Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Iain Lee | The Christian Reeve Podcast #340

Transcript

Iain Lee | The Christian Reeve Podcast #340 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reeve
• 0:02
  Podcast. Today's guest is a broadcaster,
• 0:06
  a radio host, a writer, a comedian and a counsellor.
• 0:09
  His name is Ian Lee. Welcome to the show.
• 0:11
  How are you doing? Hey man, nice to see you.
• 0:13
  It's interesting because people's oh, you're right.
• 0:15
  I don't think I've ever written anything in my life.
• 0:18
  I tried to write a book about 8 times.
• 0:21
  That's the hardest thing to do. So I found and we get.
• 0:25
  We're gonna have a bit of fun with this because again, I went
• 0:28
  from different sources online. I went from your website, I went
• 0:31
  from Wikipedia and then just online into.
• 0:34
  My website I might have put it right from my website because
• 0:37
  it. OK, let's let's jump into the
• 0:40
  first one. So this is stolen from Loudwire.
• 0:42
  Shout out to Loudwire. They used to do a series called
• 0:45
  Wikipedia fact or Fiction. And it's it's fun because
• 0:49
  obviously random people just write Wikipedia.
• 0:52
  You don't know what's on there. So let's let's see if it's
• 0:56
  right, because on on your website, on it says that you're
• 0:59
  a writer and then on Wikipedia it says that you wrote a gaming
• 1:02
  column. I and you know what?
• 1:06
  I, I don't really count that as writing because it's the, I
• 1:09
  write a gaming column every month for this wonderful
• 1:11
  magazine called Retro Gamer, right?
• 1:14
  And it's generally me. I can see all the cat hairs on
• 1:16
  my microphone. They are cat hairs.
• 1:18
  It's generally me kind of reminiscing, reminiscing about
• 1:22
  playing old video games when I was a kid or talking about my
• 1:26
  kids and, and, and how we connect through gaming quite a
• 1:29
  lot. So do you know what?
• 1:31
  Yes, I am indeed a writer. I, I know what you mean.
• 1:35
  I it's like I, I say I'm a songwriter, a bad poet, but not
• 1:41
  a writer. And they're like, what do you
• 1:43
  mean that's writing technically? And I'm like, well, yes, but
• 1:45
  it's not writing a story, is it? That's exciting.
• 1:49
  To be a writer, it's got to be books or it's got to be scripts.
• 1:52
  And I have never written a script in my life because I
• 1:56
  would not know how to. I'm very, you've seen some of my
• 1:59
  streams. I'm very much of doing it in the
• 2:01
  moment. I can do it in the moment.
• 2:04
  I think I'm quite a good improviser if I'm bouncing off
• 2:07
  someone, whether that's a producer or a Co host or a or or
• 2:11
  a caller. But the act of sitting down and
• 2:15
  writing and planning I, you know, something beyond 500
• 2:19
  words, I can't. I can't.
• 2:21
  I, I, I think that's something we share.
• 2:23
  I, I'm much more comfortable, say, being on set and bouncing
• 2:26
  off the director and being like, what about this?
• 2:28
  And then, you know, they've written it and I'll do what they
• 2:31
  want. But I'm like, yeah, but what
• 2:33
  about this? What about this?
• 2:34
  What if I try it this way? Like, that's way more fun.
• 2:36
  That's just, I don't know. But like you say, like sitting
• 2:39
  there, like, I have to do that with like, the podcast.
• 2:42
  I have to sit down and meticulously do research and
• 2:45
  then try and build a show from there.
• 2:48
  But that's because it's more of a narrative thing.
• 2:50
  So obviously off the camera, you said you'd never listen to the
• 2:53
  show. The show is kind of really.
• 2:55
  Sorry about that. And whenever I do a podcast I
• 2:57
  normally I normally listen to a couple I just didn't have.
• 2:59
  I just didn't get round to it. It's fair enough.
• 3:02
  Podcasts are long. Mine are meticulously long.
• 3:06
  It's it's I'd never expect people to to watch the show,
• 3:08
  listen to the show. The only reason I ever say to to
• 3:11
  guests coming on the show is maybe check it out is so that
• 3:14
  you get like an idea of what I do.
• 3:16
  But it's it changes with every guest because some will be more
• 3:20
  like an interview, some will be more like a conversation.
• 3:23
  I always try to get that conversational vibe as opposed
• 3:27
  to just like here's question one, here's question that's
• 3:31
  boring as shit to me. I don't like that.
• 3:33
  I think having a then that's how I've always conducted any
• 3:36
  interviews I've done is generally I'm very lucky.
• 3:39
  When I was doing radio, I could choose how I interviewed you.
• 3:41
  You'd get oh, such and such has got a book out or doing a tour.
• 3:45
  Not interested. Me and Catherine, when we did
• 3:47
  our radio show, we just flick through our record collection
• 3:51
  and go, oh, I wonder if John Sebastian from The Loving
• 3:54
  Spoonful would come on, let's send him an e-mail.
• 3:56
  John Sebastian writes back. Yeah.
• 3:58
  When do you want to do it? This is what we were talking
• 4:00
  about before, about asking people before we start
• 4:02
  recording. And then I've got John Sebastian
• 4:05
  on and I just chat. You know, I much prefer that
• 4:09
  style of of interview. Was there ever any interviews
• 4:13
  where you were like nervous maybe like just.
• 4:16
  Ray Davis of the Kinks I was nervous about because he is
• 4:20
  famously curmudgeonly and grumpy.
• 4:25
  And some interviews, you know, John Sebastian was on the phone
• 4:29
  and it was just him. Sometimes, you know, a rock star
• 4:32
  or an actor will just turn up, you know, and, and they, they do
• 4:36
  it. I, I was lucky enough to
• 4:37
  interview Ringo Starr, you know, an actual Beatle, and I think he
• 4:41
  was in the room on his own. But Ray turned up with, there
• 4:45
  was an entourage of PR people. If you got PR people, man, you
• 4:50
  are screwed. And they, there were about four
• 4:53
  or five of them and they came in and said you cannot ask him
• 4:57
  about the Kinks, even though the new album he was promoting, I
• 5:00
  think it was either a choral album he did of Kinks songs.
• 5:05
  No, it was him doing duets of Kinks songs with like Bruce
• 5:08
  Springsteen and stuff. You're not allowed to ask him
• 5:11
  about the Kinks. You must only talk about this
• 5:14
  new album, which is songs, Kinks songs, but you can't ask about
• 5:17
  the Kinks. And so I was very, very nervous.
• 5:20
  But actually, I won him over. We had a break in recording, and
• 5:24
  he famously lives in Muswell Hill.
• 5:26
  I lived in Muswell Hill. And I said, oh, man, do you know
• 5:29
  this Curry house? And he said, oh, no, I don't
• 5:31
  know that one, I'll check it out.
• 5:33
  And he said, do you know this one?
• 5:34
  I said, yeah, I do. It's great in there.
• 5:36
  And then just before we're about to record, he said, Ian, you can
• 5:39
  ask me anything. I'd obviously connected with him
• 5:42
  on some way. And he said, you can ask me
• 5:44
  anything. I said, what even about, you
• 5:45
  know, that band? He said, yeah, you can ask me
• 5:47
  about that band if you want. And it was beautiful.
• 5:50
  But I was very nervous with him. I was very nervous with Ringo.
• 5:53
  He's a beetle man, you know? I, I, I have like mixed feelings
• 5:56
  about this because like, I can understand if you get asked
• 5:59
  about the same fucking thing every single day, it obviously
• 6:04
  can get frustrating. I mean, there's questions I get,
• 6:06
  I'm not a celebrity, but there's things I get asked about like
• 6:08
  what's wrong with your fucking eye or stuff like that.
• 6:14
  And it's it's, you know, or did you know that you look like
• 6:17
  insert celebrity name here? And it's I don't know.
• 6:21
  I mean, I think if you become a celebrity and you can obviously
• 6:26
  shed more light on this, but like, if you become famous for
• 6:29
  certain things, I think you're going to be expected to always
• 6:32
  be asked about that. And I mean, well, let's let's
• 6:36
  ask about that. Like how do you navigate that
• 6:41
  sort of aspect of being famous? Like do you just let it happen
• 6:47
  or do you just kind of ignore it?
• 6:48
  Or like, how do you deal with that?
• 6:49
  What, being asked the same things over and over again?
• 6:52
  Yes. First of all, I, I, I'm not that
• 6:56
  famous anymore. I haven't been on telly for
• 6:58
  about 6-7 years and I tend not to get recognised as much,
• 7:01
  certainly as much as I did after The Jungle.
• 7:03
  But it was like, it was, it was Beatlemania for a bit.
• 7:06
  But when I get interviewed, what, what are the things people
• 7:08
  always ask what was Ricky Gervais like?
• 7:10
  What was Ali G like? Did you tell me about stealing
• 7:17
  the strawberries? I stole some strawberries and
• 7:19
  I'm A Celebrity and I'm A Celebrity.
• 7:22
  Is it like that or is it fake? Do you get meals and going?
• 7:24
  Those tend to be the the general questions and I've always had
• 7:30
  fun with them back in the day 20 odd years ago.
• 7:33
  I just make up answers. I just lie.
• 7:35
  And what was Ricky Gervais like? He's a thief and he, he, he
• 7:39
  stole 5000 lbs from me and, and he kicked my cat.
• 7:42
  You know, I'd make up stuff. But now at the age of 52, I'm so
• 7:48
  grateful that anyone has any interest in any work I've done.
• 7:53
  You know, you want to talk about a show from 28 years ago?
• 7:56
  I will happily talk about it. You want to ask me about the
• 7:58
  stealing strawberries? Some people will know I was on
• 8:01
  I'm A Celebrity. And me and someone else, we
• 8:04
  stole some strawberries, right? Really silly thing.
• 8:06
  I did it because I thought my friends Scott and Catherine
• 8:10
  would find it funny. I didn't know it would become a
• 8:12
  thing and people, but some guy in Tesco mentioned it the other
• 8:16
  day, some guy stuck in the shelves when all Ian was like
• 8:19
  strawberries. And I love it, man.
• 8:22
  I love it. I, I made a tiny little thing,
• 8:25
  the really silly thing that has seeped into the public's
• 8:28
  consciousness. So I, I, I love that.
• 8:30
  I'm just grateful anyone's interested, you know?
• 8:33
  You said to me that you kind of OK, let's, let's talk about the,
• 8:37
  the big thing here is you essentially you're playing like
• 8:40
  a character like this is the real you right now.
• 8:42
  This meant this gentleman we're interviewing, but it's, is it?
• 8:45
  Well, I, I mean, I see it like a character.
• 8:48
  I mean, you know, I jumped into your stream last night and it
• 8:52
  was crazy. I really recommend it.
• 8:54
  Check it out on TikTok. It's, it's, it's really
• 8:57
  something. But then it, it, it was also not
• 8:59
  a surprise. I was like, oh, this is, you
• 9:00
  know, he's been done this for like 30 odd years on radio.
• 9:03
  Like, and then I kind of started thinking about it.
• 9:05
  I was like, OK, was this something you decided on like
• 9:10
  really early on your career? Like you just kind of came
• 9:13
  across it or was it a device from comedy and you kind of
• 9:16
  utilised it? Where did this idea of of like
• 9:19
  sort of crafting the character and and using that?
• 9:23
  So I've never really felt this. This is the closest to me.
• 9:26
  You're probably going to get on a podcast.
• 9:28
  Although of course there is an element of performance, right?
• 9:31
  But this is the closest, so I've never sorry you're going to get
• 9:36
  cats here. This is Patty, by the way.
• 9:40
  So it wasn't until, you know, the last 1012 years I've felt
• 9:44
  comfortable being me on the radio.
• 9:47
  And it took a long time. When I did stand up 30 years
• 9:50
  ago, I did this character. I'm not very good, but I'm keen
• 9:54
  and it was always my 6th gig and I was a bit clumsy.
• 9:57
  The 11:00 show was, you know, it was a RIP off of Chris Morris,
• 10:01
  you know, day-to-day style. And I think I managed to change
• 10:05
  it into into my own thing after a while.
• 10:08
  But that's what they wanted. But then I came out of the 11:00
• 10:12
  show and I was very confused, right?
• 10:13
  I didn't really know. I didn't know what my voice was
• 10:17
  and I thought they wanted that slightly acerbic, you know,
• 10:21
  11:00 show slightly rude in your face talking like that.
• 10:25
  And today we're going to be doing this, you know, that kind
• 10:28
  of thing. So I didn't, I didn't really
• 10:32
  know who I was. And it wasn't until I started
• 10:35
  doing radio that I realized, oh, I can be me to a certain extent.
• 10:42
  And the thing you're talking about on TikTok, I mean, it's a
• 10:46
  very angry, resentful, phoning host who does not want to be
• 10:53
  there, who is, who thinks he's better than TikTok, who thinks
• 10:58
  he's a still a famous man. And I often hold up the awards
• 11:01
  I've won and go, I'm better than all of you.
• 11:05
  And that happened spontaneously. I was I thought I would do a
• 11:08
  phony show on TikTok, but the gag was going to be I would be
• 11:11
  silent until someone phoned in. So this is a this is a new thing
• 11:16
  you've come up with then this isn't a career long thing.
• 11:18
  This is like. No, no, no, this is this is
• 11:19
  fairly new. My friend Dave came up with the
• 11:21
  idea of of do a phony show where you don't say anything when
• 11:24
  someone phones you become animated.
• 11:27
  And for but for some reason, this angry sweary thing came up
• 11:32
  and I, I'm going to be honest, Christian, it was so much fun,
• 11:35
  so sweary, you know, and vulgar and so much fun.
• 11:41
  And what I don't get is that you can see it as pantomime, right?
• 11:46
  And as performance. But most of the people in the
• 11:48
  chat go look at this pathetic has been clinging on to
• 11:54
  celebrity from 25 years ago. How dare he speak to me like I I
• 11:59
  love it. I mean, how do you, how do you
• 12:02
  feel like when people say something like that to you?
• 12:05
  Because the, the way I look at it is, you mentioned before, OK,
• 12:08
  I've not been, I'm not as famous as I used to be.
• 12:10
  And it's like, well, it's, it's a relative thing, isn't it?
• 12:12
  I, I mean, I hate the word relevancy.
• 12:16
  I, I think for many people in industry, whether it be music,
• 12:18
  acting, broadcasting, you look at career, it's like, OK, well,
• 12:22
  I did this for a certain amount of time.
• 12:24
  Now I move on to this thing. I guess not many people like, I
• 12:29
  look at like people have asked me, are you trying to be famous?
• 12:31
  No, I couldn't give two shits about that.
• 12:34
  The only way I would look at that as being useful is if you
• 12:37
  can use it to bolster yourself and, and, and, and to be honest,
• 12:41
  make contacts. You know, that's really how
• 12:43
  you're going to get anywhere is making connections in the
• 12:46
  industry. You know, it won't really be
• 12:48
  about like whether or not you're famous that that can help.
• 12:52
  But I mean, as we've seen time and time again, especially on an
• 12:55
  app like TikTok, it's all about how you use these things and how
• 12:58
  you transition these things. You know, you've come into this
• 13:02
  space and you've identified, oh, I can get these people riled up.
• 13:06
  This is brilliant. And it's to be honest, it works
• 13:08
  because I think maybe some people are not familiar.
• 13:12
  I think some of the older people were a bit like, oh, I know what
• 13:14
  he's doing there. But it's, but then the other
• 13:17
  side of it as well is that not everything you say is, is this
• 13:21
  character. Like there was a few moments
• 13:24
  when you were pretty impassioned and pretty serious on certain
• 13:27
  things and quite rightly. And I was like, ah, OK, he's
• 13:33
  telling them off here. But he's also kind of playing
• 13:36
  into that character as well. And it's.
• 13:38
  Yeah, I think it's, it's it's kind of good to put people in
• 13:41
  their place sometimes because I think a lot of them need it.
• 13:43
  Like there's this sense of entitlement that exists.
• 13:46
  I get it a lot on streams as well where people are like you
• 13:50
  need to give me this, you need to give me this.
• 13:51
  It's like, I don't need to give you shit.
• 13:54
  Like I just what? What does that even mean?
• 13:57
  Yeah, there's there is some people will there's no topic on
• 14:02
  this show. It's just an angry man swearing.
• 14:04
  It's like for me, it's like, you know, the panto villain, people
• 14:07
  come out and Boo him, but a lot of people can't seem to see
• 14:09
  that. And people will think it's a
• 14:12
  phone in show on LBC and people will come on and go.
• 14:16
  I want, I want to talk about voting reform.
• 14:18
  I want to talk about taxes, people.
• 14:21
  Someone fed up a couple of days ago.
• 14:22
  What do you think of the budget? Why do you care?
• 14:25
  You don't care what I think. You want to tell me what you
• 14:28
  think? But also I'm not interested.
• 14:30
  So I cut them off and I get angry.
• 14:32
  I've had a few messages today. Oh, so you won't let people talk
• 14:36
  about politics? It's my stream.
• 14:39
  I will curate it exactly how I want to curate it.
• 14:44
  Just because you can click a box and come on doesn't mean you
• 14:49
  have the right to to tell me about your your politics.
• 14:54
  I owe you nothing. And you use a really good word.
• 14:58
  Two things. Fame.
• 14:59
  Fame is, is, isn't, isn't. There are elements of fame that
• 15:03
  is nice for the ego, right? You get free stuff, People get a
• 15:07
  lot of free stuff, which is weird.
• 15:09
  People come up and and say stuff.
• 15:10
  There is a downside. You know, I people threatening
• 15:14
  my kids. You know, I have people
• 15:16
  messaging me on Twitter saying I'm going to kill your kids.
• 15:18
  That's not very nice. And also fame is empty.
• 15:22
  It's very, very empty. And it's all it does is fuel the
• 15:27
  ego. It's like cocaine, right?
• 15:28
  For the start, you get kind of a nice feeling, but actually it's
• 15:32
  horrible and it's empty and it's destructive.
• 15:35
  And one final thing, you mentioned the word relevance.
• 15:39
  What does that mean, right? A lot of people think relevance
• 15:42
  means being on the telly and having, you know, a lot of
• 15:46
  numbers on TikTok, right? But people say you're not
• 15:48
  relevant. I've got more followers on
• 15:50
  TikTok. Well, that's an odd way of
• 15:53
  measuring relevancy. I am relevant to the people who
• 15:56
  care, right? Relevant to my kids, to my step
• 15:59
  kids, to my partner. That's it.
• 16:02
  That's relevant. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm so I'm
• 16:04
  not, you know, hosting The One Show.
• 16:06
  I'm not on GB News for goodness sakes that that's not relevancy.
• 16:12
  So there's, there's a few elements to this and I want to
• 16:15
  kind of pick your brains a little bit more about fame.
• 16:17
  But I will say I, I'm completely there with you.
• 16:20
  The, the things that really matter in life, family, friends,
• 16:22
  like that's always going to be more important and should be
• 16:25
  more important. But there's also this weird
• 16:28
  thing of, of like status. So for instance, I've been
• 16:31
  acting since 2019. But the one question I'll always
• 16:36
  get is, Oh, is there anything I'd know you from?
• 16:39
  Are you, are you famous? And it's like, well, a obviously
• 16:42
  fucking not B, I've done a lot. I'm very proud of what I've done
• 16:47
  personally that I mean I've, I've been involved in some
• 16:49
  bigger projects, but to me it's like you can be involved in a
• 16:53
  big project and not have a significant role.
