This week we’re joined by Australian kids’ music royalty: Peter Combe.

Yes — that Peter Combe.

The man responsible for Wash Your Face, Juicy Juicy Green Grass, Spaghetti Bolognese… and basically half of our collective childhoods.

What starts as a joyful trip down memory lane quickly turns into something much deeper. We talk silliness, songwriting, keeping childhood alive, grandparent traditions, anti-establishment kids’ music, why Tadpole Blues is not about puberty (sorry Alex), and the unexpected, life-changing power of music.

There’s belly-flopping into pizzas, ruined Spotify algorithms, birthday poems, kids wearing socks in the bath, and a reminder that humour isn’t just funny, it’s essential.

Purchase tickets to Peter Combe's 2026 Adelaide Fringe Show here!

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Alex has two kids. Scott would like some.

Together, they’re figuring out parenting one questionable decision at a time.

My Friend Had a Baby is the podcast where two mates explore what it really takes to make and raise tiny humans, from a dad’s point of view. With a mix of personal stories, real-time learning, and expert guests who actually know what they're talking about, you’ll get honest insights into pregnancy, birth, and parenting… without taking any of it too seriously.

Funny, thoughtful, and surprisingly informative, this show is for dads, mums, parents-to-be, or anyone who’s ever met a baby and wondered, “How do people do this?”

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Nothing in this podcast should be considered personal or professional advice.

In the Stormy Bounders Cry.

In this episode, the boys talk to Peter Coombe.

Wow, that's pretty exciting.

And I've always felt incredibly honoured that I got half an hour with the fifth Beatle.

And I have to thank Kylie Minogue for it.

If she hadn't been there, I probably wouldn't have got that chance.

I think they're still rude words.

My friend had a baby now he don't sleep no more Waves crash in his eyes Eyes on the nursery floor.

Oh, my friend had a baby.

I'm very quickly being known as the source of all panic when it comes to parenting.

You're a warrior.

Typically, I'm not in.

In.

In my professional life and so forth.

I.

Keeping a cool heads, incredibly important, like my day job.

But this whole experience has been pretty wild.

You'll enjoy it, I think, in the end, especially when you look back on it.

Peter, you've got.

You've got four, don't you?

Four children.

Three girls.

Yeah.

Three daughters and a son.

And I've got seven grandchildren.

Five.

Five girls and two boys.

Oh, wow.

Not the album that did last year, which is A Frog and My Chief Sandwich, but the one before, which is called Planet Earth, Third of the Sun.

All seven grandchildren did something on the album.

They either did the front cover artwork or they sang a solo or, or they said something or they sang as part of a group.

But they're all involved in some way or another.

So I was quite proud about that.

I'm just absorbing how beautiful that is, really.

That's such a amazing piece of art to create as a team.

One of my grandsons become quite a superb Drummer.

Just turned 17.

And I mean, all bias aside, he's really already an extremely capable musician and he's just going to be a.

He's already a very good drummer.

He's going to end up being a fantastic drummer.

Is that how you connect with your kids and your grandkids as well?

Is music is just always there or is there.

Are there times when you can not focus on that or is that just an easy way to be involved with them?

It is an easy way also.

I'm very involved as far as humor goes too.

I'm a great, great believer in the power of.

Of comedy.

So.

So, yeah, but to ask your first question, yes, I'm very much involved with him musically.

My grandsons are now in a band called called Blue Power man.

And this band is going to support me at a big gig in Adelaide at the Governor high marsh on April 19th.

They'll be my Support group.

But the.

The other thing, the humor thing is really important.

What I've developed over the years, I sort of thank the routines, but much, much more than a routine.

It's a sort of a tradition of every birthday, I write them a poem.

Each one, I wrote a poem, and I've been doing.

Be doing that for the last.

Well, last sort of 15 or so years.

Yeah, that's become part of the family tradition.

We have a birthday party to reach the grandchildren, and each time I read them, I read them the poem.

It's always kind of quirky and kind of bit silly, but I always try and incorporate what they've been doing in the last 12 months.

So they'll be doing something sporty.

Well, that'll come into the poem.

If they've been somewhere special, that'll come into the poem.

But, yeah, it's quite.

Become quite a lovely family tradition.

That's beautiful.

I think that's the stuff that parenthood, or in your case, grandparenthood, should really be about, is creating those really amazing traditions along the way.

And I'm sure those poems will all end up on the.

On the wall framed at some point down the track.

It's giving me the goosebumps there, Peter.

That's.

That's.

I know they really appreciate it because I. I do spend a lot of time on it too.

You know, I don't just off a poem in 10 minutes.

I usually.

I usually take probably, you know, at least a couple of hours because I.

It's.

It's another way of, I guess, of keeping my creative juices going.

Because you can write a quick poem in 10 minutes, which will be pretty only okay, but you can write a much better one.

It's like writing a song.

The more time you tend to put in, the better the song or the poem will be.

So I can't take it quite seriously.

But it's become a lovely family tradition.

The difference between your kids and the grandkids, I guess, when it comes to age as well, is did it come to a point where your kids are like, oh, come on, dad, we don't need to do that anymore?

And then are the grandkids, you know, holding onto that?

And they look forward to that now.

Have you found that difference?

And it was all sort of come back full circle again.

The palms have come to a bit of a natural kind of end for my children because my children range in age from.

This will make me sound like I'm about 100.

My oldest daughter's 53, and my son is 40.

2.

So I thought there'll be a point where I'll stop doing it for my children.

So that point came about 12 months ago.

But I'll keep on doing for the seven grandchildren for just, I guess, the immediate future, certainly.

And I'm going to play it by ear, but I still enjoy doing it and I think they get a lot of pleasure out of it.

And the other thing is, my wife's done these wonderful books for our seven grandchildren.

She spent hours and hours of collecting pictures and putting it in this gorgeous book.

And that I think will become a special.

And my poem goes in the back of the book.

It's the last page, the poem from PA because I'm called pa.

So that's.

Yeah, all these things you can both look forward to in the future.

That's really, really awesome.

I gotta, I've gotta say, Pete, since you agreed to come on the podcast, I've fallen into a bit of a Peter Coombe wormhole.

Of all the things that you've accomplished throughout the years.

You know, you, multi Aria Award winner, raised a beautiful family, you've impacted the childhood of just about every Australian over the course of half a century.

And there's one question that's just in the front of my mind when I read through this, and that is, are you furious that you have not been knighted yet?

I think you're well overdue to be Sir Combe with everything you've pulled off.

I think I'm quite that egotistical.

I have adversity, which was very nice.

That was just for services to the performing arts and that was lovely.

But now, look, I don't expect that kind of stuff.

I mean, if it happens, it'd be lovely, obviously, but I don't think there'd be any knighthoods in the future.

I'm happy to get behind the petition.

The.

I am.

That was, that was very.

Quite a great pleasure to get that.

Your career's been unbelievable.

You know, you've been one of the most successful Australian recording artists of, of all time.

And it's been really interesting telling people in my life that we were catching up today.

And the look on their face there was.

It was like I told them that I was meeting the King of England.

You know, people, no, Peter, like, no, you, you've got that wrong, you know, And I said, no, just bear with me.

And they, they said, how are you going to hold it together?

And I said, I don't know.

I genuinely don't know.

Like this.

I feel like I'm meeting you know someone who was present throughout my childhood and.

