Quote · Parenting Hell with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe
S12 EP48: Stop me if you've heard this one before
Where this was said
The School WhatsApp Dungarees Incident
At 12:42 · chapter starts 9:48
Rob explains that his daughter's school is running personal survival lifesaving swimming lessons, asking pupils to bring ordinary clothes to practise swimming in — simulating the experience of falling in fully dressed. A parent's confused query on the group chat sparks a thread Rob can't resist joining, suggesting his daughter will be attending in dungarees and a turtleneck. One brave soul replies 'exceptional buoyancy' and then nothing. Josh suggests replying 'boys will be buoyancy' — Rob refuses. The exchange spirals into a broader observation about the inherent awkwardness of a professional comedian trying to be funny in a civilian parent group chat, which Rob compares to a trained singer at karaoke: technically competent, tonally wrong, and slightly tragic. He admits he only really uses the group when he desperately needs information, at which point he becomes a 'thirsty, dehydrated man in a desert'.
Rob Beckett's school WhatsApp group has 67 members, with roughly 70% women and the remaining 30% men who never write anything.
Rob Beckett estimated that around 70% of the 67 members on his school WhatsApp group are women, with the male minority staying entirely silent.
Stuart Goldsmith quoted Josh Widdicombe on his Comedians' Comedian podcast as saying 'if a joke reveals a wider truth then it is true.' Josh's reaction: he doesn't think he said it, and more importantly, he doesn't know what it means. Rob's advice: cling to it regardless.
