Dentology Podcast with Cat Edney

Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Cat Edney

Episode Release Date – Monday 10th February 2025

Chris (00:01.395)
And yet again, we have a guest who is somebody who has such varied experience and valuable knowledge to share with our listeners. Monday morning, seven o’clock, seven o’clock. can only mean one thing. That’s very good. It can only mean one thing. It’s a new, new episode. lovely podcast. It is. So here we are today. We’re so fortunate and we have a delightful guest. Somebody we know really well. It’s Kat Edney. Welcome Kat. How are you?

Cat Edney (00:27.47)
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited.

Chris (00:29.327)
Not at all, not at all. Pleasure. You are the dental therapist extraordinaire and we’re going to talk all about you, your work, dig into what a dental therapist is, find out how we compare to other parts in the world. And I’m looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. So before we start, we would like to kind of get a sense of the person we’re talking to and kind of get back to the beginning. So just give us a sense of who you are. Where did you get brought up? Mom, dad, sibling? when you were small cat. Go for it.

Cat Edney (00:58.858)
my goodness. Whenever someone asks me this question, I always feel a bit awkward because I don’t think I had a very normal, I had a really normal upbringing, but really not normal in the same way that we were extremely traditional British family, very old fashioned sort of values. so, you know, I was a…

bit different at school in that we didn’t really watch TV and we didn’t really have popular culture as a thing in our household. So I feel a bit awkward about talking about that because growing up we lived in like a really lovely Victorian house, like a Victorian villa basically, traditional, in Bromley in South London.

Chris (01:36.079)
Right, okay.

Chris (01:45.839)
you

Chris (01:52.057)
Where did you grow up okay right yeah.

Cat Edney (01:55.914)
I haven’t moved very far, I’m still really close, I’m about 10 minutes drive away. But also the family that I grew up in was really traditional as well, so you know, when I went to school and everyone was talking about what was going on on EastEnders that night, I hadn’t a clue what anyone was talking about and I didn’t…

Chris (01:59.567)
Ha

Chris (02:13.679)
Was this a conscious decision on your parents part just to limit exposure to that sort of culture or was it just you were just doing other things?

Cat Edney (02:21.45)
I don’t think so. think that they just had different interests. Classical music, I did a lot of training. I’ve done my grade eight piano. used to be a singing teacher and I went to music school for the weekends. But there wasn’t really any, like I say, popular culture and I was a bit of an outcast because of that. So I didn’t have that ability to sort of have conversations with people in my peer groups because they were

Chris (02:48.943)
Mmm.

Cat Edney (02:51.344)
were all listening to Spice Girls and I was listening to Bach.

Chris (02:53.251)
Yeah.

I say you do and that thing when you were a kid being in a tribe is quite important isn’t it that having that that group and even in the workplace now yeah I was talking to somebody recently and they provide outsourced services and most of their workers are in the Philippines in the Far East but they get the people who live in the Philippines to watch trending television programs so traitors is a big thing at the moment lots of people watching it so the people in the Philippines would have an understanding of the concept and

even know what’s going on in traitors so when they can talk to people they feel part of the tribe in terms of understanding so I can understand for you being at school how it could be a bit isolated. you feel isolated?

Cat Edney (03:38.286)
I was hugely isolated, hugely. I made friends, but never like really close relationships, really close friendships. And I felt awkward bringing people home, you know? And so because of that, and also because I am the youngest of four, my three siblings are all, they’re all close in age, and then there’s a five year gap, and then there’s me. So I sort of rebelled quite a lot.

Chris (03:45.871)
Mmm.

Chris (03:51.927)
I will.

Chris (04:01.636)
Bye.

Chris (04:06.583)
I was going to say, I wondered what you’re going to be like in a teenager.

Cat Edney (04:09.826)
Yeah, I was extremely rebellious. mean, I was an awful child. And I’ve got, I still have it in me now, this sort of really…

Chris (04:13.401)
Ha ha.

Cat Edney (04:23.214)
intense sense of justice and rebellious sort of like spirit because I wanted to really, you know, say this isn’t right. I don’t want to be like this. I want to be different. And I don’t want to hold the same views as maybe, you know, my parents or my parents held. And I don’t want to do the same things that everyone else does. I don’t want to conform to tradition. And yes, I was extremely rebellious.

Chris (04:25.848)
Mm.

Chris (04:46.784)
wow. So what colour was your hair? Did you dye your hair some bonkers colour or something?

Cat Edney (04:51.502)
No, do you know what? mean, the worst I went was platinum blonde. Which wasn’t terrible. I didn’t have loads of piercings, although I get a tattoo at 14, which is dreadful, isn’t it?

Chris (04:55.055)
All right, you can go like pink and spiky or something.

Chris (05:04.111)
Ha ha ha ha!

Cat Edney (05:05.07)
But no, my rebellious nature was more around rebelling against the system at school, rebelling against not being allowed to play with certain children who were from certain backgrounds, those sort of things. Well, actually, it was more exclusion. So I ended up, my mum,

Chris (05:20.943)
Wow. I’m hearing the word detention in here. okay, excellent.

Cat Edney (05:34.434)
bless her, she’s just the loveliest person, she’s so sweet and kind, she’s a GP, she was a GP’s nurse and she scrimped and saved and funded me for the last three years of my education to go to a very small, failing, closing down Catholic convent.

Chris (05:53.753)
Well…

Cat Edney (05:54.802)
So I went from a huge state school where I was not doing well at all and you know was predicted to not get really very many GCSEs at all to this Catholic convent we were taught by nuns who were in their 90s. There were 16 of us in the year and I you know I loved it. I had the most amazing last three years.

Chris (06:18.391)
Is it funny how putting somebody into the right environment, not an obvious one, but the right environment, works? about resisting the rebellion against tradition and then being taught by a bunch of old nuns. Hang on a minute.

Cat Edney (06:28.014)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (06:35.864)
think what the difference was, was that they were so accepting of every personality, every type, and also encouraging of me being different or having different views. Whereas in my previous state school, I went to a girls school and the girls were genuinely, I’m not that old, but genuinely there was a lesson where we were taught how to iron. And yeah, in home economics.

Chris (06:40.175)
Alright.

Chris (07:00.419)
What? Really? How to iron? Excellent. Wow. That’s not that long ago. mean, because you’re not old, are you? No.