And all of your songs had such a huge impact.

And I remember being in Kindy and, and hearing them and, and learning all the lyrics and all that kind of thing.

It's just an absolutely stellar career so far.

And what I've read about part of your career right now is you're performing this amazing catalog of material for people that are now adults and still completely infatuated with your music.

Was that an interesting part of your career to go?

This stuff's still gold for the people in their 20s, 30s, 40s.

I guess it points to the fact that children music, which is really having any real worthwhile value at all, it tends to be timeless.

It does get passed down to another generation like the Lovely Recipe or something.

And I think that's what's happened with my songs.

And I've always sort of not tried to make them timeless, but I guess that's just the way that just came out.

I guess all the songs that I've loved in my life, children's songs, some of them are very old songs.

I mean something like Puff the Magic Dragon, it's a lovely children's song, but it's got an adult level as well.

But that song's now probably about 65 years old.

But it doesn't matter because it's a timeless song that.

The tale of someone growing up and that will always be the case.

So.

Yeah, but I'm really kind of feel quite honored that the songs are now being taken up by now the third generation.

Because they were, they were taken up really because the song, most of the well known songs came out in the late 80s, early 90s and of course those kids are now, you know, sort of close to 40.

And that's my.

One of my new demographics.

And when I do the Adelaide Fringe, which I do every year, I'm doing cheer coming up, you get all these people coming along, these 35 to 40, 41, 42 year olds with a 6 year old and an 8 year old.

And quite often the parents know the song better than their children do.

So they.

And they sing them like crazy, which is lovely.

So it's been a lovely, lovely journey.

In looking at videos and live shows and stuff like that.

I saw footage with an adult audience of people literally doing a belly flop in a pizza during your live performances.

Well, there's a couple of stories about that I've seen on video.

People sent me videos of actually doing Belly Fabian or Pizza.

But the best, the best one is a dig I did at Melbourne University, I think it was University in Melbourne.

I think it was Melbourne University.

This is going back now at least 15 years ago, where I got to that part of the song.

Wash your face and Argus.

We're barely flopping a pizza.

Belly flopping a pizza.

And at that point of the song, this young guy, probably 19, 20, 21, a uni student, they all gather, gather in this quadrangle to hear my.

Hear the band play, my band play.

At that point of the song, he simply took off his T shirt quite slowly.

He then produced this massive pizza from somewhere and laid it on the ground, opened it up and then simply belly flopped into it.

And it was just the most amazing moment.

The band and I, we're just still there, flabbergasted.

We didn't know what to do.

Eventually carried on with the song.

But it was a wonderful moment and it's just incredible.

So very memorable.

My cousin, who's a little bit older than me, he attended one of your adult shows at Rocket Bar in Adelaide and filmed this.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I think it was just prior to your DVD with live @ Jive.

He has vision.

I think it's during Juicy, juicy greengrass and someone's crowd.

Surfing.

That happened to quite a few concerts.

That particular show I did all over Australia, but I did.

I probably did over 100 of them in, you know, in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Wollongong, Newcastle, all the Ballarat, all the big capital cities, Hobart, Burnie, Launceston.

I did the shows all around Australia and I had a real kind of wonderful vibe to them.

And the vibe was that these young people would come along.

Around about early mid-20s.

They'd grown up on the songs.

And when I would start singing Newspaper Mama or Toffee Appet or Spaghetti Bolognese, there was that feeling of like.

Although I probably haven't played that song on my CD the last 15 years, when I did listen to it as a young child, I heard it probably a hundred times.

So the words and the melodies are imprinted on their brain and you can sort of see them thinking, God, I remember this song.

I actually remember it.

And so they will sing like crazy.

And those songs had almost kind of a strange, almost religious zeal about them.

People just loved, loved going back to their childhood and singing all those songs they grew up on.

So it was a really lovely sort of period in my career where I just did this show all over Australia.

It was just.

Gorgeous.

You can't blame those people, though, for getting so into it, because in my deep dive, in my coomverse that I've been living in for a while now, before you came along, it was all nursery.

Rhymes.

Yeah, that's not yet day to.

Day.

Follow the beat.

This is how it goes.

And then, you know, Miss Muffet fell off her.

Tougher.

Yeah.

And then along comes Peter Coombe and he's talking about all of the wonderful taboo kid things that you're not supposed to do.

Like a real sort of rebel on the scene where all the lyrics said, you know, sort of laugh behind the hands, but that catchiness that.

That real.

So absorbing.

And my.

My Spotify algorithm is just.

It's forever ruined now, as I've driven around Hobart over the last week or so, just.

I'm in pure coom mode.

And I couldn't be happier with that, to be honest, because much the same as those people that were coming to your show, I was.

I was just thinking, this is fucking excellent.

This is good music.

You know, it's really.

Good.

When you write the children, in that sense, it's no different to writing for adults.

The song's gotta be good and there's not.

If it's not good, there's no point in recording it.

And I'm very strict on myself.

If the song doesn't cut it, I simply don't record it.

And most songs I write do end up being good.

Well, I think they're good, but.

But if they were kind of only mediocre, and I wouldn't recall them, because I do tend to pride myself on having very high standards in the studio and as a performer, as a writer, because I think you never want to underestimate children's, both intellectual and musical intelligence.

So always think outwards rather than inwards.

When I write an album, I do tend to go the extra mile.

So, I mean, for example, I was saying to someone even a couple of days ago that on the last album was a song called I Dream I Could Fly.

And I could have just recorded myself with a piano.

It would sound lovely.

But I knew if I could find a gorgeous soprano, I could have him do the solo and then I could add a string quartet to it as well.

Now, that takes a lot of extra time to find.

Find the boy soprano, then find the string quartet, have the string quartet orchestrated, and then kind of produce it in the studio.

But that, to me, is what making children's problem has always been about is going that extra mile to make a song.

Absolutely.

It's absolutely the best it could be because I can't, I, I, I couldn't bear the fact of thinking I finished the album and saying, oh God, I wish I, I wish I'd added that string quartet there.

I wish I'd done that extra guitar riff there.

I wish I added that flute that I always want.

Wanted to have there.

I wish I added that oboe there.

All that kind of stuff that you can do.

And it's, it's hard work.

Recording is, is not easy.

You've got to really push yourself.

But it's always worth it in the end.

When you get that final mixed album and you kind of listen to it and you think, yeah, you're satisfied with it, that's.

That to me has always been really.

Important.

That's a great springboard into a question I've been dying to ask you.

How do you know when you got it?

You know, what is it like?

What are the pieces of the puzzle?

You see them sort of spread out on the table.

What's that moment where you go, wait a minute, this is.

It?

It's a very difficult feeling.

It's a very good question, but it's a very difficult one to answer because there's no definitive answer to it.

What I do know is that when I'm.

The way I work with say writing an album is I start off with.

It's like starting with a blank slate.

You've got nothing basically.

And I've got a few ideas I've written down in a special book I've got.

And I might start by looking at that often the first three or four days, not that much generally happens.

You sort of get a few ideas you play around with.

But the playing around process is very important because eventually something clicks.

You get some nice little germ of an idea.

But your question is, how do I know it's good?

I don't really know the answer to that.

I just know what a good song is.

I guess one of the things about a good song is I really enjoy singing it myself.

