?

51:55 I mean, what’s that like when you can’t give any creative input? Is that frustrating? Well, yeah, unbelievably. I mean, it’s when I first kind of started doing Game face, you know, they’d hired me because I was a gamer, and at least for the first kind of couple months, it felt like I couldn’t really… it was all, like, very, very heavily scripted, and then, sort of, after a couple of months, I think they started giving me my own little bit within the show to kind of do stuff, which was great, and that was fine.

52:20 I did, like, a rant every week about something that was annoying me in video games, or something, which was fine, but yeah, it can be really frustrating. But then it’s, you know, at the end of the day, you almost have to be, like, too nice a lot of the time, because it’s finding regular work is quite difficult. You just need to get on with everybody. You know, if you disagree with someone, that’s okay, or if you’re worried about something, that’s okay, but you need to learn how to say it in the right way that doesn’t upset people, because you have to remember, if you’re critiquing something about the job, you’re effectively critiquing what someone else has done, right?

52:52 So you’re, kind of, probably put a lot of work in to get to that point, or you’re just making them look bad. So there’s, you don’t want to show anyone else up for doing what they’re doing, so you basically have to act like a professional. I mean, serious. So you put in the years and you put in the time to be a professional. Yeah, absolutely.

53:08 And you know, there are ways of putting things across, and even if it’s a case of, you know, do, let’s do it this way first of all, and do you mind if I just do another one afterwards? And I could just try something different. Say something like that. Or, me and this guy, David, the one who worked for the BBC, we’d always do this rule of, it was one for fun. So you get, you get a take of a link rather than just be like, oh, let’s do it again, and you always get really annoyed when it’s a long day that you have to do something again.

53:32 You just be like, one for fun, one for fun, like, we’ve got it, we’ve got what we need let’s just do one for fun, and it suddenly just completely frees up the way you think about it, and how you go into it. And so much of presenting, because it’s, you, you’re not a photocopier. You don’t just churn out information or copies of stuff. You know how your mood is directly affects the work that you do. You’ve got to learn to let things go.

53:54 If things go wrong, you need to be able to just, just brush it off and forget about it and move on, because you might think that it doesn’t affect how you speak, but it really does, cuz it’s video. People kep pick all those cues up on your face, and they’re going to be like, she doesn’t really want to be here, and they might actually subconsciously feel that you don’t want to be here, and then they don’t hear your message. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I’m just trying to think what other really good advice I could give to someone wanting to do it.

54:19 It’s, it’s, you have to be, I guess, you have to be incredibly motivated, just mainly because especially doing freelance presenting, I’ve always made the conscious decision not to work for one person, particularly one particular company, because I like the idea of getting to do lots of different things that interest me, and, but it, you do get to a point where sometimes work gets a little bit quiet, and you get a little bit wired. You’re like, oh God, have I done the right thing? And then it goes mad, and then you’re really busy and you have no time to think, and it’s, it’s very much an ebb and flow, like that.

54:49 You have to be really prepared for it, and know that when you’re freaking out, just to calm down and worry about it tomorrow, and don’t freak out about it, because it’s just the nature of the job. It’s just that’s the way it kind of goes. I suppose the other thing is how you get work now. I think most people would probably think that you just go and get an agent. It’s like being in a band, right?

55:10 You get signed, and then it’s all great, you’ll make millions, and it’s not, right? Effectively, all an agent is, is like an extra set of contacts and someone who’s going to do the kind of legal negotiations for you, effectively. And I had an agent when I originally started, but I don’t think it was, like, too good a sort of fit, really, and it was like a different sort of time. It was really kind of, you know, I don’t know, it was a long time ago. And, then I sort of went through this period where I would pretty much find all my own work, and I was like, I don’t really need an agent, because I’m literally doing all my own work.

55:41 I’m doing all my own negotiations, and actually I was always quite afraid of doing that, so I felt, I thought it was quite a positive thing to just learn how to, yeah, to get out in front and do it yourself. Do it myself, your own work. Yeah, exactly. And just also negotiate myself. I hate talking about money, because it always feels a bit, but you know, you have to do it, so you do it.

55:57 And then, I’ve just recently signed with the new agent, and you know, she’s, she’s amazing, but it’s, you’re still out there. I’m still out there looking for my own work. You never stop doing that. You never kind of take your foot off the pedal, because you just don’t know what’s going to happen from month to month, and even when you have jobs that are in the pipeline that could be life-changing, you just have to, like, leave it over here and not count it, because TV…

56:18 Wow. Okay. You will get a million jobs that never happen, and, and you need to just be able to, just, it’s all right, there will be something else, you know, and but constantly keep on the hustle, basically, trying to find other work. Or, for me, I tend to try and work out opportunities. I like coming up with TV format ideas, so I’m in a really good position at the moment, where I’m getting to kind of meet with a lot of, like, production companies and commissioning editors and stuff like that.

56:41 This is all through my agent, whereas before I had all these ideas but, like, nowhere to put them, but she’s been in the business like 30 years, so she’s like, I’ll just call up the guy from BBC3, and you can go and have a meeting with them, and you’re like, okay, all right, that sounds good. So you know, I’m always kind of looking for opportunities, and also with people that I meet that I enjoy hanging out with or working with, or have, like, an interesting perspective on life. I’m trying to think of shows that we could do together to kind of push things in a different way, that kind of thing.

57:06 So I’m kind of always on the hustle for, finding new opportunities, and I don’t like to stop doing that, because, like I say, you know, things can be in the pipeline that can be incredible, but you just don’t know how things are going to play out. And don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing job, like, and the highs are unbelievable. I have jumped up and down on my bed a lot doing this career, like, really, just, like, oh my God, this is the greatest day, and then I’ve sat on my bed crying when it’s been terrible.

57:32 So it’s swings and roundabouts, you know. You’ve got to be a little prepared for that. Yeah, my big takeaways from that was you have to, you really have to be very Zen in that sense, because you’re almost like a startup entrepreneur, in that you get the highest highs and the lowest lows, and at one point you’re going to sign the greatest deal for the next 10 years, and then all of a sudden it’s television and it’s just gone, and you have to be able to wade those emotional highs and lows on top of being a professional when the cameras are on.

57:56 Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a really, really tricky thing, sometimes, not getting, not getting frustrated. I mean, the only times I’d ever bit get, like, angry on set it’s never really, it’s never really because of something someone else is doing. It’s usually because I can’t do my job the way I want to do it, and I know I can do it better, and sometimes I think people have been in situations where people have read it as though I’m being a bit unprofessional, or, you know, I’m getting annoyed with them.

58:21 This only happened, this was, like, really kind of early on in my career I’m talking about, and I sort of realized that people are kind of interpreting my frustration with myself and projecting it onto them, and they’re thinking that I’m annoyed with them, or, and you know, you just need to just not get frustrated, or just don’t let anyone see that you’re getting frustrated, because they will always think it’s them, and it’s not. I was just getting annoyed because I was like, I can do this so much better, and, like, I just want to say it in this way, and I can’t quite get it out, right? And you know, and then you get annoyed, because you’re like, it’s just talking.

58:45 Why can’t I just do what, why can’t I just say what I want to say? You know, and it’s not talking at all. It’s completely different. So that’s wow, that’s so, that’s very reflective on yourself, to know that that inner peace has to come from you, and that any angry or arguments you’re having with people is really your own frustration being projected outwards. It really was.

59:00 It was never, it’s never a case of, I would be outwardly annoyed with someone. I would be getting, kind of, like, it would come across like I was angry, and people will always assume it’s something to do with what, you know, what they’re doing, but it would come purely from just the place of, like, I, I just know I can do this better, and I really want to do it better, and sometimes it’s, you know, from fatigue, or you’re not as prepared as you want to be. You know, there’s different things, which is why I try and, you know, take those variables out as best I can, because the more you take them out of the equation, the better job you’ll do, the more relaxed you are, the better will come across, and the better is kind of like for everybody.

