#945 Mini me Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (30th December 2022)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is me and Vinnie, the Jack Russell annoying pygmy. Come on, get up.

If you want to be part of the podcast, all you've got to do is ask. And yeah, this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

See? See, you're part of this now.Me and him fell out earlier. We did.

Oh yes, we went for a walk. I think it was the second or third walk of the day. Blimey.

No, second walk of the day. And he was biting the lead, which he does. He enjoys doing that.

And I keep telling him to stop because he's actually bitten a hole in the lead now. And I'm a little bit worried, a little bit worried. Oh, what are you doing wiggling about? A little bit worried that he's going to, that the lead will snap because he's always pulling on it.

He's very, I'm trying to sort of train him to stop pulling and stuff. And I'm worried that it will snap and it'll just run in the road and that'll be it. You know, that concerns me.

He's not bothered because he doesn't realise. Now, sometimes it's funny. You know, it's funny, you know, it's because it's a game for him.

But I think sometimes he does it because he doesn't want to go a certain way. Did you hear him? And I was bringing him home and he clearly didn't want to come home. So he was acting up.

And I went to remove his, remove the lead from his mouth and he nipped me. In fact, my hand, my finger still hurts a little bit. It's not, he hasn't drawn blood or anything.

But I got very angry with him. Very angry. Didn't I? And when we got home, I told you off, didn't I? Eh? Told him off.

Naughty, wasn't you? We've made up now, but I can't have him biting me. I told you, honestly, I do draw the line. I know Andre bit me quite a bit when I first got him.

But this little thing, he's not, he's not a baby. You know, he's not a little baby. Andre was, hardly opened his eyes when I got him.

He was a tiny little thing. Off you go then. He wasn't, Andre wasn't a big boy when I got him.

He was, literally, he was just stopped, he just only just started eating solid food. See, he was like a few weeks old. This one's like nine months old.

And he's whining because he wants my attention now. I was watching telly a couple of minutes ago. He's absolutely fine to be in his bed and just chilling out.

Absolutely fine. As soon as I get up, he jumps up. And you can't want anything because it was only, blimey, two hours ago, you went for a walk.

If you start barking, I have to chuck you out the window again. I don't chuck him out the window, but obviously. Stop it.

I have to put him into the bedroom. So what happened is, yesterday I took him for a long walk. What's that doing on the floor? There's so much crap on the floor.

There's also stuff that shouldn't be on the floor. Oh, I had to put him into the bedroom. He's just, oh, he's such a handful.

He really is. He was perfectly fine five minutes ago. He just, I don't know, he just always, I don't know what he wants.

I've not, I've not known him long enough to know what he wants. And I kind of know when he wants to go for a walk because he will actually jump up on me and put his paws on my knees and he'll let me touch him as far as, that sounds weird, but he'll put his paws on my knees and I can stroke his face or whatever and I'll take him for a walk. Other times he'll do a similar kind of thing, but he won't put his paws on my knees.

He'll just get close and I go to touch him and he'll run away. So that's, I think when he wants to play. So he doesn't, he doesn't want to go for a walk, just wants me to play with him.

So that's the two kind of different ways of doing it. Then he didn't want me to touch him. He wanted, I think he probably wanted a treat, but why should I give him a treat for being naughty? It's just a weird, it's just all new to me.

Honestly, this is so new to me. It's enough. It's, it's, I know it's, it's the most normal thing in the world to have a dog, but you know, my only real pet, if you want to call it a pet, is a ferret who I had for five and a half years.

And he was a heck of a handful and he'd do nothing. He was told he literally was, he wouldn't do anything he didn't want to do. It's easy to handle when it, well, I don't know, is it because he was so tiny and he was good, but he slept about 16 to 18 hours a day.

So he was quite easy to manage in a way. So even when he was being naughty, it didn't last for long. And, but he wasn't, Andre could get affectionate, but he wasn't the most affectionate.

It was always on his terms. You know, if he was in bed, if he was asleep rather, and I went up to him to cuddle him, sometimes he'd be fine. Other times he'd push me away, like get off.

You're not my real dad, leave me alone. You know, stuff like that. And other times, you know, I would like, I'd be able to pick him up and I'd, he'd be asleep and he'd look at me, but he'd be so, so almost, almost like in hibernation.

And he'd just lay there. And so I'd put him on my lap and he'd wake up maybe an hour or two later. And it, it jumped, he'd look at me like, well, how did I get here? Who are you? That's it, I'm calling social services.