And if I don't enjoy singing it, chances are it's not good enough.

I have to want to do it myself.

So that's probably, probably the closest I can get to answering your question.

But it's a really tricky one to really put.

Really got to grapple.

With.

I've got one follow on question to that one there and it's around the benefits of having kids when you are writing these amazing albums.

And so Forth and it's a two parter or part A, is did you have your kids, did you use your kids as a bit of a testing audience when you were writing your audio, writing your writing your albums to say, hey, what, what do you guys think of this?

And the second part of that question is, did you encourage your kids to hurry up and spit out some grandkids so you've got another test.

Audience?

Well, the answer to the second one is no.

The first question, I never really road tested my songs on my own children.

They heard them as I was in the process of writing them.

But the best test with your song is always a group of other children, children you don't know.

So what I used to do, I don't do this anymore.

I don't really, don't really think I need to now.

But I used to go up to my local school and sing three or four of those songs.

Not, not to very young kids, but kind of kids who are more 6, 7, 8 years old.

Because young kids will, in a sense aren't a great, aren't a great barometer because they all tend to look as if they're enjoying it, whatever it is.

They haven't quite got those critical skills.

So.

And that, that was a very useful exercise to do that I suppose, after all, you get to know what's going to work with a children's audience.

That was what I used to do.

But the other thing about your question is I have not used my children, but I've written a song for all my children.

I've written a special song for them and they'll all be written within two years of their birth.

So my first daughter Joanie, I wrote her song probably was only three, four months old.

Alice, probably something maybe slightly later, maybe six months old.

Emily, I wrote her when she was only about three months old.

And my son Tom, I wrote his actually when he was about 2.

So that that fatherly kind of instinct kicks in.

And I think they really value the songs because they're written very much from a fatherly kind of aspect.

And I really enjoy performing all those songs.

They're there because, you know, they're about my four children who I love.

So it'd be very hard not to enjoy a song about about four.

People you love between the poetry and the songs for your kids.

You've really setting the bar high here because I'm using this podcast as almost like a bit of a time capsule for my son to be.

And he's going to listen to this and say, you brought Someone on called Peter who's writing songs and poetry.

And your dedication to me is just you banging on for hours in it.

Because I'm a pretty sentimental guy myself.

You know, I like hand drawn pictures.

I, I love poetry, I love.

Music.

I've.

I've mentioned in previous episodes that music's.

It's a core component of who I am as a person.

And hearing you talk about writing music for your kids, I'd be lying to you if I said I'm.

I'm not a touch envious that you've got that talent and I.

Don'T.

I continue.

And Scott, it's, it's only one of the few talents I've got.

I've got a very long list of things I'm not good at.

I guess we're all the same, aren't we?

We've all got, all got that one, one or two things we like to think we're good at and a whole lot of things we can't do.

And certainly there's lots of things I can't do.

Luckily I'm in music and I can do that.

So I do feel grateful that I've got that ability to do it.

It goes with a lot of hard work too.

It's not just most.

I mean most songs don't just come out of.

Just don't fall out of nowhere.

The occasional song does.

I can say that a song for me probably, probably Newspaper Mammals, a bit like that that just came.

I have no idea how, how or why I wrote it.

It just literally came for Fell out of the sky.

And when that happened, you're kind of grateful because most songs, there's a reason why you've written them like Spaghetti Bolognaise, for example.

Wrote that when I was in my last year of teaching in Adelaide and I saw these couple of boys playing marbles on the lawn.

So that became unlike Yo Yo Craze, unlike A Marble Face.

So that had a very definite reason why I wrote it.

But other songs I did like Mr. Clickety Canes by that.

So I don't know why I wrote it.

I know where I was when I wrote it.

I know I wrote on piano, not guitar.

And I know the room I was in this house where I wrote it, but that's all I can remember.

I sort of feel this is okay because when introduced with people say famous songwriters like say Bob Dylan or Paul Simon, I remember this interview with Bob Dylan where someone said how'd you write Blowing in the Wind?

One of his, you know, ultra famous iconic songs.

And there was a kind of quite a long silence.

And he simply said, I don't know.

And that would be the honest answer.

He really would not know how he wrote that song.

It just somehow came from some mysterious point.

And that's the mysterious thing about songwriting.

Sometimes you just don't know where it's come from.

You're just glad that it has.

You appreciate the fact that it's falling out of the sky and you're kind of glad.

Most songs, you've really got to work away.

I might spend 20 hours on the song perfecting it and getting it.

Right.

I was thinking before, when you were mentioning, like, songs like Puff the Magic Dragon and Growing up, and immediately came to mind was Tadpole Blues.

And that being one of my favorite songs.

A song like Tadpole Blues is that the body is changing immediately comes to mind.

When I think about it now is puberty or something like that.

But in the case of Tadpole Blues, is that just a frog change or a tadpole changing into a.

Frog?

Yeah, it's as simple as that.

And that's the song where I know exactly where I was and what I wrote it.

It's one of the unusual ones.

I wrote that song in Gloucestershire.

I was living in a town called Cheltenham in the Cotswolds in England.

And I was writing this song in a room with a piano, with an aquarium.

And there were simply tadpoles in the aquarium.

And that's where the song came from.

That's actually become almost one of my.

Almost my seventh hit.

I've got.

I've sort of got, you know, L' Eau de Crom or six hits.

I've got Washcher face, nose juice, newspaper mama, toffee apple, spaghetti Bolognese, juicy, juicy greengrass and chopsticks.

And Tadwell Blues has become very well known.

It's almost.

Almost now number seven, because I do it a lot.

It's a very nice song to sing in a concert.

It always works well.

I can just do it just on guitar and nothing else.

And it works really, really, really.

Well.

I can see Alex's world shattering around him because I know deep down he's defined his puberty around that song.

And you've just ripped that rug out from underneath him, Peter.

And no, it's a song about a tadpole and a frog, Alex.

Together.

I'm allowed to take what I want from it.

That it was important to me.

You talk about silliness before, and I'll share something that I do with my kids because I like to do lots of silly things with them and encourage that as well.

One of the things, on their birthday, they're allowed to wear their socks in the bath when they have their bath of the.

Evening.

That's wonderful.

Billy.

They look forward to it.

They know they get to do it and they know when it's not their birthday.

Oh, dad, can I wear my socks in the bath and like.

No, you know the rule.

Oh, okay.

I'll wait for my birthday.

Do you feel like kids are sometimes told to grow up too quickly and they can, and they're forced to lose that, or if they are, how do you hold onto.

That?

Well, I think.

I think partly by silliness, I mean.

I mean, humour with children is a big deal.

And I used to do loads of sort of silly things with my kids.

I mean, I'll give you two quick examples.

I wrote this little game, sort of like a snakes and ladders type game with little prizes.

And one of the prizes was a lock of Dad's hair.

And that's just silly.

The other thing I used to do was we used to have a thing called the Biggest Hug in the World.

And the biggest hug in the world was, if you can imagine my.

One of my kids going to bed and they're in bed and I say, let's say it's my son, Tom.

Good night, Tom.

Night, Tom.

See you in the morning.

And you pick him up, take him out, take him the door.

Good night.

See you in the morning.

Take me to the front door.

Night, Tom.

Sleep well.

See you in the morning.

Out the footbath.

Night, Tom.

See you in the morning.

Night, night.

Down the footbath.

