Russell Howard: How To Laugh Through Fear, Anxiety & Imposter Syndrome
Guests: Russell
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
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or your puppy is acting clumsy-er.
Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go.
Veg ER for Pets.
This is Kate.
Veg.
The better, kinder ER for pets.
If they're laughing, it's fine.
If they're not, it ain't.
This is the Russell Howard we have never seen before.
When you're low, it leaves you mentally fragile, but then that makes you work hard and go again because you know the excitement you get from making them laugh.
It's an unhealthy treadmill, but at the end of that treadmill, there is this incredible cherry.
That's what happiness is.
Figure out a healthier way of being the best you without it being so draining to realize what you have.
There will always be sort of shimmering.
Lights of hope in the misery, but sometimes somebody has to help you find them.
When he died, it was just this sledgehammer to your heart where you just go, Jesus, one of the, one of the,
One of the good souls isn't here anymore.
Russell Howard.
I've watched Russell Howard on TV for years and years and years.
And of all the podcasts I've done, Russell and this conversation was the most stark difference between the person I've seen on TV and the person I had a conversation with today.
I think your mind is going to be blown.
He's got a new Netflix show coming out called Lubricant.
And the reason it's called Lubricant is because he believes comedy and laughter is the lubricant that allows us to deal with the pain of life.
And we talk about the pain of his life.
We talk about everything.
And in this conversation, there's more tears.
Recently, I did an episode on this podcast with Jimmy Carr, and the resounding feedback we got was we've never seen that Jimmy Carr before.
I have a suspicion, in fact, I know that people are going to say the same about this conversation.
This is the Russell Howard we have never seen before.
And it's an incredibly inspiring, valuable, vulnerable Russell Howard.
It's the side, as a Russell Howard fan, that I wish I'd seen more of.
I have a feeling you're going to be really surprised.
So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO.
I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
I'm funny because of my mum and I'm determined because of my dad.
You said that, right?
I did say that, yeah.
I felt like that was the beginning of a riddle.
Like you were sort of a golem figure.
I was trying to understand, yeah.
Can you explain that to me, please?
My mum is a warm, twinkly-eyed little lady who is...
Inadvertently funny all the time, has no idea of her power, is just naturally bright and joyful.
If you ever feel that you're kind of getting used to hotels and the humdrum life of, oh, here we are in another place,
Take my mum with you, separate rooms, and watch her reaction when she goes into a hotel room because it reminds you of how you used to be.
Oh, really?
Jesus Christ, they've got kettles, they've got tea bags, look, they've got a trouser press, look.
Like, she's so excited and happy by the world.
My dad is a very quiet, unbelievably determined man who, you know, when we were kids, we'd sort of, he'd have us mix in cement.
We'd be sort of like, you know, building kind of walls with him, plastering as a kid.
I remember watching my dad plaster.
And he was trying to keep this kind of wall up.
And he screamed to himself, come on, David.
And.
And sort of even at 11, I was going, that's a bit much.
So I have these kind of two very different dominant personalities that kind of raised me, who I love dearly both, but they are very, very different.
My dad challenged me to a press-up competition recently at a family barbecue, and he beat me.
He did 68.
He did, yeah.
And he's 65 years old.
And yeah, I remember this story.
This sums my dad up.
I had a school report when I was 11 and the teacher said, what Russell needs to know is that he can't do everything.
And I kind of go home and, you know, that moment you give the report and your dad looks and he goes, well, what's this mean?
You go, well, the teacher says I can't do everything.
He goes, why did you say that?
I just think that I can.
I think I can do anything if I put my mind to it.
And my dad goes, you've got to go down that school now and tell her that.
So I have to walk back to the school.
You're joking.
Yeah.
And I kind of go in and go, my dad says I can do anything and you're not allowed to say that I can't.
Which is a pretty, you know, incredible thing to do, but, you know, it made school tough.
So yeah, very different.
What about brothers and sisters?
I have a brother, Daniel, who's an amazing human being, very funny.
And I have a sister who is an actress, who's also incredible.
They're very different as well.
I'm very close to my brother, not so much to my sister.
We sort of, all my brother, we just played football.
We played together as kids.
And oddly, Kerry is in the same world as me now and is kind of a BAFTA-nominated actress.
She was in Him and Her, BBC Three, and super talented and, yeah, a great human being.
They're a lovely bunch, but very strange, my family.
It's like being in a Pogues song when you go to kind of Christmas parties around our way.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's sort of, you know, those like, I remember weirdly the funeral of my nan and granddad.
It was separate.
It sounded like it was packed.
But that feeling sometimes when you go to a funeral and you're so proud to have the same blood as the people in the room.
I kind of feel that whenever I'm back with my family in the West Country, there's such a...
Lunacy and energy to them that I adore and feel so kind of delighted to be part of, you know, it's kind of, yeah.
Jimmy Carr said something to me, which I've been waiting to ask another comedian.
There's a stereotype that comedians are funny because they're depressed.
Yeah.
But Jimmy Carr said that's wrong.
He said, you've really got to ask a comedian who in their family is sick.
Because he says that much of his comedic genius or his desire to please people came from trying to make a family member happy or trying to ease moments of tension in the family dynamic when he was younger.
Do you resonate with that at all?
Yeah, yeah, completely.
My dad is successful and super serious, but used to lose his mind watching Billy Connolly or watching Have I Got News For You.
So he would howl with laughter.
And we sort of figured out.
The way to break dad's serious energy was to make him laugh, you know?
So definitely it was kind of, there's no tension if people like, I've got a line in my new special, which is laughter is the lubricant that makes life livable.
And it, you know, it really,
it soothes tensions and it's a bandage that gets over cracks.
Definitely, you know, and then it's sort of this thing that you, when you discover you, you know, you can make people laugh.
It's so addictive and you can literally create your own energy.
And like you do in arena, there's 15,000 people there.
You're orchestrating this almost societal orgasm where they're kind of like lost in laughter together.
It's, you feel like a necromancer, man.
It's the best.
And I think Jim's right in that.
That initial spark comes from probably, I'm thinking of other comedians as well as myself, it's sort of that sense of, you know,
like I've got a lazy eye.
So that was, you know, so I became funny to deflect and did jokes about my eyes to get, to stop people looking at them.
And then you kind of realize, okay, this is kind of cool.
Or if you're a bit thick, or if you're not good at football,
or you don't fit in, you can kind of...
Sort of rebrand yourself in a strange way through humor.
And you can create your own kind of energy.
That sounds kind of wanky, but do you know what I mean?
Of course I do, because there's also another stereotype, which is that people who are slightly bigger,
tend to be really bubbly and have funny personalities and comedians as well, which is, would fit that kind of idea that it's a, it's a tool of deflection from something else, you know, they don't want them to focus on or,
um, you talk about it being linked, heavily linked to self-esteem as well.
And you're, yeah.
Yeah, well, what's odd, the further you get into it, you realize that it's so much fun doing stand-up.
And it's such a wild drug, effectively, because you're doing these massive gigs for 2,000 people and everyone's laughing, or 15,000 people.
You're in New York, you're doing a gig in Finland, and you can't quite get over it.
And then as a consequence, it's quite hard to sit down and watch the TV and be normal.
So you're kind of chasing that sort of high and it's about the real, the real skill is trying to figure out the sort of work life balance, you know, I'm speaking to somebody whose house is above work, but you know what I mean?
It's like, see, the only, the only way around it is to sort of integrate it really.
But like, I don't know.
I've been doing stand-up since I was 18.
I remember doing stand-up.
the first gig and it felt like it was you sort of discovered a mechanism through which you can do life that everything sad good happy weird peculiar can go through this sausage maker and you can then
understand life figure it out but also that's a very strange way to to do it because you you're
you know, you're using the stage to kind of dissect yourself, but the aim is always funny.
But I don't know of a better way to do it than to kind of make sense of the world.
And the funny thing about all comics is guaranteed, if they find themselves in a strange situation, sometimes a heartbreaking situation in life,
there's always a little part of your brain going, there could be a bit in this.
And it's that horrible sort of, you know, sort of disease that we have that you can't ever truly be there because there's always a little bit of you, whether you're Seinfeld or,
you know, Taylor Tomlinson or Bill Burr or Chappelle or whatever.
Your brain is going, yep, there's stuff in this.
Do you know what I mean?
As you're getting beaten up or whatever, your brain...
I remember getting mugged in Brighton when I was 18.
And this guy shouted at me, come back, I'm a police officer.
He clearly wasn't.
And I said, no, you're not.
You're a monster.
And as I said it, I went, yeah, that's going to be quite funny, I reckon.
But I'm literally running away.
I'm terrified.
But my brain's going, yeah, I'll probably build a little bit about that.
And it's, I think all comics that I know have that thing where,
Reality is always auditioning to find its way into your set.
Wow.
I could get out of hand and you could start willing misfortune.
This is the weird thing.
Yeah, well, exactly.
But that's the problem.
We haven't got any jokes.
He's walking around dressed as a clown going to like a fucking zoo.
There's got to be something in this.
But yeah, you're right.
it's sort of about keeping life open a bit and keeping the third eye open, really.
Probably that's the same of all creatives where you kind of, or all people really, like you have to notice the things that niggle you.
And if you're talking about them, whether it's, you know, like in my last special, I had a big bit about kind of young women self-harming.
I couldn't, I was like, what?
Like one in four women self-harm.
And I was like, I couldn't get my head around that.
And I just knew I had to talk about it on stage.
And yesterday I saw this lady complaining because the foam in her cup wasn't at the top of her cup.
And for the rest of that morning, I couldn't get my head around it.
Just how do you get the confidence to complain about your foam not being there?
And I know somehow that's going to end up in a show somewhere.
That's the way I kind of operate, really.
I sort of see these little things or...
And they kind of make a note on my phone and they gradually kind of make their way.
You know.
Interesting.
It's like collecting dots from society and then figuring out later how they fall.
Well, I think that I know Chris Martin does a similar thing where you just make little notes of lyrics and Woody Allen does a similar thing.
Woody Allen will just write a load of stuff and then he puts it in a drawer.
And then when he comes to write a film, he just gets the drawer out.
Empties all these notes that he's been making for the last six months and figures out what the film's going to be.