59:36 Basically. One thing I realized is that you are a hustler, and any successful person that you see at the top of their game, in my opinion, is a hustler. You have to. How else would you get presenting? Presenting jobs will not just fall in your lap.

59:47 It just won’t happen. And I’m sure it’s about keeping in contact with people. I’m sure it’s about seeing them face to face, whether it’s bumping them into this, or just checking Basse, or bumping a script that you’ve got out for them, or just the Christmas cards. The D… I mean, you are just constantly hustling, and anyone at the top of their game is hustling, in my opinion.

1:00:04 They might not look like they’re hustling, but, you know, they always are, and I was always hustling. And even in banking, they’re like, what do you do? You just go into the bank and you pick up the phone? No, you’re out there having dinner. You’re out there taking the clients out.

1:00:15 You’re a dad doing this. You’re going the extra mile. You’re going the extra mile. Hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. That’s the only way to make it happen.

1:00:20 Right? Yeah. And also a lot of the time, when you, you know, I tend to not, I’m not, I’m not a particularly amazingly calculatedly manipulative person. I tend to not be able to hang out with people I genuinely don’t like, and I would never, I would never, well, no, I would never, I would never go down that avenue, because I feel like that’s a compromise, a bit too far. The people I will meet up with, the people I want to spend time with anyway, and they’re the people I want to work with as well, so I might, you know, go out for a meeting where we’re just having a catch up.

1:00:46 It’s more like, what are you doing? We’re doing this, and then something they’ll say, I’ll be like, oh, that’s really interesting, so do you think maybe they’re looking for something a bit like this? Maybe we should draw up an idea together where we do something like this. What do you think about that? And it’s more sort of collaborative.

1:00:58 It’s not so much like, oh my God, tell me what you know about jobs and things like that. And yeah, I’m just, you know, if I don’t like someone, it’s really obvious, so I’m not very good at hiding that, so I can’t, I wouldn’t be very good at hustling people I don’t genuinely actually like. As people. It’d be like, hi, you know, I want to talk about Burma, and there’s one thing that you said, you know, when you go out to, like, this place, this refugee camp you spent, and I’m going to quote you.

1:01:21 You said once, “You remove all the BS, being happy is not that hard. You think that Western life is designed to make us unhappy, so we buy crap.” Unquote. It sounds like the movie Fight Club, and I could go on and on about, you know, Brad Pitt’s lines in there, and I want to get to that stuff, but first I got to rattle through some of these gaming questions, cause people are looking to you. And now at least I know what a AAA, you know, gaming thing.

1:01:42 I’m going to ask you some basics now. These might sound like things you’ve heard before, but these are good questions that I guess I want to know. And so here are some of the basics. Do video games promote and/or encourage people to be violent? No, absolutely not.

1:01:53 It’s complete rubbish. What I think you will find is that people have a natural predilection for violence, or are antisocial in some way, will play games. It’s not the games that make them that way, but they will naturally play games because it allows them to be by themselves for very, very long extended periods of time with people not bothering them. I think, you know, I don’t think it’s like a symptom of it. Okay, so correlation, not causation, is what you’re saying?

1:02:13 Okay, good. Let’s rattle through these. I like that. Good answer. Has video game replaced the real world for this generation?

1:02:19 Not for this generation, maybe the next one, or the one after. And yeah, because the real life is kind of rubbish. Gaming’s way better. Really? Okay, all right, okay.

1:02:27 Well, well said. Well said. Do you believe the video gaming can be a path to mastery? A path to the mastery of what? Well, I don’t know actually, saying that with virtual reality coming out, things like augmented reality coming out, with the new kind of fitness stuff that will be happening, wearable technology, this kind of thing, sliding into tech a little bit there.

1:02:46 Yes, I think in the future it will be a way of actually learning real skills. I mean, imagine if you could play, like, okay, so last Assassin’s Creed game set in Revolutionary France. Imagine if you could, obviously taking out the killing people element to it but imagine if you were in school and you could walk around on the streets, hear the sights and sounds, meet the people from that time. Imagine how learning history would completely change. Imagine if you wanted to learn French and you could walk around Paris and talk to people.

1:03:10 These are all things that are only a couple of little steps away. I want to do those things now. Yeah, but these are things that will happen, so I think learning and education will completely change. So yeah, I think you can become a master of something. Definitely.

1:03:20 How far are we until we see that Oculus product that’s going to be like really good, where it really, you know, the P to heal calls are going from zero to one where people are like, it’s here now, and it’s happening, because I don’t think that’s really happened with virtual reality. No, no. Not yet, and you know, I don’t think it will happen for a few years yet. It’s definitely on the right path as far as I’m concerned, because the thing is, you know, you can make TVs bigger.

1:03:42 Oh, great, you’ve got some more pixels, and it’s ultra high, super duper amazing definition. It’s like, hey, most of us eyesight didn’t even work that well like my parents. What’s the point of having 1080 B? They can’t even see properly, you know, like, for goodness sake. So I think it’s point where, you know, like, bigger TVs don’t really… who cares?

1:03:59 They’re curved, who cares? Who gives? Right. Virtual reality is enough of a jump, or augmented reality, there, enough of a jump where it would actually be interesting again and exciting again to actually do these things. And I think a lot of the time, with some of the virtual reality games, they’re trying to think about how you can play with other people in the room, because obviously it’s quite an isolating thing, so they’re trying to find ways of doing kind of asymmetric gameplay, where, you know, someone wears the glasses and someone else has a tablet, and you’re playing the same game but from different sort of viewpoints.

1:04:27 But just imagine, just imagine that. I would love to see, you know, I’ve got a lot of friends who live all over the world now, and I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like, and imagine if I could put on my virtual reality glasses and you can sit in, like, a fake cinema, you can see the seats around you. I can sit there with all my friends. You know, some we live in Dubai, some live in China, and watch a movie together and hear what, what hilarious, witty comments they’re making about how terrible this film is.

1:04:48 That’s amazing. The ability to kind of bring people together and to show people that kind of thing. That’s a big enough jump for me that I think would really make a differ yeah, yeah, I’m excited to see that. Why is the video game industry lacking in well-written female protagonists? Because it’s been a bit of a boy club, and, also to do with the fact that they still think it’s only men who play video games, so they panded to that, because, because that’s how they sold games before, so they will still apply that rule now, even though it’s the same with them.

1:05:15 When you look at tech magazines, right, they always have the still the same stupid woman who’s basically a shelf on the cover holding up a bit of technology, and because they’ve done it before, you know that, and that’s how they sell their magazines. They will keep doing that, because why would you deviate from the plan instead of thinking, well, actually we could double our figures, because we would actually not put off women who might otherwise buy the magazine by finding something where, you know, actually doing a cover that speaks to both genders, you know, this will happen, and it will happen with gaming, but unfortunately it’s still very much, yeah, it’s just going to take a little while. Okay, all right, fair enough.

1:05:50 Is, has the difficulty level of games decreased? Yes, to appeal to the greater market. Yes. Wow. Wow.

1:05:56 Can you… well, when you play a game, you don’t have, sometimes you might have things like perma death in indie games, but, like, you know, if you played games on, like, the Spectrum, you, like, had like three lives or whatever, and then that was it, you were done, you know, game over, finished, whereas now, you know, you can hide behind a cardboard box in a game and your health regenerates, and I can see that, because it’s personally I always hated that about games, that they were too difficult, because I want to have fun, you know, and I think you know, there are games out there that do have that, you like things like Dark Souls, where it’s incredibly difficult, and then people who want that type of experience will play that type of game, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.

