Latest / Half the Picture / Peter Capaldi talks Doctor Who's next chapter, his upcoming album & dinner with Robert De Niro (4K)

Transcript

Peter Capaldi talks Doctor Who's next chapter, his upcoming album & dinner with Robert De Niro (4K) · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  Hey, you could be the new doctor.
• 0:03
  Would you do that?
• 0:04
  With this hair?
• 0:05
  Yeah, with that hair for sure.
• 0:07
  I'm looking forward to the show coming back because I think it will be fascinating and exciting.
• 0:13
  And you need the safety and warmth of the TARDIS.
• 0:17
  Always.
• 0:17
  Robot dog?
• 0:18
  Canine!
• 0:21
  No.
• 0:22
  No?
• 0:23
  Tin dog?
• 0:23
  No, no tin dog.
• 0:24
  Forget it.
• 0:25
  Out the window.
• 0:26
  I don't think I would have got the thick of it had I not had quite a difficult period of not succeeding.
• 0:32
  This could be the highlight of my career.
• 0:33
  I've taken a dump in the White House.
• 0:35
  One of the big inspirations for Tucker was Alistair Campbell.
• 0:38
  Is this Tucker or is this something that Alistair said?
• 0:40
  I'm someone who lives and breathes communication.
• 0:45
  That's got to be Alistair.
• 0:46
  Tell Barclays to f*** off.
• 0:48
  Tell Barclays to f*** off.
• 0:50
  She's an idiot.
• 0:51
  And all the other actors hated me because in the seating plan I was sat next to Robert De Niro.
• 0:56
  Oh fuck.
• 0:58
  But there was no way out.
• 0:59
  So I was gonna have to make conversation or something.
• 1:05
  And so when I came to play Mr. Curry in Paddington, I don't want to disappoint anyone, but Paddington was not actually there when we were filming.
• 1:13
  It was being played by a small person in a red duffel coat, which of course just looked like don't look now to me.
• 1:21
  Yeah.
• 1:22
  When he'd come along running towards you like this, you're f***ing old.
• 1:27
  I thought this was a kid's film.
• 1:29
  Is there going to be a big sex scene?
• 1:34
  we have a small favour to ask all of you.
• 1:35
  Please, could you check right now if you've clicked the subscribe button.
• 1:40
  Hello, my name's Peter Capaldi and I'm on half the picture.
• 1:45
  Again, because I enjoyed it so much last time.
• 1:47
  I hope you like it too.
• 1:49
  I've got to say, I'm loving the get-up that you've got at the moment.
• 1:52
  It's very strong.
• 1:55
  This is Paul Smith?
• 1:56
  Yes, this is Paul Smith.
• 1:58
  But no, I had to erase the fisherman's friend jumper.
• 2:05
  There were drawings.
• 2:05
  People were doing drawings of the jump.
• 2:07
  They loved it.
• 2:10
  I'd be ashamed.
• 2:14
  Yes, I didn't know that podcasts were visible.
• 2:19
  thank you so much again for that, for coming on that first time, because it was such a pleasure, obviously being admirers of yours, but also people watched the episode and really dug it.
• 2:27
  And when we did that episode, you were just about to, you were warming up for your tour.
• 2:31
  Yeah.
• 2:31
  That you were going to do a few months later.
• 2:33
  Yeah.
• 2:33
  And that's obviously now in the rear view mirror, you did it.
• 2:35
  I came along as we were saying.
• 2:36
  Yeah, it's great to see you.
• 2:37
  Yeah.
• 2:37
  Thanks for coming.
• 2:38
  No worries.
• 2:38
  It was a great show.
• 2:39
  Thank you very much.
• 2:40
  You went all over, right?
• 2:41
  You went, you know, obviously 100 Club in London where I saw you, but you went up north to Glasgow and all over.
• 2:46
  What was it like, the experience?
• 2:48
  It was fantastic.
• 2:49
  I mean, we played in Newcastle and Leeds and Birmingham and Manchester and all of these places and all at humble venues.
• 2:57
  You know, when I'd been in a band when I was at art school, we never played anything bigger than a band.
• 3:03
  you know, a sticky floored cellar underneath a bar.
• 3:09
  Not unlike this.
• 3:09
  This is quite big for us.
• 3:11
  This would be quite large.
• 3:12
  This would be like a stadium venue for us.
• 3:16
  So I was very happy to maintain that.
• 3:19
  I like playing that size of space.
• 3:21
  Also, I didn't want to play to half-empty places.
• 3:24
  You know, you could go and book into bigger venues, but...
• 3:28
  I had no guarantee of selling enough tickets to fill it.
• 3:32
  Whereas the smaller venues, I like the smaller venues.
• 3:35
  They're more fun.
• 3:36
  You're closer to the audience.
• 3:38
  And the people who are there want to come.
• 3:42
  So that was great.
• 3:43
  That was lovely.
• 3:43
  It was strange, though.
• 3:44
  I mean, I love playing with the band.
• 3:47
  because they're all young and they all would come in and say, you should listen to this and you should listen to that.
• 3:52
  And they'd make me listen to all these different artists and help develop my ear a bit more.
• 3:59
  And also just playing with people who could play when I was at, you know, with all due respect to my, and I include myself in this, we couldn't really play.
• 4:11
  when we started out in our band.
• 4:13
  And we never developed much musically, really.
• 4:16
  So this band can play.
• 4:20
  So that puts a whole different complexion on it and a whole different pressure on me, which is a good pressure to try and improve and try and work with them.
• 4:32
  But I noticed the thing happening, which was great.
• 4:36
  Because it was only a little too, it was only about two weeks.
• 4:40
  But in the second week,
• 4:42
  people were singing along to these songs.
• 4:46
  I thought, well, nobody knows these songs.
• 4:48
  They haven't been, you know, they're not in the hit parade, they're not in the charts.
• 4:52
  You can find them in Spotify or Apple Music if you look very hard.
• 4:58
  But I guess people start posting things at the start of the tour and the people who are coming in the next week, look at them.
• 5:07
  And I guess they, if they like them,
• 5:11
  they get into them.
• 5:12
  And so suddenly you find your venues with people singing along to all your songs, which is weird.
• 5:18
  I bet that's a great feeling though.
• 5:21
  It's lovely.
• 5:22
  And I also had the sense that you could really build something that wasn't
• 5:28
  that was quite humble in the sense that there's not a corporate appetite to create a thing that's going to make a lot of money.
• 5:43
  I think people still have an appetite for things that belong to them.
• 5:50
  And in a strange way, I saw that we could do that because I was just a guy, an old guy who liked playing music when he was young and was having a go at it again.
• 6:00
  But I was, and am, sincere in that.
• 6:05
  So I think the people who like it like that.
• 6:12
  So I thought it's kind of contrary to the ethos of all of these arms of show business that I'm involved in, which is to try and keep things small.
• 6:24
  But maybe that's just my personality as well.
• 6:28
  I don't want to be overburdened with responsibilities and overburdened with ambitions and trying to get bigger.
• 6:37
  I'm quite happy with that.
• 6:40
  where I am and where we are.
• 6:42
  At the same time, I mean, we have a new album that we've been working on and I would like more people to hear that.
• 6:51
  So that will trigger a larger effort, I suppose, to reach people.
• 7:00
  But I think people enjoy
• 7:04
  finding their own things.
• 7:05
  And it's unusual.
• 7:06
  I'm in an unusual position because some people know me off the telly, which allows me to sell X amount of tickets.
• 7:16
  But the music aspect of it is largely unknown.
• 7:20
  So if people discover that and they like it, then it's theirs.
• 7:25
  And we can carry on and do more.
• 7:28
  I'm intrigued to ask about the new album because I really enjoyed the first two.
• 7:32
  Oh, thank you.
• 7:33
  And I think we talked about it when you came on last time, but there's a lot of muscle in those first two albums.
• 7:40
  For me anyway, a lot of muscle and they're quite heavy.
• 7:42
  And I really like a proper muscular rock sound with a great band, which you had and have.
• 7:50
  I mean, where are you planning with the new album that you're working on?
• 7:52
  Where are you taking that sound next?
• 7:54
  Where do you want to push it?
• 7:56
  Well, I'm very lucky because I'm working with Neil Davidge, who used to produce Massive Attack, who I know from...
• 8:03
  He did the music for our show, Criminal Record.
• 8:05
  And I had great times working with him on the music for the show, which he did with Mikey J. Asante.
• 8:16
  They were both wonderful musicians.
• 8:20
  And Neil came to a gig, and my wife said, do you think you might be interested in...
• 8:25
  He said, oh, yeah, I'd like to do some stuff.
• 8:28
  So I rather shyly sent him, because he's a proper producer with, you know, proper track record.
• 8:34
  He's the real deal.
• 8:36
  So I was a bit scared.
• 8:38
  So I sent him all my demos.
• 8:40
  We said, yeah, I'll do this.
• 8:43
  And he had, within about three weeks, taken those like 11 demos, which I thought we'd have to get rid of, most of them, because I thought they were such rubbish songs, and transformed them.
• 8:58
  to something else, but also released something in them.
• 9:02
  that was there all the time, which was a slightly confirmed tale unfolding in them, which I thought was going to derail them.
• 9:17
  But in fact, in his hands, it released something.
• 9:20
  So they are quite Rocky, but they're also different kind of genres.
• 9:25
  He's great.
• 9:25
  So yeah, we're still at it.
• 9:28
  We haven't finished it yet.
• 9:30
  When you say like there's a tale in them, which kind of almost derailed them, do you mean like lyrically, like a story sense?
• 9:35
  Or do you mean like the tone in the music or both?
• 9:38
  I mean that they came very much from, from me, from some things that have been happening to me in my life fairly recently that were quite deep and, and,
• 9:59
  I wasn't sure whether that would work, whether that was the right thing to do.
• 10:05
  Whereas before the other albums had been a sort of just attempt having a go or doing this, get a few power chords going, get some synths going, get the drums, I love it, you know, bass, everything.
• 10:16
  Just seeing if that was possible.
• 10:19
  I think this...
• 10:21
  was an attempt to dig more deeply into the interface of between the human being, myself, meaning me, and whatever small musical skill I had.
• 10:39
  I don't know if that makes, it won't make any sense.
• 10:41
  I don't think anyone will,
• 10:45
  it's not a concept album.
• 10:46
  When I say there's a tale, I mean, I have a tale.
• 10:53
  And we all have.
• 10:55
  We all have a story of who we are and where we are and what that does to us.
• 11:03
  And so for the first time,
• 11:06
  that found its way into the music and a kind of more mature way because the other albums were really just experimenting with the idea of whether it was possible to write songs i'm making it sound very grand it's not very impressive it's not it's just what it is well it sounds like it's a it's much more of a personal record then than the other two
• 11:31
  I think I've just probably reached a stage where, for the first time, I can make a link between a genuine emotion that I feel and a musical expression of that.
• 11:47
  I don't mean the other ones weren't genuine.
• 11:49
  I mean that they were more junior.
• 11:55
  I think this is more reflective of where I am.
• 12:01
  Whereas the other ones were kind of, sort of clawing backwards to when I'd been young.
• 12:09
  You know, because a lot of the music was like kind of stuff that was around in the eighties and late seventies when I was around.
• 12:17
  And the kind of, you know, the,
• 12:20
  the noirish rain soaked northern city is a kind of trope of that time whether it be you know with us or or joy division or anyone you know it's all you know manchester glistens in the rain and glasgow twinkles in the dark and
• 12:40
  It's a kind of quite nostalgic thing.
• 12:45
  It felt like they were the albums that you kind of always wanted to make, in a sense.
• 12:48
  You wanted to, if you could do it, this is what you would do with it, going back to the beginning, really.
• 12:53
  Yeah, but also I don't know how to do it.
• 12:56
  So they're also about learning how to do it.
• 13:01
  I don't know, how do you write a song?
• 13:02
  I don't know.
• 13:04
  You have to sit down with a bit of paper and a guitar and you've got to write a song.
• 13:08
  Yeah.
• 13:10
  And so I would just often just say, oh, well, I'll write a Roy Orbison song today or I'll write an Oasis song or something.
• 13:18
  I'd do some terrible version of one of their songs.
• 13:22
  But by creating that, you generated material which you could then manipulate and change and get further and further away from that initial copying.
• 13:36
  But that's quite a common thing, you know.