And that's a lot easier than sort of writing from a blank page because you can then finesse your kind of thoughts in the field when you're in the laboratory, as it were.
You said something there which I find really interesting and I think is there's kind of...
Almost analogies for life within, which is after you've come off stage to thousands of people in an arena, you then go home and have to like sit in front of the TV.
The anti-climax, dealing with like that consistent high, then low,
it feels like a lot emotionally because that's like a huge adrenaline surge.
And then even like physiologically, that feels like that must be not natural.
Yeah.
Have a consequence.
Yeah, Christ, that's deep.
§02Transcript — part 2
And let's hope it doesn't.
But yeah, you're right.
It's, it's.
Yeah, every comedian, when they're in the middle of a tour, needs a really, really good box set.
Like, do you know what I mean?
It's like you need succession.
You need madmen.
You need something to get you through.
Because, yeah, it's sort of...
Otherwise, if you're trying to maintain that high, if you're drinking and you're doing drugs or whatnot, it's going to make it harder to be that version.
It's kind of like, whereas if you're a musician, you can still sing the song that they want you to sing if you're on coke or you're pissed up.
It's kind of hard to be...
A good comic for a long time if you kind of, you know, on drinking drugs.
So yeah, you have to sort of develop this kind of way of like reintegrating your life.
But also it's nonsense as well.
It's just, it's, it's fun make-believe like, and, and also what's important is kind of, you know, going for a meal with your wife and, and, and hanging out and seeing friends and, and there's joy in that, you know, and you see it, you, you, you have to,
You have to try, you have to plan fun.
I think that that's the crucial thing.
You have to go, right, we'll go on holiday and we'll go to that restaurant and we'll watch this film.
Because I think, like you say, it's the sitting and the, and the waiting is very difficult to compete with the, the innate rush that you get from standup.
Because of what you do professionally, do you find it harder to enjoy the sitting and the waiting and the meal?
where you're sat there just, you know, and the holiday where you're sat on the deck chair.
Not like I normally, what I love about holidays, I don't know what your feelings are about them, but by the end of like 10 days, I'm ready to go back to my life because holidays remind me of how much I love my life.
And that's the thing.
So you need to have that kind of, I'm a real sit in the sun, you know, read some books, listen to podcasts, whatever, and then kind of go again.
But I like the recharge of it.
If there was a thing where you could literally plug yourself in like a mobile phone, I would happily do that on a beach.
Do you know what I mean?
And then kind of go again.
But I'm not really a, when I'm in holiday mode, I'm not really a culture vulture.
I'm kind of a sit down, plonk, book, sun.
relax, get ill because I've been putting it off.
Do you know what I mean?
Your body just kind of gets a bit sick and then you kind of go again.
How about you?
Are you a relaxer?
I think I'm a forced relaxer.
Right.
Yeah.
I think my girlfriend is the reason why I would,
go on holiday.
And I think she's also the reason why I would be present on holiday.
And she's the reason why I'd go and look at like a castle or something.
Okay.
A castle?
Like whatever she would want to look at.
Okay.
I think if it was just up to me, I wouldn't go and I wouldn't do it.
And even if I did go, I wouldn't leave the hotel room.
Yes.
There's like strong evidence for that because whenever I've gone to speak in a country or whatever, I don't leave the hotel room.
I have no desire to do anything but just be on my phone or laptop.
So it's pretty sad, but I think, you know, that's why it's fortunate that I have a girlfriend.
Yeah, but it's...
It's also that thing as well of like, you clearly, with the job you do, you clearly love it as well.
I love it.
Yeah.
So that's the thing.
If you're fortunate enough, there are so many, there are billions of people who are, who are, who, you know, live for the weekend, do your job, punch in job.
You don't like get your money.
Smash your weekend, try and find your fun.
If you're one of the, there are so few people in this world that truly have a thing that they do, that they get paid for, that they adore.
You just got to get hold of it, man.
And just like, there's no shame, but it just seems peculiar to the outside.
So you're going to be how obsessed you get about your job or I would get about stand-up.
There was a documentary about the Comedy Store on Sky recently and I watched it.
It's incredible.
It was a beautiful kind of summer's day and I smashed the whole thing.
It was one of the best days I've ever had in my life because it was incredible.
And it evoked this kind of the comedy store from the sort of the 70s and the 80s and Jay Leno and all this.
And it just...
You know, I was like, we need a time machine.
We need to go back to those times at the comedy store.
But this, because I love standup and I kind of, you know, it's, you have to be with people that understand your passions because you can't fake it.
You can't go, let's go to the castle.
If you're not a go to the castle guy, do you know what I mean?
But you're right.
You can be, you can have help to look at the castle.
And then you realize when you get to the castle, that's just a really nice castle.
Yeah.
I wouldn't have come had you not.
Completely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're not staying for ages.
It's a car.
I don't want to look at you.
It's not an RV, mate.
But you start writing.
So on that point of finding your passion and pursuing it, you started writing jokes at 14?
Yeah.
Wow, you've done your research.
Yeah.
Yeah, I had an old computer.
And yeah, I kind of, I watched a Lee Evans video with my mate Craig.
And it blew my mind.
Because when I was a kid, stand-up really wasn't on TV.
That you'd have like a Billy Connolly tape.
You'd have like, have I got news for you?
It was a big show or bottom or...
Shooting stars.
It was that kind of era.
But stand-up wasn't really a thing.
And he was the first sort of person that I'd seen who kind of was just funny, wasn't an alpha.
And I was like, wow, he like, it was mind blowing.
I think I could be.
that's sort of a bit like how I'm funny.
Like, you know what I mean?
And me and Craig just wore that tape out.
We just watched it over and over and over.
And I didn't tell anyone about it.
I just started writing these little kind of jokes and routines and ideas that none of which were any good, but it just became like my little...
It was like my little fun place to go to every so often.
It goes, I'm going to write some of my jokes.
Did you perform them to anybody at that age?
My first ever gig was in Bristol, a place called Virgin Murph.
And I took all these jokes that I've been writing since I was 14 and I whittled it down to my best 20.
And I did it there at Virgin Murph.
I followed a guy.
Who was eating a
Banana with a spoon, singing the theme tune to the Sweeney.
And another bloke that was sort of like, his act was to punch himself in the face.
So in a sense, it didn't really matter how bad my 14-year-old stuff was.
But yeah, so that was it.
And then I kind of, some of it stuck, some of it didn't.
But it was all like, I had this bit about like, how did Captain Kirk get through the entire, I wrote this when I was 14.
But how did Captain Kirk get through all the Star Trek episodes without once flicking Spock's ears?
So that was one of my first, and I sort of think it's all right.
It's not bad.
It's not bad.
But that was the first joke I ever kind of told.
And one of the things I found quite peculiar in your story is that your dad really pushed you to give comedy a go.
Yeah.
And that seems, of all the guests I sit here with, the thing that has typically made them...
Famous or well-known or successful, their parents were usually quite against it and would much rather have them got a quote-unquote real job.
Yes.
So what were you doing at the time?
And yeah, why was your dad supportive of it when, you know, at a time when that's probably not considered a...
Highly profitable, high chance of success career.
Yeah.
I was working at the RAC in Bristol.
I had a part-time job.
And I was also doing stand-up.
Because I started stand-up at university and then finished my degree, went home.
And it was just kind of...
doing probably three gigs a week for, you know, 50 quid a pop or like sometimes a hundred quid a pop, that kind of thing.
And, um, uh, alongside this kind of like shift at the RAC.
And it was, I was kind of like, I'd have a gig in Lincoln and then I'd have to drive back to get to work.
And it was, it was kind of like knackering.
And my dad basically,
I remember, weirdly, not to name drop, but I was talking to Matthew McConaughey about this.
And it's a very similar thing where his dad, when he told his dad he wasn't going to become a lawyer, he was going to become a comedian, an actor.
His dad said, don't half-ass it.
And that was a similar reaction to my dad.
My dad basically was like, right, if you want to do this, you're 21.
Go for it.
Give yourself a year.
Don't stop.
Put everything into it.
And then if it's not happening in a year, you stop, you get a proper job.
And I kind of, I really respected that option that he gave me.
Do you know what I mean?
It was like, I'll be fine.
It was like, don't fuck around.
Properly go for it.
Don't do three gigs a week.
Do five gigs a week.
Just do that.
And then see where you are in a year.
And I was at the Edinburgh Festival.
I had about like eight days left from this kind of like contract.
And my now agent saw me at the Edinburgh Festival have...
Like a really good gig.
And he kind of said, oh, does it always go that well?
And I was like, all the time, you mad, yeah.
But I was doing lots of sort of improvising and stuff like that.
It was quite hit and miss back then.
And then we went for a meal.
He gave me, they used to have a thing called the Comedy Network, where it was like 30 gigs around universities.
And that day, he booked me into these 30 gigs that were, at the time, I still remember the money.
It's £150 per gig.
Spreading out into November.
And, but to work for a comedy company called Avalon, it's one of the biggest kind of comedy producers in the, in the UK.
And then he signed me.
And so it worked.
And then I kind of moved to London and kind of, you know, slowly kind of,
kept on keeping on.
I really, I liked the deadline that my dad gave me.
Do you know what I mean?
Because it was kind of, and I really respected it.
And he had this amazing quote on his office that said something like, I think it's by T.S.
Eliot or T.E.
Eliot that said, those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that all is vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous for they act upon their visions with open eyes and make them happen.
And that
is at the core of my dad.
So he's kind of quite disciplined, but he also has a fuck it, go for it.
But yeah, I just went for it.
But also because I loved it.
And I didn't love working at the RSC and I didn't, I'd finished my degree and I knew what I was doing.
I wanted to do.
§03Transcript — part 3
And I just, I just worked my bollocks off, man.
I did every gig you can imagine, but loved it.
And my brother used to come to them.
We traveled down to Brighton to do 10 minutes.
And, you know, we'd have to sort of bunny hop the car to Reading Station because we didn't fill up.
And, you know, it was real kind of fly by the seat of your pants stuff.
But just...
The best.
It was the best.
It was like, it's the best night out.
You go to Plymouth and you, you know, it's a six hour round journey, but you do 20 minutes and it goes great.