And it was like, Andre, it's me, it's me. I remember one, this is totally true. It's that once, everything else I said for the last four years is a lie.

This bit is true. I had this, and this is, when was it? Beginning of 2020. I bought this, it wasn't a balaclava, but it was kind of similar to a balaclava in a sense of it was kind of like a mask.

So I wanted to get a mask and because people were wearing masks. So, but I thought because of the weather, I'll get something that I can, is it a snooze or something? I don't know what they call them, but also covered my neck. I still got it somewhere, but unfortunately, or fortunately, I mean, this was probably February, maybe March, February time, it was too hot for it.

So, you know, by, by March, we have good weather. I mean, might have rain, but we have cold days, but, you know, even now the weather's warmer than normal for this time of year. I don't know if I needed to add that last bit of the sentence really, did I? Warmer than normal for a Thursday or Friday, but that, that wouldn't make sense, would it? More than normal for the shoes I'm wearing.

So I don't know wearing it, but what I did is, I wonder I'd never seen it before. He was asleep. So I got ready first.

So I put my coat on, put my shoes on, probably put my gloves on. I was determined to wrap up for winter, even though it was sunny and warm outside. I just made up my mind and, and I decided against the skis and left the parachute.

I kind of left it in my backpack just in case. So I had the, everything set up and I put my, this hat on that covered most of my face. Andre was asleep.

So basically what I did is I put, connected the lead to him and I picked him up and he was still asleep and he was like groggy. So I closed the door, front door, take him downstairs. And then I put him, get outside and I put him on the floor.

He looks up at me, yells and starts to try and get back inside the house to get away from me. I think he thought I was burgling him or something. And I took my thing off.

I said, look, look, it's me. And he looked at, oh, so because I had my face covered, he didn't know it was me. It was weird.

So yeah, that was, that was funny. So after that, I've got quite a few different costumes just to freak him out. Dressed up as a vampire once, dressed up as a school girl, dressed up as a Catholic nun, just, no actually no, the school girl, no, the school girl, that was before I had Andre.

Yeah. Anyway, so I find it weird with Vinnie, how to really, I don't know how to treat him. I don't know how to, it's just much, much more work.

And he's, I found out quite a bit about him the other night. And I've probably talked about it already, but he was a single baby. So when he was born, he didn't have any siblings at all.

He was the only one, which is very rare with dogs, but very rare anyway, generally. And he was the only baby. So he didn't, he hasn't learned how to be a dog because straight away he wasn't with his dad.

It was with his mum. There was no other dogs around. And his mum, after giving birth to him, just pretty much just laid there, didn't do anything.

I think she might've had like postnatal depression or something because she wasn't the same after giving birth to him. It kind of changed the way she was as a dog. I'm not quite sure, I don't really know why or what was involved in that, but she, yeah, it took it a lot out of her.

But maybe, you know, he wasn't the first baby she'd had. So maybe she'd had too many kids. I don't know.

And, but he, so he was born and then he, as soon as he was, you know, he was, he had humans with him and I've seen pictures of him where he didn't even have his eyes open, his little crumpled face. He looks like he's got a permanent frown. And what I'm going to do on this, on this recording, on the podcast cover, if you have a little look, there's going to be a picture of him and the other dog that I talk about, the huge dog.

And they're both on a settee together. Now, to be fair, you don't see the difference in size as much as it is in reality, because Vinnie's in the forefront. But there's a huge difference.

I mean, this other dog is absolutely huge compared to him. His head is bigger than a human head. It's a big old head.

Vinnie's is just tiny little thing. And you could, yeah, it's just a huge difference. But anyway, that was, that was nice.

So they, I got a couple of pictures. Well, actually what it was is my friend was up here and the two dogs were playing.Me and him were talking, two dogs got bored and they just decided to go for a sleep on the settee.

And Vinnie follows the other dog around and copies him. He's had no guidance on how to be a dog. You can't learn how to be a dog from a human.

And he's had no guidance. He's had no brothers and sisters to copy, no older dogs to copy, you know, so this is, he's learning now. I'll give you an example of something that he does now that he didn't do before.

For the first three weeks, he didn't do this at all ever. Now, when he goes to the toilet, he kicks behind him. He kicks the grass behind him.

He doesn't aim it at the poo. It's in the wrong direction. So he clearly doesn't know why he's doing it, but he's doing it because he's seen the other dog do it.

He now does it every time. Didn't do it before. Didn't for three weeks.