Cat Edney (07:04.782)
how to iron. And I just, I’m not, I’m almost 40, but I’m not 40 yet.

Chris (07:13.377)
I flip. That’s mad isn’t I mean it is but when you listen now you think really it’s very like how to make your man a nice cup of tea or something. So did you decide quite early on that dentistry was going to be a profession you were going to pursue? So when you went to the Catholic school was that already something you were thinking about or was that still way off the radar?

Cat Edney (07:19.872)
it’s that.

Cat Edney (07:31.789)
Mm-hmm.

So what happened was I went from not being allowed to take GCSEs that would get me more than a C.

to being offered the opportunity to do triple science and extra maths, pure maths and being supported and actually all the girls I liked were in those classes so they were in chemistry, biology, maths and so although dentistry wasn’t really on my radar I just chose the subjects that I really enjoyed and then all the girls that were in those classes were going off to do medicine.

Chris (08:07.694)
Right.

Chris (08:12.483)
Right.

Cat Edney (08:13.58)
So rebelled and said, I’m not going to do medicine. And there was one girl in my class who I sat next to, Casey. She was just brilliant, beautiful. And she had an Irish father who was a dentist. And Maria and I weren’t going to achieve the right grades to go and do medicine or actual dentistry. But we…

Chris (08:18.383)
There’s a thing here already.

Chris (08:38.319)
Mm.

Cat Edney (08:42.37)
we were looking at maybe trying to do something within the field, so biomechanics or something like that. And Maria said, or my dad said, look at dental hygiene. So because she did, I did as well. I didn’t really look into it much. In fact, I hadn’t really been to the dentist much.

Chris (08:59.843)
Wow.

Cat Edney (09:00.878)
as a child. So I didn’t really know much about it, but I just thought, well, at the time with UCAS applications, you were allowed to apply to six universities, but only four could be medicine or dentistry. So I tried my luck and applied to four dental schools. And then for the last two places that I had left over, I applied to King’s in Manchester for hygiene. And when I got my terrible A-level results, they were dreadful because the school had actually shut down by then.

I was called by Kings and they said, you know what, we’ll still have you if you’d like. So I went.

Chris (09:35.064)
well.

Wow. Fabulous. I love the fact of it. If you really want to come, it’s still alright. Yeah. You know, if you like. Alright.

Cat Edney (09:42.358)
It’s still there if you want it.

It wasn’t quite that simple actually because I took a gap year thinking maybe I’ll do better if I take gap year and try again because I think I can’t even remember my ALE results I think it was because I’ve blocked it out, but I think it was a C and two D’s But I took a gap year and during that gap year Kings changed their course So it was hygiene only and then they changed it to hygiene and therapy course So when I called up to say I’m you know, haven’t had my enrollment, but I took a gap year from last

Chris (09:55.906)
Mm.

Cat Edney (10:14.722)
year they hadn’t actually included me on the the register because it actually changed the course so it was a bit of a struggle because I had to beg them and persuade to get them to let me back on because they had promised it to me the year before.

Chris (10:26.159)
Hmm. Yeah, flip. So interestingly, if you hadn’t taken a gap year and you’d just done what would have been the hygienist course then, it…

Cat Edney (10:36.45)
I wouldn’t be here.

Chris (10:37.295)
It may well be that you wouldn’t have bridged the gap from hygienist to therapist and your career wouldn’t be on the trajectory it is. It’s funny how that kind of decision to take a gap year has had a fundamental impact on your career and what you’re doing now. Because in the introduction I said you’re dental therapist. I think that probably didn’t tell the whole story in terms of, yes, you are a dental therapist, but you’re a beacon of light to shine on what dental therapy is about. You can lecture internationally.

Cat Edney (10:53.408)
Mess it.

Chris (11:07.279)
you coach people, you train people, you’ve got a course, you really are kind of pushing the boundaries of that. But it would be really useful to kind of do some quick fire questions around what a dental therapist is, because we’ve had many conversations about, you know, where does it sit in dentistry and do people really understand? Do mean they’re not just a posh hygienist? Well, and this is a start. So to start with, how do you qualify as a dental therapist?

Cat Edney (11:28.183)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (11:34.958)
Well there’s two routes really, either you go to a course, it’s a BDS course, it’s a degree course now, it wasn’t in my day all those years ago, but it’s a degree course now and it’s three years at university, often training alongside the first three years of dental school, the BDS course, or there is I think either one or two courses where you can go do a top-up from the hygiene course

Chris (11:44.463)
All those years ago.

Cat Edney (12:04.982)
and that’s most commonly people go to Essex University and do a one-year top-up. But for me it was two separate diplomas, hygiene and therapy, that were running concurrently next to each other. So there wasn’t really an obvious divide as to why we were learning one and the other, but I guess that’s just the way that King’s did it at the time.

Chris (12:24.334)
Hmm.

Chris (12:28.237)
Right, and how is a therapist different from a hygienist?

Cat Edney (12:32.696)
Well, the way I explain it to all of the dentist’s practices and even patients that I talk to is it’s sort of like halfway between a hygienist and a dentist. So I always say, you know, I’m just like a hygienist, but I also get to do all the fun stuff a dentist gets to do. So all the checkup, the fillings, the extractions on children.

Chris (12:54.436)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (12:55.574)
I just don’t have to do the gruesome things. So I don’t have to do root canal. I don’t have to do surgical. I don’t have to extract adult teeth. And I don’t have to, I don’t place crowns. And that’s it really. So anything direct, any direct restorations a therapist can do, no limits.

Chris (12:57.856)
Hahaha

Chris (13:07.044)
Hmm.

Chris (13:11.971)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brilliant. It was interesting wasn’t where was that thing we went to? Dentorama wasn’t it? think you might have been there, Kat. I can’t remember actually and I think you were and and that Wasn’t it that dentist said? yeah The therapist can only do certain types of fillings or something and I I could it was almost like you could hear all the other therapy It was fascinating because it was I thought it was a quite an interesting one because that was a dentist view. Yeah

Cat Edney (13:20.334)
You

Cat Edney (13:32.109)
you

Cat Edney (13:37.996)
Yeah.

Chris (13:38.447)
Whereas actually you’re just saying as you can do a thing. there is a lot of misunderstanding. don’t think people necessarily know where. you’re dentist.