Good night, Thomas.

See you in the morning.

And then you'd hang him on a.

Tree.

He go, dad, dad, dad, dad, get me.

Down.

Keep me down.

Now, my kids all remember that with great affection because it was just stupid.

It was just silly.

And I used to love doing silly things with my kids because I think being serious silliness is really important.

And I think it's actually part of mental health to be silly with your kids.

I mean, I think you should never lose silly as you grow up either.

And I've heard two very famous comedians say this too, that John Cleese and Eric Idle from Monty Python both said that being silly is just like they say, people think it's just entertainment.

But they both said, no, it's much more than that.

It's actually.

It's about mental health because, I mean, if we remove all the humor from the world, be much less civilized So I think it adds to being civilized human.

Beings.

You've obviously created this wonderful upbringing for your kids.

And I'm not asking you to compare your kids to other kids or anything like that.

But what.

I also am asking you to do that.

But did you notice because they were exposed to all this wonderful creativity and fun, and let's just be silly for the sake of being silly, and let's have fun with it.

Did you notice a difference in how they developed versus, you know, maybe their peers?

I know that's a pretty loaded question.

I'm not trying to start a war between your kids and their mates, but no, no, I'm genuinely.

Curious.

It's hard to know, comparing other people.

What I do know, all my four children have a very, very good sense of humor.

They laugh a lot of things.

And that means, I guess, hopefully, the results of some of the stuff maybe I did as a parent.

I mean, I don't want to take too much credit for it because, I mean, that may have happened anyway, but certainly all my kids are fine.

A lot of things in life, funny like I do.

And I should say I brought up all my four children on faulty towers.

They can quote faulty towers back to you because I always thought, for me, it was the greatest comedy series ever made.

It's just so.

It's so brilliantly.

Brilliantly conceived, beautifully written and.

And just flawlessly performed.

And I was incredibly sad about when, a month ago, Prunella Scales died, because I thought.

I thought of if there was a.

If there was a star in Fuby Tower.

So although all brilliant, I would probably nominate her.

The way she played Sybil, Basil's husband, this very small lady, about five foot two, five foot three, with this enormous husband, about six foot five and a half.

And the way she used to terrify him.

He was terrified of her.

And, you know, my kids will know that show.

Well, it's a.

It's famous in our family.

We quote Foley Towers all the.

Time.

If I hadn't done so much research about you and your family, I'd be a little bit worried that you're going to say they rebelled and they all became.

Solicitors.

All right.

No, no, no, no.

My kids are.

All my kids.

My three girls all have a teaching background.

Well, actually, two of them.

Two of them are still teaching.

My son Tom's interesting because he.

He was very musical, became a very nice guitar player, wonderful trumpeter, and he could play drums.

We all could play bass quite well.

He was just really much.

Just very, very musical on the other three.

Are Too.

But Tom's also is very academic as well.

So they came to that point like a.

On the road, do you go down the musical route or go down the academic route?

And he's chosen the academic route and he's very good at it.

But he would have been a very fine musician too.

But, but as everyone knows who's a musician, it's a very hard, hard road to take.

It's a hard to make a good living out of it.

Although all the, all the famous people do make a good living.

There are about a thousand who don't who are trying, but they never got make much of a living out of it.

So I think he chose the route that he thought was the best for him.

But he still plays, he still plays with trumpet and he's just very, very.

Miserable.

What do you.

I know I've touched on the idea of keeping.

Keeping things silly and keeping things fun along the way, but when you think about good parents, knowing that you have.

You've been exposed to probably more parents than any obstetrician on the planet because they've all come in and, and spent time at your shows and probably introduce their kids to you and so forth.

When you think about good fathers that you've interacted with, what.

What kind of attributes spring to.

Mind?

Well, I think it sounds like loving a kid.

Loving a kid usually comes fairly easily.

It's kind of a.

The blood connection is very strong.

I found that when I had grandchildren that you think they're one step removed, but the blood connection just kicks in very powerfully.

So there's that, I guess that the loving of children.

I think doing stuff with them, enjoying their abilities, enjoying their talents and encouraging their talents.

Not pushing them, but encouraging their talents.

I think giving them a sense of caring for the world.

I'm quite a political animal and I have a lot of.

I care about stuff that's going on in the world.

I hope I've actually passed that on to my children as well.

I guess there's a. I encourage any creative parts of their being and always assuming that pick people up are creative.

I think being creative is often a slightly misunderstood thing that people tend to associate being creative just with the arts.

But in actual fact, there were all sorts of people who were creative doctors, creative scientists, creative sportsmen too, who can think laterally.

And that's part of what being creative is.

Yeah.

There are probably lots of other things I could say too.

About what?

About, you know, being a good father or being a.

Being a good parent.

But I think also Enjoying it too.

And of course, the.

The thing we've all discussed about is being.

Is.

Is enjoy.

Is.

Is introducing kids to humor.

To.

To.

Because I think humor is such a.

A powerful thing.

In fact, there's a very fascinating John Clee story about.

There's a guy, he said when.

When.

When he made the film A Fish Called Wa.

And they were doing a showing of it too, to sort of see how the film audiences reacted to the film.

And there was one.

One guy who was laughing so much at the.

At the movie that he actually.

He had a heart attack and died and was saying, you know, on one level, this is obviously incredibly sad, but on the other hand, he said, could you think of a better.

A better way of dying.

Dying from laughing.

Laughing at a film?

So that's one aspect of humor.

The other aspect of humor is that it's part of mental.

Health.

So many valid points in there, you know, and I really appreciate you sharing that, Peter.

That's really, really.

Meaningful.

Music is incredibly powerful.

I can tell you one brief story which I. I'm still amazed at the power of music because I.

Because I've grown up as a musician and I've loved all sorts of music all through my life, and it's meant an enormous amount to me and it's been very much part of my psyche.

There was a lady who came up to me after a concert and she said, oh, your song, Music of the Day, which you may or may not know, it's called Music of the Day, or Sing Sing, one of my oldest songs.

And I recorded.

Anyway, this lady came up after a show I did.

I think it was Melbourne.

She said, oh, look, I wanted to thank you because your song, Music the Day saved my life.

And I thought what she meant was, well, I was going through a bad patch, you know, and this song, I put it on, it would help me a lot, make me feel better.

And she said, no, no, no, no, no, no.

She said, no, no.

I mean, it actually.

It actually saved my life.

What she was trying to say to him was this song stopped her committing.

Suicide.

Wow.

And I thought, that's really kind of heavy stuff.

But all it did was it wasn't like an ego thing for me.

It was just simply saying that music can be that powerful if you love something that much.

It can have that sort of power.

Certain music for me.

I listened to a track only about two days ago, and this track.

Every time I hear it, it makes me cry.

I just sort of.

I can't stop it.

It's so beautiful that.

And in a sense, I suppose that's what this lady was saying, this trap.

She just loved it so much that it actually stopped her, stopped her taking your life.

And I thought that was very hard to take in but incredibly.

Powerful.

That must have sat with you for a while.

Then.

Oh, it did.

Oh yeah.

I went home.

I just couldn't stop thinking about it because when she did.

No, no, I mean actually, actually slack my life, it was quite extraordinary.

So, yeah, it was pretty, yeah, pretty, pretty.

Sort of a heavy moment.

It was, it was uplifting because I'm.