And then the promoter says, Oh, we'll get you back.
And you're like, brilliant.
I go back to Plymouth, you know?
And, um, yeah, it's sort of all worked out.
Something is so interesting when I speak to successful comedians, because
It's one of the purest forms of insanely, I say insanely, but if you were trying to reach a lucrative outcome, one of the insane paths,
one of the most insane, pure followings of one's passion, because...
It seems to be the case that you follow this passion, which doesn't promise to ever pay you that well, or promises no chance of success, and you follow it for years, and you're paid 50 quid, 100 quid.
Yeah.
And then, I mean, I speak to the ones that were successful, right?
Yeah.
But when you look back on that period of your life, and if I was to say, well, like, what are the key things?
You've identified hard work as one of them.
But what are...
are like the key things that made you get here when so many won't get here?
Hard work, luck.
Natural talent, perspiration.
But mostly, and I would say luck is a big thing, luck and hard work are the big ones, and taking your opportunity and having little
kind of moments and always listening to the crowd as well, because it's sort of that thing where certainly as a live comedian, you can't bullshit people.
Like there is, you get a tangible answer every time.
The laughter is yes.
The silence is no.
You just can't fuck with that.
Like that's, that is the, there is a truth to the, to the gig.
If, if they're laughing, it's fine.
If they're not, it ain't.
And that's the big thing, really.
It's just kind of, you know, all great comedians listen to the audience because they're all that matters.
And.
You can be critically lauded.
You can be, you can win awards, you know, but ultimately if, if you don't hear laughter, you won't be here.
And it's, and you have to have new stuff.
That's the big thing.
You have to, you have to make them laugh and constantly, constantly renew yourself.
That's the thing.
To kind of just stick around.
You make the audience laugh.
They all burst out laughing.
They clap.
They say, oh, you're amazing.
After the gig, they say, we're going to rebook you.
You're the best person ever.
Does that impact your self-esteem in a positive way?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Imagine that.
But yeah, it's, yeah, it's the best, man.
It's just, but that feeling when you do the Brighton Comedia and you're 20 and you do 10 minutes and it goes really well.
And Stephen Grant, who is still the booker at the Brighton Comedia, says, oh, we'll get you back for a 20.
That journey home.
That's the best.
Or someone says, are you going to do the, we're going to get you back to host the Lincoln student night.
And you're like, yeah, do you want to do it monthly?
Yes.
And you build up this like little following in Lincoln because it's, it's, it's, of course your self-esteem is just up there because you feel like you're,
a youth team footballer that's breaking into the first team.
That's how it must feel like.
You feel like you're kind of Phil Foden and you get these little opportunities.
It's probably a similar thing with footballers.
Like what makes Phil Foden?
Probably that he has natural talent.
He works his ass off.
And when there's opportunities, he's kind of clinical enough to take advantage of them.
Do you know what I mean?
And learn from mistakes.
And comedy is constantly about learning from mistakes because you go, you do new material, it doesn't work, you tweak it, you tweak it, you tweak it until you get something that kind of makes them laugh.
One would then assume that comedians have like just tremendously high self-esteem.
If they're laughing, yeah.
And the interesting as well is how quickly it crumbles down if it goes badly.
And I've got a friend of mine, Al Pitcher, who's a comic in Sweden.
And we talk about this a lot where when you're low, irrespective of what you've done before, you just feel like such deep, deep shame that you've been unable to kind of make them laugh.
But then that makes you work hard and go again because you know the excitement you get from making them laugh.
So it's this, it's an unhealthy treadmill.
But at the end of that treadmill, there is this incredible cherry.
Deep, deep shame.
Just because it's embarrassing.
It's like you've tried to make...
Like even this, I'm really enjoying this.
It's really fun, but it's very serious.
And we've got like a little mini audience over there I can hear.
And every little laugh, my brain's going, that's good.
And when they're not, I'm like, oh, fucking hell.
Yeah, totally.
Just because you sort of feel like, you know, it's sort of that weird thing for me.
Laughter is truth and victory and silence is failure.
But then the interesting thing about that is when you watch a performance, you actually realize that.
Of another comic, you go, wow, there's real power in the silence, actually, which took me a long time to realize, because I was very, initially, just keep it up, keep it up, keep it up.
And then you kind of, you know, you watch someone like Chappelle, for example, and you go, he's a real master of the silence, and you don't lose...
him.
And you're not away.
You're captivated.
But it takes a really long time to feel that you've earned the right to captivate an audience.
But there's captivation in silence.
But who fucking thinks they're captivating?
That's the hardest thing I find is to kind of, you can never know whether you've been captivating or dull.
Because the sound is the same.
Do you know what I mean?
It's sort of that weird thing of like, I mean, I don't come off stage going, was that captivating or dull?
Yeah, yeah.
But hopefully, yeah.
It's really interesting.
So when you have conversations like this, because there is no, like, there's not huge amounts of laughter because it's a serious conversation.
I love chats like this.
This is the best, man.
But yeah, go on.
That's what I was basically asking was, when we have comedians come here, we've had Russell Kane, we've had obviously Jimmy Carr.
They do make a lot of jokes.
Even before we're filming, I think, you know, Jack will like put the microphone close to Jimmy Carr's mouth.
And I think he said something like, just keep it like a fist away.
And he said, that's what your mother said.
And it's almost like a Tourette's of humor.
And I wonder how you kind of get through life like that.
And it almost feels like uncontrollable.
Yeah, honestly, that is the best description of it.
Like there's a joke that I think sums up comedians'brains the best by a brilliant comedian called Mitch Hedberg.
He's no longer with us.
One of the greatest comedians of all time.
And this joke sums up the brain that comedians have.
And I'll do his impression.
If there's fans of Mitch out there, forgive me for this.
But it works better if you try and do it as him.
He kind of goes, I mumble, man.
I mumble a lot off stage.
I'm a mumbler.
So I'll be with my friend.
And I'll say something and he'll be like, what?
And I'll say it again a little bit louder.
And he'll be like, I didn't hear you.
And then the third time I'll say it and he still can't hear me.
So I'll say it to him.
But now I'm yelling at him.
That tree is far away.
And that's what it is.
It's this thing in his head that's gone, oh, the tree's far away.
And it's a joke about the mania.
Like, what were you on about?
I was just saying that tree's over there.
It's not.
It's further away than, and it's that thing.
The amount of times I've been with my wife and you sort of say something.
And she's like, what?
Fuck you.
I saw this bin in Primrose Hill the other day that generally said, protect, um,
our birds this was the line on the bin protect our birds there's a picture of like a a bird
and respect their way of life and i just went into this thing of like i don't know you show respect to a fucking but like in my head i'm just kind of like i didn't know there were disgruntled chaffinches all over primrose hill i've never seen that on the news of just kind of going
today a bird was the victim of of uh you know of somebody attacking him and my brain was just like whirring around with this and she can see
I'm kind of full zombie eyes just gone.
Shit, what are you on about?
Go, I don't know, fucking bin.
And it's sort of that.
That's kind of the way that comics brains are, I think.
You spend a lot of time playing around in your head.
And then you kind of go, oh, that might be something, you know, like we would the other day.
I was talking to a friend about sperm donors and somebody had had, there was this website and on that you could sort of get, you could get your batch.
And one of them was like, you know,
He was like six foot four, Swedish, keen reader, and you're really good job.
And you're like, yeah, that's exactly what I'd say if I was trying to flog Spunk.
Do you know what I mean?
You're not going to kind of go, bit of a loner, comes in every Wednesday.
We've had to stop him.
But my point being, we were having a chat about sperm donating and my brain was sort of off in this sort of fantasy land.
Where's the bit?
But I just found it so funny that I don't know any true six foot four high achieving intellectuals that kind of just get a nip out to a spath into a pot.
Do you know what I mean?
It doesn't exist.
Everyone's Tinder buyer.
Totally.
But the point is you spend a lot of time in that kind of fun zone.
And I think that's the brain that a lot of comics have.
Speaking of that brain spiraling, after you've done a gig or, you know,
Can you remember a time where you like go on Google, you go on the Daily Mail or something, Twitter, and you look at articles of what people are saying of you and it has a really profound like negative impact on your, what you think about yourself and you start to question yourself?
I don't do it.
Like I, I...
Came up in the days of MySpace and whatnot.
And that was, I've never been on Twitter.
I've never been on Facebook.
I do a bit of Instagram.
It's the same with reviews.
It's a very funny thing.
You get a five-star review and your brain's like, exactly.
Yep.
Correct.
You get a shitty review and you're like, what the fuck?
And you realize.
That you have to pay no heed to it.
The only, I mean, it's flattering and it's great and it's lovely to get nice reviews and anyone who says otherwise is bullshitting, but it's with social media, you can't, it's too much to kind of,
seek validation from people, particularly in the world that we live in at the minute, where you're having to check to see if you've been correct.
You're not going to be right for everybody.
And some people will not like a joke or some people suit, you know, you just have to try and stay where you are.
§04Transcript — part 4
So I've definitely had times like that.
When I was younger and it just crushes you.
And you realize, actually, all I'm doing is paying attention to the really negative things that people say.
And there'll be like, you know, one out of 50 that's super horrible, rather than focusing on them.
on the kind things and you realize actually my brain focuses on the negative and you go yeah they're right actually yeah yeah yeah yeah i am that yeah yeah yeah correct correct correct it just doesn't make me
a better more functional human being it just it hurts so i don't do it do you know what i mean so i just kind of but people must have said to you your agents your manager said oh get on twitter that'll help
Yeah, well, what I do and what I love about social media is I like making things and then putting it on there.
And so putting clips of stand-up or the TV show or whatever.
But I don't...
I'm lucky.
I have a...
If I want to do comedy, I can go to a comedy club and...
it's a dark room and I can howl or I can scream or I can be silly.
I can do whatever I want.
It's in a comedy club.
Social media is the worst comedy club in the world because people aren't there to laugh.
Do you know what I mean?
Everyone there is there to laugh.
And there's this sort of lovely bonding experience.
We're here for a reason.
Whereas social media, some people, most people in the world are just up for a hoot, but some people...
Are looking to be angry or they're looking to be enraged.
So it just seems naive to put humor into such a volatile club.