Now, maybe, you know, maybe he just decided to take a break from doing it. He decided, you know, there's a lot of stress being in a new home. I know what I'll do.

I won't do that kicking thing for three weeks. I'll take a break from that. I'll see what will happen.

I'll try life without it. Maybe that's how it was, but I'm guessing that that's why he's doing it. And he's been copying some of the behaviors of the other dog.

And he does it actually when it's happening. So if the other dog has a drink, he immediately goes and has a drink. The other dog eats something, he immediately goes and eats something.

He copies him, copies everything he does. The other dog laid down on the settee, he wouldn't lay down on the settee next to him. So it's, it's, it's nice.

I think he's actually slowly teaching him how to be a dog. And although the other dog is not friendly to other dogs, the big ones, not friendly to other dogs, doesn't like other dogs generally. He is a very calm dog, like he's brilliant with humans, children, adult, anyone really.

Unfortunately, he does have a tendency of jumping up, which is okay, if you're a little dog. But if you're a big dog, he can knock you over. He can't knock me over because I was just I'm just too big.

He can't. But if he runs at me, he's taken my knee out a couple of times, where he just ran right at me before I realized that he wasn't going to run around me. Because I just figured he was going to run around me.

This is like five years ago when he first came here. He doesn't, he just runs through, he can run through a tree. He really is.

If you put him in a contest against a bull, I wouldn't necessarily bet on the bull. Seriously, his head is made of concrete or steel. And we think that perhaps the reason why he does not like other dogs is because of his past.

He's a rescue dog and he might not have been treated well, right from the beginning. We know where he was for the last two places, or at least the last place. This is not Vinnie, but the other dog, the white dog.

He was living with one of his best friends. So he'd known him for a long time. He'd known him for a couple of years before.

But before that, I think he lived in an environment where potentially dog fighting was going on. So it might have been a case that the dog was affected. Well, it's not, you can't not be affected by that, can you? So he doesn't, he's scared of dogs.

Even though he's a huge giant of dog. He's not huge as in tall. There's plenty of dogs that are taller and bigger, but he's just muscle compact.

If a human being was that size, that strong as a human, then you think he's probably the size of an eight-year-old boy, you know. So the weight probably, I think he doesn't weigh that much, probably six stone, probably. But it's muscle, six stone of absolute muscle.

And if I had that, I'd basically look like a bodybuilder. Or even, okay, I should rephrase that. I'd look even more like a bodybuilder.

At the moment, I do, I say I don't, I might, I do look like a bodybuilder. One that hasn't worked out for 35 years. You know, I might have been a bodybuilder, you don't know.

In fact, I was a bodybuilder really, in a sense of I, I couldn't put weight on. When I was 16, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, all those years, I couldn't put weight on. I couldn't, nothing I did could put weight on.

Now I did put weight on gradually, a little bit of weight over the years. So I wasn't the same weight when I was 24 that I was when I was 16. So you know, I did put a bit of weight on, but not a lot.

Maybe I put on probably a stone over those like seven or eight years from leaving, from leaving school to 24, I probably put on about a stone, if that. And I was so, I suppose the correct term would be slim, but I class myself as skinny. I really didn't like how I looked.

I was embarrassed by being so slim, which is weird because now I'm fat. And there's been a very, very short window of opportunity for me to publicly, I was going to say expose myself, that's not the right term, like take my t-shirt off or without embarrassment in a sense, you know. And that was a very short window.

I had a window that in 2004, when I did slim down. I looked 2010, I was training. So I was definitely looking fairly good.

Okay, ish. And that's it during the 2000s, but then twice in the last 20 years. But then in about 1998, it might be 99, but 98, 99, I didn't lose weight, but I did put on a fair bit of muscle.

And I was pleased with how I looked. Even people were telling me that I looked good. And I was, I was wearing more like tighter clothes, tight tops to show off the muscles, which I'd never done in my life.

I never felt confident really in my body. And I did for, I don't know, seven, eight months. So it was nice.

That was nice. It probably was 99, probably the summer 99. And then 2000, 2000.

Do you know when you let air out of a balloon, forgetting the noise, but if you let air out of the balloon, the opposite happened. What do you mean when you blow into a balloon? Yeah, I suppose I could have just said that, couldn't I? When you pump a balloon up, I just, but it was the same sound as letting the air out, but I got bigger. Yeah.

Oh, itchy tummy, itchy tummy. So I don't know where I was going with that. I remember I had this black t-shirt that was very short.