• 13:39
  You'll hear John Lennon saying that all the time about, you know, songs that he's doing, which are deliberately trying to copy Curtis Mayfield or whatever.
• 13:48
  or Lou Reed talking about James Burton, wanting to play like James Burton on a guitar, on those records.
• 13:55
  Yeah.
• 13:56
  I do want to ask, do you think going more personal kind of with this next album, was that, and writing those songs that felt more like they were just coming out of you, was that difficult?
• 14:06
  And was that, I guess, at all scary?
• 14:09
  I guess going a bit further, being a bit more personal in what you were writing?
• 14:13
  Yeah.
• 14:14
  It was a little,
• 14:16
  It's scary because if you're being creative and you're using the events of your life to fuel that, you run the risk of being blinkered about how effective that material is because it's more effective to you
• 14:45
  than perhaps material that's less personal.
• 14:49
  So you have to be careful not to, you've got to stay alert.
• 14:53
  But that's why I said I thought we'd get rid of, when I gave the songs to Neil, I thought we'd throw half of them away because I thought half of them were too personal to be of any use.
• 15:04
  But in fact, that's why I say,
• 15:07
  Well, I say he released them.
• 15:09
  He released the emotion from that neurosis and built a song.
• 15:20
  But I don't know.
• 15:21
  It's just, you know, you also get older.
• 15:22
  You know, I'm 68.
• 15:23
  So I go, well, I don't know, you know, how long I'm going to do this, you know, how long I get to do this.
• 15:29
  So it's just fun.
• 15:33
  But I think you have to,
• 15:36
  push hard.
• 15:37
  You have to push yourself to try, even if it is, because essentially it's a sort of hobby, isn't it?
• 15:44
  It's not how I make my living.
• 15:45
  It's just a hobby.
• 15:48
  But you know, it's serious.
• 15:49
  Are there any plans to play the new songs on the next tour?
• 15:52
  Are they at that stage yet?
• 15:53
  I think there's a couple on this one, but they're not, because we're doing a little tour in December.
• 16:00
  So we'll do a couple, but they're not the songs that will
• 16:06
  that I've been talking about.
• 16:07
  Do you have that experience when you're playing your songs on stage?
• 16:11
  That like, again, like Lou Reed, like, cause I think so much goes back to Lou Reed, at least for me, like how he, when he was doing a song on stage, he would be singing it.
• 16:21
  And then it wouldn't, sometimes it wouldn't be until he was singing it in front of an audience that he actually realized what it's, what it was about.
• 16:26
  yeah like he would do it he would like even up through the writing and like the demoing and then recording he would say oh yeah this is what this song is and then he'd do it on stage like oh my god this is what it's about and be like i can't believe i'm saying this on stage you know because obviously they would go to some pretty dark and some quite personal areas yeah did you find that ever when you were on stage doing on the most recent tour like oh this is what this is about playing it in front of an audience yeah yeah you'd start you you'd begin to see that it can be it's a different thing
• 16:53
  You don't have ownership of it, or you have, it is still growing.
• 17:03
  So what it's about is not what I think it's about.
• 17:07
  Or I know what a song is about, but then in a public place with people listening to it, it becomes about something else.
• 17:17
  And it becomes about their relationship with it and their interpretation of it.
• 17:24
  And I can't articulate exactly what it is about,
• 17:26
  They're getting out of it.
• 17:27
  But sometimes a song becomes, there's an emotional thing in it, which I haven't placed there.
• 17:36
  But in a crowd, that emotional thing will rise to the surface.
• 17:43
  And you have, you know, you go with it because that's what it is.
• 17:47
  It's playing live.
• 17:48
  It's interacting with people.
• 17:50
  Yeah.
• 17:52
  Yeah, but he's amazing, Lou Reed.
• 17:54
  I mean, there's just nobody else.
• 17:58
  Clearly, you're a big Lou Reed fan.
• 18:01
  So what was the first Lou Reed album you got into?
• 18:04
  Transformer.
• 18:04
  Transformer, of course.
• 18:06
  I remember we talked about it a little bit when you last came on, but I think that was the first album I ever fully loved.
• 18:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 18:13
  front to back the whole thing every track yeah i could listen to the whole thing and i did like it was the first time i ever had an album i could listen to the whole thing over again and that was i was probably 20 when i heard that so what's your favorite track
• 18:27
  I'm a big fan of Hanging Round.
• 18:29
  Yeah.
• 18:29
  Track four.
• 18:30
  I think that's a track that doesn't always get the love that like A Perfect Day or A Walk on the Wild Side does.
• 18:35
  Yeah.
• 18:36
  I think that track, and I'm a big fan of Goodnight Ladies.
• 18:39
  Goodnight Ladies is great.
• 18:41
  Is that your favourite?
• 18:42
  It's not my favourite, but I love it.
• 18:44
  I don't like to have favourites because it changes as well.
• 18:46
  I mean, Satellite of Love is amazing.
• 18:49
  But as you say, it's the whole thing.
• 18:51
  And I can't tell whether or not it's the actual...
• 18:55
  I don't know whether or not you love music because of its unique
• 19:02
  components, those notes in that order, or whether you love it because you played it, you heard it when you were 20 and it takes you back to the other place, or whether it's a combination of those things.
• 19:15
  Because I noticed when, as is often the case, you know, when you're publicizing music things, you're always asked to put together lists of records that you love and all this stuff.
• 19:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:27
  Mine always fall into a five-year kind of span because that's when I was young and leaving school or going out into the world and being a student and stuff.
• 19:41
  And all most of the music is from that period.
• 19:47
  And I wonder whether it's...
• 19:51
  it's that connection with your history that makes them so powerful.
• 19:55
  But then, you know, Transformers, just one of the greatest albums ever made.
• 20:00
  I'm surprised it doesn't get the love that it deserves.
• 20:04
  I slightly think because it has a slightly...
• 20:07
  theatrical kind of, because it's, it's, it's, it's really in the, in the, in the, in the microclimate of glam.
• 20:17
  Yeah.
• 20:18
  You know, glam's all happening and, because he doesn't do another album like that.
• 20:24
  No.
• 20:25
  You know, and obviously Bowie and Ronson and everybody else are bringing a kind of theatricality to it, which absolutely suits him, which absolutely suits him down to the ground, but he never went back there.
• 20:40
  He wasn't that kind of artist, was he?
• 20:42
  He never really went, he very rarely went back, if ever.
• 20:45
  Yeah.
• 20:45
  Yeah.
• 20:46
  But it's that uniqueness, it's that voice and that guitar and just the comedy.
• 20:51
  You could just listen to him singing.
• 20:53
  And he's one of those great examples of, you know, he's not a great singer, but he's a great singer.
• 20:59
  Yeah, he's got a great voice.
• 21:01
  He's got a great voice.
• 21:03
  And I love Berlin, and I think Berlin is amazing.
• 21:06
  I listened to Berlin a lot at art school.
• 21:09
  I thought Berlin was amazing, yeah.
• 21:11
  I mean, in a way, that's the complete tunnel opposite of Transformer.
• 21:14
  I love that about actually, just zeroing in on that, because Transformer, beautiful album, such pleasure to listen to, just purely like the songs are beautiful, they're catchy, it's beautifully produced, you say, by Bowie and Ronson.
• 21:29
  And Bowie, I mean, Berlin, it's like after Transformer was a big hit, and people were like, oh, Lou Reed, who's this guy?
• 21:35
  He then goes...
• 21:37
  okay, well, now that I've got them, I'm going to give them this.
• 21:40
  And Berlin cannot be more brutal and dark and opposite of a follow-up to Transformer.
• 21:46
  Yeah, it is.
• 21:46
  It's so dark.
• 21:48
  It's terrifyingly dark.
• 21:50
  But yet it is also hopeful.
• 21:52
  It also has a buoyancy at the end.
• 21:55
  Yeah, sad song.
• 21:56
  It creates these characters.
• 21:57
  Yeah, and sad song is just such an amazing...
• 22:02
  I love sad song and I love it's, you know, it's the only song I know with Mary Queen of Scots in it.
• 22:08
  So where does that come from?
• 22:09
  She looked like Mary Queen of Scots.
• 22:10
  How do you know?
• 22:12
  You wander around the Metropolitan Museum of Art or something, hanging around, you know, after getting your drugs, going and, you know, go and see all those glorious old paintings and maybe you had an affinity with some picture of Mary Queen of Scots.
• 22:24
  I don't know.
• 22:26
  But yeah, it's great and sad.
• 22:30
  but also beautifully produced and great orchestral work and all that in it.
• 22:34
  It's very ambitious, but also he kind of is a very, he's just, he's a sort of fuck you artist, isn't he?
• 22:41
  Yeah, big time.
• 22:42
  You don't like this, fuck off.
• 22:44
  Metal machine music, whatever.
• 22:45
  I was just about to say.
• 22:47
  You don't like it, fuck off.
• 22:48
  Yeah, I think he even said that.
• 22:50
  He would say that.
• 22:51
  On the record, if you don't like this, I don't care.
• 22:53
  Yeah.
• 22:54
  Yeah.
• 22:55
  The last great American whale.
• 22:57
  Yes.
• 22:57
  From New York, right?
• 22:58
  Yeah.
• 22:58
  That's a great track.
• 22:59
  New York's a great... New York was...
• 23:00
  I was actually... Because what you were saying earlier about like going a bit more personal with your songs, like New York...
• 23:04
  I remember by that time of New York and... Do you know Song Swagrella?
• 23:08
  The one... Yeah.
• 23:09
  Love that album.
• 23:09
  We did it with John Cale about Warhol.
• 23:11
  He said that was actually the point in his career where he actually started thinking, okay, I'm not just going to write about stuff as like objectively.
• 23:17
  I'm actually going to write what I think.
• 23:20
  It took him that long.
• 23:21
  Yeah.
• 23:22
  It's admittedly, he admitted to get the confidence.
• 23:25
  Yeah.
• 23:25
  But then you think, you know, he's very personal and does his own stuff.
• 23:32
  But then you think, yeah, but you're a little reading, you live in New York, you know, all that stuff and you've been in the Velvet Underground and you're really cool.
• 23:38
  You could just walk around in your shades all the time and stuff like that.
• 23:41
  It's not really the same for us, is it?
• 23:44
  you've got to go to to boots to get your hemorrhoid cream or whatever it is you know all of that you know and it's raining and it's miserable what shall i get for the tea tonight macaroni and cheese or whatever you know or do you or do you think oh well i'll wear shades while i'm doing all that and i'll make my own life shades i'll do my hair blonde this time well he must have had to go and get do the shopping as well from time to time
• 24:07
  Presumably, yeah, somewhere in the village.
• 24:09
  It wouldn't send Laurie Anderson.
• 24:12
  It's your turn to make the tea.
• 24:15
  Perhaps Laurie Anderson gave him into trouble when he came home and he hadn't done the ironing and stuff like that.
• 24:20
  It's funny.
• 24:21
  Shortly after, the last time you came on, we had Murray Gold on.
• 24:24
  Oh, yeah.
• 24:24
  He was great.
• 24:26
  Big Lou Reed fan.
• 24:27
  And Barry fan as well.
• 24:28
  Huge Lou Reed fan.
• 24:29
  And he was telling me a story about how he was in a restaurant in New York.
• 24:32
  Yeah.
• 24:33
  And he was sitting a table or two across from Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson.
• 24:39
  i don't know if he had the shades on but you he was there he was lou reed sitting there yeah i don't i can't i don't want to obviously speak i know powerful that's what he said to me but he said yeah he did say hello to him and he was yeah yeah he plots up the courage to say hello to him and i think and lou was just very lou just like yeah yeah nice man i'd be too scared to say hello to um laurie anderson has a curious kind of um there's a curious roundabout link here which is that um
• 25:05
  We were all talking about where we live in London, and I live in North London, not far from Cranley Gardens, which was the home of Dennis Nelson, who's a notorious serial killer.
• 25:18
  But apparently his favourite record was O Superman by Laurie Anderson.
• 25:22
  So I always think of O Superman when I'm passing his arms, as I did this morning on the way here.
• 25:29
  Oh my God.
• 25:29
  The next, I mean, not to go too morbid, but if there is ever a documentary about Nilsson, I mean, maybe there is, and they've used that song.
• 25:35
  I mean, that's an unbelievable song.
• 25:37
  Eight minutes.
