Graham Norton

Minnie questions comedian and chat show host Graham Norton. Graham shares an unexpected lesson from a drama school reunion, what Peanuts taught him about happiness, and the (albeit simple) recipe for his famous “Graham soup.” Plus, a bonus pet psychic story from Minnie you have to hear to believe!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
There's been a dog snoring throughout most of this. Has
Douglas been snoring? Yes, I remember you did our podcast
and you were talking about your mom and it was
really moving and lovely, and then you could just hear
this just crying. He was so and I don't think
it was empathy. I don't think he was going, oh,

(00:21):
miss driver, miss driver, speaking so movingly. I think he's
just thinking, I'm bored, I want to ut this room. Boy,
let me out. What's happening? Remember your word, brother, it's
so funny. I like dog interruptions very much. It seemed
quite disrespectful. I think that's entirely in keeping with like dogs. Hello,
I'm Mini Driver. Welcome to Many Questions Season two. I've

(00:45):
always loved Pruce's Questionnaire. It was originally a nineteenth century
parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five
questions aimed at revealing the other players true nature. It's
just the scientific method really. In asking different people the
same set of questions, you can make observations about which
truths appeared to me universal. I love this discipline, and

(01:09):
it made me wonder, what if these questions were just
the jumping off point. What greater depths would be revealed
if I ask these questions as conversation starters with thought
leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I
adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions
that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story.

(01:29):
They are when and where were you happiest? What is
the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you
most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped
you the most? What would be your last meal? And
can you tell me something in your life that's grown
out of a personal disaster. And I've gathered a group

(01:52):
of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and
humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You
may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to
their experience or the most surprising, or created the most
fertile ground to connect. My guest today is the polymorphous

(02:16):
wonder that is Graham Norton. Graham is perhaps best known
for his chat show The Graham Norton Show, for the
eight books he has written, for the radio shows he
presents in the UK, and on and on and on,
because the thing for me that makes him so known
is this extraordinary wit and spirit that just runs through

(02:36):
every single thing he does. I can't tell you how
many times I've been on his show over the years,
but it's quite a few. And I will tell you
that churches can really be a bit uphill, but I
long to go on his show because I have never
laughed so much in my life. After you've listened to
this episode of my podcast, please just google Funny race

(02:59):
Hall names the Graham Norton Show, and you will see
me genuinely crying with laughter at the hands of a
merciless Graham. It's quite hard to become a national treasure
in the UK, but Graham is one, and everyone knows it.
I always feel better for having talked to him, and
this interview right now proved to be no different at all.

(03:26):
Where and when were you happiest? I do know this,
but I always kind of think, I remember when I
was a kid, there was a Peanuts cartoon. I loved
Peanuts when I was a kid, but it's kind of
weirdly deep for kids. I think it's Charlie Brown and
Lucy maybe talking Charlie Brown, someone else talking, somebody saying,
you know, in every life, one day will be happier

(03:48):
than all the other days, and the other little child
is going yes, and then the first child goes, what
if you've had it? And as a child, you know,
that sort of blew me away because that's just seemed
the saddest thing in the world that if you're eleven
and you've had your happiest day, the rest of your
life is it lived out? Not as good as that.

(04:10):
So I think you've got to live your life assuming
your happiest days to come. I think that's very smart.
Oh my god, it's so existential Peanuts, isn't it. Yeah,
that is so deep for a little children's cartoon, And
it hit me to my core. That just seemed like
meaning of life, level of revelation. Happiest day might have happened.

(04:32):
The answer to your question is I had a wedding
weekend this summer in Ireland. Your wedding, my wedding is
my wedding. We got married already, but we had this
weekend and you know, there were party planners, and there
was this going to happen, This is going to happen.
People were flying in, but of course then the airports
were all messed up, COVID was still around. You know.