1:06:32 Like, I want to have fun, I don’t want to be frustrated, I don’t actually want to be, have something that’s too technically difficult. I want it to be fun. I want to go in there, have some fun, accidentally, oh, I killed that guy, and you know, that was a great shot, you know, and then move on. I, I want to have fun. I don’t want to, really, you know, be tested to the limits, so yes, that’s why I, I’ll never play Dan good answer.

1:06:51 You definitely know what you’re talking about here. Which is, is nice to hear. Our, how do you think the video games are changing the world as an experience, just in every possible way? I think, I mean, you know, we touched upon, you know, things like virtual reality and stuff like that. I think, I think the, the prospects for education are unbelievably huge.

1:07:10 I think once people start getting over the fact that Grand Theft Auto is a bit violent, all this sort of stupid stuff. Oh, you can kill prostitutes, you can kill anyone in that game. It’s not, it’s not just prostitutes, you can kill anyone. Honestly, it’s quite, it’s a bit like South Park. It’s just, cover it’s offensive to everybody, let’s be honest.

1:07:28 I think it would really, really change how we do everything. I mean, imagine there’s this kind of sort of joke game called Surgeon Simulator, where you’re like this sort of drunk surgeon, but imagine if you were to actually make a proper surgeon, simulator, so you could actually, like, you know, try out and test things, and I mean, yeah, there’s just a million applications, and I think we’re kind of getting to that stage where we’re moving past it, which is fantastic, and that’s great. I’m just trying to think what other application, just.

1:07:56 I mean, just even like, I, I find TV a little bit offensive, because it’s so passive sometimes, you know, and people kind of sit on a couch together and sit there with their families, and you know, watch something, and it’s not all like Gogglebox, let’s be honest. People don’t really have conversations do they, you know, with their families? Who knows? But you know, I think a way of kind of engaging your family and interacting with your friends, and I don’t know, we, we’re becoming more and more isolated, and gaming is the one thing that kind of brings everybody together.

1:08:26 Wow, you know, sounds like a Whitney Houston song. Oh God. Well, no, what, no, but I know you are right. I mean, people sit around and, and just glaze at the, at the, you, I mean, at the TV. There isn’t interaction.

1:08:35 There isn’t even really commenting. No one’s figuring things out, no one’s talking to each other. It’s nothing is more fun than meeting up for a play date with your friends. Be like, all right, how you doing? Wait a minute, let me just kill that guy.

1:08:46 Yeah, no, great, how was your day at work? You know, it’s, it’s like having, like, a Skype chat, but you’re playing through something and achieving something together, and I think that’s what people, you know, they look at online multiplayer and they think, oh God, it’s just full of profane American 14-year-olds, and yes, there is a certain element of that, but, you know, if you’re playing in, like, a group with your friends, you can do private matches you know, when you do stuff and you just meet up with your friends for, like, a kind of catch-up and a bit of a game, and it just feels like you’re not wasting your evening. So, you know, how, like, when you’re at home and you, like, watch TV or listen to music or you’re online, you spend the whole evening doing that.

1:09:18 At the end of the day, you’re like, I’ve really wasted the evening. I really feel like I’ve just done nothing. I haven’t progressed my life in any interesting way. I never feel like that after playing, like, multiplayer games with your friends, cuz you’re spending time with your friends. That’s never a waste of time.

1:09:31 Well said. Okay, let’s talk about Burma. You know, and I want to know what’s going on. What is a British, you know, blonde television personality doing in a refugee camp in Burma with, you know, no clothes? I’m sorry, not no clothes, no new clothes.

1:09:45 The first I’ve heard of it. I was drunk that one time, though. I don’t know. Okay, the, cuz this isn’t an obvious fit, is it? And it’s one of the reasons that I wanted to have you here is because you, a lot of things that aren’t obvious, actually most people do, let’s be honest, but you know, you have a lot of sides to you that people wouldn’t expect from just seeing someone on television, right?

1:10:04 I suppose so. I don’t know. I’ve always been. I don’t like to kind of go the normal route really with anything, you know? I mean, even, even kind of with my presenting career, I am, I feel like the, the path that I took and the decisions that I made to kind of get where I am now, being female, I could have taken a large degree of shortcuts if I wanted to, you know.

1:10:27 I could post up, you know, selfies with my boobs hanging out a little bit. I’m not, I’m not criticizing women who do that, and that’s their choice. I’ve only ever compromised what I’ve been okay with compromising, and that was one compromise I was never willing to make, and I feel like my journey to get where I am now is probably taking a lot longer, but it was the only journey I was ever going to make, cuz I, I didn’t, there certain elements I don’t want to.

1:10:50 I don’t, I don’t see why, as a woman, to be successful, you have to basically sexualize yourself in some or another. Like, why can’t I just know what I’m talking about? Why is that not enough? You know, and I wanted to kind of set that example. So, yeah, anyway, I like to choose difficult roots for lots of things, and then get annoyed that I’ve chosen really difficult routes for things.

1:11:06 But does it make it all worth it, worth more because you chose that route, now when things are coming together quite nicely? I feel quite smug, and your career is probably on a more solid footing because you got there that way, as opposed to the selfie route or the Kardashian route. Nothing wrong with her, she has a lot of other talents as well. But is it, is, wait, what? I don’t know.

1:11:26 You talked yourself into a corner. I know, I just got right off that, but I mean, is it, is it, like, since you earned it all, is it more secure? Well, I suppose it’s not really. It’s not like fame in the usual way of fame, in that, you know, like, you have, like, someone who sort of, like, pops up and they’re famous and they’re in all these magazines. I’m doing a job, so it’s kind of, it sort of builds upon itself.

1:11:49 It’s never quite like, oh, well, you did this one show, and then off you go. It’s like, oh, you’ve done that one show, go do another one. You know, it’s not, it’s not quite the same. It’s not like fame, for, you know, and that whole side of it never absolutely interested me in any way. I can’t imagine anything more annoying than being famous.

1:12:06 Yeah, and being not famous after that, that’s got to be not even that. I just don’t even think I’d like the famous bir… you’re proba… right. I think most people don’t. They just think they do, and then when they get there they’re like, what’s going on? Well, I think it’s more to do with the fact that if you have to rely on other people to tell you that you’re awesome, there’s probably something a little bit lacking in your life, a little bit.

1:12:23 You’ve got to be comfortable and happy within yourself, you know, otherwise you’re just going to spend your whole life never being happy. Anyway. So, Burma, Burma. I had, my best friend from school ended up setting up a charity for the Ki refugees out there, and that was another long story, but she she ended up dying while she was out there, and that was kind of a really horrible moment in my life obviously. And I had gone out to, after the funeral, with her family, and gone to visit and see where she was, because, Steph and I were very, very similar, like really similar.

1:12:57 She was like the girl I’d known, I’d known her since I was 11. She was a girl I did every kind of first thing with, you know, like, we got into trouble, like went out to, like, pubs, and, you know, like all this sort of… she knew me better than I knew myself, probably. And, I never really, I don’t think I ever really understood how she ended up living out there. Like, a part of me didn’t really get it. I was like, why would you give up your life here?

1:13:18 Like, I love my life in London. Like, I don’t get it. And after she died, I’d gone out there to visit, cuz I couldn’t, I couldn’t go just after it had happened, cuz she’s buried out there. How did she die? It was a motorbike crash, and, they’d had, like, this big state funeral.

1:13:32 She had done all this charity work. Like, 4,000 people attended her funeral. It was, like, this massive deal, and I couldn’t get out there because the flights were, like, too grand, because it was like two days later, and I just didn’t have the money, and I ended up going, I think it was maybe, like, a month afterwards with her family, and kind of saw everything that she was doing, and kind of still didn’t really… I could sort of understand, but didn’t really get, still, why she did it.