• 16:56
  But then it's relative. Like I'm not chasing trying to
• 16:59
  become some star. I'm trying to build a career in
• 17:02
  like creative endeavours and I'm grateful for any and all
• 17:06
  opportunities. That's the way my mind works.
• 17:09
  The people I look up to, like your career actors or career
• 17:12
  musicians, they are invested in what they're doing.
• 17:16
  Even if they become a success, they're still trying to master
• 17:20
  their craft as much as possible. It's it's the reason I was so
• 17:24
  excited to have you on the show, amongst other reasons is like,
• 17:27
  wow, professional broadcaster. Like I've been doing this five
• 17:30
  years and you know, I've become like a podcast veteran.
• 17:34
  I guess you could say I the broadcasting, I understand it's
• 17:38
  a totally different behemoth and it requires different things
• 17:42
  from you. And there's a certain way that
• 17:44
  you approach it, you know, and depending on what type of radio
• 17:51
  you're doing or type of broadcasting you're doing, you
• 17:53
  have to adjust it a little bit. I mean, you mentioned before the
• 17:56
  11:00 show required a certain thing from you and it was a
• 18:00
  character, etcetera. But then you're moving into
• 18:02
  radio and it's like, OK, whether it's LBC or whether it's like
• 18:07
  ABBC thing, like there's different requirements.
• 18:11
  They might ask you or they might then they might just be that
• 18:13
  unwritten kind of expectation. I get it.
• 18:16
  Sometimes you're acting well, I get like basically nothing to go
• 18:19
  on and I try to figure something out and then the director's
• 18:22
  like, no, no, no, actually it's this.
• 18:24
  I'm like, oh, OK, well, that's totally different from what I
• 18:27
  had in mind. But like bringing it back to to
• 18:30
  the point like there's, there's a lot of focus on status
• 18:35
  relevancy, I think because that's what the average person
• 18:38
  thinks is important and it's just not realistic.
• 18:43
  Like for example, if you want to talk numbers, I've got 2 TikTok
• 18:46
  channels. It's for stupid talking about
• 18:48
  this. But one of them has 28,000
• 18:52
  followers, the other one has like 9000 Now of that, I'm lucky
• 18:58
  if maybe like 10 people are actively engaged.
• 19:01
  And like that's the thing you've really got to pay attention to
• 19:03
  is your audience that the people that are invested like that have
• 19:07
  been following, you say, for years, not people scrolling on a
• 19:11
  fucking app like they're not. That's the are they going to pay
• 19:15
  your bills? Are they going to be invested in
• 19:16
  you? No, but that's that's the thing
• 19:19
  now, like you get judged on that.
• 19:21
  Like we hear it with casting directors, like they will
• 19:24
  actually make decisions based on how many followers you have on.
• 19:27
  Instagram, there are a lot of people, radio has changed in the
• 19:30
  last three, 4-5 years in that they won't necessarily hire, you
• 19:34
  know, the, the broadcasters, they'll hire people who've got
• 19:37
  2.5 million followers on Instagram because they think
• 19:41
  that audience will come with them.
• 19:44
  No, I mean, OK, let's let's talk about that.
• 19:46
  Like radio has changed. People don't listen to radio as
• 19:51
  much anymore. I mean, you could argue maybe
• 19:54
  podcast podcasting is the evolution of that is the next
• 19:58
  step. You know, there's still radio
• 20:01
  out there that's worth listening to, be it talk radio or, you
• 20:04
  know, music mixed with with bit speaking.
• 20:07
  You know, I think it's always going to exist on some level.
• 20:11
  But much like television, you know, people's interests change,
• 20:14
  their habits change, and maybe they're just not.
• 20:16
  Consuming media in the same way anymore, but as you say, like
• 20:21
  broadcasting is a thing that people go to like university for
• 20:25
  or train for years to get into and understand like the tricks
• 20:30
  over time. For example, you interview
• 20:35
  people for years. You did phoning calls, you did
• 20:37
  like straight up interviews with people.
• 20:39
  You would have had to have learned to do that.
• 20:40
  Like if you're an influencer and you've come and done a, a few
• 20:45
  podcasts and you know, whatever you're like, Oh yeah, I'm ready
• 20:48
  for radio. You're going to quickly realise
• 20:50
  after a few months that this person isn't, is not ready for
• 20:53
  this. I would say 99.5%.
• 20:56
  I do think within that pool there are some talented people
• 21:01
  that just need a break, that just need someone to recognize
• 21:05
  them and, and, and pull them out.
• 21:07
  I mean, I slightly cheated getting into the reason I got
• 21:11
  high profile radio gig on LBC, which was a different beast back
• 21:14
  then was because I've been on telly and in sort of 2002,
• 21:19
  three, four, they were doing a similar thing as they are now
• 21:23
  with influencers. We'll get him off the telly.
• 21:24
  We'll get her off the telly. And I was very, very lucky that
• 21:27
  I was OK at radio at that point. But I had a boss who who could
• 21:32
  see something that I couldn't see in me.
• 21:35
  And he encouraged me and he said he was the one.
• 21:38
  There's two guys, guy called Scott Solder and David Lloyd,
• 21:41
  and they said when you're on the radio, you're OK, but you're
• 21:45
  playing a radio host. You're doing what you think a
• 21:48
  radio host should sound like. Stop that and be you.
• 21:53
  What the fuck? And it was the best advice I
• 21:57
  ever had. And I was very lucky in my radio
• 21:59
  career of 20 odd years. The for the most part I was
• 22:04
  allowed to be me. I built up this style of
• 22:08
  irreverent radio of phoning show that was, it was unlike anything
• 22:15
  else. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll say that.
• 22:16
  And, and I was allowed to do that.
• 22:19
  There was a period when I ended up doing BBC local radio and
• 22:21
  they tried to knock that out of me, but they didn't.
• 22:24
  And then I got the sack because they, they couldn't.
• 22:26
  And because I, I had a go at some homophobes.
• 22:30
  That's that's a different thing. So I, I was very lucky that I
• 22:34
  was able to, to be me. I can't remember what the
• 22:39
  question was. I go, I go off on tangents.
• 22:41
  Christian, I do apologise. I get a bit lost sometimes.
• 22:45
  It's fine, let's explore that a little bit.
• 22:48
  So this from Wikipedia. Let's see if this is true or
• 22:52
  not. If it's true.
• 22:53
  It says here, yeah. Lee began his radio career in
• 22:56
  December 1997, presenting a four hour show on Horizon 103.3, an
• 23:02
  independent station in Milton Keynes.
• 23:03
  Hey, on Christmas Day at that point.
• 23:06
  White, right, But go on. At that point, he was 24 years
• 23:10
  old with only 15 minutes experience in a studio and did
• 23:13
  not take any compliance or Ofcom regulation exam prior.
• 23:18
  Wow. How is that on there?
• 23:20
  Because some of that is true and some of it is accurate and some
• 23:23
  of it is slightly inaccurate. Yeah, my first radio gig was on
• 23:26
  was on Horizon and I did do a four hour Christmas Day show and
• 23:32
  that was my first show. But for for three months before
• 23:36
  that, I was, I was part of the breakfast show crew and there
• 23:41
  were two hosts in the studio and I was out driving this this Jeep
• 23:45
  and I would go and do Vox pops and interview people on the
• 23:47
  street and play silly games on the street.
• 23:49
  So that was the real start. Yeah, I hadn't had any Ofcom
• 23:53
  training at that point. The thing is, I have had Ofcom
• 23:56
  training and people go, oh, you're so dangerous.
• 23:59
  My God, you must have had loads of upheld complaints.
• 24:02
  Never had one, never had one because I, I did the Ofcom
• 24:05
  training really, really well. I learned what exactly what the
• 24:09
  boundaries are. I learned exactly what you're
• 24:12
  allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do.
• 24:15
  And what I did was I made it sound like I didn't know what I
• 24:19
  could do. And so I would do these things
• 24:22
  that some people go, well, that is awful, I'm going to complain.
• 24:25
  And I did. I got a lot of complaints to
• 24:26
  Ofcom, but that's meaningless, right?
• 24:29
  I could phone up Ofcom now and say Jeremy Vine did this awful
• 24:34
  thing and it really upset me. Well, she does, but and Ofcom
• 24:38
  would have to investigate it. That's a complaint to Ofcom.
• 24:42
  It would not be upheld. I've never had a complaint
• 24:46
  upheld, which I'm very proud of, actually very proud of.
• 24:49
  It's very much of Jeremy Vine. A lot of those shows like the
• 24:52
  right Stuff and and stuff like that like that.
• 24:56
  There's some of them used to be phone and show.
• 24:57
  I think they still are in in on television possibly.
• 25:01
  And you know, they're quite famous for occasionally getting
• 25:03
  people just phone in and slip through the cracks and just say
• 25:07
  something outrageous and it's hilarious.
• 25:09
  I love, I love this country for that.
• 25:11
  I love it. I'd like to see more of that.
• 25:13
  And if you're listening, if you phone up the Jeremy Vine show
• 25:16
  both on the radio and on TV, there's no delay.
• 25:20
  There's no, some stations have a 7 second delay, so, but there is
• 25:24
  no delay. You can say whatever you want.
• 25:27
  So get in there and do it. What's what's some of the most
• 25:30
  outrageous stuff said to you on radio that caught you off guard?
• 25:36
  I've had three people who think I'm broadcasting just to them,
• 25:41
  who think I'm sending out secret messages to them.
• 25:44
  When you said that to me, well, some of them did did some rude
• 25:50
  stuff to themselves. But so that's, that's always a
• 25:53
  little bit okay. I once did a phoning show on
• 25:58
  LBC. I wanted to do a presenter list
• 26:02
  phoning show and it didn't really work where people would
• 26:05
  just phone up and come straight to where and they'd talk to each
• 26:07
  other and and stuff. It didn't quite work, but we did
• 26:11
  have a delay. We had a 7 second delay and what
• 26:13
  that means is what is broadcast is 7 seconds behind what happens
• 26:18
  in the studio. So if you were to phone up and
• 26:21
  libel someone and it is libel, guys, it's not slander on the
• 26:25
  radio. If you were to libel someone or
• 26:27
  swear, I could press the button and it wouldn't go out.
• 26:31
  It would jump 7 seconds and it wouldn't go out.
• 26:34
  So we're doing this presentalist show and it wasn't really
• 26:36
  working. And someone phoned up and said
• 26:39
  the C bomb six times in a row. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 26:43
  That's a lot. And no, no problem.
• 26:47
  I've got the, the delay, the, the dump button.
• 26:49
  So I hit the dump button and then people started phoning in
• 26:53
  saying we heard that. And I'm like, no, no, you
• 26:56
  couldn't have heard it. Yeah, we heard it.
• 26:59
  And what had happened, it was being broadcast on FM and DAB
• 27:04
  and the dump button was only connected to FM.
• 27:08
  So everyone listening on digital heard, you know, and that was my
• 27:15
  God, my life is over now. Again with Ofcom, it went to
• 27:18
  Ofcom. Loads of Ofcom complaints, about
• 27:21
  30 or 40 Ofcom complaints. However, I'd pressed the dump
• 27:25
  button and when I knew it had gone out, I came on air and I
• 27:28
  said, I'm really sorry. You may have heard some awful
• 27:30
  inappropriate language. We're going to stop the phone
• 27:33
  in. That's not what this show is
• 27:34
  about. And we, I sincerely apologize.
• 27:37
  So Ofcom, we're able to look at it and go, well, you press the
• 27:40
  dump button and it didn't work and you apologized.
• 27:44
  Not upheld. Fantastic.
• 27:47
  Man, I wish I had a tape. I haven't got a tape of that.
• 27:49
  I wish I had a tape of that. That was a good one.
• 27:51
  But people, you know, but, but as as I progressed and became
• 27:55
  more me and I talked about addiction and mental health and
• 27:57
  loneliness and, and stuff, people would particularly on
• 28:01
  late night shows, you know, you'd get men, but it was maybe
• 28:07
  6040 men women on my show, which I was kind of proud of because
• 28:10
  phoning show was generally like 802060405050 sometime.
• 28:15
  So I would get people phoning in at 12:30 saying I haven't spoken
• 28:18
  to anyone for two weeks. And, you know, stuff like that
• 28:23
  is a privilege to hear. You know, when I did live shows,
• 28:29
  you'd have these slightly nervous men to one side who'd
• 28:32
  want to come and say hello to you afterwards.
• 28:35
  And they will come up and say, oh, I what?
• 28:37
  What? You talked about suicide
• 28:39
  impacted on me. I've I've been thinking I was
• 28:41
  thinking of killing myself and you talk.
• 28:43
  You know, your your words encouraged me or I was a
• 28:45
  hopeless alcoholic and hearing you Share your story helped
• 28:50
  helped me give up the booze. So that stuff, you know, is a
• 28:54
  privilege. Yeah, there was, there was
• 28:57
  obviously a particular moment. I I know you've spoken about it
• 28:59
  extensively but I'd I'd love to be able to share.
• 29:02
  It here and I don't mind you asking about it, you know,
• 29:04
  again, yeah, it's important I think.
• 29:06
  So shout out to Kendra. She asked about this particular
• 29:08
  moment. So there was a moment when you
• 29:11
  were on on the air and a gentleman called in and you were
• 29:15
  essentially able to direct the emergency services his way and
• 29:22
  prevent, I believe, suicide he was thinking of.
• 29:24
  He had taken an overdose. Yeah.
• 29:26
  And he did. He did have to when he went to.
• 29:28
  So this was, this was one evening about half eleven, I
• 29:30
  think. No, it was 11.
• 29:31
  It was, it was, it was 10/5 to 11.
• 29:34
  I remember, I remember that 5:00 to 12:00 or 5:00 to 11:00 at
• 29:37
  night. And this guy phoned up and we'd
• 29:39
  been doing something very jokey before and he came on and I was
• 29:42
  kind of joking. And then he said, I've taken an
• 29:46
  overdose. Now people phone up and say
• 29:48
  stuff and you've always got you. You can't take something like
• 29:51
  that at face value. You've got to be on your guard
• 29:54
  because I've had people, oh, I've taken an overdose and
• 29:56
  you're a tosser. Hang up.
• 29:58
  So you've got to be on your guard.
• 30:00
  And he was. So I'm chatting to him trying to
• 30:02
  work it out, and he's slurring his words.
• 30:04
  And I said, do you normally slur like that?
• 30:06
  He went no. And I thought, OK, this, I think
• 30:09
  this one might be serious. Where are you, man?
• 30:12
  I don't know. I'm outside and I don't know
• 30:14
  where I am, OK? At that point Catherine, who was
• 30:18
  hosting the show and then producing this show, she left
• 30:21
  the studio and went out into the the other side and called 999,
• 30:27
  said we've got the suicide, we don't know where he is.
• 30:29
  Can you hold on the line while we try and work it out?
• 30:32
  And we kept him on the line for over 30 minutes.
• 30:35
  And he was in Plymouth, He was outside.
• 30:38
  And I got him to describe what he could see.
• 30:40
  And eventually someone phoned up and said, oh, I know exactly
• 30:43
  where that is. And they were able to tell us.
• 30:45
  So Catherine was able to speak to the ambulance and I spoke to
• 30:48
  him for 30 minutes. At one point he stopped talking
• 30:53
  for 7 minutes. And I thought, oh, I'm talking
• 30:56
  to a dead man, this guy's dead, you know.
• 30:58
  And then he kind of came back and then eventually the, the
• 31:01
  phone was picked up and it was, they said, well, this is the
• 31:03
  police, we've got him now, thanks very much.
• 31:06
  And I burst into tears because it was, it was awful.
• 31:09
  I still question to the day whether it was the right thing
• 31:14
  to keep him on the air for that long.
• 31:16
  Once we'd found out where he was.
• 31:19
  Was I being exploitative by keeping him on?
• 31:23
  I still question that, right? This was in 2018, I think it
• 31:26
  was. And the reason I kept him on the
• 31:29
  air is because I didn't want to spend 20 seconds going from the
• 31:32
  studio to the other room. Casey put the phone down.
• 31:36
  Obviously I kept him on to find out where he was, but I could
• 31:39
  have, I could have moved on. Then it was, it was, I think out
• 31:43
  of it was rabbit in the headlights thing.
• 31:45
  I didn't know. I didn't know what to do.
• 31:47
  I know how to talk to people on the radio, so I'm going to do
• 31:50
  that. I didn't know what else to do.
• 31:52
  Was it the right thing or not? Yeah, I, I still wonder.
• 31:57
  Anyway, yeah, he went to ICU. He, he died and had to be
• 32:01
  resuscitated. So it was a very, very serious
• 32:03
  thing. And I spoke to him a couple of
• 32:06
  times afterwards. It was near Christmas and it was
• 32:10
  a very, very sad story. And I can share it because he
• 32:12
  shared it on, on the radio. He'd been either a train driver,
• 32:15
  he'd work for London Underground and he'd had to, he'd had to
• 32:19
  help clear up a suicide. So he'd seen things that no
• 32:23
  human being should see and he turned to alcohol.
• 32:26
  His marriage broke down because of all of this.
• 32:28
  He, he moved out and his life was an absolute disaster at that
• 32:33
  point. And, and he, he, he got involved
• 32:37
  in an abusive relationship. And I spoke to him a couple of
• 32:40
  times. I remember speaking to him on
• 32:42
  Boxing Day and then thinking, actually, I can't help this man
• 32:45
  anymore. And I was, I was giving him the
• 32:47
  number of AAI was trying to find him a hotel or an Airbnb he
• 32:51
  could stay in to get out of this abusive relationship.
• 32:54
  And he didn't want to, he didn't want to, didn't want to get
• 32:57
  sober, didn't want to, you know, and it was Boxing Day and he, it
• 33:05
  was a let me, let me, it was a difficult phone call.
• 33:08
  That's all I need to say. It was a difficult phone call
• 33:10
  and I was on the phone for 45 minutes and I thought, my kids
• 33:13
  in the room next door, I'm trying to save somebody who does
• 33:18
  not want to be. So I've given them all the
• 33:20
  information. I'm going to step back.
• 33:23
  I had to protect myself and I had to protect my kids, you
• 33:27
  know, So after that, I don't know.
• 33:31
  I don't know what happened. I think about him often.
• 33:33
  I, I don't know his last name. I've got no way of, of getting
• 33:36
  in touch with him. I don't know, I don't know.
• 33:39
  Well, I would say, I think kind of mimics what a lot of people
• 33:44
  have said about it, which is that, you know, you, you acted
• 33:48
  remarkably as you said you hadn't received training for
• 33:51
  something like that. I don't think many people in
• 33:53
  your position would have necessarily.
• 33:55
  I'm sure there's certain protocols and stuff.
• 33:57
  But my personal thoughts, I think, and based on what I've
• 34:01
  heard over the years, when it comes to someone who's losing
• 34:04
  consciousness, they say the best thing you can do is keep them
• 34:07
  conscious. I reckon you probably saved that
• 34:10
  man's life in more ways than 1 based on that.
• 34:15
  And, you know, it's all part of the process of, of helping a
• 34:20
  person anyway, you know what I mean?
• 34:21
  Like being able to make sure they're OK.
• 34:24
  I, I would disagree about it being exploitative.
• 34:26
  I think the only way that would be the case would be if it was
• 34:29
  like an entertainment thing, which it wasn't.
• 34:32
  It was like you were doing this show.
