Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / STEPHEN FRY Visits Josh

Transcript

STEPHEN FRY Visits Josh · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and there are very few people
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  alive today who I could comfortably call heroes of mine, but Stephen Fry is one of them.
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  One of the most articulate, eloquent, wise, and funny people alive, I grew up watching
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  his sketch comedy show A Bit of Fry and Laurie, as well as Blackadder, one of the funniest
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  television comedies ever made. He's also known for Jeaves and Worcester and a bazillion other
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  things that I won't even begin to try to recite. So fast to say that he's won an Emmy, he's won six
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  baffters, that's for his hosting of the brilliant BBC television quiz show QI, which manages to
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  both be smart and also extremely funny. On stage, Stephen adapted me and my girl, he won two
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  Olivier Awards or the show did rather. He was nominated for a Tony for his role in 12th
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  night on Broadway, which was a Shakespeare The Globe theatre production. On the big screen,
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  he's starred in a number of movies. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance
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  of Oscar Wilde in the biopic Wilde, who was in Gosford Park and a fish called Wanda,
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  V for Vendetta and the Hobbit. He is the voice of all of the Harry Potter audiobooks, and also
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  the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So if you know him from nothing else, but you have children
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  who have listened to the Harry Potter audiobooks, then he has spent a long time in somebody's brain.
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  And his autobiography, which is called Moab is my washpot, was incredibly powerful to me as a
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  teenager. I read it and it's rawness, it's honesty, it's humour, and it's sort of whimsy about
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  how screwed up he was as a teenager. I found extremely reassuring. On a recent trip to Sydney,
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  Stephen was kind enough to swing by the uncomfortable conversations studio after much begging on my part.
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  Please enjoy it as much as I did the one that the only Stephen Fry.
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  The week that Donald Trump first won his first election in 2016, I was on stage in Philadelphia,
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  with Richard Dawkins moderating an event and it was the first public thing. Then here I had done
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  since Trump won the first time and we came out into this auditorium and sat down and you could
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  feel the sort of tension in the air and the first thing I said to him was what the fuck just happened,
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  everyone sort of laughed. What the fuck just happened this time?
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  Well as I said to the audience in the Australian to understand this and the Americans listening
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  weren't nor with anyone else but it was an astonishing result that I'd bet the other way and
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  incomes night's choice at 90 to one, quite extraordinary. I'm talking of course about the really
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  important race that went on which was the Melbourne Cup. But what goes on in America? I have this
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  desperate need to believe that I can opt out of knowing what's going on in the world.
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  It knowledge is a powerful thing and people talk about it is a great thing but it's also
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  an immensely destructive thing. There are a lot of phrases like what the eye doesn't see,
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  the heart doesn't grieve over but I've traveled enough in the world to know that if you're in
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  I don't know the deciduous forest of Madagascar, they don't know who the president of the United
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  States is and they don't care, they get on with their life, it matters nothing to them.
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  Does it actually matter to us? I mean it's an interesting question.
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  Well mostly the whether or not those forests in Madagascar continue to exist or I can't
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  exist in a world of climate chaos depends a little bit on who the president of the United States is.
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  Yeah, I mean in a very long chain of course in effect it's very very long. If you really believe
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  that the world would last longer with Kamala Harris as president than with Trump I think you're
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  totally misguided. Have you already solving the problem? No, it's because I'm trying not to
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  care because it's so destructive, it's like giving yourself cancer to worry about this
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  preposterous credit at the White House. He's going to have an apoplexy before his things over
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  and it's not he who's the problem now, it's his legatees, it's the muskrat, it's Robert Kennedy,
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  it's the vice president and all the people he's enabled and the Supreme Court and the entire structure
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  of the United States, Constitution and it's you know articles and instruments of government,
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  it's civil service and everything else, all the agencies, they'll be corrupted and contaminated.
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  And it's, yeah it's depressing but I'm 67 and I want not to care, it's that simple, of course
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  inside I had a sleepless night, I thought fuck them all, I was angry and upset, then I thought
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  that's what they want me to be, there's nothing they like more than liberals ringing their hands
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  and they like to mock them, huh? They said they were going to leave the country, why are they
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  still there as if they expected everyone to leave within 24 hours? You know it's a tricky one Josh,
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  yes it's miserable but we have to find a way to live life and to be happy and fulfilled human
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  beings and to do what we can that's good in our perception of what's good, not virtue,
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  signaling or anything like that but just believing that the circle of one's
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  kiss which is not a word we use very often, the neighbourhoods, the communities in which we
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  live as well as the kin and the family are where we can survive and that if we keep worrying about
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  these enormous, apparently enormous and important people and actions it will drive us crazy
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  and I'm fully aware that if I'd said that in 1933 I'd be in real trouble now because you know
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  sometimes you have to take action, man the barricades, shout, scream, try and change what's going
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  on but at the moment at least I just want to ignore it, I want to get on with life and live life
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  here now in the vertical moment not in the great horizontal stream of history because it's too
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  it's almost too much to think about and you have to believe at some point you have to have a
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  faint sense that the wicked will be punished by the nature of the cosmos and I'm always
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  reminded of a great line in the importance of being earnest where Sicily is talking to her
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  governess, Miss Prism, Miss Prism says, do not speak slightly of the three volume novel Sicily,
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  I myself wrote one unhappy at times and Sicily says did it end happily, Miss Prism says, the good
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  ended happily, the bad ended unhappily that is what fiction means, this is a great line and I fear
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  it's true, it is only in fiction, the good end happily and the bad end unhappily. I mean at some
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  kind of vast cosmic comeuppance for people who do bad, sounds quite religious, which is something
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  you're not. I'm not a member of a church or a temple or any organized religion but that doesn't
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  mean the one doesn't have a sense of right and wrong and the cause. Do you think the cosmos does?
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  No, no, no but the language we use to describe the balance of good and evil and when things happen
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  and what the consequences are, I mean really it's a logical change of action and reaction
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  that happen more or less within the space we live, though we know that that doesn't work.
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  But you do think that immoral acts will lead to a chain that will end in the destruction of that.
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  I hope but that's why I quoted Oscar Wilde, we feel it probably doesn't happen at all.
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  I mean that's what's so shocking isn't it about modernism. I remember reading when I first read
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  Evelyn Moore, I could not believe how shocking it was, not because it was morally shocking,
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  because of you know loose ethical behavior or anything like that but because
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  there was no justice in the books and I was so used to that Wilde an idea that he
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  marks that the good end happily and the bad end unhappily which they did in the kind of books
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  that Red is a boy you know whether it was Sherlock Holmes or school stories you know the
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  bully gets punished and the hero wins the day and suddenly to read novels like To Climb and
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  Fall and so on where people just randomly it seems get end up in prison for doing nothing wrong.