1:13:55 And, and then I planned to go away travelling, and I was just going to kind of do a bit of a tour around. I mean, I’ve been to Thailand before. This is where it is, all these Burmese refugee camps. And, but I wanted to kind of do the whole of Southeast Asia, and at the time I kind of, I was dating this guy, and we kind of did a bit of a tour around, and then he, he was coming back to England, and I was like, actually, you know what, I want to, I want to stay, and, there’s a couple of chaps that I knew that I’d sent up there to go to, go teach in this village, and I thought, well, I just, I’ve got the time, and I had, like, more money than I’d actually spent, and I was like, okay, I’ll go up and visit them and just see how they’re getting on, and just sort of, you know, differences it make, sort of thing.

1:14:33 And, had gone up there to visit, and then just stayed. Just didn’t leave, and it was just this, you know, amazing place. A bit weird. It was, you know, the women who have, like, the rings on their necks. Kayan.

1:14:47 It was LE, well, they actually have K there as well, and some Shan people too, but yeah, mainly, mainly just the women with the rings on their necks. And, oh, actually, wait, I’m wearing, so this is actually a bracelet made out of the stuff they put around their necks. Oh, wow. So it’s brass. It’s a coil rather than rings, so it doesn’t stretch their neck.

1:15:06 What it does is, it’s just very heavy, so what it will do is it just depresses their collarbone, so it looks like their neck starts here, basically, and that, like, it never takes the weight. Okay. So, you know, if you took them off, you, it’s not like your neck’s going to break or anything like that. Quite heavy. It is quite heavy.

1:15:20 And what is the story? Is that that’s a tradition? Is it? Or, it’s a tradition. You ask them about it, and they will tell you a million different stories.

1:15:29 One of them was that they did it so that men wouldn’t steal their women. Another one was a story about a dragon woman or something. I can’t, it’s, I think it’s been sort of lost in the sand. The reason why they do it now is because the Thais pay them to do it, because basically the Thais didn’t grant them refugee status, excuse me, so they couldn’t seek asylum, so they were allowed to be there, but they’re not allowed to leave or go anywhere or do anything or get a job, basically, and they’ve been there for, like, 15 years.

1:15:54 There’s nothing else they can really do. So the Thais would basically pay the money to wear the rings, because it brings tourists to the area, because apparently, like, the Thai hill tribes look really boring, so getting, like, some Burmese ones with, like, big ears and big necks is, good. So yeah, so I was there. I ended up staying there, yeah, for best part of a year, teaching in the school. And, yeah, it was, you just stayed.

1:16:17 You didn’t come back. You had work to do here, maybe, and you just stay? No, I didn’t. I well, I didn’t really know, I don’t think I really knew what I was doing at that sort of point in my life, where I was a bit like, interesting. So then I just stayed, and then what happened?

1:16:29 You didn’t have a lot of things. Were you just living on the way the way they live over there? My house was terrible. Everyone else’s house was actually all right. It was like made of teak.

1:16:37 My house was made of bamboo, which, if you ever stayed in a bamboo hut, which is effectively what it was. My, where my bedroom was, if some… it’s the same bit of bamboo as, like, the lounge, so if people would walk through my lounge, you just all, like, bounce, cuz it was really bouncy. And there was, like, a hornet and a snake, and wait, there was also cockroaches, quite a lot of cockroaches, but you just sort of got used to them, crawling over you while you were sleeping.

1:17:00 You just leave them alone. You don’t kill them, cuz if you kill them, they more come. So you just have to just let them get on with it. And you said this was one of the happier times of your life. Yeah.

1:17:09 Why? Because intrinsically, life, Western life, is designed to make you unhappy. Like, we don’t really have so much industry, like in, in England anymore. We don’t really want great. Well, we are great at some things, but you know, it’s this idea of making money from money, in the whole kind of banking system, you know, going out and buying stuff from shops, and then we don’t charge anyone tax, and all the money goes, you know, it’s rubbish, right?

1:17:32 And how do you get people to buy stuff? Right, you get people to buy stuff because you have to be constantly sold that you’re missing something in your life, or these extrinsic, you know, extrinsic rewards is what’s going to make you happy, when actually everybody knows it’s complete rubbish, and it’s all down to, like, how you feel in yourself doing something that’s for you. An intrinsic reward is the best thing to make you, you know, long-term happy, but they don’t want you to be happy, happy, because it’s, it’s most of our economy is based on just people going buying crap in shops, basically.

1:18:00 You know, once you take all of that away, I had, like, a terrible house. It was rubbish, had no electricity. I had to boil my water. My water was brown. You’d have to boil it, and then you’d take off the water off the top.

1:18:12 I, there wasn’t really any. I had, like, a torch that was about the most glamorous thing that I had, and, I lived there. There’s no, there’s no, really, like, electricity, anything like that. I would just hang out, really, and you know, teach, and then go and do some English teaching to some of the older people from the village in the evenings, and then they’d make me eat, like, another dinner. It’s, like, really rude to refuse dinner, like, so many dinners.

1:18:35 It was getting ridiculous. And, you know, just, like, eating dinner and spending time talking to people, and once you take away all that, I mean, it’s a statistically proven fact, right? You know, money doesn’t equal happiness. I mean, up to a point, you know, it goes up on a scale, and then once you reach a certain point, it actually just plateaus, and it makes absolutely no difference. And once you know you’ve got a roof over your head, you’ve got food, you’ve got friends, you’ve got people you want to spend time with, once you have all those boxes ticked, you actually don’t need anything else on top of that.

1:19:01 It actually makes no difference long term, really, if you’re going to be happy or not. And did you bring a lot of those values back to London with you do? If you look at your life now, is it more simplified than it was? No, because it’s impossible to ignore just the kind of crushing, subconscious me of images, and I came back and I was like, I have figured this all out, no one’s going to touch me now, I’m a freaking genius, and then, like, after a year, you’re just exactly back cuz you can’t, you can’t avoid it all.

1:19:30 This stuff is rammed down your throat constantly. You’re constantly being brainwashed to feel all these things and think a certain way. All your friends think it, it’s, it’s impossible to go against the current. It really is. Why did you come back?

1:19:41 I came back because part of me felt like if I stayed there any longer I wouldn’t ever come back, and part of me, I think, really wasn’t quite ready to. I guess, like, being in London’s a little bit like a test, right? It’s one of the most complicated and difficult cities to kind of make a go of things. I mean, it’s, it’s got wonderful opportunities, but it’s a tough city, you know, to really kind of make a breakthrough sometimes, and part of me wanted to know if I had the right stuff to do it, and I thought, if I, if I don’t go back now, I won’t ever know.

1:20:14 And then part of me also thought that I can always come back. Like, if I really, really hate being in London and I don’t want to do it anymore, I can just come back here, and I know I’ll be happy. So yeah, that was kind of the reason why I came back. Does part of you think you might go back someday? It’s kind of all changed now.

1:20:31 It’s, they’ve now sort of a lot of the families that I knew are no longer there. They kind of got asylum finally, and a lot of them are, like, in Charlotte, in North Carolina, for some reason. Don’t know quite why everyone went there. They’re all kind of all over the place, really, so it wouldn’t ever really be the same, and I’ve, I have been back. I was actually back in January and saw some of my old friends and family who are my Burmese family who are back there, which is great.

1:20:55 Again, I was there for, like, about a week and a half, and I kind of was a bit like, I think I need to leave, because the more I go back and the more I sort of stay, the more I sort of think that I want to stay. I’m reminded of how ridiculous London life is, and how we’ve all got it completely wrong. But you still came back. You still were like, I’ve got to come back? Well, there’s other reasons for having to come back, but, yeah, I probably would have stayed otherwise.

1:21:19 I was, it was really tough. Besides that, Burmese family, do you think you’ll ever unplug like that and just go somewhere else where you know it’s just the simple life somewhere? Yeah. I don’t want to pay off my student loans. So you’re going to run, you’re going to run from them if I go to abroad?

