Holly And Ben Meet The Real Street Cat Named Bob | This Morning

I think we're all about to fall in love with this you going to give me a high five come on oh my God that's just so amazing of all the many things that cats do I don't think I've ever seen until I saw the film I don't think I'd ever seen a cat give a high five oh yeah well he does he does a few other tricks but uh you know the the fan favorite is always the high five yeah you love your licky stick don't you yeah well he's he's just going to chill out during this interview but James you let's start at the beginning of the story because you moved to Australia when you were three years old and you said that your you you moved as your mother your parents have got divorce and you said that actually that beginning stage you through childless was child childhood was kind of rootless yes um I was moving around often uh never in one primary school for a very long at a time boarding schools things like that my mother was um very much a working person so um I kind of got raised by opz and nannies pretty much for the younger years and then I think because definitely I didn't have a social sort of standard set of friends I didn't know how to properly you know integrate yes and um you know I often ended up uh trying to overcompensate and ended up getting bullied cuz you know kids are yeah he's like he's going it's all right tell his story he's saying where's the licky stick oh absolutely and uh because of that you know when I was 18 uh I thought I'd come back and try and reunite with my uh family over here and um I was I was quite a bit of a tear away sort of goth when I came back you know so Pier Kings and long black hair and I think it was a bit of a shock to my family and um um my my work didn't really go through very well and I ended up sleeping on couches and then when I ran out of couches to sleep on I was sleeping rough sleeping rough and with that hand in hand and you say actually initially it was a coping strategy that you turned to heroin yes it's uh well it's an Escape isn't it you know it's uh when you when you're out on the streets you know you look for any way to try and uh be more comfortable and um it's yeah exactly they did just that watching that watching the film what's extraordinary is that you were you were picked up and helped Joan froger plays the counselor in in the film that you were helped by um and you got the opportunity to move into some accommodation which sort of seemed to be the start of your recovery but then discovering Bob now in the film Bob breaks in and starts eating your cornflakes uh in real life you discovered him and he was injured is that right he was sitting on my doorstep yeah and um he had a big absis on his leg well it wasn't my doorstep it was the same doorstep on the ground floor which I was on the fifth floor and he'd been sitting there for 3 Days on this mat and I knocked on the door and I said your cat's been out here for 3 days and they're like oh it's not my cat so I invited him up and I had some had some cat uh some tuner and stuff which I gave him and while I was feeding him I discovered the absis on his back leg took him to the rspca and spent literally the last money I'd made from basking the day before on his antibiotics which I've had to feed him for two weeks during that time trying to find where he lived um couldn't and then tried to send him on his way thinking he might know where he's going and instead he started following me a little more each day until one day he actually got on the bus with me like in that scene and that's the clip that we just saw and for you I mean it was even bigger than this because this was start of a a a friendship that you two have and and you sort of put it down to him that he's saved you in a way because of the responsibility you had towards him having a child yeah he was he you know he taught me he taught me that um I had to you know buckle up and well cuz he was there he was following me around and stuff like that I had to you know take responsibility for him and I don't I didn't know it then but the love that he was giving me was helping me to change my ways amazing so this is now the movie and Luke you play him in the movie James was there every step of the way so that must be quite a unique acting experience for you well I I could hang around with James all the time anyway so it was lovely and it was really helpful and useful for us to be able to ask him questions about certain scenes and moments in the film that we wanted to just check certain details and stuff and and obviously there' be no one else that could uh could take Bob onto set and and transfer him onto from james' shoulder to my shoulder before I seen CU it's fascinating watching him because cats can be quirky creatures at the best of times but when did he start climbing on your shoulders James and when did he start sitting on your guitar while you're busking um the shoulders pretty much started on the first day that he came into town with me where i' I'd made him a harness out of a shoelace uh the same sort of style goes around the waist and neck Cu uh cat harnesses but I didn't have one and that was kind of an on the spot thing and uh we were walking down the street and he just sort of stopped and looked up at me so I picked him up and he just climbed up and sat on my shoulders and that was it you know he had his perch and he was there youly there more like a parrot than a cat I mean that's the thing is you used to Parrot sitting on shoulders and things and then there you are Luke playing James with the cat on your shoulder but actually busking and also on the guitar the guitar was uh sort of when it was raining he just climbed down onto the guitar cuz the guitar was widen enough for him to sit on and uh he did that when we when it was raining actually when we were outside c garden outside the transport mum yeah yeah it was during a take I think and he just started climbing down onto the guitar and I this is brilliant keep going and I hadn't seen him do it before B's improvising at this stage that's how he's all over it he loves it every single take he' do he' do he'd do the same uh Muse on command every single time high five I just can't and how has this changed your life um well I've now I now do a lot of uh you know uh SP spokesmanship for Charities such as the big isi foundation um we've raised a lot of money for the Blue Cross and cats protection League um Street cat named Bob has sold over a million copies uh in the UK I mean if we combine all the books worldwide it's got to be between five and six million copies um including the children's books that we've done aming and um as of November I believe we're going into pre-production for the Animated Series so but for children also for more of the same just click here and don't forget you can subscribe for even more of these amazing videos exclusive to our Channel you do a lot of manipulation you dress him in all the clothes um that there would be people who say that's a bit cruel yeah see I would never do anything to Doug that he was really uncomfortable with and at the end of the day he's only in costumes for maybe 5 to 10 minutes just to get the or the video or the photo so he lives quite the lavish life he's a very very spoiled pug

Channel: This Morning

Views: 710,332

Keywords: celebrity interviews, celebrity gossip, tv news, soap news, holly willoughby, real stories, phillip schofield, this morning, ruth langsford, eamonn holmes, morning show, breakfast tv, ben shephard, Street Cat Named Bob, James Bowen, film, high-five, Luke Treadway

Id: 9lUKCgRb9yk

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2016