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  And I suppose you'd call it the malice of time and chance shocked me and I think it should
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  shock all of us because inside us for some reason we are given this sense we can call it cosmic or
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  we can call it internal and personal. We're given I mean philosophers call it deontology or the
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  deontic sense of what is right and what is wrong it's beyond religion, religion it far
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  preceded certainly Christian religion and it's there in animist religions and anything else that
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  there that things should balance and that behavior that is cruel and repatious which destroys society
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  and hurts people and destroys families is wrong and should be punished and if it's not punished by
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  the cosmos by nature by some sort of accident or you know a bad person you know getting ill
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  which doesn't really happen as we know decent one full kids get cancer. I mean it's funny it's
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  so bizarre that we me ended into this fatalistic territory because this is a week where I've just
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  lost three people who were very close to me randomly one of whom was young one of whom was old and
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  one of whom was in between and I was just talking to my brother on the phone coming in here and he
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  was asking me how I'm feeling and I said it's a little bit like I'm I'm numb like I'm not grieving
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  but I do feel like I'm walking through a multiplayer video game and I'm just like well okay so the
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  universe is just random or predetermined or something and it decided to throw a trump victory and then
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  one person dying another person dying another person dying at me and it's sort of like well let's
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  just see what the ants how the ants respond and I just sort of feel a bit like an ant. Yes I know
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  just what you mean and and it is I suppose it's why I value not religion but myth because the myth
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  I love best the Greek myths let me just spend the last six years of my life retelling in different
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  forms understand that if there are gods if you know in other words if there are agencies and forces
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  in the cosmos then they must be sort of by definition because of the nature of the cosmos they
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  must be yes beautiful, medisterial, fantastically powerful but also capricious and mean and cruel
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  because that is what the world is and you know children die bone cancer there's no getting away
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  from it. Special diseases that nature has has invented that are so cruel there is you know
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  Tricoma, African children have their eye and it's growing inwards scratching their eyes with agony
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  and they go blind. Is the New Testament and is Christianity a bit fatuous in that context?
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  I mean you can discover there's all kinds of things it's an interesting story obviously pretty
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  much historical in its linium months but once and Paul gets in in the acts of the apostles once
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  he gets on the road to Damascus and turns from being a persecutor of this tiny little sect
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  that is growing up after the death of Jesus and decides to create a religion out of it what we
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  call a church Ecclesiastes Ecclesiasticus then it then it does become if not fatuous it becomes
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  about power and control I mean it's some Paul writes letters to all the all the people who've
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  heard about Jesus and think it's interesting telling them how to behave and telling them how to
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  organize it becomes political it becomes literally about power and organization where the
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  few spiritual things thrown in and in terms of detaching yourself from the flotsam and jetsam
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  of daily life and finding that kind of tranquility and happiness that you were talking about by
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  focusing on kith and kin have you gotten better at that with age is it easier at any particular
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  stage of life it is easy it's easier not to it's easier to be patient I think I mean in a
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  literal sense when you're young very young like now what do I mean now we're in November as you
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  and I are talking yes if I was a child then if I was eight nine ten and I saw Christmas was
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  happened in weeks away it is six or seven weeks away I'll go oh my god is never coming I would be so
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  and if I made the way to the car for an hour just get a mad none of that matters anymore you know
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  absolutely doesn't you time passes and you know it does and even bad things boring things dentists
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  visits whatever you know tests and all the things you get when when you're older they're that'll
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  that'll be gone don't worry so things do pass and you're aware of cycles more in because you've
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  had a long time to live and you know things go up and down the Romans had a nice image which was
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  wrote to fortuna either the wheel of fortune nothing to do with the American Chris show that's now
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  Ryan Sequest I think it's taken over oh yeah yes see Jack never mind and but the wheel of
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  fortune was essentially like a sort of big ferris wheel like a wheel that goes around but it was
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  blown by the wind and the wind was was time and chance and sometimes it blew harder and the wheel
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  went faster and sometimes it was slow and the wheel was slow and I remember when I was in kind of
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  in my prime and Bill Clinton was president and Tony Blair was prime minister and there was talk
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  of the third way the idea of extreme right wing or indeed the kind of strange left wing cultural
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  imperialism that is filtered into universities was Mars way Mars was the bottom of the wheel if you
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  like both of them were and it seemed like at the top of the wheel this third way between the left
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  liberal and and and right conservative was the natural path that the world was going to take
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  and the end of history the end of history indeed as Fujian called it and and and and africjama and
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  and that the yeah because the value wall was falling and Mandela was free and you know everything
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  really did seem quite remarkable interesting and fun and even art and music and things were
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  interesting and original and you know there was Oasis and Blair and there was Damian
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  earth and the young British artists there was you know things going on there was style and there
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  was fun and it seemed like that's how it would be but the wind blew and the wind continued to blow
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  and now those things are right at the bottom yeah it couldn't be more contemptuously held by most
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  of the world and often when the wheel goes round things become opposite so words take on opposite
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  meanings so now the word elite does not refer to billionaires who are saving on tax and who are
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  running the world it refers to people like us sitting in a scruffy studio moaning about the
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  fact that the world doesn't go the way we wanted to but apparently we're elite well we do there is
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  but that's a bit cute isn't it to avoid the cultural definition of elitism in the sense that
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  we we and people like us hold the organs of a cultural power or at least have up until now