1:21:35 Like, it’s f*** no. I’m just kidding. Yes, I do, only because I have to be online so much for work, and I, part of me begrudge. Part of me loves being online all the time. Part of me absolutely hates it, because you do feel terrible after being on Twitter for a bit too long.

1:21:48 You’re like, what am I doing with my life? What is this? Trying to find funny things to say. But you’re aware of it, because a lot of, aren’t aware of a lot of the things. You’re very aware of yourself, I think, because a lot of people don’t know they’re aware, and so they’ll, they’ll, they’ll watch TV until they’re just like, what am I doing with my life, or they’ll stay on Twitter until they just got all these things in their head, or they’ll, they’ll snap at people on set and think it’s them, but, like, you seem to be very aware of yourself.

1:22:11 I think you, I think you sort of have to be, and actually, you know, doing presenting anyway, you have to kind of analyze what you do. I’ve always been a bit reading between the lines in life anyway, but even with presenting, you know, you have to watch back what you do. You have to kind of analyze how you look at things and how you say stuff, and I think, I don’t know, maybe it comes from having depression quite a lot. Anyway, you’re quite analytical, I think, and you tend to, you have to be acutely aware of what you say to yourself, because that’s the kind of, the cornerstone of why you get depressed, because you have kind of repetitive cycles of negative thoughts, and you need to be able to hear them and stop them.

1:22:43 So I’ve kind of always been very in tune to what I’m saying to myself, like, why do I feel really terrible right now? And it’s like, oh, because I just said you’re really, you know, awful and terrible like 10 minutes ago to myself over and over. You know, so I think you have to become quite aware of what you say. I think everyone should be very aware of what they say to themselves, because, you know, you will make yourself feel terrible if you let all these things influence you, and you need to be aware that you’re being manipulated, or, and, and be aware that your brain is really susceptible to this stuff.

1:23:13 You know, you just say to yourself a couple of times, oh, well, I’ll never, you know. You look on Instagram and you see someone’s, like, perfect vision of a life, you know, and then you start feeling bad about your own life, and then you have to remember it’s Instagram. It’s all a bunch of lies. It’s such a bunch of lies. No one’s life is ever that exciting.

1:23:30 They’re probably sitting there thinking, like, oh God, I’m really miserable, but let me just put this photo up. You know, it’s, yeah, you find her at, it’s Julia Hardy. My life is not that glamorous at all. Yeah, no, it isn’t. It is glamorous at all.

1:23:42 Some of us have been watching some of your video posts on YouTube, and I wanted to ask you about this. If you want to talk about it. I know your, your father is struggling with cancer right now. I was wondering. I think it’s something that we’re all going to have to deal with at some point in our life, whether with ourselves or with a loved one.

1:23:57 I haven’t dealt with that specifically, and I was just wondering, what have you learned about it? How’s it going? How is your own self dealing with the whole thing? Cuz I know you’re very self-aware anyways. Yes.

1:24:09 So, well, basically, my dad has terminal mesothelioma, which is from asbestos. So he used to work in factories quite a lot when he was younger, so he’s basically breathed in asbestos. So it’s terminal. It can’t be fixed. He is having chemotherapy, but with, kind of, at the point where we’re waiting for some test results to see if it’s actually done anything.

1:24:28 I mean, it might do nothing, and really it’s only trying to kind of extend life, and if it is going to extend life, how much life compared to, like, the absolute pain in the ass that having chemotherapy is, you know? Like, if it’s, like, well, extended, like, three to four months, and you’re like, well, actually you’re going to spend, like, two months feeling like crap. Like, what’s the point? Cuz it’s, it’s a bad experience, right? Yeah.

1:24:47 I mean, basically, during his the, the second round that he had, he got, I think it’s this thing called neutropenic sepsis, which is, I think it’s basically they pump all this poison in your body, and I think it’s that sort of thing of, like, let’s hope there’s enough good stuff left at the end that you’re not dead or something. I don’t know, I might be generalizing drastically what the chemotherapy experience is, but, basically he, he got very, very sick very quickly, and, I’d, he’d had like a terrible night’s sleep one night, and, he was not very with it. I thought I just, cuz had a bad night’s sleep, so I thought, all right, well, we’ll sort of leave it, see how he feels tomorrow, and he sort of seemed a bit better the next day, and I’d gone out for a few hours, and, I’d come back and within, like, a really short space of time, it was like, it was like looking at my granddad.

1:25:31 It was like he couldn’t really talk properly, and he sort of didn’t really, wasn’t really making any sense, and anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up sort of like taking him to hospital, and it was good that I did, I think, in the end, because I think, actually, if we left another night, I don’t think he would have sort of been around in the morning, and it just unbelievably freaked me out how quickly it’s like that. Men and thing, it just, swe, turns on like a dime, really, really quickly. It’s not, yes, so, admittedly, that was, doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s this, you know, whole thing of like contamination and stuff like that, and I think he’d been a bit too rambunctious, really, and was a bit like, oh, I feel fine, let me just go out, and we’re like, you need to stay at home, kind of thing.

1:26:06 But, I don’t know, it’s, it’s a bit of a tricky, obviously, a bit of a tricky situation, because you, you initially, you initially are effectively grieving for someone who isn’t dead, and it’s, you feel really guilty for that, because you just want to be really supportive, but you’re having to kind of come face to face with that, but then saying that, you know, I do, I’ve said this in, like, some of my videos, it sounds really, really messed up, but I actually feel quite lucky in that I get to kind of spend this time with him, and I get to kind of make peace with everything, cuz all this time that this has all been going on, and you know, it’s all very traumatic, blah blah, you know, whatever. And then I had a very, very, like, one of my, my closest friends called me up the other week when I’d just come back from, from Thailand, and sort of said that his dad D had died just like that.

1:26:56 No, war, warning, nothing, and I was like, and he was like, yeah, you know, he’s kind of like playing it off, and like, and I was like, this has not hit you yet, cuz he’s in shock, you know, of course he’s in shock, and you know, some people never get that chance. They never get that chance, you know, and like I was so focused on myself and what I was going through, I completely, for not, that I could have anticipated anything like that, but, you know, you become so focused on, like, what you’re going through, and you sort of immediately forget that situations are so different, and actually, it’s, I feel quite lucky, really. It sounds really stupid, but if it was a choice of that, or him just dying right outright?

1:27:30 Obviously I’m going to take this option, you know, but it’s been, it’s not been, yeah, the best. I mean, it’s, it’s amazing how these sort of things kind of latently affect you quite a lot, like, whereas normally I’d game play games quite a lot. I play the drums, do all these things that bring me joy in my life, and actually for the past, like, six months I’ve just, haven’t really felt like doing any of them. I just kind of want to sit and not really think about things, and think, you know, distract myself with other stuff, which isn’t really the best, but then it’s, it’s kind of finding the balance between being aware of what’s going on but my problem is, I would take it too, too far and start thinking about, oh God, what will his funeral be like, and oh, what will this be like, and then you’re miserable and you’re like crying, and it’s really, really awful, and you’re like, yeah, maybe I don’t need to think about that just yet, you know.

1:28:12 So it’s, it’s finding a balance between sort of being aware and appreciative of the time, but really not taking it too far, right down the road, and not thinking about it all the time, making yourself think about it, think about it if you want to think about it, but stop sort of forcing it in your head, because otherwise you end up just… I was just really miserable all the time, and then I’m spending all the last time I’m spending with my dad being completely miserable. That’s no fun for anyone, you know, we should be happy and enjoying, you know, that the fact that we’ve got this time, you know.

