I was giddy and starstruck to have
of The Flagging Dad as my guest for my latest podcast, episode 4 on my new YouTube channel, Drinkglish. His newsletter is genuinely one of the best and funniest on all of Substack and if you’re not subscribed to it, shame on you – rectify this immediately.He is also the author of two books, the second of which, The Thing Is, I recently finished and can’t recommend highly enough. There were passages that had me in fits of laughter and it’s full of all sorts of hijinks and adventure. Towards the end of our conversation, I completely lost it and almost had a breakdown over one passage from the book (it’s hard to tell whether I was laughing or crying).
Andy is a former English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teacher, and unlike me, he was wise enough to get out after a mere three or so years. I only intended to teach for two years before finding a ‘proper job’ and here I am, two decades later, still sort of figuring things out reflecting on life choices and where it all went wrong.
April 2025 marked 20 years since I qualified to become an English teacher, and, feeling overly nostalgic, I wanted to hear Andy’s story. He reflected on his TEFL course some 15 years or so ago, and his time in China and then Hong Kong. What happened on his first day of teaching in China would be enough to put anyone off teaching forever, but he stuck it out for a few more years.
Apologies for the shaky sound quality, but the good news is, Andy sounds terrific. His soothing dulcet tones are as clear as day, though CapCut, the programme I was using to edit this and add subtitles, struggled to deal with Andy’s Yorkshire accent. I can assure you this is not what he was saying at all (2:04 mark):
CapCut had all sorts of issues with the name of Andy’s wife, Louise. He definitely did NOT say this:
Me, on the other hand, I sound dreadful. I was ill, hence my drink of choice, but I promise you I did not sound this wretched at the time. There was a problem with my audio and I’m pretty proud of myself for managing to salvage it. In the original, it was a completely undecipherable mess. Despite my limited tech know-how (I’m a Luddite), I fiddled around and got it to sound somewhat coherent (don’t even ask me how, it involved things like extracting, merging, syncing and it made editing an extra ‘fun’ challenge). I still sound rough, but thankfully, Andy did most of the talking and he’s 100 times more interesting than me anyway. You can mute it when I’m talking – just use the subtitles!
Here's a rundown of what we discussed:
0:00-6:30 – my rambling introduction; Andy’s love of Leeds United; the joys of Substack; why he decided to teach English in China
6:30-9:45 – the people who become English teachers; our drinks of choice; more of my rambling about my training course in Prague
9:45-14:15 – Andy’s experiences in Beijing during his two-week training course, which involved a lot of late-night booze ups
14:15-15:50 – Andy gets fortunate with his placement in China; he could’ve ended up somewhere much worse, teaching whippersnappers
15:50-19:00 – the hilarious stories from Andy’s book and his epic first day teaching in Chengdu (spoiler alert: it involved all sorts of chaos and shenanigans)
19:00-23:00 – Andy goes to Hong Kong, unexpectedly; I contemplate whether to name and shame my former employers
23:00-27:30 – we wrap up and I almost lose my shit over something Andy wrote in his book that hits way too close to home.
Make sure you check out Andy at The Flagging Dad and you can find his books here: The Thing is and Bright Lights and White Nights
You can also watch (and subscribe!) on my YouTube channel:
Be my guest!
Thank you to those so far who have expressed an interest in appearing as a guest and get in touch if you’d like to have a chat. Find out all the details behind Drinkglish here:
In case you missed it
My new book (my 3rd, or as the Irish might say, my turd) is out now:
Don’t forget to like, comment, share, reshare, and play this out loud on full volume in public transport or in your town squares.
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