(04:53):
I picked these party planners basically out of the phone book.
So they're telling me, oh, yeah, we'll do this, and
you're thinking, I hope you do, because I have no idea. Anyway,
the weekend could not have gone better. We got amazing
whether the moment I was happiest was with my husband,
just as the party was drawing to the close on
the Sunday, where you know, we were surrounded by our friends. Still,

(05:17):
it was a beautiful night. The lights were all in
the trees, the music was playing, and it was just
I didn't need to worry about how the whole weekend
was going to go anymore. I didn't need to worry
about the catering, or the performers, or the weather or
people getting there. In that little probably fifteen minute, you know,
at the end, I could just be happy. In that

(05:40):
little tail end of all the anxiousness and the planning,
I felt supremely content and loved and loving and all
all those good things and all the anxiety and the
worry actually qualifies and probably has a huge amount to
do with how happy you felt. Yes, actually, you're absolutely right.
It is a correlation. All the things that could have

(06:02):
gone wrong didn't. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if there are
people who when they die, I feel that they shually
went all the stuff is done. It's like, oh, phew,
you know, I'm night, and God, I don't have to
do another Christmas. On a different level, I see that
with people on my chat show all the time. What
do you mean at the very end they're really happy, Well,
they're kind of very happy, but also disappointed because they

(06:24):
were worried for the whole show. Sometimes I'll have, you know,
a newbe someone who's just doing their first movie or
their first single or whatever, and because I'm such an
old blag, I've been sat there for donkeys years and suddenly, really, oh,
you're really nervous, you know you kind of you just
want to hug them and kind of go, oh, really,
you shouldn't be nervous about this. Trust me, so many

(06:47):
words things are going to happen to you. This is
not one of them. This is one of the good things.
Trust me, nebe this highlight and I feel they were
worried for the whole show that was going to go wrong,
and they're going to say something stupid, or I was
going to ask them a weird question, or I was
going to make them look foolish, and then you see
them at the end kind of going, oh, I could
have just enjoyed that. I could have just let go

(07:09):
and enjoy that. And I wonder if people think that
on their deathbed, like, oh, I was such a fool. Well,
I worried about stains on my carpet when I could
have just been enjoying the coffee that I spilt on it.
You know, it's just that kind of approach to life
when someone who you've loved has died, has that thing
become really really present for you, of oh my god,

(07:31):
I'm really am going to let go of worrying about
all of that stuff because I've just seen how quickly
this is over. Like there's a clarifying moment. I felt
that when Mom died so extraordinarily like, holy shit, I
am never thinking about that thing again. That probably lasted
for a minute. Yes, I agree with you. I think
grief and loss gives you exactly that word, the clarity

(07:54):
it gives you perspective, it goes again. I'm a years ago,
in my twenty I got mugged and stabbed and kind
of lost over half my blood and ended up in hospital.
But I remember when I was in hospital, and maybe
it was just the drugs I was on or something,
I don't know, but I just remembered feeling like I
knew everything. I felt like in that moment, having survived that,

(08:20):
I felt like I could have you know, Palestine, Israel,
come sit by my bed. I will. I'll solve this
because I have this kind of huge wisdom. Like I said,
it was probably the drugs, but equally, I do think
there's something about extreme things like that, like grief, like
loss for a moment, as you say, like the window

(08:41):
shuts again. In that moment, you know everything, but you
remember this is so show biz. But remember when Kim
Catrall and Sarahisca Parker had the fuck Yeah, I remember
that burned into my memory. Serage Parker said something to
about the brother yea, about her brother and Kim, you
were not my friend, and everyone's like, oh, that's been harsh,

(09:02):
and I just thought, no, that's a woman in grief totally,
that's a woman in grief going, oh, you know what,
you fuck right out of this. Yes, it's the clarifier
you chop out the people that try to co opt
your brother's death for a tweet or whatever it was.
You respond with that clarity of emotion of like, I
have no time for this extraneous social contract bullshit nonsense. Yeah,

(09:25):
but I also feel like that does maybe just what
we said about the anxiety qualifying the happiness those moments
and that kind of intensity. When I remember it, I
feel the happiness on the other side of it. I
feel how it helped throw into relief what real happiness
looked like. That sitting on that beach in Cornwall in
the rain, when we all complained about the barbecue not lighting,

(09:48):
and my mom laughed because she had cring tonics in
funny enough, a snoopy, you know, small child's drink holder.
All that happiness, it's just more clearly defined by all
that worry or anxiety or angst around certain things. And
I'm I'm kind of fascinated by that. But that is
part of I suppose the fundamental duality of being alive.

