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Chapter 1: What is the antidote to self-improvement according to John Tothill?
to John Tothill Forgives Your Sins. This is the show where I, John Tothill, eschew the nauseating barrage of self-improvement in favor of your worst impulses and transgressions. And I'm here tonight to take your confession. Think of me as your high priest. And while not a real priest, I am really high. Where would a priest be without his parish? Look at you all. Thank God you're here.
I asked my producer, Sasha, to round up the most impure, immoral, feckless, virile, shameless, disgusting little freak she could find, and my God, she's done a good job, hasn't she?
We all have those regrets, whether it's an awkward faux pas at your girlfriend's work Christmas party, or drunkenly insisting you can do a backflip straight into the chocolate fountain at your girlfriend's work Christmas party.
Chapter 2: How does shame affect our lives and decisions?
But lifestyle gurus are constantly teaching us how to optimize our lives. Influencer Molly May once said, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. I say, not if I lose six of them drunk on sherry in my local Waitrose, waiting for them to put little yellow stickers on the fish cakes. Now, today's theme is the workplace.
Now, the world is full of people trying to teach us life hacks for the workplace. I'm tired of Stephen Bartlett with his diary of a CEO. Sorry, that's the last diary I want to read. My favourite diaries in order are Bridget Jones, Samuel Pepys, everyone else on Earth, and then Stephen Bartlett. OK, workplace, what do we do for a living? What's your name?
Lucy.
Lucy. What do you do for a job?
Design festival.
Design festival. Now, what that is, is two abstract nouns... ..that you've so interestingly sewn together. Design festival. Say more.
You don't have to. Work in partnerships.
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Chapter 3: What confessions does John Tothill invite from the audience?
So, sales.
I blacked out. Don't take this the wrong way. You know when someone starts to say sales, and it's like, you know when someone tries to explain the rules of a board game to you, and you go, I can't, I can't do this. Anyway, what's everyone's favourite style of croissant? Three, two, one, almond.
Okay, let's get on with it.
Let's get on with it.
Let's get going with our first mischievous misdemeanor. Now, my genius producer, Sasha, has gathered up all of your confessions before the show. I promise you, I have never heard any of these before, and I can't wait to get through them. So, our first confession comes from Nadia. There you are. OK, amazing.
Now, I will say, Nadia, in the final broadcast, in the interest of anonymity, we will blur your face, OK?
LAUGHTER
Nadia, what's your confession from the workplace?
I once caused a man to have the wrong body part treated in A&E.
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Chapter 4: What humorous workplace confessions are shared during the episode?
I used to. You used to work in A&E. That story checks out, doesn't it?
Tell us what happened. He was meant to have his lower leg, his shin, examined.
Right, and what actually happened?
Well, I was a student nurse at the time and I wrote down, because I was a bit nervous and a bit dyslexic, and I accidentally wrote down chin. Oh! LAUGHTER
OK, interesting.
And so what happened? Well, we were sort of flitting around as students and I could see the man sat down and the casualty officer was like, open your mouth, can you clench your teeth? Thinking, oh, and he looked a bit eyes up to heaven and he obviously thought he was getting a really good job starting at the headphones. LAUGHTER
And then it didn't, the penny didn't drop with me until I saw him limping out.
OK, I'm very sympathetic to you straight away, and for two reasons. First of all, it's totally on him. Do we agree? To be like, I think that's been everything, thank you. He's got to learn to advocate for himself, you know? For God's sake. Second of all, it's hard, isn't it? Because you're a student nurse, you're doing a real job, aren't you?
When people like with fake jobs, don't take this the wrong way, but, you know, design... You know, if the design festival goes wrong... ..it's not the end of the world, you know? Because before I did this, as you can see, I don't work anymore. I don't consider this work civic duty, perhaps, but not work. But I used to work as a teacher, Nadia.
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Chapter 5: How does John Tothill critique lifestyle gurus and their advice?