• 34:34
  This gentleman came on. Yeah.
• 34:36
  OK, now I've got a this is a serious moment.
• 34:39
  You know, I've had it. I've had it before on on my live
• 34:42
  streams. Not quite the same thing, but
• 34:43
  I've had maybe we were joking around before someone comes in
• 34:47
  with something really serious and you try and help.
• 34:51
  And you know, I always preface it by saying like, look, I'm not
• 34:54
  a professional. I would recommend this.
• 34:57
  But if you're asking my advice, well, here's what I would do,
• 35:02
  which kind of leads into my next question.
• 35:03
  Like, was there a particular moment in your career where you
• 35:07
  felt the weight of responsibility as far as that's
• 35:11
  concerned? Or do you, can you explain that
• 35:14
  a little bit more? What do you mean?
• 35:16
  So responsibility. As you said, like especially
• 35:18
  we're doing like a phone in show for the most part, you expect it
• 35:23
  to be a bit funny, a bit silly, a bit, you know, just kind of
• 35:25
  unpredictable. But then obviously sometimes you
• 35:28
  get these serious moments. Yeah.
• 35:31
  That coupled with the fact that you know, you're a celebrity,
• 35:35
  you're a a role model for many people.
• 35:39
  Obviously you mentioned that you're a father, but obviously
• 35:42
  that would have come a little bit later in life.
• 35:44
  So was there a particular moment where it all kind of you started
• 35:49
  feeling that responsibility? I can answer that question very
• 35:52
  specifically. It, it certainly during the
• 35:56
  radio around that time of his name was Chris the guy, you
• 35:59
  know, sort of after that, suddenly people and my shows
• 36:03
  have always been very, very silly.
• 36:04
  You know, we, we played hide and seek on the radio and we, we,
• 36:07
  you know, we made dens, we brought duvets in and made a den
• 36:10
  in the studio. That was the vibe.
• 36:12
  And after that, a lot of the calls got a lot heavier and I, I
• 36:18
  struggled to kind of protect myself and I would take this
• 36:22
  stuff on, but the real time was the, the, the, the, it's, it's
• 36:26
  fairly recent actually. So I mean, how heavy do you want
• 36:32
  to get man do? You want to get as you need.
• 36:34
  To be OK, right, all right, we're going to go for the, we're
• 36:36
  going to go for the big stuff. We're going to get as heavy as
• 36:38
  it can get. So when I was when I was 8-9
• 36:41
  years old, I was, I was sexually abused in the Cubs, right?
• 36:43
  And there is now an ongoing legal case with the police,
• 36:49
  which obviously I can't talk about.
• 36:50
  And at some point there's going to be a civil case with the,
• 36:53
  with the scouting movement because there is, there is a
• 36:56
  cover. I don't want to sound all
• 36:57
  conspiracy theorists, but there is so that is going on.
• 37:00
  But to to get to that point, I made a public statement and said
• 37:05
  this happened to me in this specific, this very specific
• 37:10
  area. And I'm being vague now just
• 37:11
  because of the legals, but it's all out there.
• 37:13
  This happened to me in this very specific area.
• 37:15
  Potentially with these people. Were you there?
• 37:19
  Do you did did it happen to you get in touch with me and I had
• 37:23
  about 2530 men get in touch who had who who had the same
• 37:28
  experience with the same people or had worse experiences with
• 37:32
  the same people and that was heavy.
• 37:35
  However what I also got 70 emails from people saying really
• 37:41
  sorry to hear this happen to you.
• 37:44
  Here's my story of of being abused that weren't connected
• 37:48
  with this incident, right And the first 5678910 I'm reading
• 37:53
  them and I'm doing quite lengthy replies.
• 37:55
  I'm really sorry that happened. Here's but maybe here's how you
• 37:58
  can get help. But by the 10th one, it was like
• 38:00
  this. It was sucking the life out of
• 38:02
  me. You know, having it was a
• 38:04
  privilege. People would share these
• 38:05
  stories, but I'm getting all of this stuff dumped on me is not
• 38:10
  quite the right phrase, but actually that's how it felt
• 38:12
  right? And I had seventy of these and I
• 38:16
  had to stop responding. And I'm going to be honest,
• 38:20
  Christian, I stopped reading because I had my own trauma that
• 38:24
  I was dealing with that and I was remembering more and more
• 38:27
  and more. I was, was, was communicating
• 38:30
  with these 25 men that, that was specifically involved in this
• 38:34
  incident and these people. And that was my focus was
• 38:38
  sharing with them, identifying with them.
• 38:41
  Do you want to go to the police? Do you want to do la, La La?
• 38:44
  So the, the, the, the, the 70 emails, I, I, I stopped reading
• 38:48
  them. I, I, I, I read the first
• 38:51
  paragraph. And if it said, and here's my
• 38:53
  story that's unconnected to yours.
• 38:55
  I had to stop reading them. And I felt bad for a while.
• 38:58
  I don't feel bad now because if I had read them all and if I had
• 39:01
  tried to reply to them all, I would have gone.
• 39:04
  It would have sent me into a very, very dark depression that
• 39:08
  I was approaching anyway because of what I was doing.
• 39:11
  So that, and the reason I got that many is because I, I'm Ian
• 39:16
  Lee off the telly. You know, if, if, if, if Joe
• 39:18
  Blow from Kokomo had gone out and said this, they would not
• 39:21
  have got that response. So it was because I'm Ian Lee
• 39:25
  off the telly that it got some traction.
• 39:27
  So that was a big one. And that was, oh man, that's all
• 39:30
  happened in this year. God, I was going to say that was
• 39:32
  two years ago. That's all happened in this,
• 39:34
  this year. So that was the time I felt the
• 39:37
  most. I am being crushed by other
• 39:40
  people's misery. I can understand.
• 39:44
  I only really started to get the concept of empathy maybe four or
• 39:49
  five years ago, maybe a bit longer than that because like
• 39:53
  people always get these misunderstood like sympathy
• 39:55
  versus empathy. Empathy is more about spending
• 39:59
  time with said person and trying to understand and trying to feel
• 40:04
  the emotions. But that is, as you said,
• 40:06
  exhausting and. I think people don't always
• 40:10
  consider the impact it has on the individual.
• 40:13
  Like if I sit there and I listen to your story and I or, you
• 40:17
  know, read your story, write a response, I'm taking on your
• 40:21
  emotion. I remember one time I was
• 40:24
  watching a film with my dad and it's pretty heavy, the source
• 40:29
  material. And he just kind of changed the
• 40:32
  channel and he was like, not now.
• 40:33
  It's too heavy. And I kind of quizzed him a
• 40:36
  little bit for a second and he's always been pretty light.
• 40:40
  Like he loves to talk, but he's also like man of few words as
• 40:42
  well. Excuse me.
• 40:45
  And he what he was trying to teach me there was that like
• 40:49
  these things have a bigger impact on you than you realise.
• 40:53
  It's why sometimes, you know, sometimes you watch like
• 40:55
  something really, really heavy, like a really heavy movie and
• 40:58
  it's late at night and now you're like, should we watch
• 41:03
  watch like a comedy, I don't know, Big Bang Theory or
• 41:05
  something. And you just throw it on so that
• 41:07
  you don't feel depressed anymore.
• 41:08
  But you've taken on that emotion, you know, even though
• 41:12
  that's a fictionalized thing, it's not real or, or maybe it's
• 41:15
  based on a true story or whatever.
• 41:17
  You've taken it on and then hence you've given your energy
• 41:20
  away. So what you've done there is,
• 41:24
  is, is protect yourself and as you should, you know, I think
• 41:29
  it's interesting maybe because we spoke before, you know, we
• 41:35
  earlier on about like, it's the entitlement factor.
• 41:38
  I think sometimes there's this expectation that some people
• 41:44
  like you people have to be listened to or your radio haste
• 41:48
  you, you should listen to me, you know, or you're a celebrity.
• 41:51
  Like if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be there.
• 41:54
  Like you owe me this, you owe me that.
• 41:55
  And it's like everything in life is circumstantial and people
• 42:02
  don't owe people anything. You know, it's good to
• 42:04
  acknowledge people who've who've helped you in life, who've given
• 42:06
  you opportunities and to sing their praises and stuff like
• 42:09
  absolutely show that you're grateful, pay it forward, all
• 42:12
  that stuff. But you know, if, if you've got
• 42:15
  difficult things going on in your life and you share it with
• 42:17
  other people, there's no expectation for those people to
• 42:20
  have to engage with that. And I know sometimes, especially
• 42:25
  people that are close to us, sometimes we feel let down,
• 42:27
  like, oh, they wouldn't hear my story or they wouldn't listen or
• 42:30
  whatever. And it's like not everyone is
• 42:33
  able to help in the way that you think.
• 42:35
  And everyone in our life has like a different role.
• 42:38
  Some are there to just, you know, be a friend that we just
• 42:41
  have occasional point with. Others are friends for life and
• 42:44
  and we discuss everything with some friends.
• 42:47
  It's just, you know, we only do this one thing and nothing else.
• 42:50
  Like, you know, people have different purposes in our lives.
• 42:53
  And I think if we navigate it like that, then we'll find what
• 42:56
  we need from someone, and we can be that for someone else maybe.
• 43:01
  Yeah, some people are better than others.
• 43:03
  Some people may be good at empathy for a bit, but then need
• 43:06
  to step back because they're going on with their their own
• 43:09
  stuff and they can't deal with with anything more.
• 43:14
  And some people are, are, are are great at listening.
• 43:17
  And some people are what, what, what, what am I trying to say?
• 43:24
  Some people will only use people purely for negative stuff.
• 43:31
  I've got a friend. I'm being deliberately vacant.
• 43:34
  How vague can I be? I've got a friend.
• 43:36
  Is it a celebrity or is it someone?
• 43:37
  No, it's not a celebrity. Yeah, it's Ricky Gervais.
• 43:40
  No. What names?
• 43:41
  I've got a friend who's got a friend who's who's who's quite
• 43:45
  ill, but all they do is talk about the illness that's OK and
• 43:51
  criticize their friends for not seeing them enough, not helping
• 43:55
  them enough, not doing the shopping for them enough, all of
• 43:58
  that stuff. And my friend felt obliged to up
• 44:01
  it. And I said, you don't have to,
• 44:05
  you know, you don't have to do all of those things.
• 44:08
  And also if you want to step away, and some people will say
• 44:11
  this is a terrible thing to say, but it's not.
• 44:13
  If you want to step away, that's OK to do.
• 44:17
  To some people it might look a little bit shitty and that's OK.
• 44:20
  And some people do it, you know, for, for, for main reasons.
• 44:23
  It's that thing, isn't it? You got to put your oxygen mask
• 44:25
  on first before you do for with the person next to you.
• 44:30
  I say this all the time, I I think the most selfless thing
• 44:34
  you can do is prioritize your own happiness.
• 44:37
  Because if you're not happy, if you're depressed, you're
• 44:41
  miserable, whatever, everyone else suffers, right?
• 44:47
  So like, it might sound selfish in the moment, like oh, they're
• 44:50
  only caring about themselves. No, by protecting your
• 44:55
  happiness, your well-being, you are able to be that strength for
• 44:59
  other people as well, because you're in your best headspace
• 45:03
  mentally, physically, emotionally, etcetera.
• 45:05
  Let me give you, can I give you an example right, So I'm a drug
• 45:08
  addict. I'm I'm I am 2 weeks, 15 days
• 45:12
  off of being five years clean, which is fantastic.
• 45:14
  Congratulations. Thank you, ma'am.
• 45:16
  And I had 13 years and then I relapsed and, and towards the
• 45:20
  end of my last relapse, my, my good friend, she's now my
• 45:23
  partner and fiance, but she's my, my, my best friend.
• 45:26
  Catherine Boyle I, I, I relapsed and I was lying to her and I was
• 45:32
  being incredibly deceptive and I was being mean to her and all of
• 45:35
  these things. And a, a, a friend of hers said
• 45:39
  you've, you've got, you know, you've got to walk away.
• 45:41
  She goes by, if I walk away, he's going to die.
• 45:44
  They said, yeah, you got to walk away, but if I walk away, he's
• 45:47
  going to die and I'm a terrible friend.
• 45:48
  They said, no, if you if you stay there, he is going to drag
• 45:51
  you down into misery and pain and potentially dangerous place
• 45:57
  for you. And so she said to me, Ian, I'm
• 46:00
  walking away when you get clean, we can talk.
• 46:02
  Until then, I'm not having anything to do with you.
• 46:04
  And part of me went, yeah, this is great.
• 46:06
  That means I can take more drugs without you banging on about it.
• 46:10
  And that's what I did for a bit. But then I started to realize,
• 46:12
  oh, I'm I'm pushing away all of the good things in my life, the
• 46:15
  best things. And it's what I needed right to
• 46:18
  that was part of my rock bottom is my best friend guy.
• 46:20
  And I'm never talking to you again until you get clean.
• 46:23
  And it's a tough one, but with if we're talking about addiction
• 46:26
  specifically, if someone you know or love, a family member
• 46:32
  friend is a hopeless addict or alcoholic and will will not
• 46:36
  listen to you, the best thing you can do is walk away.
• 46:40
  Now, could I do it if it was my kids?
• 46:44
  I don't know, man, I don't know. I don't know.
• 46:47
  Even though I know it's the right thing.
• 46:48
  I don't know if I could and, and and God willing, I'll never be
• 46:51
  in that situation. But that's a real strong example
• 46:54
  of you have to put yourself first, otherwise you get taken
• 47:00
  down. Got a question here that that
• 47:02
  ties to this? Shout out to Vilma.
• 47:04
  Has healing. Yeah.
• 47:06
  Hello. Has healing changed the type of
• 47:08
  people you allow into your life? Yeah, I don't, I don't allow
• 47:12
  heavy drug users into my life. You know, it's on a serious
• 47:16
  note. When I got clean the the first
• 47:18
  time, which was 2004, I was told you have to change your phone
• 47:22
  number and delete all of the numbers of people who are who
• 47:27
  you've used and you drink with. But they're my friends.
• 47:31
  They're no, no, no, but they're my friends.
• 47:35
  And I did it. And you know what?
• 47:38
  None of those people, you know, I was on the telly.
• 47:41
  I was easy to find. None of those people got in
• 47:43
  touch and said, hey man, how you doing?
• 47:45
  I got a few who found me and said, have you got any git?
• 47:49
  But none of those friends were, were were got got in touch.
• 47:53
  So it it yes, you have to change again.
• 47:59
  I speak about addiction because that's my my story.
• 48:01
  You have to change the in that instance, a lot of the people
• 48:05
  you hang out with and some some friends I told I'm a drug addict
• 48:09
  and I, you know, we'd be in the pub.
• 48:10
  Why are you not drinking? I'm a drug addict and I can't
• 48:12
  drink anymore. Some of those friends walked
• 48:14
  away. OK, Well, that's about them.
• 48:16
  That's not about me. And more generally in mental
• 48:21
  health and depression, I know exactly who my friends I can
• 48:24
  speak to if I am sinking into a very low mood.
• 48:29
  I've got three people I would feel very confident reaching out
• 48:35
  to and say I'm in a little bit of trouble here and mentally I'm
• 48:38
  not I'm struggling. I've got three people who I know
• 48:41
  I could rely on to help, and again, I don't.
• 48:43
  That's not all they I use them for at all.
• 48:50
  Here's a story. I interviewed Adam Buxton years
• 48:52
  ago, the brilliant Adam Buxton. And I told him about being
• 48:55
  depressed. And this was in a quite a dark
• 48:57
  part of my life about being depressed and being sued,
• 49:00
  suicidal sometimes. He said, Ian, Ian, if ever
• 49:03
  you're like that, you must call me.
• 49:05
  I don't know him that well. You must call me.
• 49:07
  And I went, OK, sure, right. And one day I was so low, so I'm
• 49:12
  going to press the Buxton button.
• 49:14
  And I called him and he meant it.
• 49:17
  He meant it. He when he said call me, it
• 49:19
  wasn't an empty thing. He meant it.
• 49:21
  And he asked how he he could help, what he could do, who of
• 49:24
  my friends he could speak to, to, to, to get more support.
• 49:28
  And I, I'm forever grateful for that.
• 49:31
  And I managed to thank him a few years later.
• 49:34
  So yeah, being depressed or being in addiction can help you
• 49:41
  shape your friendship. So one thing just tying to that
• 49:45
  that I thought might be interesting to throw into the
• 49:47
  mix is, yeah, you often hear about like, oh, once you become
• 49:51
  famous or successful, you know, you'll be a struggle to know who
• 49:55
  your real friends are, like the fake people from the real
• 49:58
  people. Like, how do you know, Like, how
• 50:00
  do you navigate that? How do you identify people that
• 50:05
  are just trying to use you to say build connections or just
• 50:09
  use you for certain things Like how do you avoid that?
• 50:13
  At the start, I don't think at the start you make it about me.
• 50:18
  At the start I didn't know well because I I was going to say
• 50:20
  everyone and I don't know and there'll be some that are
• 50:22
  different. I didn't know how to navigate
• 50:24
  it. I had such low self esteem and I
• 50:27
  hated myself so much and I'd never been successful with
• 50:32
  girls. There was, there was confusion
• 50:33
  over my sexuality. And even though I had a
• 50:35
  fantastic girlfriend at the time, when I got famous,
• 50:39
  suddenly I got hot girls, you know, talking to me and, and my
• 50:42
  behaviour was not great. The, the, the first time I
• 50:45
  really saw it. I remember I was at a gig at the
• 50:47
  garage in, in Islington. I can't remember who it was.
• 50:51
  And this really hot girl, right, who would never have given me
• 50:53
  the time of day before she came, She came up to me and she went,
• 50:57
  oh, you're famous. Is Ali G with you?
• 50:59
  And she's looking around and said, no, he's not.
• 51:02
  And she went, OK, well, you'll do.
• 51:04
  I did not, I did not speak to her.
• 51:05
  I said, I, I, I kind of went, Oh yeah.
• 51:07
  I, I, I metaphorically brushed her off.
• 51:10
  But that was, that was the first time I went, OK, they're not
• 51:15
  seeing me. They're seeing the guy on the
• 51:19
  telly, which is very different. And, you know, I went from
• 51:23
  signing on and being in debt and live living with my mum to
• 51:28
  earning a lot of money and being famous.
• 51:29
  And people are attracted to that, especially when drugs get
• 51:34
  involved and they know that you've got drugs and you can
• 51:36
  afford drugs. So there were a lot of druggie
• 51:39
  people that that kind of latched onto me for that.
• 51:45
  How do you navigate it? It's tough.
• 51:48
  You know, I wanted to be liked. So I think in some ways I turned
• 51:51
  a blind eye to it. And then when I stopped being
• 51:55
  famous, a lot of them disappeared.
• 51:57
  Well, not just I, I guess my question because I kind of
• 52:01
  expected that, but like I mean also like professionally.
• 52:05
  OK, it's. Because I've what I've noticed
• 52:07
  with me not having status, if you like people I've reached out
• 52:12
  to who I know and have now become famous, they're like a
• 52:17
  different person now. They're up there on us.
• 52:20
  There's people that I've reached out to, celebrities who throw
• 52:24
  the well, you need to pay me this amount of money.
• 52:27
  There was one person who I'm tempted to name drop.
• 52:32
  It's me privately if you don't say it here.
• 52:35
  Yeah, it's not professional. I won't I won't say it.