Cat Edney (13:44.706)
There’s a huge bias at the moment in dentistry and that’s really much dependent on what the team, not just dentists, but the entire team has experienced in the past. So if you speak to a dentist, say if you ever worked with a dental therapist, they’ll say, they’ll often say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve worked with dental therapists all the time. But depending on what that therapist did, how their scope of practice was realized within the specific practice, within the constraints that they were working within,

Chris (13:54.511)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (14:14.69)
has made that dentist or that team member form an opinion on what a therapist can do. But in very much the same way, as a dentist has got a scope of practice that is all of the things they are allowed to do, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they do them. And that’s what we have with therapy. It’s just really pronounced within therapy. 70 % of dental therapists work as dental hygienists, which is a shocking statistic, I feel. Yeah.

Chris (14:30.305)
No.

Chris (14:41.007)
70 % workers hygienists because you’re losing all that opportunity to to change the fee structure of your practice

Cat Edney (14:43.595)
Absolutely.

Cat Edney (14:49.603)
Yeah.

Absolutely, there’s a huge void in practices where you could potentially take all of this, we call it the small bits, the little bits of work, the little fillings, the non-quadrant dentistry, know, the restorations that could be done maybe during a hygiene appointment. If you take that out of a dentist’s diary, you open them up to having so much more space to do more profitable treatments. But there’s been historical barriers to

Chris (15:01.709)
Yeah.

Chris (15:14.413)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (15:19.952)
implementing that kind of work that we’re only just seeing now. It’s only really in the last, well, four months actually that barriers are being lifted so that therapists can truly work independently.

Chris (15:33.377)
and what were those barriers and who imposed them?

Cat Edney (15:36.6)
So if we work backwards, the most recent barrier was prescribing rights. So being able to provide local anaesthetic and fluoride to your patients without having a dentist specifically write a prescription for your patient or without having to have a document called a patient group directive which covered a group of patients in a group of situations needing local anaesthetic. So that was a barrier. It was a huge barrier for NHS care because you couldn’t use a patient group directive.

Chris (15:58.895)
Mark.

Chris (16:04.271)
Mmm.

Cat Edney (16:06.944)
I’m very fortunate, I’ve been working privately for years, actually I’ve never worked on the NHS at all, and so I’ve always been able to work under a patient group directive. So that was the most recent barrier that’s been lifted and that’s taken years of work by our associations, they’ve been incredible working on that. So really it’s in its infancy there. But then prior to that, if you go all the way back to 2012,

Chris (16:23.727)
Wow.

Cat Edney (16:33.01)
That’s when I was living in Canary Wharf at the time and I was living next door to this guy who was in dentistry. He chatted about dentistry a lot. We used to watch the rugby together, drink beer, stand on our balconies. You know, we had a lovely, I rented my flat from my boss in Canary Wharf. It was lovely. We stood up, chatting dentistry and this guy used to ask me my opinions on direct access because in 2012, direct access was being debated. The BDA were dead against it.

Chris (16:51.203)
Hahaha

Cat Edney (17:02.904)
Associations were kind of not sure if they wanted that hygienist or therapist to be allowed direct access, but it was being pushed by the Office of Fair Trading to allow hygienists and therapists to go direct. And this guy used to ask me the questions about it all the time. And it turned out, even though I didn’t know it at the time, because I’m clueless and very naive, my neighbour was actually Barry Cockroft. So I always stood on my balcony drinking beer with the chief dental officer at the time, saying to him,

Chris (17:12.121)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (17:24.655)
wow.

Cat Edney (17:33.398)
You know.

doesn’t matter whether direct access comes in or not, we do it anyway. So direct access is essentially a therapist or a hygienist being allowed to treat a patient without a dentist having seen that patient and said, I would like you to do X, Y and Z on this patient. So without prescribing treatment. said, I was saying to Barry, you know, I was working in Canary Wolf as a hygienist at the time. And I said, do you have any idea how many times those prescriptions actually get written by my dentists? It never happens. never

Chris (17:50.191)
Yeah.

Chris (18:03.631)
Mm.

Cat Edney (18:04.144)
please see this patient for X, Y and Z and all the things you need to do. They just say see hygienist and it’s not a good enough prescription anyway. So you may as well let Direct Access come in, you know. Lo and behold, May 2013 it did, so it’s been 10 years.

Chris (18:07.375)
Mmm.

Chris (18:14.863)
Interesting.

Chris (18:20.825)
Wow. why is everybody, you should credit Kat with a very important beer drinking, rugby sharing influence. But why is it the practices even now, 70 % of therapists are still only doing hygiene. What’s the barrier that’s not getting dentists to engage with therapists to the level they can, could and should? Yeah.

Cat Edney (18:24.424)
I’m tired.

Cat Edney (18:43.554)
I think it’s fear, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s fear and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I truly believe every clinician has imposter syndrome.

And I think that is true in therapists and in dentists. The model of dentistry so far has been very much a siloed one man band model. So it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got five dentists working in a practice, they’re actually working very often as an individual entity within that practice. So they have their own list, their own nurse, their own surgery, their own patients, and they don’t want anyone else seeing their patients. That’s their patient.

Chris (19:14.519)
Mmm. Yep.

Chris (19:18.723)
Hmm, yeah true.

Chris (19:23.47)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (19:25.136)
Firstly, for a financial concern, they think if they allow their patients off to see someone else, they’re losing out on money. They don’t see the bigger picture.

Chris (19:33.807)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (19:34.904)
but also they’re worried about judgment, they’re worried about failure, they’re worried that maybe I’ve got that diagnosis wrong and someone might think I’m wrong to plan this treatment on this patient. And also what might happen if it doesn’t work? Will the patient lose faith in me? And then it’s the other side, that we don’t have confidence within our profession. Therapists are not confident, especially therapists who qualified like I did. I qualified 2008 and then didn’t do any therapy for…

Chris (19:45.431)
Hmm. Hmm.

Cat Edney (20:04.848)
for nine years. It’s, dreadful because you.

Chris (20:06.479)
How did that, how did that feel?

Because you’re qualified to deliver a skill to a certain standard, but basically you’re just being ignored, overlooked. Not given the opportunity.

Cat Edney (20:19.912)
I had this drawer in my hygiene room. It was my therapy drawer and my, actually I’m not going to name any names, but it was my therapy tutor. One of the tutors was the associate in my practice who should have been referring to me. Never did, not once. But we set up a drawer together of burrs, one fast handpiece and some composite and it sat there for nine years, never opened.

Chris (20:39.855)
Wow.