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  have but we don't really know well people in a Hollywood people on television and that's not
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  power is not power in Hollywood I'm sorry none every family makes a disaster streaming is going
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  down no seriously I mean it's absolutely not Hollywood in is a shit condition well all the studios
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  combining to try and make money and they're shedding their margins have never been tighter
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  yes the culture that people consume by watching television and going to the movies regardless of
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  what the sort of economic fortunes of that industry are combined with the kinds of things that get
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  said in newspaper editorials combined with the kinds of things one is supposed to believe in order
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  to get invited to the right parties in Brooklyn and London like there is a I understand the the
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  tromperist definition of elitism which is this fairly said because most people you know how many
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  Seth Rogan has how many listen Joe Rogan Joe Rogan is well hundreds of hundreds of millions
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  hundreds of millions how many people watch television program two million yeah I mean that's an
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  nonsense yes but that insertion mean by the opposite it just isn't true but it's a perception
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  well what did you mean a moment ago when you talked about the the cultural imperialism of a certain
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  type of well there's a academia in academia academia what does that mean oh god do we have to go
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  through well that probably intersects with the section that's another word here again the rest
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  of the rest of my life I know what the of course I know what he said and I did but nobody reads
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  newspapers nobody watches television it's all this is how it used to be that the wheel has gone round
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  that's the point I'm making right things are the opposite yes I understand but nobody is really
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  and and the rhetoric of the right is still as if this enemy of of theirs these liberals these
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  liberal elites are still ruling the world we're not we're just whining in corners like I say
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  yeah yeah we we don't have any and I'm not saying I want that any power I'm not interested in it
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  if people want to listen to me I appear on a podcast but so do millions of others and you're
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  this Rogan who's now I got wrong is a perfect example far more people listen to him than we'll
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  be listening to us but the reason but Stephen the reason why a lot of people are but are drawn to
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  people like Joe Rogan and the reason why a lot of people voted for Donald Trump I would suggest
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  because those are counter-revolutionary yes yes yes I know what the rhetoric is it's a lie
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  right it's a believed one right yeah that the wheel has gone round that's all I'm saying and now
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  yeah you can that's that's why they use the word elite and it it pricks the excitement of the
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  voters could think yeah those guys like yeah you know Josh and Stephen sitting there using long
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  words and referring to things and fuck them you know yeah fuck us one heart okay because we
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  well you know I'd rather I'd rather not listen to Joe Rogan or watch martial arts and you know
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  I'm not interested in their world and it's the world that's winning it's the big world their
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  entertainment they're wrestling and they're you know all the things they like and the music they
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  listen to and the you know the clothes they wear and the language they use is dominant in the world
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  it is winning it has won yes mine may once have seemed smart and interesting just as the aristocrats
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  of the 19th century but we don't wish someone went around are wearing ribboned wigs and saying
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  laugh and talking out in in Bridgerton language we would think there were pretentious or mad you're
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  giving me an idea about something I'd rather like to do by all means cosplay then it becomes
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  doesn't it yes well nothing is cosplay isn't there's so much that there was real that's the point
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  it was real it was a real way of thinking yeah real way about branding the world and describing it
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  it was a real way of offering home an organizational and political structure for us to follow
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  know that that is gone the world has turned and now there is another one and people find it very
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  difficult to understand when the world changes that it really really does change and I am not
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  of the generation that belongs to this new world and I'm not politically culturally socially
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  disposed towards the same set of beliefs and aspirations that those people are I don't want
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  persuade them that I'm right and they're wrong I just it's become a different country if you
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  go to a you know like my university I went to an ancient university Cambridge it was founded
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  best part of a thousand years ago it's the same buildings that it has been for that 900 years
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  the same colleges some of them have been added to by different you know generations a bit Georgian
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  here and so on but it's basically a medieval building but if I went in there in 1790 or
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  something I would see in the young barren there at Trinity College being a student and all the
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  dons all the teachers would be single and they would be in holy orders that's how it was then
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  that's how the place worked same building completely different world and we are in the same
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  building the earth it's still got the Alps still got Australia still got the English channel
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  but it's a different world and it's a different world the one I was born in and grew up in
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  and I can be like most old people hand-ringing and nostalgic and sentimental about it I can be
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  angry and gnarly about it I can be grumpy but I choose not to be even though inside a lot of
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  me is churning and thinking fuck this new world I hate it I hate every part of it I recognize
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  the buildings but it's not the same world and this happens as the wheel turns it happens all the time
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  and different generations get caught up in it because they belong to it and we now live in a time
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  where people are very very self-conscious about those generations and I think that's why when I was
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  young yes the phrase baby boomer existed but it really merely was a reference to the fact that there
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  was a peak in births after the Second World War it was a demographic statement it wasn't a huge
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  cultural one but now every fucking ten years there's a new generation that is apparently
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  described with piercing accuracy is oh Gen Z think this do they I mean if you said that about
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  black people or Jews be considered racist just on the basis of someone's birth you interpret who
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  they are what they think and even can say you hate them I hate baby boomers do you and do you
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  hate black people is that a is that a reasonable thing to say no isn't how dare people be so
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  bloody bigoted about generations it's a whole but I think part of the reason is because the
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  because the wheel is turning so fast and people are unstable about it and unsure about it and they