It was just about covered my stomach because my stomach was so good at the time. I don't know if I had a six pack, but it was slim, you know, it was slim. So it just about covered my stomach.

I had tight jeans. I've always had slim legs. You know, they're not skinny, but they're slim.

I've always had slim, never had big legs, like fat legs or anything like that. Even when I've had a big Santa belly, I've never had Santa legs. And then I had this top and the sleeves were really high up so I could show off my biceps and my shoulders.

And all that might say, oh, it's very shallow or whatever. I've never been able to do it before. Don't you realize that I wanted to look like that when I was younger, but I could never.

It just, for some reason, my body just wouldn't do it. I had muscles, but they weren't. You know, there's only certain size you can get if your body won't process the food or convert the food into muscle.

I know it's not quite how it works, but I've always had hard physical jobs when I was younger. So I was always lifting heavy boxes, unloading lorries, doing stuff that if I'd have almost, I kind of should have been big or really, really strong. And although I was strong enough to do the job, it didn't seem to make any difference to my body.

So, you know, my body just like, no, don't care. And you might be thinking, oh, yeah, yeah. But what did you really do to try and put weight on? Let me tell you.

I will tell you, I'm not joking about this stuff. I really, really tried to put weight on. The first time I tried to put weight on was when I was 15.

And I started working in a chip shop. And I was living at my step-nan's in the living room on a bed, camper van, camper bed thing. And so I'd sleep on that.

I have to wait till everyone had gone to bed, sleep on that, and I would get up. I'd have to get up when everyone else got up and put that away. And, you know, it was inconvenient for everyone involved, really.

And then I, during that period, I decided, I'll go back a little bit. I wanted to be a bodybuilder. See, I joked about it, but I wanted to be.

When I was at school, the last year of school, I was reading bodybuilding magazines. And I was doing karate. So I knew I was physically fit.

I was physically able to do stuff. But then, yeah, most kids are at 14, 15. It's not, wasn't like a unique thing for me.

But I was just, I was around all these kids that were muscly. You know, by the time you get to leave school, it's most of the girls are women physically, and most of the boys are men, you know, like with muscles and deep voices and sometimes have to shave and things like that. And I was still a little boy.

I was, I was still, I wasn't tiny. It wasn't like, I didn't get to my full height of three foot four until I was about 16. But I, I was, I was still going through puberty, really.

I hadn't gone through it. I was still going through it. I think my voice had broken by then, I think.

I remember that period of waiting for my voice to break. And I'd wake up every morning. And because you know, when you wake up, when your voice is a bit, a bit groggy, and I'd think, the first thing I did, this is when I was about 14, I'd wake up and I'd go, yes.

And I'd walk downstairs and I thought, I practice it as I walk downstairs. And I like, what I want to do is say, morning, everyone, instead of like, morning, morning, everyone. Hi.

Oh, brilliant. So I was just, see, my voice didn't break. It just gradually changed.

It wasn't like one day, nothing like that. I knew lots of boys that did have that, that, you know, they'd come in and it wasn't, I mean, I never experienced it during a conversation, but it, you know, it was kind of almost overnight. But with me, it was, I've never been a deep, I've never had a deep voice, a deep booming voice.

It's not me. I don't, I never had that. But I don't know if it's, I didn't have the, that break thing.

It was more a gentle changing. And that might have been because I was so slow in developing. And it wasn't just that I was a slow developer.

I also developed slowly. You could actually hear me growing, the creaking, but it was so minute. It was like a tree in the wind.

I don't know what that means. So, you know, some kids, you know, they'd have the summer holidays, they'd come back and they'd be like a foot taller, or a girl had come back and she'd be a woman. And, or my boy, her friends would be like, you know, before, before summer holidays, I'll see you, see you then Jason.

And then I was like, why Jason? Like completely, you know, changed. I was like the same as kind of all the way through school, just a slightly taller version. As I got older, it's raining outside.

And that's probably the most interesting thing I've said throughout the whole recording, isn't it? Was it raining? Tell us more about the rain, will you? No, bodybuilding. I want to tell you about bodybuilding. See, when I started doing karate, I started doing weights.

The two went together as far as I was concerned. I wanted to build myself up and I wanted to be, have a good body. Technically, I did, for what I had, I did really well.

But I just didn't have much to work with. It was just a boy's body. And it was all muscle, you know, it's, um, at 15, I'd pose and I'd do my, try and do my bodybuilding poses in the mirror.