• 52:36
  But what I'll say is she she was in a very well known television
• 52:39
  show. She had a small role in it.
• 52:44
  I spent months trying to get her on the show and I built I
• 52:48
  because as I've mentioned before, like I build a show.
• 52:52
  So I had questions about this TV show she was in questions about
• 52:56
  her current things. You know, I like to build it so
• 52:59
  you get like a a breakdown of their, their whole life, you
• 53:03
  know, like that's how I build it.
• 53:05
  And she made me send and I never sent questions to guests.
• 53:08
  And I made a rule after this. Never again.
• 53:10
  Yeah. She made me send all the
• 53:12
  questions to her so she could review them.
• 53:15
  And then she was like, yeah, OK, that's fine.
• 53:17
  And then she still strung me along.
• 53:19
  And in the end I was just like, yeah.
• 53:20
  And I don't screw you. I'm I'm done.
• 53:22
  I'm gonna bother. You told me that.
• 53:24
  It's. Because The thing is, people
• 53:27
  have asked about this over the years, like, oh, who's the most
• 53:30
  famous person you've had on the show?
• 53:32
  And I'm like, I don't care about having famous people on the
• 53:34
  show. What I care about is having a
• 53:36
  good conversation, you know? Like I've seen so many people
• 53:39
  have celebrities on their shows and the show sucked because
• 53:43
  either they couldn't interview or the guest just didn't want to
• 53:47
  talk, you know? And it's like, it's such a
• 53:51
  missed opportunity. But then it's not everyone is
• 53:54
  good at that kind of long form chat as well.
• 53:59
  Or, you know, sometimes it can just be down to the host not
• 54:03
  asking the right questions or not being invested in the
• 54:06
  person, you know? Like I never wanted this show to
• 54:09
  just be, oh, question number one.
• 54:12
  OK question #2 OK. Like that's boring.
• 54:17
  Do you know what I mean? Like I don't spend hours doing
• 54:20
  this show so that I could just do that, but I digress.
• 54:25
  I I get. Can I come in for a second?
• 54:31
  You know, some people will look at a show like yours and go,
• 54:35
  well, I can't get anything from it.
• 54:37
  You know, you're not Louis Theroux, you're not Adam Buxton.
• 54:40
  I don't know what you, but in terms of statues there, I'm
• 54:45
  doing it myself. No, you're right, You're right.
• 54:46
  The. Number of people that listen to
• 54:48
  the podcast and the coverage it's going to get.
• 54:51
  So there will be some people that go, well, why would I do
• 54:53
  Christian Reeve's podcast? What you know, it's not going to
• 54:58
  change My there's no fee and the audience isn't big enough.
• 55:02
  And I don't know what your audience is.
• 55:04
  I'm making some assumptions here.
• 55:05
  The audience isn't big enough for it to have an impact, so why
• 55:09
  would I do it? And I, I, I, I get that.
• 55:13
  And sometimes Christian, quite quite often actually, I'll turn
• 55:15
  down podcasts. But what I will do is if a
• 55:18
  smaller podcast gets in touch, I will go and check it out.
• 55:23
  The reason I didn't do it with you is because I, we, we got in
• 55:26
  touch because I stumbled across your live stream and straight
• 55:30
  away I liked you, I liked you. There we go.
• 55:33
  That's it. Straight away I liked you, I
• 55:35
  liked your vibe and I liked what you were, were were saying.
• 55:38
  And the bit I saw was there were people putting nasty comments
• 55:41
  and you're going, guys, why would you spend your evening
• 55:43
  sending nasty comments to a bloke you don't know?
• 55:45
  It doesn't even touch the sides. And I thought, oh, OK, I like
• 55:49
  this bloke. So that's why I said yes, if I
• 55:51
  get asked to do a smaller podcast, I'll go and check it
• 55:54
  out. And if it's not for me, I will
• 55:57
  go back and say thank you very much.
• 55:59
  But I'm I'm going to pass. I wish you the best.
• 56:01
  Best of luck. So that's why some people it's
• 56:06
  not even like names, you know, some people go, well, there's,
• 56:09
  there's nothing for me. Why would I, why give up my
• 56:11
  time? So go on.
• 56:14
  No, you go on. I was just.
• 56:16
  Going to say I want to help and I can't say yes to everyone
• 56:20
  where I can and with people I like and shows I like, I would
• 56:23
  like to help them. If me having been on the jungle
• 56:26
  eight years ago, if me having a little bit of that celebrity
• 56:29
  with a small C helps raise the profile a bit, right?
• 56:33
  But also, am I going to enjoy it?
• 56:35
  You know, and I'm enjoying this a lot.
• 56:37
  Am I going to enjoy it? I don't want to sit with someone
• 56:39
  for an hour, hour and a half, 45 minutes, whatever it is, if I'm
• 56:43
  not going to enjoy it. This is the thing as well, like
• 56:47
  I always thought about OK, I I knew eventually the show would
• 56:50
  get to the point where I would probably have a few celebs on
• 56:53
  and I thought about what how do I approach that?
• 56:56
  Every show I've seen where it's a celebrity on and the
• 57:01
  interviewers interview him it's. Like, oh.
• 57:03
  Tell me about that time when you did this.
• 57:05
  Like, Oh my God, Like, what was it like eating fucking
• 57:07
  strawberries in the jungle? Like who the fuck cares?
• 57:10
  It's like, it's just a bit fun to me.
• 57:13
  Like I want to get behind the person and get the real story.
• 57:16
  And if you want to engage someone, I mean, it depends.
• 57:21
  Some people love talking about themselves, and that's kind of
• 57:24
  what I mean. When it comes to certain celebs,
• 57:26
  it goes beyond being a celebrity.
• 57:27
  Like, I'll give you a few examples.
• 57:30
  There's been times when I've done auditions and I walk into a
• 57:32
  room and there's that one prick who just walks in the room like
• 57:36
  they own the place and it's embarrassing.
• 57:39
  You mentioned when you were on radio, people had entourages.
• 57:42
  Right now, no. What?
• 57:44
  There's no cameras there. There might be, but a lot of the
• 57:47
  time there isn't. But like back in those days,
• 57:50
  maybe less so. So you're just in a small tiny
• 57:53
  room together and they're walking in at like, like, I'm
• 57:58
  the fucking, I'm the man or whatever.
• 58:00
  And it's like, this is embarrassing, man.
• 58:02
  Like we're we're here to do an interview.
• 58:04
  Like just be normal, be a human, be a normal person.
• 58:07
  Like what's? I wonder if that comes out of
• 58:09
  fear. You know, quite often arrogance
• 58:11
  can come out of fear. It may come out just because
• 58:13
  they're a Dick, you know, that's another, that's another reason.
• 58:17
  And maybe, I don't know, does that work for them?
• 58:20
  Do they get gigs? I don't, I mean, I don't, I
• 58:23
  don't know. I haven't done an audition for a
• 58:24
  million years. I guess my point is more just
• 58:27
  that like, I don't think it's limited to celebrities
• 58:30
  necessarily. I think it's just, it's just
• 58:32
  ego. Yeah, I've, I've met a lot of
• 58:35
  celebrities over the years that are wonderful human beings.
• 58:38
  And then I met a couple who one of them was heartbreaking
• 58:42
  because I was like, he was a hero of mine.
• 58:44
  And, you know, they say never meet your heroes.
• 58:46
  It was literally that. Like, I was, I was a teenager.
• 58:49
  I met this guy who's a famous musician and I tried like I I
• 58:54
  was working. He was just getting like some
• 58:56
  milk or some shit. So I I was like, Oh my God, can
• 58:59
  I shake your hand? He was like, if you want, shook
• 59:01
  his hand. I mentioned his band.
• 59:05
  His face dropped like like how dare you kind of vibes.
• 59:09
  And I was like, OK, And then, you know, I could tell he was
• 59:16
  just trying to avoid me at that point.
• 59:17
  And I was like, well, I'm not going to harass the guy I
• 59:19
  mentioned because I was in a band at the time.
• 59:22
  And I mentioned that because the link was my drummer was taught.
• 59:27
  The same guy that taught my drummer taught his son how to
• 59:30
  play or some shit. And his son was in a band.
• 59:32
  He was like, and he actually perked up when I mentioned his
• 59:34
  son's band. He's like, oh, yeah, I was like,
• 59:37
  oh, that's cool. And then when I mentioned the
• 59:38
  thing about the drum teacher thing, he was like, Oh, yeah,
• 59:40
  that could happen. And then I was like, in my mind
• 59:43
  I was like, yeah, it's time for me to fuck off then.
• 59:45
  And I just walked off and I was like, he gave me a bit of time.
• 59:48
  I appreciate that. But I was also kind of broken by
• 59:52
  it because I was like, man, I'm influenced by this person.
• 59:58
  I'm just some kid that to him, you know, to him, it's just
• 1:00:02
  Tuesday. To me, it's a big moment.
• 1:00:04
  Even all these years later, I remember it.
• 1:00:07
  You, that's you have been Al Jardine, right?
• 1:00:10
  And what that is, I love The Beach Boys and, and at La
• 1:00:13
  airport, I saw Al Jardine from The Beach Boys, right?
• 1:00:17
  There ain't many people recognizing Al Jardine from The
• 1:00:20
  Beach Boys, but I saw him and suddenly I'm proper.
• 1:00:25
  Oh my God, it's Al Jardine. So I went to the bathroom to
• 1:00:31
  kind of get myself up. I thought, I'm going to talk to
• 1:00:33
  him. I'm going to talk to him.
• 1:00:33
  I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to mention this really
• 1:00:35
  obscure song from Surf's Up and I'm going to talk to him.
• 1:00:37
  I'm going to talk to him. And he, he had his back to me.
• 1:00:40
  I went up and I said, Mr. Jardine, and you saw I saw him
• 1:00:44
  go and he turned around. He went yes.
• 1:00:49
  And I was, I was heartbroken. And all I could say was I just
• 1:00:54
  want to say thank you for the music.
• 1:00:56
  And he went OK, and I turned away and I walked away and I
• 1:01:02
  was, I was Al Jardine. I was devastated.
• 1:01:05
  However, on the times I've met Brian Wilson, he was an absolute
• 1:01:08
  gentleman. And you think, come on, guys,
• 1:01:10
  even Mike Love was a gentleman. Come on, Al.
• 1:01:12
  Again, I think it's a choice. It's always a choice.
• 1:01:16
  I know fame is this thing that's thrust upon you, like you, you,
• 1:01:20
  you didn't choose it. It happened.
• 1:01:22
  It happened as a result of your work.
• 1:01:23
  And you know how you deal with it.
• 1:01:25
  It's how you deal with it. But when I see stuff like that
• 1:01:27
  where it's like people are fond, do you know what I mean?
• 1:01:31
  Because it's not everyone's going to be a freaky weirdo.
• 1:01:33
  Like there's a lot of people that just admire what you do and
• 1:01:37
  are inspired by it and want to say thank you like yourself in
• 1:01:40
  that instance. And I think the crushing thing
• 1:01:42
  is that person can't just take a second and be like, because
• 1:01:46
  don't get me wrong, I I appreciate like if you just like
• 1:01:49
  out in a restaurant somewhere and someone's like, hey,
• 1:01:52
  autograph, autograph. Now it's like, fuck off.
• 1:01:54
  Like that's totally fair. But if it's like, you know,
• 1:01:58
  you're in the airport, you just walk in and it's not 5:00 AM.
• 1:02:01
  So like you, I hear that because I'm a big wrestling fan.
• 1:02:04
  I see, I see like wrestlers telling fans to fuck off with
• 1:02:07
  that. Like, yeah, if you shove a
• 1:02:09
  camera in my face or autograph stuff at 5:00 AM, don't expect
• 1:02:13
  me to smile in the airport. Like I totally get that, but
• 1:02:16
  when it's just like, let's say like an agreeable social
• 1:02:20
  situation, you know, you're just walking around and I think I
• 1:02:25
  think it's a two way thing. So because I think people, maybe
• 1:02:32
  I just want to get into this and then we can move on because I
• 1:02:35
  think we've spent a bit a little bit too much time on this.
• 1:02:38
  It must be pretty daunting to have random strangers come up to
• 1:02:41
  you and just just start talking to you, you know, in general.
• 1:02:46
  But then like in this kind of, Oh my God, Oh my God, you're
• 1:02:49
  this person. You know how, how exactly have
• 1:02:53
  you learned to deal with that over the years?
• 1:02:55
  Maybe. What's the best way to deal with
• 1:02:57
  that? First of all, it's a privilege
• 1:03:01
  to have someone come up and go. I like what you do.
• 1:03:04
  What I don't like is sometimes I've had like people come up and
• 1:03:08
  go, Oh, my boyfriend thinks you're great, but I think you're
• 1:03:10
  shit. And they think they're being
• 1:03:14
  funny and charming by doing it. It's not a nice thing.
• 1:03:17
  And when I get that, I go, oh, OK, all right.
• 1:03:19
  And I just walk on because I don't, I don't want that.
• 1:03:22
  I, if I've got time, I'll, I'll listen to people.
• 1:03:26
  And if I'm in a rush, I will listen to them through a bit.
• 1:03:29
  I will shake their hand. I'll say, look, do you want to
• 1:03:32
  take a selfie or something? And then I say, I'm really
• 1:03:34
  sorry. I've got to move on, you know,
• 1:03:37
  But if someone wants to take a selfie with me, yeah, fantastic.
• 1:03:41
  A selfie, of course, not a problem at all.
• 1:03:43
  I think you're right. I think sat down, eating a meal
• 1:03:45
  is a different, different prospects all, all, all
• 1:03:48
  together. But but then again, you know,
• 1:03:51
  I'm not, I'm not a superstar wrestler who's probably getting
• 1:03:55
  it every 5 minutes, you know. But even after the jungle, when
• 1:03:58
  I was getting it quite a lot, it was, it was.
• 1:04:03
  And also my kids at the time found it hilarious, man.
• 1:04:07
  They found it hilarious that someone wants a picture with
• 1:04:10
  their old dad. So I've developed a technique
• 1:04:14
  because quite often someone comes up to me and they, it's a
• 1:04:18
  big thing for them to come up to me.
• 1:04:20
  And they want to say quite often that show you did back then was
• 1:04:24
  really important to me when I was 15.
• 1:04:27
  Well, what am I going to do? So I sod off now because then
• 1:04:31
  I'm kind of peeing on their 15 year old memory.
• 1:04:36
  And so I listen to it and go, oh, well, thank you very.
• 1:04:38
  And I get uncomfortable with compliments, but I've learnt to
• 1:04:41
  go, oh, thanks man, That really mean, you know, that really
• 1:04:43
  means a lot that you would share that.
• 1:04:45
  And I'm glad I was able to play a part in your life.
• 1:04:47
  Do you want a selfie? And you have to say, do you want
• 1:04:50
  a selfie? Because people are quite often
• 1:04:52
  too nervous or will spend 20 minutes getting to the selfie.
• 1:04:55
  So you kind of got to jog it along a bit.
• 1:04:57
  But I, I, you know, I, I, I will nearly always, unless there's
• 1:05:02
  something, you know, unless I'm rushing to the hospital or, or
• 1:05:04
  whatever, I will nearly always, I will always try and, and, and
• 1:05:09
  spend a bit of time with someone.
• 1:05:13
  This is kind of what I was referring to.
• 1:05:14
  Like for you it's just a Tuesday.
• 1:05:18
  For them it's it's a memory for a lifetime.
• 1:05:20
  Can be. Yeah, like I'll, I'll name drop
• 1:05:23
  someone as as a bad example, but just to kind of illustrate a
• 1:05:26
  point. Famous comedian, the guy that
• 1:05:30
  looks like a lion, I can't remember his name.
• 1:05:31
  He was on Strictly Come Dance in one year I think.
• 1:05:35
  Sean. Walsh.
• 1:05:37
  I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:38
  Sean Walsh. So I saw him years and years and
• 1:05:42
  years and years ago at a Sean Locke concert, concert comedy
• 1:05:48
  gig, sorry. And he was the warm up and he
• 1:05:50
  was amazing. He was better than Sean Locke.
• 1:05:52
  I couldn't believe it. And I'd not heard of him at that
• 1:05:54
  point. I think I'd seen his face maybe
• 1:05:56
  on like Mock the Week one time. So I was like, oh, OK, cool.
• 1:05:59
  Then I went to one of those shows being filmed that fucking
• 1:06:03
  wherever it was. They'd like the fun fact, a lot
• 1:06:06
  of TV shows get filmed with a live television audience and,
• 1:06:10
  and you, they're free to go. You can get the tickets for free
• 1:06:12
  and you can watch anything. Yeah, like I saw Would I Lie to
• 1:06:18
  You? That was cool.
• 1:06:18
  I saw the Big Fat Quiz of the Year one year.
• 1:06:22
  Anyway, I go to see some shitty show that Sean was doing.
• 1:06:28
  And it was, it was the shits. And I think everyone knew that.
• 1:06:30
  But, you know, it was it was cool to see him.
• 1:06:33
  He was doing a good job. It was it was great.
• 1:06:36
  And he was on his own at the end.
• 1:06:38
  And I said to my then partner, like, oh, I want to say hello.
• 1:06:41
  And she was like, if you want. And I went up to him.
• 1:06:44
  Like I wasn't like, hey, I just went up to him.
• 1:06:47
  And I was like, hey, I just wanted to say, first of all,
• 1:06:49
  great show. And then I said, by the way, I
• 1:06:54
  wanted to say I saw you at this gig.
• 1:06:56
  I thought you were fantastic. And I thought as a comedian,
• 1:06:59
  he'd probably appreciate that because while he might not be
• 1:07:02
  super invested in this TV show he's doing, he would appreciate,
• 1:07:06
  hey, thanks for coming to pay to see me at a show, You know what
• 1:07:09
  I mean? And his response?
• 1:07:12
  And for those listeners, I can't give you the visual.
• 1:07:16
  Come to YouTube to see the visual.
• 1:07:17
  It was like a yeah, like this kind of like, how dare you talk
• 1:07:24
  to me, you scrote of humanity kind of vibes.
• 1:07:28
  And I just, I'll forever have that image in my mind now
• 1:07:32
  whenever I see him. I'm just like, oh, that, that
• 1:07:35
  sucked. And to bring it back to to your
• 1:07:38
  example, like it's about choice. You know, I'm sure he was tired.
• 1:07:42
  He, I mean, he was on his phone the whole time.
• 1:07:44
  I remember that eventually the thing like I because I stood
• 1:07:47
  there for a second clearly and like, oh, and not knowing what
• 1:07:50
  to do And my ex was pulling, pulling my arm a little bit.
• 1:07:52
  And then I think some production assistant came and grabbed him
• 1:07:55
  and took his attention. And it was, it was like kind of
• 1:07:59
  surreal in a shitty way. You know, it's like, ah, OK.
• 1:08:04
  And my overarching point with all of this is, you know, if you
• 1:08:08
  are a celebrity or if you are like a person of interest, let's
• 1:08:11
  say, or just someone who's appreciated for something, just
• 1:08:15
  be nice. Takes a second.
• 1:08:16
  But I will say in that's not a very nice story.
• 1:08:20
  And I will say independence, some celebrities maybe.
• 1:08:23
  No, it's a shitty way to behave. And Sean Mosch, no, but, but let
• 1:08:28
  me let me in defence of him and Al Jardine.
• 1:08:33
  We don't know what had happened that day.
• 1:08:35
  You know, maybe they had a phone call that their mum was ill.
