Michelle Brasier joins the podcast!

Michelle Brasier joins the show! Go see her at the Edinburgh Fringe, where she's performing Reform at the Gilded Balloon Teviot at 7pm throughout August!

• Welcome to one of the first episodes that wasn't recorded 100,000 years ago!
• Who the heck is Michelle Brasier?
  
  

• An alcoholic beverage in the morning is a British tradition - the podcast started when Tom and Rich used to go to the pub and talk about their dads.
• The podcast is about laughing a lot, even when the topic is not a topic where you would normally laugh.
• Michelle had a lovely childhood. She was in first year acting school at a fancy acting school and was a very strong singer.
• She took a year off and booked a trip to Glasgow (hey, that's where Tom lives!) to see Scotland, and was also interested in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
  
  

• A month before Michelle was meant to go, she stood too close to a heater and caught on fire, leaving her with burns so serious she had to learn to walk again.
• Her dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
• Her iconic friend James offered to quit his job and used up all of his leave looking after her in the hospital.
  
  

• A rare bit of beauty around death - the hospital let them bring the dog in, which is rare.
• Michelle took the bold decision to start a relationship with a man on the day of her father's death. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that didn't form the basis of a lifelong partnership.
• A telenovela life.
  
  

• Space Tortoise - a show about a tortoise who wants to go to space to show her dad how tall she has gotten.
• Edinburgh has a very special place in her heart - an absolutely beautiful story about snow globes.
• Her brother died after her dad died.
• An experimental drug - free if he survived for a year, and if he didn't, you had to pay for it.
  
  

• There is a genetic predisposition to breast, stomach, ovarian, bowel and other cancers in that area in Michelle's family, which is why she is being treated as if she has Lynch syndrome.
• But she is much happier now than she was when she was 17. 
• Rich is happier having lost stuff because he knows what it is to have things now.
• The hierarchy of grief.

• James was there when her brother died. They have been friends since they were 10, which is rare, and it is a real safety net.
• The process of talking about it after it happened came naturally to Michelle, but it was also a learning process.
• Finding the beauty in sadness and unhappiness is always a natural reaction to anything in the world. Anything sad and unhappy is always like... where's the fucking poem in that?
• "The horror of being truly known is the only thing that can get you to the joy of being truly loved."

• Tom often looks at his rabbits and goes, yeah, I could do that.
• Tom's dad was a big singer and obsessed with amateur dramatics, always doing stuff on stage. He was in lots and lots of shows.
• He was due to be in Starlight Express before he got the diagnosis - he had learned how to skate and everything, but he didn't want to do it.
• Nobody wants to see a man weeping on rollerblades. It's a safety risk.
• Tom's dad bloody loved a bargain.
  
  

• Rich's dad had meningitis, but it sort of presented very suddenly. He was a GP, so he caught it off someone who came in to see him, and it can live in your body and then just sort of suddenly, suddenly, just have any symptoms.
• Meningitis is incredibly noble.
• Rich's dad hated it when someone on TV had a cardiac arrest and got resuscitated. He was angry that they always got it wrong.
• So when he died, had he been successfully resuscitated, he would have been absolutely fuming to be proven wrong. Alive, but at what cost? 

• Tom talks about his dad dying over a period of two years and watching him suffer, and Rich talks about his dad dying quickly.
• Legionnaire's disease.
• Michelle's nephew is scared because he's seen someone go to hospital and not come back, and it's really hard to watch.
• "I wish a quick death on my mum."

• Michelle talks about her brother losing his mind slowly.
• Tom explains is dad took a slight turn too - he would occasionally pop up with an opinion, which was sad to hear. He was always a very smart man, but ended up buying into conspiracy theories following the brain tumours.
• You get used to them not being around, but you don't get used to not being able to tell them stuff.

• Her brother was her biggest supporter and he would call her in the middle of the night with his friends at a party, playing one of her songs for the party.
• He was the only person in her family who she could turn to and be like, it just worked with this person.
• The experience of talking about her dad and brother onstage, and how she finds the experience of being able to do it in front of people who are dying.
• How her brother died in 2015, and why it took her a while to write her book.
  
  

• Being a performer, on stage, is a way to share grief through laughter and music. It's a way to ask questions rather than trying to come and pretend to have answers.
• There's something that comes from grief that is not about the death. grief is about asking questions.
• Tom & Rich profusely apologising as it's now 11pm in Melbourne and they've been chatting for two hours now.
• Michelle's Edinburgh show!
  
  

• Michelle's Edinburgh show!
• Hey, Rich is doing a show too!
• Tom will be there to help smack away the cash of foolhardy individuals who don't give Rich enough dollar dollar bill y'all. And Rich has pledged to buy everyone a pint to say thanks for coming. What a nice guy.