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  want they want to be rooted I mean in my my real theory I suppose again it's sort of examination
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  Greek myth and but it's the half talked about kiss and kin the word half in in almost all cultures
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  is extremely important obviously fire was important when we invented it and one language arrived
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  60 thousand years ago very very recently we were you know the putative human family was gathered
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  around the fire in the putative cave with the dogs helping us you know guard from wild animals
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  and other tribes and so on and we started because we had language in some element of safety
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  children start asking questions and around the fire would tell stories about how the world was
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  created and why the was thunder in the sky and what it meant and who was in charge of
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  pushing out flowers from dead twings at the springtime and all those sort of things and we've had
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  the half we've had the half ever since and the word half is cognators language say with the word
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  heart in angus accent heart and half of the same the word cardier in Greek was used for half
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  as well as or equals and the Latin for half is very revealing its focus word focus means half
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  origin we now use it metaphorically to mean anything around which we concentrate our thoughts and
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  we focus on this but it comes from the half it's deeply part of who we are to have a half
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  and right up to your child and my childhood we still had a half it wasn't the story of fireplace
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  but it was a television and family enough there was a flickering light that told stories about
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  which we all gathered and everybody watched them at the same time and the stories came out and
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  they went went always good stories obviously they were often red grundy uh so poppers or whatever
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  you might say and but nonetheless there was a sense of commonality in the fireplace a national
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  fireplace and and uh and now that's utterly disintegrated nobody watches the same things any more
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  than mummy and daddy are watching an Apple TV series and the daughters watching something in her
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  bedroom and the sun is what we're going to ask what the sun is watching in his bedroom um and
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  the food is different probably the most interesting yeah the food is utterly different he's
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  getting a pizza she's getting a burger they're all getting delivered so they're not eating together
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  and they're not listening and they're not telling stories in the evening and they're not gathering
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  around a fireplace of any kind um sharing uh sharing stories and that disintegration of the half
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  is a disintegration of a lot of things and I know that's almost a right wing thing people used to
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  say out of a Christian or a some sort of strong social sense that you know young people with their
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  music and they you know they don't have any structure and they don't family life is disintegrating
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  because of divorces and gay people and so on and so and it almost senses if I'm using that kind of
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  language but I'm I'm just speculating really on the fact that uh we don't have this anymore we don't
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  have this half social media tries to be a half um uh I suppose the the strange image that Americans
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  have that must keeps using about a town square I don't know why he thinks it's a town square
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  in town squares do you have one person with a microphone the size of Africa well other people have
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  one the size of a small pebble because that's what he's got does that mean free speech and a
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  town square also you don't promote or or demo ideas on the basis purely of house how much people
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  engage with them and how much people think on them doesn't show how much it outrages people
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  that seems a weird way to shuffle ideas up and down I mean I think of a town square in those terms
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  one thinks of you know the church eskies on the balcony or the king on the balcony or the
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  or the or the or Brezhnev you know the balcony and everyone looking up and that's what they're
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  doing but it's worse than that there's something hunger games here about it there's something
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  colceum about yes there is as well as that as well as church it's still a balcony yeah that's like
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  you know who can say the most who can say the thing that either most reinforces what you already
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  believe or most demonizers and caricatures call us sir I think there you know exactly this
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  cyclical nature of sort of history and of life is something you've actually been quite perceptive
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  about even when you were young I think one of the reasons that your autobiography Moab is my
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  watchpots spoke to me so much when I was a teenager it's such a beautiful book Stephen it is so
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  it is so so beautiful and so open and revealing but it's also like you quote from yourself aged 15
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  writing to your future self yeah do you remember this passage I do I mean I can't quote it
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  I have it could you read it or could you want me to could you read it because it's so
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  anyway I want to talk about that and what it tells us about life to myself not to be read until
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  I'm 25 I know what you will think when you read this you will be embarrassed you will scoff and
• 29:04
  sneer well I tell you now that everything I feel now everything I am now is truer and better than
• 29:12
  anything I shall ever be ever this is me now the real me every day that I grow away from the me
• 29:22
  that is writing this now is a betrayal and a defeat I expect you'll screw this up into a ball with
• 29:29
  sophisticated disgust or a best with tolerant amusement but deep down you will know you will
• 29:36
  know that you are smothering what you really really were this is the age when I truly am from now
• 29:44
  on my life will be behind me I tell you now this is true truer than anything else I will ever
• 29:51
  right feel or know what I am now is me what I will be is a lie I'm writing I remember the tears
• 30:01
  streaming down my faces I roaches and I felt it and what it was really about joss of course I suppose
• 30:08
  it was I was in love and there was a transgressive love because it was again love as we would now say
• 30:15
  and I felt that it connected me with all the poets and writers in the world it made me
• 30:23
  forced me to go to the library to to try and find some vindication that I wasn't alone
• 30:29
  and I read novels sitting schools full of lyrical edeless and moon calf love of the kind I was
• 30:35
  feeling and which would have been banned at the time but I or I read biographies of oscarwals
• 30:40
  in his circle and then the the ripples went out into other circles and other groups into the
• 30:46
  pulled bowls and the tangier set and so I became quite a sophisticated reader of what we would now
• 30:52
  call queer literature but also it gave me a sense that that there was compromise in the later
• 31:02
  lives that I was reading that that my purity and ferocity of what I felt and also my very adolescent
• 31:14
  sense that I could connect with nature that the drops of dew on a tree spoke to me more than to
• 31:21
  others and not just that grown ups because car keys and mortgages and having lawn mowers and all
• 31:31
  the attributions and things of adulthood that the other boys so looked forward to I saw is growing
• 31:38
  away from this intensity and although it's like a Chinese foot massage it's absolute agony but you
• 31:46
  love it and I love this agony it was it was you know Catullus Udi Edamo I hate and I love and it
• 31:56
  was so intense and I felt it so powerfully and I suppose unusually for a teenager I had an
• 32:03
  element of the literary now used to be able to put it down and I was asked by gay times many years
• 32:13