• 1:08:38
  Maybe they had a phone call that their cat had been run over.
• 1:08:41
  So, so, so in in defence, I would suggest someone like Sean
• 1:08:47
  Moore should take all of the the if he gets recognized by anyone,
• 1:08:51
  he should he should take it. I won't tell you the story, but
• 1:08:55
  Sean Locke is one of the rudest people I've ever met in my life,
• 1:08:58
  and he humiliated me on a television show.
• 1:09:01
  I won't go into it because it people get very defensive about
• 1:09:06
  Sean Locke and I know he's very, very popular.
• 1:09:08
  Him and Bez are the two worst people I've ever worked with.
• 1:09:13
  Bez like Happy Mondays, Bez. Yeah, do you want?
• 1:09:16
  I'll tell you the Bez story. I'm hosting a live show, live TV
• 1:09:20
  show. It's a show called Liquid News.
• 1:09:22
  It was on BBC Three and it was a 30 minute kind of fun like
• 1:09:27
  showbiz show. And we got Bez as the guest and
• 1:09:30
  we're talking about Michael Jackson and we're talking fun
• 1:09:32
  show. And then Bez, I ask him a
• 1:09:34
  question and he starts talking about the Falklands, right.
• 1:09:38
  And, and how we were complicit in murder and, and I've got the
• 1:09:43
  director of my gun. Ian, we have got to move on.
• 1:09:45
  This is going on for two. We've got to move on.
• 1:09:48
  And I said, Bez, really sorry, man.
• 1:09:50
  We've got to move on to the next story, the Atomic Kittens or
• 1:09:53
  whatever it was. And after the show, he came up
• 1:09:56
  to me and went mental. He's jabbing his finger in my
• 1:10:01
  chest. You FNC, you cut me off.
• 1:10:05
  What I was saying was more important than the Atomic
• 1:10:07
  Kittens, you shouting at me, right?
• 1:10:11
  And it was, I was, it was awful. It was awful.
• 1:10:14
  And I went home and I was so upset.
• 1:10:17
  And then about a year later, I was at an event and Bez was
• 1:10:21
  there and Bess is talking to me. And then he went, oh, didn't do
• 1:10:26
  that, didn't do that. Bess went, I've just remembered
• 1:10:31
  who you are. You're that effing C And he's
• 1:10:34
  jabbing his finger in the and he's having a go at me again.
• 1:10:37
  And I said, Bess, I had to stop you because I had someone, it
• 1:10:40
  wasn't me doing it. I had someone in my ear saying
• 1:10:43
  we have to move on. And he and in the end I went, do
• 1:10:46
  you know what, mate? Just fuck off.
• 1:10:48
  And I, I walked away. Those two, those two people,
• 1:10:52
  there we go. That's my best story.
• 1:10:54
  I only learned recently that the whole reason Bez was apparently
• 1:10:57
  part of the band was that he sold drugs to to the babies, the
• 1:11:01
  band's drug dealer, supposedly. Allegedly allegedly.
• 1:11:05
  There you go. I'll let you know because
• 1:11:07
  Captain will be listening to this.
• 1:11:08
  The word allegedly covers you for nothing.
• 1:11:10
  It's a myth. It's a myth.
• 1:11:13
  It doesn't get you out of any trouble whatsoever.
• 1:11:16
  But I think you're right in that story, yes, I think that.
• 1:11:19
  I think that's known fact. Well, let's let's move it on.
• 1:11:24
  Here's something fun from We Can Wikipedia Fact Check for a
• 1:11:28
  second. OK, yes, You were born in
• 1:11:31
  Slough? Yes.
• 1:11:32
  Well, you say fun. There ain't much fun there.
• 1:11:35
  Yes, I was born in Wexham Park Hospital in Slough.
• 1:11:38
  Jimmy Carr once famously said if you want to know what Slough
• 1:11:41
  looked like in the 1970s, go now.
• 1:11:44
  OK, Jimmy lived this now Jimmy lived in I think in Farnham
• 1:11:47
  Common where I where I ended up living as well for a bit.
• 1:11:51
  Thoughts on on Slough? A lot of time for Slough.
• 1:11:54
  It's an easy one to knock, right?
• 1:11:57
  I had, I, so I, I lived on the Brittwell estate from zero to
• 1:12:02
  11. Then we moved to Farnham Common
• 1:12:03
  because we, we went from working class to middle class.
• 1:12:06
  But I, I went to school in Slough, went to Herschel Grammar
• 1:12:09
  School. I did a lot of my, you know,
• 1:12:12
  back in those days you could get served in a pub at the age of 15
• 1:12:15
  in your school uniform. You know, I had my first snog in
• 1:12:19
  Slough. I'd lost my virginity in Slough.
• 1:12:22
  I had my first job at B Jams on the Farnham Road in Slough.
• 1:12:27
  I got a lot of time, I got a lot of time for Slough.
• 1:12:30
  And what was great when I was growing up there was it was a
• 1:12:34
  real example of multiculturalism working right.
• 1:12:39
  So in my school, we have white kids, we have black kids, we
• 1:12:43
  have Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Somalians.
• 1:12:46
  We, we, all of these people. And generally, generally we all
• 1:12:52
  got on, you know, and, and it was a real surprise to me when I
• 1:12:57
  came out of Slough and went to uni or to other places that that
• 1:13:02
  was an unusual, I thought that was the set up everywhere,
• 1:13:04
  right. But that was an unusual
• 1:13:07
  situation situation I think, I think the demographic has has
• 1:13:11
  shifted slightly. It's only shifted slightly more
• 1:13:14
  towards Polish society then I think it's shifted again.
• 1:13:19
  I'm not really up to date with it.
• 1:13:21
  But so I had this great upbringing.
• 1:13:23
  I can swear in Urdu like nobody's businessman.
• 1:13:27
  And that is always a great one. There's always a great one to
• 1:13:30
  pull out of your hat. So I I got a lot of time for
• 1:13:34
  Slough. Was not expecting that.
• 1:13:36
  There you go. People are Slough enjoy it.
• 1:13:40
  I mean, it's it's crazy how much the place you come from changes.
• 1:13:44
  I I look at where I grew up in. I grew up in northwest London.
• 1:13:48
  I've been to Slough a bunch of times as well.
• 1:13:49
  Whereabouts in northwest London? Do you know Hillingdon Borough?
• 1:13:54
  I do know Hillingdon, the borough I.
• 1:13:55
  Was, I was, I was born and raised in Hillingdon, all
• 1:13:57
  around, all around there. And it's, it's, it's crazy like
• 1:14:02
  how much it's changed over the years.
• 1:14:04
  I just went back for my partner's anniversary and we
• 1:14:08
  Schmidt family and staff and, and we went and we did, we went
• 1:14:12
  up to London, which was stressed me the fuck out.
• 1:14:16
  Just, if you're in London, it's just so stressful.
• 1:14:19
  But it is, it's good, it's a good experience.
• 1:14:21
  It's good to see how things have changed as well.
• 1:14:23
  And so I live in Manchester now. I've lived abroad.
• 1:14:27
  I moved away from London in like 2014 and I'm always kind of
• 1:14:32
  looking onto the next thing. So like, where are we going to
• 1:14:34
  go next? What's going to happen next kind
• 1:14:36
  of thing. And it's, it's just interesting.
• 1:14:39
  Where do you which area do you reside now if you don't want me?
• 1:14:42
  Asking I So I lived in Slough, in Farnham Common.
• 1:14:44
  I lived in North London, sort of Muswell Hill Crouch and for
• 1:14:47
  about 20 years. And I, I live near Wendover now,
• 1:14:51
  which is, yeah. No, it's no reason you should
• 1:14:53
  know. It's near Aylesbury and it's,
• 1:14:55
  it's very nice, quiet little place.
• 1:14:59
  Yeah. Nice, Nice.
• 1:15:00
  Yeah, I I, I know, I know, I know that area.
• 1:15:03
  Well, I, I think a cousin of mine used to live in Aylesbury
• 1:15:06
  at one point nearby. Anyway, sorry I don't like.
• 1:15:09
  Changes, you know, everywhere changes and Slough is, is very
• 1:15:13
  different. I, I don't go, my kids live near
• 1:15:16
  there. I don't go to Slough that often,
• 1:15:19
  but you know, sometimes the one it's, it's, it's different.
• 1:15:22
  You know, the High Street is, is pretty much closed, but that's
• 1:15:25
  the same everywhere. High streets don't, you know,
• 1:15:27
  aren't necessarily needed anymore.
• 1:15:31
  So, you know, I'm still on a couple of Slough Facebook pages.
• 1:15:34
  There's a lot of racism. There was actually, there was a
• 1:15:37
  lot, there was quite a bit of racism in Slough that I've
• 1:15:40
  painted a slightly rose tinted picture.
• 1:15:43
  There was quite a bit of racism and I think that racism, it may
• 1:15:46
  have got got worse. However, racism is very trendy
• 1:15:50
  these days, you know, right, far right thinking is really, really
• 1:15:53
  popular. So, sad as it is, it doesn't
• 1:15:56
  surprise me. That was crazy actually when I
• 1:15:58
  was in I wasn't going to share this, but just off the top of my
• 1:16:01
  head I stayed closish to hidden recently, like to see family and
• 1:16:09
  on the way there just so. Many fucking flag.
• 1:16:13
  Posts with like flags on, but it's like something out of the,
• 1:16:18
  you know, like you watch like The Walking Dead or some shit
• 1:16:20
  and they've got like signposts and it's like really eerie.
• 1:16:23
  It was like that. I was like, this is weird.
• 1:16:27
  This is really weird. I've got family members that
• 1:16:30
  flag shaggers and it's just like now is everyone that put up a
• 1:16:34
  flag a racist? No.
• 1:16:36
  All the racists throughout that day putting up flags right, You
• 1:16:39
  know, painting roundabouts, you know, and the the thing with the
• 1:16:44
  Union flag, most of them are flying upside down and that
• 1:16:48
  means distress and people don't the fact you know, I'm a proud
• 1:16:51
  patriot. I'm gonna fly the Union Jack.
• 1:16:53
  Well, fly it fucking right way up then, you know, do a simple
• 1:16:57
  bit of research as to where the white band is and it's white.
• 1:17:00
  You should where the white band is supposed to be.
• 1:17:03
  So you've got it flying the right way up.
• 1:17:05
  I, and I just think it those, those flags everywhere.
• 1:17:09
  I just think they look horrible and, and they've been up for a
• 1:17:12
  few months now, so they're all dirty and they're tatty.
• 1:17:15
  If you're going to have pride, take them down and put new ones
• 1:17:17
  up. If that's what you're going to
• 1:17:18
  do instead, someone's council tax is going to have to pay for
• 1:17:22
  them. I, I, I hate it.
• 1:17:24
  I hate, you know, I don't want to get too political, but this
• 1:17:26
  country is, is, is sinking to the right in an unstoppable way,
• 1:17:31
  I think. That's that's an interesting one
• 1:17:33
  as well. Like what?
• 1:17:33
  What? Because obviously it's clear,
• 1:17:35
  it's clear to see like you're leaning when you talk about
• 1:17:37
  these things. And I, I don't really talk
• 1:17:39
  politics on my show either, but it's pretty obvious kind of
• 1:17:42
  where I sit, I guess. But like, have you, do you ever
• 1:17:48
  feel pressure or have you ever felt pressure in your career
• 1:17:52
  from people, be it people in the industry, listeners, whatever,
• 1:17:57
  to, to have to talk politics? I mean, I imagine when you did
• 1:18:00
  LBC, it was probably there was a bit of that.
• 1:18:03
  There wasn't at LBC because LBC in 2004 was a very, very
• 1:18:07
  different beast. It was gardening shows and it
• 1:18:10
  was plumbing shows and it was all of that.
• 1:18:13
  There was very, very little politics.
• 1:18:15
  That's fairly recent, recent 15, last 15.
• 1:18:19
  When did I leave LBC? 2007?
• 1:18:22
  That's when it started shifting towards politics.
• 1:18:25
  So it's very different. When I walked at worked at talk
• 1:18:28
  radio, every other show was like pro Brexit and let's get Nigel,
• 1:18:32
  let's get Nigel, big Nigel and all of that stuff.
• 1:18:35
  And The thing is, you know, you had some of the worst
• 1:18:38
  broadcasters in Britain, Julia Hartley Brewer, Mike Graham,
• 1:18:42
  Jeremy Kyle. And so we would get a hangover
• 1:18:45
  from them. So we'd open the phone lines and
• 1:18:47
  talk about, you know, if you had to wrestle a Beatle, which
• 1:18:50
  Beatle would it be? I would go for George.
• 1:18:52
  I think I could probably take, you know that and you get people
• 1:18:55
  finding out. I want to talk about Brexit and
• 1:18:59
  about how Labour are doing their best to stifle it.
• 1:19:04
  And I go what? Why would you want to?
• 1:19:06
  It's boring. It's boring to talk about that
• 1:19:09
  that entitlement again. So no, I have never, I've never.
• 1:19:15
  OK. I mentioned earlier on about
• 1:19:16
  getting the boot from BBC local radio and, and that I think
• 1:19:20
  that's probably on the Wikipedia page.
• 1:19:21
  That's the only time I've got in trouble for my political
• 1:19:24
  beliefs. And what it was, it was a story
• 1:19:27
  about a, a gardener, A prisoner for sex offenders who had
• 1:19:35
  preached the homosexuality was a sin and you would go to hell and
• 1:19:41
  all of that. And he got the sack and there
• 1:19:43
  was a far right Christian group called Christian Concern.
• 1:19:46
  This is all out there who had taken on his case and were going
• 1:19:51
  to court saying he'd been sacked for his religious beliefs.
• 1:19:54
  He hadn't. He'd been sacked because he was
• 1:19:57
  a gardener and he was not allowed to preach, right?
• 1:20:00
  That was what he was sacked for. It would have been the same if
• 1:20:03
  it had been a Muslim gardener who'd been preaching.
• 1:20:05
  You can't say. I bet you wouldn't say that
• 1:20:07
  about Muslims. Well, I am right, it would have
• 1:20:10
  been sacked as well. So this, this.
• 1:20:13
  So we had that guy on the gardener.
• 1:20:17
  Had I think we had like a lesbian vicar and that's
• 1:20:22
  important. The important I specify that BBC
• 1:20:26
  balance and then we had someone from the Christian concern right
• 1:20:31
  and I got very angry and you're supposed to be neutral at the
• 1:20:35
  BBC. Screw that.
• 1:20:36
  How can you be neutral when something is is is blatantly
• 1:20:39
  wrong right. And like I said, you're
• 1:20:42
  homophobes. No, we're not.
• 1:20:44
  The Bible says this. I said you're homophobes and
• 1:20:46
  you're disgusting and what you're doing is disgusting.
• 1:20:48
  And we'll have, we'll have gay people and lesbians and, and
• 1:20:52
  young people who are confused about their sexuality and you're
• 1:20:54
  telling them that they're wrong and they're going to go to hell
• 1:20:56
  and you're disgusting. I got the sack for that.
• 1:21:00
  I got the sack. As you're saying this on the
• 1:21:02
  air, are you thinking going to get in trouble for this or are
• 1:21:07
  you just like just passionate? No, no, no.
• 1:21:09
  We came out. Catherine was Catherine was the
• 1:21:11
  producer at the time, right? And we came out, we literally
• 1:21:14
  high fived each other and went that was great.
• 1:21:17
  It was a great show and we did the right thing.
• 1:21:22
  And the bosses of the station said that was a great show and
• 1:21:26
  you did the right thing. OK.
• 1:21:29
  The next day, remember I was at Tottenham Court Road station, I
• 1:21:33
  got a phone call from the boss of the station saying, Ian,
• 1:21:36
  we've got a little problem. Christian concern have
• 1:21:40
  complained to the BBC board and you're going to have to do an
• 1:21:45
  apology. No, I said no, I'm not.
• 1:21:49
  What? What did I do wrong?
• 1:21:51
  Well, you know, they're saying that you were anti Christian and
• 1:21:56
  that you bullied them. I said, right, this is the
• 1:21:59
  interview you, you patted me on the back for yesterday.
• 1:22:01
  No, no, no, no. You're going to have to do an
• 1:22:03
  apology and it'll go away. So I came in and the BBC had
• 1:22:07
  written me an apology and I said I'm not doing that.
• 1:22:10
  I'm not saying that I they wanted me to apologize for what
• 1:22:16
  I had said. And I said, I will apologize for
• 1:22:19
  the way I said it, but I'm not apologizing for what I said.
• 1:22:23
  So we did the apology. I apologize for the way I spoke
• 1:22:26
  to my guests that that was disrespectful and rude.
• 1:22:30
  Didn't apologize for what I said, went away.
• 1:22:33
  Then two days later, I get a phone call saying, right, the
• 1:22:36
  head of the BBC, it was Tony Hall, the head of the BBC is
• 1:22:39
  investigating this now. And I'm thinking, I'm, I
• 1:22:42
  thinking I'm out. This is it.
• 1:22:44
  This is this is game over. And they were upset because I
• 1:22:49
  had 6 Ofcom complaints. Again, going back to the thing,
• 1:22:52
  none of those complaints were upheld.
• 1:22:54
  There was an internal investigation with the board and
• 1:22:56
  with Tony Hall. And I got the, I got, I got a
• 1:23:01
  phone call saying you can come back, but you're going to have
• 1:23:04
  an outside producer and the BBC board will be monitoring every
• 1:23:08
  show and if you make one mistake, you will be out with no
• 1:23:14
  pay or we can buy off your six months contract and you go and
• 1:23:19
  you never speak about this again.
• 1:23:22
  I was devastated, man. I actually had a nervous
• 1:23:24
  breakdown about this. I, I, I, I genuinely, I,
• 1:23:27
  obviously I went for the latter option.
• 1:23:29
  I knew that I had a job coming up at talk radio.
• 1:23:32
  However, I felt so betrayed by an organization I've been so
• 1:23:36
  proud to work for. I I felt so betrayed by my
• 1:23:39
  bosses who had patted me on the back and said that was a great
• 1:23:42
  show and then we're denying everything.
• 1:23:44
  They were protecting themselves. I felt so let down that I'd done
• 1:23:48
  the right thing. I'd done the right thing.
• 1:23:50
  I'd stood up against bigotry and I hadn't.
• 1:23:53
  It wasn't an anti Christian ranks.
• 1:23:55
  I read the transcript and I had I responded to the complaint and
• 1:23:58
  the I wrote this well thought out.
• 1:24:00
  I was, I was devastated. And it became this big thing.
• 1:24:04
  It got in the New York Times and, you know, Gervais picked it
• 1:24:08
  up and these, you know, Hitchens, who I'm not a fan of,
• 1:24:11
  he picked it up. All of these people picked it
• 1:24:13
  up. And I, I had preachers in
• 1:24:15
  America saying I was going to go to hell.
• 1:24:17
  You know, I'm getting messages and emails and tweets from, you
• 1:24:20
  know, Baptist ministers in, in southern States and I'm going to
• 1:24:25
  go to hell and I'm a Sinner. And it became this, this
• 1:24:28
  worldwide thing. And I had a nervous breakdown
• 1:24:32
  and it, it, it, it absolutely destroyed me.
• 1:24:35
  However, I will say it, it, it, it didn't hurt any legend that I
• 1:24:41
  may have, you know, it, it didn't hurt this guy stood up.
• 1:24:45
  It, it pissed off the right people.