I was pleased that, you know, that, that the song was part of her still, still being.

Alive.

No words for that, Peter.

No words at all.

That's.

No.

It was certainly a fairly fascinating but thought provoking, you know, few minutes just hearing this lad talking to this lady.

So of course I couldn't talk to her too long because she, she'd said that.

And then when I'm doing a meet and greet after a concert, you got all this line of people lined up and you said, but I kind of wanted to talk a bit more.

That's pretty much what she said before she.

Disappeared.

It's a reflection on what you've accomplished as well.

You know, I know I sort of a bit tongue in cheek before talking about, you know, the impact you've had on 50 years of, you know, Australian children and beyond as well, but really is a testament to what music can.

Do.

I think it's probably worth saying too that I think that even though I talk a lot about music, that silly quirky song, I written lots of them.

I've also written many serious songs, or probably less of them on children's albums, but I think they're equally as important because I don't always assume that children like.

I mean they do love Up Timbo Echo songs, Newspaper Mama, Wash your Face knowledge, all that stuff.

They love all that, there's no doubt about that.

But they also do.

You never underestimate children's ability to absorb something more subtle and more serious.

And sometimes someone will write to me and say, oh, my favorite three songs are Wash your Face, Norris Juicer, Juicy, Juicy Greengrass and Lullaby for Tom.

And those Lullaby Tom is totally different to Juicy, Juicy Green Grass or Worship.

It's a serious song.

That's the one I wrote for my son.

And it's very touching when a nine year old child says that that song means as much to them in A quite different way than the more kind of uptempo sort of ones that are well known.

So that's something I. Yeah, I enjoy knowing that that happens with children.

It's a very important.

Thing.

So one segment we have is how to dad.

This is an opportunity to ask a few questions that define moments of being a dad.

And the question that I had for you, because I have a few as well, is of any album or any artist or a selection of albums, what are maybe three albums that you know or you want or you have shared with your.

Kids?

Oh, that's a good question.

Actually, that leads on to a album I share to my kids.

I'd probably say off the top of my head, Paul Simon, Simon de Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, the Beatles, Abbey Road, and probably, yeah, probably Simon de Gafunkel's Bookends album.

Those three.

The ones.

Now, I say those three albums because I did a show at the Fringe, Adelaide Fringe.

We'd done this show three.

Times.

Yeah.

And it's called My dad brainwashed me with 60s music.

And the reason they did this show was there were songs that I loved growing up myself.

I tended to play a lot in our house when my children were growing up.

And those three albums are ones they heard a lot.

So they almost accidentally influenced my children's music.

Tastes.

And did you sit down with them and go, let's listen to this?

Or was it a car trip?

Or is it, hey, guys, I think you should listened to these?

And they discovered them.

Themselves.

Yeah, they pretty much discovered them just by me playing them, hearing me play them.

And then, no doubt, I probably played them in the car when they were young kids as well.

But it was more just them in playing them in the house, on the stereo, in the house where they heard them.

And of course, I'd sing them at the occasional adult concert I do.

And so they'd know that the song meant a lot to me.

And they just.

It was almost by osmosis.

They just picked up these particular albums with certain songs on them.

So when we did this concert, my dad brainwashed me with children with 60s music songs on these three albums were in the concert.

And that's when I knew how much they meant to them.

I mean, I already kind of knew that, but things like Here Comes the Sun from Abbey Road, the Only Living Boy in New York from Boojab or Troubled Water, a song America, which comes from, comes from the Bookends album.

They were all on the concert and they.

And they loved all those Three songs, loved doing them.

So that's when I. I guess it's sort of.

I realized that the song did mean a lot to them and they hurt a lot as a child.

Said I never pushed.

I never pushed them on, but they just simply heard them and they got to love them as well.

Like my daughter often says she wished.

She wished she'd grown up in the 60s because she loves 60s music and she.

She's a real.

A real kind of 60s folky bills, Peter Paul and Mary Simon of Gar Funkle, Jana Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, sort of a convert.

She loves all that stuff like I do.

So.

So, yeah, it's a very long answer to your.

Question.

Alex, you just mentioned a.

An interesting song there.

Here Comes the Sun is a song that has consistently and eerily played throughout our entire pregnancy.

Journey.

Really.

Even when, when we first went in to see the ob, Here Comes the Son and my.

I. I was absolutely convinced that we were going to have a daughter and my wife was saying, no, we're going to have a son.

And.

And this song just popped up everywhere, was playing in the supermarket, it was playing in the ob.

It would just randomly came on, on the radio, on.

On stations that wouldn't typically play the Beatles.

And that song was just there the entire way through.

And my wife was.

She's like, no, we're having a boy.

The song is the.

The.

Clue.

Yeah, wonderful.

I could tell you a bit of a Beatles story when I won.

The album came out when I received the aria in Sydney.

You make a speech and they always have a keynote speaker and the keynote speaker at this particular function was the Beatles producer George Martin was kind of like known as the fifth Beatle because he was involved in every Beatle album ever made, did the orchestration for Yesterday, who produced Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, et cetera, et cetera.

Anyway, when we got winners room after he'd done his speech and Kylie Minogue was in there as well, and all the journalists, all they wanted to do was talk to Kylie.

They were crowding around her and chatting away.

She's a very sweet girl, she's lovely.

But there's George Martin, who produced the album for the most famous rock band ever in the entire world.

And he was ignored.

He was just standing in the middle of the room having a cup of tea.

I don't think he minded really.

He's quite happy, no one to talk to him.

And I thought this is somehow.

It says that Showbiz can be a very shallow business.

This guy is incredibly significant.

Did the orchestration for yesterday, for God's sake.

And he's ignored and no one wants to talk to him.

So I had the chance to go up to him and I thought, no, I don't want to go up and do something silly like asking for his autograph.

That would seem such a sort of a silly thing to do, really.

So we spent quite a long time talking about the orchestration for A Day In Her Life, which is the last track on Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Go Band.

It's a brilliant song with this extraordinary orchestral thing.

Do you know the song at.

All?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, very.

Well.

Yeah.

Okay, well, look at the orchestral thing, how it ascends and ascends and ascends and ascends and ascends.

At the end, there's this extraordinary huge chord.

43, second chord.

Anyway, describe how he actually got the orchestra to play this ascending passage.

Because the trick was that orchestras, they read notes.

They're classical musicians who read notes.

They don't like being left on their own, having to make up stuff themselves.

But the brief was you go from your lowest note to your highest note in a certain amount of time, and you get there however you want to get there.

And that's why that particular sequence in the song you should hear twice sounds kind of.

Almost kind of eerie, a bit scary, because all these classical orchestral players are just finding their way up to their top note.

And it's just.

So we talked about that and that was a really, really interesting discussion.

And I've always felt incredibly honored that I got half an hour with the fifth Beatles.

And I have to thank Kylie Minogue for it.

She hadn't been there, I probably wouldn't have got that chance.

So I'm forever grateful to Kylie, of.

Course.

Oh, my God.

Listening.

Listening to Peter Coombe talk about the Beatles, this is.

This is.

This is it for me.

I think I've.

Peter, I've peaked.

This is.

It.

Yeah.

When you talk about sergeant Peppers, because that was one of my albums, and rather selfishly, which is the story that I will share, is that since having kids on the 1st of December, we put the Christmas tree up and we put Peter Coombes Christmas album on.