  later to respond or to write a letter to my 15-year-old self and I said oh well that's interesting
• 32:19
  because my 15-year-old self wrote a letter to me and they said what do you mean and I pointed
• 32:24
  them to that and they said well can you reply to it so I did actually write write back in which
• 32:28
  did the replies say well it it it it said um I might even have it in a strange way if we
• 32:36
  can just have a second yeah it was published in the Guardian and I'm someone reminded me of it
• 32:42
  recently and so I yeah yeah I won't be the whole thing work I can you can always cut it I suppose
• 32:50
  dearest absurd child I hope you're well I know you are not as it happens you wrote in 1973 a letter
• 32:59
  to your future self and it's high time that your future self had the decency to write back
• 33:04
  you declared in that letter reproduced in your 1997 autobiography Moab is my washpot that
• 33:10
  everything I feel now as an adolescent is true you went on to affirm that if ever you dared
• 33:16
  in later life to repudiate deny or mock your 16-year-old self it would be a lie a reducing
• 33:23
  treasurable lie a crime against adolescence this is who I am you wrote each day that passes I
• 33:29
  grow away from my true self every inch I take towards adulthood is a betrayal oh Lord love you
• 33:35
  Stephen how I admire your arrogance and rage and misery how pure and righteous they are and how
• 33:42
  passionately stormdrenched was your adolescence how filled with true feeling fury despair joy
• 33:49
  anxiety shame pride and above all supremely above all how overpowered it was by love my eyes
• 33:56
  filled with tears just to think of you of me tears splash onto my keyboard now I am perhaps
• 34:03
  happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognize that I would trade all that I am
• 34:09
  to be you the eternally unhappy nervous wild wandering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen
• 34:17
  angry angst-ridden and awkward but alive because you knew how to feel and knowing how to feel
• 34:25
  is more important than how you feel deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime
• 34:31
  and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul I finally know now as I
• 34:39
  easily knew then that the most important thing is love it doesn't matter in the slightest whether
• 34:45
  that love is of someone of your own sex or not gay issues are important and I shall come to them
• 34:51
  in a moment but they shrivel like assaulted snail when compared to the towering question of love
• 34:57
  gay people sometimes believe to this very day would you credit it young Stephen
• 35:02
  that the preponderance of obstacles and terrors they encounter in their lives and relationships
• 35:07
  is intimately connected with the fact of their being gay as it happens at least 90% of their
• 35:14
  problems are to do with love and love alone the lack of it the denial of it the inequality of it
• 35:20
  the mist reciprocity in it the horrors and heartaches of it love cold love hot love fresh love
• 35:26
  stale love scorned love mist love denied love betrayed the great joke of sexuality is that these
• 35:33
  problems be devil straight people just as much as gay the 10% of extra suffering and complexity
• 35:40
  that uniquely confronts the gay person is certainly not incidental or trifling but it must be
• 35:46
  understood that love comes first this is tough straight people to work out straight people are
• 35:52
  encouraged by culture and society to believe that their sexual impulses are the norm and therefore
• 35:58
  when their affairs of the heart and lines go wrong as they certainly will when they are flummoxed
• 36:04
  distraught and defeated by love they are forced to believe that it must be their fault we gay people
• 36:10
  at least have the advantage of being brought up to expect the world of love to be imponderably
• 36:15
  and unmanageably difficult for we are perverted freaks and sick aberrations of nature they
• 36:22
  poor normal lambs naturally find it harder to understand why in lies and as words the course of
• 36:28
  true love never did run smooth sexual availability so long an impossible dream in your age
• 36:34
  becomes the norm in the late 70s and early 80s only to be shattered by a new disease whose horrors
• 36:40
  you cannot even imagine you were little believe that i can say to you now across the gap of 35
• 36:46
  years that we are the blessed ones the people have written a happy or not because of toll puddle
• 36:53
  martyrs chartists infantry regiments and in number of ancestors who made the world more comfortable
• 36:58
  for them and we gay people are happy now or not in large part thanks to stonewall rioters Harvey
• 37:05
  milk Dennis lemon gay news Ian McKellen at owl and the battered bodies of bullied beaten and
• 37:12
  abused gay men and women who stood up to be counted and refused to apologize for the way they were
• 37:18
  it has given us something we never thought to have pride for a thousand years shame was our lot
• 37:24
  and now turning on a six pence we have arrived at pride without even it seems an intervening period
• 37:31
  well it's okay i suppose wouldn't have chosen it but there you go who would have thought it
• 37:36
  i know what you're doing now young steven it's early 1973 you're in the library cross-referencing
• 37:41
  bibliographies so that you can find out more and more examples of queer people in history
• 37:46
  art and literature against whom you can hope to validate yourself leonardo chakowski wild
• 37:52
  parents corvo and funglerden robin morm whersley and englishman john jane kevaffi montelon
• 37:59
  roger perifey marie reno michael Campbell michael davies angustioid corvidal john rich you
• 38:05
  william borers so many great spirits really do confirm that hope it emboldens you to know that
• 38:10
  such a number of brilliant if often doomed souls shared the same impulse and desires as you
• 38:16
  i know the index card waltz of autobiographies poems and novels you are dancing
• 38:22
  those same names are still so close to the surface of my mind nearly four decades later
• 38:26
  novels poetry and the worlds of art and ideas are opening up in front of you almost incidentally
• 38:33
  you spend all your time in the library yearning to be told that you are not alone
• 38:38
  and an unlooked for side effect of this just happens to be a real education achieved in a
• 38:43
  private school designed for philistine bumpkins being born queer has given you by mistake a fantastic
• 38:50
  advantage over the roger playing ordinaries who surround you but those roger playing ordinaries
• 38:55
  have sold to and you should know that i know you cannot believe it now they seem so secure so
• 39:02
  assured so blessedly normal they gave cuff but wursley the kippling derived title of his
• 39:08
  overwhelmingly important to you autobiography the flanneled fool these are the men that have
• 39:14
  lost their soul the flanneled fool at the wicket and the mudded oaf at the goal you look down at
• 39:21
  the fools almost as much as you fear them the ordinary people whose path through life is guaranteed
• 39:26
  they won't have to spend their days in public libraries public lavatories and public courts ashamed
• 39:32
  spurned and reviled there is no internet no gay news no gay chatlines no men seeking men
• 39:39
  personal no out and proud celebs just a world of shame and secrecy somehow as you age a miracle
• 39:47
  will be wrought you will begin by descending deeper into the depths expulsion crime and prison
• 39:53
  nothing really to do with being gay but everything to do with love and your inability to cope with it
• 39:58
  yet you will as the regency rakes used to say make a recover and find yourself at university where
• 40:05
  it will be astonishingly easy to be open about your sexuality no great trick for the university's
• 40:10
  Cambridge long a hotbed of righteous tolerance spiritual heavy petting and homo hysteria you will
• 40:17
  emerge from Cambridge and enter a world where being out is no big deal although a puzzlingly small
• 40:23
  number of your co-evils will find it as easy as you to emerge from the shadows but before you
• 40:28
  damn anyone for failing to come out look to their parents the answer almost always lies there
• 40:34
  oh how lucky in that department hasn't so many you are young Stephen but don't kid yourself
• 40:39
  for millions of teenagers around Britain and everywhere else it's still 1973 taunts beatings
• 40:45
  in punishment to wait gay people the world over in playgrounds and execution grounds the distance
• 40:52
  between which is measured by nothing more than political constitutions and human will yes
• 40:57
  you will grow to be a very very very very lucky man who is able to express his nature out loud
• 41:03
  without fear of hatred or reprisal from any except the most deluded demented and sad but there is
• 41:08
  that but that is a small battle one a whole theater of war remains the theater of war is bigger than
• 41:15
  the simple issue of being gay just as the question of love swamps the question of mere sexuality
• 41:21
  for alongside sexual politics the entire achievement of the enlightenment which led
• 41:26
  into earlier to gay liberation is under threat like never before the cruel hypocritical and
• 41:33
  loveless hand of religion and absolutism has fallen on the world once more so my message from
• 41:39
  the future is twofold fear not young Stephen your life will unfold in richer more accepted and
• 41:46
  happier ways than you would ever dared hope but be wary for the most basic tenets of rationalism
• 41:52
  openness and freedom that nourish you now and seem so unassailable are about to be harried and
• 41:57
  besieged by malevolent mad and medieval minds you poor dear dear thing look at you welltering in
• 42:05
  your misery the extraordinary truth is that you want to stay there unlike so many of the young you
• 42:11
  do not yearn for adulthood pubs and car keys you want to stay where you are in the republic of
• 42:18
  your best sense where feeling has primacy and pain is beautiful and you know what I think you are
• 42:25
  right beautiful yeah beautiful isn't it to have a dog with themselves right walk I mean do you
• 42:34