I mean, but, and I'd also try and like, look like Bruce Lee and stuff. And I was everything, you know, I don't know, six pack, but that, you know, the whole stomach thing, the chest and the back and everything was muscle. But I was just little, I was like eight and a half stone when I was, when I left school, eight and a half stone.

That's like featherweight boxer, like tiny, tiny, probably less than that. And I remember I was, I had this mirror, it was a full length mirror, but I was standing in the hallway, looking at myself in the bedroom mirror so I could get a more of a, I don't know if I thought it made me look better that way. So I was doing these poses and my face was going red, you know, like the Hulk trying to sort of make myself look big.

And I heard laughing, and one of my brothers behind me walking up the stairs, he was laughing his head off at me. So I must've been, what, 14 at the time. 13, 14, like, oh, brilliant, brilliant.

But, you know, I did weights every day, but I didn't eat. I just, I had normal food that I'd normally eat. I've never been a big eater.

Even now, I don't eat that much. I rarely finish a meal. I've never, you know, I just don't.

I maybe have like half of it. And some people, when they cook me a meal, it's almost like they're trying to take offence because I've not eaten it all. And I say, look, I don't eat much.

Don't be fooled by my belly. I don't actually eat a lot of food in one time. Now, I might eat 12 times a day, but that's a different story.

So I wanted to be bigger so I could get muscly. And it's quite easy for 14, 15 year olds to get muscly. But I just couldn't get big.

And there was all these kids around me that were like twice my size. And so I thought, oh, I just want to be big. I want to be big and muscly.

Because if I'd have been their size, and probably most of them were, I guess, 12 stone at least. That's about an average kind of, yeah, 11, 12 stone. So there were about four, four stone, five stone heavier than me, probably most of them, a lot of them.

With all the training I was doing, I would have been really, I might have been able to be a bodybuilder, or, you know, I just didn't have the genetics, the physical genetics, as opposed to the psychological genetics. So at that time, anyway, so when I was 15, and I was working, I decided to spend my money on food. So I was getting paid.

To start with, before I went, for the first part of the year, I was on £60 a week. And then in September, I went down to £27.30. I know, don't, don't even ask. It was ridiculous.

So I don't know why I did it, but hey. I started buying eggs, and I started cooking for myself at breakfast. I bought this book, which was called The Optimum Bodybuilding Diet.

And I don't know if it was Rich Gasparri, or, it's one of the big bodybuilders. Because when I was at school, for the last year of school, maybe the last two years, I used to read the bodybuilder magazines. I knew every bodybuilder.

I already knew about Arnie and stuff, you know, because he was already like a big star, a big movie star by then. And I'd already seen Pumping Iron, and you know, probably 1984, I probably watched Pumping Iron. And he, although he was a big star, well, plus I was a kid, so perhaps I didn't sort of see the newspapers and stuff.

But I didn't know a huge amount, a huge amount about him. But once you read, start reading the magazines, bearing in mind, he last competed for Mr. Olympia in 1980. So he was still quite fresh.

So he won Mr. Olympia 70 to 75. And then last one was 1980. So he wasn't, it wasn't like now, it's like 40-odd years ago.

Then it was just a few years ago. And he was advertising, and so he was still the king of bodybuilders. You know, he held the record for the most amount of Mr. Olympias.

He doesn't now. He's one of the top of all time. I mean, yeah, there's no doubt that he's the most famous bodybuilder in the history of bodybuilding.

But it's not just because of the bodybuilding, is it? I mean, let's face it, if it was just, if he never did anything else but be a bodybuilder, then he would, he would be remembered as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. And people would compare him to Lee Haney, or some of the others that came after him and beat his record and got more Mr. Olympia titles. But he, you know, you can't change the history.

The fact is, he went on to be a huge, huge star. I mean, he's had three careers, hasn't he, really? And then on top of that, selling products and being the face of weeder and nutrition and stuff like that. But bodybuilder, the best, he got the top there.

He got the top of the movie industry. And then he was the governor of California. So he got as far as he could really go in politics, because he wasn't born in the USA.

So he wasn't allowed to go for president. And I'm guessing that if he was able to, he may want to be in a president as well. Because he was very popular, wasn't he? So he kind of got the top of all of his three careers that he had in his life.

And he's still only 14. So I think when I was reading those magazines, it just inspired me. I wanted to be muscly.

And also, my dad was muscly. My dad's big, a big bloke, very strong. And back then, he had this, what do they call it, chest expander.