Can you imagine if it was a club called Twitter, right?
Hey, do you want to come play Twitter?
Can you imagine how hard that comedy club would be?
Do you know what I mean?
And so I just don't, I don't bother with it, but I like making things that are finished and then putting them out.
But I kind of literally emailed them to my agent.
than say, oh, we should put this bit from the show on.
I don't even know.
I haven't got my logins.
I don't know.
Really?
Yeah.
What a nice way to live.
Yeah, but, and also maybe it's because I'm 41 and I kind of came up in an era where stand-up was still playing clubs.
If you're a young guy now,
it must be completely different.
And there's loads of kind of great comics that have kind of come up through social media or through podcasts.
And I love that because there's particularly podcasts, I think, with like young comics, there's a real air of punk about it where you kind of go in, I'm not going to wait for TV to give me anything.
I'm going to make my own thing.
And then people gravitate to that.
And, uh, and it's, it, that's your thing.
And, and you, you can't mess with that.
Whereas I love that.
I love the fact that people aren't going to be waiting for TV to anoint them, but I was very lucky that I was just doing live gigs.
And then when I was 26,
after having done stand-up since I was 18, somebody said, do you want to go on TV?
And I kind of went the traditional path, as it were, and kind of social media grew alongside it, but I was never, I never needed it.
Which is not to say I couldn't have been bigger if I cultivated it, but the content I like making,
exists in the club and it's finished when I do a Netflix special or it's finished when I do a TV show.
It's in a state of flux when I'm in a comedy club.
It's in a constant state of becoming.
And the problem was...
social media, it makes everything finite and tangible.
And sometimes it's not.
Sometimes jokes evolve or routines evolve.
If you put it out there, it might be rubbish or it might be ill-conceived.
It might upset people.
But by the end of it,
having worked in it in a comedy club, it might say exactly what you want it to say.
It's a really sort of holy space, the comedy club.
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Versus Twitter.
As a comedian, do you ever feel a sense of imposter syndrome?
Yeah, I think I don't know any great comic that doesn't.
I'm talking to Billy Connolly.
Billy Connolly used to get nervous.
Eat Billy Connolly.
Was worried that the audience wouldn't love him, that he wasn't worth their evening.
Billy Connolly.
If Billy Connolly is thinking that, then, you know, you know, all of us are.
And it's, I think if you get to that stage where you're like, this is going to be great.
I know it's going to be great.
It probably won't.
You have to have a healthy degree of,
of imposter syndrome in order to be the best version of yourself.
Because you have to kind of, you know, you have to burst into that party and be the best, funniest you, because that's what's on the ticket.
That's the thing.
And the only way to do that is kind of hard work, you know.
But to just rock up, for example, to an arena tour, having done no kind of warm-ups, it'll be fine.
It fucking won't.
Arrogance destroys stand-up.
You kind of have to go to small clubs before you start doing a tour to kind of know you're okay to get rid of that.
And without imposter syndrome, you don't grow as an artist.
Do you know what I mean?
But it can be tough to deal with psychologically, right?
Because it sounds like it must be...
similar to living with a sense of like self-scrutiny, which can be quite unhealthy.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess the,
The key thing is to, you've got to, I think you have to leave on your own terms.
Do you know what I mean?
As in stop, there's a while where this won't be healthy forever because it is a strange way to live with that.
Do you feel that?
You feel like it won't be?
Yeah, just because you just kind of go, there would just come a time where you're,
you're just, you're not as sharp as you once were.
And you're like, ah, fine.
I'll just go work in local radio.
But like, like not, that's not a dig at anyone in local radio.
You do important stuff.
Keep those weather checks coming, but doing kind of arenas.
For a long time is, you know, I've been doing them since like 2012 now.
And that is a crazy level of pressure because you sort of do, we do, I do them in like a month long block in the UK and it's kind of right.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know, and then you get through it and then you're like, okay, go again, go again.
And that isn't necessarily the healthiest way to be forever.
Does it have mental health implications on you?
Because if you're living with that kind of internal fluctuation all the time and that anticipation, those feelings of self-doubt that, you know, they say that anxiety in particular is like concern about the future.
If you're constantly...
thinking about the future, that moment in that arena, do you feel anxious at all?
Well, the funny thing is the only time you don't feel anxious is when you're doing stand-up.
But weirdly, that's the respite.
But leading up to it, it's nerve-wracking.
But as soon as you step on the stage, you know exactly what you're going to do.
And it's fun.
It's the most fun in the world.
And then it's the leading up to it and the afterwards.
Was that all right?
Was that fine?
It was good, right?
Fine.
You know, I think you sort of just make your peace with it.
And like you say, it's...
It leaves you mentally fragile, but I don't know of another way of doing it.
Have you suffered with anxiety, though?
Oh, yeah, massively.
I like it sort of...
But I think it's sort of that thing, like, right, I have these gigs, but don't do this work.
I'm going to look like a fool.
People are going to boo me.
There's going to be anger, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So you go, so that fear drives you to write and perform and get a show that's good enough, right?
And I've not found anything that was a useful motivator.
But like you say, it's a tough way of being.
Like Johnny Wilkinson, I remember seeing this about him.
Johnny Wilkinson kicked the winning...
I don't know rugby, but the winning World Cup kick.
Yeah, right.
And as the ball sort of soared over,
Apparently, he said to himself, his brain went, you nearly missed that.
As it went over, like, and he's won the World Cup.
And the next day he was training and he was kicking goals again to ensure that he didn't make that mistake.
And unfortunately,
For him, that's what makes him magnificent.
You know what I mean?
And I think it's sort of that thing where you go, the older you get, you can try and adapt it and try and figure out, you know, and we're all in a constant state of becoming as regards to sort of mental health and trying to,
figure out a healthier way of being the best you without it being so draining.
But he scored the winning goal, the World Cup, you know, and it's sort of, it's kind of shitty, but that determination is what sort of made him.
And it's kind of,
I guess the thing is, it's about kind of ensuring that you have enough kindness to yourself around that so that you kind of give yourself a break from time to time.
And that the overall picture is happy.
Yeah, but I don't know of a better motivator than fear to make good stuff.
Like if it exists, I mean, can you recognize that?
Do you have, what is there another thing that you have?
I guess excitement.
If you could turn fear into excitement, that would be a healthier way of doing it.
Yeah.
But I just don't find it as, oh yeah, it's so much fun because we'll go there and it's going to be great.
But then you wouldn't do the prep, right?
As you say, if I was excited, I wouldn't, I'd probably neglect.
Well, that would be the thing.
So that, so you'd have like six months of joy.
Yeah.
And then you do the thing, it'd be fucking awful.
And then, whereas at least this way you have six months of tension and then you have joy and then the kind of joy lasts throughout the tour.
And then after the tour.
And then after the tour, you go back to fear to get there.
But I don't know.
But I don't have the answers and I don't know what works for other people.
But for me, it is that.
And it's something that I'm trying to address.
Which is?
Living in fear too much.
Living in fear too much or putting too much responsibility on the thing.
But I don't know of another way.
And I'm sort of, you know.
Seeing people and trying to figure it out, but I don't know.
What motivates you, for example?
I completely get it.
It's a trade-off, right?
If you want to achieve the goal, you need this unfortunate.
§05Transcript — part 5
I always think this.
I think everything has a cost.
Yeah.
And everything good in my life that I love comes with a cost.
It could even be a financial cost or it could be some other type of sacrifice.
And those that have risen the highest in certain professions, it's so obvious to see the cost in their lives.
It's much more obvious than everyone else.
So I sit here with my guests.
I sit with Eddie Hearn.
He's built the number one boxing promotion company, but he never ever sees his wife and kids.
And he's like, it's like unsatisfiable as a human.
Yeah.
You know, that's why his book is called Relentless.
And I get, well, that's the clear, quote unquote, cost potentially.
Yeah.
And yeah, with what you're saying, being an arena performer,
one would think that you spend a lot of time in a certain mental place, which is not always great.
Yeah, but then I was just thinking then,
I was thinking about,
The fascinating thing about life is you have these, so for example, we did 10 nights at the Albert Hall, which is like a world record.
It's mental.
It was extraordinary that kind of little me that used to sit in the back of mom and dad's Ford Fiesta, watching the raindrops go down the window.
I did 10 nights at the Albert Hall.
It was mental.
And it was fun.
It was brilliant.
It was great.
But it was like, you're playing snooker, you know, get all the reds, then knock the rest of them down, done.
You know what I mean?
But it's that lovely kind of controlled snooker brain.
Joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, end of the show.
Hooray.
Yeah.
Go again.
Right.
But it was fun.
That exists from a sort of dopamine level on a very similar level as...
Being on my stag do with my cousins in Vegas and hearing my cousin Lewis tell a story.
And so I think it's my way of figuring it out is to have as many of those dopamine hits of joy, whether it's good food, good company,
travel, books, music, whatever.
So you're kind of constantly feeding yourself.
Like, because if you just, that's the big realization I've had that if you only try and get happiness from work, for me, it doesn't work to sit around and hope that your life outside of work can compete with this joy that you get from work.
The only way you can do it is to surround yourself.
with people that you think are fantastic or experiences that you think are fantastic.
And it can even be little things.
It's just like, you know, like we did some gigs in Dubai and we went to a water park every day and I'm 41 and I went with my friends who are all big, big lads.
And we were on this rubber dinghy and we kept going down this slide.
We honestly, it was the joy, the silliness of the day led into the fun of the gig.
And I remember reading a thing about Chappelle, that Chappelle, when he's on tour, he brings his pals, he brings friends along so that he's...
he's sort of living, the joy of life is connected with the joy of work.
He's never sort of sat backstage with his notepad, kind of waiting for an hour and a half to go on.
And if that's something I'm trying to do, I'm trying to kind of involve people more in kind of work and be less kind of, you need to stay away, I need to concentrate, you know?
To blend the two.
And you kind of totally, yeah.
And you talk about this in the same way with you, a couple of moments ago, you talked about
living for the week and then kind of like compartmentalizing that and then having your life on the weekend and how that doesn't feel like the best way to live either because you have five days of misery and two days of like pissed, you know, getting, trying to find the...