Chris (20:44.067)
blow the dust off. That’s dreadful isn’t it?

Cat Edney (20:45.206)
Yeah, was really soul destroying. It’s soul destroying, but at the same time, dental hygiene is really rewarding as well. So you are getting to do a lot of your job that’s really rewarding. When I trained as a therapist, I was pretty much trained to believe that we wouldn’t really get to do any therapy anyway. It was kind of like a curse. Absolutely. I think it’s really an institutionalized view.

Chris (20:51.715)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (21:03.563)
Really? Well even at the training stage.

Chris (21:11.299)
Has it changed now, cat? Right, good.

Cat Edney (21:12.972)
completely, yeah. mean, there’s certainly, there’s dental schools out there that I’ve visited who are so proactive. mean, Peninsula Dental School, as it comes to mind straight away, they’re so incredibly pro-therapist. They’re wonderful. And actually, the graduates that come out of that school are incredible. They’re so proactive as well. They’re amazing, you know, level of confidence in those therapists.

Chris (21:35.713)
Is there a financial incentive for people to deliver therapist work or become a therapist over hygienists? Is it more financially rewarding if you’re genuinely being used and treated as a therapist? you earn more money?

Cat Edney (21:49.068)
I would say that really varies on by region. So the therapist that I talk to in the North, it’s a very different story to the therapist in the South. So if you’re in the North, you tend to be salaried or early rates pay. You tend to be working on the NHS and via referral. So you don’t have control of your diary. You don’t have control of what comes through. You get paid the same regardless of what you do. And it’s hard.

Chris (22:15.619)
Mm.

Chris (22:18.905)
Mm.

Cat Edney (22:19.032)
to make any money being a therapist, you tend to make more as a private hygienist. But in the South, if you manage to get a job as a therapist, it’s much more rare, but you’re more likely to be looking at a UDA rate or a percentage rate of pay. You’re more likely now, especially in the last few years where we’ve been really banging this drum about direct access and therapy led and autonomy, you’re more likely to be able to control your own diary.

Chris (22:22.831)
Okay.

Cat Edney (22:47.074)
The way I work now is that I do my checkups and I do my own treatment plans and then I send the work that’s appropriate for the dentist to the dentist and fill their diary up with the juicy stuff, Invisalign and crowns and veneers and what have you. And I do the work that I feel confident to do. And so for me, it’s definitely much more profitable being a therapist. I I now work three days a week. I used to work six, you know.

Chris (22:57.199)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Chris (23:06.008)
Hmm.

Chris (23:11.702)
Bye.

It is bonkers, isn’t it, that dentists don’t see the benefit? Yeah. I suppose in a reverse way, I suppose, we quite often see people who want to grow a business and we say you have to employ someone to grow that business, but it’s going to cost you money in the short term until you sort of get past that point. And it’s sort of almost a similar reluctance, isn’t it, to say, oh, hang on a minute, I could I could get rid of something from my book.

as you were saying, that you could do where they… And then if the partnership is truly correct, you’re giving back considerably more than they’re giving, if that makes sense. And it’s just like, I don’t understand why I suppose it’s that back to everyone’s doesn’t think about either the value or they’re worried about losing patients. It’s mad.

Cat Edney (23:57.422)
it.

Cat Edney (24:05.794)
The thing is, it’s even more complex than that because you might currently have a hygienist who is a therapist but working as a hygienist with a very limited room income. So the cost of their surgery for that day is quite a high cost and they barely meet it with hygiene. We all know that hygiene is a bit of a lost leader.

So actually, you’re not utilizing that room as well as you could be. If you use that therapist even just to do the exams during the hygiene appointments, which is totally doable, you’d hugely increase the income of that room and create space in the dentist’s diary. But then it’s slightly more complex because hygienists tend to be fully booked for six months in advance. Dentists are not so fully booked, and especially feeling the pinch at the moment, we’re seeing more white space in people’s diaries.

Chris (24:34.809)
Yeah.

Chris (24:49.357)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (24:56.312)
It’s that. And then there’s also this problem that I hear all the time is, well, where can I find a therapist then? Where can I find a therapist who’s super confident, who wants to take it all on? And that is hard. It is difficult. Confidence is an issue in our profession that it’s going to take a little while to get over.

Chris (25:02.435)
Mm.

Chris (25:14.063)
But the environment hasn’t exactly bred people to be confident has it? If at the early stage of training and I know it’s changed with, it sounds like Peninsular doing great work, but if people were trained into an environment that says we’re never really going to use this. whilst there’s a therapy area, think of yourself as a hygienist because that’s kind what you’re going to end up doing. It’s hardly creating the environment for people to kind of want to push to grow into.

Cat Edney (25:18.446)
No, this is…

Cat Edney (25:37.23)
Absolutely. and then on top of that, the scope of practice of a therapist, what you can and can’t do really limits us and makes your, providing treatment really quite worrying and scary because if I expose on a patient, if I expose their nerve tissue, I can’t manage it. I can’t then go ahead and do an extra patient. can’t do a root canal treatment. If I’m halfway through a restoration and suddenly think, do you know, this actually needs more than I can provide,

Chris (25:57.263)
All right.

Mmm.

Cat Edney (26:07.184)
now I’m going to have to have a conversation with the patient. It’s embarrassing, it’s difficult, there might be a complaint. And you know, we’re in this hugely litigious society now, especially in dentistry. So as a therapist, it’s actually really hard to manage because we’re limited by our scope of practice as well.

Chris (26:13.935)
Mmm. Mmm.

Chris (26:20.237)
Yeah, that’s true.

That’s true, I suppose I hadn’t really thought about that, you if you’re doing a…

if you’re doing a filling and then somehow it’s not, it’s a worse filling, if that makes sense, then then suddenly, yeah, you’re, you can’t resolve it, can you? Given the environment, Cat, is this becoming a more popular or less popular career choice? Because the picture you’re painting, it sounds like it’s, it’s quite hard and it’s quite challenging. And I’m just interested to see whether perhaps at dental school level, are they over subscribed for people to want to be therapists or are they struggling to get people to see it as a, as a positive?

career choice? Good question.

Cat Edney (26:57.688)
So when I went and applied to university, I remember distinctly being told there are 40 applications for every place. So you’ll be really lucky to get in. 40 applications. Now there’s something like 180 applications for every place. Because, and I was talking, I had a work experience go with me in my clinic yesterday. I love doing that. I love having someone there watching what we do.

