Why wouldn't I just ask mum myself?

Tell Me isn't here to replace phoning your parents. It's here because of what happens to the questions you keep meaning to ask.

It only works if it's consistent

If you can text your mum a question twice a week, at the same time, every week, then you don't need Tell Me. Genuinely.

One question is easy. Everybody manages one. But will you do twenty? Fifty? A hundred?

Tell Me lands at the same time, twice a week by default. That turns into a habit fast. Parents start looking forward to it. My dad says "I haven't done my Tell Me today" — that's the bit that matters. If a question arrives sporadically, whenever you happen to remember, it never becomes a thing she does. It stays a thing you keep meaning to do.

She needs time to think

Phone her, or ask across the dinner table, and you've put her on the spot. You'll get the short version. The one she's told before.

A question that arrives as a message gives her room. She reads it, thinks about it, goes away and comes back. She adds a bit more the next day. She goes and digs out a photo of it. By the time the next question comes in, you've got the proper answer instead of the on-the-spot one.

You won't always know what to ask

Some days you'll think of a brilliant question in the supermarket. Tell Me lets you drop it in a list and hold it until the time's right.

Other days you'll have nothing. That's what the question bank is for.

Where does the answer actually go?

Ask her in the kitchen — are you recording it? Ask her by text — are you backing that up?

Tell Me takes her messages, her voice notes and her photos, transcribes them, tags them and keeps them. All of it searchable. So when it's 2am ten years from now and you can't sleep and you want that story about dad, it's there.

Where's the text message you sent her in 2026?

She's more honest with it

This one's harder to put a number on, but I've seen it in every house that uses Tell Me, including my own.

Mum is a bit more unfiltered answering a Tell Me question than she is answering you.

She knows it's you. She knows you chose the question and you're the one who'll read it. But she isn't looking at you while she says it. And that small bit of distance is enough. The story about how she met your dad might come back as the real version, rather than the one she's been telling you since you were nine.

And it won't stop you phoning her

If anything it's the opposite.

Right now you phone your mum and you talk about your week (busy), the weather (dull) and whether you've been up to much (no).

Start asking, and the phone calls change. They become "I never knew that." They become "you never told me that."

You'll find yourself saying tell me more, mum a lot.