Clint Roberts and Jordan Watson chat away like mates standing around a barbecue. Both are laugh-out-loud funny, know how to tell a good yarn and are the sort of guys everyone wants to be friends with. ZM radio star Clint met Jordan, best- known for his hilarious How To Dad YouTube videos, a decade ago.
“We’ve crossed paths a lot,” shares Clint, 36, who co-hosts the Bree & Clint drive show with Bree Tomasel. “In a former life, Jordan was a television cameraman on Jono And Ben, and I did a radio show with Guy Williams, who was a big part of Jono And Ben.”
“We pranked you,” says Jordan.
“Yes,” laughs Clint. “We got trapped in the studio and they filled it with dozens of farm animals. There were goats in the studio!”
Now with five daughters between them, Clint and Jordan have teamed up to talk about fatherhood, as well as other mid-thirties male stuff in their new podcast The Parenting Hangover.
Not so sure about the dad moves, Jordan!
“It came from wanting to have a space where dads could talk about being parents and celebrate being a dad,” tells Clint. “There’s so much that doesn’t get said. I remember when my wife Lucy was pregnant for the first time, I was like, ‘OK, I need to school myself up on what I’ve got to do’. There was nothing really out there for dads like us, so I thought, ‘Why don’t we do a podcast?'”
Clint’s girls Tui and Maggie are three and two, while Tauranga-based Jordan and wife Jody are parents to Mila, 10, Alba, eight, and Nala, five.
Jordan and Nala happen to share a birthday, 2 January, but they also have a rare type of birth in common. Jordan, 35, was born in the passenger footwell of his grandmother’s car. He came out of the birth canal inside the liquid-filled amniotic sac that surrounds a baby during pregnancy. Also known as an en caul birth, it’s a rare occurrence that affects only one in 80,000 live deliveries.
“The midwife knew about that!” laughs Jordan. “When Nala popped out, she was in the bag, just like I was. The midwife turned to me and just broke down, saying, ‘This is so beautiful!’ But my five-year-old did steal my 30th birthday.”
Jordan with Mila, Alba and Nala (front).
Teaching children where babies come from is the first topic in The Parenting Hangover. Jordan shares how he and Jody, 35, had to decide what to do when their children showed the neighbours’ five-year-old a sex-education book they’d bought for Mila.
“Yep, we were those parents, where people might not want to send their kids over to play,” jokes Jordan. “But the neighbours were cool about it.
“It’s definitely not a podcast that gives you all the tips and great advice. We’re the one saying, ‘Hey, we’re going through the same struggles.'”
Clint adds, “We just talk about life through the lens of parenting. There are layers of complexity, joy and difficulty put over everything because you’ve got kids. You’ve got responsibilities and a family to think of. So everything that happens has a parenting angle to it.”
Clint says he and Lucy, 37, are still trying to get back on their feet after the baby days. “I’ve always described us as not being a mobile family because it’s just easier to stay at home, but we have started going places again, like to see Lucy’s family in Whangamatā.”
The radio star says he doesn’t get car sick, but unfortunately, his children do. “We’ve just accepted that it’s par for the course when we go anywhere now. We just have to be prepared for spew everywhere!”
Jordan laughs and says to Clint, “I love the fact this is all new for you. I sit in the back and my wife drives because she gets car sick. My daughter who gets really sick sits on a booster in the front. I’m six foot one [1.85m]and 105 kilograms, squeezed into the back with the other two, and it’s just like that because I don’t get sick!”
Jordan says whether he and Jody will have a fourth child will be a podcast topic. “I’m not snipped, so we’re 50:50. We’d need a whole new car!”
Clint reveals he’s had a vasectomy, so the Roberts family will stop at two children. When his girls were babies, he loved taking them for walks every day.
“I had Tui in the front pack for the first two years of her life. I worked out I lost 10 kilos just from the amount of walking I did with Tui on my chest. For every kilo she gained, I lost. When Maggie came along, I had her in the front pack and then both of them in the push chair. But we’ve moved house and where we live now is really hilly and there’s no flat area to push a pram around.”
Clint with Tui (left) and Maggie.
Both men love being dads and spending time with their broods. “Kids give you a great excuse to be silly because it’s fun,” Clint says.
Adds Jordan, “I’m hands-on and goof around, but they hate it when I sing and dance in public.”
New episodes of The Parenting Hangover drop Thursdays on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