• 1:24:48
  You know, I became for a while, you know, the LGBT community
• 1:24:54
  were big fans of me, which I'm very, very happy with as a
• 1:24:57
  bisexual man. I hadn't come out at that point,
• 1:24:59
  but. Did you know back then or Jeff
• 1:25:03
  Inglins or? Just I was bisexual.
• 1:25:04
  Yeah, yeah, I was, yeah, I was. I was getting off on.
• 1:25:07
  I was getting yes, yes, I was. I was, I was, I was.
• 1:25:12
  I was very much in denial about that.
• 1:25:14
  That didn't happen for another couple of years, but it was it
• 1:25:17
  was devastating, man. So that is the one time I've
• 1:25:20
  been called out. It's not even politics.
• 1:25:22
  It's common decency. You know, someone says game Gay
• 1:25:26
  are queer is going to go to hell because it's an abomination.
• 1:25:31
  Well, that no, no, I can't let that go out unchallenged.
• 1:25:37
  I can't let that go out and say that is fundamentally wrong.
• 1:25:42
  But I've always found the BBC very puzzling, especially with
• 1:25:45
  everything that's come out over the years.
• 1:25:47
  And that right there, what you just outlined there, I've seen
• 1:25:50
  that in fucking corporate business.
• 1:25:52
  It's, it's just politics. It's bullshit politics.
• 1:25:55
  It's just, oh, we're getting pressure from these people.
• 1:25:59
  We need you to say this. And it's like, fuck you.
• 1:26:01
  I'm not saying what you want me to say.
• 1:26:03
  And like, that's, that's when there's a panic, like, Oh my
• 1:26:05
  God, we need him to say this. Let's just get him to leave.
• 1:26:08
  And then that solves the problem.
• 1:26:09
  It's like, no, you, you don't realise, you thick fucks that
• 1:26:13
  that's not addressing the problem.
• 1:26:15
  You're going to get like if anything, like firing someone in
• 1:26:18
  instance like that kind of makes them like a martyr in a sense,
• 1:26:20
  because it's like, you know, they stood up for them for what
• 1:26:23
  they believed in. They didn't apologize, they
• 1:26:26
  walked away. And that in of itself is a
• 1:26:28
  point. And you still have the problem
• 1:26:31
  on on your on your on your lap. You know, like you, you now you
• 1:26:35
  look homophobic as an organization, which obviously
• 1:26:39
  they're not. But like, that's how it looks.
• 1:26:42
  And it's like, I think sometimes, yeah, in life you do
• 1:26:44
  have to take a stand. And, you know, sometimes you're
• 1:26:47
  going to get shit for it. You know, I've had shit before
• 1:26:50
  from people for some of the stands I've taken.
• 1:26:52
  And I'm like, I don't care. Like I'd rather do the right
• 1:26:54
  thing, you know? I would do that again 100%.
• 1:26:57
  I would do it again 100%. You know, I couldn't keep.
• 1:27:02
  And there's impartiality and there's being on the wrong side.
• 1:27:07
  And to not call out homophobia is that's not impartiality.
• 1:27:12
  And the reason I said we had a lesbian priest on is because so
• 1:27:16
  that it would look like, and we had, we had another religious
• 1:27:19
  figure who, you know, was like, well, in the Bible, it doesn't
• 1:27:22
  say anything about gay being bad.
• 1:27:25
  So we had the balance in terms of the argument.
• 1:27:28
  But for me, we didn't need the balance, man.
• 1:27:30
  We didn't need the balance because what they were saying
• 1:27:33
  was fundamentally wrong, right? And it had to be called out and
• 1:27:37
  I would do it again at a moment's, at a moment's notice.
• 1:27:41
  I would and and if I lost a job for it, then so be it.
• 1:27:44
  So be it, man. Not got a problem with that at
• 1:27:46
  all. Would you say that's the
• 1:27:47
  proudest moment of your career? Well, it is it the proudest
• 1:27:53
  moment of my career? It's certainly up there.
• 1:27:56
  It's certainly it. It's certainly up there, I
• 1:28:00
  think, yeah. So what is the proudest moment?
• 1:28:03
  What's the I'm? Trying to, I'm trying to think
• 1:28:05
  it will be something. It will be something really
• 1:28:10
  small. I don't know.
• 1:28:14
  I, I don't know. I can tell you the very best
• 1:28:16
  moment of my career was the night I went home to watch the
• 1:28:19
  first ever episode of the 11:00 show.
• 1:28:22
  That was the best buzz ever. It's like I've done years of
• 1:28:26
  work to get to this point and sitting home and turning it on
• 1:28:30
  and thinking, Oh my God, they're actually showing it.
• 1:28:33
  It's not a joke. They've not pulled it.
• 1:28:35
  They're showing it. That was the that was the most
• 1:28:38
  thrilling moment of my entire 30 year career, that shadow of a
• 1:28:42
  doubt. Let's look at that for a second.
• 1:28:43
  I mean, obviously we, we, we spoke, I know we said we, we
• 1:28:46
  move on for fame. Last thing, I promise it's just
• 1:28:49
  because The thing is I find it fascinating.
• 1:28:52
  I don't know if I'm like a psychological perspective yes,
• 1:28:55
  you know, like how because you mentioned before like and I can
• 1:28:59
  relate, you know, broke, penniless like this is what life
• 1:29:02
  looks like and then it completely shifts.
• 1:29:05
  You know, this show goes out. It's seen by millions.
• 1:29:10
  I was it an overnight thing because obviously this is the
• 1:29:13
  90s, so there isn't written social media or anything, but
• 1:29:15
  like, yeah, it. Was a big success.
• 1:29:18
  But it's, it's, it's a big deal. You know, it's a big thing being
• 1:29:20
  seen on television. Then was it an overnight thing?
• 1:29:26
  Did it take a little bit of time?
• 1:29:27
  Like what, what did that shift look like?
• 1:29:31
  And and how did you sort of deal with that initially?
• 1:29:33
  And so exactly the first time I've, I've thought, OK, this is
• 1:29:36
  this is big and I'm now famous. So the first episode goes out
• 1:29:40
  and the next day we go out filming.
• 1:29:42
  The vox pops like 9:00 in the morning.
• 1:29:44
  And there were these builders on the other side of the road.
• 1:29:46
  They went, oh, mate, you got a light.
• 1:29:48
  I went, no, I haven't got a light.
• 1:29:49
  You got a light and I and it kept going on.
• 1:29:52
  And I said to my director, that's weird.
• 1:29:54
  They said they saw the show last night.
• 1:29:56
  You made a joke about having a lighter.
• 1:29:58
  It's like, oh, right, OK, this is a thing then.
• 1:30:05
  So that was, you know, literally within 12 hours, not the 10
• 1:30:10
  hours of it being on the telly. I got recognized for the first
• 1:30:13
  time. And that was when I thought,
• 1:30:14
  yeah, OK, this is this is going to be an interesting ride.
• 1:30:18
  Now let's see. Let's see where this goes in my
• 1:30:23
  cats. You're right, big boy, big boy.
• 1:30:26
  OK talks. So yeah, coming what the
• 1:30:32
  question was. But that was the first time I'd
• 1:30:33
  I'd realised that strange things were happening, that the Circle
• 1:30:37
  K, there's a Bill and Ted reference.
• 1:30:38
  Let's Fast forward to now. Love a bit of Bill and Ted.
• 1:30:41
  We mentioned at the top of the show that like you, you've,
• 1:30:44
  you've moved on to using TikTok. Now as I understand, correct me
• 1:30:47
  if I'm wrong, it's kind of like a device to promote maybe you
• 1:30:52
  your Patreon show, would that be?
• 1:30:54
  Correct, TikTok isn't no, just that TikTok is its is its own is
• 1:30:58
  its own thing. And here's the thing I've I've
• 1:31:00
  done 8 shows on there. There is a very strong chance
• 1:31:03
  I'll get bored next week and never do it again.
• 1:31:06
  You know, it's my ADHD brain. I'm getting the bus.
• 1:31:09
  I might do one after this, we'll see.
• 1:31:10
  But but I might get bored of it. I start these projects and then
• 1:31:15
  get bored and I used to really beat myself up about it and now
• 1:31:18
  I don't because that means that project has served its its
• 1:31:22
  purpose. It did what it needed to do.
• 1:31:24
  What's the next thing I need that kind of rush.
• 1:31:26
  So no, it's, it's, it's purely its own thing at the moment.
• 1:31:31
  Is there like a particular goal with it?
• 1:31:33
  Or as you say, is it just having fun?
• 1:31:35
  No goal. Fair enough.
• 1:31:37
  Which might sound weird to some people.
• 1:31:39
  Or you're trying to the people. Oh, you're trying to be famous.
• 1:31:41
  You're trying to be relevant. I'm not it might do you know
• 1:31:43
  what it might lead to something. It probably won't.
• 1:31:47
  But this is the thing that the the pleasure is from the doing
• 1:31:51
  it. The pleasure is from the doing
• 1:31:53
  it and by you know, for some reason it's getting, you know,
• 1:31:58
  345600 people watching it live. I say it's 2000 people and
• 1:32:02
  people get so actually it's 357. Oh yeah, no, I'm seeing more up
• 1:32:06
  to date stat. People get so angry face value.
• 1:32:09
  So for me, the pleasure is in doing it right.
• 1:32:12
  There is not at the moment. I swear to God there is no other
• 1:32:17
  reason. Is there anything like see you
• 1:32:21
  retired from from radio to to begin a career in counselling
• 1:32:26
  and we'll address that in a moment, but is there any kind of
• 1:32:31
  career goals left at the moment? Is there anything like, would
• 1:32:34
  you, would you entertain a show if it was offered to you now,
• 1:32:38
  Like anything in particular? I've started doing live shows.
• 1:32:41
  I did my first solo live show in October, the first one I've done
• 1:32:45
  for 12 years. Then I did a show a couple of
• 1:32:47
  weeks after with Mackenzie Crook.
• 1:32:49
  We used to be a double actor. We used to live together and we
• 1:32:52
  kind of showed Bob Mortimer wrote and directed a sketch show
• 1:32:56
  for us that was never shown. And so we showed that for the
• 1:32:59
  first time and that that was, that was quite funny.
• 1:33:03
  So I'm, and I've, I've got 4 shows booked in next year.
• 1:33:06
  One of them is the solo show Imposter Syndrome.
• 1:33:08
  One is I'm going to be playing the radio like a musical
• 1:33:11
  instrument in a bookshop in Reading. 1 is a show with
• 1:33:14
  Catherine, a game show and something else.
• 1:33:18
  So I'm enjoying doing that. Yeah, I'd love to, I'd love
• 1:33:21
  another crack at telly I. I would love, I would love, I'd
• 1:33:25
  love to do the 11:00 show again. I think there is something in
• 1:33:30
  bringing that back. Now.
• 1:33:31
  You ain't going to get Ali G You might get Ricky, actually, if
• 1:33:34
  people wanted that Ricky. Would be game.
• 1:33:38
  I think he would. I-11 of the things I I was going
• 1:33:42
  to ask you about is, is comedy, because obviously comedy has
• 1:33:44
  changed a lot over the years. A lot of people make the
• 1:33:47
  argument that comedy has gone very woke now and it's it's not
• 1:33:50
  as fun as it used to be. People don't are afraid to kind
• 1:33:52
  of push the boat, afraid to get cancelled, stuff like that.
• 1:33:55
  People like Ricky Gervais, it strikes me as like he doesn't
• 1:33:58
  give a flying fuck, same as Chappelle.
• 1:34:01
  They kind of look at the comedy landscape and go, well, I'm
• 1:34:04
  going to do my thing, here's what I believe, here's what I
• 1:34:07
  think, take it or leave it kind of thing.
• 1:34:10
  And obviously you're going to get, you're always going to piss
• 1:34:12
  people off. I mean, even say back in the
• 1:34:15
  nineties, 2000s, people were still outraged at things.
• 1:34:18
  It's just now you've got this threat of like, losing work
• 1:34:22
  because whatever TV companies are afraid, like, oh, you said
• 1:34:27
  this, we can't give you this Netflix deal now given all of
• 1:34:32
  that context, like, do you think a show like that could work now?
• 1:34:36
  Yeah, and I think it would thrive now because you can, you
• 1:34:42
  know, you can say a lot of stuff.
• 1:34:44
  The people's when people say you can't say anything in comedy,
• 1:34:47
  what they generally want to do is make jokes about brown people
• 1:34:51
  and gay people and disabled people.
• 1:34:54
  That's generally, it's a massive generalization.
• 1:34:57
  But when people say you can't joke about anything anymore,
• 1:34:59
  those are the groups they want to make jokes about.
• 1:35:02
  And I don't I don't really want that to come back.
• 1:35:04
  And I think most sensible people don't.
• 1:35:06
  Some people will but I but but but on this stream right I'm
• 1:35:11
  yelling at people calling them CS telling them to F off and
• 1:35:16
  people in the chat are going well this is woke.
• 1:35:19
  How is how is that woke? I'm telling.
• 1:35:22
  Believe, believe. The kids call it rage baiting.
• 1:35:25
  They're trying to rage bait you. I I found out that's what it was
• 1:35:29
  all woke means is not being a Dick.
• 1:35:32
  That's all it means is don't be a Dick to people.
• 1:35:35
  Be a bit considerate. You disagree?
• 1:35:36
  Go on well. I think it used to mean that
• 1:35:41
  certainly when it when it first because society has been woke if
• 1:35:46
  you want to call it that for years.
• 1:35:47
  Like for instance, I'm a big Star Trek fan and I've been re
• 1:35:50
  watching Next Gen. Because I'm a nerd and there's
• 1:35:54
  loads of stuff in that that by today's standards would be
• 1:35:56
  considered very progressive and and it's great the way they do
• 1:36:00
  it. Things like that, yeah.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah. And, and like, there's, look,
• 1:36:03
  there's a lot of things socially, I'm very left and I, I
• 1:36:06
  look at things like that and I'm like, yeah, damn right, things
• 1:36:09
  should be called out. Shouldn't things should be
• 1:36:11
  spoken about? However, now it's kind of become
• 1:36:15
  this thing where if you take movies and Series, A lot of the
• 1:36:18
  time it feels like you're being lectured and it's like, well.
• 1:36:21
  OK. I'm not a sexist or a racist.
• 1:36:23
  I don't need to be told that I'm just a normal person.
• 1:36:26
  I don't have those views. So why does it feel like this
• 1:36:28
  thing I'm watching is lecturing me?
• 1:36:30
  Like, you need to be doing this. You need, it's like, you know,
• 1:36:33
  like people sometimes argue if you want to normalize something,
• 1:36:36
  don't talk about it, which is a bold statement, but I know what
• 1:36:40
  they mean. Like in the context of say, like
• 1:36:42
  a film, if you have like, say a gay couple and it's like they're
• 1:36:47
  that's that that's just in the story.
• 1:36:49
  OK, and normalized that that's what they mean.
• 1:36:52
  It's like normalize it within the now, it's different if
• 1:36:55
  that's part of the narrative, absolutely.
• 1:36:58
  But if it's like shoehorned in, that's I think when people, most
• 1:37:03
  people when they talk about woke, they're talking about that
• 1:37:06
  they don't like how things are kind of shoved in and can you?
• 1:37:09
  Give me an example of where it's shoved in.
• 1:37:11
  I don't know, I. Can't remember the fucking film
• 1:37:13
  is called the The Final One. Yeah, the last.
• 1:37:16
  One final one. There's like a, there's like a
• 1:37:17
  panning shot where they're like they throw like a like a lesbian
• 1:37:22
  kiss. They just throw it in there and
• 1:37:24
  it's, it's a very throwaway thing and it pissed off a lot of
• 1:37:28
  people. It didn't bother me.
• 1:37:29
  I was like oh OK, but I understood that like that would
• 1:37:33
  be an example of like woke if. You like what if it had been a
• 1:37:36
  straight couple kissing? No.
• 1:37:38
  One would have said anything. So I don't see the difference
• 1:37:42
  because I don't, I don't see the difference between a straight
• 1:37:45
  couple. Listen, sci-fi fans, a lot of
• 1:37:47
  them are generalisation, a certain element of the nerd
• 1:37:52
  community. And I do not use that word as an
• 1:37:54
  insult, right? I'm a, I'm a geek, right?
• 1:37:56
  I'm not a nerd, I'm a geek and there's a difference.
• 1:37:57
  Don't ask me to define it because I don't know if I could.
• 1:38:00
  But there are a certain element that really want to get angry
• 1:38:03
  about rainbow flags. I want to get angry about that
• 1:38:06
  stuff. And I think the question is if
• 1:38:10
  it had been a, if it had not been a talking point, if it had
• 1:38:13
  been a straight kiss, then I believe it shouldn't be a
• 1:38:16
  talking point. If it had been a that, that it
• 1:38:18
  was a gay kiss because both, both the normal, statistically,
• 1:38:25
  OK, I don't know the stats, possibly more straight people.
• 1:38:28
  I don't know this. This is set in space.
• 1:38:31
  That one's a long time ago, isn't it?
• 1:38:32
  Yeah. It can't be gay in space.
• 1:38:34
  You can't. In space, no one can hear you be
• 1:38:38
  gay. So to me, I don't see that as a,
• 1:38:42
  as a, a, you know, pushing it. I see it as always the people,
• 1:38:45
  people kissing. Fact, I don't even see that.
• 1:38:48
  I don't even see it. I said in a stream recently that
• 1:38:51
  I, I think the issue is not so much for, for, for look for some
• 1:38:56
  people, a lot of people that like argue against woke, they're
• 1:38:59
  just assholes like, and we know that and it's just, they just
• 1:39:02
  don't like anything that and it's fine.
• 1:39:05
  Fuck those people. I will agree when you're talking
• 1:39:08
  about narratives, there's a way to do things like for example,
• 1:39:13
  another Star Trek property. No, sorry, not Star Spokes about
• 1:39:17
  Star Wars. Star Trek is doing it right.
• 1:39:18
  Now you're in trouble. You.
• 1:39:19
  Yeah, I know they'll come for me now.
• 1:39:23
  I think it's the final episode of the first season of Picard.
• 1:39:26
  There's another panning shot, and they built up this character
• 1:39:31
  called Seven of Nine. She's a show favorite for years.
• 1:39:34
  And then there's this mercenary character who Picard has been
• 1:39:38
  friends with from like way back or whatever.
• 1:39:41
  And basically the panning shot, it shows like everyone in the
• 1:39:44
  ship. And then it pans out and then
• 1:39:46
  it's like, oh, it's this is my new crew, I guess.
• 1:39:49
  But it shows a moment where I think her name's Raffy and Seven
• 1:39:54
  of Nine were like sort of holding hands at the table.
• 1:39:57
  And it's like a bitter and you look at them and you're like,
• 1:40:00
  this makes perfect sense. They've built the characters up.
• 1:40:03
  They've got chemistry. It creates intrigue for the next
• 1:40:06
  season, like, oh, we're going to find out how that relationship
• 1:40:09
  goes. Like how did that happen?
• 1:40:10
  Like that's how you do it. Good narrative, good
• 1:40:13
  storytelling. And I think to an extent, that's
• 1:40:17
  how you narrow normalize things as well.
• 1:40:19
  I think a lot of what people are arguing is sometimes within the
• 1:40:22
  storytelling aspect of things. Because we're trying to just put
• 1:40:28
  like meet certain quotas or, or, or put a certain idea out.