And it had two long things down the side of it. So it's a chest expander, but it was also a push-in thing, which you could push in the whole thing. So it was both your chest and your back.

And he just pulled it apart and just pushed it. It was easy for him. And he had this long bar that he used to bend.

I couldn't bend it. It took me years to bend it. He could bend it like nothing.

I would be honest, I don't know if I'm being honest, because I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that even now, I might ask him if he's still got it, but he might have it somewhere. As if it's still, I mean, it would probably deteriorate by now, turn to dust. It would do if I had it, because I've never touched the thing.

I've got a bicycle, an exercise bike in there. Honestly, it's starting to deteriorate. There's cobwebs.

There's, honestly, it's got its own kind of little ecology going on inside it. I haven't used it. I'll be honest with you, I don't feel I'm ever going to.

I don't like bicycles. I don't. So there.

But walking is cool. I don't mind walking. So I'm getting to walk around a bit.

So I suppose I kind of wanted to be like my dad, in a way of like his physicality, because he was big and very strong and big muscles. And I want to be like that. But I wasn't.

And then, so I started this diet when I was 15, and it was a bodybuilding diet. So I was eating probably six times a day, chicken eggs. What was it? Yeah, fish, just like small meals, but regularly, and loads of vitamins and stuff like that.

I just pooed more. That's all it was. It's just, it's just, I didn't gain anything.

I mean, I didn't suffer. I mean, I didn't lose, well, the only thing is the only person that was a toilet. So yeah, so I didn't put any weight on.

And then, in the early, then I kind of just stopped. I did it and I tried it again when I was 16, 17, nothing. And then I, so I moved upstairs.

I tried out there, tried to, I thought it'd be easier. Now I'm upstairs. I can go upstairs.

And how many times can I say the word upstairs, do you think, in this sentence? So I went upstairs, because that's where I lived upstairs. And I go downstairs, because that's where I worked. So I get some fish, put it in the microwave with some milk on, you know, do that, then go upstairs and eat it.

And so try and do that and eat sort of, instead of eating chips, because it's a chip shop, but I tried to eat healthily. And then I'll go to the gym, like every two days or something in the afternoon. But no, didn't work.

So then, in about two, in 1993, 1992, probably, onwards, different times, I would go, we had a canteen where I worked. And I'd say to them, please just make me sandwiches. And I'd get them to make me like four lots of sandwiches.

And I'd eat them. And I'd have, there was this drink that you get that was very high protein. And it was almost like a milkshake.

Really tasty. There's high, high calorie, it wouldn't be healthy for me to have something like that now. But back then, my metabolism so fast.

And I was determined, if I had that, and I'd try and drink three or four of those a day, I was kind of spending all the money on food, really. And I thought, well, I don't really need to go to the gym, because I've got such a physical job, lifting a lot of heavy stuff. So I'll try and put weight on and do some exercises at home.

Couldn't put any weight on. I just pooed more. And it was, I mean, it's true.

It's just what happened. It's like, this, I've just got a point. And I never thought, never thought as a kid growing up, that one of my main worries as an adult would be the costs of my poos.

Like working out how much each poo cost me. So that was four pounds. Like, no, that's just wrong.

I couldn't afford to poo anymore. I was getting to the point where it was becoming too expensive to go to the toilet. So I had to stop that.

Once I had a little bit more money, I tried it again a few couple of years later. Still couldn't do it, couldn't put any weight on. And then, right, I was, this is, I'm not going to go into it, but I was ill for, between, I think it was October, 2000, no, 1994, October, roughly, until the summer, maybe like July 1995.

I was unwell, continuously going to the doctors, getting tested, and didn't know what was wrong. I had some stomach problems and other things. Eventually, they told me that it was caused by stress.

They could find nothing wrong with me. I had everything tested and stress, they said. And they put me on antidepressants.

Within, I'd say within a month, maybe a month and a half, I put half a stone on. And then I put some more weight on. And just, no, I didn't put a huge amount on, but it was, if you only weigh about nine stone, you add another half a stone, and it makes a difference to how you look.

It does. It makes a difference how you feel as well. And then I went to Butlin's in 1995 Christmas period, and I was getting fed three times a day, three cooked meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then whatever else I wanted to eat in the meantime I could have.

And what I was doing was I was drinking a pint of milk every meal, with every meal. And I put on another stone just in about four weeks. And then, but I was still slim.

That's the thing, I was still slim. But I was, it's almost like my body started to fill out. And I was kind of how I should have been, how I felt I should be, in my mind anyway.