(10:10):
It is, but also I think an extreme thing like that,
you know, all that whanging on, living in the moment,
whanging on. But you know what I mean, because it's
like all that whanging on and living at the moment,
I totally do. So, yes, we know, we all are
to live in the moment. Yeah, yeah, Well, you know what,
I've got a diary and there's things in it and
I'm planning. You know, you just can't. But in that moment,

(10:30):
in that profound moment of loss, you are entirely in
that moment, I think, where nothing else is going on.
It's just that. Yeah, every book that I'd read on
any kind of personal growth or philosophy or religion or
whatever I've read in my whole life, it was so
extraordinary in those moments. And by moments, I mean months

(10:52):
after Mom died. It's like I knew, I knew, just
as you said, weirdly, I knew everything. I knew all
of the thing, all of the things that mattered, all
the things that actually held meaning, all of the things
that I wanted to let go of. It was so
incredibly clear. There's an extraordinary gift in that. There's not
much that's good about when your mom dies. And I

(11:14):
would only say that just in terms of like observing
stuff that happens. But I do believe in the clarifying
power of grief and the definition of happiness. I want
to see Gary Barlow from Take That, who if people
in America they may not know Take That. But he
was a you know, a young kid and a boy
band and then they disapparited a horrible time and they
came back and were successful. And he's doing this one
man show kind of a life and in the second

(11:36):
act he tells this really heartbreaking story about him and
his wife losing a baby. The baby is still born,
and it's so heartbreaking, it's very sad, everyone in the
audience sobbing. But he turns it into this positive. The
gift that that child gave him was perspective, and the
gift of that child gave him was being able to

(11:57):
say no to things, not you know, needing to please
people all the time. And that what you're talking about,
the happiness on the other side of something. I just
think that's what's that phrase, collateral beauty around awful things?
There is collateral beauty? Really tell me what relationship, real

(12:19):
or fictionalized, defines love for you? Oh, now it's fictional,
but it was profound when I watched it, and it's
still kind of profound because I think there's a kind
of a pureity to the love in this and it's
Elliott and et the love between those two, because so

(12:41):
much of it's unspoken, so much of it isn't thought
about or expressed or figured out, or you know, the
way in relationships there's a kind of a not a game,
but a kind of a dance, is sort of a
choreograph thing between you before you get to love and
staying in love. And there's something so pure about the

(13:05):
love between that little boy and the alien, and the
fact that you know one of them is an alien
makes it really lovely. And his heart lights up like
a bedside lamp. You can't get better than that. I mean,
I love John. Oh, but if his heart lit up
like a bedside lamb, but I could read by it,
I would love it. If my boyfriend's he lit up
like I'd be like, oh God, keep that going. I

(13:26):
can turn my phone off. I'll just turn this way
downing hard on. Yeah, that's lovely, so like a camp fire. Oh. Also,
you know what's beautiful about Elliot and Eats relationship as well,
is that Elliott his love doesn't weive when he knows
has got to go. Yeah, he doesn't sort of stop
helping him, and it doesn't diminish the love. That notion

(13:48):
that one person is going to really lose out because
I don't think it would really think twice about Elliott
after he's gone back home, frankly, because home is obviously
his passion and what defines love for him. It's all
he talks about when he does staying. But also, isn't
there something about that? Because Et nearly dies, so Elliott
thinks he's lost Et, and then he comes back to life,

(14:09):
and then I think that allows Elliott to let him
go because it's so lovely that he's alive. I don't
care if you're alive and not living with me, but
I'm so happy you're alive. You're absolutely right, it's a
really beautiful, pure expression of unconditional love that relationship. I
think you should stop asking this question now because I
think I've given the proper answer. I think I've've solved
that question for you. I've solved for that across it off. Yeah,

(14:34):
it's Eliot and e t thank you, thank you, good night. Okay,
So what is the quality that you like least about yourself.

(14:57):
Compromise is a good thing, but I feel I'm a pushover.
I feel like I never really stand up for anything.
I kind of just go, ho, well, I just roll over.
There's a lot of rolling over, and I feel like
that's the thing the young me would judge me the
most harshly about. I think the young me would be
pleased that I was success and but I think the

(15:19):
young me would stare at me, going, what you're going
to do that? Or you know what? That's okay? Isn't
that like, you know, path of least resistance. Isn't that
like a whole kind of philosophy in itself? Isn't that
a really amazing thing that you do that? No, see,
I don't think it's admirable at all. I look at
people with conviction, and I am in all of them.

