Arya Goggin spent years trying to make a cat love him. She never did.
He grew up around dogs, then met Trixie, who tolerated him out of what he suspects was pity. \"I fell in love with Trixie,\" he says. \"I don't know if she ever fell in love with me.\" It did not put him off. He waited, and when the time came he got two cats of his own, rescue sisters from Celia Hammond named, with great ceremony, after a Bond girl and a Disney princess: Domino and Belle. One struts like a model, one is the girl next door, and one, allegedly, has a French accent.
The cats are only half of it. Arya drums for Skindred, the band from Wales that took on a major label with nothing but a tiny indie behind them and stole a UK number one, a win so unlikely the whole rock community rallied behind it. He is brilliant on what that actually took, on the MOBO that was, by any sensible measure, too sharp to hand out on the night, and on a truth that applies equally to bands and to cats: no one will ever care about your work more than you do.
He joins Chrissy to trace the whole unlikely road, from Wales via Devon and Iran, through drummer's arms and a shield that would not look out of place on Jason and the Argonauts, to a life where the cats arrived during Covid and now travel down to Devon like royalty. Belle and Domino, naturally, supervise the entire conversation from a polite distance. Roger has views of his own, and a French passport.
","author_name":"Chrissy Iley"}