But I think also the pandemic has recalibrated a lot of people that you actually go, we were kind of locked away from each other and we were locked away from experience.
And the happiness of something appearing from nowhere.
Those masks.
magical nights down the pub or watching football or listening to music or having a barbecue with friends where a moment unintentionally becomes a memory.
And we were kind of robbed of those social moments that created memories because we were sat with this disease lurking, not knowing where our lives were going to become.
We kind of felt like we were sort of immune from something.
This heavy happening to us.
And it didn't, it happened to everybody.
And it feels like because of that, we are now kind of coming out of the cave, as it were, with a real desire to find as much
majesty in the universe as possible.
But I genuinely feel a lot of people, like audiences post-pandemic, like even British audiences, who are, you know, by a stretch, the toughest crowds in the world, like by a stretch.
It's that lovely English common and cunt make me laugh.
You know what I mean?
Whereas like in America, they're already up.
You do comedy clubs in America, they stand up as you walk in.
You know what I mean?
And...
But British crowds now, because people want connection and they want experience because it was kind of robbed of us.
So it feels like it could be a really glorious time.
And like you were saying with the tour that you've got planned, what a fantastic time.
way of doing that rather than just, I could just do, you could just do a Q and a, but you're putting, you know, you're making what sounds like a really pulsating live theater show.
It's going to blow people's minds.
And that's what I want to do.
That's what audiences want.
There's a friend of mine called Alex Edelman who said, I like stuff that's ambitious and finished.
And that's kind of where I want to go.
And I feel like that's where audiences want to be.
They want to see something that's going to rock them, you know, and blow them away.
What a target to aim for, to a thing that's going to be, I'm going to try and make a thing that's the best night out that anyone's ever had.
One of the things you said was, just a couple of moments ago, was that you've seen someone to help you with that kind of fear, living in fear state that we described.
What do you mean by you've seen someone?
Oh, just a bit of therapy to, yeah, try and...
Have like sort of little coping mechanisms.
You know, you sort of just get, you get far enough into it where you go, maybe just have a bit of help now to recognize kind of moments of mania and how to kind of manage them a bit better.
So nothing super exciting.
It's not a shaman or, you know, it's not any kind of ayahuasca or mushrooms.
It's just a bloke in a,
in an office.
So what was your intention when you went to Bloke in the Office?
Just to kind of make it a bit easier.
so that you weren't loading it too much.
So you can still like, you know, work efficiently without it becoming debilitating.
Because I think that's the thing probably a lot of people suffer from, that by using fear as a motivator, sometimes...
you're probably losing 20% of your potential through kind of panic.
So yeah, it was sort of, God, I sound like a fucking robot when I said that, but you know what I mean?
It was sort of that thing of like, just trying to figure out, okay, is there another way of doing this?
Was there?
Uh, yeah.
It's, but even recognizing when you're, um, just a bit full on and just kind of go, all right, just calm down.
But I'm a real sucker for like little quotes, man.
Or I was weirdly, I'm interviewing Will Smith on Thursday, which is mad for 10 minutes.
I've got a 10 minute interview with Will Smith.
I'm so jealous.
They, they emailed me and said, Oh, cause we have the same publisher.
Like Will Smith's coming to town.
I was like, can I get on the podcast?
He's like, he's got no time.
Yeah.
I'd love 10 minutes.
Well, but this is it.
Well, I'll sneak you along, man.
Let's do it.
I see we can double up.
But, but.
I was listening to the beginning of his book and it's a brilliant story about his dad made him and his brother build a wall.
And it's just this is very, very simple analogy.
You've probably read it.
It's just brick by brick.
And that's particularly when you're making a TV show and you're writing topical jokes.
Sometimes, well, sometimes it's really hard to make stories interesting and to write jokes about things that are going on.
And in that instance this week, that really helped me brick by brick.
And I'm able to kind of go, okay, yeah, cool.
I can get stuff from that.
You know, I'm very much a, from a philosophical point of view or a therapy point of view, I need...
Pointers and tips to make me better.
I'm not a enjoy every sandwich kind of a guy because it's a fucking sandwich.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like being the sandwich, just it's a fucking sandwich.
Like I need, I'm very much kind of Eastern philosophy of like, okay, how do we, how do we make ourselves better?
I love the idea of
kind of sort of self-improvement and being the best you.
Um,
So I find quotes help that, you know?
And even talking to somebody like that I am, like a bit of an expert, he'll say something or you'll say something and you kind of unravel a thing.
And even like what we're doing now, sort of having a chat.
About the process.
And I have my friend, James Bay, the singer, we, particularly during COVID, we spoke a lot about
everything and about creativity and talking to like-minded individuals about the pursuit of a joke or a song.
Or any kind of piece of art, I find really, really...
Interesting.
I love it.
I'm so interested in the way that musicians create.
I'm so envious because they sit in a cool room or they go to like the studio and they kind of write and they jam and they riff and they create a thing and then they perform it.
Whereas the musicians I know are very envious of the way the comedians create, which is you go in front of a crowd.
And you create with, not for, you know, it would be like the comparison, like Chris Martin going in front of a crowd and chiseling and going, it was all blue.
Nope.
Okay.
It was all green.
Nope.
It was all yellow, yellow, right.
I'll do yellow tomorrow.
And it sort of is that kind of process.
So talking to different creatives,
or anyone who is sort of an expert in managing yourself is something that I find really comforting or, or, you know, like
even I've really gone to this guy, Andrew Huberman at the minute, he's like a professor from Stanford and there's all these kind of,
neuro-linguistic things you can do to help yourself, you know, like cold showers and all this and Wim Hof breathing and all this kind of stuff.
Does that stuff work for you?
Maybe it's psychosomatic, but yeah, it feels like it does.
Do you know what I mean?
You feel like you've done your...
It's like going to the gym.
It just feels like medicine for you, doesn't it?
You always feel like no one enjoys going to the gym.
You know, I imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger did, but most people are just like, right, do it.
And it feels like a nice little tick for your soul.
And it just,
It feels like therapy is almost, well, it's exactly that, isn't it?
It's a workout for your brain.
Or having a conversation like this is a really nice workout for your brain, where we're both in kind of like a strange dreamlike state, where we're kind of having a deep conversation.
We're kind of riffing.
But somehow, without planning any of this, we're getting to a deeper place.
And yet it's very strange because there's people driving, listening to us right now, which is very weird.
It's weird, isn't it?
Do you know what I mean?
It's so weird, yeah.
And well, that's the fascinating thing.
In the future as well.
In the future, man.
Yeah.
But you're in the now, aren't you?
Derek, left there.
But it's sort of that fascinating thing that you let people travel to work with you.
It's the coolest.
Yeah, yeah.
It feels like a huge, you know, especially because it comes out on Monday as well.
Yeah.
Which is a particularly like interesting day to be in their ear at 6am.
Yeah.
It's so funny, is it?
What are the podcasts you listen to?
What are you going to?
If you lock me up, if you find out, like, I listen to like serial killer podcasts.
Do you?
Yeah, like Theranos, The Trial of Elizabeth Holmes, like crime and serial killers tends to be my like go-to.
§06Transcript — part 6
Yeah.
And do you know what?
It's actually, I probably know why now, because I'm so fascinated.
The reason why I do this podcast, I'm so fascinated by people and their psychology.
And for me,
criminals and serial killers are the most extreme and fascinating amongst us.
So I would love to have a podcast where I could interview serial killers and be like, why did you do that?
Do you know?
Yeah.
It's basically what I'm doing now.
Slightly different fascinations.
Yeah.
It's just, I get so fascinated by them.
I'm watching these serial killer documentaries, trying to understand the pattern in what made them like from their childhood and their dads at this, and then kill on the playground, punched them.
And then they just started killing people.
Yeah.
So yeah.
What about you?
Sort of more fantasy football stuff, really.
Oh, interesting.
No, I kind of, yeah.
No, no, no.
Yeah, it's because a friend of mine does one.
Yeah, I listen to Tim Ferriss and Andrew Huberman.
Those are my go-tos.
Mark Maron I really like.
Yeah, yeah.
She has some really great interviews.
You know, I love, there's a brilliant interview with Maren and Seinfeld, which is one of my favorites.
Like I really got into Jerry Seinfeld during the lockdown, which is kind of so late.
Do you know what I mean?
I just feel like I've gone, hey, radio had a good.
But...
But yeah, I kind of, yeah, that's my thing.
I like hearing people that I don't know and have in my mind blown.
That's what I like about podcasts.
I'm not into serial, I find it too, do you know what I mean?
People say that.
Too icky for me.
And you call yourself murderinos, don't you?
Is that what?
I don't know.
That's the name.
If you're a big fan, you're a murderino.
Oh, really?
Wow.
I fit in.
Yeah.
One of the things you were touching on there about these kind of practical hacks and quotes and stuff that allow you to kind of get to a better place reminded me of something that I read about you regarding your pre-
performance routine and superstitions.
Yeah.
Before you're going up on stage and there's, you know, 15,000 people out there and they're all got their arms folded and demanding you to make them laugh.
What are you doing backstage to get yourself in the state you need to, to perform at your optimal?
So if it's arenas, we get football and we just have a kick around.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
So we just sort of do keepy-ups and you've got to do 10 before you go on stage.
Between...
Oh, okay.
So me, Kumar and Pete, and then Steve, and we've got to do 10 keepy-ups before we go on stage.
You can't really do that if you're doing a small club.
There's a brilliant comedy club called Top Secret in London, and it's very, very small.
And before that, I'm literally in an alley that stinks of piss looking at notes.
So it's always looking at notes, thinking what you're going to do, sort of trying to be calm to listen to that inner voice that says, hey, you could also do this.
And that kind of weird, kind of funny that just appears from nowhere.
That's always the best way of starting a gig.
And that's it really.
But there isn't really a psyching up process.
I like watch, if I'm doing a big show, I'll watch my friend who's supporting me.
See what, get, sneak in the back of the theater or the arena and get a feel for them.
And then just go for it.
Why keep you up?
Is that just a tradition or is it like a...
No, it's just sort of if you're...
Yeah, there's maybe it's just that weird thing of like, right, I've done 10.
I can, you know, and then if you don't do 10 the first time and it falls, you got to do 20.