(15:40):
They are annoying, but I am in all of them.
That's really interesting. It happens in my personal life to
where you know, like there's a lot of inner monologue
about that shouldn't happen or that, but I just don't
say anything because it's it's easier, but it's not easier.
But I think it is easier. It's easy because it's

(16:01):
like the thing is that once you've done it once
and you realize the whole world didn't stop and this
guy didn't fall in and it was actually fine, I
think it must then become quite a delicious thing to do,
which is to maybe not take a position. It takes
a lot of energy to have conviction. It does. And
like I said, I am in all of those people.
You know, I feel like, you know that thing kind
of like, oh that was quite good, that's fine, that's

(16:23):
all right, And you've gotta think, oh, why can't something
be exceptional? Why can't something be really good? And I
feel like I should aim a bit higher in all
parts of my life. But I don't find Jannah notice
about you? Oh no, no, he's my doing well, yeah,
he's my peak achievement. My husband is my peak achievement.
I think that's lovely. I do know what you mean.

(16:44):
But I'm just the complete opposite. I need to stop
trying to fight for everything and just getting exhausted and
disappointed as opposed to being pleasantly surprised when a few
things work out. There must be something in between, where
you know what battles are worth fighting. My boyfriends were
really good at that. He's like, I'm not going to
die on that hill. I am going to die on
that one. Except I'm not going to die. I'm going

(17:05):
to succeed. I'm going to plant my flag in the
top of that mountain and then he'll do it. It's
quite annoying. So maybe actually my worst quality is that
I'm just resentful of his good quality, of his good qualities.
My friends just moved into a new apartment and they're
having trouble with the neighbor. There's an upstairs neighbor. All
these like angry emails going around, and my friend ended

(17:28):
one email with do not fight me, I will win.
Oh my god, that's fantastic. I love that way to
win over your neighbors. Do not fight me, I will win. Also,
that is a rookie era never moving anywhere with upstairs neighbors.
It's hard. I mean, one a nightmare for cool thing,

(17:51):
but stairs neighbors are terrible to neighbors. Essentially, basically being
in a neighbor sandwich is fucking dreadful. Yeah, I don't
know I would take that into extreme consideration, but have
a whole neighbor thing nightmare. I used to do like
an agony uncle column in a paper here, and I
did it for about eight years. And those are the
problems I dreaded when people wrote in about the neighbors,
because there is no solution. There's no solution except move, yeah,

(18:14):
move at Even then it's hard because if they're noisy
or whatever, it's hard to sell your house and blah
blah blah blah blah. Yeah, you have to disclose all
of that stuff. Yeah, it's monsters. As if it weren't
hard enough trying to find a place to rent or
buy in this life. Now, what question would you most

(18:35):
like answered? I remember, and I'm sure all kids do this,
where you lie in the grass and look up and
you know the clouds move, but you think that's the
earth going and then you look beyond that into the
blue and it's just that. Even as an adult you
stop thinking about it. But as a child, that is
such a kind of mind fuck. There must be a

(18:57):
there there, but there is no there there. It goes
on forever, new they can't go on forever. There has
to be you know. I still don't understand it. But
do I want that question answered? I mean no, because
I think it would bore the chasses out of me.
I think just like someone would start explaining to me
are placed in the cosmos or the concept of infinity,
and I would find myself slowly looking away. Oh there's

(19:23):
someone I know. I wonder what's for dinner? Was up
my phone? And that is the origin of the universe.
Cheese tasty? You know what. I'm just thinking. The one
thing I would quite like to be able to do.
I would quite like to be able to read dogs minds.
I know they're probably quite easy to read, you know.

(19:46):
Can I fuck it? Can I eat it? But I
couldn't scratch my tummy? There's that? Yes? And can I
eat that hand? Or fuck it? I think there's some
subtlety going on in there's something else going on. So
I would quite like someone to tell me what my
dog is thinking at all times. I really like that,

(20:08):
And that is a really true. Wait, can I tell you? Yes?
My dog ran away from me at this fair we
were at and I ran through the crowd and I
found him with his paws on the shoulders of this
woman and she was like, oh, oh yeah, oh oh goodness.
And I was like, oh my god, Oh my god.
My dog, and she was like, Hi, your dog was
just telling me a few things, like would you like

(20:29):
me to tell you? And I was looking around, what
is happening? Anyway? It turned out she was this really
famous pet psychic, and my dog told her. She said,
you have to get his bed back from the garage.
And I'd literally got him a new bed the day
before and thrown out his old one, and it was
upstairs in the garage where I lived, waiting to be
taken away. And he told her that. And then the

(20:49):
other thing he told her was that my sister used
to take him to work and my dog had most
of his tail missing from a terrible accident with the door,
and my sister's boss used to call him stubborn. His
name was Bubba, and he used to call him stumpy Stubba,
and he didn't like that, and he told the pets
psychic to tell me to tell him to fucking stop
calling him that. Wow, it was heaven. They couldn't have known.