• 1:40:31
  We're, we're kind of doing that at the expense of the story.
• 1:40:35
  And maybe that's the issue. I, I, I disagree.
• 1:40:38
  I disagree with what, what you're, you're saying.
• 1:40:40
  I, I have not seen any examples where I've gone, Oh my God, I,
• 1:40:45
  I, I, I've given examples of it. And, and I think for me the test
• 1:40:49
  is my kids who are 15 and 13, they think nothing of it.
• 1:40:54
  I'm a 52 year old man. So maybe there is still a bit of
• 1:40:57
  my dinosaur brain that goes, that's two blokes.
• 1:41:00
  Oh, that's good. But my kids don't think that's
• 1:41:03
  cool. Anything of it.
• 1:41:04
  That's interesting. It's it's absolutely nothing.
• 1:41:09
  And sometimes when we are correcting the mistakes of the
• 1:41:13
  past, sometimes it can drift too much the other way, maybe before
• 1:41:17
  it corrects itself into the the. I was on holiday with my kids a
• 1:41:24
  while ago and it was hot. It was hot.
• 1:41:25
  It was too hot, man. It was so hot.
• 1:41:27
  And I, we're in a shop getting some lighter clothes.
• 1:41:30
  And I said, I wish I could wear a skirt.
• 1:41:31
  And my boys went, well, why don't you?
• 1:41:34
  And I said, oh, to your generation, that's nothing.
• 1:41:39
  Men can wear skirts. They went, yeah.
• 1:41:41
  I said to my generation, it's, it's, it's historically seen as
• 1:41:45
  a bit weird. So to them seeing, you know, two
• 1:41:50
  women kissing 22 blokes, you know, holding hands or whatever,
• 1:41:54
  it's, it's nothing. It's nothing do.
• 1:41:57
  You know, I'd never thought about that.
• 1:41:58
  It's a really interesting way of looking at it, but it's, it's
• 1:42:00
  true. I mean, for, for me, like all my
• 1:42:06
  friends are like gay or trans or whatever.
• 1:42:08
  Like I, I know people from all, especially living in Manchester,
• 1:42:11
  you meet all sorts of cool people.
• 1:42:13
  And sometimes I will still be like, wow, like, that's
• 1:42:18
  different. Yeah.
• 1:42:18
  I don't remember seeing that when I was growing up.
• 1:42:20
  But then also like, it's just it's amazing and kind of cool
• 1:42:24
  that the younger generation below me is like looking at
• 1:42:27
  things like that. But then that means the
• 1:42:31
  normalization of it is succeeding.
• 1:42:34
  So that's a good thing. However, we about, we're about
• 1:42:36
  to have, you know, the next election, we're about to
• 1:42:39
  probably have quite a far right government.
• 1:42:41
  And my concern is that they undo all of the good that we did and
• 1:42:44
  the gay marriage, you remember, gay marriage was such a big
• 1:42:47
  thing. Oh my God, when did it become
• 1:42:49
  legal? I'm going to say 20/13/2013,
• 1:42:52
  okay. And it was such this is
• 1:42:56
  disgusting. This totally ruins the sanctity
• 1:42:59
  of marriage. There are still people that
• 1:43:01
  think like that, but that debate is not held anymore.
• 1:43:03
  And my kids have, you know, they've only lived in a world
• 1:43:07
  where gay marriage was was was a thing, you know, and they will
• 1:43:10
  look back at some point and go what?
• 1:43:11
  It wasn't legal. My worry is you get you get the
• 1:43:14
  right wing come in and OK, well, they've targeted brown people,
• 1:43:19
  the next on the list. Well, they've already targeted
• 1:43:21
  LGBT, trans being the big one at the moment, but it will be gays
• 1:43:26
  and lesbians and bisexuals and then it'll be disabled people.
• 1:43:31
  And my worry is that they'll undo all of that.
• 1:43:34
  We're going to we're going to get rid of gay marriage again.
• 1:43:37
  Do. You really think reform would
• 1:43:38
  get in? Yeah, that's fucking.
• 1:43:42
  Terrifying man, I really hope. That the last election, man, you
• 1:43:46
  know, Conservatives are dead dead.
• 1:43:48
  Listen, there's four years to wherever it is till the next
• 1:43:50
  election. It's time to turn it around.
• 1:43:51
  Labour have been a huge disappointment.
• 1:43:53
  This is my opinion. Labour's been a huge
• 1:43:55
  disappointment and have pandered to the the right wing, which is
• 1:43:59
  pointless because they're not going to convert convert reform
• 1:44:03
  voters to vote Labour and they're going to lose Labour
• 1:44:05
  voters. They should have gone harder in
• 1:44:07
  to the left. And I don't necessarily mean
• 1:44:09
  socialism. I'm possibly I'm a socialist,
• 1:44:11
  but I don't necessarily mean that.
• 1:44:13
  But they should have gone more for the working person and
• 1:44:16
  called out these racist policies of the other groups.
• 1:44:19
  The last election reform, you know, they were second in nearly
• 1:44:22
  every in nearly every constituency.
• 1:44:25
  And a lot of them, they were close.
• 1:44:27
  So yes, I think I think that's where we're heading.
• 1:44:30
  You got Trump, you know, America sneezes, we catch a cold.
• 1:44:34
  It's heading. It's all heading that way.
• 1:44:37
  When I was down visiting my dad, we had the news on and the the
• 1:44:43
  new party, your party came up as one of your thoughts on that.
• 1:44:48
  I don't know much about them. I know that it looks like it's a
• 1:44:50
  shit show already and that they're, they've been to what, a
• 1:44:54
  year? And there are huge divisions
• 1:44:57
  already. So I don't really know enough
• 1:45:00
  about them to comment on them as a party.
• 1:45:03
  It doesn't look like it's going particularly well in terms of in
• 1:45:08
  terms of unity. I should, you know, like I I was
• 1:45:12
  there like so I saw like a press conference or something where
• 1:45:16
  like the leader and the second in command or whatever were kind
• 1:45:20
  of odds. And then the next minute the
• 1:45:23
  leader, Jeremy Corbyn, left the party and I was like, Jesus,
• 1:45:26
  that escalated quickly. The fuck?
• 1:45:30
  But yeah, it that's kind of the vibe it seems to be.
• 1:45:33
  But I just bring up because they're supposedly a bit more
• 1:45:37
  like socialist leaning or something like that, kind of
• 1:45:39
  like what you'd maybe want Labour to be a bit more like.
• 1:45:43
  But and of course they're made-up of like former Labour
• 1:45:46
  people. So anyway, happy.
• 1:45:48
  Happy days, man, Get get ready for it.
• 1:45:51
  You know, people like you and me are going to be up against the
• 1:45:53
  wall. You know, we're all in big
• 1:45:55
  trouble. Let's, let's we.
• 1:45:58
  Can we cheer things up a little bit?
• 1:46:00
  Yeah, absolutely. If I say minty biscuit, what
• 1:46:03
  comes to mind? Oh, but that is a wonderful
• 1:46:07
  phone call from my friend Barry from Watford to a show I was
• 1:46:11
  doing on BBCWM. So Barry, Alex Lowe, Barry from
• 1:46:14
  Watford, Clinton Baptiste would call me up for years, starting
• 1:46:19
  an LBC, maybe 2004, no, 2005. And we phone up as this old man
• 1:46:24
  Barry from Watford. And we would improv these comedy
• 1:46:26
  bits, right? Never knew what we were going to
• 1:46:29
  talk about. Never rehearsed it, never
• 1:46:31
  planned anything. They were all improvised.
• 1:46:33
  He was on the 11:00 show, Alex. So I knew him.
• 1:46:35
  I knew him very well. And we'd make these things up.
• 1:46:37
  And I was on BBBCWM and he texted me and said, are you on
• 1:46:41
  the air yet? What are you talking about?
• 1:46:43
  I said, oh, we're talking about blue badges.
• 1:46:44
  He said, all right, can I, is it all right if I call in?
• 1:46:47
  I said yeah, sure. And he called in and it's become
• 1:46:50
  this viral thing I got told off by the boss of BBCWM.
• 1:46:57
  He said and we do not have fake character callers.
• 1:47:00
  It brings the BB CS integrity into question.
• 1:47:05
  What integrity? That a week later it had 1.2
• 1:47:07
  million views on YouTube. It became this international
• 1:47:12
  phenomenon. Robert Downey Junior has heard
• 1:47:15
  it and likes it, although he thinks the host is a bit of a
• 1:47:18
  prick. And it every every now and then
• 1:47:22
  it goes around and around and around.
• 1:47:25
  I'll let you into a secret. It was I would see it every
• 1:47:29
  three or four months, pop up on TikTok or Twitter or Instagram
• 1:47:33
  and get a million views. I thought, oh, I want a piece of
• 1:47:35
  this pie. So I uploaded it to my YouTube
• 1:47:38
  channel. Every month I get between 150
• 1:47:41
  and £200 from that call, from that call and, and to me that's,
• 1:47:46
  that's a significant amount of money these days.
• 1:47:49
  The thing is it was not the funniest call that we ever did.
• 1:47:52
  It was, it was a middling tier call, you know, but for some
• 1:47:57
  reason that has has struck the nation's consciousness, which is
• 1:48:01
  great. It's great fun.
• 1:48:03
  What's the funniest call then, of all time?
• 1:48:05
  What is the funniest call? He would talk about his wife's
• 1:48:09
  Charlie when he meant the perfume, but it sounded like he
• 1:48:12
  was talking about her sexual organs.
• 1:48:15
  There was he used to do other characters.
• 1:48:19
  My favorite character was this the tech guy.
• 1:48:22
  He he did a tech guy called Steven.
• 1:48:27
  Oh, what was it? It was Joe Lavens was the the
• 1:48:30
  UFO guy, Stephen Murdoch. And we did this on LBC the first
• 1:48:35
  time, right when I said LBC was a gardening program and a league
• 1:48:38
  and they would have tech stuff. And I'd say right coming up at
• 1:48:40
  4:00, we got tech expert Stephen Murdoch coming on with.
• 1:48:44
  So get in with your tech questions, right?
• 1:48:46
  And so people fell for it and someone phoned up and said, how
• 1:48:50
  can you, can you tell me about Internet?
• 1:48:54
  I use Internet cafes. Can you tell me about Internet
• 1:48:57
  security? And Alex, Stephen went on this
• 1:49:01
  thing about when you take your jacket off, don't hang it over
• 1:49:04
  the back of the chair because someone could steal your wallet.
• 1:49:08
  And they said, no, no, no, I mean, with the computer.
• 1:49:11
  And he'd say, yeah, so you've just got to be careful, you
• 1:49:14
  know, where your wallet is. And it went on like that.
• 1:49:16
  Someone found out with an issue about burning DVDs, and Alex
• 1:49:22
  just started talking utter bollocks.
• 1:49:25
  And the person was getting very, very angry with them going,
• 1:49:27
  well, that's not true. And SIM said, well, actually I'm
• 1:49:30
  an expert. And it just, you know, in
• 1:49:33
  describing it, it doesn't sound funny, but it was so beautiful.
• 1:49:36
  And and it caught me like the other one is Joe Lavens, who's a
• 1:49:39
  UFO expert and he'll talk about an alien doing it with a monkey.
• 1:49:46
  It's and that's where the human race comes from, because an
• 1:49:48
  alien did it with a monkey. It just makes me laugh so much.
• 1:49:52
  So there's there's lots of there's, there's lots of good
• 1:49:55
  stuff. But mint tea, biscuit, yeah,
• 1:49:56
  it's wild. It's incredible.
• 1:49:58
  So. We've spoken about like
• 1:50:00
  obviously you being a famous person and the panto behind it
• 1:50:04
  and stuff and the character and all this.
• 1:50:06
  So I didn't actually see when when you were in.
• 1:50:09
  I'm A Celebrity. I'm just not locked into what's
• 1:50:12
  going on a lot of the time. I think I was in Estonia at the
• 1:50:15
  time, actually. Well, I just graduated.
• 1:50:17
  You were having a better time than me then, I'm sure.
• 1:50:19
  No, no, this is not a good time in my life.
• 1:50:25
  Anyway, so I've seen the clip everyone talks about the fucking
• 1:50:29
  strawberries clip. And the thing that stood out to
• 1:50:32
  me was kind of like, and I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this,
• 1:50:36
  but to me it felt like you looked at that a situation just
• 1:50:39
  being in the jungle doing this and you're like, oh, this is
• 1:50:41
  this is too silly. I'm just going to play up to
• 1:50:43
  this and just have fun and fuck it, like play the character.
• 1:50:48
  Would you say that being famous a lot of the time and, and what
• 1:50:51
  you've done in throughout your career is kind of the same
• 1:50:53
  thing? Like you're playing the role of
• 1:50:56
  a famous celebrity Because they, they, they say that there's a
• 1:50:59
  difference down there between being famous and being a
• 1:51:02
  celebrity. Like, that whole show's premise
• 1:51:05
  is built on that idea. On the jungle, right, the jungle
• 1:51:08
  is for appearing on, it's not for watching.
• 1:51:10
  And I'd been asked four years in a row, and I'd always said no.
• 1:51:14
  I said yes, that yes, this time because I was getting divorced,
• 1:51:17
  I needed some money. I was doing a radio show that no
• 1:51:19
  one was listening to and wanted to promote it.
• 1:51:21
  And also, my kids would have been 7:00 and 5:00 or 8:00 and
• 1:51:25
  6:00, and they'd never seen me on telly.
• 1:51:27
  And I thought, well, why don't I do the biggest entertainment
• 1:51:29
  show in the country? And I treated it like a job.
• 1:51:33
  I treated it like a gig, right? I was being paid a lot of money
• 1:51:37
  to entertain people. So when I went in, I worked out
• 1:51:41
  where all the cameras were. I treated it like ATV studio.
• 1:51:44
  I worked out where all the cameras were and I thought, and
• 1:51:47
  everyone was so fucking boring. Oh my God, they were so dull.
• 1:51:51
  And I went in and they went, yeah, we're all on a we're all
• 1:51:54
  on a spiritual journey. I went shut up with that journey
• 1:51:57
  crap, right? It was boring and I thought,
• 1:52:01
  I've got to do something entertain.
• 1:52:02
  I've got to entertain. So I the strawberries was, was
• 1:52:07
  funny. I didn't know it would become a
• 1:52:08
  thing. It was just a funny thing to do
• 1:52:11
  when I was doing a task. I made it as entertaining as
• 1:52:15
  possible in the diary room. I would try and say entertaining
• 1:52:19
  funny things. Yeah, sometimes it got a bit, a
• 1:52:21
  bit serious because it was horrible in there and I was in
• 1:52:23
  there with a bunch of nasty people and it was exhausting,
• 1:52:27
  man. And it was, it was, it was
• 1:52:29
  depressing at times, but yeah, I was playing a character in there
• 1:52:34
  for pretty much most of it because that was the job.
• 1:52:37
  The job was to go in there and make entertaining television.
• 1:52:40
  OK, I know how to do that. I will steal some strawberries.
• 1:52:43
  I will say something. You know, I, I, I will make
• 1:52:46
  someone look like an idiot, the right people.
• 1:52:48
  I might look an idea. I will, you know, when if I'm
• 1:52:50
  doing a challenge, I'm going to, you know, the, the, the I got
• 1:52:53
  the eating challenge where you got to eat a pig's vagina and
• 1:52:55
  you got to eat a scorpion camel's brain, right soon as I
• 1:52:58
  walked out and saw that. Because you don't, I don't know
• 1:53:00
  what you're going to do as soon as I walked out and saw that, I
• 1:53:02
  thought, oh, first of all, this is the famous one.
• 1:53:05
  This is the one everyone watches.
• 1:53:07
  That means I'm that means I'm doing quite well outside if this
• 1:53:10
  is what they've given me and BI can I can eat any old crap?
• 1:53:14
  I was a student in the 90s. You know, I put any old crap in
• 1:53:17
  my mouth. CI can I can make this funny.
• 1:53:20
  I can make this really, really funny.
• 1:53:22
  And so I had a great time doing the eating challenge.
• 1:53:25
  I mean, it made me feel quite sick, but I had no problems
• 1:53:28
  about any of it, so I hammed it up a little bit.
• 1:53:30
  You know, they don't want to see you go, oh here's a pigs vagina.
• 1:53:33
  They want to see you go. Oh my God, I can do that easy.
• 1:53:39
  It's just fascinating to me because it's like, I've seen so
• 1:53:42
  many celebrities over the years like really worry about
• 1:53:45
  self-image and their ego and their reputation and stuff like
• 1:53:48
  that. Whereas it's quite refreshing to
• 1:53:50
  hear someone just being honest, like, yeah, this is performance,
• 1:53:52
  this is fun. This is fuck it.
• 1:53:54
  Like dive head first into this. Yeah, and, you know, I've been
• 1:53:57
  my own worst enemy at times, particularly when I was using
• 1:54:00
  drugs. I, you know, I, my, my TV career
• 1:54:04
  went very quiet. It was down to me.
• 1:54:06
  It's my fault. You know, I was a Dick and and I
• 1:54:08
  was taking drugs and I became unreliable.
• 1:54:10
  So I've been my own worst enemy. But I don't at that point
• 1:54:14
  onwards, I don't care how people perceive me on TVA lot of it is
• 1:54:20
  pantomime. I don't care how people perceive
• 1:54:22
  me on TikTok. And he said TikTok because I
• 1:54:25
  know who I am. And again, my family and my kids
• 1:54:28
  know who I am. That's it, That's it.
• 1:54:31
  Going to move it to final part of the show.
• 1:54:33
  There'll be some questions I've never asked.
• 1:54:36
  There'll be some questions I ask every guest just to kind of
• 1:54:40
  build us into to tie things together for today, since we
• 1:54:44
  were just talking a little bit about fame and we've obviously
• 1:54:46
  spoken a lot about it throughout the show.
• 1:54:49
  What has fame taught you about life?
• 1:54:50
  Well, it's taught me that fame isn't important.
• 1:54:52
  I mean, it took a long time to get there.
• 1:54:53
  That fame isn't important. Perhaps don't knock the
• 1:54:55
  microphone, please. the IT, it, it, it, the celebrities are just
• 1:55:01
  people There's nothing special about.
• 1:55:04
  I mean, I can still get excited about meeting famous people.
• 1:55:07
  Can I? I've met, I've met everyone I
• 1:55:09
  wanted to meet. McCartney, I'd like to meet, but
• 1:55:11
  but I've met everyone I wanted to meet.
• 1:55:13
  And some of them are boring. Some of them are assholes.
• 1:55:15
  Some of them are really cool. So fame, famous people are are
• 1:55:19
  nothing. They're us.
• 1:55:21
  You know what's fame taught me about life?
• 1:55:25
  He's taught me what is it? What's important?
• 1:55:27
  Again, what's important is, is, is my family.
• 1:55:30
  That's it, you know, and, and it, it's a shame it took decades
• 1:55:34
  to work that out. And it took being, you know,
• 1:55:37
  crushed by the fame machine to work that out.
• 1:55:42
  It's also taught me fame is addictive.
• 1:55:43
  And there's still a tiny part of me, you know, I got mentioned,
• 1:55:47
  name checked and I'm A Celebrity this week.
• 1:55:49
  Someone sent me the clip and there was still a tiny part of
• 1:55:51
  me and went, oh, they remember, oh, that's they're still,
• 1:55:55
  they're still that bit. And I have to be aware of that
• 1:55:57
  beast, you know, And if I ever get back on telly, I have to be
• 1:56:01
  aware that that beast is, is within me and I have to keep it.