1:28:36 Yeah, and you’re grieving for someone that’s still there, and so, so he’s probably, you know, he’s probably going through his own, you know, journey in his own mind, but, but gets a lot from you, and I’m sure some days he’s probably like, why doesn’t everyone just treat me normal today, or, you know, I don’t know what some of these things are, but that must be exactly, exactly that, and you’re just going around being moros B one, right? And, like, of course he’s going to pick up on that and be a bit like, great, you know, it’s, it’s a really tricky, and of course it’s much easier said than done. And this has been, sort of, this has been like a journey of kind of six months getting to this a lot better state of mind about it, but yeah, I think it, no, go ahead.

1:29:11 Go ahead. No, no, no, no, please go ahead. I mean, I guess, Mo, I mean, if we all think about it, but no one knows like when we’re going to go, and everyone thinks it’s going to be done like in a movie, or you’re going to make the phone calls and stuff, but in the reality it’s probably going to be so sudden that you’re going to be like, I can’t believe I I, I got hit by that bus, and you’re never going to be able to have any closure or anything like that and so, like you said, but when you’re in it, you’re thinking, how, why is this happening to me?

1:29:33 This is a horrible thing, but too much time to think about stuff sometimes is not always the best, you know? Right? So sometimes easier not, not having to think about it, you know. Yeah, but there you go. Thanks for sharing that.

1:29:45 I really appreciate it. I got to ask you about misogynistic Mondays, or misogyny Mondays. It’s a blog you write, and I can’t believe it’s you okay, because, cuz, I read, I read a couple of the articles, and I’m like, well, this is a very angry woman and yet you, you come across as a very grounded, self-aware, knowing what’s going on, in touch with the, you know, the Western side, in touch with the Eastern side. And so what is the blog about? And maybe I misread it, and why do you write it?

1:30:12 And yeah, talk, talk to me. Okay, so misogyny Monday came about because, or did I not get the joke? Okay, so when I originally first started doing stuff in gaming, I used to get a lot of, like, kind of, and stuff online, and I used to really argue with people, because I’m smarter than them, and I can win this argument, so I thought. But you spend the whole day, like, angry, and you were younger and feistier then to, you want to fight everyone. Then yeah, absolutely, and I knew I could outsmart these people, and, you know, well, that’s what I thought anyway, but you’d spend the whole day angry, and it’s just really not a healthy way, you know, to sort of deal with it.

1:30:43 It just ruins your day, and then, you know, you’re, you’re told, oh, don’t, you know, don’t feed the trolls, just ignore them, and I did that for a while, and then I was kind of like, this is really rubbish. Like, why is my one superpower silence and not interact? That’s not a superpower. That’s sitting around doing nothing, like this is rubbish, because also even by not commenting, they’re kind of getting away with it, because no one’s calling them up so I was like, nope, I’ve had enough of this, I want to do something else, and you know, I think if you get on a very kind of feministic soapbox and start lecturing people, no one really likes to hear that.

1:31:18 What the internet likes is jokes, so, as long as you can make it funny, people tend to be on your side and I was very, very clear when I started this that you can’t, you know, you can’t generalize all men. This is a very, very few idiots that are out there, who basically, I kind of feel sorry for, like, normal guys who are just trying to, you know, and women get really defensive about stuff, but that’s only because you have absolutely no idea how many times before we’ve had this conversation some idiot has meant something else by it, you know? You’re basically sort of like getting sort of like the punishment for 10 other guys being complete idiots, really, and it’s not really to do with anything that you’ve said, you know?

1:31:59 It’s just this kind of, it gets to this point where you’ve, like, had it said to you so many times, or something, and actually what you meant was very innocent, but once you pile on top of all the other examples, is it external, though, or is it internal as well? What do you mean? I don’t know. You said that maybe I’m the, the 10th person that that said something similar, and then I get it all, but is it also your internal clock, as in like, I’m angry about these situations, and so I’m lashing out at this, and lashing out at this, yeah.

1:32:25 I think, I think in some, because a lot of the time, you know, sometimes these things happen, you don’t say what you wanted to say at that time, or you didn’t call someone up on being, it, because a lot of the time if someone comes at you like really full on, you never, your first thought isn’t that someone’s being horrible to you. You misinterpret. You’re like, I must have misheard or something, and it’s not till later you think, actually, that guy was kind of being a bit of a, you know, so basically I decided that I was going to call these people up.

1:32:53 It made, to do with, like, YouTube comments, are the stuff that I’ve done, where people just wrote just the most like disgusting stuff, so then I’d just write a joke afterwards, and then I screengrab it, and then I take out their name, because it’s not really, it’s not about pointing at them and getting the internet to go after them. I don’t believe in that, because they will, well, they would, and I know that they would, but they don’t need to. They don’t need to, because really it’s about showing people what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

1:33:21 And by kind of taking that and using it as an example, you’re showing a lot of other people what’s acceptable and what isn’t. It’s almost like you’re kind of like educating some people. A lot of people don’t need to be educated because they’re perfectly sensible, normal men, but, you know, there are people out there who maybe need a little bit of guidance. You’re kind of, you know, showing them possibly the right way. And, I don’t know, it just seems a bit classier, really, than calling them out.

1:33:42 I, I don’t need to call them out. I don’t, you don’t need to know their name. It’s just, it’s, em, should be embarrassing enough that I’m calling them out. You know, secret shame. So yeah, I just started to write loads of, like, really stupid jokes, and then screengrab them and put them up on this, long, how long you been doing that?

1:33:56 Oh, God, I maybe, like, seven months. The problem is now is that, I’m getting less misogynistic comments, and it’s really starting to frustrate me, so I can’t update it as much as I’d like. I need to start making some more. Online, you’re listening, contact Julia on your form of social media and give her some ammo. Yeah, it’s right, it’s funny, cuz like, I don’t, I don’t know men that are that do that stuff, but maybe it’s just cuz I stay away from that energy, but some men do, they really don’t get it, and they do some dumb s***, so I guess they do need to be called out, and I guess sometimes women don’t get the chance to do it, and maybe they realize later, or maybe they just know not to confront these people in doing dumb things.

1:34:35 I think, I don’t know, I think I think a lot about this stuff, and I think that, you know, I don’t know, like, as a woman, you, you feel acutely aware that your, like, your body is always up for discussion. This is one of the biggest things. Your body’s always up for discussion. You’re too fat, too thin, your boobs are too small, they’re too big, all this sort of stuff, and you know, you’re just kind of going about your daily life, and then suddenly you realize you’re being sexualized in some way, and you’re like, why can’t I just go about my daily life without something kind of gross?

1:35:03 And it feels gross because it feels almost like, it’s almost like a sort of, like, betrayal, and I don’t know, what, I don’t know why it feels like that, but you’re just kind of going about your normal life being you, and you know, I’m not, I don’t think about sex all the time, or, like, I don’t look at guys and be a bit like, you know, and sexualize them in that sort of same way. And I appreciate those differences between the genders, or whatever, but I mean, here’s the thing, okay, if, if there is a difference between the genders, and say men think, for example, think about sex more often than women, and maybe you, you know, you go out and you look at women, you think, oh, yeah, and you can’t help it, you can’t help thinking that. That’s fine.

1:35:34 Think it, don’t say anything out loud. We don’t want to know that that’s what you’re thinking. Yeah, just keep it to yourself. Maybe don’t stare at my chest. Top tip, you know, you might be thinking, I have no problem with you thinking that, just don’t remind us of that, because we’d like to be thought of as humans, not as objects, if that’s possible.

1:35:52 Does that happen a lot? Yeah, I’ve had, like, I’ve been, like, creepy men on the tube. I’ve had that thing, you know, where they kind of barge into you, oh sorry, and they basically grab your boobs. I’ve had, like, guys follow me onto different, train carriages when I’ve been wearing a skirt and try to touch up my legs. I’ve had, yeah, Lo, I’ve had, I think most women, if you ask them really honestly, I’ve had probably, I could probably give you 20 examples of either times on the underground or situations that I’ve been in where men have tried to exploit situations or put you in really inappropriate situations, and stuff like that, playing up on the fact of like, oh, she’s such a prude, or always trying to, like, manipulate you, into, like, trying to con you into doing something.

