Hi, I'm Matt Svillander and you are listening to the tennis podcast.

Well, hello and welcome to the tennis podcast. The morning after the Australian open men's singles final

We last spoke to you just before the women's final. I have to say the exciting news for us here on the tennis podcast is we have a special

Yeah, it's not Catherine where to go. We're not ready that first about Catherine this week. This week we normally are because today we have a very special guest

And that is a Mr John Inverdale of BBC radio and television and many other outlets as well who's been in the business at the very top for about 30 years.

John, am I allowed to say that? I hate that. When anybody says how long it is, I just felt like I want to go and crawl away into a hole, you know.

However, the fact is he knows his stuff and he's been here with us. Sorry, I'm bringing the average age down quite considerably.

Yeah, okay, all right. Well, we're all getting older Catherine. But John, this has been I think your first time at the Australian open. What have you been your impressions?

Am I abiding impression as we're sitting here the morning after looking at a blue sky and looking at sparkling colors everywhere.

You know, when I walked into Melbourne Park, I thought that I just sort of landed in a fruit salad. Everything was bright red, bright orange, bright yellow, bright blue, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright.

And it was, you know, it's everyone always calls it the happy slam and I can see that but it's not just the mood. It's the look.

You know, that particular shade of blue is just very energizing and very innovating and I thought it was great. I loved it. Really loved it.

We also made a friend, didn't we, a couple of nights gone our walk home. Tell us about that.

Yeah, we did actually. This is not something that happens as you're sort of walking down, you know, Oxford Street in London.

But we were walking back to our hotel at about two o'clock in the morning and there wasn't a soul anywhere and it was absolutely deathly quiet because Melbourne just, when Melbourne shuts, it shuts.

This is not a city that doesn't sleep and at two o'clock in the morning, it's just you and me walking along the riverbank and then suddenly in front of us, there was a possum.

So here we are in Australia and a little baby possum, actually not so small, actually looking at us and I wasn't sure who was more scared because I wasn't, I've never been face to face with a possum before.

And I wasn't quite sure, you know, what a possum does in those situations. I think he was more scared of me though than I was of him.

So he's scuttled up this tree and we stupidly tried to almost go and stroke him because I don't know, why do you do that? I mean, it's so mindless. I don't know why we tried to do that.

And I thought, he had that look in his eye, that glint. I thought he's going for us. He's going to leap and he's got quite, quite big claws.

He's like sort of a squirrel on steroids and he's got, you know, I thought he's going to, if he jumps us, it could be in big trouble here.

But anyway, so it's one of my, you know, a possum, maybe he is the Melbourne possum, maybe he is the sole possum who inhabits the streets of Melbourne.

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