Chris (27:07.427)
Right.

Mm.

Chris (27:14.038)
well.

Cat Edney (27:27.832)
I was talking to her about the fact that it’s not the same as other university applications. It’s not like the dental route where you do your A levels and then you apply to become a dentist. And it’s usually 18 year old A level leavers who are applying. In dental hygiene and therapy, not only have you got people applying from school who are leaving their A levels, but you’ve also got 60,000 dental nurses who are also wanting to apply.

Chris (27:55.907)
Mmm

Cat Edney (27:57.504)
to do hygiene and therapy. Not everyone obviously wants to do it but there is a huge cohort of dental nurses who that’s their progression. So the competition is really, really strong and also I think it might be seen as a slightly less stressful version of dentistry.

Chris (28:05.327)
Hmm.

Chris (28:16.964)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (28:17.422)
And I wouldn’t disagree. think being a dentist is extremely stressful, having to do all that, you know, messy work that I don’t want to do, see those nerve tissues and stuff that I don’t want to see. yeah, I think it’s a really high amount of competition.

Chris (28:34.919)
Are there more training places coming up or has it sort of been relatively static?

Cat Edney (28:39.95)
Do know there’s not one training option in Northern Ireland for hygienists and therapists anymore. There’s dental schools shut down. They don’t do it anymore. I think there has been some chat about changing the way dental hygiene could be delivered as a course and it could be delivered more of an apprenticeship style, which isn’t very interesting. I don’t know how that would work. But no, I don’t think there’s that many places.

Chris (28:50.895)
Well.

Chris (29:05.967)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (29:09.904)
If you think there’s often 40 or 50 places in each school for hygiene and therapy, but then 200 for dentists, there’s not a lot.

Chris (29:11.172)
Wow.

Chris (29:18.299)
Mmm And you’ve created your own course haven’t you you’ve got the modern therapist as a course to talk to us about that and what that is and what that looks like and how that’s gonna help as opposed to the old therapist, yeah

Cat Edney (29:23.95)
I

Cat Edney (29:30.466)
Well, listen, I…

Yeah, because I got in trouble for that the other day. I did get in trouble. Yeah. No. So basically, I told you I alluded to the fact that I didn’t do therapy for a long time. And actually, even my training as a therapist was pretty basic. I mean, I think I did 10 amalgams, 10 10 composites, and that was you done. You’ve trained well done. And so when I decided that I was going to rebel and change,

and get into this system again and be a therapist again, I spent God thousands of pounds, thousands, ongoing on loads of different dentists, CPD training courses. So I sat in on courses about occlusion, courses about enlays and crowns, composite courses of course, also courses. I went into courses that I could never use.

because I needed to learn these things in order to be able to feel confident to put out dental therapy. And what I noticed, I noticed two things. One was that there was really nothing there for just therapists. So every time I went to a composite course, they would say, well, you know, in this case, you would do ortho first, or in this case, you need to put a crown. And that didn’t speak to me as a therapist because, well, what do I do if I can’t do that?

Chris (30:32.591)
you

Hmm

Chris (30:58.093)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (30:59.086)
And then the other thing was that, sad to say, I felt really marginalised on a lot of those courses. I was left out, no one spoke to me. There was an awful lot of, well, know, what do you, yeah, why you here? Why do you do this? Have you actually got a job? You know, and I remember one dentist said to me, well, can I just train my dental nurse to do your job? It was like, really?

Chris (31:12.456)
Because you’re a therapist you’re not you’re not one of us

Iowa.

Chris (31:25.753)
Wow.

Cat Edney (31:26.914)
quite disrespectful. So I decided that, you know, I’m quite thick skinned. I can take it, but other therapists out there who I want to come on this journey with me, who I want to grow, who I want to develop and provide that confidence for, I don’t want them to go through what I went through.

Chris (31:47.117)
Hmm

Cat Edney (31:47.82)
So I built the Modern Therapist as a training brand that it’s got two aims. One is to make therapists confident, amazing, awesome, modern therapists. And by modern, what I mean is, you know, the up-to-date techniques and progressive and pushing for more.

Chris (31:55.939)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (32:08.024)
But also to the modern therapist is a training bread, not just composite course, but also with practices in mind. So I train practices how to use a therapist because there’s not a lot of point in getting therapists amazing at being therapy, but doing if they can’t get a job. And there’s.

Chris (32:14.703)
Hmm.

Chris (32:22.691)
Hmm. Yeah. You must also have something in there about confidence and communication with the therapist. Cause obviously you are quite ballsy by the sounds of things, a bit of a rebel. So therefore you’re happy to go head to head with someone. But as you say, part of your, your course as presume is sort of saying, this is the way you deal with people and communication skills.

Cat Edney (32:43.638)
Yeah, it really is an awful lot of what we speak about at the beginning. So we always have a chat at the beginning and everyone, it feels really comfortable. Everyone feels like they can share their concerns, their problems, what they’re facing.

Chris (32:47.599)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (32:57.704)
and we sort of hash it out. You know, we have an hour at the beginning where we’re saying, okay, well, what situation are in? Where would you like to be? How are you going to get there? We talk about, you know, things like portfolios. Dentists all have their VT year to create a portfolio of what work they do and showcase what they can do. Well, therapists don’t get that. So we talk about how to create a portfolio. We talk about, you know, how to…

Chris (33:04.505)
Hmm.

Chris (33:16.772)
Mmm.

Chris (33:20.975)
It’s true actually, you don’t even think about that but you’re right. Because there’s no reason why a therapist couldn’t showcase their work on Instagram to the same extent that a dentist would. And when you go for a job as you say, show what I’ve done, this is what I’ve done.

Cat Edney (33:33.006)
But also, you know, we’ve got to look at it from a practice owner point of view. Why would you employ someone who can’t show the work that they do?

Chris (33:40.461)
Yeah, no, it’s a real simple one, isn’t it, actually? Who’s leading this charge with you, Kat? Because it… times must feel like you’re a bit of a soul voice. Are there a band of you? If we did like a wide-angle shot, are there a bunch of other therapists kind of loitering in the background?

Cat Edney (33:56.27)
like this.