And I felt so much healthier, so much better. That's why, even though I'm overweight, I don't want to go back to being skinny, because I didn't feel healthy then. I feel healthier now than I did when I was really light.

And I don't know why. I could definitely do with losing, it's not so much losing weight, it's more losing fat. I'm happy with my weight.

I'm 100 kilos, or 16 stone. I'm happy with that. It's fine.

It's just I could do with losing some fat. Convert that fat into muscle and I'll be happy. I'm all right.

And then some people say, five foot eight, shouldn't be 16 stone. Well, the two things I would say to that is, well, three things. First of all, mind your own business.

Secondly, my ideal weight according to the charts, the official weight height charts is, I should be 11 and a half stone. So that's four and a half stone lighter than I am now. I'm pretty sure, without being ill, I could not get down to that weight.

11 and a half stone. It just wouldn't happen. I can't do that.

I could be slim and still, I can take a stone off and I'll be slim. I'll be like a slimmer waist. So I'd know I could get down to that.

And thirdly, I spent too long with the second one. I forgot what the third point was. It was something.

Yeah, I think genetics. Look at my dad. He's a big bloke.

My brother, my younger brother, he's a big bloke. He's lighter than me, but he's stocky and everything. So I guess I had the skeleton.

I just didn't have the body. That just sounds weird. It's almost like the meat on the bones, the meat's been added to the bones, but the bones were already there.

How weird. And then in 1996, I became a security guard and I put a bit of fat on. Not a huge amount, just a little, because I was sitting on my bum all night.

For sometimes seven nights a week, I'd just be sitting down. And I wasn't fat. At one point, I was actually working out, going to the gym.

So I was getting into quite good shape because I had the extra weight and then I was getting more muscular, which is good. But there was a point probably early 1997, I was pretty much just didn't see anybody and all I did was work. And I did put a bit of weight on, but half a stone probably, not much.

And because I remember, I think I was still only about 10 stone, maybe, because I'd lost some weight. But when I was about, yeah, it might have been 10 and a half, but I'm pretty sure it was just over 10 stone. That's what I was in my late 20s.

So still light, really light. I mean, it was much lighter than I should have been. And I remember going for a massage about 1998 and it was a genuine massage and I was just having, because my back that ended up how it is now, not my fractured back, but the arthritis, that started back then.

I was having problems sitting down for long periods and it was hurting. And so I went to have a massage to try and sort it out, to try and like maybe if it was muscular tightness or knotted or whatever. So I went to the massage a few times to try and sort that out.

I didn't realize it was going to, it just progressed over like 20 odd years to the point where I was having to see a physiotherapist and got diagnosed with arthritis in that part of the body, which I'm thinking, well, you know, at least it's happened slowly. So I kind of got used to it over time and providing I do exercise is generally under a certain degree of control. But I remember saying to this domestic, I said, like, I'm just embarrassed.

I'm so skinny. And she said, well, it's all right. Do you want a happy ending? No, she didn't say.

And I said, you, I said, yeah, but I just don't like it. And she said, you know, you know how many people would love to be slim like you? I said, I don't know how many. She said, well, I don't know how many, but I'm saying, well, why do you, why do you bring it up then? You just said, do I know how many? So therefore I'm figuring you know how many, if you just ask me how many, you're going to tell me how many, but you tell me you don't know how many.

She said, look, we're wasting a lot of time. I mean, we've only got five minutes left. And if you want that happy ending, I said, no, stop it.

This is a real message. She said, it's not really. I said, it is.

It's for the story. It's a podcast. It's a clean podcast.

Adult, child-friendly, everything. I said, come on. Don't talk about happy endings.

She said, well, you mentioned happy endings. I said, no, I didn't. She said, you did.

I said, how is, how is I the one that mentioned it? Well, she said, well, people are listening to your podcast. People listen to us. I said, yeah.

Whose voice do they hear? Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough.

And she, you know, she said, oh, loads of people would be happy to have your body, to have your, you know, to be slim. And I think she might have said I had nice legs. I think I might have just added that myself.

Yeah, probably didn't say that. I did get told I had nice legs from a bloke once that I was living with. I wasn't living with him.

And it wasn't, it wasn't a, it was just, just something that was said. That's, yeah. And I, yeah, I really wanted to be, didn't, didn't want to be slim.

And it wasn't really until it was 2000. And I ballooned. I put on about two stone in probably three months.