Yeah.

Ever since we've had our daughter, that's happened on the 1st of December.

The album plays front to back probably a couple of times, depending on how the Christmas tree decorating is going.

And I just wanted to share with you that that.

Is that your album is very special to us in our.

Family.

Oh, thank you.

That's very kind of you say that.

Well, that's interesting.

Is that particular tradition of playing the Christmas album I called the Green One.

There's a red one as well.

But the rim are much better known.

Is something which a lot of families do all over Australia, because I keep getting emails, people telling me that.

So it's rather touching that people play that album while they're putting up the Christmas tree because that album could have easily not happened.

The ABC weren't that wild about me making an album that had no traditional famous Christmas songs on it.

Didn't have Rudolph, didn't have Silent Night, you know, all the Christmas stuff they hear on Carol's Nights.

And I had absolutely no interest in re recording them because I'd be done so many times I wanted to do an album, original Christmas songs.

So they were skeptical.

So I was quite thrilled when the album went gold in five weeks.

And because people really just.

They seem to love it, it's become a bit of a classic with the Australian family.

So I'm thrilled to hear that story you told about your family and the Christmas tree because it's one I've heard a lot over the past 30 years.

So, yeah, I remain very touched by that.

It's lovely to hear.

That.

I'm going to jackknife quickly, but I've got to ask this question while you're here.

And you can't escape backstage beefs.

So backstage beefs in kids music, have you ever needed to put a wiggle in their place and say, no, I'm king of the kids, I'm top of the hierarchy, you'll follow suit.

Or is everyone very respectful when you're in the.

Room?

Yeah, people are respectful.

I feel about the Wiggles, it's kind of a strange one because I almost feel we're in a slightly different field because the Wiggles are what they are.

They're this juggernaut of children's music and they're called it everywhere.

And they have their names on all sorts of promotional stuff, you know, like toothpaste and toothbrushes and all that kind of stuff.

Nappies, all that kind of thing.

And I have to say I'm not the remotest bit interested in merchandise.

I mean, I'm not anti merchandise, but I'm only interested in any merchandise which may be of some use to people.

And the only merchandise I have at all, and I didn't even create this myself, was two guys who wanted to make some toffee Apple socks.

And I thought that was rather nice because they've used the iconic artwork from the album.

I thought that's okay because socks are really useful.

You know, people, everyone needs socks.

To get back to your question, it's.

I think we're just, I'm just different of the Wiggles.

They, they're, they're a group, of course, who.

And they're constantly changing and I, I, for me, the music is all that counts.

Nothing else really matters about the music.

So I'm not using anything, any extraneous, extra things.

But, you know, they've been incredibly successful and, you know, good, good, good luck to them also.

The other thing is, I think the Wiggles are pretty much a preschool group because when kids go to schools, I know this because I do a lot of school, do a lot of school concerts.

Kids tend to switch off very quickly from the Wiggles.

It's not a criticism of them, it's just say that they've had enough of them by then.

And I've always been really interested in writing music.

Leaving aside things like Clickety Cane or Watch your face nut juice, which is more, I guess, kind of more of a preschool type song.

I've written lots and lots of songs for your middle and upper primary kids.

They're lesser known, but I've always wanted to write because I've always felt those kids have been ignored over the years.

They haven't had much offered to them, which is written sort of for them.

And therefore, of course, they tend to gravitate towards pop music, often a bit too early that plays back into.

I think that there's always a danger of losing a childhood or growing up too.

Soon.

There's something that's so spectacularly anti establishment about Peter Coombe.

No, I don't want your merchandise no, I don't want to know.

I'm not going to follow the nursery rhyme system.

No, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to make the music for the people.

I'm going to put it out there and, and make it for them without all of this background noise.

I feel like I'm talking to a, like a punk rocker from the 70s.

It's just awesome.

The whole mentality around it.

If I wasn't already completely on board before, you know, anti establishment kids music.

I'm for.

It.

I think I am anti establishment in the sense that, I mean, at the moment, I mean, of course, the big, big news debate being very serious now is of course the awful event at Bondi that was absolutely horrible.

Ghastly But I've also over the last two years been very concerned about what's happened in Gaza.

I think what's happened in Gaza just appalling.

And when you find out that over 20,000 children have been killed.

As a person who's is dedicated whole life to children, you can't ignore that kind of stuff.

And I'm quite happy to come out and say that, but because most people tend to be keep their, I mean, call it politics, to me it's just humanity to themselves.

But that's something that I, yeah, I've been, you know, not, I've been outspoken about it because I, I feel extraordinarily sad that these young Palestinian children have been just been blown off the face of the earth and not that much has been said about it.

We all know it's happened, that's on the news.

It's on the news every night, but it's not really talked about.

But yeah, the thing in Bondi is obviously just.

Appalling.

When Gaza broke out and I sat down on my daughter's bed and just wanted to talk to her about how lucky she was she lived where she did.

And I mean she didn't.

She was like, okay, dad, cool.

But like, for me as a dad, that's what I needed.

I needed to give her reassurance that she was safe, which was really important.

What can audiences expect from your.

Show?

Well, I guess in summary, I guess it's a mix of the older songs and the newer songs.

I mean, I don't want people to think at my show that I stopped writing songs after Spaghetti Bolognese or you know, 30 odd years ago.

I've written many, many, many songs since then and I try and make the show a combination of the old stuff, what I call the hits, I suppose, loosely speaking.

So there'll be Mr. Flickety Cane, spaghetti Bolognese, Juicy Green Grass, Toffee Apple, they'll all be in the show.

But there'll be new songs, like a song called 10,000 Stars, which comes from my last album and that the album's called A Frog and my cheer Sammy, that'll be in the show too.

Also in my fringe shows I have a group of about 13 kids who perform on stage with me.

This is a group, a group of kids who come from a performing arts school called Theatrebugs.

And it's a performing arts school that was started by my daughter about 25 years ago, Joanie, she started this school and it was very successful.

And I've been working with kids now.

This is probably, it's probably close to my 20th fringe.

I've worked with them and these are lovely kids who come along, they dance, they sing, they act in the show and they give the show a whole nother dimension.

But it kind of also, it plays into my philosophy of if I'm a children's songwriter, I want children not just to be on my album, I want also to be in my shows.

Seems the most natural thing in the world to have children on stage with me.

It makes these shows much harder to do, more work involved.

I've gone to a number of rehearsals.

I've got to be careful to get the right kids in the shows.

I can't have too many kids who can't sing well.

So I've got to do a little bit of auditioning.

But it just, I guess it's my philosophy of working with children on albums, on shows.

And it's great to them because they get the chance to do a seven season show and every year they kind of start up first show they're a little bit anxious but by the second show they're like seasoned professionals.

And it's wonderful to see this progression in children's faces that they get to love it and they can't wait each time I do the next show.

So that'll be my friend shows next year.

It's called.

The show is called Peter Coombe in brush your hair with a toothbrush.

I've tended to use the lines of Mr. Clickety can because they're kind of well known lines.

It's a different line.

But yeah, it's a mix of music, songs, dance, acting, singing and mix of old songs and new.

And I just choose the new songs are songs.

They've got to be songs that work in a live situation because some songs you record don't necessarily work as well live.

So I choose songs that will work live and if they're softer songs, softer, less, less interactive.

