People said like, why are you doing it?

I'd go, what, do you think?

Yeah, do you think? Or deposit for a house, you know, whatever. It's not for the experience. It's not so I can dry Stanley Johnson's pants over a fire, which is another thing I've done in my life. That's all right. That's all right. This week on walking the dog, Ray and I took a West London stroll with a brilliant comedian,

Sharperac or Sandy, and her two beautiful dogs, Taylor the Retriever and Jamie the Maltese.

So it was a bit of a miserable rainy day in London when we met, but seeing Shaps, as she very

kindly tolerates me calling her, bounding into the park with Jamie and Taylor, was like a

lovely burst of sunshine. They are simply an iconic trio. So we'd actually briefly met each

other before a few times over the years, but we ended up being thrown together a few months

back when our mutual friend, the comedian and author Adam Kay, was having a party in

the country and it was suggested I give Shaps a lift. And we basically hit it off so well in the car,

I ended up forgetting I had no petrol and missing the motorway turning, but I did end up thinking

this woman was fabulous. She's obviously had a hugely successful career as a comic and author,

but I wanted to find out a bit more about her life story,

and we had such an interesting chat about everything

from her family leaving Iran after the revolution when she was a very young kid,

her childhood growing up in London,

where she told me about the huge effort she made to assimilate,

including changing her name to Shappi

and her decision to become a comedian.

We also talked about her adult diagnosis of ADHD

and how that's allowed her to make a lot of sense of her childhood,

as well as the brief time she spent

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