(21:11):
She couldn't have known that. How could you have known
that we had a pet psychic on the TV show
years ago? And this woman she was literally from the
audience and actually had a dog and the dog told
the psychic that the woman needs to put carpet back
in the bedroom because he can't jump on the bed
anymore because he can't get purchased on the wooden floor.
And the woman, I mean, you saw the one's face,

(21:34):
she was just like Honestly, I think she thought we'd
broken into her house and taking pictures or something, because
she had just taken up the carpet and put in laminte.
Oh my god, my god. And I also love the
fact that dogs aren't like you know. I want you
to teach me the secrets of the universe and take
me on concorde. No. Have you seen that woman on
Instagram who thinks her dog can talk to her wait

(21:55):
when it hits the buttons? Yes, I've seen her a lot.
It's sent task stick. I like the way if he
just hits table and sleep. You dreamt about her table.
You treamt about a table. You was so smart. Well,
a major UK supermarket now sells a set of four
of those little things. Does it say fuck eat? Honestly,

(22:18):
you can record whatever you like. I God, that's amazing. Yeah,
we got them for Douglas the Dog. And what Starglass
done with them? Nothing? Occasionally he'll walk on one by accident,
and then we have to give him a treat or something.
One of them does they treat, even that one. He
hasn't figured out that hitting it will get him a treat.
But he's an older dog, so you know, there is
a saying about that. Also, it's like, you know, not

(22:41):
all dogs are like really smart. Like I've had very
smart dogs, and I've had really thick dogs, like really
thick dogs. Some dogs probably aren't chatty. Some dogs don't
want to talk to you, and they're like, look, love,
there's a whole reason I can't talk. They start trying
to talk to me. That's what this life is about.
It was about silence, about silence. Yeah, look, just feed
me twice a day. Like that was the arrangement. So

(23:04):
what's the buttons? Stuffed with the buttons? The buttons? Now,
what person, place or experience most also to your life?

(23:25):
I would say San Francisco. I was in a hippie
commune in San Francisco when I was twenty and twenty
sounds quite old, but I was an Irish twenty, which
is like a sort of international fourteen, let's say. And
I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

(23:46):
I had done two years at university studying French and English,
but I wasn't enjoying it. I didn't like being in Cork,
and so I ran away. I ran away to San Francisco,
and through various accidents and alchemy and luck, I ended
up in this hippie commune. It's still there. It's still
there in San Francisco. Oh my god, how amaze, just
off the Panhandle. And I had never met people like

(24:08):
this before. People with convictions put me right off, put
me off the life. But they treated me, you know,
they treated back in an adult there was the chore wheel,
and you know, we had to cook one night and
I'd have to cook for you know, twelve people, and
I couldn't cook for one. Can I just get twelve

(24:29):
pot noodles? Do that for everyone? That's okay, right? And
I went back. They had a kind of a twenty
five year anniversary ten years ago, and I went back
to see them, and this one woman, she said to me, oh,
we still make your soup. And I'm like what. Apparently
I had made some leak and potatoes soup, of course,

(24:51):
the potatoes in it. And she still makes it she
calls the Graham soup. But weirdly, that woman, I remember
she was studying to be a nurse, and she was
I think she was forty maybe forty one two, and
she was studying to be a nurse. And I remember
thinking of the time, like like, why would you bother?
Like really, really, lady, you're training to do something in

(25:13):
your forties. It's too late for you. And I must
have said that to her, hopefully not as boldly as that,
but I must have questioned starting a new career or
being a student in her forties, and she went, well,
if I am a nurse for rest of my life,
I'll have been nursing for twenty five years, you know,

(25:35):
untill her retirement. And I was like, oh, that's that's
longer than I've been alive. I can understand that is
a long time. And it gave me, in my little
young life, it gave me kind of the gift of time,
of realizing that in a life, although they go by
in a flash, we also have more time than we
think we do. And I think that's something that young
people should know. Don't be in such a rush. You've

(25:57):
got time to fail, You've got time to six seed.
You've got time to not succeed or succeeded the thing
you don't enjoy, and then find the thing you do enjoy.
You know, when I turned fifty, there is a sense, oh,
the bike is at the top of the hill and
the rest of my life is now downhill. But then
you realize, oh, no, I'm only fifty. Yeah, you know,

(26:17):
with a bit of luck, there's decades of this ship left.
I better find things to do and find challenges and
things that I haven't done yet that I want to
get done. So and that all came from that hippie commune.
Don't be scared of failure, because actually there's time. I
think it was Victor Hugo who said fifty is the
youth of old age. Yes, I really, I really like that.