They tend to come at the beginning of the show when children's concentration spans are at their peak.

Like you wouldn't for example, start off with Mr. Clicky Decay.

And that would be ridiculous because you're starting with your number one song at the top of the show and the rest of the way is downwards.

So you always want to work your way up to a kind of a musical climax really.

So that's the way my fringe show will be.

Structured.

A bit like sergeant Pepper's Yeah, I guess.

So.

Yeah, yeah, I was going to.

Say.

Yeah.

There's definitely a comparison.

There.

That's my fringe shows for next.

Year.

Thank you, Peter Combe, for spending your afternoon with us.

It's been truly incredible hearing you talk about being a father and a musician.

And as I sit here seething with envy about your experience with the fifth Beatle, I will bite my tongue and stay polite and try not to live vicariously through you and.

And just say enormous thank you.

On behalf of Alex, I should.

Say briefly, George Martin is a very, very nice human being.

He was a V9.

Of course, he died a delightful.

Man.

Peter, the knife is already in me.

Stop twisting it.

Okay.

Sorry.

I'll stop.

Talking.

Thanks so much for joining us, Peter.

It's been.

Great.

Mike Redfitt, nice to meet you.

Both.

After the break, we'll be back with word of the.

Week.

Oh, my friend had a baby Life live like a coin oh, my friend had a baby Chaos joined the.

Joy.

I hope you are enjoying this post.

Class.

If you like it, give it five stars.

Don't forget to tell your friends and.

Family.

Diapers on the dashboard Mil stain's on the moon he says he's drowning in love but man, it came too soon Baseline pounding heartbeat Wah, wah guitar scream Parenthood's a dust and drop not some easy dream.

Oh, my.

Friend Peter Comb.

Oh, my God.

This.

Is.

That.

That was amazing.

Well, that whole experience, I'm.

I'm just like.

I don't know, I'm a starstruck.

I am inspired.

I feel like that part of my life has, in a bunch of ways, answered so many questions I had, but at the same time has somehow better prepared me to be a dad.

Well, nicely, because I'm going to be stealing all of his traditions.

Like, okay.

Poetry.

Poetry.

Yeah, I could do.

That.

Write some custom music for each child.

Step it up, dads of Australia.

Now, you know what Peter Coombe does.

Mate?

Yeah.

That's the standard.

That is where it's at, right?

Anything below Peter Coombs standard, I don't want to hear about it.

I don't want you near me.

I don't want you near my kids or my kid when they come.

I don't want, you know, this is it, right?

And I don't like.

One of my.

My hugest regrets about that was not asking him at the end, do you want another kid in their 30s?

Because I know a guy.

I know a guy who wants.

In.

Oh, that was so very sweet.

And we are so unbelievably appreciative of the time that he gave us.

It made me reflect on so many things that I do with my kids.

And I think to myself, am I a piece of shit?

Like, am I.

Am I doing.

This?

You are.

Everyone, everyone is compared to Peter Coom.

I'm sorry to be the guy to tell you this and answer that question, but the answer is yes.

If you're not Peter Coombe, you're a piece of.

Shit.

I don't think he would agree with.

That.

He's too nice.

And that's.

That makes it even worse.

He'd encourage you.

He'd say, no, you're a great guy.

You're going to be a great.

Good luck, you know, you're going to be a great dad.

And then I'd be going, if I'm.

If I was Peter Combe, I'd be like, yeah, I'm the fucking.

Business.

Well, one thing, actually, when he talked about writing songs for his kids, oh, my God, why, that is just amazing.

But it did remind me of some of the little things that I do.

And I'm sure you'll give me grief about wearing socks in the bath on your birthday or whatever, but.

But I got opinions.

I got opinions.

That's all.

Right.

We'll come back to.

That.

Is that the one thing that we do do on their birthdays is I sit them down and I put the camera in front of them and I interview them on their birthday.

So I get them.

Yeah.

So we get a yearly snapshot of where they're at.

And I think, you know, with my background, that is.

That is something that I can do with my kids and feel good about that.

So, Scott, I don't know what you're gonna do.

Show them Goon of Fortune, probably.

The list of all the ways they've wronged me throughout the last 12 years.

And read that out loud to them and.

And just sort of say, look, look, I got things you gotta hear about the last 12.

Months.

But it also, I guess that is the byproduct of this podcast.

It is a little time capsule of dads.

And they'll forever be able to hear our voices until the end of the universe.

Which I think is really sweet.

But another thing that will always be there until the end of the universe is Word of the week, Scott, if you'd like to intro us into the.

Music.

Cue that.

Music.

It's time for ride of the week.

It's time for ride of the wave.

It's time.

Oh, yeah.

Far out of the.

Way.

Posterior fornics.

Posterior.

Fornix.

Oh, that's probably the most complicated one we've had.

Yet.

Well, I thought let's, let's just kick it up a notch.

Just go full clinical.

Let's, you know, bust out the classic sort of old school medical textbooks and find a word of the week.

The word of the week was actually donated this week by a good friend, Liz, who has listened to the.

Podcast.

Okay.

And she was very, very keen for us to talk about this.

So posterior fornix is the deepest recess at the top of the vagina located behind the cervix.

It forms a crucial part of the vaginal vault that wraps around the cervix and it leads to the rectorine pouch, and it's also known as the pouch of Douglas.

Now, the reason the word is so great, it's so exciting and she was so excited when she was telling me this because it's essentially like a little motel for snow.

So, so the man ejaculates, or in the clinical term, jizzes.

And, and like all the strong ones, they, they go like.

They're just like.

Yeah, the Spartans, they.

Blast.

They're not hanging around.

They're not stopping in the hotel.

Just like, fucking catch you.

Well, I'm out here, I'm out here for egg.

I came here to swim and bust egg.

Right, that's, that's your Spartans.

They're out on the move.

Then you got your lazy.

Boys.

Yeah.

And they're hanging out.

They, they sort of pop into that little area there.

So it's right at the top of the vaginal canal.

And the, the, the little spermies that live in that environment that, that hang out up there, they, they can hang out there for but multiple days.

Oh, by the way, like these just slacker, you know, so they've got.

They'Ve got a, they've got a car, they've got a reservation for a couple of.

Days.

Oh, yeah, they've got valet.

Parking.

Right.

And they've come there, they drop their bags at the door, fully arrogant sperm, and then they go and just hang out up there.

But the thing is, the sperm that hang out there, when the woman moves around, it can kind of shake out a kind of jiggle out the loose, loose little spermies.

Right.

So, yeah, those slackers, while it's unlikely because your Spartans are going to just sort of charge the gate and get to the egg first, those little slackers, they can, they can come racing.

Up.

Yeah, so, so they can, they can pull a Bradbury and, oh, they can.

Absolutely.

Pull a Bradbury.

Yeah, 100%.

So it's also where menstrual cups.

Fit.

Oh.

Okay.

As well.

So, you know, and it's, it's very.

Look, it's a very important part of the vagina as well.

It's the pathway for gynecological surgeries and it allows access into the pelvic cavity.

Also helps with intercourse.

Full stop.

Yeah, it's.

It's a really important part, the posterior.

Fornix.

Because I, I would have thought they're pre old spermies, they're pre programmed for just like we're going straight for the egg.

But some of them just don't have the strength and they get stuck there or they go, no, I'm happy here for the.