• 25:38
  It's fabulous, isn't it?
• 25:39
  Yeah.
• 25:40
  Fabulous.
• 25:41
  Where did that come from?
• 25:42
  I've no idea.
• 25:42
  Who decided to release that?
• 25:44
  Yeah.
• 25:45
  It was huge.
• 25:46
  Well, was John Peel the one who really pushed it, I want to say?
• 25:49
  Because he would do that thing of like, he'd play Boomy Rhapsody, the other big one.
• 25:53
  Yeah.
• 25:53
  Really unconventional, long song.
• 25:55
  And he would be like, no, this is great.
• 25:56
  I'm going to play this to help.
• 25:58
  Yes.
• 25:59
  When I was at art school and I was in a band, obviously you were desperate to get on the John Peel show.
• 26:06
  And we made a little record ourselves because you could do that.
• 26:09
  There was a plant out in Paris where they would take your tape and they'd turn it into vinyl and you could have 45 RPM records.
• 26:22
  and everybody thought if you got, if you didn't have a record, you just have a cassette tape and you try and stand around outside broadcasting the house hoping you'd see someone who looked a little bit like they might work on the John Peel show and maybe go and give them the cassette and hope they'd play it.
• 26:38
  And everybody hoped really that they would, what would happen to the undertones would happen to you.
• 26:43
  You know, that John Peel would become so devoted and would love your track so much he wouldn't stop playing it and go on and on about it and be propelled to top of the pops.
• 26:53
  but that didn't happen to us and to many, many bands but he did very sweet he played our record a couple of times but he didn't have much to say about it so once he played it at the very last track of the show so it was on for about 30 seconds so then the end of music came
• 27:12
  But it was nice of him to play it.
• 27:14
  So you got 30 seconds on Peel.
• 27:15
  I got 30 seconds on John Peel.
• 27:19
  And was that around the same time?
• 27:20
  Because am I right thinking that in the early 80s, you opened, didn't you, am I right thinking that you opened for Spandau Ballet doing some stand-up?
• 27:27
  That's what I was doing.
• 27:28
  Yeah, that was because sort of after the band, I sort of experimented with doing, because alternative comedy was sort of happening at that time.
• 27:38
  And I went to see the comic strip with Alexis Ayle and French and Saunders and Ed Edmondson and Rick Mayer.
• 27:51
  who were like, the pair of them were, I'd never seen anything like that.
• 27:57
  And it wasn't dissimilar from music, in the sense that you were in a grubby little club somewhere, and these two guys came on stage, and I'd never seen anything like this.
• 28:07
  They were so violent right in front of you.
• 28:10
  But it was so funny and so abstract, but also so kind of naff and predictable.
• 28:17
  And they just grabbed anything they could to make you laugh.
• 28:23
  And I loved them.
• 28:25
  So I had to go at doing that.
• 28:26
  Because also sometimes with a band, I would chat to the audience.
• 28:31
  And it's a very bad thing that happens.
• 28:33
  I've spoken to a lot of artists about this.
• 28:36
  Chatting to the audience, if you start getting laughs...
• 28:40
  it's quite dangerous because you begin to redirect things down that road.
• 28:47
  So you have to be a bit more pretentious than that.
• 28:50
  So when we were on stage, I used to get quite a lot of laughs with my chat.
• 28:55
  So I sort of developed that.
• 28:56
  And I'd met, I don't know, it was Gary Kemp.
• 28:59
  He was very sweet.
• 29:00
  I don't really know how this happened.
• 29:03
  I think because we were supporting Altered Images, who Gary was a big fan of.
• 29:08
  And Altered Images was very sweet just because they'd become quite a big band.
• 29:11
  They were a big band.
• 29:13
  And we supported them.
• 29:14
  We used to support them on tour, which was great, which was so kind of them.
• 29:19
  But I would chat away to the audience during that.
• 29:24
  And I think Gary saw me doing that.
• 29:26
  And then the next time I saw him a year later, the band had sort of broken up and I was sort of trying to do stand up.
• 29:31
  And he said, why don't you come and do this?
• 29:33
  I mean, it was disastrous.
• 29:35
  Because why would a group of 2000 teeny boppers who had come to see Spandau Ballet in their new romantic poem want for a second to watch a kind of fledgling Glaswegian Rick male copyist do his unfunny material that he was still working through.
• 29:56
  So it was awful, but great.
• 30:00
  It was terrifying.
• 30:01
  And there had no patience with me whatsoever.
• 30:04
  I was going to say, what's a Spandau Ballet audience like?
• 30:07
  Well, I don't think it's specific to them.
• 30:09
  It's just an audience who haven't come to see an art student who thinks he's funny.
• 30:16
  Maybe that's what Spandau Ballet were in some ways, art students who thought they were musical.
• 30:21
  But they weren't art students.
• 30:23
  Actually, they were lovely.
• 30:23
  They were so kind.
• 30:24
  I feel very glad that I spent some time with them.
• 30:27
  They were so kind.
• 30:28
  I keep going back to how kind you don't realise when you're young, the generosity.
• 30:33
  of people.
• 30:34
  And Gary and Martin Kemp and all the band, they all lived in Islington and all of their parents worked in what they called the print, which was newspapers.
• 30:44
  Not as journalists, but as the people that printed newspapers
• 30:48
  the newspapers, which was a craft that went back centuries, but also was under fire at that time because of Mrs. Datcher and because Rupert Murdoch beginning to move the print, the whole print industry away from Fleet Street and from the traditional means of making newspapers to warping wherever it was, where he was having computer-generated printing and all that beginning.
• 31:16
  But they were great and I'd go to their house and they were always, and they were Spandau Ballet.
• 31:22
  They were full in their pop, successful Spandau Ballet.
• 31:26
  But you still got to go round to their house and their mum would make you chips and all that.
• 31:29
  And I loved that.
• 31:31
  They were so kind.
• 31:32
  Do you remember what you would talk about with Spandau Ballet over the chips?
• 31:36
  Well, they made me laugh because they were so, and remember I'm still struggling to try.
• 31:41
  I don't know where I'm going at that point.
• 31:44
  I don't know what's happening.
• 31:46
  I just want to be part of something.
• 31:48
  And I don't know whether it's music or comedy or acting or what.
• 31:52
  I just want to be part of something.
• 31:55
  And this looks great, the whole music thing.
• 31:58
  And they seem very successful.
• 32:02
  Well, they were very successful to me.
• 32:04
  But they were also very...
• 32:07
  they were also very North London.
• 32:11
  They were also very, there's a, if you come, you know, I came from Scotland, so my anxieties about whether I was equipped to do any of this stuff also had a sort of slightly kind of class kind of element in it.
• 32:35
  Yeah.
• 32:36
  because I didn't feel that my background had given me any right or any preparation for being in these worlds.
• 32:47
  But they were sort of...
• 32:50
  I was sort of amazed at how they were totally North London.
• 32:56
  They were totally Islington.
• 32:58
  But that was a different...
• 32:59
  I think what I'm trying to say is, if you come from outside of London...
• 33:04
  you've also got to deal with not just the problems of trying to do what you're trying to do, but the problems of not belonging, of being in a city that is very different and very, seems very, um, established and people who feel, who seem very at home there.
• 33:24
  And, uh,
• 33:26
  So they haven't had to travel 400 miles to try and get their career going.
• 33:31
  They might have only had to get the tube into town to stand outside Broadcasting House.
• 33:38
  Whereas I've had to get an overnight bus, which the rest of the band have put their money together to pay for me to come down with my bag full, duffel bag full of cassettes, and stand around in the cold with, you know, literally sleeping on people's floors, you know, in this strange big city.
• 33:55
  Yeah.
• 33:56
  Was it around the time of Spandau that Local Hero came along?
• 33:59
  Was that around the same time, so early 80s?
• 34:02
  I think the Spandau might have been before that.
• 34:05
  I'm not sure.
• 34:07
  But I think wisely he said it was either before that or after that.
• 34:13
  He said very accurately.
• 34:16
  I think it may have been before it.
• 34:19
  But I'd have to look that up.
• 34:21
  I'd have to get in touch with the Peter Capaldi Museum and...
• 34:28
  Well, I asked because in the run-ups of this chat, I went back and looked at Local Hero, which was, of course, your first film.
• 34:33
  Yeah.
• 34:34
  And you're working with a director like Bruce Forsyth, who's amazing.
• 34:37
  And that's such a terrific film.
• 34:38
  I mean, as far as first films go, I mean, that's up there for me.
• 34:41
  That's a good one.
• 34:42
  I mean...
• 34:43
  Am I right in thinking that your first scene in that film, which, as I say, your first film, it's your first scene in your first film, was the scene on the beach with you and Burt Lancaster, like, towards the end of the film?
• 34:53
  Am I right in saying that?
• 34:53
  I think it was, yeah, because they shot all of Burt Lancaster's stuff first.
• 34:58
  Because, obviously, he was the most expensive component.
• 35:02
  And there was a whole pile of stuff that he was in that was set in America.
• 35:06
  But they built a set in Inverness, in a whiskey distillery to be his home in Texas or wherever it was.
• 35:16
  And they'd done two or three days filming in Houston.
• 35:21
  And then they'd come and brought him
• 35:23
  with them to Scotland and the very first day we were standing on that beach and it was snowing.
• 35:32
  And if you see the film now, you'll still see on the mountains on the islands, over the water, the snow on those mountains.
• 35:39
  But the first day we were filming, I was standing with him and the snow was falling down and I thought, I don't know how this is going to work.
• 35:49
  And they stopped filming and did some weather cover.
• 35:51
  Then we came back the next day and it was beautiful.
• 35:53
  But he was great.
• 35:55
  And he always said to me, he was like this all the time.
• 35:59
  He was like Bert Lancaster.
• 36:01
  And he said, kid, I got to tell you, he said, your instinct is fabulous, fabulous instinct.
• 36:07
  Can't understand a fucking word you say, but your instinct is fabulous.
• 36:12
  That was nice.
• 36:13
  He was like that.
• 36:14
  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
• 36:17
  He was great.
• 36:20
  So that was a very exciting experience.
• 36:23
  But I wasn't, you know, at first, you know, I wouldn't be here now if I hadn't been for that.
• 36:30
  you know and that was a kind of sort of thing that bill the director had he because he was a sort of lone wolf or lone voice uh he'd made small films in scotland uh and then there was an aligning of the stars because david putnam who'd made just made chariots of fire was looking for something else and that kind of all fitted uh and it was lovely to make but i you know i didn't
• 36:59
  I wasn't really being an actor.
• 37:00
  I was just, Bill just had met me at gigs again with Altered Images because Claire, who was in Altered Images, had been in Gregory's Guild, which was his previous film.
• 37:10
  So he used to come to gigs and he'd seen me supporting with the band, supporting Altered Images.
• 37:18
  And we got to know each other that way.
• 37:19
  But I think he just,
• 37:21
  There was no acting required.
• 37:23
  It was just a bit of a geeky bloke who didn't really know where he was, which is what I was.
• 37:30
  Well, there's such kind of innocence to that character, Danny.
• 37:33
  Like, you know, he's so funny and he's so, and the way, even just the way he moves, the way you sort of move in that character.
• 37:39
  It's quite-
• 37:41
  There is no, it's not a character.
• 37:44
  I didn't sit at home, didn't go to Jacques Lecoq and figure out how to, it's just the way I move.
• 37:51
  Which is horrifying when you see it, when you are the victim of your own shape.
• 38:00
  Victim of your own gait.
• 38:02
  Because you never see that.
• 38:03
  As a human being, even if you see photographs of yourself, you rarely see yourself walking or moving.
• 38:09
  You never see yourself from back there.
• 38:12
  So to see yourself walking.
• 38:14
  And of course, Bill loved my run, which he thought was hilarious.
• 38:17
  So he'd make me run all the time.
• 38:19
  But I didn't know it was because it was funny.
• 38:22
  Another great film that you made around that time, which I actually hadn't seen until this last week, I watched it in the run-up, is Lair of the White Worm.
• 38:30
  I don't know, has that been on recently?
• 38:31
  Because so many people have brought up Leia the White One to me over the last two weeks.
• 38:35
  Really?
• 38:35
  Has it been on the telly or something?
• 38:37
  Or whatever it is young people use to engage.
• 38:43
  The old-fashioned.
• 38:44
  I streamed it online.
• 38:45
  I bought it online.
• 38:45
  Oh, you streamed it online?
• 38:47
  Yeah.
• 38:48
  I didn't know if it... Do you want your money back?
• 38:49
  No, I was going to say, I loved it.
• 38:53
  Honestly, I loved it.
• 38:53
  I don't know why.
• 38:54
  I know at the time it kind of...
• 38:57
  I was reading up on it.
• 38:57
  It felt like people didn't quite get it.
• 38:59
  But that film is insane.
• 39:01
  Oh, God.
• 39:03
  And I mean that in the best way.
• 39:04
  It's Ken Russell, obviously, so it's going to have a lot of energy to it, a lot of the kind of maverick energy that he had.
• 39:10
  But that movie's brilliant, and it's you and Hugh Grant in The Gotham Heroes.
• 39:14
  Who I loved.
• 39:15
  He's great and he's so brilliant.
• 39:17
  He was so funny.
• 39:18
  He made me laugh all the time.
• 39:20
  He's so clever.
• 39:21
  I mean, he's the brightest person I've ever met, I think.
• 39:25
  He's so smart.
• 39:28
  So, and just so witty.
• 39:31
  And he was, he's remarkable.
• 39:33
  Yeah.
• 39:34
  Yeah, he was great.
• 39:35
  I loved working with him.
• 39:36
  He's great.
• 39:38
  But it was a great, you know, it was great fun because it was, well, was it great fun?
• 39:43
  I'm thinking back now, was it great fun?
• 39:47
  I think it was slightly stressful because I don't think that Ken, who was, again, very kind, but Ken was quite terrified.
• 39:56
  because you'll all be too young to know this.
• 39:59
  But in the 60s, he was the original enfant terrible of British cinema and made these very, you know, he made The Devils, which was one of this kind of most outrageous and kind of...
• 40:17
  barrier-breaking kind of movies with kind of nudity and grossness and Oliver Reed and and blood and and it was all it was really quite I mean my parents would not have approved did not approve of the devils or any movies like that so he was quite scary but by the time I got to meet him he had become sort of uh
• 40:43
  There was an American film company who were fans of his, and they decided to sort of finance a number of movies.
• 40:52
  And one of them was Lair of the White Worm, which was a pet project of his, which he'd had for some time, I think.
• 40:59
  But he took it absolutely seriously.
• 41:03
  I mean, he was really, really serious about it.
• 41:06
  And it was like the devils.
• 41:09
  So when you were making it, the vibe on the set was not, oh, this is a bit of a campy, fun sort of horror movie.
• 41:16
  It was like, this is the real thing.
• 41:18
  This is really about these evil, an evil vampire cult that people are, this little, people like this little boy scout will be prone to being seduced by.
• 41:28
  And Amanda Donahue, who was wonderful,
• 41:32
  So it was mad and a bit scary.
• 41:35
  But I loved it.
• 41:39
  It was great.
• 41:40
  Because I loved horror movies as well.
• 41:41
  So I liked the idea of being in a horror movie.
• 41:43
  But it's not as...
• 41:46
  He thought...
• 41:48
  The way Ken spoke, I felt his ambition for it was for it to be a full-on horror movie.
• 41:54
  And I think it ended up... People laughed at it.
• 41:58
  So I think he then lent into that.
• 42:02
  when it came out.
• 42:03
  Yeah.
• 42:03
  And sort of suggested that it had been a comic invention all the time.
• 42:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:08
  But it was great fun.
• 42:09
  And at the same time as that, well, I found myself making Dangerous Liaisons.
• 42:15
  Of course.
• 42:17
  Which was, I think, what I thought I was away.
• 42:19
  I thought I was good to become a national treasure there and there.
• 42:24
  Because I moved from that to doing Dangerous Liaisons.
• 42:27
  Again, these are, you know, which was their most extraordinary experience.
• 42:33
  experience and still one of my favorite films even though i'm in it i would never cite a film that i'm in as being a favorite but i think that's a brilliant film brilliant cast as well john malkovich is just outrageous glenn close i sat in the um
• 42:54
  Stephen Frears, who I just think is fabulous, fabulous director and used to take the piss out of me all the time.
• 43:03
  Used to call me Janet.
• 43:04
  Janet was a character who was in a...
• 43:06
  There was a hoary old...
• 43:12
  early Sunday evening BBC show called Dr Finlay's Casebook, which was about a rural doctor in rural Scotland.
• 43:21
  And every week was one of his shows.
• 43:22
  It was a very, very big show.
• 43:25
  And he had a wee surgery in this kind of wee village somewhere in the Highlands.
• 43:29
  He kind of spoke like that.
• 43:30
  And there was an older doctor as well who had wisdom which he dispatched.
• 43:35
  But there was a sort of housekeeper called Janet.
• 43:40
  Janet used to appear like that for the tree.
• 43:44
  Cups and saucers for the doctors.
• 43:48
  She'd have a little bit of wisdom.
• 43:49
  So Stephen just called me Janet.
• 43:51
  So you'd have John Malkovich here.
• 43:54
  You'd have Glenn Close and Michelle Fiverr.
• 43:55
  And then he said, Janet will come in here.
• 44:01
  And that was every day I was on the set.
• 44:02
  I said, Janet will walk in there.
• 44:04
  And then Janet, come over here.
• 44:05
  But I loved him and I loved it.
• 44:08
  And I remember the day...
• 44:13
  of the read through, which was in Paris, at the hotel, George, whatever it is, very grand hotel, Michel Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, John Malkovich.
• 44:31
  Glenn Close is not there because she's, I don't know, fatal attraction, she's doing something else.
• 44:38
  And so Stephen goes, well, Janet, you'll have to read Glenn's part.
• 44:43
  So Janet has to read Madame Mertour with John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.
• 44:54
  So I've got to read, I've got to do her part with them, which was great.
• 45:00
  And they were great.
• 45:03
  I remember John was sitting, John, I was...
• 45:07
  I was enthralled by John.
• 45:10
  He sat smoking a cigarette, rolling up cigarettes and smoking them.
• 45:13
  He knew all the lines.
• 45:15
  He didn't have the book in front of him.
• 45:16
  Because he was essentially a theatre actor.
• 45:20
  And he just threw it all out there.
• 45:23
  And Michelle.
• 45:24
  Amazing.
• 45:26
  And it turned into this.
• 45:28
  One day I was with Stephen.
• 45:31
  And I saw he had a folder with...
• 45:34
  And he opened the folder and there was photographs of Barbara Stanek and Fred McMurray in a film called Double Indemnity, which had been a Billy Wilder film.
• 45:46
  Great film.
• 45:47
  I asked, why have you got a Billy Wilder, a stills one Billy Wilder film?
• 45:52
  Double Indemnity is one of the classic film noirs.
• 45:56
  And he said, because this is a film noir.
• 45:59
  Dangerous Liaisons is a film noir.
• 46:03
  And of course, that's what it is.
• 46:06
  Film noir or noir being, James Ellroy said, you know, film noir is a genre where the basic cornerstone of it is the tenet that we're all fucked.
• 46:24
  and which people love.
• 46:26
  We love that we're all fucked films.
• 46:29
  Lou's kind of got some of that going on as well, isn't it?
• 46:32
  Big time.
• 46:33
  So that's what Dangerous liaison is, is these bleak, dark characters who think they're smart and clever, but they're derailed by love, and love destroys them.
• 46:45
  But their performances, Glenn Close's performance, Michelle Pfeiffer, John.
• 46:53
  I mean, John hadn't,
• 46:55
  It was only like his second movie or something.
• 46:59
  So he hadn't become the being John Malkovich guy.
• 47:03
  He hadn't become that guy yet.
• 47:04
  He didn't know where all this was going.
• 47:07
  And he was terrifying.
• 47:09
  His ability to access rage was amazing.
• 47:13
  But I would just watch him.
• 47:16
  God, this is great to be here.
• 47:17
  To all this going on.
• 47:19
  Would you say that's the hardest read-through you've ever had to do?
• 47:23
  No, it was fun.
• 47:23
  It was the scariest, but it was actually the most fun because I had a big part.
• 47:27
  You had two parts.
• 47:29
  I had two parts to do, yeah.
• 47:31
  Do you have any other memorable read-throughs that you've done that stick in the head?
• 47:36
  Well, I hate read-throughs, so I try to avoid read-throughs.
• 47:39
  Doctor Who read-throughs were always great because Stephen Moffat was always very...
• 47:43
  He would read the stage directions, and he'd always read them with great colour.
• 47:48
  And lots of...
• 47:49
  He would make funny remarks and jokes about characters and jokes about actors.
• 47:54
  But he would really drive the read-through so that it was playing at a realistic time.
• 48:01
  Because also they were timing it to see if the show, how that episode would work in terms of its dynamics.
• 48:07
  So he would drive it.
• 48:08
  So that was always fun to do.
• 48:11
  But generally I would, generally I try to be not available for read-throughs.
• 48:18
  Because they're murderous, you know, and you sit in a room full of 200 people who you're never going to see again, you know, and there is inevitably a, it becomes a live performance as opposed to what you might do with that material.
• 48:34
  And so it creates a slightly illusory sense of what the project might be.
• 48:41
  I think.
• 48:42
  Well, say with something like Heaven Sent, which of course is just you really, doing the read-through for that.
• 48:47
  I think there's even a clip of you doing the read-through when it's literally just you at the table and you're having to hold the centre, even just at the read-through.
• 48:54
  Yeah, that's quite fun.
• 48:55
  But the funny thing, the read-throughs of Doctor Who were always fun, but they tended to be...
• 49:02
  You're in the middle of filming one episode, and then suddenly on, they'll say, well, Tuesday night is the read-through for the next episode.
• 49:10
  But we're still in the middle of filming this episode, and we might be off in a quarry somewhere or in a power station somewhere.
• 49:18
  And you've got to get back to Cardiff in time for this read-through, which all these actors have arrived, fresh-faced, ready to join, to do their episode of Doctor Who.
• 49:27
  And so you've got to turn from being the exhausted person who's been out in the quarry for a week into a, hello, welcome to the show.
• 49:36
  It's lovely to see you all.
• 49:38
  Thank you very much for coming.
• 49:39
  I'm Peter.
• 49:40
  I play the Doctor.
• 49:40
  You know, and all this stuff.
• 49:43
  So that's all a bit of a performance.
• 49:45
  But that's nice.
• 49:48
  It's nice also.
• 49:49
  It's nice to see all the actors, the fresh faces.
• 49:51
  I love seeing all the fresh meat coming out.
• 49:55
  You'll change.
• 49:56
  You'll see.
• 49:56
  Give it a week.
• 49:57
  You'll see a week.
• 49:58
  You'd arrive and do a read-through on the Monday morning with the cast, and then you'd shoot it all week, and you'd be exhausted by Friday, but when you left, you'd see the new cast arriving, which was lovely.
• 50:11
  We were all fresh-faced and ready to go.
• 50:14
  I love that about actors.
• 50:15
  They're full of hope, even though the hopes are dashed.
• 50:19
  Well, it's like the Nuafe, we're all fucked.
• 50:21
  We're all fucked.
• 50:22
  I'm sorry.
• 50:23
  But not really.
• 50:24
  That's great.
• 50:24
  That's what I love about actors.
• 50:26
  And it was only when I was knocked about a bit myself that I began to see it in their eyes.
• 50:32
  I could see it in the other actors' eyes.
• 50:34
  How they didn't have to say it, but I knew they'd been up for a part and they didn't get it.
• 50:39
  I knew that their mortgage payments were getting too big.
• 50:43
  I knew that they hoped they were going to get a thing in a film or a show and it had not worked out.
• 50:50
  But they were still here and they were still happy to be there.
• 50:52
  Oh, that's great.
• 50:54
  Trooping along.
• 50:55
  Well, I think kind of slightly bruised and kind of scarred.
• 50:59
  That's how people are in real life.
• 51:02
  Nobody gets a through life without some misfortune, you know, and it's the capacity to survive that and to refocus on being positive.
• 51:19
  Not that that's easy.
• 51:20
  Terrible things happen to people.
• 51:22
  Terrible, terrible things.
• 51:24
  But somehow...
• 51:27
  People are able to reassemble and re-evaluate and re-process their lives and get to a better place with it.
• 51:36
  And some act, that's the, you know...
• 51:39
  Some actors arrive with that already.
• 51:42
  When they're young, they've already got that.
• 51:44
  But with me, I had to wait until I got throttled by the business.
• 51:49
  What do you think was the moment that you, that resilience kind of came through, do you think?
• 51:53
  That what job do you think was the one that taught you?
• 51:55
  Well, the thick of it.
• 51:57
  I don't think I would have got the thick of it had I not had quite a difficult period of not succeeding.
• 52:07
  after having been, you know, uh, extremely lucky, uh, and having done a lot of these lovely, lovely jobs, it sort of didn't catch fire and it didn't sort of take me to, and I'd, you know, I tried to direct and all that and gone to Hollywood and all that stuff.
• 52:24
  And that hadn't, that'd been great.
• 52:27
  And then it hadn't worked.
• 52:29
  Uh, and I'd, I'd sort of grieved over that for too long.
• 52:32
  Uh, and, uh,
• 52:35
  So when I went to audition for The Thick of It, I wasn't fresh meat.
• 52:42
  I wasn't fresh-faced and looking forward to what the day had in store.
• 52:49
  I was a little more beaten up and a little more noir-ish.
• 52:57
  Which kind of suited, which I didn't realise, suited the material better.
• 53:03
  And Tucker better.
• 53:03
  Yeah.
• 53:04
  Well, I mean, with The Thick of It, because we talked about that last time you came on, and it was great hearing you reminisce about that show.
• 53:10
  But something that we didn't talk to on so much was In The Loop, the film of The Thick of It, of course.
• 53:15
  And everything you just said there about Hollywood, I mean, that's a film, you know, they're literally transplanting the TV show into a feature-length context, taking it to Hollywood.
• 53:23
  A lot of it takes place in Washington, America.
• 53:26
  And you're working with some incredible, as Tucker, you're working with some incredible players in that.
• 53:30
  Notably, James Gandolfini.
• 53:32
  He was incredible.
• 53:33
  You guys have that great standoff in Washington.
• 53:37
  I mean, do you remember what James was like to work with?
• 53:39
  Amazing.
• 53:39
  Amazing.
• 53:40
  Well, because, you know, I love the Sopranos.
• 53:44
  Who doesn't love the Sopranos?
• 53:47
  And you find yourself in a room and he walks in.
• 53:51
  And he's not Tony Soprano, but he looks like him.
• 53:55
  And he sounds like him.
• 53:57
  And he has such charisma.
• 54:01
  And he was gentle and he was kind and he was slightly intimidated.
• 54:06
  I think, I think he was slightly sort of, I think he adored Armando and what Armando had.
• 54:13
  I don't know how he quite came to this, but he knew all about the thick of it and stuff.
• 54:17
  So he knew that world, Armando's world.
• 54:23
  And, uh,
• 54:27
  I mean, we rehearsed in New York, which was amazing.
• 54:34
  And I have all these photographs of us in a hotel somewhere.
• 54:38
  We're all up on the ninth floor or something.
• 54:41
  You know, I'm there and Chris Addison's there and Tom Holland is there.
• 54:46
  We'd all worked together before and stuff like that.
• 54:49
  James walked in and he had, he'd come on his bike.
• 54:53
  So he had a crash helmet.
• 54:54
  And the other way you often see, why do people ride a bike?
• 54:58
  Because I guess they think because it's cool or something.
• 55:01
  I mean, a motorbike.
• 55:02
  Oh, not a bicycle.
• 55:03
  No, a motorbike.
• 55:07
  But then they always end up coming into the party with a big stupid helmet.
• 55:10
  Where am I going to put this and all this leather gear?
• 55:13
  Where does that go?
• 55:14
  It's not very cool in that bit.
• 55:16
  I'm sure it's cool when you're on your Harley Davidson on the road.
• 55:20
  But it never looks good when you walk into the hotel with all your leather, puffy leather gear and your big helmet.
• 55:27
  Except if you happen to be James Gandolfi.
• 55:32
  And I remember he made his...
• 55:33
  The script was much longer.
• 55:36
  The script went through a lot of...
• 55:38
  I mean, the Thick of It scripts always went through changes, but in the loop went through a lot of changes.
• 55:43
  And there were much bigger scenes.
• 55:45
  There were bigger conflicts between Tucker and James' character.
• 55:49
  Yeah.
• 55:51
  And, uh, we did, we rehearsed those as, as, as Amanda normally does.
• 55:56
  We read them and then we had to improvise them.
• 55:59
  Uh, I follow the, uh, the course of, of, of the events, but use your own words to do so.
• 56:08
  Uh, and James and I were always, the characters were always at Loggerheads, but James got very into this.
• 56:17
  I could see he started to breathe deeply and, and, uh,
• 56:20
  He went to punch me and he pulled the punch like that.
• 56:23
  And I just stopped because I thought, that's Tony Soprano.
• 56:28
  And if he hits me, you know, I'm on the floor here.
• 56:32
  But it was wonderful as well.
• 56:34
  But he was getting so engaged with it, as I guess I was as well, because you have to as well go, well, you know, I'm a total fanboy about James and the Sopranos.
• 56:45
  Forget that.
• 56:47
  You just have to destroy that.
• 56:48
  You just have to put that away and you just play.
• 56:51
  And Malcolm was a great character because he was like a shark.
• 56:54
  So there was no great kind of, there was nothing much else going on other than him trying to get what he wanted just to eat the other person.
• 57:04
  You know, that's all he wanted to do was eat them and spit them out.
• 57:08
  So I wasn't scared as Malcolm.
• 57:10
  but a little bit of me was scared in the 70s when I was growing up in that period that we've discussed which is the most influential on your adult life there was a tendency the British films television series used to do a film version ironically Hammer films which had made all these great horror films that I loved they were running off steam
• 57:33
  But they discovered that there was a way to make money by making a very cheap spin-off of a television series.
• 57:40
  For instance, Step Toe and Song, which was a big classic sitcom in the 60s.
• 57:47
  And people forget this in the early 70s as well.
• 57:49
  They made film version of that.
• 57:51
  And they famously made a film version of On the Buses was a kind of, I can't explain On the Buses to you.
• 57:58
  I think you'll have to talk to your parents or psychiatrist or therapist or something to find out what On the Buses was.
• 58:06
  Obviously, it was set on the buses.
• 58:10
  It was about a bus driver and a conductor.
• 58:12
  You wouldn't know what a conductor is.
• 58:15
  And their adventures, fairly sexist adventures.
• 58:20
  driving a bus every day with various birds, I think is what they would call them, would get on the...
• 58:27
  Anyway, I used to think that In The Loop was in danger of being the thick of its... Mutiny on the Buses, I think, was the film version of Mutiny on the Buses.
• 58:39
  So I used to...
• 58:40
  I had a folder with my In The Loop script, but on the cover of it, I got the Mutiny on the Buses film poster...
• 58:50
  So those few of us who were old enough on that team to remember that got it.
• 58:57
  But of course I had worked with, the other star of Mutiny on the buses was a great actor called Stephen Lewis, who was an amazing man.
• 59:06
  And he played a character called Blakey, the bane of the bus driver's life, because he was the inspector.
• 59:15
  So out of the blue he would appear.
• 59:16
  What's going on?
• 59:17
  He's so spooked like that.
• 59:18
  You know, kind of comedy, comedy.
• 59:21
  And he's called Blakey and everyone knew, and he had a moustache like Hitler.
• 59:25
  What are you doing?
• 59:26
  Turn in that corner.
• 59:26
  You shouldn't have been turning that corner.
• 59:28
  What are you doing?
• 59:28
  We're too late.
• 59:29
  You should be here this time.
• 59:32
  Oh, no, Butler.
• 59:33
  Butler was the name of the name.
• 59:34
  Butler, I see you.
• 59:35
  Butler, I see you.
• 59:36
  Butler, what are you doing there?
• 59:37
  That's all wrong.
• 59:38
  Get off that bus.
• 59:40
  Let me start that.
• 59:42
  And he was great.
• 59:44
  And so when I came to play Mr. Curry in Paddington, I just kind of tried to channel Stephen.
• 59:52
  That's Blakey.
• 59:54
  Mr. Curry is kind of Blakey-esque.
• 59:55
  You can't have that bear there.
• 59:57
  Get that bear right out of here.
• 59:59
  You know, with his notepad and all that stuff.
• 1:00:01
  It's not right.
• 1:00:02
  We can't have any of these foreigners hanging around here.
• 1:00:04
  Get out now.
• 1:00:06
  So that's all, Stephen.
• 1:00:07
  Was Nicole, Nicole Kibben, cognizant of that when you were making Palentin together?
• 1:00:11
  We said, ah, on the buses.
• 1:00:13
  I get it.
• 1:00:13
  I don't think I mentioned that.
• 1:00:14
  She was so lovely.
• 1:00:15
  She was so sweet and ordinary and helpful and funny.
• 1:00:20
  She was so funny.
• 1:00:21
  And not, we didn't have...
• 1:00:25
  I can remember sitting with her in some grubby room somewhere in North London where we were filming somewhere, and it was grim and it was raining, and it was...
• 1:00:34
  I don't want to disappoint anyone, so turn off now if you're a big Paddington fan.
• 1:00:39
  But Paddington was not actually there when we were filming.
• 1:00:44
  and in fact was being played by a small person in a red duffel coat, which of course just looked like, don't look now to me.
• 1:00:55
  Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  That you were terrified.
• 1:00:58
  And he'd come along running towards you like this.
• 1:01:00
  Fucking hell.
• 1:01:04
  I thought this was a kid's film.
• 1:01:07
  Is there going to be a big sex scene?
• 1:01:13
  But yeah, so she was great.
• 1:01:14
  And I, because I thought, you're one of the most famous people in the world and there was no entourage.
• 1:01:18
  There was no big trailer.
• 1:01:20
  There was no, we were all just sitting in these grubby little rooms.
• 1:01:23
  Great fun.
• 1:01:24
  Paul King, who directed that film and the second one.
• 1:01:26
  It's brilliant.
• 1:01:28
  Just a brilliant director.
• 1:01:30
  And so in love with Paddington, because you have to be, I think we spoke about this before.
• 1:01:36
  That's kind of trick of filmmaking, is to keep the flame alive, to keep the love for the thing alive, while 200 people are standing around going, you know, oh, he hasn't turned up, or we can't use that location, it's raining.
• 1:01:51
  What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?
• 1:01:52
  I always think making a film is like having the builders in, because you've got this lovely idea
• 1:01:58
  for this lovely little, you know, I want to replace this bathroom with this bathroom.
• 1:02:07
  Oh, you know.
• 1:02:07
  If we don't, we can do that.
• 1:02:09
  We can't do this, we can't do that.
• 1:02:10
  Put it there, we can't put it, you know.
• 1:02:13
  And that on a huge scale is what filmmaking is.
• 1:02:16
  You've got this great idea you want to make a film.
• 1:02:19
  You must have it with podcasts.
• 1:02:20
  You think we'll get Peter Capaldi back in again.
• 1:02:24
  He doesn't wear his jumper.
• 1:02:28
  And all he does is make references to people that no one's ever heard of.
• 1:02:35
  How do we get out of this?
• 1:02:36
  Wouldn't have it any other way, sir.
• 1:02:37
  Any other way.
• 1:02:38
  Bless.
• 1:02:40
  Well, touching... Because there was something with In The Loop, going all the way back to In The Loop.
• 1:02:46
  Because something that we did... Because last time we had you on, we did a little read-through.
• 1:02:50
  I don't know if you remember.
• 1:02:51
  We had a little read-through of a Thiccobit sort of scene, pseudo-scene that Alan Moore had written.
• 1:02:58
  between Tucker and Jon Snow.
• 1:03:00
  And actually we thought we do, we didn't think we'd do the same thing here.
• 1:03:03
  One of the big inspirations for Tucker was Alistair Campbell, the spin doctor of Tony Blair.
• 1:03:09
  And something that we did was that over the weekend, I went back through everything that basically Alistair Campbell has ever said.
• 1:03:17
  And I drew up some of the choices quotes.
• 1:03:19
  I thought, oh, is this Tucker?
• 1:03:21
  Is this this little Tucker-esque?
• 1:03:23
  Or is this something that Alistair said?
• 1:03:25
  And I thought we could do a little quickfire round, if you're up for it.
• 1:03:28
  If you're going to follow me down this rabbit hole.
• 1:03:30
  Is this Alistair or is this Malcolm?
• 1:03:32
  This is the fucking Shawshank Redemption, right?
• 1:03:34
  With more tunneling through shit and no fucking redemption.
• 1:03:37
  That's Malcolm.
• 1:03:39
  Correct, that's good.
• 1:03:40
  I thought I'd start you off easy.
• 1:03:41
  We'll get you in.
• 1:03:43
  I forgot that.
• 1:03:43
  That's a good line.
• 1:03:44
  That's a good line.
• 1:03:44
  I just thought, yeah, you can't go wrong with that one.
• 1:03:46
  You can't go wrong with that.
• 1:03:48
  I'm someone who lives and breathes communication.
• 1:03:52
  That's got to be Alistair, right?
• 1:03:54
  No, it's one of yours.
• 1:03:55
  It's one of yours.
• 1:03:57
  It's in the inquiry.
• 1:03:57
  There's no swearing in it.
• 1:04:00
  What do I say?
• 1:04:01
  I'm someone who... Who lives and breathes communication.
• 1:04:04
  I should have said I'm someone who fucking lives and breathes.
• 1:04:08
  Communification.
• 1:04:09
  Communification.
• 1:04:13
  This one I think might throw you.
• 1:04:15
  Nicotine stained man frog.
• 1:04:20
  Nicotine stained man frog.
• 1:04:22
  I don't know.
• 1:04:23
  You're very clever.
• 1:04:24
  Why are you very clever finding these things?
• 1:04:27
  These are all on the record, by the way.
• 1:04:28
  Things that Tucko and Alistair have said.
• 1:04:31
  I don't know who that is.
• 1:04:32
  That's Alistair.
• 1:04:34
  Alistair talking about Farage.
• 1:04:36
  What does he call it?
• 1:04:37
  A nicotine stained man from.
• 1:04:40
  That's great, good.
• 1:04:41
  Well done, Alistair.
• 1:04:42
  Yeah, that's not bad, is it?
• 1:04:44
  Very good.
• 1:04:45
  It's on the last one.
• 1:04:46
  Nicotine stained man frog.
• 1:04:47
  That's good.
• 1:04:48
  Okay, how about this one?
• 1:04:49
  He's so dense that light bends around him.
• 1:04:52
  Yeah, that was one of the great, great lines from The Thick of It, from Malcolm.
• 1:04:59
  I don't know who wrote that.
• 1:05:01
  Simon Blackwell, maybe, was a brilliant writer.
• 1:05:04
  Or maybe it was...
• 1:05:06
  Maybe it was Jesse Armstrong or maybe it was... A great writer.
• 1:05:09
  Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  I think that's from the opening of Series 3.
• 1:05:12
  I think you're coming into number 10.
• 1:05:14
  Yeah.
• 1:05:14
  And you're like... Light's so dense it bends around him, yeah.
• 1:05:19
  And also I had all the human hair.
• 1:05:24
  Most household dust is made from human flesh.
• 1:05:28
  Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  Dead human skin.
• 1:05:29
  Dead human skin, yeah.
• 1:05:31
  That's what you are.
• 1:05:32
  That's right.
• 1:05:32
  That's right.
• 1:05:35
  Not Peter.
• 1:05:36
  Tony Roach.
• 1:05:37
  That might have been Tony Roach who did that and came up with that.
• 1:05:40
  How about this one?
• 1:05:40
  There have been spin doctors around ever since Julius Caesar wrote the greatest soundbite of all time.
• 1:05:45
  Veni, vidi, vici.
• 1:05:47
  That was good.
• 1:05:49
  That's Alistair.
• 1:05:50
  That's a good one, isn't it?
• 1:05:51
  It is a good one.
• 1:05:53
  It's a little serious.
• 1:05:56
  But it's a good notion, I like the notion of it.
• 1:05:59
  I always felt I should have really been in, I was always very, I met Tim McInerney the other day, who's a great actor, who I did a play with years ago.
• 1:06:09
  And Tim, he's well known from Blackadder and stuff like that.
• 1:06:13
  But I went to see Gladiator too, and it was one of the worst days of my life because there was Tim, we went to the Senate.
• 1:06:18
  And there was Tim, and he was a dodgy senator.
• 1:06:22
  And I thought, surely I should be the dodgy senator up there, giving the emperor the wrong advice, the dodgy spin doctor.
• 1:06:31
  Yeah, of course.
• 1:06:32
  He was wonderful.
• 1:06:33
  But I complained to him personally.
• 1:06:36
  You saw him, you were like, oi, how come I wasn't in Gladiator 2?
• 1:06:40
  I know, because there'll never be a Gladiator 3, so it's a shame.
• 1:06:44
  A little tragedy in my life.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah.
• 1:06:46
  But only a little tragedy.
• 1:06:47
  Small tragedy.
• 1:06:48
  Oh, okay.
• 1:06:50
  I think this is a tough one.
• 1:06:52
  I reckon I could find between 12 and 15 things that if I could have him for half an hour, I would absolutely destroy him.
• 1:07:02
  I don't know.
• 1:07:02
  You see, I thought this would be easy.
• 1:07:04
  I thought it would be very, very clear.
• 1:07:07
  But obviously I've forgotten so many of it.
• 1:07:09
  So there's so many good lines.
• 1:07:11
  I would say that's probably Alistair.
• 1:07:13
  That's Alistair as well.
• 1:07:14
  Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  I think you'll appreciate this one actually.
• 1:07:16
  Tell Barclays to fuck off.
• 1:07:18
  Tell Barclays to fuck off.
• 1:07:21
  Is that me?
• 1:07:22
  Is that Malcolm?
• 1:07:23
  That's Alistair.
• 1:07:23
  It's Alistair.
• 1:07:24
  But you were in the room for that one because that was that was at the charity event that you guys did.
• 1:07:29
  Years ago, back in 2012, I want to say, you guys did like a charity event, right?
• 1:07:33
  You and Alistair.
• 1:07:34
  That's right.
• 1:07:34
  Yeah.
• 1:07:35
  Because people were always trying to get us together.
• 1:07:37
  Because the thing is, I hadn't really, I didn't know who Alistair Campbell was.
• 1:07:40
  So when we started to think about, he wasn't actually somebody who was disgusted.
• 1:07:45
  Armando just said this is a kind of spin doctor and there would be references to that position of being an advisor and of course Alistair would be mentioned in that but so would Bernard Ingham and other people and yes Minister obviously was a reference as well
• 1:08:06
  So I hadn't seen him when we started shooting.
• 1:08:11
  So he had no influence over the choices I was making.
• 1:08:17
  And then I gradually began to see him.
• 1:08:21
  I think there was a documentary I saw, which was following a week in the life of number 10 or something like that.
• 1:08:28
  And he did a press conference.
• 1:08:31
  And I remember copying.
• 1:08:34
  There was kind of a vibe about it.
• 1:08:37
  And they were kind of relaxed, kind of trying to be funny, but also being a bit rotten and a bit hard and a noisy kind of sort of, yeah, kind of newspaper-y kind of journalistic kind of vibe was what he seemed to send out.
• 1:08:56
  So I remember sort of trying to grab some of that.
• 1:08:58
  And then one night, but people kept trying to get us together and I didn't want to.
• 1:09:02
  Because as the show became more successful, it became more common to say it was based on him.
• 1:09:07
  And as I say, it hadn't been based on him.
• 1:09:10
  But then one night I went to a thing called... Now, they don't do this anymore.
• 1:09:14
  Why not?
• 1:09:16
  It's called the Politics Awards.
• 1:09:17
  It's like the BAFTAs for politicians.
• 1:09:19
  Right.
• 1:09:21
  So you can imagine it's audiences largely politicians.
• 1:09:26
  So Channel 4 used to do it.
• 1:09:27
  They don't do it anymore.
• 1:09:28
  But they invited us because they have a category best TV show.
• 1:09:32
  So obviously, I think of it as normally the best TV show.
• 1:09:35
  And I went to the table and there were nameplates.
• 1:09:38
  And my name was there.
• 1:09:39
  And I could see the nameplate next to me was Alistair Campbell.
• 1:09:43
  So I thought, oh, fuck, he's coming.
• 1:09:46
  This is going to be it.
• 1:09:48
  I'm going to actually meet him now.
• 1:09:50
  And indeed he showed up.
• 1:09:51
  And he's very big.
• 1:09:53
  He's very tall and quite an imposing kind of guy.
• 1:09:59
  And fast, spoke very quickly.
• 1:10:02
  And we got on fine.
• 1:10:05
  But I noticed he spoke in gags all the time.
• 1:10:08
  Not that they were very good gags, with all due respect, I'm sure.
• 1:10:13
  I perhaps just didn't know the references.
• 1:10:15
  Perhaps he was Michael.
• 1:10:17
  But let's go references that I didn't get.
• 1:10:19
  But I thought that's really interesting.
• 1:10:20
  You're just talking.
• 1:10:22
  By talking in gags, I mean, saying, how are you doing?
• 1:10:25
  How's your day been?
• 1:10:26
  I like your hair.
• 1:10:27
  It's crazy looking.
• 1:10:28
  Where'd you get that from?
• 1:10:28
  Is that a wig?
• 1:10:29
  Okay, so later on, we're going to do this.
• 1:10:31
  Okay, those shoes, are you serious?
• 1:10:33
  Where did that guy come from?
• 1:10:34
  Fulham, right, I knew you come from Fulham.
• 1:10:36
  Okay, let's sort out Thursday.
• 1:10:38
  So all the time,
• 1:10:40
  the way the way it's gags because I always worried about how you play in a comedy this sounds like quite an actory sort of thing to say do the people in comedies know they're funny are there gags are they are they are they making those gags in real life in the real life that we are pretending to inhabit or are they accidental
• 1:11:03
  combinations of words that the audience is recognized as a gag, but the character doesn't.
• 1:11:09
  And I thought, oh no, he recognized.
• 1:11:10
  So Malcolm, Malcolm knows he's telling, Malcolm knows he's making funny remarks.
• 1:11:15
  That was a thing that happened post that.
• 1:11:17
  I thought, all right, that's what he does.
• 1:11:19
  And he was fascinated because also that award ceremony, you can imagine is full of conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Clyde Cranier, everybody, you know,
• 1:11:32
  And Alistair, because he was quite in his pomp then, had a line of people would come and...
• 1:11:39
  I remember Dennis Davis, who's a kind of conservative, big conservative politician.
• 1:11:46
  being delighted to see Alistair, and then kind of embracing and chatting and having a laugh.
• 1:11:51
  And then some other Tory would come up and they'd all have a laugh.
• 1:11:54
  So seeing all these kind of what you thought were people who would be on opposite sides, seeing them all be friendly to each other and coming to enjoy each other's crack.
• 1:12:06
  was surprising and rather lovely, actually.
• 1:12:09
  There should be more of that.
• 1:12:11
  We could do with a lot more of that.
• 1:12:13
  Yeah, it's something we don't really see, is it?
• 1:12:14
  You don't really see.
• 1:12:15
  I thought, well, no, that's sensible.
• 1:12:18
  You have differences of opinion about policy, but it doesn't mean you hate each other.
• 1:12:26
  And I'm sure some people do hate each other.
• 1:12:29
  And of course, we live in a society now in which hating each other is encouraged in order to fill the coffers of our corporate masters.
• 1:12:38
  But we don't hate each other, do we?
• 1:12:40
  No.
• 1:12:40
  We all love each other.
• 1:12:42
  That's what I'm about now, sending the love out there.
• 1:12:45
  So Markituck is a secretly close mate with Mannion, by that logic.
• 1:12:50
  I think that would be...
• 1:12:53
  Yeah, I think that would be, that's a possibility.
• 1:12:57
  And at the same time, you have to wield the dagger.
• 1:13:03
  When it's time, when it's time, you have to do the deed.
• 1:13:08
  But that's politics.
• 1:13:09
  And that's one of the kind of fascinating things about it.
• 1:13:12
  You know, tough, it's all, you know, the world now is just like showbiz or this podcast or whatever, whatever this is, you know, it's all just stuff.
• 1:13:24
  But those are serious people dealing with serious issues trying to make it work.
• 1:13:32
  And if you're trying to make things work in the real world, you've got to put up with other people's.
• 1:13:37
  You've got to have differences of opinions and not want to kill people.
• 1:13:40
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:13:41
  It's all gone terribly wrong now.
• 1:13:43
  Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 1:13:45
  Do you want to hear one more?
• 1:13:46
  Yeah, I do.
• 1:13:48
  Sorry.
• 1:13:49
  I think this one's quite, should be, actually, well, actually there's one more, but then there's one that is such a good quote.
• 1:13:55
  I kind of want to just read it out anyway.
• 1:13:56
  You must do it.
• 1:13:57
  Is that okay?
• 1:13:57
  All right.
• 1:13:58
  I think we should use the carrot and stick approach.
• 1:14:00
  You take a carrot, you stick it up his fucking ass, followed by the stick, followed by an even bigger, rougher carrot.
• 1:14:08
  Well, I think that's Malcolm.
• 1:14:12
  But the rougher carrot, I don't remember.
• 1:14:14
  That's one of yours.
• 1:14:15
  It's one of mine.
• 1:14:16
  Yeah, I don't know if Alistair could get away with that.
• 1:14:19
  But it's one of my favourite.
• 1:14:21
  I thought it might be a trick question.
• 1:14:22
  I thought it might be Alistair quoting Malcolm.
• 1:14:26
  Adding the rougher carrot.
• 1:14:28
  Well, who knows?
• 1:14:29
  Maybe he has quoted it.
• 1:14:30
  And then the last one, which I think will, you know, it's just fuck the fuck off.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah.
• 1:14:36
  Fuck the fuck off.
• 1:14:37
  Yeah.
• 1:14:37
  Is that even a quote?
• 1:14:38
  So that's just a thing people say, isn't it?
• 1:14:40
  Fuck the fuck off.
• 1:14:41
  That's not a...
• 1:14:43
  I'm from Glasgow.
• 1:14:44
  We say that all the time.
• 1:14:47
  You hear that, you know, in the maternity ward.
• 1:14:52
  When you first arrived.
• 1:14:55
  Here's your baby.
• 1:14:56
  Fuck the fuck off.
• 1:15:00
  That's Alistair.
• 1:15:01
  That's Alistair.
• 1:15:02
  That's Alistair.
• 1:15:02
  Fuck the fuck off.
• 1:15:03
  Yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Apparently that's something that he would say.
• 1:15:05
  I mean, cause Mark Kermode asked him about, asked him about that when in the loop came out, would you, would you ask, would, would he ever go full tuck?
• 1:15:11
  And he said, Oh yeah, I did used to say fuck the fuck off.
• 1:15:13
  He said, maybe he did invent that.
• 1:15:17
  That's quite a good one.
• 1:15:18
  I meant to ask like, other than him, like doing gags, like what did he, what did you talk about when you've, that first time you met him, when you were sitting next to each other, did he say, Oh, love the thick of it.
• 1:15:27
  Love what
• 1:15:30
  I can't really remember what we... We didn't talk about a lot because...
• 1:15:37
  I think he said the show was rubbish and stuff like that.
• 1:15:41
  But it was all generally in that kind of jovial, viperish kind of tone.
• 1:15:46
  I think he kind of slagged off the show, but also said he liked it as well.
• 1:15:53
  But I don't think we did.
• 1:15:53
  We didn't speak of anything of any...
• 1:15:57
  I saw him again quite really about a year ago I saw him because I was getting the train to Glasgow because he happened down to Glasgow a lot and he was getting off at press and I didn't see him but I think he was going to see his football team Barnsley Barnsley because it's from the north so I saw him briefly then but we never really talk about anything really because it's a bit embarrassing but
• 1:16:26
  You know, and also it's not really true.
• 1:16:29
  It's not, I didn't study him or I'm not like him.
• 1:16:34
  We don't, you know.
• 1:16:37
  I think, as I've said before, the people, the only people I knew who behaved the way the character in the script behaved were agents in America.
• 1:16:48
  At CAA or ICM, you know, the agents were very powerful and potent and brutal and funny.
• 1:16:55
  They were really funny and they really swore a lot.
• 1:17:00
  So that was...
• 1:17:03
  If I had a picture in my head, it was of a number of American agents I'd come across.
• 1:17:11
  But these untruths become popular and begin to become preferable to the truth.
• 1:17:20
  The apocrypha kind of takes on a life of its own.
• 1:17:24
  Well, it's something I realised from having been around for a while now.
• 1:17:29
  I'm often asked things, questions about,
• 1:17:33
  You know, when we're publicizing things, I'm asked about whether it's Doctor Who or this or that.
• 1:17:38
  And I'll tell some story that I've probably told a hundred times before.
• 1:17:42
  But sometimes I realize while I'm telling it, I've buffed it up and shaved bits off of it and maybe altered the ending a little bit to make it more palatable or make it funnier.
• 1:17:59
  And it's not the truth.
• 1:18:03
  It's better than the truth.
• 1:18:04
  It's more show business friendly.
• 1:18:06
  That's why I often say to people, do you want the real answer or do you want the showbiz answer?
• 1:18:11
  Because the showbiz answer is more audience friendly.
• 1:18:15
  But the real answer is more complex, maybe a bit duller, but might pay dividends.
• 1:18:22
  But then maybe not.
• 1:18:25
  as the ring of truth about it, like running into Alistair on the train on, on the way up North.
• 1:18:30
  That's true.
• 1:18:31
  But there was nothing to, there's no punchline to it.
• 1:18:35
  Just, you saw him on a train.
• 1:18:36
  It's just like, you know, is the buffet bar open?
• 1:18:39
  No, it's shut now.
• 1:18:40
  Oh, that's a shame.
• 1:18:41
  Okay.
• 1:18:42
  All right.
• 1:18:43
  There's no, there's no gag to it.
• 1:18:47
  So sometimes you have to make up a gag.
• 1:18:49
  Cause I mean, you can't go on, you know, you can't go on Graham Norton and just talk.
• 1:18:55
  You've got to go on and have stories.
• 1:18:56
  It's like all of those shows, they phone you up and say what you're going to talk about.
• 1:19:01
  Meaning, have you got any gags?
• 1:19:04
  It's kind of like being in front of Spandau Ballet again, isn't it?
• 1:19:08
  Did the stand-up comedy.
• 1:19:11
  Yeah.
• 1:19:12
  Yeah.
• 1:19:12
  It is.
• 1:19:13
  Is that how that works?
• 1:19:13
  They ring you up and they run you through?
• 1:19:16
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:19:17
  Any show.
• 1:19:18
  Any show like that.
• 1:19:19
  I feel like we're not doing our job properly.
• 1:19:21
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:19:22
  No, but I think that's why podcasts are very successful.
• 1:19:26
  because it allows people a little longer with the folks.
• 1:19:32
  I mean, I think it's a weird world we live in because when I grew up, people who are actors were mysterious and distant and didn't live in the same world as me.
• 1:19:47
  Whereas everyone I see now, every actor seems to be saying, I'm exactly like you.
• 1:19:55
  We are all the same, and I'm exactly the same as you all are.
• 1:20:01
  So please love me.
• 1:20:04
  Whereas before they were slightly, you didn't know who they were.
• 1:20:08
  And you get these little slivers of who they might be.
• 1:20:11
  So they had a mystery, and you probably gave them the benefit of the doubt.
• 1:20:15
  Mm.
• 1:20:16
  But it's the way the world is, because the biggest stars in the world have to do.
• 1:20:20
  You know, I see George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Nicole or any of those people, they've got to be on shows talking about the funniest thing that happened to them on the set, what really made you laugh or what was, you know.
• 1:20:36
  I get so bored with hearing what a hilarious time everybody had.
• 1:20:41
  You obviously can't move in Hollywood.
• 1:20:43
  You can't move around film studios for the laughter or people falling about at the hilarious things that happened on set.
• 1:20:50
  Yeah.
• 1:20:51
  you know what's terrible you know and did you take any mementos from the set of schindler's list or whatever it might be do you know what i mean yeah totally i did not expect schindler's list to be the film i didn't but you know what it's like but that is what it's like what would you take from the set of schindler's list then
• 1:21:16
  Well, that's an extreme.
• 1:21:17
  But you know what I mean?
• 1:21:18
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:19
  Of course, absolutely.
• 1:21:20
  What a hilarious thing.
• 1:21:21
  What did you take?
• 1:21:22
  Tell us about a day when you couldn't stop laughing.
• 1:21:26
  This is funny.
• 1:21:27
  You mentioned Schindler's List.
• 1:21:27
  But I actually have been to the place where they shot the Schindler's List in Poland.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah.
• 1:21:32
  This is taking a turn, I didn't expect to say.
• 1:21:34
  But where Spielberg built the camp outside of Krakow.
• 1:21:39
  Yeah.
• 1:21:40
  Where they shot a lot of the Jewish ghetto stuff and the camps.
• 1:21:43
  He built that just outside Krakow in this big quarry.
• 1:21:46
  Well, in a quarry.
• 1:21:47
  Quarries, you know, come back to the quarries, you know, Doctor Who.
• 1:21:50
  But it was this massive quarry.
• 1:21:51
  And they pulled the set down when they left.
• 1:21:55
  But they hadn't completely removed it.
• 1:21:57
  So you can go to the quarry.
• 1:21:59
  I mean, I didn't know this until I was in Krakow with my mate, and we were like, oh, what is there to do in Krakow?
• 1:22:03
  And we had wandered around and seen all the main sites.
• 1:22:04
  We were like, oh, there's – and I – I mean, obviously, it's not an easy film to watch, but it's a great film.
• 1:22:10
  And I said, oh, they shot it just over there.
• 1:22:12
  So we went out, and you can still see, like, the barbed wire poles, the holder poles, and it's all there.
• 1:22:20
  But it's all overgrown.
• 1:22:21
  It's just been left.
• 1:22:22
  Yeah, that's –
• 1:22:23
  It's a wonderful film.
• 1:22:24
  It's great.
• 1:22:26
  So powerful and so beautifully made.
• 1:22:30
  But I remember I did a play with Liam Neeson, who's delightful.
• 1:22:34
  And he'd been in Schindler's List, which was both a...
• 1:22:40
  a joy and a curse for us because we were in a play, which wasn't that successful, but it was on in New York and it was sold out because people would, busloads of people would come into Manhattan from outside of the city to see Oscar Schindler.
• 1:23:00
  And of course, as the evening wore on, well about five minutes into the play, they realized it wasn't, they weren't going to see Oscar Shinder.
• 1:23:06
  They were Oscar Wilde, it was actually.
• 1:23:12
  But actually,
• 1:23:14
  But I always remember this made me laugh so much because obviously Liam, that really projected him into this kind of big, big league.
• 1:23:23
  But I've known and admired Liam for years because Liam was a great, and also he was a great, for those of us who like have accents and all that stuff, Liam was a great model and inspiration because he was doing all this great work and he had his accent and he had his Irish identity.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah.
• 1:23:43
  And they had, for the play we were doing, I remember they had a very grand sort of cocktail party in a bar somewhere in Manhattan to publicise the beginning of the play.
• 1:23:58
  And, you know, obviously a lot of these parties are, you know, the waiting staff are running in and out with, you know, trays full of sausages and hummus and cocktails.
• 1:24:10
  This guy who was a waiter came running up the stairs
• 1:24:14
  onto the floor we were on with this tray of sausages, and the first person he saw was Liam.
• 1:24:20
  He went, wow, Darkman.
• 1:24:24
  Which of course was a kind of film, a superhero movie that Liam had made.
• 1:24:30
  And I loved that that's who this guy reckoned that Liam was.
• 1:24:35
  Never mind Oscar Schindler, it was Darkman, whoa.
• 1:24:38
  Darkman.
• 1:24:39
  I thought you were going to say Excalibur.
• 1:24:41
  Excalibur.
• 1:24:42
  That would have been a deep cut for Liam.
• 1:24:44
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:46
  Wow.
• 1:24:46
  Wow.
• 1:24:47
  Did you talk to Liam at all about...
• 1:24:49
  So Shindler's List had just come out.
• 1:24:51
  Is that right?
• 1:24:52
  So he just... What, Shindler's List had just come out?
• 1:24:54
  So when you were doing the play with him, it had just come out and people were...
• 1:24:58
  I can't remember.
• 1:24:58
  It hadn't just come out, but I think it'd been a year or a couple of years.
• 1:25:02
  But I think it's the first time Lee had been on stage since that.