  believe that the sixteen-year-old is right I mean I do I that something there is something about
• 42:39
  adolescence that for me as well was burning bright yeah and so intense and the colors
• 42:46
  yeah everything was turned up to eleven that's exactly right exactly right Josh and they
• 42:51
  you know that's what I was saying when I was that agent I suppose recognizing it still to be true
• 42:56
  when I wrote that which is now quite a long time ago as you can pretty tell in the sense although
• 43:01
  I was right perhaps to be pessimistic about the future and so is the is the price then when you
• 43:07
  talk about happiness and being happier now is the price of happiness contentment and
• 43:13
  the turning down on the volume of yeah of intensity yeah contentment is being in an on chair yeah happier
• 43:20
  is skipping around yeah I don't skip around skipping around like a child with an ice cream is happy
• 43:25
  contentment is in a chair thinking I'll do yeah yeah something like that is that a bit sad it's
• 43:33
  sad and bad and inevitable I guess I mean on top of that one has to I have to layer at least the
• 43:39
  fact that I you know having bipolar disorder will have phases in which I'm the happiness is turned
• 43:46
  up not to eleven but to yes yes yes you know a sort of hyper manic phase of I call it sometimes
• 43:53
  my Joan of Arc phase you know this kind of radiance that fills one and this sense of energy and
• 44:00
  things being possible and is that reminiscent is that reminiscent of what the 16 year old
• 44:04
  Stephen was talking about yes very interesting I mean sometimes you think psychiatry and the
• 44:12
  language of psychology and mental health is just another linguistic discourse to describe
• 44:20
  what medievals use demons or humors and you know that it's no truer to say that but there is
• 44:29
  something about adolescence in which yeah mood swings are greater and yeah I was also I found
• 44:37
  it harder to concentrate and you can call that attention deficit hyperactivity if you imagine
• 44:46
  a hypothetical spirit who who waxed and waned from being a 16 year old Stephen writing that letter
• 44:53
  to the Stephen present day over the course of 24 hour periods maybe we would diagnose that as but yeah
• 45:00
  and I think there is an element in which one can I mean I'm not scientific in the least a lot of
• 45:07
  my friends accuse me of being over scientific or over rational though I don't think I'm a rationalist
• 45:14
  but there's an element in which the medicalization of human moods and behaviors is no more convincing
• 45:22
  than the medieval theological demonizing or of the same thing yeah you know they're both ways
• 45:29
  of kind of controlling and creating a narrative for something that is deeply un you know
• 45:35
  in Kuwait and in Misty and Brownian sometimes and then and it's it looks clear from that letter
• 45:41
  that you wrote to your younger self that you would not if you could snap your fingers and
• 45:46
  raise having been that person would the converse be true that if you could snap your fingers and
• 45:52
  retain that sense of passion and you know life for the duration of your life would you keep it
• 46:03
  I think the question content contentment I think what I would the thing that would help but
• 46:08
  pause me from that snap is that and this is such a dull answer and my teenage self would be
• 46:15
  astonished is the discipline and joy of work that the control over my emotions that I was that I
• 46:26
  gave myself or somehow learned through language and writing and whether it was originally just
• 46:34
  writing comedy sketches with my friend Hugh and and and becoming a professional entertainer
• 46:40
  and then that word professional somehow then becoming a writer and finding out how difficult it
• 46:46
  was to write and but how that difficulty was a was a thrill and that the nature of creating a book
• 46:53
  required such professionalism and even acting in the theatre and and on film requires professionalism
• 47:02
  you have to learn your life you have to stand where you're told you have to behave you have to
• 47:06
  be on time and so on and so on and all of that those structures and frameworks that are not social
• 47:12
  ones they're not a boss telling you what to do which I would find difficult they are you becoming
• 47:18
  your boss and telling yourself what to do they they are discipline I mean it's a fashion word
• 47:24
  and I get fulfillment out of that of a kind that I never imagined I had this idea when I was
• 47:31
  young like a lot of people that art and poetry were about self-expression and about you know about
• 47:37
  really I got less or I wrote myself they were about that sort of outpouring of emotion but I discovered
• 47:43
  that almost the opposite is true there's there's a great essay it's an introduction to a book
• 47:51
  of criticism that T.S. Eliot wrote in which he basically says the same thing there with a lot of
• 47:56
  people seem to have the mistaken idea that the point of poetry is to express how you feel it
• 48:02
  couldn't be further from the truth he says and this you know this is a lesson of very few people
• 48:07
  want to hear and because we're mostly pretty adolescents still about the idea of poetry and we
• 48:12
  think that's what poetry is it's where you know letting your feelings out it actually it's it's
• 48:17
  way utterly controlling them through language and finding only the exact word to describe what
• 48:23
  necessarily isn't a feeling it's a perception and it could be the song of a thrush it could be
• 48:31
  you know the way a river moves and if you find the right word just as an artist a painter finds
• 48:36
  the right flash of white to convey water then the emotion pours out but it's exact and it's
• 48:44
  formal and it's not done in a kind of blast and even van Gogh if you read his diaries and letters to
• 48:52
  his brother Theo he's totally technical it's you know yes he's a deeply disturbed you know he's
• 48:57
  got great mental illness and so on and he's passionately sort of love for color and movement and
• 49:03
  nature and he wants to represent it he wants absolutely to represent it but it's about how he does
• 49:09
  it it's about the detail of the brush it's that it's that that makes art not emotion not it's
• 49:16
  the controlling of emotion that's fascinating because in terms of discipline and precision
• 49:22
  you're a precocious child yes and your father's criticism of you was that you were a bit too
• 49:30
  cute and knowledgeable and fancy and you were great at putting together a disciplined pastiche
• 49:37
  of what other brilliant people had said absolutely but you are fundamentally unoriginal yeah and
• 49:42
  that you know all you were good at was putting on a show of inteligencia exactly is that a
• 49:47
  criticism that stuck or that's really interesting because and I'm not wishing to suddenly become
• 49:55
  all luxury about it but it's only because that is what he said that I was a pastiche that it was
• 50:00
  just a kind of laying on of things that I perceived from outside in the world and that I could
• 50:05
  recreate cleverly and make it look like it was a work of art isn't that exactly what we
• 50:11
  moan about AI now because AI does the same it just scrapes all the data and puts it together so
• 50:17
  neatly and so cleverly but it's not original but the reason I call my first novel the liar was
• 50:24
  about this image I had because I noticed that this is actually how it all works and in fun and
• 50:29
  I've had it said the same thing because I'm quoting him all the time but you know great
• 50:34
  great artist steals the way he puts it and the image I have for it is teenage is very often
• 50:43
  and younger you practice your signature because it's your logo it's your little image that you
• 50:51
  give the world your name the way you write it your signature and it used to be very common
• 50:55
  thing because it was on checkbooks which don't really exist anymore the back of credit cards which
• 50:59
  everyone forgets to sign these days because it's you know you use a chip and pin but the signature
• 51:04
  was a very important thing as you signed a letter with it and it was your signature and when you
• 51:09
  were young you would practice it and you would make it up you would it would be fake because you
• 51:14
  would say one day like my name has a Y in it I'll do a straight down line for my Y with no curl on
• 51:21
  it and then I think no that's not right I'll do a little curl to it goes up against itself
• 51:26
  and I would try different signatures right and then one day it's fixed and it is your signature
• 51:32
  and the same with a walk I used to look at other boys as we walked into school from our houses and
• 51:37
  think oh he carries his book in front of him like that that looks quite cool these books
• 51:41
  kind of like that and he's got them under his arm and I would sort of try different walks
• 51:47
  and similarly with writing and it takes a long time but I loved various writers I have
• 51:54
  my what you now call a worldwide web my WWW Oscar Wilde PG Woodhouse and Evelyn War and
• 52:02
  loved their novels and writings and and everything I wrote was a ridiculous pastiche of
• 52:08
  of those styles you know bit of woodhouse bit of wild bit of bit of wall with possibly a bit of
• 52:14
  Arthur Conan Doyle shoved in as well and it was obvious and I knew it and my father saw it in
• 52:22
  everything of course pastiche as he called me but then I remember there was a magazine at university
• 52:28
  where he used to write reviews and articles and silly things and it was always under pseudonyms
• 52:34
  so no one knew who was writing what so he could be rude about people so on and one day I was
• 52:40
  walking along and someone said oh I'd article you read about so and so and I'd go
• 52:45
  why do you think that was me so off I would say it was your style completely and I said I've
• 52:50
  got a style I said of course you have is I mean you might as well have been you know you physically
• 52:56
  on the newspaper speaking out it was obviously you and I went back and looked at the article
• 53:01
  it wasn't Woodhouse it wasn't wildy it was I mean it was English it was an English style that had