There are hundreds of amazing therapists. don’t know, I think we’re all speaking about it in our own way, right? So there are therapists who, like you say, they showcase their work on Instagram and they are incredible. If I could be that talented with my composite work, then I would be a very happy lady. So there’s therapists that do it that way. There’s therapists who speak about therapy in the same way that I do. They write articles and they’re

they are very progressive in their own way. And then obviously we’ve got two associations that have tried really hard to push the sort of more political side, I imagine, is the best way to describe it, of therapy as well. So there’s loads of us doing this, but I wonder whether maybe I just shout louder.

Chris (34:31.855)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (34:52.238)
And that’s why, you know, maybe it’s, you know, the modern therapist looks like it’s just me, but it’s not. There’s tons of modern therapists out there.

Chris (35:02.083)
Hmm. And I think that’s it. think you’ve obviously built a platform to be able to talk about this, which is great.

And I think sometimes when something’s new and different, you do need somebody that kind of spearheads it. Champion. Yeah, but it’s great to hear that it’s not just you. There’s a bunch of other people who are all kind of coming along as well, because for you, must be incredibly hard to do this if you were on your own, because at times it must feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. We’re not necessarily getting the breakthrough that you need. So the fact there’s a bunch of people and there’s support from the associations as well. It’s moving in right direction.

Cat Edney (35:36.716)
Yeah, I think what’s important is that we all sing from the same hymn sheet. Everyone’s saying the same thing, just the fact. This is the scope of practice. Educating dentists on the fact that this is actually the scope of practice is what we’re allowed to do. We’re not making it up. But yeah, I’m really fortunate that there are lots.

Chris (35:42.072)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (35:45.582)
Hmm.

Chris (35:51.439)
Hmm.

Mm.

I presume it’s probably similar in a way to when hygienists first started. There was a resistance about hygienists and what are you going to do and all that sort of stuff. And then that has become accepted and there’s probably you’re on the similar trajectory. I say no, actually we can do a decent job.

Cat Edney (36:15.598)
You absolutely hit the nail on the head when the first hygienist went into practice. You know, do you really think the dentist went, amazing, I’m going to clear off all my patients into the dark. Of course they didn’t. But it’s got that way because the dentist has suddenly realized that why am I doing this? It’s so funny that it’s not normal for to think that way about therapy, but we’ll get there.

Chris (36:22.999)
Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, lovely. Great.

Chris (36:33.795)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (36:38.382)
Yeah.

Chris (36:42.209)
Yeah, but they haven’t embraced it. I find that quite strange. No, but then again, I suppose it goes back. Sorry, it goes back to a way that when we talk about people understanding business. yeah. They don’t. There’s not a connection, even if it’s purely a financial connection. That’s actually if you do it this way, you’ll probably end up making more money and maybe having less stress. they don’t necessarily do that connection. Interesting. Listen to you.

Cat Edney (37:06.894)
There’s lots of practices that are actually embracing therapy. So I’ve got, you know, there’s a practice in Preston that’s therapist led completely, Cure Clinics by Chris Ball. He’s a friend and he’s amazing. He’s put this therapy led clinic in Preston. He’s opening another one soon. And there are practices that are really embracing it now. And obviously you’ve spoken to Saree Khashar. She’s my principal. She’s just been incredible, letting me take the reins and do what I want to do.

Chris (37:10.127)
Hmm.

Chris (37:29.901)
Yes.

Got an empty shop over the road. I was just thinking as a a dental care professional and a GDC number you you can own a practice are there there therapists out there that own practices?

Cat Edney (37:36.908)
therapy but it’s in its infancy still.

Cat Edney (37:51.214)
Absolutely, there’s one on the road that I’m on right now. So yeah, there’s therapists owned clinics, not a lot of them because of the barriers that we’ve got. again, prescribing barriers, medical emergencies kits, those are a barrier at the moment because you, therapists can’t buy the medicines that they need for a medical emergency kit. Isn’t that insane? So you can’t buy it. We still can’t buy local anesthetic without a dentist, although we can now use exemptions. We can’t buy it.

Chris (38:14.251)
That is not.

Cat Edney (38:21.168)
So owning a practice as a therapist is tricky, it’s doable.

Chris (38:24.587)
There’s also a commercial issue as well in that banks won’t treat hygienists and therapists in the same category as dentists. So the funding facilities made available to dentists are way more preferential than you would receive as a therapist.

Cat Edney (38:37.646)
Absolutely.

But also, look, you have to see that there is a reason for this. You know, as a therapist, I can’t hope to earn the same as a dentist. I can’t because I can’t do the same high earning treatments. I can’t whack an implant in every day, you know, and have a huge turnover. And so your traditional owner operator method of a principal dentist being the first person to start making money and getting money into your clinic, that’s not going to

Chris (38:44.782)
Hmm.

Chris (38:52.772)
Mm.

Cat Edney (39:09.368)
work for a therapist. know, a therapist is going to need somebody else to come and be an earner within their business and so you can see why it’s hard to lend to a model like that. It really very much hinges on the fact that you have to get a dentist and we all know how hard that is these days.

Chris (39:10.595)
Hmm.

Chris (39:21.999)
Mm.

Chris (39:27.935)
Yeah, but people listen to this podcast gonna be surprised to know that you describe yourself as an introverted extrovert And I think most of us are yeah, we have this phrase about being a synthetic extrovert I think lots of us kind of like to put on a mask and become a character What what what these cat can play the piano and sing? Yes, what what what is your your default state? What is your your your happy state?

Cat Edney (39:51.534)
So I love to be on stage. So I absolutely, if I’m up there, seriously, I’m really into my musicals, love the jazz hands, love to be on stage. Like I say, I used to sing and play all sorts of musical instruments. I love that. So I can do it.

Chris (39:57.071)
Ta-da!

Chris (40:13.071)
Do I have a recollection? Did we have a conversation about your brother? Your brother’s big in theatre, isn’t he? Was that not you? thought, there’s somebody in Dengers whose brother is like massive in West End productions. I can’t remember who it is. I remember who it is, but it’s somebody who’s, and they’re like proper big time, like proper West End musicals. The next event we see Katak, if it’s a piano. A piano, a bar and a microphone, you’re in, Anyway, you love the stage.

Cat Edney (40:17.74)
No, that’s not me.

Cat Edney (40:24.526)
I need to meet that person please.

Cat Edney (40:42.766)
Yeah, so I love the stage. I love an audience. I can do an audience, that’s fine. And I can get quite a lot of energy from that. what like one on one or a group of two or three people, I find that quite difficult. I find it difficult to keep a conversation going. I potentially, I might be a little bit.