• 1:56:07
  I have to not take it seriously. I'll say this, if you carry on
• 1:56:11
  with TikTok, that will lead to somewhere for sure.
• 1:56:16
  Because I mean, apps, apps like that now are like where people
• 1:56:20
  are getting opportunities. Yeah, yeah, you know, and it's,
• 1:56:23
  it's not always guaranteed, but I mean, you know, to even to get
• 1:56:28
  like average 500 viewers per stream, like that's insane
• 1:56:31
  numbers. That's a lot, isn't it?
• 1:56:32
  And committed as well. They're like hooked in.
• 1:56:34
  They're they're listening, they're watching.
• 1:56:37
  And, you know, if people see potential in something,
• 1:56:40
  especially in someone who's who's done this for a career for
• 1:56:42
  so long, they know what they're working with, they know what
• 1:56:46
  they can do with that. And it might lead to some some
• 1:56:49
  interesting opportunities that you've never really come across
• 1:56:51
  before. Yeah, it might.
• 1:56:52
  Do. For instance, working with
• 1:56:56
  influencers or content creators or whatever, room for collabs
• 1:57:00
  and stuff. I think there's gonna be a lot
• 1:57:01
  of comedians that reach out to you or up and coming, and there
• 1:57:05
  might be some scope there. OK, I'm open.
• 1:57:08
  I'm open to the universe to see what what comes.
• 1:57:12
  And I'm, I'm a firm believer in that you, you know, manifesting
• 1:57:16
  to a certain degree, but I'm open, I'm open to see what
• 1:57:19
  happens. Something's going to happen.
• 1:57:20
  I know it is. I know it is.
• 1:57:21
  I knew I was going to get the 11:00 show years before it ever
• 1:57:24
  happened. I could see, I could see me in a
• 1:57:26
  big grey suit with a microphone stood in front of an audience.
• 1:57:30
  I saw it for years, right from quite a young age.
• 1:57:32
  And then one day I'm stood there and I went, oh shit.
• 1:57:35
  This was my vision, man. And I can see something is going
• 1:57:39
  to happen. So yeah, I believe that.
• 1:57:41
  I have the same about some sort of talk show.
• 1:57:46
  I don't know, something, something on a stage like I I
• 1:57:50
  feel very comfortable being in front of people or performing
• 1:57:54
  like whoever I'm doing music or ever, it's just on a stage, like
• 1:57:58
  very comfortable with that. The only time I ever get
• 1:58:00
  uncomfortable is if it's like a few people I know.
• 1:58:02
  I that's excruciating for some reason, but an audience is like,
• 1:58:06
  oh, this is work, this is performance, this is talking,
• 1:58:08
  this is. I think the bigger the number,
• 1:58:10
  the easier it becomes because it becomes less specific.
• 1:58:15
  I, I, I would struggle doing something in front of six
• 1:58:17
  people, something in front of 5000 people, which I've done.
• 1:58:19
  Yeah, please piss. There we go.
• 1:58:22
  What has TV taught you about life?
• 1:58:25
  The well, these are good questions, but I don't have, you
• 1:58:29
  know, I feel I should come back with very deep philosophical
• 1:58:32
  answers, but I don't, I don't have it.
• 1:58:34
  I don't really watch TV anymore. I find it that there's nothing
• 1:58:38
  on there excites me. I get sucked into Married at
• 1:58:40
  First Sight Australia, which is terrible.
• 1:58:42
  It's awful program. But I don't really watch TV.
• 1:58:45
  What has TV taught me? Don't trust people.
• 1:58:47
  People will lie to you, people will lie to you and say what
• 1:58:50
  they think that you want to hear.
• 1:58:52
  And people will quite often not be honest with you.
• 1:58:56
  If you don't want me, just say you don't want me.
• 1:58:58
  Don't say, oh, you're going to be in this TV show and it was
• 1:59:03
  definitely happening. And then you turn it on six
• 1:59:05
  months later and Jimmy Carr's hosting it.
• 1:59:07
  And I think TV is the worst for it.
• 1:59:09
  But also it's taught me to be honest with people to not
• 1:59:12
  bullshit people to to tell the truth.
• 1:59:15
  Yes, I would like to do your podcast.
• 1:59:16
  No, I don't think I want to do your podcast.
• 1:59:18
  But thank you for asking me. You know, it's that it's that
• 1:59:20
  simple. I've said since day one, I would
• 1:59:23
  rather honestly, I would rather someone turn around to me and be
• 1:59:25
  like, no, I think you know, your show is the shits.
• 1:59:27
  Fuck you. I'd I'd respect that more than
• 1:59:30
  Lion, but at least it's the truth.
• 1:59:33
  At least it's honesty, like the truth shall set you free, as
• 1:59:36
  they say. Being honest, he's taught me to
• 1:59:39
  be honest with people here. Also there are still great TV
• 1:59:42
  shows that are hilarious. I when I was on my anniversary
• 1:59:45
  with my my partner the other day.
• 1:59:48
  OK, because this show, what was it called?
• 1:59:52
  The bidding room or some shit, It's on BBC and it's hilarious.
• 1:59:56
  It's like if you would take Dragon's Den and mix it with
• 2:00:00
  like Antiques Roadshow or something and put them together
• 2:00:03
  like and it was hilarious. Like this guy brought a lamp in.
• 2:00:06
  It was fucking lamp light lamp without a lampshade or light.
• 2:00:12
  And Nigel Haywards is just like. But the one with Havers?
• 2:00:15
  Yeah, it's like, it's, it's a light and he's, and the guy next
• 2:00:20
  to him was like, yeah, like, you know, it's, it's got this
• 2:00:22
  curvature about it. And I'm like, it's, it's a
• 2:00:24
  fucking light man. Like would do, you know, And
• 2:00:27
  they're like, oh, I reckon best it could do was 1015 lbs.
• 2:00:30
  And I'm like, yeah, that's, you know, you get a bargain basement
• 2:00:32
  sale for £20, like fine it, you know.
• 2:00:34
  And The funny thing was the guy said, said like his wife wanted
• 2:00:38
  him to get rid of it. And I'm like, yeah, because it
• 2:00:39
  looks like crap and it's probably taken up clutter.
• 2:00:41
  Why do you want it in the house? So he brings it into the room
• 2:00:44
  and this is where it's like fascinating.
• 2:00:46
  And we're like, I can't believe this is a real show.
• 2:00:48
  So you've got these five people sat down and like Dragons Den
• 2:00:52
  and they're all just like, tell us about this light.
• 2:00:54
  What's the story behind the light?
• 2:00:56
  And then within 5 minutes, one of the dudes who's got like,
• 2:01:00
  he's wearing like a like a like a waistcoat like you'd wear at a
• 2:01:03
  wedding. And then like snakeskin style
• 2:01:06
  cowboy boat boots. And he goes over to the, the
• 2:01:10
  light and he starts like grinding on the light in front
• 2:01:13
  of the guy. And he's just like, yeah, oh,
• 2:01:17
  yes, great light. Look at what I'm getting out.
• 2:01:19
  Yeah, I'm not kidding. This.
• 2:01:20
  Yeah. Daytime telly.
• 2:01:22
  And yeah. And then there's like other
• 2:01:25
  women in the audience that are just kind of picking it apart
• 2:01:28
  and I'm like, it's a fucking light.
• 2:01:31
  And then the craziest bit, yeah, I think that's going to go for,
• 2:01:37
  what would it go for like two, £300?
• 2:01:40
  I've got a load of lights I need to get on there.
• 2:01:44
  Maybe you should go on there man, sell some some stuff.
• 2:01:47
  Love to do with that kind of bunts, yes?
• 2:01:51
  It was such a weird, but it's great.
• 2:01:53
  Like I love trash TVI think it's fantastic.
• 2:01:56
  It's it's we need that. We need more trash TV.
• 2:01:58
  Yeah, yeah. Come on.
• 2:02:01
  What has comedy taught you about life?
• 2:02:02
  I don't know if it's taught me anything.
• 2:02:04
  I don't know. I mean, these are very profound
• 2:02:06
  questions. It's only going to get more
• 2:02:08
  profound as well. My God, I don't.
• 2:02:11
  What has comedy taught me about life?
• 2:02:14
  I I can't think of anything. No worries.
• 2:02:18
  And that might be disappointing, but I don't.
• 2:02:20
  What has comedy taught me about life?
• 2:02:21
  I don't think it's taught me well.
• 2:02:22
  It's taught me that anything can be funny.
• 2:02:24
  Anything can be funny if handled skilfully.
• 2:02:28
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 2:02:31
  Oh man. OK, well, let's get very
• 2:02:36
  specific. The best advice I've ever
• 2:02:38
  received is do the is is if you're an addict and or an
• 2:02:40
  alcoholic, work the 12 steps saved my life, saved my life.
• 2:02:45
  It's the only thing that stopped me killing myself with drugs.
• 2:02:48
  And I very nearly, I did nearly die from overdoses and I did
• 2:02:51
  nearly kill myself through suicide.
• 2:02:53
  So the best advice was these are the 12 steps.
• 2:02:56
  Do them and go to meetings two or three times a week.
• 2:02:59
  I'm glad you did, Ian. Thank you I.
• 2:03:01
  Appreciate you doing well man. Thank you, Christian.
• 2:03:04
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
• 2:03:07
  That it is wafer thin and that we could die at any point.
• 2:03:14
  At any point, it can just end. I'm going to be bleak.
• 2:03:18
  And I've had, you know, friends, my good my friend Leno died a
• 2:03:23
  few years ago and he was, you know, similar age to me, just
• 2:03:27
  just died. And you know, it can fuck it, it
• 2:03:33
  can end, man, straight away. That's, that's, that's the, the,
• 2:03:36
  the biggest thing I I and for a long time I didn't want to be
• 2:03:38
  here. I'm 52.
• 2:03:40
  I want to be here for another 50 years, you know, God willing,
• 2:03:42
  and, and having all my faculties and stuff.
• 2:03:45
  So, so yeah, it, it, it, I, I could drop, I could have a heart
• 2:03:49
  attack as soon as I cut off here.
• 2:03:51
  I could, I could crash my car. I'm going to do my best shot
• 2:03:54
  though. I won't do anything.
• 2:03:55
  I'm going to go and lie down. But I could crash my car tonight
• 2:03:58
  and not come home, you know, Enjoy it and try it.
• 2:04:03
  Easier said than done, particularly with mental illness
• 2:04:05
  and stuff. Try and enjoy it because it can
• 2:04:06
  end at any moment. All I can say is a massive thank
• 2:04:08
  you. Thank you so much for being on
• 2:04:10
  the show, for being so candid and.
• 2:04:12
  I'm just getting warmed up, Christian.
• 2:04:13
  Don't end it now. Come on man.
• 2:04:16
  I'm getting into the groove taking.
• 2:04:19
  Two hours of your time. I don't want to rob you of any
• 2:04:22
  more 2. Hours.
• 2:04:22
  Jeez. It is 2 hours that it's flown.
• 2:04:24
  Honestly, it's flown by. You're great.
• 2:04:26
  I will say you're great at this. Can I ask you a question?
• 2:04:29
  You've done 250 of these. Why?
• 2:04:31
  Why do you do it? Why?
• 2:04:33
  Why? Do you do this?
• 2:04:34
  Podcast. 339. Oh, yeah.
• 2:04:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excuse me.
• 2:04:37
  That was quick. This is.
• 2:04:39
  This is 340. This is 340.
• 2:04:41
  Magic's the magic number. It's the best number.
• 2:04:44
  Why? Why do you do it?
• 2:04:45
  So I I became a fan of podcasting in the 2000s.
• 2:04:49
  I would go on the way to work to a job I fucking hated in retail
• 2:04:55
  and I'd stand on a cold platform and it's pissing it down with
• 2:04:58
  rain. And I listened to the Ricky
• 2:05:00
  Gervais podcast and I was like, wow, this is brilliant.
• 2:05:04
  And I loved his humour and his comedy and stuff and everything
• 2:05:06
  with Karl Pilkington. But I thought the medium was
• 2:05:10
  fascinating. I was like, oh, podcasting,
• 2:05:12
  because obviously I'd listen to radio.
• 2:05:13
  I listen to LBC back in the day and stuff, listen to talk radio
• 2:05:17
  in my dad's car and stuff. And I was always familiar with
• 2:05:20
  that. And I always thought that was a
• 2:05:21
  cool concept. But this idea that you could do
• 2:05:23
  it yourself was intriguing to me.
• 2:05:26
  And you know, the years pass by and I go to uni, I do a
• 2:05:30
  thankless marketing degree and and I for a sliver of time tried
• 2:05:35
  to do something then and it didn't really work.
• 2:05:38
  And then Fast forward to 2020 pandemic hits.
• 2:05:42
  I do a very, very short lived podcast with a couple of
• 2:05:45
  friends. Typical.
• 2:05:47
  Oh, let's just talk about what's going on bullshit.
• 2:05:51
  But the banter was fun. It was a lot of fun.
• 2:05:53
  I love bouncing off people. I love being like a big kid
• 2:05:56
  about things. Because if you ever work with
• 2:05:59
  me, the way I work is I'm very professional.
• 2:06:03
  I take it very seriously, but I want everyone to have a good
• 2:06:06
  time. So I'll crack jokes, you know,
• 2:06:08
  all this and then as soon as cameras rolling my business,
• 2:06:10
  let's do it. And that's kind of how I
• 2:06:12
  approach it. And we had a lot of fun with the
• 2:06:16
  show. The other two just, you know,
• 2:06:18
  they weren't feeling it in the end.
• 2:06:19
  It's fair enough. Everyone goes their separate
• 2:06:21
  ways. But I was like, but I I want to
• 2:06:24
  do this. I want to do a podcast.
• 2:06:27
  I think I could be good at this. I felt like there was something
• 2:06:32
  there, so I started pursuing it. I didn't really have a plan, but
• 2:06:37
  I knew, OK, it's probably going to be long form.
• 2:06:40
  I'm going to tell stories from my life.
• 2:06:42
  I'm going to maybe interview people.
• 2:06:45
  And then it I kind of fell into a rhythm.
• 2:06:47
  I started interviewing people all around the world and hearing
• 2:06:52
  their stories and just kind of gaining, gaining inspiration
• 2:06:59
  from it. You asked why I do this.
• 2:07:00
  Well, every time I do the show, I'm inspired by the stories that
• 2:07:04
  are shared. I'm inspired by the people on
• 2:07:07
  the show and it gives me hope because it's things have not
• 2:07:11
  worked out for me creatively. After this, I'll be going to one
• 2:07:14
  of my many day jobs and and that'll be that, right?
• 2:07:18
  But I still pursue it each and every day.
• 2:07:20
  Every single day I'm applying for auditions every single day
• 2:07:23
  I'm promoting my music, my podcasts, doing streams,
• 2:07:27
  whatever, trying, trying to get something done.
• 2:07:31
  And the podcast, you know, you, as you know, you've done shows
• 2:07:36
  before, like you fall in and out of love with things you do, but
• 2:07:39
  I've never stopped being interested in doing the show
• 2:07:43
  because I love talking to people and listening to people's
• 2:07:46
  stories and being inspired by that and trying to apply that to
• 2:07:50
  my own life. And I don't know, I, I think
• 2:07:54
  this, this show has given me a lot.
• 2:07:56
  It's taught me how to, to really listen to people because a lot
• 2:08:02
  of people don't listen. It's famously one man said many
• 2:08:09
  people are just waiting for their opportunity to speak.
• 2:08:11
  And that's, you know, you miss out on so much when you do that.
• 2:08:16
  But more than that, it taught me how to do good, like good
• 2:08:18
  conversation with people and to show people that you really care
• 2:08:22
  and you're really invested. You know, like this show today
• 2:08:27
  could have been very different, but I approached it like I
• 2:08:29
  approached every single show. The only thing I did a bit
• 2:08:32
  differently was I had to kind of breakdown your career and go,
• 2:08:36
  alright, let's kind of ask a few choice questions here and there.
• 2:08:41
  Some beats, some stuff people will probably want to hear, but
• 2:08:44
  let's keep it my style. It's still my show.
• 2:08:47
  I want to do it my way. And it fortunately has felt like
• 2:08:51
  every other show. And I hope you've sort of felt
• 2:08:53
  that too, which is this kind of relaxed conversation which often
• 2:08:57
  gets people more comfortable and more wanting to speak.
• 2:09:02
  But yeah, sure answer. I'd love talking to people and
• 2:09:05
  hearing people's stories. Good.
• 2:09:06
  Well, I, I'm so grateful that you invited me on and and we're
• 2:09:10
  interested. So thank you man, and I wish you
• 2:09:12
  the best of luck with the show. Thank you so much.
• 2:09:15
  And yeah, final question for you.
• 2:09:18
  Do you have any upcoming projects or final thoughts that
• 2:09:20
  you'd like to share with our listeners?
• 2:09:22
  Yeah, well, I, I got a couple of things.
• 2:09:24
  I've got a couple of podcasts. I've got The Phone in Show which
• 2:09:27
  is just called The Phone in Show with Ian Lee and that's the very
• 2:09:30
  sweary 1. I've got a slightly gentle one
• 2:09:33
  that I do with my partner Catherine and it's called Ian
• 2:09:35
  and Catherine and Too Many Cats. And if anyone is in Bath on
• 2:09:41
  February the 9th, I'm doing a show at the Rondo Theatre,
• 2:09:46
  Imposter Syndrome and you can find out all the dates Ian
• 2:09:48
  lee.com. It's got all of my my tour dates
• 2:09:51
  and stuff. So go and have a look there
• 2:09:52
  please. Next time, if you're ever in
• 2:09:54
  Manchester, I'll be there. Do you know what?
• 2:09:56
  I was emailing Manchester venues this this very morning?
• 2:10:00
  Yeah, I was emailing. I've emailed.
• 2:10:02
  Who have I? Who have I emailed?
• 2:10:05
  I write things down. I've I've got the wrong book I
• 2:10:09
  can't find. But I've emailed.
• 2:10:12
  No, hang on. Where have I put them?
• 2:10:15
  I've. I better have written them down.
• 2:10:18
  I cannot find where I've written them down.
• 2:10:20
  That's weird. They should be in this book.
• 2:10:23
  But I. Reckon it would be the Comedy
• 2:10:25
  Store if I had to take a guess. No, it's not.
• 2:10:27
  It's not the Comedy Store. I kind of like once I've I've
• 2:10:30
  emailed, oh, here we go. I've emailed the Deaf Institute.
• 2:10:36
  I've emailed the frog and bucket.
• 2:10:41
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I've emailed those.
• 2:10:43
  There's also a nice place called the Carlton Club, but that's out
• 2:10:46
  a little bit, so I might. We'll see.
• 2:10:48
  We'll see. But yeah, I'll let you know.
• 2:10:49
  It's I'm I'm going to book something indefinitely.
• 2:10:51
  Cool, we'd love to see that. As always, I wish you the best
• 2:10:55
  of luck with everything. Thank you so much for appearing
• 2:10:57
  on the show. I know my listeners were really
• 2:11:01
  excited for this one. I know it's going to blow some
• 2:11:02
  people's minds. For the people who didn't
• 2:11:05
  believe in me so much for a hobby.
• 2:11:08
  Thank you so much for watching and listening.
• 2:11:10
  And until next time, see you in the next one.