And if it falls 30.
So do you know what I mean?
So you have to do it.
And then it becomes this weird, like little thing.
You just don't want that in the back of your head.
You can't do a big gig going, shit, man, I only did 24 keepy-ups.
So it's superstition.
Yeah, like, yeah, and I just,
And I kind of like, I spend a lot of time with my tour manager, Kumar, the mighty Kumar Kamalagaran,
and just chatting about stuff and just being kind of loose and sort of, yeah, just sort of getting in the zone of being silly and just talking about...
Any old bollocks to try and sort of get things going or, you know, it's like if my brother comes on tour with me, that's always fun because it's kind of, there'll just be a bit of, a bit of nothing kind of happening.
And like, yeah, so I like sort of just hanging out and chatting, talking bollocks and sort of loosening yourself up really.
That's kind of what I do beforehand.
This is a very, I don't know why this question came into my head, but it tends to be the kind of things I ask on this podcast.
What was the lowest moment of your life?
What was the lowest moment of my life?
I think when my granddad died, that was like, I was, it was, yeah, it was awful.
And I was incredibly lucky because I, how was I?
I was thinking I was 36 when granddad died.
And he, I'd never had anyone in my family, um,
Well, my cousin Shane had died when I was 18.
And, but I'd never been to a funeral.
So it was Shane and granddad.
So there'd been this huge gap where nobody died.
And, you know, this sort of beautiful family that I belong to, they were all kind of there.
And my granddad was sort of like unbelievably...
Special kind of man.
He was four foot nine and just funny and warm and just like a quintessential granddad.
But like he got me into football.
So I used to watch football with granddad and watch match of the day.
And he'd make me and Daniel toast, you know, that thick white bread.
And he'd kind of like make us some granddad toast.
And he's just a brilliant, brilliant,
soul that just was such a big part of my life that he, and they used to come and see us quite a lot.
And whenever he was there, I don't know, he was, you were just bathed in his love.
Like him and him and my nan just adored me and I adored them.
And it was, they used to have a poster of me on there.
On their wall.
And they used to, and Nan used to keep all the reviews I'd get so that she'd put them up.
Like, and it was just that lovely thing.
It was really, some lovely reviews and some shitty ones too.
And it was just like, Nan, why are you, don't take that.
What are you talking about?
But, but they, and they used to watch me on TV and I come from a family where
It's inconceivable that I could be on TV from the family that I come from.
It's, you know, it's like going to the moon.
But because Nan and Granny used to go, we'd watch you on the TV.
We'd watch it with the volume down because you'd swear.
So they would watch me.
When I was doing Good News or I was on Mock the Week, with the volume down, it's our wrestler on the box and just sort of see me, like that.
But they were so...
Through every part of my life, I felt utter love for my nan and my granddad and they were around forever.
It's that thing where...
I don't know, for whatever reason, he was like this sage.
And there's a beautiful photo of my cousin Shane, who died when he was 18.
And he was on a scrambler motorbike.
And our granddad, when we were about eight, used to look at that and just go, there you go.
That is the bravest bloody boy you've ever seen in your life.
And it was like...
Sort of a really interesting story because he had cancer and he died of cancer.
And he went on this sort of scrambler and he did this race and he completed it, even though he was really not well at all.
And our granddad told that with such pride.
And it was this beautiful story.
And that's what, and you knew Grandad told similar stories, obviously not as beautiful as that, about all of us.
And yeah, when he died, it was just this sledgehammer to your heart where you just go, Jesus, one of the, one of the,
one of the good souls isn't here anymore.
And yet this is the fascination of life.
I was in Mexico when it happened and my mum rang me up and said, granddad's dead.
I was like,
Just low.
Literally seconds later, there was a Mexican man just going, and it was just like, fuck me, the universe is funny, man.
So it was like utter sadness.
And then somebody, and it was, yeah, it was just this weird,
like moment where you're like going, fucking really, really.
So yeah, that was the, that was definitely an unbelievably low moment.
And yet weirdly became his funeral, this beautiful moment where you were, like I said at the beginning, where you feel privileged to belong to the blood you belong to.
You know, I've never done who do you think you are?
I know who I am.
I'm, you know, I know where I come from and I know my people and I feel proud to belong to those people.
And the funeral of my granddad was just this reminder of,
the excellence of my family and how proud and how much we all love each other.
So from that deep sadness came this reflection of my granddad.
And you realize,
that everyone in this room were there because of his brilliance.
So it was this kind of weirdly bittersweet moment, you know?
And my cousin Stuart wore a leather jacket and looked like fucking Lovejoy.
And nobody understood.
And everyone's like, why are you wearing a leather jacket?
Oh, I know, I didn't have a suit.
And we were carrying granddad in a coffin.
And Danny was like, nice jacket, Stu.
And our fucking shoulders start going because it's like, you know, like, oh, mate.
And everyone's like, are they going to laugh?
And we're like, fucking hold it together, hold it.
And then, yeah, six weeks later, my nan died.
And it was horrific.
Six weeks later?
Yeah, six weeks later.
And then we went to the...
Went to the funeral again and Stuart rocked up with that same leather jacket.
And you're like, fuck me, man.
And you could see everybody just looking down going, don't laugh.
Why is he wearing this fucking leather?
He literally rocked up like Hasselhoff.
You're like, put a suit on.
But it was weirdly funny.
And you could hear everyone go, fucking needs to wear a fucking leather jacket on.
I go, Jesus Christ, what's fucking wrong with it, man?
Like it was all flapping and that.
But, and I, I had to do the eulogy for my granddad as well.
And that is something I put deep, deep, deep, deep time into to make it.
And I, you know, and obviously you can't get it right.
You can't express what he meant to you.
But yeah, that was the, that was a long answer to the lowest moment.
But yeah.
They say people can pass away from heartbreak.
Yeah.
Is, for your grandmother to die six weeks following...
Yeah, I think, yeah, I think they would, you know, joined at the hip.
Yeah, they used to just kind of...
Yeah, maybe it was that.
It was just kind of...
Yeah, it was just...
But also, they were such constants, and I just wasn't...
§07Transcript — part 7
I'd never really been exposed to death, and it was just this kind of, like...
For it to arrive quite late in your life.
It was just a real like, whoa, yeah.
And then you've suddenly lost your nan and your granddad who had kind of, like my nan in particular is just
such a lovely, she's got proper sort of blue, grey, owly eyes, you know, and she's always like tucking her sort of shirt down and she'd just come in and just tell you little, she goes,
Just weird little shit.
So I remember doing my dissertation.
She was staying around her house.
And she's like, what are you doing?
I said, I'm doing a dissertation now.
And she's like, what about?
I said, it was about whether it's right or wrong to advertise to children.
And my nan went, it's not.
Like that.
I kind of went, well, I've got to do 10,000.
So, you know.
It's not though, is it?
Come on, come and have your tea.
I can't just put it's not Nancy Vale.
I've got to do this.
But she was very strange.
We used to make flapjacks together as kids, when I was a kid, and she was obviously my nan.
But we didn't like flapjacks.
And we used to just make them as a thing and then put them in the bin.
Fucking weird.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
And the reason we kept doing it is because it really annoyed my mum.
Because she's like, what are you doing?
Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?
And then she would get the flapjacks out the bin.
And that was funny, watching my mum eat flapjacks from a bin.
I got a weird family, man.
But, yeah, those were the...
I wonder if she did die from heartache.
I don't know.
I mean, she...
You know, they weren't particularly well towards the end of their life as well.
They sort of had kind of, you know, certainly the beginnings of dementia.
So, yeah, it was kind of, you know, it's that horrible thing where...
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's just kind of yuck, isn't it?
You know.
How about you?
What was the lowest moment of your life?
Am I allowed to ask?
Yeah.
The lowest moment of my life.
Good question.
Is it shitty to ask you?
No, it's not.
If I can ask someone else, they have to ask me.
I don't even, it's a really interesting question.
I think it would probably be, oh no, I know when it is.
Well, it's the one that kind of stands out to me as really, really sucking.
So my grandmother dying was one of them, but I wasn't close to her.
Right.
So it was just actually seeing my dad upset, seeing your like dad cry for the first time was very like, oh.
Yeah, that isn't that, if you, have you got a strong dad?
Yeah, strong, yeah.
Never seen him be emotional.
Yeah, that's the weirdest thing, isn't it?
Quiet, passive, just.
And then, you know, to see him cry is...
Yeah.
That's very difficult to understand as a kid.
And then the other one is actually when my dad called me into his bedroom and told me he didn't love my mum.
Oh, wow.
And that they were going to get a divorce.
And they didn't get a divorce.
They're still together now.
But at seven, I think I was, when he said that to me, it was like earth, like foundation shattering information that I couldn't.
I don't know why I always remember that.
I don't know why I always recall that one, you know.
It's like I could never forget that moment in my life.
What are you meant to do with that at seven?
Fucking exactly.
Especially when it doesn't even happen.
But their relationship for me was so toxic as a kid that I actually got to a point later.
Where I'd come to terms with the illusion being burst that your parents actually might not stick together.
And then I was actually willing them to get a divorce because they were just screaming at each other too much.
Yeah.
I think that's probably, for some reason, those two moments came to mind.
If I told you that you could never write a joke again and you could never perform again.
Yeah.
What would happen to you?
I don't know.
It's...
Hmm.
I think you'd go back to, I'd end up being what I was when I was younger, of just desperately trying to make people laugh and just sort of, I'd just be a bit of a nuisance at Tesco.
Do you know what I mean?
When you kind of get in your shop and you're like, are you all right?
I was looking at the sperm donor the other day.
Oh, he used to live six foot four.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's kind of, you know, so I think.
Why?
I don't know.
I just like making people laugh.
I like the, I like, it makes me feel good.
And it, it, um.
Yeah, it just makes me feel good.
I kind of, like you say, it feels like you're giving them a socially accepted orgasm every time they laugh.
So you're literally going around making people come.
Why don't...
In Tesco.
Yeah, I know.
Imagine making someone come in Tesco.
But why don't I...
Every little help.
Here we go.
But why don't...
That's the new head for Christmas.
I'm sorry, go on, carry on.
What were you going to say?
But why don't, why do you have that need?