1:36:31 And I don’t think that this is an anomaly. This is actually the… I think there is a small percentage of men out there that do not know how to to deal with those things, and they choose the wrong way to to deal with it. I don’t even think they, I think they just do stupid things like that, and if, if a guy called them later on, and said, “What the f*** are you thinking, touching a girl in a tube?” they’d be like, “But also, you got to remember, the, this is, this is the starting point.

1:36:55 Like, if they get away with it, they will do it again. You know, you have to call these people out, and it. But it’s like, all this time, the stuff happened on the tube. It’s like, who the hell am I going to talk to? I’m going to go to the police, because they’re going to care.

1:37:05 Like, but this is, this is kind of like point one. It’s the same thing with stuff like domestic violence, verbal abuse, and how it escalates to like a bit of a slap, to a shove, all the way down the line to a really not particularly nice ending and conclusion. And this is why you need to have these points where you interject ahead of time. And I was reading something, something actually sort of saying, like, it was actually a chap writing about misogyny, and he was saying that actually as men, you could probably do more to kind of influence a lot of this stuff.

1:37:32 Like, if you’re in a group of guys and some guy’s making some sort of, like, slightly inappropriate comment, they say it because they think they can get away with it and that it’s acceptable, and the fact that you don’t say anything and you don’t call a guy on it means that you are effectively saying the group agrees with you, that this is an acceptable way to talk about women. Now, you have to remember, as men, this is the guy. This guy is the reason why when you try and be nice and just play a simple compliment to a woman, you get a load of s***.

1:37:58 He’s the reason, because he is going around the world thinking that it’s acceptable, and think about how many women he interacts with on a daily basis. Yeah, that’s a lot. He’s probably personally responsible for the fact that you maybe, you got a mouthful from a woman once. So if you don’t call him out, you’re actually doing yourself a favor by calling him out in the long run, because the thing is, like, you know, women don’t, we don’t want to come across as, like, we’re completely insane and psychotic if you totally misinterpreted things, but you have to remember, like, we have to be extra in tune to all of this stuff, because, you know, we, a lot of the times we can be in situations where we can’t control it.

1:38:32 We could easily be overpowered, you know, so we have to be able to read all these other cues, and anything that just gives us that slight inclination, it’s like, okay. Say I had an example once where, there was these, a couple of these guys, and we come back home on the tube, and there was a girl sitting opposite me, and they sat down next to him, like, all right, darling, you know, how you doing? And this girl was just really trying to read her book, trying to read her book, but can ignore them.

1:38:54 They just wouldn’t. They just kept talking to her, kept talking to her, kept… now they might have been perfectly harmless guys, completely harmless, maybe they’re just a little bit drunk, they just want to talk to her. All right, as a woman, if that was me, I would be like, I don’t know these men. I don’t know what they’re capable of. If I start a conversation with them, it’s only going to lead them on.

1:39:11 I need to let them know that I’m not interested, so you know, she lets them know by completely disengaging with them, but they persist, so then what do you do? You’re then in a situation where you’re completely intimidated. You don’t know what these guys are going to do. It’s actually becoming a lot more threatening, because they’re not stopping, because they’re not picking up on her cues that she doesn’t want to talk to them. That seems like they’re a lot more forceful.

1:39:29 Maybe they’re not going to listen to what she wants later down the line. You know, this kind of thing. Everyone has to be on their guard and it’s the front line everyone does in the end with that situation. I just stepped in. I was like, guys, what are you doing?

1:39:39 I was like, you’re intimidating her. Like, you literally just sat next to her. You’re drunk on a train, like, of course she’s not going to talk to you. Oh, we’re just like, well, you might be. How’s she supposed to know?

1:39:47 How are you supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys? You can’t. So you have to just take, be on the defensive, otherwise she’s going to get herself in a situation where you guys are following her home. You know, how that could be, that is a realistic thing that could happen, and it’s happened to a lot of women. You’re very passionate about this.

1:40:04 Yeah, well, I think it’s well said, and we’ve all been in that group with the guy says that thing, and everyone’s like, I think we do weed him out over time, and with somebody says says something to him, but probably not enough. And the other thing that kills me also is that we have daughters and mothers and wives, and so it’s not like these are isolated incidents. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s the population, last time I checked, so, and nobody wants that to happen to anyone they care about.

1:40:28 So, I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s people need to step up. I think guys, all the guys I hang out with don’t do any of that dumb s*** but I mean, I think they just know that that’s stupid. It’s usually the guy that does that is usually the most insecure in the group. Oh no, absolutely, and so usually it becomes obvious to the other guys that it’s just DB what he’s doing. I think directly calling another guy out, not even just sort of kind of ignoring it or taking them on.

1:40:49 I think just embarrassing them, because then he won’t say it again in that group. Won’t say again, you as a group have spoken. What’s something we could say to him? Like, just to be like, ‘Dude, what are you talking about? That’s actually really not…

1:40:59 Like, there’s a, we need, like, a one-liner you can hook us up with, and okay. I need to, it depends what he’s saying, I suppose, but there, there’s a thing where a lot of, some men that I’ve met, like, to, just, they will default by calling a woman a b**** oh, that, that stupid b**** or whatever, and it’s like, why, why is she a b****, what she done? I was like, if she was really mean to you and was really nasty, I’d be like, call her a b**** because she’s a b**** right.

1:41:21 You can’t just default and just treat women as though they’re naturally the enemy or somehow lesser, and a lot to do that is what language you use, and I know it sounds really petty and really, really pedantic but it’s these little clues and things that basically, you know, give people the opportunity to kind of work within that, and, you know, push things in a way that they shouldn’t really go. If you as a collective male group of friends speak about women with respect, well, it’s not even, it makes it sound like way more complicated than, these people just talk about them like their people, like their normal people. I agree, and language is everything, so it’s important, and again though, if a guy said that comment to me, that she’s a b****, I would really all the guys hang out, we would look at him and be like, that’s…

1:42:02 I mean, unless she’s actually done something really [expletive] but it usually says a lot about the guy. I mean, because it’s, it’s being completely inconclusive. So what did she do, actually? Like, what, and what did you do? Why, she, exactly, a b****?

1:42:11 Or are you talking about a dog? So I think you should say next time you’re in a group of guys, just be like, ‘What would Julia say to that? She would just slam you, homie. Yeah, just straight kick to the ball. I’m just kidding.

1:42:21 I wouldn’t do that. All right, check that out, Misogyny Monday. Julia, I always ask people to come on here, a few questions at the end. I’m going to hit you with them. Okay, if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Julia and give that young lady a bit of advice, now, with all of your wisdom, what would you tell her?

1:42:39 Probably don’t get those really terrible forearm tattoos. Can we see them? Look, oh yeah, check that, that’s really pretty. Hold that up to this camera here. Okay, so I got this one.

1:42:48 Oh my God, wow, what is that? Jesus, that’s unique. I don’t, I don’t even know, right? Went into a tattoo shop and was like, I’m going to be really cool and get a forearm tattoo, because everyone will think I’m really cool, right? How old are we at this time?

1:43:01 I think I was like 16 16. Okay, cool, and literally just picked one off the wall. Okay, you got, you got some strong forearms here, pumping iron there. No, I don’t know, it kind of looks like, if, if, like, the Irish were to go into space, it looks like a Celtic spacecraft. Okay, and you got some other wrist hat too.

1:43:18 You got some Zs there. So this one’s Tai, that says to learn. The other one is K, and that says Stephanie. That was my friend who died and so she was working with the Karen, so it’d be nice to, like, a tattoo of her name. This is Kayan, so that’s the long neck language, and that says it’s a proverb.