Chris (41:00.367)
That’s what we’re here for, that’s fine. Phew, thank goodness.

Cat Edney (41:05.078)
I don’t know whether it might be an ADHD tendency maybe, but I might drift off, my mind might drift off.

Chris (41:11.148)
Nice Back in the room back in the room

Cat Edney (41:15.88)
After doing that, if I’ve had a group that I’m talking to for a long time, I do need an hour to myself in silence. And quite often when I’m running a course or doing a full day training, I will take myself off at lunchtime and hide for half an hour so I don’t have to talk to anybody. Not that I don’t want to, but I just need a reset.

Chris (41:26.511)
You

Chris (41:41.53)
I find that though sometimes, don’t you, when we do our seminars or even our webinars, you know, when you come down, it’s quite full on. Oh, it’s a little bit of an adrenaline high that’s of leaking out. No, I’d sort of get it.

Cat Edney (41:52.27)
Yeah.

I take that reset time and I allow myself that. In the past, I used to feel really guilty that I wasn’t engaging with everyone all the time and I wasn’t being that jazz handy person all the time for everyone. But actually taking that reset time means that I can really think about how has this been going today? What are the responses? I feel like you can feel people when you’re with them in a room. You can feel how they’re feeling and I want to make sure

Chris (42:16.711)
Mmm.

Cat Edney (42:23.542)
that I honor how they’re feeling in the next time I’m speaking to them and not just breeze past them and be in my own head about what I’m thinking. that’s what I do. Yeah, I will go away after this conversation and think, did I say everything I wanted to say? And then you’ll go over everything and replay it all. I’m that person. I sort of ruminate a lot over conversations and just to make sure that I am…

Chris (42:27.599)
Hmm, you’re quite a reflective person.

Chris (42:40.706)
Okay.

Chris (42:45.145)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (42:50.06)
being authentic and getting across what I really mean.

Chris (42:51.983)
So if you could play back time on a longer time frame, would you qualify as a therapist again if you had your time again?

Cat Edney (43:02.862)
Do you know, I mean, if we really went back, maybe I should have tried harder in those A levels. Instead, I got a job in a sports car, right? So there isn’t much of a regret there, because I love, I used to race a lot. I used to race cars and motorbikes and stuff. So let’s not go into that conversation, but I love cars.

Chris (43:14.447)
you

Chris (43:24.911)
You’ve brought that in, of like 40 odd minutes in. Come on, whichever that right at beginning.

Cat Edney (43:29.644)
I love cars and so that’s the reason I didn’t really do well in my A levels because I went and got job, worked really hard and bought myself a sports car. But if I had done my A levels properly and got into dental school, I was accepted into Manchester if I had done the, got my A level results.

Maybe I’d have loved dentistry and done actual extractions and crowns and stuff like that. And I think I’ve got the manual dexterity to do a really good job and be a really great dentist. So potentially that would have been something. But I’m so happy as I am. It is a lower stress job. I really believe that. It’s a slightly lower stress job. But there isn’t the pressure on me as a therapist that there is on a dentist to do things like owner practice.

Chris (43:59.332)
Hmm.

Chris (44:07.567)
Mmm.

Chris (44:16.205)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

Cat Edney (44:19.312)
practice, which is a very traditional pressure I think a lot dentists feel. There isn’t that pressure on me. And also, I’m so fortunate I’ve got huge flexibility in my life. You know, I’ve had three children, we holiday, we, you know, we, I have a lovely life outside of work as well that’s non-dental related, lots of lovely friends, you know, great family. So, so I…

Chris (44:23.726)
Yeah, yeah.

Chris (44:31.009)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (44:38.18)
Mm.

Hmm. Hmm.

Cat Edney (44:46.568)
as much as I would like to think, you in another life I could maybe have been more of a businesswoman or more successful or something like that, it might have been to the detriment of all the wonderful things I’ve got now.

Chris (44:57.133)
I think there’s always a cost. think there’s a bit of definition of success, isn’t it? Yeah. But I think lots of people, it’s very easy just to see the bit that people post about their life. But generally there’s a cost of some sort for whatever success we have. There’s another side to it that some of you don’t always own up to or recognise. But it sounds to me like you’ve got quite a nice balance in your world. I like the link between, as we’ve seen quite a few times, between art.

Cat Edney (45:19.81)
Mostly.

Chris (45:25.515)
and dentistry, you know, and that piano, that creative side, sort of dexterity, it’s fascinating, that creative bit that seems to quite often when we talk to people in dentistry, there’s something in there that’s sort of I quite like making models. And Avinas, what music do you have playing in your surgery?

Cat Edney (45:45.102)
I don’t get choice, isn’t that awful? But also, because I’m same country, it’s the same music across all surgeries. But also, as I said at the beginning, I don’t really do popular culture. So if you asked me what music I want to I haven’t got a I haven’t got…

Chris (45:48.737)
Seriously, you don’t get a choice.

Chris (45:57.837)
Bye.

It’s vague.

Cat Edney (46:03.79)
I mean, I’m easy. I would listen to rap and I’d listen to classics. I’ll listen to anything. I’m not that person that there’s music going and it irritates me. There is no time where it’s annoying or I don’t like it. I don’t really have a preference. don’t have a… I feel like it’s a bit weird.

Chris (46:07.503)
You

Chris (46:15.119)
Yeah.

Chris (46:19.599)
an eclectic mix, I think, which is the way to have music.

Chris (46:26.871)
No, no, I think it’s a great thing because otherwise the changes you end up getting pigeon-holed and there’s actually good music in virtually every genre. More interesting, what sports car did you buy?

Cat Edney (46:32.982)
Every now it’s you know so I used to do standing quarter miles in a Subaru Impreza

Chris (46:39.629)
I was at an embarrassing sports car.

Chris (46:45.935)
yeah, proper racing. Yeah.

Cat Edney (46:49.486)
And then also I bought a smart car, but it’s a smart roadster, you know the short flap and we actually dropped a Hayabusa motorbike engine in it and used it to go round brands.

Chris (46:55.977)
yeah, yeah, little one.

Chris (47:03.535)
I bet that was fast. I bet that went quick.