And even though I still wasn't heavy, I was heavy. I was big, but I wasn't big. It's weird, isn't it? It's like I was fully 12 stone.

Now it was huge. If you add, you think percentage wise, that's a large percentage of increased weight. So I felt massive because it happened so quickly.

But in reality, at 12 stone, I was only half a stone over my ideal weight. And I was still getting okay with dating and stuff. No one ever told me I was fat.

I was just normal kind of size, I guess. I just felt huge. And then I moved away from London.

And I probably put on a little bit of weight, but I did start going to the gym. I started going to the gym before going to work. And I did it for a few weeks.

Nothing. No results. Zero results.

Now if I'd have stuck at it, I'd have got results, I know, I guess. But it was almost like my body refused. It was like, you know, it was almost like a defiant child.

Like, look, I've waited for 30 years to get to this weight. I'm staying here now. It was all like my body wanted to, you know, I mean, unconsciously and unconsciously, I wanted to be bigger for so many years, for over a decade.

Well, one and a half decades. So for 15 years, I wanted to be bigger. And suddenly I got my wish.

And there was a part of me that just like, nope, ain't going back. Ain't going back to that. I'm happy now.

I'm now big or bigger. I felt huge. I wasn't huge, but I felt huge.

And then, you know, 2004, I actually lost weight. It got down to 11 and a half stone. I was doing Kung Fu, doing Wing Chun Kung Fu twice a week.

And no, three times a week, actually, because you used to do, you used to do leg spa on a Friday. That's where basically you just sparred with your legs. You did take the rest of your body with you.

But it was just using your legs to defend and to attack. So it was, it was a lot of fun. And then I was a vegetarian, and I stopped drinking for the whole of 2004, drinking alcohol, not all liquids, otherwise I just turned to dust.

And I lost, I probably, I must have gone 11, 12, 13. I must have lost two stone. And I just went right down.

Yeah, maybe one and a half stone, two, whatever. So, so I wasn't fat, but I was, I was chunky, but I wasn't that fat. But I was proper slimy, slimy, slimy, slim, probably slim by the time 2004 kind of came to an end.

Really slim, but also really fit, physically fit, muscular. I was, that was the best probably, maybe the best I've looked since 1998. And maybe some would argue the best I've looked since.

Maybe I've not, I've never kind of been able to look that good. Although I think I look fairly good in 2010. Because I was boxing twice a week.

And I was also training every night on a punch bag and using weights. So I think I lost, I didn't so much lose weight, but I did put some muscle on. And I just, when I used to go to the boxing gym, they'd say to me like, you've lost weight, you're slimmer.

And my belly kind of went down. So yeah, it was good. And I sweat so much.

Honestly, I really sweated. And then I remember once though, because I moved, I think it was 2009, 2009. I was traveling up to London.

I was helping my friend out a couple of days a week. And I think I hit, I don't know, it might have been 13 and a half stone or maybe 14 stone for the first time ever. And I felt like a pig.

I felt I just eaten a big meal to be fair. But I weighed myself and I couldn't believe how much I weighed. So this was a point where I was going the other way.

I didn't want to be that heavy. I just like no, this is wrong. I'm gonna pop, you know, I really thought I was just going to get too big and explode.

And yeah, it was quite an unpleasant feeling. It's weird to think now I'm over two stone heavier than I was then. But I've really fitted into my body.

It's almost like everything's just, I guess we just get used to our bodies, don't we? So it's weird as I went through that whole time of trying to put weight on. I've only tried to lose weight, well no, I lost weight in 2004, but I didn't try and lose weight. I tried to get fitter.

And I did try to have get back a side of the six pack or slim waist. But I didn't care about the weight as far as you know, how much I weighed. I wasn't interested in that.

But I was interested in getting myself fit. And I succeeded. So that's the only time really that and maybe I lost a bit of weight in 2010.

See now, I seem to be for the last few years stuck at the 16 stone kind of mark. I kind of go a little bit under sometimes just a little bit over. But I think this is my happy space maybe I don't know.

But I'm thinking maybe it's a bit too heavy. And once my back heals, I'm going to start exercising a bit more. And maybe I can't stop drinking alcohol because I don't drink alcohol anymore.

I could stop drinking coke, but I really drink more than one can a day anyway now. So I've cut right down on that. I could stop eating chocolate.

No, that's not going to happen. What else? Yeah, I just I think I just found this seems to be my weight. Hmm.

What time is it? I've been talking for hours. I want to go. Thank you for listening.

Remember to be kind to yourself. Because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye.