Latest / Rich Fulcher's TalkBox / Alisdair Beckett-King: Film School to Comedy, Golf Clubs and Whimsy & Goblins | TalkBox Ep. 39

Transcript

Alisdair Beckett-King: Film School to Comedy, Golf Clubs and Whimsy & Goblins | TalkBox Ep. 39 · Rich Fulcher's TalkBox

• 0:00
  I have toes and finger. Oh, hi, It's me, Rich Folger.
• 0:07
  Rich Folger's talk box coming up.
• 0:10
  And our guest this week is Alistair Beckett King.
• 0:14
  You may not know him, but he's 6 feet 3 and he's ginger and he's
• 0:20
  half Scottish and he's smart and he's funny.
• 0:24
  So laugh when you listen to him. No, he's great.
• 0:29
  I'm sure you've heard of him. He's got viral videos out the
• 0:32
  wazoo. Now listen, press like and
• 0:35
  subscribe. Don't forget, because we got a
• 0:38
  great one coming up and it's right over here.
• 0:44
  Yeah, here. That's the PM.
• 1:02
  He was at Moose Knuckles. Merch.
• 1:05
  Got my merch. OK, great.
• 1:09
  OK. Oh, hi, Alistair.
• 1:14
  How are you? You brought some tea.
• 1:16
  Brought myself a little pot of tea.
• 1:18
  Thank you for having me and. Help yourself my little cave.
• 1:22
  I feel like a a cave. Dweller like a little like a
• 1:26
  little goblin. Should I do?
• 1:28
  It it depends. Do you want to lean in?
• 1:32
  Do you want to lean into goblin or yes, goblin, something you're
• 1:35
  steering away? From I don't know if we have a
• 1:37
  lot of goblin listeners, so. Goblin.
• 1:41
  It's a big market, really, if you want to shift merch.
• 1:43
  Nobody likes collecting little trinkets like a goblin.
• 1:46
  OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:47
  All right, well, I'm going to cater to them then.
• 1:51
  And I'm I'll go for the for the Wizards.
• 1:53
  Now. We're a government of Wizards.
• 1:55
  We're covering a lot of bases. Did you have far to go?
• 1:58
  Do you live in the environs of London?
• 2:02
  Yes, I do. I live in, I live in South
• 2:04
  London. Not not to show off Lewisham.
• 2:07
  Lewisham. Oh, OK.
• 2:09
  Yeah. I've been there.
• 2:11
  Yeah, yeah, I live almost exactly between Catford and
• 2:14
  Dulwich. So it's a, it's an interesting
• 2:16
  mix, you know, with Dulwich, which is very posh and, and
• 2:19
  sophisticated and, and Catford where real people live who you
• 2:24
  know. And so we live exactly, exactly.
• 2:26
  Real folks. Real, real folks.
• 2:28
  Yeah. People that take their trash
• 2:31
  out. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:33
  I mean, actually we don't have Willy bins where I live.
• 2:35
  We just live it on the street. But that is, that's the way it
• 2:38
  is. And do you find it because you
• 2:40
  gig a lot? You're a gigging com I am a
• 2:43
  real. I'm a real, I'm a real comedian.
• 2:45
  Yeah, a lot of people don't. A lot of people don't believe
• 2:48
  this. I've got a YouTube channel.
• 2:49
  People who he's real. People don't believe that I do
• 2:52
  gigs. The people that I do, I'm a
• 2:54
  comedian. Is it difficult to get to and
• 2:58
  from your gigs from where you live?
• 3:00
  No, because I live next to a train station.
• 3:02
  Wrong side of the tracks. OK, you know, not to be too cool
• 3:05
  about it. Bit dangerous, but right.
• 3:08
  No, I, I, I don't drive by, go everywhere by train.
• 3:11
  But you know, the British Isles though, they're riddled with
• 3:14
  train lines. Yeah.
• 3:15
  So you can get by without a car as long as you don't want to do
• 3:18
  like the rugby clubs and the golf clubs, you know those those
• 3:22
  gigs. Which you've done so much.
• 3:23
  Have you done now? I have.
• 3:25
  I don't know what it is about a sporting building that the
• 3:28
  people in them don't like me. Oh.
• 3:30
  Really, I don't go overwhelming. I think they'd like you.
• 3:34
  Why is that? Yeah, yeah, because you have
• 3:36
  that welcoming look, right? Don't you?
• 3:42
  Yeah, yeah, I know. I think I'm pretty.
• 3:44
  I'm welcoming, but the I find the golf clubs do not welcome
• 3:48
  me. They're like, it's just going to
• 3:49
  be whimsy. If he's if he's whimsical, come
• 3:53
  on, a kick off. Who was the guy that played the
• 3:58
  golf clubs? Morecambe and Wise?
• 4:01
  Did they do a lot of golf clubs? I I imagine they they'd go down
• 4:05
  brilliantly in the golf clubs, Morecambe and Wise.
• 4:08
  I just need to make my ACT more like Morecambe and Wise.
• 4:10
  OK, The main problem is I'm I'm one guy that is the big barrier
• 4:16
  I think to becoming Morecambe and Wise for me.
• 4:18
  Well, I'll tell you what I'd love as well, in addition to
• 4:21
  your comedy, is your YouTube clips Amazing?
• 4:26
  Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
• 4:28
  Yes. And I'll tell you something,
• 4:30
  initially I did not want to like them.
• 4:35
  No, I didn't I. Love that.
• 4:36
  I love that. Because they are so highly,
• 4:40
  they're they're produced so well, you've got a lot of money.
• 4:44
  That angered you? No, but I was just going to say
• 4:47
  when I initially see something like that, I go, it can't be
• 4:51
  that funny because they're putting so much money because
• 4:54
  it's almost inversely proportional sometimes.
• 4:57
  I get a lot of feedback when people say, Hey, I love your
• 4:58
  sketches, the lighting and I'm like and the jokes and they're
• 5:01
  like, but the green screen. No, but what I'm saying this you
• 5:05
  enjoy the jokes. This is funny as well as high
• 5:11
  production value. Well, the secret is that it's
• 5:13
  not expensive. It's just I just do it all.
• 5:16
  And so the, you know, like they say, time is money.
• 5:19
  If you don't have money, you can just spend a lot of time on like
• 5:22
  you can spend like weeks working on a 32nd.
• 5:24
  How do you do it? I think the secret is buying
• 5:30
  pasta in bulk and just not needing not spending so you
• 5:34
  might have. Cast curve Yeah, yeah, yeah to.
• 5:35
  Get your It's all about finding efficiencies.
• 5:38
  My secret has always been earn little money but spend even less
• 5:42
  money. Yes, yes.
• 5:43
  And the result is happiness. Low overhead.
• 5:46
  Exactly. Keep it.
• 5:47
  Keep it simple. But you must, you must know a
• 5:49
  lot of you went to film school, is that right?
• 5:53
  OK, well done. You've done some research.
• 5:55
  Yes. So I so basically I squandered
• 5:57
  the government's money. It used to be possible to get
• 5:59
  the government to pay for you too, to learn things.
• 6:03
  No, no, no. No, those days are gone.
• 6:05
  So don't, don't get excited. People like, oh, I could go to
• 6:08
  film school. You can't.
• 6:09
  Now, if a young person is listening to this, no, it's not
• 6:11
  going to happen. For me, go to YouTube school.
• 6:13
  But it happened for me. I was the last, the last, the
• 6:17
  last child to to have opportunities.
• 6:20
  And then I I squandered all of that by graduating and
• 6:23
  immediately starting stand up, which is just like, which was
• 6:27
  great because it's so expensive and slow to make films and it's
• 6:30
  so quick. Yes, with standards you can just
• 6:33
  go to. If you live in a city, you can
• 6:35
  just go to a place and talk and you're doing stand up if people
• 6:38
  laugh. So you went right when you were
• 6:41
  going to school. You went to school in London for
• 6:44
  film. Were you doing stand up while
• 6:46
  you were in school? I wish I had been.
• 6:48
  Or this all like? Student comedy competitions you
• 6:50
  can take advantage of. But I like I I started just just
• 6:54
  as I was. So I'd made a film.
• 6:55
  I'd invested film. Maker, Alice.
• 6:58
  Yeah, I wanted to be like Orson Welles.
• 7:00
  And then the, the, the, I went to the London Film School, which
• 7:03
  is probably about 3 metres away from where we are now.
• 7:06
  It's in Covent Garden. We're just basically, we're
• 7:10
  underneath it as we speak. And they have a thing where when
• 7:15
  you make a film, they they put you at the front of the room in
• 7:20
  front of everyone, and then that without you being allowed to
• 7:22
  talk, they tell you what they thought of your film.
• 7:24
  It's like a form. Of ritual humiliation.
• 7:27
  You know, like a trial in the Soviet satellite state.
• 7:30
  It's like a verbal stoning, yeah.
• 7:32
  Exactly. It's exactly.
• 7:33
  Which I get it. Exactly.
• 7:35
  And and so they hated my film and it was such a humiliating
• 7:37
  experience. And the only good thing that had
• 7:39
  happened to me creatively at that time was I'd done 1 gig.
• 7:42
  I went to my first open mic same week and I did a gig and I did 5
• 7:46
  minutes and people. That's amazing.
• 7:48
  Forget. Always like forget all this film
• 7:50
  business. Really.
• 7:51
  So you. Just I'm a comedian now.
• 7:52
  I'll just become a comedian now. But then luckily, luckily we had
• 7:56
  a pandemic, Yeah. And I got to pull out all the
• 7:59
  skills. That was that when you started
• 8:01
  to do all the did you notice friends of yours started doing
• 8:04
  it and. Everyone, everyone started to do
• 8:06
  it because people had no choice. But I just had like 6 months
• 8:09
  head start on people because I already had the stuff and I
• 8:12
  already knew how to. You had the skills.
• 8:14
  And I so I so I just was able to just do things a little bit
• 8:18
  faster perhaps or just a little. Bit I think that's great though,
• 8:22
  and it have the basic skills well I.
• 8:25
  Often say to people, like, if you're at all interested in
• 8:27
  comedy, like, I think you should go out and do some open mics
• 8:30
  because even if you don't make it, you know, even if you don't
• 8:33
  find work, yes, you're going to meet some of the strangest
• 8:36
  people. Yeah.
• 8:37
  Do you know what I mean? Like some extra.
• 8:39
  Some of the. Yeah, The people, yes, the
• 8:43
  reality's extras. Yeah, yeah, reality's war
• 8:46
  compounds some of the weirdest people.
• 8:48
  And then like 10 years time, some of them are going to be
• 8:50
  like doing right wing propaganda for for Russia Today.
• 8:54
  And some of them are going to be professional comedians.
• 8:56
  Some of them are going to be millionaires.
• 8:57
  And you know, some of them will have had complete breakdowns
• 8:59
  because it's. Sad that's the PM.
• 9:01
  He was their most snuggles Wednesday nights.
• 9:06
  Exactly. You're going to meet everybody
• 9:07
  who's going to go on to do something great or terrible
• 9:10
  right in in 10 years time if you go to an open mic for long.
• 9:13
  Enough. It's true.
• 9:15
  I think everyone should go through it.
• 9:17
  I I. Think it's it's a really good
• 9:20
  thing to do. It's interesting you see an
• 9:22
  interesting side of humanity. Because I think it's interesting
• 9:26
  because I mean, there are people though that started out, you
• 9:30
  started in the mid naughties sort of.
• 9:36
  The 10s, 2012, The 10s was when I started gigging.
• 9:38
  Yeah, so the YouTube stuff hadn't really taken off then?
• 9:43
  No YouTube didn't exist and when I started everyone said don't
• 9:46
  put any of your stuff online. Exactly.
• 9:48
  Don't put it online. Exactly.
• 9:49
  It's precious. Yeah.
• 9:51
  You keep it and then you do it for a Netflix special.
• 9:54
  Yeah. Yeah, which is we're still
• 9:57
  waiting to hear about the Netflix special.
• 9:59
  But some people have still not made the transition to like, oh,
• 10:04
  I've got to do this stuff online.
• 10:07
  I've got to get an online presence, Yeah.
• 10:09
  Yeah, in a weird way though, like if you don't like doing
• 10:13
  reels, don't do reels. I think I, I find it strange
• 10:16
  when I when I run into comics who are like, oh, I just hate
• 10:19
  doing real. I've got to do some reels, got
• 10:21
  to record some agents, some reels.
• 10:25
  Hey, where are you? Where are you from?
• 10:27
  Is your girlfriend you carer? I need to do a reel and it's
• 10:31
  like, if you're not enjoying this, yeah, don't, I think just
• 10:34
  don't do it. Stop.
• 10:36
  Do what you like. And now I'll come across.
• 10:39
  Yeah. OK.
• 10:40
  Yes. Did you hear that?
• 10:42
  Yeah. Kenny.
• 10:47
  No I agree totally. I don't know what happened
• 10:51
  though during COVID I did not catch the bug of filming things
• 10:56
  you. So you didn't start putting
• 10:58
  content. I instead became depressed.
• 11:04
  I got to tell you, it's not either or.
• 11:06
  You can. You can produce content.
• 11:08
  It should. Have been, so that was an
• 11:09
  option. But I I know, I respect that.
• 11:12
  I respect just what's wrong with just sitting in your pants?
• 11:15
  Yeah. What's wrong with that?
• 11:17
  Everyone was doing Yeah. And the state of the state of
• 11:21
  the industry right now, a lot of people are going back to stand
• 11:26
  up. Like, you know how there are
• 11:27
  people that sometimes they use stand up as a stepping stone to
• 11:32
  get their sitcom or whatever. A lot of them are like, there's
• 11:37
  not much work. Why don't I go back to stand up?
• 11:41
  Yeah. Yeah, but it's nice.
• 11:43
  OK, I guess none of us have real control over our lives and our
• 11:47
  careers. There's always a gatekeeper of
• 11:48
  one kind or another. And online it kind of seems like
• 11:51
  there's no gatekeepers, but actually there are algorithms
• 11:53
  with gatekeepers behind them and you just don't see it.
• 11:55
  Yes, whereas British comedy is quite small.
• 11:58
  So you know the names of the television producers and radio
• 12:01
  producers who make the decisions.
• 12:03
  So you know who it is who's holding you back.
• 12:05
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 12:06
  And you just, you know, hope those people.
• 12:08
  The pictures on the wall. Made with darts exactly.
• 12:12
  Whereas with, you know, if it's YouTube or a social media
• 12:15
  platform, it's just something is deciding that this is good and
• 12:19
  that's bad, but we never see what it is.
• 12:21
  But then you have the semblance with stand up and with putting
• 12:25
  your stuff online, you have some sort of control over what you're
• 12:29
  doing. You'll wake up in the morning
• 12:31
  and it won't be. I wonder if my agent's going to
• 12:34
  call me. You go.
• 12:35
  I'm going to do something about Keir Starmer.
• 12:44
  I don't know, the first thing I think every morning I like, I
• 12:46
  just spent a few minutes just thinking about Keir Starmer,
• 12:49
  just to really to inspire me. Well, you know what I mean.
• 12:53
  Like I saw a clip of you doing something on Severance.
• 12:57
  You obviously you've watched Severance, right?
• 13:00
  Were you? Being joined Severance a lot.
• 13:02
  Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm in fact, I think I'm a severance apologist
• 13:05
  because even though it does lots, it's doing this sort of
• 13:08
  the lost thing of being like and what's behind this door, another
• 13:11
  door. But but actually I think it's
• 13:15
  got quite a lot of heart and I found it quite touching.
• 13:17
  And I'm older now and I don't need shows to make sense.
• 13:20
  I don't need the answers. Yes, I just, I just want to be
• 13:23
  made to feel something. It's.
• 13:24
  Possible concrete endings? No, I I give me ambiguity and
• 13:29
  feelings. That's all I want, yeah.
• 13:32
  Or as I like to say, ambiguity. Ambiguity.
• 13:36
  Am I saying it wrong? And no, no ambiguity.
• 13:38
  No, I just like to. Say it like that.
• 13:40
  Yeah, Yeah. But do you think, though, that
• 13:43
  it should end? Like, Laws definitely could have
• 13:46
  ended Oh yeah a lot sooner. I would have been glad if they'd
• 13:50
  ended it at two. Yeah, because unfortunately
• 13:53
  everyone needs work and so everything has to keep going
• 13:56
  until they cancel it, which is a shame.
• 13:57
  That's the thing with USTV over here, if they're satisfied, look
• 14:03
  at the Office, right? 12 episodes, Bing bang boom, the
• 14:08
  US Office. It's still going on, isn't it?
• 14:11
  I. Think so, Yeah.
• 14:13
  And he just keeps getting more and more hair, inexplicably.
• 14:16
  Like he's bored at the start once.
• 14:17
  And now he's got the thickest head.
• 14:19
  He's going to mane. He's good for what's happening.
• 14:21
  He's going. Yeah, he's got full for O No, I
• 14:24
  think you're right. The The nice thing about British
• 14:26
  sitcoms is that like one or two people write 12 episodes of
• 14:30
  comedy and then have a nervous breakdown and then if they
• 14:34
  recover, they. Do I'd like that, Yeah.
• 14:36
  I mean, I like the fact that there are two distinct ways of
• 14:39
  approaching it. Whereas I, I hear people
• 14:43
  sometimes talking about over here they go, we ought to get a
• 14:47
  room like they do in the US It's like, no, no, oh, you have
• 14:53
  autonomy over your show. Do.
• 14:56
  You think so? So you think it gives people a
• 14:57
  creative freedom that you don't get with the writers?
• 15:00
  Wrong system. Oh yeah, because not that I know
• 15:05
  a lot of what I'm talking about, but I will like.
• 15:09
  There's a little ambiguity in what you're saying.
• 15:11
  Oh, pictures show to someone out here and they'll go whereas they
• 15:16
  used to go. I'll take it to Channel 4.
• 15:18
  I'll take it to whatever Dave. Instead, they'll say I have AUS
• 15:25
  agent and they're I'm going to maybe get a Co.
• 15:29
  This is like multiply by 15 suits.
• 15:32
  How many people are going to put their little, you know, their
• 15:37
  the cooks spoiling the broth? I, I don't know, I think things
• 15:42
  have changed a lot, but the stuff I used to really love when
• 15:44
  I was a teenager, there was a in the UK, there was a spate of TV
• 15:49
  shows, maybe a. Little bit like second.
• 15:51
  City I was a big deal or no deal head.
• 15:55
  Some people would say it makes no difference which order you
• 15:59
  open the boxes, the same things are in them.
• 16:02
  You can't change what's in a box by thinking about.
• 16:04
  It but not me. Not me, I think.
• 16:05
  I think it's magic. I think Noel Edmonds can do
• 16:08
  magic. Exactly.
• 16:09
  And it's absolutely worth spinning that out to 45 minutes
• 16:12
  in my opinion. Let's see if we can make that a
• 16:16
  bit longer. But there were loads of shows
• 16:19
  like Adam and Joe and This Morning with Richard, not Judy
• 16:23
  in Fist of Fun, whether they were very student E comedy.
• 16:26
  But it also felt like nobody is checking what's going out.
• 16:31
  Like this stuff shouldn't be on air.
• 16:33
  It's too shortly put together. The jokes are too niche.
• 16:36
  You know, like in the background of an episode of Fist of Fun,
• 16:39
  there's an A board that says the cut worm forgives the plough.
• 16:43
  That is never referenced at any point.
• 16:45
  That's a William Blake quote, which I know, obviously,
• 16:48
  obviously. Yeah, obviously I recognise.
• 16:51
  That me quote. Me too, kind of.
• 16:53
  But what is why is it there? Was it a sketch that was
• 16:55
  deleted? It doesn't matter.
• 16:56
  Is it just some kind of pretentious wankery to appeal to
• 16:59
  a pretentious wanker like me? Yeah.
• 17:01
  But what? That doesn't make sense in the
• 17:04
  world of YouTube because if you have something that isn't good
• 17:07
  enough for television, if you had something that's kind of
• 17:08
  shoddy and homemade, it would go on the Internet now.
• 17:11
  So you can't, you can't have that subversive sort of young
• 17:14
  onesie kind of, Oh, this shouldn't even be on telly, but
• 17:17
  it is. It doesn't make sense anymore.
• 17:19
  Plus it seems a bit like comedy's so subjective, like you
• 17:23
  can get people in a room and they can all pretty much like
• 17:27
  Bridgerton. We'll put him in in the show
• 17:30
  Fist of Fun. Maybe one person or three people
• 17:35
  will like it. And no, I mean, you're going to,
• 17:38
  you're going to divide the room, yes.
• 17:39
  No, comedy's way more divisive. Yeah, I agree.
• 17:42
  And I guess people want I don't I isn't that one of the nice
• 17:45
  things about comedy world when you're in, when you're in on a
• 17:48
  joke that other people aren't in on?
• 17:49
  Yes, that's what I. Said But that's what I said.
• 17:51
  That's what I said. Are you listening?
• 17:52
  And you want people? It's about to like it as well.
• 17:56
  They might or they might not, but you feel like you're in on a
• 17:59
  little secret, a little comedy secret.
• 18:02
  Yeah, I love it when when a joke gets one laugh from one person,
• 18:07
  like when you're trying a new bit and you like perfect.
• 18:09
  That's what a joke for me and that person.
• 18:11
  That's ideal. Now, if I could, what I want to
• 18:13
  do is not change the joke, but I get everyone else on board, you
• 18:17
  know? Yeah, keep it the same.
• 18:19
  But somehow persuade everybody else to see things the way.
• 18:22
  Just you and that one person. But it doesn't always happen
• 18:25
  that way. No, it does not happen.
• 18:28
  And then you find out after the show that person was in a
• 18:32
  straight jacket. That is the worst thing, though.
• 18:38
  Do you ever get compliments after a show from people who you
• 18:40
  don't want compliments? Yeah, people, you're like, oh,
• 18:42
  you liked it? Yeah, and then you're going.
• 18:45
  Who else wants? Yeah, what about the French
• 18:48
  philosopher and the polo neck? Yeah, the total neck over there.
• 18:51
  Did you like it now? But just just this guy.
• 18:53
  Well, the same thing too. Like you look out at the
• 18:56
  audience and you tell a joke gets a good laugh, but then
• 19:00
  there's one person not laughing and then you're like, what the
• 19:04
  hell is the matter with that guy?
• 19:07
  I'm going to play the rest of my hour to that guy.
• 19:10
  It'd. Better be a personal tragedy.
• 19:12
  And if so, why did you come out to the show while you're here?
• 19:15
  I guess, yeah, People though, sometimes I've had whole whole
• 19:19
  shows like that. And then the nice thing about
• 19:21
  doing like a free Fringe show at Edinburgh is to put money in the
• 19:24
  book afterwards. And sometimes I've had the worst
• 19:27
  show and then I've made loads of money and it's like, did they
• 19:30
  just enjoy it inside? Is is that they were comforted?
• 19:34
  Yeah, they. I gave them something.
• 19:36
  Yeah. Did they think it was spoken
• 19:37
  word? Why?
• 19:38
  Yeah. Why am I rich?
• 19:39
  I'm rich but sad. Well, not everybody's a laugher,
• 19:42
  right? Like country wise, it's
• 19:44
  different too, right? Yeah, Yeah, I think so.
• 19:47
  Like, how would you just the UK, how would you break down, say,
• 19:52
  Scottish audiences from? I'm going to be very careful
• 19:56
  because I don't want to say anything bad about Scotland.
• 19:58
  I'm half Scottish, so I'm allowed to speak
• 20:01
  authoritatively. All right, on the subject of
• 20:03
  Scotland, I think Scottish audiences are, if you're English
• 20:05
  especially, I think Scottish audiences are harder to impress.
• 20:09
  But but I think they're, they very much reward someone who has
• 20:14
  made the effort to know things about Scotland, you know, for
• 20:17
  someone who isn't just coming up and doing exactly the set they
• 20:19
  would do in London with no tweaks.
• 20:21
  Just. Someone and.
• 20:23
  And I think Scottish hecklers are funnier because they
• 20:26
  understand that it's not worth shouting out unless it's good.
• 20:30
  Yeah, yeah. Whereas in Kent.
• 20:33
  Doesn't just be drunk, Yeah. It's just somebody who's just
• 20:36
  joining in, you know, whereas in Scotland, like it's going to be
• 20:38
  a really cutting put down that's going to absolutely, it's going
• 20:41
  to be devastatingly astute and there'll.
• 20:44
  Be a minute, pause where you go. How do I come back from that?
• 20:48
  It's just a physical pain with oh, oh, and that the audience
• 20:51
  will will really see that you've genuinely and.
• 20:54
  So when they come on board, they're on board I.
• 20:57
  Think so, Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 20:59
  I mean, I did. I did last time I was on tour.
• 21:02
  I did say it's nice to be in Edinburgh while in Glasgow.
• 21:05
  And that is thank you. That is a mistake that.
• 21:10
  But they, they just toyed with me.
• 21:12
  You know, I could get with a mouse after that.
• 21:13
  They just didn't let me know how angry they were about it.
• 21:16
  And so every time I thought I was safe, they would like, and I
• 21:18
  was like, oh, no, no, I'm in trouble again.
• 21:20
  And so they just, you know, they just toyed with me.
• 21:23
  They just played with me, It was fun for them.
• 21:25
  One time we were. This was in England though.
• 21:29
  One time we were in one city and then we yelled out.
• 21:35
  This was on the Boost tour. We yelled out the wrong city.
• 21:40
  Which? Hello.
• 21:42
  And then it was like from that point on, we had we made sure
• 21:45
  that the city was. But did people not just go those
• 21:48
  crazy surrealists? This show, it's so surreal.
• 21:51
  I pretend we were in Lover but I think it it scared us so.
• 21:55
  Much that really. Oh, that's, that's good to know
• 21:57
  that it's not just me. Yeah.
• 21:59
  Happened to anyone? Know your city.
• 22:03
  You're performing. They really and I, I think where
• 22:06
  was it? Some I refer to one place as a
• 22:08
  town, and then I started to do another routine.
• 22:10
  What's that? It's a it's a city, not a town.
• 22:15
  Yeah, yeah, okay. There's a cathedral and they
• 22:19
  were so. Upset about the fact that I
• 22:21
  called it a town, even though you'd called London a town,
• 22:23
  wouldn't you? That was 15 minutes ago, Sir.
• 22:26
  I'm sorry. And I think all, all cities are
• 22:31
  towns, but not all towns are cities.
• 22:33
  That's what I said. Oh yeah, they wouldn't have it.
• 22:36
  Well done. And then you did a Venn diagram.
• 22:39
  Yeah, but it's just basic stuff really.
• 22:41
  You should know this, I said to them.
• 22:43
  But. There is, there are people
• 22:45
  though, say you go to Scotland and you have an act, but then
• 22:49
  you just, you place local items in your act and they know you've
• 22:56
  kind of crowbar. Do you ever get that?
• 22:59
  I have, I have one where I sort of do that because I, I'm
• 23:03
  talking about travelling somewhere on a train.
• 23:04
  So I try and name a place that I've, I would have travelled
• 23:07
  through to get there. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:08
  Which I feel when I do it, it's actually very sophisticated.
• 23:11
  Yeah. But when everyone else does it,
• 23:13
  it's really hack and I get really annoyed.
• 23:16
  So I don't know, it's hard to say decide whether that's good
• 23:20
  or bad. One come I think was, Rich Halt
• 23:24
  said. To me, like always get,
• 23:26
  especially Americans is always come out a bit self deprecating
• 23:31
  at first because instead of saying this is the way it is and
• 23:36
  it's like obviously you don't know what you're saying.
• 23:39
  So it's so do you think audiences will bridle if an
• 23:42
  American comes out acting like? I think so.
• 23:45
  A big the big a big shot. Unless they're unless they're
• 23:49
  confidently being an idiot, yeah.
• 23:53
  Because I've seen American audiences react to, I've seen
• 23:55
  like comics do jokes about how rich they are to American
• 23:58
  audiences. American comics be like, I'm so
• 24:00
  I'm so rich. And the audience is like, whoa.
• 24:03
  Yeah. He made it.
• 24:05
  He can't do that here. You can't do that.
• 24:08
  Nobody wants to know that you're doing well.
• 24:10
  Well, I find like, you know, in LA there were people that would
• 24:14
  do, you know, you get the notepad and stuff and a lot of
• 24:17
  people would talk about, you know, their day.
• 24:20
  Like I had an audition today. It's like it does not go over
• 24:24
  here. You know, I met Conan O'Brien,
• 24:29
  Glasgow, I met Conan O'Brien and we were.
• 24:32
  Yeah, he's ginger. Come on, you're ginger.
• 24:34
  Is there nothing? No, no, I think it seems it's
• 24:38
  not very relatable. I guess.
• 24:40
  It seems very show busy. Yes, don't be show busy.
• 24:44
  No one wants that. Yes.
• 24:46
  I guess, I don't know, maybe Australians are the same.
• 24:48
  I think there's a sense that if someone thinks they're a bit
• 24:52
  special, you know what's a tall poppy?
• 24:54
  I think in Australia, yeah, they have that.
• 24:57
  To all puppies. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:59
  And so if you, if you stand out, you get your head chopped off.
• 25:01
  And I think there's a lot of that, especially in the North
• 25:03
  where I grew up, you know, like I didn't realise because I'm
• 25:06
  moderately funny. You know, I'm a professional
• 25:08
  comedian. I'm quite funny.
• 25:10
  Some some comedians are as people much funnier than me,
• 25:13
  like as as you can see. That's what everyone says
• 25:16
  though. My brother is the funny.
• 25:18
  One, right? Yeah.
• 25:21
  And what was that? What was I saying before I was
• 25:24
  being self? Oh, that self deprecation.
• 25:26
  I didn't realise that I was funny until I moved to the South
• 25:29
  of England, because nobody had mentioned it to me up until
• 25:33
  then. Because in the north of England
• 25:34
  no one's ever going to say you're really funny.
• 25:36
  Exactly. But in London that you meet
• 25:38
  people from all over the world and foreigners don't have the
• 25:40
  problems we have. And so they were just like, hey,
• 25:42
  you're funny. I was like, what am I?
• 25:45
  Then I'll become a professional comedian.
• 25:47
  Thank you. Wow, no one told me.
• 25:51
  It's you would never find out. I don't know how people in the
• 25:53
  north get started in the North have the nerve to do it.
• 25:56
  That's. Why everybody should move away
• 25:58
  from home just to experience? Just to find out whether you're
• 26:02
  funny or. Not what you're good at.
• 26:04
  Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, because I'm not going to
• 26:05
  tell you about home. When you were growing up, were
• 26:07
  you? Did you?
• 26:08
  Were you drawn to comedy stuff? Yeah, I think I was a comedy
• 26:12
  nerd. Oh, OK.
• 26:13
  Which is why I'm very resentful of the people who the funny
• 26:16
  bones people, the people who were always on just, people who
• 26:19
  are just. And they know nothing about.
• 26:21
  And they never try. They don't get any references,
• 26:23
  they've never read a book. These people, it just comes out
• 26:26
  of them. Proust.
• 26:27
  What are you talking about? Is that a kind of soup?
• 26:31
  Because obviously those people are nature's comedians and
• 26:33
  they're and that's way, way better than trying to think of
• 26:36
  clever jokes and writing them down like a twat.
• 26:39
  No, those are it's. It's all different.
• 26:43
  It is I, I, I do like sort of nerdy, precise comedy, goblin
• 26:48
  comedy, obviously, but yeah. It's the end result that counts.
• 26:53
  I agree it's funny. I got a review one year which
• 26:56
  said effortlessly funny. And I was like, I put so much
• 27:00
  effort into. I was almost defending
• 27:02
  effortless. Yeah, I'm glad that it came
• 27:04
  across as if it was just like, I'm this was natural.
• 27:06
  But like there was a whole slideshow like it was really.
• 27:10
  I worked so hard on it. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:12
  But I mean that would be a compliment.
• 27:14
  It is, yeah. That's supposed that's the ideal
• 27:17
  to make it look like. You take it, work out on it.
• 27:19
  Yeah. So you did you have comedy
• 27:22
  albums. Did you do the?
• 27:25
  I listened to, I don't know the comedy albums were as big here
• 27:28
  as they were in the States, but I definitely had some of the
• 27:31
  Monty Python RIP offs. I think they were called, you
• 27:33
  know, the where you would hear the, the like the California,
• 27:37
  you know, the Hollywood Bowl. Hollywood Bowl.
• 27:39
  The Hollywood Bowl. Version, the Hollywood Bowl.
• 27:40
  Yeah. Where they would do the.
• 27:43
  And so I was about to recite the entirety of all the sketches.
• 27:46
  Yeah. Yeah, that's unnecessary.
• 27:48
  I don't need to do that. But I want for the record to
• 27:51
  show that I could do that. Yeah, he can do that.
• 27:53
  And all the voices as well. But yeah, so I listened to that
• 27:57
  obsessively. And and you know, I was big into
• 28:00
  sitcoms, Blackadder and Red Dwarf, and every sitcom was
• 28:04
  going. I really liked Roseanne.
• 28:06
  Roseanne was on Channel 4, yes. Yeah, yeah, I loved Frasier.
• 28:12
  I just really watched a lot of Frasier and Frasier and Cheers
• 28:17
  that just such tight scripts, really, really clever, full of
• 28:22
  clever jokes and cultural references.
• 28:24
  They seem. Cheers seems incredibly highbrow
• 28:27
  now. It seems like sort of.
• 28:29
  And at least like Peep Show, you know, like a show for serious
• 28:33
  people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:34
  Who read broadsheet newspapers. Yeah, exactly.
• 28:37
  A show for people who smoke pipes.
• 28:38
  Yeah. And yeah.
• 28:41
  It's hard to imagine a sitcom like that and being so sort of
• 28:45
  rich with sort of cultural references and literary and film
• 28:49
  references and music. And like, the great thing about
• 28:51
  Frazier is it's full of jokes about wine and opera and other
• 28:54
  things I know nothing about, and it doesn't matter.
• 28:56
  Well, because Frazier was in Cheers.
• 28:59
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:01
  And he was the intellectual that walked into the bar.
• 29:04
  Oh, and Diane was a bit of an intellectual, yeah.
• 29:09
  And then then the coach and Woody, who are the same
• 29:12
  character, basically, yeah. Which is a lovely idea that, you
• 29:14
  know, that's, you know, the guy who played coach sadly died.
• 29:17
  He died the first series, yeah. You can, I mean, you can see he
• 29:21
  doesn't look well in some of the episodes.
• 29:23
  It's it's difficult to watch watch back and you if you know
• 29:27
  this guy's about to die in. 6. You can you can see him.
• 29:30
  It's not nice. But then they replace him with
• 29:32
  Woody Harrelson, who's, which is a lovely idea that when when
• 29:35
  someone gets written, someone can't be in the show anymore,
• 29:37
  you replace them. You just sort of trial the
• 29:40
  serial number, yes, Give it to a new actor.
• 29:42
  That happens sometimes in shows. Yeah, it's lovely.
• 29:48
  I, I, I mean, I'm not pleased that the guy died, just for the
• 29:51
  record. It's sad that he died, but it's.
• 29:54
  The only one I can think of, and this is a long time I used to
• 29:58
  watch this in reruns, was Bewitched when the the husband
• 30:02
  got replaced. And they had to draw a new guy
• 30:04
  from a cartoon of the stars. Yeah, that's a problem, Yeah.
• 30:09
  Did you like cartoons? Yeah, so I'm like, I do
• 30:12
  animation as a hobbyist because I'm obsessed with animation and
• 30:16
  so. You can do animation too.
• 30:18
  You know, yes, a little bit. Not very well.
• 30:21
  Like, by the standards of comedians, I'm quite good at
• 30:24
  animating. Yeah, compared to animators, I'm
• 30:25
  terrible. But I wanted to be Terry Gilliam
• 30:27
  from Python. Oh.
• 30:28
  So I was like, OK, be Terry Gilliam and just do the
• 30:31
  cartoons. And you know that's.
• 30:33
  Doing a good impression. Terry Gilliam is a useless
• 30:35
  skill, by the way, because nobody knows what he sounds
• 30:36
  like. But.
• 30:37
  He sounds like this. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:39
  It's just all in the back of the throat.
• 30:42
  That's what he said. That's his love.
• 30:46
  Yeah. So yeah, I my God.
• 30:48
  He didn't get it. That's what Terry Gillian.
• 30:50
  Sounds like you don't know. He wasn't in any of the
• 30:53
  sketches, so nobody knows. So that I started stand up
• 30:57
  thinking I'll just meet some Oxbridge guys, yeah, and I'll do
• 31:00
  the cartoons for them. Yeah.
• 31:02
  And my career will be and. And it won't.
• 31:05
  This is. My question too is why aren't
• 31:07
  there's a lot of adult animation in the US, or a fair amount?
• 31:13
  How come it hasn't really taken off over here?
• 31:15
  I won't try to because it probably can't afford it.
• 31:18
  Yeah, I guess I always say I love watching old British TV
• 31:22
  dramas, but the difference between watching the because
• 31:24
  there's some beautiful ones where they were shot on 16 mil
• 31:26
  film and so they've been rescanned and they look
• 31:28
  beautiful. But but every time someone
• 31:31
  crosses a room, you can really hear the floorboards because
• 31:34
  nothing is shot on a sound stage.
• 31:36
  So. So it looks beautiful and then
• 31:38
  some. Then Poirot has to walk across
• 31:40
  the room and it's like, and you're like, Oh yeah, this is
• 31:43
  British television. You don't get that with Colombo.
• 31:46
  Colombo You never hear his feet. Sorry about my shoes, they're a
• 31:52
  bit squeaky. My wife is supposed to oil them
• 31:55
  in the morning. So I like, I like the small
• 31:59
  scale of British stuff, but at the same time like, yeah, it's a
• 32:02
  shame. I think eventually though,
• 32:05
  there's going to get a point where the software will be that
• 32:08
  you could do it all yourself. Put the footsteps back into
• 32:11
  Colombo. Oh nice.
• 32:18
  But yeah, that's a shame because I know there would be so many
• 32:22
  good animation shows. Yeah, yeah, I suppose we, we did
• 32:26
  try a few in the 90s, but they didn't catch on.
• 32:28
  But then again, maybe it's because we only make 10 episodes
• 32:31
  of everything. Right.
• 32:32
  You know Wallace and Gromit. Is Wallace and Gromit OK, Kenny,
• 32:36
  you made a good point. What do you want?
• 32:39
  A brownie also? So you were involved that you
• 32:45
  were into comedy, but you never thought I'm going to be a
• 32:47
  comedian. You thought film.
• 32:49
  Yeah, absolutely. I thought I'll be a.
• 32:51
  Because you watched the cameras. Yeah, I wanted to direct films,
• 32:55
  but I I never had the courage because you make short films
• 32:58
  when you and it takes ages and then you send them off to
• 33:00
  festivals. And in my experience, you don't
• 33:02
  get into the festivals and then you start again.
• 33:04
  And it's quite depressing compared to what I noticed doing
• 33:08
  the Fringe for the first time is like, more people have seen me
• 33:11
  do stand up than I've ever seen me.
• 33:14
  A film I'd made, you know, I'd spent.
• 33:16
  Really trying to make. Films.
• 33:17
  And in one month more people have just seen me do 5 minutes
• 33:21
  of comedy than that. And I thought, oh, you can reach
• 33:22
  people. And when did you realise that?
• 33:25
  When I ran the numbers afterwards.
• 33:28
  Spreadsheet Film school stand up.
• 33:33
  And it's so cheap. It was so much cheaper to do
• 33:35
  stand up. Even though people talk about
• 33:36
  how expensive Edinburgh is and it is and how easy it is to lose
• 33:41
  loads of money. People were like, you know, you
• 33:42
  can go up there and lose thousands of pounds.
• 33:44
  It's like, but I was, I was raising money to make films and
• 33:48
  then not getting any of that back at all.
• 33:50
  You're telling me there's a chance I could sell tickets and
• 33:52
  make some of it back quickly? This is yeah, this is way better
• 33:56
  than making short. Films and you also, you develop
• 33:59
  an idea and then you could go on stage that night you see the
• 34:03
  fruits, the comedic fruits of your labour already.
• 34:08
  The audience just immediately tells you at the end of every
• 34:10
  sentence whether they're enjoying it or not.
• 34:12
  Yeah, laughs and their faces and that's very helpful.
• 34:15
  It makes you realise how needy we are.
• 34:17
  Yeah. Compared to people who just sit
• 34:18
  and write a a Sonata and not play it to anyone then send it
• 34:22
  off. Whereas we have to be like was
• 34:26
  was that did you did you like the thing that I, the thing that
• 34:29
  I noticed? Did you enjoy that?
• 34:31
  Is that. Yeah.
• 34:32
  OK then I'll go I'll do the next bit then.
• 34:34
  OK yeah, yeah. The.
• 34:35
  Fact. You've been done yet?
• 34:36
  Yeah. But the thing about it too, is
• 34:40
  that you. You film is like a team effort.
• 34:45
  It's collaborative, your work. You got to get the script and
• 34:49
  then you got to get your people together and then you got to
• 34:53
  publicise it. It's just a long process.
• 34:56
  Yes, you've got to be very patient.
• 34:59
  I mean, you've, you've acted in many, many things.
• 35:03
  Oh God, yes. Is it, Is it?
• 35:09
  Can you improvise? Can you have fun?
• 35:10
  Is it? Does it just get boring compared
• 35:13
  to doing live? Stuff if you're just going on it
• 35:15
  for like 3 days or whatever, that's the best when they go
• 35:20
  have fun with. That you just put on a wig?
• 35:22
  Yeah. Yeah, well, it all depends on
• 35:24
  what it is like. Sometimes when things are like,
• 35:28
  you know, they've already been on for a while, they've got a,
• 35:31
  it's a well oiled machine. Whereas what I don't like is
• 35:36
  when, because sometimes I'll be known like, oh, Rich will make
• 35:40
  something up, but they don't have any sort of basis like make
• 35:44
  up your character, make up the plot, make up the, you know, And
• 35:48
  then you're like, oh, OK. So they just expect you to just
• 35:52
  produce art for them. Right.
• 35:55
  Just as, whereas if it's something like curb, it's like
• 35:57
  you're coming in do this and then you want to end like this
• 36:01
  so you can make up the in between bits.
• 36:03
  Yeah, yeah. So it depends on how you know
• 36:08
  together they are organised the. Yeah.
• 36:12
  Does that answer your question? It does answer my.
• 36:14
  Question. Thank you.
• 36:15
  You're welcome. Any other questions?
• 36:19
  So you started doing stand up and immediately you just got the
• 36:23
  bug. Yes, yeah.
• 36:24
  I think people either have a bad first gig and then there's that
• 36:29
  sense of I've got to do better. You know, I've got to like when
• 36:32
  you lose a video game, you're gonna be like, no, no, no, yeah,
• 36:34
  yeah, you get better at this or you have a good first gig and
• 36:37
  then you're forever chasing the because the investment to reward
• 36:41
  ratio is insane on your first gig.
• 36:44
  It's like golf. If you hit that one good shot,
• 36:48
  you made that one joke. Yeah, it makes you want to.
• 36:51
  Yes, yeah, exactly. Like can I?
• 36:53
  And I don't know, I don't know that it's ever possible to do it
• 36:58
  again, because when you just fluke something, you can't
• 37:00
  actually recreate it. So no, no gig now will ever be
• 37:05
  as rewarding as the first gig because I've spent years trying
• 37:07
  to get better at it and I have got better at it.
• 37:09
  I am funnier now. The show is better.
• 37:11
  I actually am. I don't know why.
• 37:13
  I don't know why people keep saying I'm not.
• 37:16
  But right, I am. I am actually.
• 37:19
  But it's, you know, it's never going to be like you just turned
• 37:23
  up with 5 minutes of material and people laughed.
• 37:26
  Yeah, you know, that's amazing. Yeah, I know it's it is.
• 37:29
  It's like a bug you want to keep catching.
• 37:33
  Yeah, that's really good branding for the comedy disease.
• 37:37
  So you when did you start getting into the kind of an hour
• 37:43
  show mentality when you did Edinburgh?
• 37:47
  Yeah, I was a coward about it. I was very slow to do it, and I
• 37:51
  didn't know that I wanted to do it until, in fact, I think I did
• 37:54
  a first. Yeah, the first time I did a
• 37:55
  work in progress, I was like, oh, it was great.
• 37:56
  It was fun for it was just me because I used to, because I was
• 38:00
  so sort of whimsical and intellectual.
• 38:02
  Yeah, I would usually do quite well in clubs because it would
• 38:07
  be like, you know, my wife, you know, the usual.
• 38:11
  You would be different because I was getting in the 18. 70s yeah.
• 38:13
  And then they would come out, the mother-in-law, and then I'd
• 38:17
  come out and be different. And so yeah, I would be
• 38:21
  different. So but sometimes like if the
• 38:23
  compare did like really heavy sex stuff as sometimes they did
• 38:27
  and then brought me on, I would always die if they did like like
• 38:30
  9 minutes of fingering material. You just do the Oscar Wilde
• 38:34
  stuff, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:38
  And then I would just come out and do my sort of flimsy whimsy.
• 38:42
  And it was nice to go like, oh, in a show, I get to set all the
• 38:46
  rules and expectations. Yeah.
• 38:48
  And I can control people's experience of it as a, you know,
• 38:52
  and. People are going to see you.
• 38:54
  Yeah, even. If they're just sort of turning
• 38:56
  up because it's like free comedy, they've still sort of
• 38:58
  seen a flyer. They've got an idea that oh,
• 39:00
  this looks like. Oh, he's tall.
• 39:02
  I want to see. Him.
• 39:03
  Yeah. 6 foot two you say? Yeah, excellent.
• 39:06
  That's a Trump side. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:09
  And and I think I weigh the same as his official weight as well.
• 39:14
  200 I think I. Think.
• 39:16
  I think so. I can't remember.
• 39:17
  Can't remember. Yeah, he does.
• 39:18
  I think he's actually totally. Like 200.
• 39:20
  He's, I think he's 63. I think so.
• 39:22
  I think he's. Maybe he's lied about that.
• 39:24
  Yeah. No way.
• 39:26
  The president, No. Come on, the president.
• 39:31
  The president can't lie. Have you had a secret MRI,
• 39:35
  maybe? No, Not should, I guess.
• 39:37
  Yeah, he's. He had a secret.
• 39:39
  MRI. I think so.
• 39:41
  Anyway. That's neither here nor are.
• 39:44
  You allowed to do you have insert information that you're.
• 39:46
  Kenny's going to cut this. OK, OK, I don't know if people
• 39:48
  are ready to hear this. So your first one hour show was
• 39:54
  at the festival? Yes, it was called the Alistair
• 39:57
  Beckett King Mysteries. And so you've done a bunch since
• 40:01
  then that I've done. I guess four, yeah, only four.
• 40:06
  So some people have done 1A year in the amount of time.
• 40:10
  So I could have done about 8:00 but.
• 40:12
  Did you tour each one of those shows?
• 40:14
  Not straight away, no. I, I only got to start doing
• 40:18
  touring after lockdown and after having videos do well and
• 40:21
  getting a tiny, tiny bit of telework.
• 40:23
  So I was able then to sort of dig back into, oh, these, these
• 40:27
  shows I did that were OK that nobody saw.
• 40:29
  I can take these older shows on tour, but now I'm in the
• 40:33
  horrible state and I've run out of those and now I have to write
• 40:35
  actual new. Jokes for people.
• 40:38
  It's like the Game of Thrones when they've gone through all
• 40:41
  the books shit, what do I do? Now I've got no idea.
• 40:44
  Help me JRRRR Martin GRR Cubed. What do you do?
• 40:53
  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, what I did was I did
• 40:56
  write the jokes, but it was because I got used to touring
• 40:59
  shows that I wrote several years ago.
• 41:01
  Yeah, but that keeps you fresh though.
• 41:04
  That keeps you fresh. It's been fun, it's been, it's
• 41:07
  been fun to relearn stuff. So what about this tour?
• 41:11
  What? How did you approach this one?
• 41:13
  Is it just a compilation of funny stuff doing gigs?
• 41:19
  It's called King of Crumbs because because, as as you know,
• 41:22
  you have to name shows when you've got no idea what they're
• 41:25
  about. But I.
• 41:26
  Do. I had to, I had the idea that
• 41:29
  you sort of try and do big important comedy about serious
• 41:32
  issues, but then you end up talking about like little
• 41:34
  details, you know, like things you notice when you're in the
• 41:36
  supermarket or yes, when you're feeding the ducks.
• 41:39
  And so I thought King of Crumbs is quite big because it's like,
• 41:42
  I have all these ambitions, intellectual ambitions, but
• 41:44
  actually the show is just going to be, you know, when I started
• 41:47
  writing, I was like, I don't think I've got a show, I've just
• 41:49
  got these crumbs. So I was like, will you?
• 41:50
  Explain that in the show. Maybe I should explain that in
• 41:53
  the show it's about bringing the crumbs together and then
• 41:56
  eventually you've got a. Because that makes sense.
• 41:59
  Yeah, That really does. Oh, yeah.
• 42:02
  The cheesecake. Yeah.
• 42:03
  Is the whole filling or a shell? Yeah.
• 42:06
  Yeah, exactly. But but just to begin with, it's
• 42:09
  just crumbs. But eventually, and I think, I
• 42:11
  think some people really do just tell one story in a show.
• 42:14
  But I think most people, if we're being honest, are finding
• 42:17
  bits and bits and bits. And then it's really nice when
• 42:20
  you've got 2 totally unrelated bits and then you discover you
• 42:23
  can link them together with a new joke and it looks like it
• 42:25
  was all planned from the start. Yes, that's beautiful.
• 42:29
  Well, sometimes people have. I'm going to write about this.
• 42:32
  I got, you know, ear cancer and I'm going to write my whole show
• 42:37
  about that. And then I'll have little jokes
• 42:39
  that go off about that. And then there are other people
• 42:42
  that go, I've got all these jokes, right?
• 42:45
  But I've got a lot of jokes about ear cancer that I'm going
• 42:49
  to, you know what I mean? It's like you do them in one of
• 42:53
  two ways. Right.
• 42:55
  I think I'm a yeah, Look at what the jokes are about and try and
• 42:59
  try because I think because I have little video bits and
• 43:02
  animated bits. In the show.
• 43:04
  Yeah, I try and structure it like the.
• 43:08
  What do you show? Up.
• 43:09
  If I could juggle, I'd be juggling as well.
• 43:11
  That's great. But I think about the way like
• 43:13
  musical acts, if you're a musical comedian, you play a
• 43:16
  song, you do a bit of chat, you play a song, you do a bit of
• 43:18
  chat, and you'd probably have 810 songs in a show if it's a
• 43:22
  chat in between. I was like, OK, well those I can
• 43:24
  do like a bit, you know a 2 minute bit and then I can throw
• 43:28
  to the screen and have a little clip and then I can do another
• 43:30
  two or three minute bit and then I can throw to the screen.
• 43:33
  I feel like you want to structure it.
• 43:35
  I. Want a bit screen bit?
• 43:37
  Screen bit screen. Yeah.
• 43:38
  And while they're looking at the screen, I have a little drink of
• 43:40
  water, you know? Nice I've.
• 43:42
  Earned that and it's like a concept album is what I try and
• 43:46
  think of it like. It's not telling a story, but it
• 43:51
  feels right. It feels like it's got some kind
• 43:54
  of musical shape to it. Yes, it feels like it went
• 43:57
  somewhere even though. That's what you want.
• 44:00
  That's what I'm trying to, yeah. Yeah.
• 44:01
  Even though it's pure hand waving nonsense to try and
• 44:04
  create the illusion of structure really.
• 44:06
  It's a ride the audience is going on your ride that you've
• 44:09
  created and. It should have.
• 44:12
  It should be satisfying like a I didn't know you were such an
• 44:15
  expert when it came to rides. Yeah, but I've, I've mentioned
• 44:20
  this on the pod that sometimes I used to, every time I did an
• 44:25
  hour show, I'd always stop at one point and look at the clock
• 44:30
  and it was always 40 minutes. I don't know why.
• 44:34
  Because that's the point of the legendary lull in an hour long
• 44:37
  show, is that? 40 minutes.
• 44:39
  I think I I I never solved it. Maybe I did.
• 44:43
  And I go, here we go, let's bunch it on it's.
• 44:46
  Because I used to, yeah, I used to try putting, well, I'll put
• 44:49
  the best bits, you know, I'll put the bits that like I would
• 44:51
  be closing on in a club, I'll put them there.
• 44:53
  Terrible idea. Because the reason it's a low is
• 44:56
  that the audience are losing focus and they've been sitting
• 44:59
  for a certain amount of time. And so you're wasting the best
• 45:03
  bit on them there. So it needs to be something that
• 45:05
  changes the tone. I now think it needs to be
• 45:07
  something that has a a needle scratch, yeah, something that
• 45:11
  just livens things up. A piece of music comes in or
• 45:13
  something. The screen is handy for that
• 45:15
  because. That's something different.
• 45:17
  Go in and. That's when all the puppets come
• 45:20
  out. Yeah, exactly.
• 45:24
  And then you put the puppets in in post.
• 45:26
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:29
  Wow. So when when do you start your
• 45:33
  at? The time of recording I'm on
• 45:36
  tour at the end of this month, at the end of February, starting
• 45:39
  in Shrewsbury or Shrewsbury, I don't know which.
• 45:43
  Now, is that where The Taming of the Shrew was created it?
• 45:49
  Was originally the Taming of Shrewsbury, but they they just
• 45:53
  shortened it for the posters. Wow, so Shrewsbury, you're going
• 45:57
  to see the first show King of Chrome.
• 46:01
  It's going to be so good, yeah. And do you are you very detail
• 46:05
  oriented with every aspect like the house music has to start
• 46:09
  with the police and you know, do you are you that into?
• 46:14
  The whole thing, I wish I I wish I was better at control because
• 46:18
  I want to be in control of all of it.
• 46:20
  Yeah, but I'm bad, you know? I'm bad at focusing on
• 46:23
  absolutely everything. So I try not to be a control
• 46:26
  freak. But but but but if anything is
• 46:31
  done less well than I would do it if I had just done it, I get
• 46:34
  very upset about that. I'm nice to work with.
• 46:37
  I'm not. I'm not Moody.
• 46:38
  Did you hear that Shrewsbury text?
• 46:42
  You better be on your toe. Yeah, just be on your game is
• 46:44
  what I'm saying. Yeah, you.
• 46:45
  Know cuz or do you bring one person with you to go on?
• 46:49
  No, I, I yeah, no, it's, it's very much just me in a big bag
• 46:54
  full of nonsense and a laptop. So like props, you've got a
• 46:58
  couple. Couple of things, you might be
• 47:02
  the 40 minute mark. You never know.
• 47:06
  Never know, just just bring out a human skull, yeah.
• 47:12
  That was great. At the 40 minutes, I forgot all
• 47:15
  about it. And so you're going to be doing
• 47:21
  the tour for about a year or no? No, no, it's not.
• 47:25
  It's not too long. It's about 2527 days somehow.
• 47:28
  So it's just this, this spring. It's a nice little spring tour.
• 47:31
  Oh, that's gonna be fun. For a lovely little gentleman.
• 47:34
  It's a nice jaunt, yes. Around the country, yeah, Yeah.
• 47:39
  And what about plans after that? Do you have any, you know, like
• 47:44
  are you one of these guys that wants to keep doing stand up or
• 47:49
  do you have a a film you want to do or?
• 47:53
  Yeah. What's the what's the, what's
• 47:54
  the game plan? Yeah.
• 47:55
  Well, I, I'm just curious. Yeah, it's live comedy.
• 48:00
  Yeah, I no, I mean, that's fine. I.
• 48:03
  Really like doing it. That's the thing that really
• 48:05
  surprised me about it because I, like I said, I approached it
• 48:07
  cynically thinking, oh, this will, I'll learn how to write
• 48:09
  comedy from doing this and, you know, and then it'll help me
• 48:11
  with film and other stuff. And actually it's just really.
• 48:15
  Enjoyable. For what it's really enjoyable
• 48:17
  to do for what it is. So I'm just, I just feel really
• 48:21
  lucky for now to be able to make a living doing it.
• 48:24
  Yeah, yeah, because it's really. Rare.
• 48:27
  It's hard if you know, if you're making AI, there's a lot of
• 48:30
  bitterness in comedy because it's, you know, like Will.
• 48:33
  This is news to me. Well, what is this bitterness
• 48:37
  stuff? But you know, like, like you,
• 48:40
  you were saying nothing's getting made.
• 48:42
  You know, we don't have any money.
• 48:43
  You know, there's no, hardly any sitcoms are getting made.
• 48:46
  There's, you know, it used to be that it's all panel shows
• 48:48
  because sitcoms are too expensive.
• 48:49
  And now panel shows are too expensive.
• 48:51
  Yeah, where are the panel shows? There's just not enough panel
• 48:54
  shows on television. Everyone is is saying this.
• 48:56
  Panel's panels and and. And so people get kind of
• 49:01
  bitter, but I feel like if you've, if you're making a
• 49:03
  living out of going around telling jokes to people, then
• 49:06
  that's the best you've made it. Yeah.
• 49:08
  As far as I'm concerned, most comedians have made it.
• 49:11
  And there's there's degrees of making it well.
• 49:13
  I mean, since I came over here during the pandemic and all of a
• 49:19
  sudden there's so many people touring and performing that
• 49:24
  weren't. Before people who had got off
• 49:27
  the circuit, yes. Back, yeah.
• 49:29
  Yeah, it's just. Control over it and it's
• 49:32
  immediate and. And plus, they're not
• 49:35
  commissioning enough comedies on TV.
• 49:37
  The piano shows. And everybody's writing a book
• 49:40
  as well. I've written some kids books.
• 49:42
  You know, all the screenwriters having to publish books, having
• 49:45
  to publish books as if it's a punishment, have to publish a
• 49:47
  book, forced to publish books and yeah, because, because,
• 49:52
  because it's something that you have control over.
• 49:54
  Yes. You know, like I wrote some kids
• 49:56
  books and I was like, this is they're mystery stories.
• 50:00
  Oh nice. And the the series is called
• 50:04
  Montgomery Bonbon. They're murder mysteries for
• 50:05
  kids. But the nicest thing about it
• 50:07
  was finishing it because. Kids get murdered.
• 50:13
  No, no, the kid solves the murder.
• 50:15
  Oh OK, great. But just just getting to have
• 50:19
  something that's done because, you know, pitching shows.
• 50:22
  You were talking about that. Yeah.
• 50:24
  Yeah. You just pitched show after show
• 50:25
  and people said, have you got any ideas?
• 50:26
  And you're like, yeah, do you remember the nine ideas I sent
• 50:28
  you last year? Maybe one of those is still
• 50:30
  good. Yeah, it was like, why is it so,
• 50:34
  you know, visceral? It's it just disappears the
• 50:38
  minute you say it. It's like it was a thing that I
• 50:42
  said. Yeah, exactly.
• 50:44
  Whereas with the book, you get to make it and then it's
• 50:47
  finished and you can move on in a way.
• 50:49
  Because up until that point, I'd just been writing treatments and
• 50:52
  and script scripts that didn't go anywhere.
• 50:54
  Yeah. And you never find out.
• 50:56
  Would this have been good? Would that sitcom idea have been
• 50:58
  funny? Maybe it wouldn't have been, but
• 51:00
  you don't find out. But with the book, you know,
• 51:02
  like, oh, now I can see what's good about it.
• 51:04
  I can see what I would try. To do differently control.
• 51:06
  It's been made, yeah, and you can move on.
• 51:09
  So the thing you don't have to think of production values.
• 51:12
  If you want a helicopter in your book, you can have a helicopter.
• 51:15
  There's no producer saying, well, that sounds very
• 51:17
  expensive. Yes, it's OK, I know how you can
• 51:20
  do it on computers. It's I can do it.
• 51:21
  And This is why I've started to write a book.
• 51:24
  I haven't done anything yet but. Have you started to begin
• 51:28
  writing a book? You own the intellectual
• 51:31
  property of the book. Yes.
• 51:34
  So you can sell the rights to it.
• 51:36
  Yeah, yes, that's where the big money is.
• 51:39
  Yeah. Whereas if you wrote the
• 51:40
  screenplay, people might go, well, yeah, great watch.
• 51:49
  Can you tell us what the book is called?
• 51:50
  Does it have a title yet? Yes.
• 51:52
  And can I have a latte as well? Yeah.
• 51:58
  So listen, there is a segment in the show.
• 52:02
  I don't know if you've seen it or not.
• 52:04
  It's called fill in the blank. OK, OK, so I give you a
• 52:08
  statement. You have to fill in the blank.
• 52:11
  You don't have to be funny. Good.
• 52:13
  Yes, it's one thing we've established so far.
• 52:16
  Take the Stress off #1 Blank is a movie which I hated at first
• 52:24
  but is now one of my favourites. Mulholland, Dr Whoa, straight
• 52:31
  out of the game you hate. You said this is too weird.
• 52:33
  I I because. Like I think like we were saying
• 52:36
  very much at the start of the podcast, I watched it as as an
• 52:40
  uptight teenager, you know, slightly weirded out by the, you
• 52:43
  know, it's like I was watching in my living room and there's
• 52:45
  sex in it and you, there's there's nipples.
• 52:48
  And I was a bit embarrassed. I was 50 kids.
• 52:50
  I you hate, we hate. We're both.
• 52:53
  We're both nipple haters. That was a real nipple, haters.
• 52:57
  And I and I was like, what is it about?
• 52:59
  And I remember reading like theories and explanations of the
• 53:02
  plot and being and you, you dig down, you go like, well, this
• 53:04
  is, this isn't interesting. And it only it took me years to
• 53:07
  realise that the point that films aren't codes that you're
• 53:11
  supposed to crack to come up with the answer of what they're
• 53:13
  about. Right, Right.
• 53:14
  Watching it again as an adult, it's just, it's very, it's full
• 53:17
  of moving moments, things between characters, things that
• 53:20
  feel real, things that feel unreal and weird.
• 53:23
  It's very funny, you know, And it's like it doesn't the, the
• 53:26
  goal is not to just try and understand everything and to
• 53:29
  nail down what does this mean? What does that mean?
• 53:31
  It's not what it's about. You needed that life experience
• 53:34
  too, with nipples. With nipples once and now and
• 53:37
  now if you show me a nipple I wouldn't even react.
• 53:41
  I'm completely calm around nipples these.
• 53:43
  Days, I think I was reading the I think Rolling Stones had the
• 53:46
  100 greatest movies of the 21st century and Mulholland Dr was
• 53:52
  like, was it one of the town, I think.
• 53:54
  It's terrific. Yeah.
• 53:56
  It was going to be ATV series. It was going to be the new twin.
• 53:58
  Peaks, Yeah. What happened?
• 53:59
  And they they watched it and they were like, no, you can't,
• 54:02
  you can't do that. And so they reshot it as a film.
• 54:04
  But you can see how it would have been in the way that Twin
• 54:06
  Peaks has the drama in this, the the pastiche, but also comedy.
• 54:11
  Like, it's really funny. Love Twin Peaks?
• 54:14
  Drive has has the same. You know, there's some really
• 54:16
  funny bits that I'd totally forgotten about.
• 54:17
  I hated The Shining at first, really, because I had just read
• 54:21
  the book and I was one of these people.
• 54:24
  Like it's not in the. Book it's really different to
• 54:27
  the book isn't. It yeah, because at the end he's
• 54:30
  going through the maze and actually there are these topiary
• 54:35
  animals that are actually moving in the book.
• 54:38
  I can see why they didn't do. It because I remember that
• 54:41
  because they're like a lion. There's lions, but it would have
• 54:44
  looked so rubbish. Yeah, yeah, it's it was totally
• 54:50
  right to not put that in the film.
• 54:51
  Yes, which I found out later 2 I've broken blank bones in my
• 54:58
  entire life. In in in my own body.
• 55:01
  Zero. Really never broken a bone.
• 55:05
  Wow, me neither. Wow, Kenny.
• 55:07
  Never. Either really, for you're
• 55:11
  Australian. You've got to break.
• 55:13
  Yes, I've told you're you're the first intact Australian I've
• 55:16
  ever heard of. Is that from being careful or?
• 55:21
  Yeah, it's, it's not going outside is the secret just sort
• 55:26
  of dwelling in a sort of closet kind of Yeah, yeah.
• 55:29
  Underground cave environment. Three, I think.
• 55:32
  I'm pretty sure I understand everything about severance,
• 55:36
  blank or false. I, I think true, true.
• 55:41
  I think it's true because I think, I think what Severance is
• 55:45
  about is it's just like most shows, it's just a love story.
• 55:50
  It's just a love story. Doesn't matter what the goats
• 55:51
  mean. None of the rest of it really
• 55:53
  matters. It's just a love.
• 55:54
  Story it's about overcoming this problem he has with the brain.
• 56:00
  It is. He's to over.
• 56:01
  But it's, it's like, is he going to choose the girl or is he
• 56:05
  going to, is he going to do the right thing or is he going to,
• 56:07
  is he going to, is he going to stay with the woman he loves?
• 56:09
  You know, that's it. That's all it's about.
• 56:11
  It's about loves. Basically, he's just love.
• 56:13
  OK, Wow. Thank you.
• 56:16
  It's. Like this podcast?
• 56:19
  Really, it's just like it's about love at the end of the
• 56:22
  day. Isn't it?
• 56:22
  At the end of the day, it's about love.
• 56:26
  Love box. If I was given 1000 lbs today to
• 56:33
  spend on myself, blank is what I'd buy.
• 56:37
  Oh, oh, you're not buying for somebody else.
• 56:41
  It's just for me, just for you to spend it because I'd probably
• 56:44
  just put it in the bank. Yeah, no, you have to spend it
• 56:47
  or it'll be gone. Has to.
• 56:49
  I'm going to burn it. I don't know.
• 56:52
  I'd probably squander it on like something I really don't need,
• 56:55
  like, like a diopter for a camera lens.
• 56:58
  Like a camera. Yeah, a lens for a camera.
• 57:00
  Diopter, that's what I was going to say.
• 57:06
  I didn't come here to be mocked. Yeah, no, I'd I'd probably, I'd
• 57:11
  be too tempted to buy some piece of camera equipment I don't need
• 57:15
  and wouldn't use well. That's what I do you.
• 57:17
  Use silly videos for the Internet.
• 57:18
  You just handed this money. I just wanted to see how you
• 57:22
  would, you know? I miss thinking of myself as a
• 57:25
  as a film guy, so I maybe I'd get like one of those chairs
• 57:29
  with director written on it and just sit in that.
• 57:32
  Yeah, I always say I'm going to buy equipment when I get extra
• 57:36
  money, but never. What do you spend?
• 57:38
  What do you spend the money on? I don't spend that you just.
• 57:42
  You just keep it. No, I mean this is just.
• 57:45
  This. Scenario is it's rare that I go,
• 57:48
  oh, this is all mine, I'm just going to spend and I usually,
• 57:51
  you know, buy food and stuff. Last question, OK, blank, I'm
• 58:00
  embarrassed to say, is in my cupboard right now.
• 58:05
  I think nothing because I my flat's so small we don't really
• 58:10
  have any cupboards. OK.
• 58:12
  Space. So it's a really tiny flat that
• 58:14
  we live in and. Nothing.
• 58:17
  Yeah, I'm not. Bare.
• 58:18
  I'm not saying I don't have any skeletons in my closet.
• 58:20
  I'm saying I don't have a closet.
• 58:22
  Really. Yeah.
• 58:23
  So it's just a lack of. There's no kind of weird snack,
• 58:28
  or any kind of. I mean, there's a we've got a
• 58:30
  small Rankin full of pumpkin seeds.
• 58:32
  OK, that's weird. Where do you keep your pumpkin
• 58:36
  seeds? In a jar, yeah.
• 58:39
  In a jar, yeah. OK, not in the, not in the.
• 58:41
  So you take. Them in yoghurt and stuff, you
• 58:43
  pull them. Into a jar.
• 58:44
  Yeah, OK. Does it have one of those those
• 58:48
  sort of lever ones? Yes, one of those jars.
• 58:51
  Yeah, we, we got those. Yeah, I didn't, but yeah.
• 58:57
  No, because you wouldn't have spent the money.
• 58:58
  You would have just. Yeah, and now it's plug time.
• 59:03
  And off the back of that. Yeah, off the back and seeds.
• 59:06
  Revelations. I've got a segue to plug.
• 59:10
  Because when you when you click bits, make sure to clip the
• 59:12
  pumpkin seeds bits because that is the bit that's going to get
• 59:15
  them. All right, lead with that.
• 59:18
  Don't bury it. Hold on, I'll just do a face so
• 59:20
  you can be like pumpkin seeds and then you can use that as the
• 59:24
  graphic and people will be like, what's this pumpkin secret that
• 59:27
  he's got? It's that he hates pumpkin
• 59:29
  seeds. So plug time, where can we get
• 59:35
  tickets to your the? Internet mainly, yeah.
• 59:38
  Buy them from the venue, buy them from your site.
• 59:41
  There's links on my site and the the tour is put on by Mick
• 59:45
  Perrin worldwide. They've got all the dates.
• 59:47
  They're very nice people, they know what they're doing and
• 59:52
  yeah, so it's Auk tour where I go to lots of places in England,
• 59:57
  plus Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow, oh.
• 1:00:00
  OK. So it's it is mostly England.
• 1:00:03
  No doubt they wouldn't let me. I think it's I'm the hair.
• 1:00:07
  They think I would just be absorbed into Ireland if I were
• 1:00:11
  to cross the border. Oh, OK, that's the fear.
• 1:00:14
  So is it an EU thing? Or it's an.
• 1:00:17
  EI think? I, I, yeah, I think I might be
• 1:00:19
  like a taxable good of some kind.
• 1:00:21
  So I don't, I there's some kind of backstop situation, right?
• 1:00:25
  I'm not. I'm not allowed to look into.
• 1:00:27
  That no, I would think you would do Dublin.
• 1:00:30
  I'd yeah, I'd. Really love to, but I've never,
• 1:00:32
  I've never been to the Republic of Ireland.
• 1:00:34
  Well, I'd love to perform. Guys, watch this guy, it's
• 1:00:38
  amazing. You're going to love it and
• 1:00:40
  you're going to want him to do Ireland.
• 1:00:43
  Right. Thank you.
• 1:00:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And pumpkin seeds will be sold
• 1:00:48
  in the lobby, right? I just, I just throw them out to
• 1:00:51
  the people in the first few rows, yeah.
• 1:00:53
  And do you have merch? I keep thinking I should get
• 1:00:56
  merch because people people want to give.
• 1:00:59
  People to pay for merch. What much?
• 1:01:01
  What? What?
• 1:01:02
  It doesn't matter. Face on a pumpkin seeds.
• 1:01:05
  Yes, a coaster. A thumbtack.
• 1:01:09
  People. You name it.
• 1:01:11
  Nail Clippers. Think about it.
• 1:01:12
  Branded nail Clippers. Thank you for the tip.
• 1:01:14
  Think about it. Thank.
• 1:01:16
  You thank you very much. Yes, good luck on your tour.
• 1:01:19
  Thank you very much. Yes.
• 1:01:20
  Oh, that was great. I I was excited to talk to him
• 1:01:25
  and I hope he was to talk to me as well, because that's how it
• 1:01:29
  works. All right, well, so if you want
• 1:01:31
  to see that King of Crumbs tour, go check out his website and buy
• 1:01:37
  a ticket. And if you want to buy merch for
• 1:01:39
  Talkbox, look at this. I've been drinking on this the
• 1:01:43
  whole time. It's a mug.
• 1:01:45
  There's T-shirts as well. Hoodies, nasal stuff.
• 1:01:50
  No, there isn't any nasal stuff. Shot glass, There's a whole.
• 1:01:56
  If you have sleep apnea, there's one of those things now.
• 1:02:00
  There isn't. Anyway, come on, you know what
• 1:02:03
  to do. Bye.