Tuesday, 6 October 2026 - 17 minutes
There comes a moment in life when you realise you might not be cool anymore.
For comedian Laura Lexx and me, it appears that moment involves standing in a playground collecting conkers for your children.
How did this happen?
Laura joined me on The MarshyCast to talk about her show Yo-Yo, which looks at life, love and what happens when a marriage reaches the point where your partner has pretty much seen everything you've got.
As Laura and I have both been married for 11 years, our conversation inevitably became a minor investigation into one of life's great mysteries:
How do men and women actually manage to live together?
Because there's something peculiar about a long-term relationship.
You spend years fighting against whatever life throws at you. You're building careers, sorting out homes, raising families and generally trying to get yourselves to a place where everything feels reasonably settled.
Then one day you realise things are actually... good.
Excellent.
Now you can start arguing with each other about something completely ridiculous.
It's that up-and-down nature of relationships that helps explain the title Yo-Yo. Laura describes it as a metaphor not just for marriage, but for life itself. Things go up, things go down and just when you think you've got everything under control, off it goes again.
Of course, turning your marriage and family into comedy raises another question.
Does Laura's husband get veto power?
I asked whether she needs permission before putting jokes about him into a show. It turns out she does run material past him, and he's not the only member of the family with potential editorial influence.
Dad gets consulted too.
There must be something slightly terrifying about discovering that an embarrassing family moment hasn't just been remembered, it's now got a lighting cue.
We also talked about getting older and that strange moment when you look at your life and wonder when exactly the transition happened.
Once you were cool.
Now you're collecting conkers.
And because discussing 11 years of marriage wasn't risky enough, we finished with a game that could cause considerably more trouble:
Marriage: Keep It or Bin It?
A selection of the little things that come with married life, with Laura deciding whether they're worth keeping or need to go straight in the marital skip.
No relationships were harmed in the making of the podcast.
Probably.
🎧 Hear my full conversation with Laura Lexx now on The MarshyCast, available on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.
Find me on all social media @paulswampymarsh
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