And I, like, I don't.
So if you said to me, I could never write a joke again, or I could never, you know, perform comedy again, I would...
fine, like my life would be unchanged, but for you, yours would be, it'd be like an irritant.
And like, what's the difference?
Well, it's the same as you, like saying, you know, you can't, you can't have your own business.
Yeah.
You've got to work for somebody else.
So how,
How does that feel?
For me, it's a definite loss of purpose.
For me, it's like a huge loss of purpose.
Not so much working for someone else, but not being able to like build, yeah, do what I do professionally.
It would be this huge sense of like loss of purpose.
I might move on to like doing shows or like just writing books all the time or something else.
But from a comedic perspective, it's like what you're doing is like very reliant on feedback of sorts.
So I'm wondering where that's like coming from.
Is that, you know, we kind of touched on it earlier in the conversation.
It's just...
Yeah, it's been such a clear, consistent coping mechanism in the toughest moments of your life, evidently, that it makes me ponder how you would cope without that coping mechanism, dealing with the reality of life.
Yeah, but I think that's why I said laughter is the lubricant that makes life livable.
Life is tough and laughter provides respite.
For me.
And it,
And it's so deeply human.
Everyone has, irrespective of whether you have an easy, blessed life, everyone has had moments of trials and tribulations.
And laughter is just a, it's a thing that soothes us.
And I find it particularly soothing that you take the sting out of pain by just making,
making it funny.
Do you know what I mean?
And it's kind of, it just works for me.
I just find laughing or making people laugh just the best because you're in, in the moment of laughter, you're lost.
You are not of this realm.
You're, you're kind of in this white noise space.
And it's good.
It's a good place to be.
Escape is the most important thing.
Yeah, but exactly.
And then you come back to kind of reality and you're a little bit more reconfigured or it lightens the load a bit, you know.
And I...
get a deep sense of satisfaction from making people laugh.
So, and you're right, it is tied up in them.
You know, it's very needy.
That's absolutely true.
But then, you know, I'm 41 now and I kind of know who I am.
I'm kind of needy.
Most comics are, because I've been asked to write,
sort of my autobiography quite a few times and it's like, I just don't feel like sitting and entertaining myself.
Whereas when you're writing stand-up, you're writing it for an audience.
So you can perform or you're making notes and you go, hey, I'll take that on stage and I'll kind of riff it out and figure it out with them.
Whereas a book to me just feels like it would be, I don't think I've got the skills to sit down and try and...
Entertain myself and then eventually entertain people through the book.
Do you know what I mean?
Like I did a thing last year where we went to Australia and New Zealand during the pandemic because we were doing some gigs out there and we stayed in the hotel for two weeks and we made a stand-up show.
That blended me meeting people alongside standup.
And it was, it was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done.
We met these incredible women in New Zealand, a thing called the coffin club.
And what they do is I didn't know this.
It turns out, um,
dying is
really expensive and coffins are really pricey.
And what these retired pensioners do, they make cheap coffins and they kind of sell them for like, you know, 300 bucks, really kind of low, don't make any profit.
So these beautiful funeral elves.
And they make their own coffins as well, just as a bit of fun.
And I met this lady and she'd made three coffins for herself.
And I was like, how come you made three?
She's like, I just keep putting on weight.
And it was so touching and peculiar.
And then we went into another room and there were little baby coffins, tiny, tiny.
And it's one of those things that...
I hope nobody ever sees that.
And I was like, how?
And people often say, oh, comedy, hardest job in the world.
Imagine making a coffin for a baby.
It blew my mind.
And I looked at this twinkly-eyed lady.
I was like, how do you do that?
How do you get yourself in a place to make something that sad?
And she kind of looked at me and just went,
I do it so no one else has to.
And it was so beautiful.
And for me, I loved being able to tell that story through stand-up with her on the show.
And I don't know if I have the skills to tell that story.
Through words on a page.
§08Transcript — part 8
Do you know what I mean?
I'm sort of aware of a,
an ability I have as a,
a communicator to make a story like that deeply human.
I could tell that in front of anybody and it gets to their heart.
It's so pure.
And there's so many stories out there like that, that trying to find those examples of magnificence, I find endlessly...
interesting, but you don't find them if you sat down writing a book.
You got to get out there and you've kind of got to put yourself in peculiar situations.
I met a lady that goes yaoi hunting.
Turns out there's a yaoi is a big eight foot sort of like abominable snowman in Australia that he lives just outside Brisbane.
She was absolutely wonderful, right?
You know, mad as a box of frogs, but beautiful.
And she was like, yeah, what we do, put some cigarettes out and some beer and that should lure him in.
Like, so she puts this big jacket on me.
She goes, yeah, and you might want to make the mating noise.
And I'm like, well, how does that go?
And she's like, sort of like, and I'm kind of interested in the feel going, and she's like, yeah, you're doing really well.
And then I panic.
Because I start going, what if this is real?
And suddenly this eight foot bloke comes along and fucks me like that.
And I'm sort of dragged off and you're like, and then it was so, and I was telling her this and we're laughing and it's funny that, that again, those stories, I love trying to find those stories.
So I feel like I don't,
have enough stories yet to sit down and tell them all.
And the great thing about stand-up,
You can rotate your stories.
You go, hey, do you want to hear this?
Hey, do you want to hear that?
You know, or things can happen from nowhere.
My brother is an ex, like we were, we were having a conversation with a friend of mine recently and from nowhere, my brother goes, what?
Because this bloke was talking about his friend.
He goes, yeah, he's a vet.
My brother goes, yeah, to be a vet, you've got to shoot a cow in the face.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
He goes, yeah, it's the only way you can be a vet if you've shot a cow in the face.
I said, is it?
What, so they do six years of school, and then right at the end they give him a Smith& Wesson, and they blast him in the face, and he's like, well, don't give him that, you thick fuck.
I give him a bolt gun.
I'm going to shoot him with a rifle.
Fucking moron.
Like that.
So we're having this kind of conversation and I'm like, what are you talking about?
He goes, true.
Kez told me.
Kez told you.
Yeah, he knows.
Knows a vet.
Shot him in the face.
So it's like that.
Now, weirdly, a month later, I'm doing a gig in Leicester.
There's a guy chatting away and he's a vet.
And I go, listen, I've got to ask, do they make you shoot cows in the face?
And he goes, yeah, yeah, we have to.
It's one of the things.
The fucker was right.
So I ring my brother up in the middle of this gig.
There's 2,000 people there.
I ring him up and I'm like, put him on speaker on the phone.
I go, you all right?
He goes, yeah, what?
And I go, I'm just in Leicester.
I'm at a gig.
Yeah.
And I go, yeah, you know that thing you were saying about cow?
And vets, yeah, it turns out you were right.
And he went, yeah, I know.
And he goes, listen, I've got to go.
I'm watching Vigil.
Like that.
Fucked off.
But that was the correct story for that night, is my point, is my point.
That sometimes, and it was so hilarious.
In that moment, it couldn't have been more perfect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then all the ushers, the work there, I go, that was planned, right?
Yeah.
But it was, but it only came about because me and my brother were with friends of mine in Exeter.
He told a man's story.
I had an argument with him.
We all laughed because my brother was talking shit.
What's he on about?
A month later, I meet, you know, a vet.
He agrees with my brother.
And we have a moment of magic.
And it's the funny thing that that's all anyone would remember from that show.
And I don't have the skills to do that through sitting on my own.
I would be too excited to tell people the story.
So Patrice Evra, who sat there before Jimmy Carr, said one day his girlfriend turned to him and was like, are you happy?
And at first he resisted that question because it makes people feel a little bit uncomfortable.
But yeah, are you happy?
Um,
Yeah, at this moment, yeah, I've really enjoyed this chat, like deeply.
And I feel pumped up and energized.
So, yeah.
But back to what I'm saying, I'm kind of, I need the energy of others to make me happy.
You referred to, when I asked that question, you referred to this moment as if happiness was more of a mood in your view versus then like a...
long-lasting state.
If we were to say that it's a state, a long-lasting sort of the baseline, would you say you're happy?
Yeah, I'd say I have more moments of happiness than sadness.
But I'm in a state of flux with that.
Like, you know, I can be super low and super...
Sort of depressed about,
Oh, fucking hell, the jokes are shit this week in the show.
God, I haven't got the stuff.
You know what I mean?
So I kind of, I can let things get on top of me.
But I have more moments of happiness than sadness, I think.
Have you ever experienced what they call like depression, like clinical depression in your view?
I don't know.
I don't think so.
You know, I have moments of like, where you can't, you know, you be sort of aware you need to shift it, but I'm very much at right, get on the treadmill, lift some weights, um, kind of, uh, do something kind of a guy.
I'm restless, you know?
Um, but, uh, yeah, I've never been, you know, diagnosed or anything like that, but, uh,
But yeah, how about you?
Are you happy?
It's such a heavy question, right?
It's a really heavy question.
I remember the first time my...
Fucking Patrice Evra.
Yeah, I know, right?
Yeah.
What an interesting, fascinating bloke he is as well.
It's just...
Frightening.
Remarkable, remarkable guy.
Am I happy?
I remember the first time I was asked it and it felt really uncomfortable and I felt defensive about the question.
Yeah.
My PA, who was also my girlfriend at the time, and he has a long story, we won't go into that.
She asked me in the car one day, she was like, are you happy?
I was like, how dare you?
I think that's my reaction.
No, of course not.
But that's kind of, I think like my ego inside my chimp brain probably was like, how fucking dare, like, of course I am.
I believe so, yeah.
I believe so.
And one of the things that has helped me a lot is I'm very obsessed with gratitude.
And like constantly reminding myself of like how unbelievably fortunate I am to be one of the free ones.
And what I mean by that is like financially free, free to do what I choose to most days.
Of course, I have days where it sucks and my mood's shitty and like I'm irritable and I'm a bit of an asshole to be around.
I feel somewhat content despite my relentless excruciating ambition.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a very good answer.
I'll take that one.
Okay.
Your manager said you're the hardest working comic he's ever met.
Right.
Yeah, well, I just like...
Is that toxic?
People in our society at the moment, there's this kind of stigma around people that work too hard, that it's toxic productivity or...
