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Hello and welcome, sentimental garbage, the podcast where we talk about the culture we love that society sometimes makes us feel ashamed of. My name is Caroline and my father, the series

creator of Lost, would not be too pleased to hear about this. And joining me is the man whose auntie

wrote The Gruffalo. It's benjamin dean oh my god hi i'm

so glad to be here and so glad that the news is finally out that yes i am an epa baby of the person

the gruffalo is your dad absolutely the gruffalo is absolutely my father i was about to say actually

my dad i was about to say the reason why i'm an fos because my dad auditioned for gladiators in the 90s, but actually being a graphalo is so much better. So I take it's bad. So much better. I do think that I would be a great kind of son of the Gruffalo. So I'm glad that I've got this kind of thing. Yeah, you would really, you'd represent and show all the ways which he's understood. You'd be like a real Francesca Scorsese of the Gruffalo.

I can see that for me. You would help us reflect back what's so great about him to begin with. I can absolutely see that for me, even though I hands up have never read the Gruffalo even as a child. I know. Like we're two people who write for young people who are absolutely vamping our way through this Gruffalo conversation because neither one of us know what the fuck it is.

Barely tell you what, can barely tell you what that man looks like. Is that man, bear? Ox? I don't know. It could be any animal creature. Today we're talking about nebo babies. I'm so excited. I have so many thoughts. I know you do too. But can you, before we go any further, can you tell me your credentials

outside of being the Gruffalo son? Well, obviously I have dad auditioning for gladiators. I,

you know, straight into entertainment business, gave me kind of like the wants to be in the

entertainment business, even though I haven't spoken, it's spoken to my dad in like 15 years. So,

yeah, absolutely. He went for that gladiators audition and you said,

Sianara. It's like the new he went out for cigarettes and never came back. Precisely. Went for milk and just literally never came back through the front or ever again. And then my mom used to write me sick notes for score that were an absolute lie, which is how I ended up becoming a fictional writer.

So here we are.

I was just like,

well,

it's kind of an astounding level of privilege

...