1:43:31 It says, when taking shots, keep cool to hit the target and don’t be scared. Yeah, but yeah, so maybe don’t get some stupid tattoos. Maybe I don’t know I don’t really regret them. I don’t really care. I don’t really care enough to regret them properly.

1:43:46 I would probably say, I don’t know, how long could the phone call be? So it would be like a long hour, systematically, prob game with her, right? I’d have to systematically go through a lot of things. Yeah, okay, all right, that’s fair enough. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, business or personal, or one of each?

1:44:07 Was some good business advice? Did you have a mentor or someone that hit you early on and said, you know, Julia, this, that? No, okay, I didn’t really have a m email mentors as well has, if slightly, Barbara Walter was busy that day, or there’s just not that many what I’m trying to think. I actually, I knew this guy well. I actually, I still know this guy called Yummi he used to, he used to work for the BBC, and I met him when I was quite young, and he was involved in this Sky channel called Rapture, which is quite an amusing place, but, it wasn’t any one particular bit of viice, but it was just kind of like his attitude that I sort of really got on with.

1:44:47 He was very much self-starter. He would kind of go out, and this was before, like, everybody was sort of doing it, and, he would just go out and be like, I want to do this thing, and I want to do that, and I’m going to do this, and I’m going to pitch this thing, and, I found it really inspiring, and it’s sort of how I’ve kind of adopted my kind of way of looking at it. It’s just like, if you want something, you should just do it. Like, don’t wait for someone else to come and make it.

1:45:07 You should just go out, and it’s all about, life’s about experimenting and just trying things out and seeing what works and what doesn’t work, you know, and I always kind of took that sort of, just that kind of work ethic, really forward. That’s great advice. Don’t wait for permission is one thing, and then don’t, you don’t need it anymore. Like, you know, the, the co… the price point of most things nowadays is incredibly, incredibly small, so even if you’re just messing around with, like, your phone and trying something out, you know, it’s worth doing just to see if it works.

1:45:35 I think it’s the pain point. People don’t want to go over and that’s, like, it’s called the dip, or whatever. It’s after, when you might first, people say, oh, that’s a great video and then it becomes the hard part, and then you have to keep going, and then people say you suck, and you have to do it again, and then that’s when I think people don’t want to spend the pain. Yeah, but that’s true I guess they have the possibility. Last bit of that is, we kind of covered it earlier, but I want to get you again, you know, to the 20-year-old female that’s watching you, and they’re getting tons of inspiration from you, and is is, is going to be calling out all sorts of men today, I hope, and take a long time.

1:46:08 What advice do you give to them if they want to, you know, grow up and be like you one day? Well, first of all, don’t take my job. Why would you? No, no, don’t take my job, just don’t. Why would you do that to yourself?

1:46:20 No, I think it’s a very, very different, it’s very, very different ball game nowadays from when I first started. You know, YouTube is a wonderful platform. It’s effectively like a shop window for your work. You can do whatever you want. You can upload it.

1:46:34 You can get lots of people seeing it. You can collaborate with other people there’s, you know, if you want to do presenting, it’s a great way to practice and kind of get feedback from people about what you want to do, finding out what content people want to see, as well. And it’s really important, obviously to, you know, watch yourself, watch yourself back, because actually everyone has really, really annoying ticks and things that they do And yeah, you need to kind of get rid of some of them, but yeah, and that, and, just kind of pick something that you’re interested in presenting-wise.

1:47:06 Just don’t say you want to be a presenter. Like, really think about why you want to be a presenter. I mean, I think the reason why I love the job so much is purely because it connects me with people. It’s like what you were saying at the start. I get to meet some incredible people that I would never have met, and talk about things that I’m really, really interested in hearing about, and I’ve always liked talking to people.

1:47:24 You know, even before I did anything on camera, I always talk to people, like, oh, this is what you do? This is really interesting. Interest me, tell me about it. I want to understand it, and I never get bored. I never get bored talking to people, ever.

1:47:36 Like, I always find it fascinating. So, you know, think about why you want to be a presenter. If it’s about fame, do something else. Just do something else, because it’s, you know, there is you have to kind of work hard at it, and, you know, I would say almost it’s harder than other avenues of maybe becoming famous. So maybe just do that.

1:47:55 If, if you want to be famous, you’ve got to genuinely just have a passion for, yeah, wanting to talk to people. The process of doing it, you do have to kind of work at it. It’s not just getting up there and talking. There are certain ways that you go about it, and certain skills that you learn. And, yeah, just just keep at it.

1:48:12 You know, if you’re, if you’re passionate enough, you’ll find a niche and you’ll be able to find work. And, you know, in terms of jobs, now there’s more jobs than there ever have been. You can really eke out a living. You, you haven’t got to be, you know, Holly Willoughby or whatever. You know, you can actually earn a living, you know, doing what you do in the field that you’re interested in.

1:48:28 Yeah, yeah. The passion gets you through those hard times, and we see it in tech all the time. Is that a lot of these guys and girls come into tech because they want to make the next billion, but they don’t really give a s*** about the business they’re doing, and so they want to be the rock star without putting, you know, having the passion for the music. And so it doesn’t sustain you. You know, it’s, some, you know, if you’re, if you’re passionate about the subject and you’re enjoying what you’re doing, it’s never a waste of time.

1:48:52 Like, if you get into presenting because you want to be get rich or famous, if you don’t do either of those things, you’re going to look back on your career and say to yourself, I’ve wasted my time. I’m not famous. I haven’t got lots of money. Why did I do this? If you’re interested in your subject, it’s never a waste of time.

1:49:08 You haven’t wasted anything, because you’ve enjoyed what you’re doing, and it’s, it’s not about getting into it and saying, well, when I get a TV show, I’m going to be really happy. It’s about enjoying what it is right now, otherwise there’s literally no point in doing it. Yeah, because you’re going to spend a lot of time not having a TV show. Basically, there’s this concept that you get paid twice to do work, and one, the first time you get paid is the work itself, and then the second time is if anyone bothers to give you any money for it.

1:49:31 And so I think it’s important to realize, what you said, that first piece is sometimes it’s just the work itself. A lot of artists will tell you this, and writers, that just be like, focus on the work and enjoy the work, and if you don’t, if you’re not enjoying that, then nothing else is going to happen. And, and the other thing you said, really good, is, with YouTube and everything, you’ve got to put stuff out there and go do stuff, and then you have to put it out there, take all the hits and all the criticism and all that, and then learn from it and make the next piece.

1:49:58 There’s so many, online artists out there that are waiting for five years until their tune is perfect, and yet they never release it. They never get the feedback. They never grow. So you’ve got to have those. I’m sure some of your early presenting jobs, you, you, you were horrible on, and just, oh God, I’m having to pull some…

1:50:12 I’m giving a talk at this, this industry thing at the beginning of March, and so I thought I’d pull out someone like my old presenting clips. I like regretting, but beautiful in this in a certain way. I don’t know. Like, I, the first ever link I did, I had two lighters in my hand, cuz I couldn’t stop clapping while I was doing it. I was like, “Hello and welcome, I’m here at the” and I couldn’t actually not do it, so they put lighters in my hand so I couldn’t clap.

1:50:38 And if you watch it, and I will show it to people, I’ve got two lighters in my hand. I look Bonkers. Absolutely Bonkers. That is a funny. All right.

1:50:44 That is a great way. That is a great way to finish this. How can people get a hold of you? What’s the best way? Just hit me up on, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

1:50:52 It’s all the same handle. Instagram, the House of Lies, the House of Lies, that is Instagram. It’s all the same. It’s just, it’s Julia. So yeah, awesome.

1:51:02 Julia, your London Real material, I’m so glad you came in, and thanks for telling us everything. Thanks for being so honest about all aspects of your life. This has been a great episode. Thank you. I don’t know what else to say.

1:51:16 As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. I wish you well on