Moment.

My understanding, my loose understanding of how sperm work is you've got your winners and you got, you know, the ones that are a little bit lazy.

So the winners are more likely just to, just to go for it, as you said.

But then it's also just a, like a point of convenience as well.

You know, you can get some of the Spartans that get caught up in there as well.

Yeah, it's a really critical part.

It's.

It's a temporary.

Reservoir.

Yeah, that's.

Who.

Who knew that you.

That the body functioned that way.

That there is a backup plan in case the, the initial brigade, they go on their attack.

They get slaughtered at the line.

Who knows, they might have issues.

They might go the wrong way.

I don't know if they can go the wrong way.

Someone can correct me on that.

So they got the boys in the backup, the backup dancers, if you will.

The front man falls down and so they have to sort of do their little jiggle dance and get out there and do their bit.

Well, isn't that nice?

I wonder how many of us were a reservoir.

Baby.

A swamp.

Sperm.

Sperm.

Aw, that's so.

I guess that's, that's, that's.

Sweet.

Is it.

Sweet?

I don't know.

I don't know.

How long can they last in the old.

In that.

Sack?

So they hang around there in the, in the, the posterior fornix region.

It's usually 20 to 30 minutes.

Right.

So that's not, not super.

Exciting.

Okay.

However, I was going to backtrack on something I said before because there's another part of the exceedingly complex female anatomy that is, is involved and I may have blended some parts of this together.

They're called the cervical.

Crypts.

They've got their own.

Crypts.

They've got their own crypts so they're, they're small pockets in the cervix that hold the sperm and they will release them gradually over time.

Right?

So the cervical crypts, they're these folds inside of, inside the vagina and, and they also act as barriers, so shields from the vagina's acidity and, and all those different things that are fighting the sperm.

Because the vagina is actually incredibly hostile.

It's a hostile environment.

Environment for the.

Sperm.

Don't have to tell.

Me.

That's it just again, goes to show that the fact that this species has survived as long as it has is absolutely insane.

But it's an incredibly acidic environment.

So spammies go in there, they, they go into the crypts and they go into the posterior fornix.

And so it's like this, I don't know what you call it, like an obstacle course of, of different folds and cups and nooks and crannies for these, these poor little spammies to be able to just blast up and create the loves of our lives and our.

Children.

So you know that if the ones that do make it have really earned it, they've done their obstacle course of getting through the old canal and making its way up the tubies and ending at the.

Egg.

They've battled their 200 million competitors.

They've run through or swum through the war zone that is the vagina that's just spitting acid and it's just, it's creating every kind of hostility it possibly can.

And then in the end, the eggs there like, what fucking took you so long?

You're fucking doing.

Well.

Then the egg has to make that journey as well.

The back, the other way.

It's like, all right, now that I've got one of you in me, I'm going to make my way back down the fallopian.

I'm probably stuffing this up like, intensely.

Gonna have like a doctor on at some point goes, we just need to clarify a couple of things.

And just a reminder that none of this is personal or professional advice.

And if you have any problems, questions, ask your doctor.

Not, not this.

Podcast.

But that would, if, if that were the reaction the egg had to that one sperm that all that got away there, like, where, where the, have you been?

And the sperm being able to, to turn around to said egg and say, right, let me show you where I've.

Been.

Come with me, come with.

Me.

Like, I, I, I, my, my sperm in this, you know, in this scenario is Dante going through the multiple layers of hell to get there and Find, you know, the.

The trapped love of his life, and for her, in the ninth layer of hell, or however many layers there are to be, like, what's your problem?

Why do you.

Why do you look so tired?

Say, come with me, I'll show you.

So, yes, there is a bunch of different temporary reservoirs throughout the vagina.

It's not.

It's not just a simple, you know, fleshy tube in which.

In which the sperm sort of go on a glorious biological slip and slide to its finish point.

It's a, you know, Hellscape.

It's a hellscape.

It's an absolute hellscape in there.

Speaking of hellscapes, what I'm going to encourage you to do right now, Alex and listeners, if you're that way inclined to just Google recent images of human.

Egg.

Yes.

Okay, I'm looking that up and if I go to images.

Okay, which one, what am I looking at?

Which one am I looking at.

Here?

I'd like you to pay attention specifically to the one that looks like a boob with an infected nipple that is leaking a tear of pus.

Yeah, that's the prize for.

For that sperm that gets all the way through that.

That sperm that's just been, you know, marinating away, jiggling around in your testicles for all this time and battles its way through an acidic hellscape, goes through various folds and is, you know, the vagina releases at certain points and, you know, bombs are dropping and machine gun fire can be heard and it finally gets to the end and that's.

That's the finish point.

Like, you couldn't blame the sperm for saying, getting there and going, fuck am I doing with my life?

Like, what have I.

Done?

I've existed for 30 seconds and this is what I.

Get.

So all spammy cripness aside, this episode has definitely run much longer than any of our previous ones.

So if you've actually gotten to.

This point post coom, you've got that post coom clarity.

And you've got to this point.

There'S, like, there's a new definition of bc, and it's not ad, it's ac.

So it's before Coom and after.

Coom.

Right.

So you've survived.

You've survived the after Coom section, the previous moment in time where Coom was present.

And somehow you've managed to write out the rest of the podcast.

And we thank you so much.

We know it's been a huge disappointment just having the two of us here, but while you see, as we sort of fade out and sort of gush about what has just transpired.

Just a huge thank you to Peter for.

But spending the time he did and sharing everything he did.

It was absolutely fantastic.

Get your tickets, get to the Fringe.

I know it's going to be a very, very solid reason for me to get on a plane and get back over to Adelaide for Mad March so I can go up to Peter Coom in person and be like, hey, man, you remember me?

I was the guy that asked if you ever threw down with a.

Wiggle.

And after all that, we forgot to ask him for free.

Tickets.

Ah.

Man.

What's it all been for?

Like, what are we.

Doing?

Well, I think, you know, a lot of people wonder about their place in this world, and some people lament about the age that we're in right now.

And, you know, we weren't around to discover the new world.

We're not going to be around to discover space.

But we were here in this moment to share the planet with Peter Coombe, and I think that's a good.

Thing.

The DC moment.

We had the.

We had the.

The bc.

We got the before comb.

We're in the during comb section.

Like, we're.

We're in the midst of it, and we're hoping with four sets of cross fingers, that there's another 25 albums to come and that Peter Coom will adopt me and write a song for me.

Peter Koom, if you listen to this podcast, remember y' all pals, Connie.

And I mean, you're halfway there with your middle.

Name.

Oh, you didn't.

Even.

We didn't even get to tell him that my middle name is hashtag Peter.

Coombe.

Maybe next time.

We're almost outliving the cold death of the universe here with how long this episode has gone and time to pull the rip.

Cord.

We got to get out of.

Here.

We'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

And for all you tired parents out there, remember, toffee on the apple, jumpsuit on the.

Baby.

Topical.

It's a Peter Coombs.

Comment.

I.

Get.

I get.

It.

I get.

It.

I get it.

People are going to have to.

Arrive.

Give me that.

Look.

No, no, no.

No.

It's fine.

People are going to have to arrive to that.

To that conclusion themselves, and I wish them all the best.

Sorry.

I'm okay.

I'm all came.

Down.

All.

Right.

I'm came.

Down.