Welcome to part two of Walking the Dog with the wonderful Ollie Smith and his dog Busby. Do, by the way, pre-order a copy of Ollie's brilliant debut crime novel, Death By Noir, so you can get stuck in immediately when it's published on June the 18th. Really hope you enjoy part two of our walk and do give us a like and a follow so you can catch us every week. Here's Olly and Busby and Ray Ray.

So this experience, at this point you're doing pretty well because as you say you were also

writing Trolley and Lola and you wrote some of Wallace and Gromit. I did work on for, I was

yeah, part of a kind of punch up day for for, what was it, called the curse of the wear of it. Yeah. And you're thinking at this point, well, that sort of feels like things are maybe going in a Hollywood direction. I was doing that. I was definitely doing that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was no, there was nothing else on the horizon. It was actually my friend Mark Huckabee, who's a fellow screenwriter. Yeah. Who, in the nicest possible way, pointed out to me that

much as I was, you know, all right at screenwriting, he said, the thing is, all you ever talk about is wine.

And I've got to be honest, I'm so bored hearing about it.

You've got to do something with it. Here is a competition which you should enter. It called wine idol love it like pop idol but nobody

saw it um which i did enter and you know long story short managed to win and they used it as a

calling card to pop round some studios and my part of the prize was an audition to go on great food

live which was a satellite tv show hosted by jenny barnet. And I got my first. I did the audition and they were like, yeah, you're very theatrical. I don't think you'd write for tele, but do the audition anyway. Did the audition, rained it in. And they gave me a shot. And they kept asking me back. And other shows saw me. and within about six months I was kind of doing

great food live, food uncut, there's a sky show called Taste that picked me up and then within

about a year or two the Richard and Judy Wine Club came knocking and Amanda Ross who was the producer

of that show then went on to produce Saturday Kitchens so that's been 20 years now.

Are you joking? I know. I can't believe it.

Don't tell anyone. How, I love you on that show. Thank you. How, um, what have you learned?

Like, how different are you to when you started out on that show? I, yeah, when I started out, it was, I was in the supermarket aisles and I had like three minutes and I had to be larger than life, you know, sort of more this morning. Very much so. Well, you're very sweet. I would thought of it as much more Keith Chegwin back in the day of the swap shop. Hello, Noel. But yes, I was, I was trying to sort of be entertaining or trying to have some authority in the field,

but also make it fun. I just wanted wine to be democratic, something for all ages, classes, backgrounds, no barrier to entry.

And I thought if I made it fun that that might sort of help, and I think it did.

But then coming into the studio was the greatest blessing for me because I was able to just be entirely myself. And I love live TV because I don't really think you can hide anything. You have to just, you have to just be who you are. When things go wrong, it's a total gift because it's material. It's something that the audience relate to. Everybody's dropped a pan at home. Everybody's spilled a glass. And the key thing I learned this from Frank Skinner, is don't pretend things haven't go wrong. Always own up. I totally agree. Like, oh, look at that. Yeah. I was hosting the show when Matt was away. And I asked for Paul Ainsworth, the chef, to come on because he's a great friend,

and I really had the utmost admiration for the way he conducted himself in life.

And one of us, I haven't watched it back, but one of us spilled a glass of water over the cooking.

And it was a phenomenal TV moment because there we are.

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