But I couldn't. You can't do that. I had to be a teacher. And I had to leave the school, actually, in the end. Lucy, ask me why I had to leave the school.
Because you were badly behaved?
No, Lucy. I said, ask me why I had to leave the school. No, don't help her. Lucy, please could you ask me why I had to leave the school?
Why did you have to leave the school?
Round of applause for Lucy.
LAUGHTER
That's why I push you. So I had to leave the school because this modern agonizing notion of timekeeping and punctuality and contracted hours is entirely at odds with leading what Aristotle would have called the good life. If you ask the school why I left the school, it's because I kept forgetting that the days start in the morning. Absolute nightmare.
And my whole family are teachers, by the way. But I don't know if you come from a dynasty of nurses. I don't know if you come from a dynasty of design festivals. Maybe you do. Maybe it's a sort of family thing. My parents are teachers. My grandparents are teachers. In fact, OK, I'll quickly tell you this. My grandma, as in my mum's mum...
You know how, like, in the English language, it falls to, like, the children of every family to come up with a differentiating system between grandparents? Do you find that? So you get grown men like me being like, yeah, well, when I was younger, I couldn't really pronounce the word grandma, so in my family, we just call my mum's mum gangbang.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of workplace productivity pressures?
And so my gangbang was a cookery teacher, right? And she was a cookery teacher, and her maiden name was Miss Piecraft. Isn't that so nice? Isn't that lovely? That would be like me being called Mr. Has a glass of wine at lunch and in the afternoon wheels out a trolley with a TV on it. Makes the children watch Chicken Run hundreds and hundreds of times. Any teachers in? We will come back to Nadia.
Is there a teacher over here? Thank you for putting your hand up. God bless. What's your name? Samantha, and what, do you teach primary or secondary? Primary. You teach primary, God bless you, quite right. Secondary school teaching, terribly intellectually lightweight. Do you know what I mean? Primary school teaching, Samantha, that's where it's at, isn't it?
Because we are, this is the last haven of the polymaths, do we agree? Primary school teachers, the great generalists. Are we cooking with this? The last living renaissance men and women of Europe. LAUGHTER pontificating as we do on all the great subjects, you know, flitting between French and food tech like a great multi-headed god of wisdom.
Fantastic.
Joining the dots of knowledge. That's what you have to do, Samantha, isn't it? What can the Battle of Hastings teach us about joined-up handwriting?
LAUGHTER
Very interesting.
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Chapter 7: How does John Tothill use humor to address serious topics?
Very interesting. Anyway, so, Nadia, did you get into trouble?
No-one really realised, cos I managed to run after him, cos he was limping, so... Oh, bless you! So you actually rectified this.
I'm sorry, but you're an angel, I think. That's fantastic. I used to get into so much trouble. There was one time, when I was a teacher, I got called in for a meeting with the deputy head, and she said, John, you and I need to have a meeting, because every time you're late for the school, the message that that is sending to the children...
It's that you value your time more than you value their time. And I said, yes.
Go on.
And that's not what that means, by the way. If you're someone like me who's late for stuff all the time, it's not that you value your time, is it? What it means is five minutes before I was supposed to get to work, I treated myself to a sit-down wee, turned out to be a poo.
That's what it means.
Here's an interesting fact for you. The digital alarm clock was invented by the Nazis. Isn't that interesting?
It's not true, but it is.
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Chapter 8: What final thoughts does John Tothill leave with the audience?
So, I was so bored during my receptionist job that I bought a craft project to do at the front desk and I superglued my arm to the desk and the paper. LAUGHTER
So this was a desk job.
It was my first job. I see. And I was a receptionist and I had to work quite late.
Right.
It was just quite long and so I would kind of just want to craft and, like, do some things. What do you mean by craft?
Am I being stupid? What do you mean by craft?
I decided to, like, kind of recover my diary with, like, kind of different bits of paper. So... Oh, I see.
Putting sort of like new wrapping paper around your diary.
Right, exactly, because I didn't like the kind of cover.
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