• 53:07
  kind of you know was not of the streets certainly it was a literary style if you all wants to put
• 53:15
  it that way and I thought maybe I've certainly got this thing a voice my own individual voice
• 53:22
  and it is it layers and layers of other people's voices and other people's influences
• 53:27
  all over because everybody's would be but then that's what also what artificial intelligence is
• 53:33
  the Bayesian priors yes call it and and and so maybe originality does eventually come out of
• 53:40
  these accretions of pastief do you think it will from AI yes yes and I think it's inevitable
• 53:48
  I mean already there's a syllabus just sold a painting for 1.4 million was it that it was done
• 53:53
  by an AI I mean that could be a fad though the question oh yes absolutely that doesn't speak
• 53:59
  to the question of whether AI will be genuinely creative and you mentioned in the article that in
• 54:04
  that letter that you just read that you wrote to your younger self one phrase left out at me which
• 54:08
  was blessedly normal so when you're talking about copying the other boys walks do you ever I mean
• 54:18
  I know you envied people who seemed to be blessedly yeah normal you know people who just seemed
• 54:24
  to you know be able to dance without ever having had to be taught or you knew how to walk
• 54:30
  and hold themselves yeah if you could swap out your life for a blessedly normal life would you
• 54:37
  I think I think I actually say in in in in Mer in Merb the book you were so kind about I think it
• 54:44
  has a section that's called joining in or something like that and I quote is it that would say
• 54:52
  someone who defines the the bourgeois anti hero in literature which is kind of basically the hero
• 55:00
  of most novels since the Second World War as being divided in the self between two opposite impulses
• 55:11
  to be a part of the tribe to join in to be blessedly normal to be accepted but an equally powerful
• 55:21
  impulse to stand alone and be different and to be outside and that is they are so opposite it
• 55:27
  tears one apart because you can't satisfy yourself and I think I am like that I think a lot of
• 55:33
  people are like that you know there's is it the master builder or the public enemy I think it is
• 55:40
  the ibson clay that that ends with he stands strongest who stands must alone which is a powerful
• 55:46
  and terrible way to end a play and and to say to an audience you know because it's a communal act
• 55:51
  theater and it's a very it's a brilliant moment because you kind of think it's tragic thing to say
• 55:56
  but it's also defiant and it is a lot of a lot of the things well admires in art or shaking fists
• 56:03
  at the gods he stands strongest who stands must alone can that be true surely not but he's writing
• 56:10
  the ibson plays about a poisonous society a society that turns on the on the on the honest person
• 56:16
  with you know and and yet we also believe that we only can be strong when we are together
• 56:24
  you know which is a kind of a barbarist kind of thing you say in politics yeah we and no one
• 56:30
  challenges it of course we do we are together you know we're stronger but how can they both be true
• 56:35
  and yet within one they are both true well it reminds me a little bit of the conflict between
• 56:40
  the desire for newness and adventure on the one hand and the desire for safety and
• 56:45
  certainty and familiarity on the other which obviously something that you've also struggled with
• 56:50
  you know you want to be doing something new and incredible and at the same time you want to be
• 56:56
  well and around the familiar how does Walt Whitman put it so brilliantly do I contradict myself
• 57:02
  very well I contradict myself I contain multitudes yes and and that I remember reading that and
• 57:09
  thinking oh that's the most beautiful thing I've ever read yeah do I contradict myself very well
• 57:15
  then I contradict myself and and you know that's because that's what it is to me we are completely
• 57:23
  mixed in in our impulses I mean it's true in ways you know that ancient the Romans always
• 57:30
  talked about Russ versus herbs you know country versus the town and and that is a partly an
• 57:38
  expression of that there was a generation of Roman poets and thinkers and writers and indeed
• 57:43
  rulers like Augustus who who fancied themselves in the countryside as a gardener alone with nature
• 57:50
  away from the rustle the bustle of the city and they're far from the maddened crowds in
• 57:55
  the whole strafe as as Gray puts it and and but also like Catalyst they were they yearned
• 58:03
  for the pavement and the mob and the smell of people yes and I like that I love being alone in
• 58:09
  the country so I don't think it's a fantastic feeling and I you know I fantasize about just
• 58:14
  being in my house in the country and you know every year making chutney and jam with the seasons and
• 58:21
  you know having eggs and from the chickens and dead and being oh and not knowing whose president or
• 58:26
  prime minister you know this is how we began our conversation and then another part of me is never
• 58:32
  happier than when I'm you know in Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue or wherever it is you know just thinking
• 58:37
  this is I am part of the do you know the Australian poem Clancy of the Overflow no title it's
• 58:43
  beautiful it's by one of our greatest poets who I'm blanking on who wrote the man from Snowy River
• 58:50
  Banger oh don't you understand or yes I think it is I won't waste three minutes of your time
• 58:56
  reciting it for you now but it's beautiful it's about exactly this it's about it it's about this
• 59:02
  in in the 1800s in Australia and someone who's sitting in his dingy did a lot first writing a letter
• 59:07
  to someone who he met on a musta station in the outback and the letter comes back to him
• 59:14
  from a colleague who says oh Clancy who the name of the guy has gone off and he's he's out on
• 59:19
  the range somewhere and the letter is just this this guy's sort of thinking thinking through what
• 59:25
  it must be like to be out there in the wide open spaces of the Australian outback sitting on
• 59:30
  horseback seeing the vast sunlit plains extended as he would certain the the whisper of the
• 59:36
  breezes and the river on its bars and he sort of brings his focus back to where he is in this
• 59:42
  gritty 19th century you know Sydney with the fett of air and gritty of the dusty dirty city through
• 59:49
  the open window floating spreads its foulness overall he says and you know it just ends up with
• 59:56
  saying I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy like to take a turn at
• 1:00:01
  driving where the seasons come and go while he faced the round eternal of the cash book and
• 1:00:07
  the journal but I doubt he'd suit the office Clancy of the overflow just brilliant that I love
• 1:00:14
  it I love it and that that reminded me the office thing of the great opening of the words with
• 1:00:19
  poem the world is too much with us getting and spending yes and I we feel that but you know the
• 1:00:27
  marvel thing about the brain Josh isn't it it's his astonishing you can be like Clancy there on
• 1:00:31
  the range and you stand and all around you is nature and not a single human being or a thing made
• 1:00:38
  by a human and a little fresher to wind will turn a leaf in the distance and your eye will catch
• 1:00:44
  it straight away you will see the tiniest movements your brain is tuned to them because it might be
• 1:00:50
  someone who thinks you're lunch or it might be a potential lunch for you and we're we obviously
• 1:00:56
  evolutionist trained is to have this sensitivity in our perceptions when we're out there but you
• 1:01:01
  can then get on the train and two hours later you're in the middle of the city with 600 people on
• 1:01:07
  the pavement either side of you playing music on you can be on the phone hopping out of the way
• 1:01:14
  of a taxi music coming out of the barbershop as you pass by all this noise all this and your brain
• 1:01:20
  can cope with that yes so the same brain that finds the tiniest little nuance in a leaf yeah
• 1:01:27
  is able to filter out all this incredible noise and have a conversation I thought you were
• 1:01:31
  also going to say something different which is that you could be on horseback in the outback
• 1:01:36
  and your brain could be full of all the junk of the city and you could be completely at
• 1:01:41
  non-present to the tranquillature you're inhabiting and your brain could be racing and similarly
• 1:01:47
  you could be walking through fifth avenue in New York City this is one of the things I used to
• 1:01:50
  love doing when I lived in New York is walk down the street in a kind of contemplative
• 1:01:55
  rather sort of Buddhist yeah when you are your mind you're surrounded by the by the mayhem but
• 1:02:02
  you're not of it you know you're not in it and you can kind of coast through it in a tranquil way
• 1:02:06
  as the madness yeah I want to let you go but I want to ask you can we do a quick one word
• 1:02:13
  Rorschach like I'll do my best throw a throw a word at you you'll give me a word haggis
• 1:02:21
  Paul Hugh Laurie friend Winston Churchill
• 1:02:28
  bulldog twitter says pool English prep schools oh joy pain two ounces
• 1:02:40
  Brexit catastrophe circumcision cruel Michael Tatcher
• 1:02:50
  birdessier libraries smell pornography smell Australia
• 1:03:02
  sun Los Angeles noise New York
• 1:03:10
  clamor George Orwell
• 1:03:15
  Puritanism Elon Musk
• 1:03:19
  Foulness companies that make their staff right he him or they them gender pronouns in their
• 1:03:25
  email signatures bless tiktok in comprehension capitalism
• 1:03:37
  fuck it the ethos have moved fast and break things disaster
• 1:03:46
  what's the most unusual place you've ever been
• 1:03:49
  there's a good question the most unusual place I have ever been
• 1:04:00
  I mean one can say Utan probably in terms of it country it's unlike almost any other
• 1:04:10
  and ever visited both geographically and socially what else and unusual well I grew up in Norfolk
• 1:04:19
  which is the most unusual country in England in some ways it's eccentric and peculiar