Cat Edney (47:04.522)
It was fun. And that one actually I crashed into the back of a lorry once. And so that one got written off. And then later on, a couple of years later, I bought another smart car, which I had spray painted bright pink. I drove that for a number of years until I fell pregnant with my twins. We had to buy a house. And in order to buy the house, my poor husband had to sell his BMW because he had to come with

Chris (47:21.167)
you

Cat Edney (47:34.368)
with something to put the deposit down. And so he started driving the pink smart car and he drove that for about four years, bless him. And on the back, I had actually had the badge changed from smart to tart. So I love him, but he actually really enjoyed driving that car. There’s so much fun. There’s so much fun.

Chris (47:36.047)
You

Chris (47:41.323)
Excellent.

Chris (47:51.311)
Bless him.

Yeah, well distinctive. tell you it stands out flipping it outstanding outstanding Cap we’ve got to the uh, the point where we need to ask you a couple of questions First one is you will fly on the wall and you look down. What’s what’s playing out? Where are you and who’s in there?

Cat Edney (48:11.694)
So I said earlier that I’m really into, as a family we’re really into musicals and so most recently we took our three children to go and see Hamilton the musical.

Chris (48:23.307)
Okay.

Cat Edney (48:24.622)
So I’ve got massive FOMO, I’ve always had it, I’m that person, I wanna be in the room everywhere, so if I could be able to fly on the wall in every room in every situation, that’d be great, But with this question, because I know you ask it of everyone, I was thinking I would like to be in the room where it happened, where Alexander Hamilton made the deal to get, you know,

Chris (48:45.529)
Yeah.

Cat Edney (48:52.652)
Washington is the capital city and I want to know what happened there because no one really knows what happened in that room. It’s called the Compromise Dinner and so I’d love to be a fly on the wall there and find out what happened just so I could tell my children really because they keep asking me.

Chris (48:54.019)
Mmm.

Wow, okay.

Chris (49:10.479)
Fabulous music.

Cat Edney (49:15.33)
I love that song as well, it’s always in my head.

Chris (49:17.773)
Yeah, yeah. And our follow up is you can meet somebody who would you like to meet if you were given the opportunity?

Cat Edney (49:24.95)
Yeah, it’s really difficult, isn’t it? Because you’d want to say, in my heart of all hearts, I want to say, I want to meet a really progressive, you know, a female who’s changed the world, who’s broken glass ceilings and, you know, been a rebel or changed something in some way. But because we’re so lucky and we’ve got history books and we’ve got Google and we can Wikipedia things, I feel like I’ve learned about those people. You know, I know about Rosa Parks. I know about Florence Nightingale.

Chris (49:37.966)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (49:55.036)
I know about, you know, even Michelle Obama, right? I know about her. What I want to do is meet the next person.

Chris (49:59.087)
Mm.

Cat Edney (50:04.332)
who’s gonna do these things. I want to meet the next person to make a massive change, especially for females, for women in the world. The next person that’s gonna break a glass ceiling or not fall off of a glass cliff, I don’t know if you know that term, but it’s when women are put into positions of power, but are only put in that position of power because they’re likely to fail. So for instance, a company

Chris (50:13.391)
Mm.

Chris (50:21.345)
Mmm.

Cat Edney (50:34.476)
is failing already and they go well let’s get a female CEO in and see if they can help us out and it’s like setting someone up for failure well I want to be I want to meet the next person to not fail when they’re in those situations you know and and watch that play out I don’t want to hear about it having happened I want to watch it I want to be with them so whoever that’s going to be send them to me

Chris (50:39.503)
Smile.

Yeah.

Chris (50:46.095)
Mm. Mm.

Chris (50:50.703)
Mmm.

in real time, yeah. That would be cool. What I love about that is we can understand the context and the situation, but we will never know who that person is, because until it happens, it was only ever the point before.

Cat Edney (51:06.646)
Yeah, it’s a dream. And I’ve got some really strong female best friends who are outside of dentistry who doing that at the moment. I’ve got a friend who, she’s the poll head of Sunday Times, Caroline Wheeler, and she actually broke the blood borne virus scandal.

Chris (51:16.206)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (51:28.366)
Her whole political and journalistic career has been around that. So watching her go from a local journalist, when we had our twins in the same week in the same hospital, so we’ve been friends ever since, and the last 12 years she’s been breaking this bloodborne virus scandal, and now there’s been an inquiry, and now there’s going to be compensation. Watching this really strong woman progress and break glass ceilings and become an editor of a big newspaper and stuff like that, I find it so empowering.

Chris (51:34.638)
Wow.

Chris (51:46.587)
Mmm.

Chris (51:52.367)
Hmm.

Cat Edney (51:58.412)
it makes me want to push for my own profession as well.

Chris (52:03.491)
Very cool. Kat, thank you so much. Yeah, fantastic. I think you’ve got a really important role to play in dentistry and you have been playing a really important role. think the work you’re doing pushing forward the voice for therapists along with others is hugely valuable, hugely valuable for the profession. People will take a lot from this, I’m sure. They should do anyway. Yeah, exactly. Lovely. keep well. And yeah, no doubt we’ll be seeing you at an event at some point in the Near a piano. Yes, exactly. Kings Cross Station.

Cat Edney (52:22.126)
Thank you.

Cat Edney (52:32.11)
I know, I have to brush up on my skills. It’s been a while.

Chris (52:33.466)
Ta ta

Chris (52:37.679)
Do you not play now then?

Cat Edney (52:39.892)
No, it’s really sad, but we don’t have a piano. I haven’t had a piano in my house for about 10 years now. The children, I wanted to teach them to play, but they wouldn’t listen to me. And then what’s even more sad, if you really want to know the truth, is that I worked so hard for that grade eight. I’m not talented in the slightest. I’m just hardworking. And so to get that exam done was blood, sweat and tears. And I don’t have a natural ability. I just had that.

Chris (52:45.487)
Cat Edney (53:09.856)
So as soon as you stop practicing, you can’t really play. I can play it, can tinkle, I can make things sound lovely. I can do it, but I’m not fantastic.

Chris (53:15.535)
you

Wow. So if anyone wants to gift Kat a piano or a keyboard, please. Yeah. yeah. Oh, okay. Anybody. She’s got expensive tests. was going to say, if you’re asking, might as well ask for the best. Brilliant. Look at yourself, Kat. Thanks very much. Cheers. Bye.

Cat Edney (53:24.078)
Baby grand would be perfect.

you

Cat Edney (53:35.817)
No.

Cat Edney (53:40.44)
Take care.