Yeah, but it's sort of, you know, you work at something that you love.
So it's kind of like, you know...
it's sort of those moments of like, you just lose yourself in it.
It's like, I imagine it's the same with when Picasso was painting.
Do you know what I mean?
He was just probably like, this is fun.
Like, do you know what I mean?
Like, you know, imagine this, I'm not comparing myself to Picasso.
I'm using him as an example of just sort of, imagine his manager going, you need to fucking relax, mate.
Do you know what I mean?
The Sistine Chapel weapon.
But it's just, I don't know.
I just, I love it.
And I don't, I don't mind working hard.
And it's also, it's not, it's not working in the true sense.
Like you just said, how fortunate to be one of the free ones.
Like, it's ridiculous.
Like, I write stand-up on my own, but I do my TV show and I write it with...
Five people and we get to write jokes.
That is our job.
There's an unbelievably privileged job to be able to sit around and think of funny things for people.
And that can be stressful, but there are people working in
in jobs that they don't like that would kill for that opportunity.
So you're right.
You need those moments to kind of snap yourself out of your funk and, um, and remember that you're getting paid to do a hobby ultimately, you know, in my case, um,
And in mine, like this is...
Yeah, totally.
But my point being, it's sort of like,
There's no, there's nothing wrong with having low moments and everyone does.
And it feels like the world is better now in terms of being able to talk about them.
But you also, I think if you come from a certain background, you don't want to bitch and moan about yourself and kind of say that you're having a tough time or whatever.
But if you're lucky enough to have friends that you can talk to,
or things like this, or a therapist or whatever, it just makes the pursuit of happiness a lot easier, I think.
Because I think that is, maybe that's what happiness is.
It's about talking for long enough to realize what you have, whether that is a loving relationship, whether it's a job you love.
Whether it's a hobby you adore,
But there will always be sort of shimmering lights of hope in the misery.
But sometimes somebody has to help you find them, I think.
Do you know what I mean?
Because I think it's very difficult to sit within yourself and go, yeah, I can see everything's fine.
Sometimes you need a little bit of help.
To kind of remind you of how lucky you are.
Your upcoming Netflix special, you called it Lubricant.
I now know why.
Yeah, yeah.
But tell me what we can expect from this special and how it was conceived and what makes it, you know, I guess, worth watching.
Wow.
It is the best.
Stories and jokes that I've written in the last two years from traveling around the world.
I did a tour that was called Respite.
§09Transcript — part 9
And I kind of put together all the best bits about kind of conspiracy theories and, uh,
COVID and leadership and madness in the world.
And I sort of splodged it all together and the,
You never quite know what it is until you sort of step away from it.
And I think it's actually a love letter to laughter.
That's what the show is.
And it's the full hour is about the importance of giggling and of being silly and how deeply human it is.
and it should be treasured.
There's a bit in the special where I was chatting about, you know, when you hear somebody play a musical instrument
and you're envious of the notes they're making, it strikes me that laughter is a musical instrument that any one of us can play.
And now is not the time to put down our fucking trumpets.
And that's the show, really.
It's about the importance of laughter and the role it plays in which we do life.
And it's lots of funny stories that are kind of all about that, really.
You talked about how as a comedian you have to kind of have this like self-evolution.
Uh-huh.
What evolution in the comedian that you are in this special, Lubricant, have you observed in yourself?
I'm slower and I'm more thoughtful and I try and make it more...
Interesting for people sat at home than in the room.
I think previously I've been a bit too kind of high octane and I'm trying to kind of make it pleasurable for people at home so they can sit and enjoy it because that's how it ultimately is consumed.
I have a fascination with anger and I have a fascination with beauty.
I don't like, so I find anger strange and I find beauty beguiling.
And that is only getting deeper and deeper.
So for example, that story about the ladies.
in the coffins that isn't in this show, but it's, it's somewhere deep in me.
And I think that will come out in another show.
So it's sort of the evolution as a comedian for me is that I want the next special and the next tour that I do to be deeply human.
And I want it to be this,
in the best sense, a place where you can fucking nod with me and laugh with me and feel like this connection with people next to you.
And I think that comes through exploring how fucking weird and silly we all are.
I think the world's taking itself very seriously at the moment.
And there's so much humor in it.
I think there's so much humor in the, on the edges, in the shades of serious stuff.
Do you know what I mean?
I kind of find it,
Yeah, that's kind of what, that's where it feels like my evolution is, that I'm trying to kind of, I try and talk about
You know, I quite like being able to talk about serious stuff.
For example, you know, talk about cancel culture or woke.
The amount of times you hear the word woke in newspapers at the minute.
And it's because it just sells papers, man.
And it's kind of like, hey, have you seen what they've done?
You can't say the word farts and boobies and arse in Scrabble.
That's a story in the newspaper.
And it was like fury as woke Scrabble bosses.
No one's furious about Scrabble.
No one's like just, and even if they were doing that, how are they going to police it?
I was going to, you know, break into your house and go, did you just put clit on a triple letter?
They're not going to do that.
So I find that mechanism really interesting at the moment that you go, okay, clearly there's money to be made in kind of, you won't fucking believe what I've done now, in that energy.
But also recognising that it's just a trick.
It's fake outrage.
It's fake outrage and it's kind of, it's the what next brigade.
But I find that really interesting.
That was like Piers Morgan's whole thing for a while on TV.
It was like, they've changed toilets to unisex.
Yeah.
Fucking.
Yeah, but because it sort of like, it just, it works.
It's easy.
It's click.
And then you're there.
But it's kind of not, it's just not nourishing.
And there is actually a way of making the people that succumb to that and the people that think it's bullshit, you can bring them together through really piss funny stories.
Or like that story about the coffin and the lady.
Doesn't matter your political orientation, doesn't matter your gender, whatever.
That's a deeply funny human story.
And like, you look at someone like Billy Connolly, like, like some of his bits are so beautiful and funny or George Carlin that, that, that they're,
they're majestic and you're kind of lost.
And I think there's a real value to humor and it's often overlooked because it is silly.
And it is kind of fart, piss, shit, fuck.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of, you know what I mean?
It's fingers and ears.
But it's a release and it's kind of,
It's a deeply important thing, laughter.
Deeply, deeply important.
And if we didn't have it, you know, I think it's only like dolphins and rats are the only animals that laugh.
I don't know how scientists found that out.
I know I do actually.
They tickled the rat's bellies with a pencil.
This is presumably pre-COVID.
Do you know what I mean?
Imagine that if it's just kind of vaccine.
I'm busy just trying to get this rat to giggle.
But yeah.
So that's Lubricant.
Is it December 14th?
December the 14th.
It comes out.
It was Respite.
It was the show Respite.
And then right at the last minute, I decided to call it Lubricant.
Love it.
But that becomes a, I mean, we all know now, listening to this, why it's called that, but it's kind of 40 minutes in, you go, oh, right.
There might be some furious perverts.
We were kind of going, where's there's absolutely nothing here about, like, about Vaseline, about KY jelly.
This is bereft of any lubricational.
I hope someone writes in.
Yeah.
Leave the review.
This is not what you think it is.
It's absolutely disgusting.
I was fucking outraged.
And then you've got Until the Wheels Come Off as well, which is a documentary.
So, yeah.
So Until the Wheels Come Off is a documentary about making a stand-up special throughout the COVID pandemic.
So, yeah, it was kind of...
Yeah, sort of cameras followed us around and tried to, you know, like we did gigs in football stadiums and car parks.
Crazy.
Yeah, it was brilliant.
It was nuts.
But we did Ashton Gate, which is the home of Bristol City.
And we had to get 2,000 people in a 10,000-seater stand.
They all had to be spread out.
And it was one of the weirdest gigs I've ever done, but it was one of the best.
And that comes out on the same day?
So the doc is on the same day as the special.
So, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
We have one.
I'm excited for both.
I actually did get the chance to watch the trailer.
All right, nice.
And it was...
Hilarious.
Oh, thanks, man.
I'm particularly excited to see someone with your smarts and both comedic genius and intellect take on recent times.
Yes.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally.
That's what I'm most excited about.
And so really, really looking forward to that on December 14th.
We have a longstanding tradition on this podcast where the previous guest, as I mentioned, writes a question for the next guest.
So Patrice wrote, are you happy?
Because that was the question that stumbled upon him.
I'm not going to say anything.
Who the person was that's written this for you.
Okay.
But I'm going to tell you what the question is.
What three things would you give to the world?
You can only answer with single words to make it happier.
Jesus.
Jesus?
Not that.
That's one.
What three things would I give to the world to make it happier?
You can only answer with one word answers.
I mean, this is a real reverse Aladdin moment, isn't it?
A fixed climate.
I know that's two words, but, you know, that's the first thing.
Technology that stops mental health.
So you zap them and they're fine.
It's just sort of a wand you wave at them.
Okay.
Mental health wand.
Yeah.
So yeah, a mental, a mental, yeah.
So that's it.
Fixed climate, mental health wand and food.
Food.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like fixed climate, mental health wand, food.
And starvation.
And starvation?
It will end starvation.
Yes, right.
Not end starvation.
No, no, I was going to say, fuck me, I give and I take.
Now I'm going to ask you to do the same.
But before I do that, I just want to say a huge thank you for coming today because I've watched you on screen for many, many, many years.
I find you hysterical.
But also, I love this opportunity to get to know a side of you that I wouldn't have ordinarily seen on screen because of the way that, you know,
the format of TV and a depth in you.
And you're just, again, you're super smart, super introspective.
You're a genius, clearly.
And you're doing a service to the world, which is clearly so unbelievably selfless in cheering people up at a time when they really need it.
That I feel like the comedians amongst us who are lubricating us through these hard times are national treasures at the moment.
So thank you.
Oh, mate, what a sweet thing.
I need you to come home and say that whenever I'm having problems with my wife.
We'll send you a video clip so you could do that.
But it's time to write a question.
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When your cat is acting weirder, or your dog is being louder, your turtle moves slower.
Hello, Ted.
Your cat seems thirstier.
Whoa, slow down, buddy.
Or your puppy is acting clumsier.
Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go.
Veg ER for Pets.
§10Transcript — part 10
This is Kate.
Veg.
The better, kinder ER for pets.