• 1:04:24
  I was going to say we do different they say also in this rapid fire a series of questions I was
• 1:04:30
  also going to ask you what's the most underrated part of England or Britain oh no we definitely
• 1:04:34
  say he's dangly yes it's yeah Norfolk it's fantastic should we should we colonize Mars
• 1:04:42
  I don't you know I don't care I mean I know it's important and an extraordinary step for mankind
• 1:04:48
  but because of the kind of people who talk about it and because obviously Marsk is just so
• 1:04:53
  full of bullshit about what year we're going to do it and how we're going to do it and
• 1:04:58
  it's a lot of things that we can do will unfortunately be done by such dreadful people
• 1:05:06
  that they sort of make it you know I mean in a sense you could say this is the story of humanity
• 1:05:12
  it was wonderful to explore I just read a wonderful book by the American historian Hampton
• 1:05:19
  Sides it's called the Wide Wide Sea and it's about the last voyage of Captain Cook
• 1:05:25
  and I wasn't sure what I was expecting but first it's beautifully written so it's it's a thrill to
• 1:05:30
  read and I didn't know much about Captain Cook you know I suppose I could have imagined that
• 1:05:39
  typical you know white supremacist style British person claiming things in the name of the king
• 1:05:47
  and being part of the ruination that is empire he turned out not to be like that at all he was
• 1:05:52
  very uncomfortable at changing the lives of the places that he discovered as a European you know
• 1:06:01
  and in his last voyage he went he was supposed to be on behalf of the crown going all the way around
• 1:06:07
  the world and up to find the northwest passage the idea being that you could get from the Pacific
• 1:06:13
  to the Atlantic across the top of the world which we now know you can't do it's just it's a
• 1:06:19
  little ice give it time the only way was to go all the way down to the bottom of South America
• 1:06:27
  that was a huge voyage until we cut let's say we until the Panama and the two of us
• 1:06:33
  and even Josh cut the Panama Canal that's right yeah but anyway so but it's fascinating because he
• 1:06:37
  goes down you know all the way down South Africa and then cross the Pacific to New Zealand and then
• 1:06:44
  back to Australia where he'd first been of course the botany bay not very far from where we
• 1:06:48
  are talking now um and he's in Tasmania and then he he goes up to Tahiti to return oh my this
• 1:06:57
  extraordinary Tahiti who has he brought back to England and his second voyage and became
• 1:07:04
  the sensation of Britain this remarkable Tahiti who's complete desire was to uh get his revenge
• 1:07:13
  against the people of Bora Bora who attacked his island there was a lot of war going on in the
• 1:07:17
  and the society islands or whatever you prefer to call them now that that area of Polynesia
• 1:07:23
  and then he went a bit north and discovered something completely new to to to the west which was
• 1:07:27
  Hawaii um and had an amazing time in Hawaii it was astonished by how wonderful and beautifully it
• 1:07:32
  was and they were and everything was gorgeous then he went up to the north and sailed around and
• 1:07:38
  but anyway one I thought was what a good and interesting man he was he was killed and when
• 1:07:46
  the second visit to Hawaii so didn't they eat him they they may have done in a ritualistic way
• 1:07:53
  because they thought he was a god and that the god had betrayed them this god lomo i'm not judging
• 1:07:58
  them for no no absolutely not and and it was it was but what was interesting was that he he felt
• 1:08:04
  very bad about the interference anyway and about the trading and and all the rest of it he was
• 1:08:10
  fascinated by the way they lived and very respectful of it and had no sense that these countries
• 1:08:14
  should be run by Britain or anything else they should be governed the sent out he was a decent
• 1:08:20
  person and I guess they're a very decent scientist in a sense he was like a scientist because his
• 1:08:25
  real skill was astonishing navigation he's a remarkable seamen I mean absolutely incredible
• 1:08:31
  the the greatest of his age and people were astounded his crew were astounded by his skill and his
• 1:08:36
  instincts and so on that's what he was and there are scientists who who have that knowledge about
• 1:08:42
  but the people who will go to Mars will be like the people who will
• 1:08:45
  who will exploit what cook discovered and go all right well we'll go there then we'll go with
• 1:08:50
  the royal naval ship and we will run it and we will call it part of Britain who would lead the
• 1:08:55
  mission to Mars that would get the maximum buy-in from Stephen Fry it would it would have to be a
• 1:09:00
  scientist and the scientist only not someone who wanted to colonize it admittedly there don't
• 1:09:04
  seem to be any Martians to be exploited but the fact is we would just ruin another piece
• 1:09:12
  you know it's like that hymn by Greenland's icy mountain and there's a line in it where every
• 1:09:17
  prospect pleases and only man is vile and I you know we are just such an infection
• 1:09:28
  it's a terrible thing to say we have some upside we have some nature we have some nature you know
• 1:09:33
  there are other animals that are infestation and you know other creatures can't write moeb is
• 1:09:38
  my washpot well that's a very you know I mean it's like we are an infestation who has great
• 1:09:43
  redeeming feet we are a god we are gods and creatures yes you know all of that so very quickly
• 1:09:50
  final things what was the best thing about hosting qi oh I I mean the the guest Alan really
• 1:09:57
  Alan Davis is charming where he allowed himself to be presented as a fool he is anything but
• 1:10:04
  and he's he's delightful what's the least bad sport the least bad sport well cricket cricket is a
• 1:10:10
  great great great sport a great artistic achievement it's the greatest thing man has ever done
• 1:10:16
  what's the best thing Oscar Wilde wrote the importance of being honest and
• 1:10:21
  they profund is a close second his letter to Posey from prison right you get a time machine and
• 1:10:27
  you can go into the past to any period and any place where do you go you're not going to be killed
• 1:10:32
  you know no I go to the cafe royal in 1888 1889 1890 in the hope of meeting eventually
• 1:10:43
  all the people who lived in that part of Victorian London would be Oscar Wilde but also
• 1:10:48
  Sherlock Holmes would be just around the corner at least Gernan Doyle and they might actually
• 1:10:52
  Gernan Doyle and Wilde and Gernan Doyle was really impressed by Oscar Wilde wrote about him even
• 1:10:57
  after the trial and the disgrace of Wilde he wrote in his autobiography in the 20s uh
• 1:11:03
  Kona Doyle just how impressive a man he was that they were invited it's another
• 1:11:08
  marvel story could almost make a short film or something it was a man called Stoddard who was the
• 1:11:13
  managing editor of a literary American literary magazine called Lippincott's magazine which
• 1:11:18
  published short stories and did full stories novels and rather like an American film producer he
• 1:11:24
  went to England to get some talent and he invited to dinner at the Langham hotel the original
• 1:11:31
  Langham there are now Langham's all over the world um he invited Oscar Wilde Rudyard's Kipling
• 1:11:37
  and Kona Doyle um Rada Kipling wrote the light that failed his fantastic autobiographical novel about
• 1:11:43
  his blindness about his you know what at least loss of a good sight he was very very short sighted
• 1:11:50
  Kipling it's a marvelous book Kona Doyle was persuaded by Stoddard this the studying scarlet you
• 1:11:58
  wrote with that chap what's he called Sherlock something Sherlock Holmes yes I think there's another
• 1:12:04
  book in that and so he wrote the second Sherlock Holmes book his sign of four and um and he said
• 1:12:11
  to Oscar Wilde you you've never written a novel have you you've written plays and everyone says
• 1:12:15
  I wish you well I think you write a novel I've got an idea for one and Wilde said well I was thinking
• 1:12:20
  that's someone who's portrait aged when they didn't that sounds good to me right that
• 1:12:26
  that's so a picture of Dorian Gray was it and so that one didn't have the Langham hotel
• 1:12:31
  so I'd like to be around there you know yeah sort of bumping into those people and thinking of
• 1:12:36
  that you're so you're such a polymath and you've done so many different things from black
• 1:12:41
  editor q i to your books to your Greek mythology and everything do you ever wish you'd had
• 1:12:47
  a clearer focus the but yes in in a way I do um I mean I admire I admire artists and I'm not an
• 1:12:57
  artist I have arguments with artists about this they say oh yes you're an artist I said no no no no
• 1:13:02
  no um one reason I know I'm not an artist is every artist I know in the end doesn't care what
• 1:13:09
  people think about them they just go fuck that I don't care so Damien Hurst someone like that
• 1:13:14
  people who can be incredibly rude about his work or or other painter friends of mine that they can
• 1:13:20
  get you know criticism or the market price goes down and they go man I care that's my problem
• 1:13:30
  I'm I'm sensitive to the audience I am in that sense I suppose the word I would use is I'm
• 1:13:37
  an entertainer I want people to be entertained by my what I write by what I say and when I perform
• 1:13:42
  on a stage and therefore as an entertainer it's my I am the servant of the audience an artist is
• 1:13:49
  a servant of no one except their art and I can't be like that and part of me thinks it would be an
• 1:13:55
  adventure to be an artist to be absolutely dedicated to something and care about that more than
• 1:14:02
  about what people thought of it but then I care what people think about me too much socially as
• 1:14:07
  well as creatively and but that's okay I mean that I suppose one of the themes of our conversation
• 1:14:15
  has been that that I've come to the conclusion that it's okay it is okay and you are very
• 1:14:21
  entertaining Stephen thank you