Ep 110 - We Will Always Love Dolly

So the biggest news and we can't get past it.

Um, it's only just happened a few days ago, but Dolly Parton died and it has been an incredibly sad time for everybody.

Um, The outpouring of grief has been unprecedented, I think it's fair to say, from the global community.

Everybody on the planet seems to be in mourning, or if not in mourning, at least celebratory about her achievements and her life.

And how have you been feeling? How have you been holding up? Because regular viewers and listeners of the podcast will know that we're both big Dolly fans, and you especially with the trip that you've been planning with our friend Anna this year to Dollywood.

So how have you been holding

up? Not great.

I mean, I've just been doing a lot of crying.

And it's so bizarre because it's the first time really in my life that I've been in mourning over a celebrity like this I don't remember another time when I've been this upset about a celebrity dying or somebody that I've never met dying it's been really really difficult um you know, all the classic sort of stages or symptoms of grief, you know, the sort of the inability to grasp or comprehend that this person is no longer around.

And it's weird because they're no longer, it's weird because they were never in my life on a one-to-one level anyway, but that's, I suppose, the power of Dolly and her ability to connect with people and the sort of radiance that she gave out.

You know,

it's amazing.

I've seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments and posts from people, celebrities and non-celebrities, hundreds, talking about how special Dolly Dolly made them feel whether they'd met her or not, and how inspired they were by her.

What is it that spoke to you about her?

It's really hard to summarize it, but I think I was saying to you on the phone yesterday, wasn't I, that I think for a lot of people, especially those people who have been rejected in some way, shape or form, whether that's rejection from parents or family or from society as a whole, so being an outsider, Dolly just exuded such unconditional love for everything.

I mean, she was so...

And not only was she so loving, but also in a very careful and measured way, she never sort of got into... fights or controversy around things really um she just was she would just she appeared to just accept and love people unconditionally and i think that's maybe what appealed to a lot of people around the world because a lot of us have got rejection issues um and have experienced rejection in many different ways and so i think that was part of her appeal um it's but it's so multifaceted because i mean You could talk ad nauseum about what an incredible singer, songwriter she was, what an incredible musician she was.

And the same, you could talk about her radiance and her love forever.

You can also talk about her philanthropy forever.

I mean, there are just so many different aspects to it that it's really, really hard, I think, to summarize it.

And it's just overwhelming at times.

But how are you holding

up? I've been very upset by it.

I've been very moved.

I would say that I'm as upset as I was when Prince died, but it's different with Dolly because I didn't think of Prince as... thoroughly, thoroughly good person to his core.