(26:39):
And by the way, that when you're in your twenties
and I remember thinking I had to get it all done,
I didn't even know what that meant. But the amount
of time I spent worrying that I wasn't doing enough,
it's so interesting, like if one does think about it,
not that time is running out, but rather there is
a lot of time. I know. It's exact obverse of
the meters ticking. Yes, but also that thing that no

(27:01):
time is wasted in a way, no exactly, that if
you find out that you hate doing something, it's going
to help define what you do want to do. Yeah,
I think that's brilliant for all of us. Actually to go,
you've got a bit more time. You've got a bit
more time than you think, because how old were you
when you kind of thought I've made it. It was
for about fifteen minutes, but you thought it. It didn't

(27:25):
happen in the moment it happened. When I sort of
looked back, I must say that I thought the zenith
of like being on the red carpet with my mom
and dad at the Oscars when I was nominated for
an oscar. They made it real, like seeing them right
there and like my dad squeezing my hand and not
being flustered by any of it, just seeing him sort
of dadding in that insane environment. There was a lot

(27:47):
going on that night. But looking back the next couple
of weeks, I did go, actually, it's kind of what
you said from the Snoopy cartoon, and I was like,
I'm not sure it's ever going to get better than that.
I think I peaqued I think I succeeded. We don't
feel that anymore, No, God, No, because that was this
barometer that I had said of what success look that. Yeah,

(28:07):
And once you get rid of that barometer or beautifully
or wonderfully, if you're lucky, that life will sort of
teach you that that success and failure are lovers intertwined.
One is not bad and one is not good. You
have to name them differently, and you really start living
at once. I started letting other things into my life
that were great and amazing. I remember we had a
reunion for drama school. I think it was a twenty

(28:29):
five or thirty year reunion. And of course when your
kids at drama school, we were all, you know, teenagers,
early twenties, and we only measured success in one way.
Success was being a star, or having your name up,
or working in theater or working in film and television.
We all there's a whole group of people twenty eight
of or something, and we all had one vision of

(28:51):
what success was. And so to meet up thirty years
later and realize how diverse success is. You know, some
people were still acting and that was their success. Some
people were now artists, some people who had families, some
people have started businesses. You know, there was one woman
and she had an illness and she was in her mission.

(29:13):
So just being there was her success. Because I kind
of thought, oh, it'll be a weird day because some
of these people will be you know, quote failures now
and I will be the only true star. They're all
going to hate me, Mini, They're going to hate me.
And I felt so stupid because when I got there,
I realized, oh, we've moved on. If we got in

(29:35):
a little tell transportation device when we were in drama
school and went to the future and found out that,
you know, a couple of us were still in the
industry and doing well, then it would have been a
very bitter, horrible day. But the fair that you didn't
and the fact that we lived all that life in
between and you got there, and I was so struck
by it. The people and it. It goes back to time,

(29:56):
doesn't it. You know, as you navigate life, you find
your job oi and you find your successes in all
different sorts of ways. As you now know. Yes, and
then I think we're brutal with our ideas of like
really adhering to a notion of what is success and
what is failure and being traumatized by this prescribed idea
of failing. Failure is so I can't remember the quote,

(30:20):
it's Winston Churchill. I'm totally paraphrasing and watching it. But
success is enjoying the failures in between failures like that,
it's all failing and trying not to and enjoying that process.
I thought you were going to say success is enjoying
the failure of others. By the way, that would be
something that would be something that Churchill could also said

(30:41):
he probably did. He probably did. It was so great,
Thank you so much, Thanks for this many It's been fun.
Graham's fourth novel, Forever Home, is out now and for
our friends in the UK, Graham will be on tour
to discuss the book through October. So if you've enjoyed

(31:03):
hearing his musings, and I know you have, please do
catch him live. Mini Questions is hosted and written by
Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy,
Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver,

(31:26):
Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Mini Driver.
Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day,
Lisa Castella and Annique Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador,
Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech

(31:47):
support Henry Driver,