• 1:25:07
  So I think there was a big, understandably, a kind of interest in seeing Oscar Schindler live.
• 1:25:14
  Yeah.
• 1:25:16
  But it wasn't Oscar Schindler.
• 1:25:17
  So, I mean, speaking of actors, and am I right in thinking that you met, like, because you're a big Duvall fan and a big De Niro fan and Pacino fan.
• 1:25:25
  And I want to say, you've met all three of them.
• 1:25:26
  I met all of them, yeah.
• 1:25:27
  Yeah.
• 1:25:27
  Like, how did that come about?
• 1:25:29
  Three legends, speaking of acting legends.
• 1:25:33
  Oh, God, is this about... Well, one of them I met through Liam...
• 1:25:37
  Oh, okay.
• 1:25:38
  Because Liam, often big stars would come and visit him after the show.
• 1:25:43
  And yet, you know, we'd look over the balcony from where those of us who played the smaller parts, as tend to be, the dressing rooms are further.
• 1:25:51
  The big stars, the lead in the play always has the dressing room that's closest to the stage.
• 1:25:56
  And if you have a smaller part, you might be on the next floor.
• 1:26:00
  If you have a smaller part again, you might be on the next.
• 1:26:03
  And then if you have a very small part, you'll be right at the top.
• 1:26:09
  There would always be people, including myself, looking over the stairs after the show to see Jessica Lange or whoever is being led into Liam's.
• 1:26:22
  But he said to me one day, he said, Oh, Alice is coming tonight.
• 1:26:26
  Was that a passable Liam Neeson impression?
• 1:26:28
  That was good.
• 1:26:30
  I don't think so.
• 1:26:31
  I haven't really got a Liam.
• 1:26:34
  Have you ever seen Taken?
• 1:26:35
  Eh?
• 1:26:35
  Have you seen Taken, the film he did?
• 1:26:38
  Of course.
• 1:26:38
  If you don't give my daughter back now.
• 1:26:40
  I mean, that's the best I can do.
• 1:26:41
  What?
• 1:26:41
  I'm not going to, no.
• 1:26:44
  Now you know what it's like.
• 1:26:45
  That'll be the end of it.
• 1:26:45
  Yeah, I'm so sorry.
• 1:26:49
  I will find you.
• 1:26:49
  No, he said to me, oh, Al's in tonight.
• 1:26:52
  So come and meet him.
• 1:26:54
  So I went into Liam's and...
• 1:26:58
  It was all like this.
• 1:27:01
  I don't know what am I going to talk to him about.
• 1:27:05
  I don't know what to talk to him about.
• 1:27:08
  No.
• 1:27:09
  And of course you end up...
• 1:27:10
  My fallback position with those guys is because they're all Italian, is to talk about Italian stuff.
• 1:27:17
  Of course.
• 1:27:18
  You know, but it doesn't really work because they're so distanced themselves from Italy that they might know where someone's come from.
• 1:27:28
  But he was lovely.
• 1:27:30
  He was absolutely lovely.
• 1:27:32
  But when I met him, I thought, I don't really want to meet people who I really admire.
• 1:27:39
  because I've got nothing to say to them.
• 1:27:42
  Because you can't say, you can't get into a big discussion about Michael Corleone.
• 1:27:48
  How did you do that?
• 1:27:49
  I'd love to, how did you do that?
• 1:27:51
  Where do you start?
• 1:27:52
  How do you figure out what to do?
• 1:27:54
  How do you say that line?
• 1:27:56
  What was that process?
• 1:27:57
  You can't do that because you don't know them.
• 1:27:59
  And you're nobody, you're three flights up in the theater.
• 1:28:03
  But he was lovely, he was great.
• 1:28:06
  Robert Duvall was just, Armando and I were in America selling the thick of it at some television thing.
• 1:28:17
  We were in a corner in a hotel, and Duvall walked into our corner, obviously by mistake, and looked at us.
• 1:28:23
  I was like, fuck, that's Robert Duvall.
• 1:28:25
  He just looked at us, smiled, and he waved with that crinkle face, and he was gone.
• 1:28:30
  That was the best way to sort of meet people.
• 1:28:36
  Robert De Niro was very, I don't know how to tell it, whether I should tell this story or not.
• 1:28:41
  You can tell the showbiz version if you want.
• 1:28:44
  Well, it's not, I'm such an admirer of us.
• 1:28:48
  What he's done is bravery and courage and taken on Trump.
• 1:28:54
  What a guy.
• 1:28:55
  I mean, what an amazing person.
• 1:28:59
  Yeah.
• 1:29:00
  And also playing Vito Collioy.
• 1:29:04
  I think it's just, I believe that person lived and that we got to see him.
• 1:29:11
  I can't believe, you see that performance, it's like, it's like a memory from the past or something.
• 1:29:18
  It's, and he looks incredible.
• 1:29:23
  He looks like someone from an old photograph come to life.
• 1:29:28
  Um,
• 1:29:30
  Okay, we went to, I don't really go out.
• 1:29:33
  I get invited places that I don't normally go.
• 1:29:36
  Then I got an invitation.
• 1:29:37
  Robert De Niro invites you to the opening of, they have a restaurant chain, right?
• 1:29:44
  Don't they?
• 1:29:46
  So they opened up a restaurant.
• 1:29:47
  So I said, well, I love Robert De Niro.
• 1:29:51
  He's like, maybe I should go.
• 1:29:54
  No, no, I won't go.
• 1:29:56
  And then, wait a minute, it says, Robert De Niro invites you.
• 1:30:00
  well, he must have checked this.
• 1:30:01
  He must have gone through the list.
• 1:30:03
  So if I don't turn up, even if he'll go, forget him.
• 1:30:09
  So I went.
• 1:30:10
  And it was big and it was packed and all that stuff.
• 1:30:13
  And it was a seating plan and I was going.
• 1:30:15
  And I was sat with some other actors.
• 1:30:17
  Some other actors had been invited.
• 1:30:21
  We were all looking.
• 1:30:22
  Where is he?
• 1:30:23
  Where is he?
• 1:30:23
  He's over there.
• 1:30:25
  It's actually Robert Deere.
• 1:30:26
  Fantastic.
• 1:30:27
  But then the seating plan was presented and all the other actors hated me because in the seating plan, I was sat next to Robert De Niro.
• 1:30:35
  No way.
• 1:30:36
  So I'm like, oh, fuck.
• 1:30:39
  Is this good news or bad news?
• 1:30:45
  Is this the worst thing that's ever happened to me or the best thing that's ever happened?
• 1:30:51
  I don't know.
• 1:30:52
  But there was no way out.
• 1:30:57
  I was sat next to Robert De Niro.
• 1:31:00
  So I was going to have to make conversation or something.
• 1:31:04
  Or maybe I should just not take my seat.
• 1:31:06
  Maybe I should just go.
• 1:31:09
  And struggling with this whole thing of, you know, well, if you don't take your seat, you're just being a wimp.
• 1:31:15
  You know, and he might be great and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:31:17
  Might be lovely to talk to.
• 1:31:20
  Do it.
• 1:31:22
  So the other actors all hated me because I had this privilege of sitting next to Bobby, Robert De Niro.
• 1:31:29
  And I was sat here and Robert was there.
• 1:31:32
  And there were two Americans sat there.
• 1:31:34
  They were probably huge.
• 1:31:35
  I don't know who they were.
• 1:31:37
  But Robert spoke to these people.
• 1:31:41
  They were talking to him all night long.
• 1:31:45
  And then very, very occasionally he'd go,
• 1:31:50
  And I thought, well, what do I do here?
• 1:31:52
  Because they're obviously talking about Trump and all important things and stuff like that.
• 1:31:59
  Do I try to catch his eye?
• 1:32:02
  If I catch his eye, will he go, oh, this looks like a seasoned actor who might be interested in chatting about movies and stuff like that.
• 1:32:10
  But no, I'll do it like that.
• 1:32:13
  And there's like a little window.
• 1:32:15
  Just every time he looked around, but he only looked around about three times.
• 1:32:19
  The glance was getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
• 1:32:22
  And I thought the next time he's not going to look around.
• 1:32:26
  So I thought, I've got to get in.
• 1:32:30
  Do I get in or do I not?
• 1:32:33
  That was my dilemma.
• 1:32:35
  Do I try to engage Robert De Niro in conversation or not?
• 1:32:39
  I should have.
• 1:32:42
  I should have been conscious of what people say about him, which is, he's a wonderful man, but a man of few words.
• 1:32:49
  But I didn't.
• 1:32:49
  I thought, I'm a wimp if I don't try and engage him in conversation.
• 1:32:55
  So I did.
• 1:32:57
  The next time he looked around, I plunged into that window, smashed it open.
• 1:33:02
  And I just ranted at him in the nicest possible way, using my only fallback position with the Italian-American gods, which was Italy.
• 1:33:17
  And I just spoke about my father in my crying.
• 1:33:21
  and the village which I came from in Italy called Piccinisco and which I'd just got Italian citizenship.
• 1:33:26
  And he'd got Italian citizenship as well.
• 1:33:29
  And I said the village was very small, but it was lovely.
• 1:33:31
  And I spoke for about five minutes.
• 1:33:35
  Well, it probably wasn't that.
• 1:33:36
  It was probably like a minute.
• 1:33:38
  But it was terrifying.
• 1:33:39
  It was like jumping out of an aeroplane.
• 1:33:43
  LAUGHTER Looking for the parachute, you know.
• 1:33:46
  LAUGHTER
• 1:33:49
  Please, please, please just.
• 1:33:53
  And he listened to us and he went, yeah.
• 1:34:01
  Oh.
• 1:34:02
  And I crawled away.
• 1:34:05
  Oh.
• 1:34:06
  But, you know, he's wonderful.
• 1:34:09
  And why would you have stopped for this rant, this unintelligible rant?
• 1:34:14
  I'm sure I got completely Gleswigian as well.
• 1:34:17
  He must have gone, who is this guy?
• 1:34:18
  Who sat him here?
• 1:34:21
  Let's get on with trying to get rid of Trump.
• 1:34:23
  So thank God he did that.
• 1:34:25
  He didn't listen to me.
• 1:34:26
  But it was, you know...
• 1:34:28
  It was embarrassing.
• 1:34:30
  So that's why I avoid going to see famous people.
• 1:34:34
  But I love him.
• 1:34:35
  And I just think he's incredible.
• 1:34:36
  He's so brave.
• 1:34:37
  I mean, he must get death threats all the time.
• 1:34:40
  But my God, he doesn't stop.
• 1:34:44
  amazing do you see that video that he released I think where Trump was either getting elected or re-elected and he was just it's like a black and white sort of camera this punk this clown this absolute gangster he's fabulous no holds barred absolutely fabulous amazing man and what an actor it's such a shame as well because also I think movies have changed so much
• 1:35:04
  there aren't these roles around anymore.
• 1:35:08
  He played those fabulous seminal roles.
• 1:35:10
  And also he's hilarious.
• 1:35:12
  I mean, New York, New York is one of the funniest.
• 1:35:15
  Midnight run.
• 1:35:16
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:35:17
  He's fabulous.
• 1:35:17
  He's hilarious in that.
• 1:35:19
  But he's hilarious in New York, New York also.
• 1:35:22
  Brilliant.
• 1:35:22
  So that was Mike's.
• 1:35:23
  I'd love to meet him again.
• 1:35:25
  I wouldn't say anything.
• 1:35:29
  I'd just sit there.
• 1:35:30
  Hats off to you, though, for jumping in that window.
• 1:35:33
  Do you think that was the right thing to do?
• 1:35:36
  I think if I, I mean, I don't know.
• 1:35:39
  I would like to think I would do the same thing because it's Robert De Niro.
• 1:35:41
  You know, it's like the maestro.
• 1:35:43
  Yeah, you'd hate yourself for not trying.
• 1:35:46
  But I hated myself for trying.
• 1:35:47
  You know, so there was no, I didn't win.
• 1:35:55
  except I learnt that didn't matter really because he was incredible.
• 1:36:00
  He was still incredible.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah, well, I'm sure he's like, he's had a lot weirder and a lot worse.
• 1:36:05
  I mean that and I'm trying to make that in the best way.
• 1:36:09
  Thanks for placing that in that kind of zone of weirdness, that zone of weird interactions that poor Robert De Niro has had to interact with.
• 1:36:17
  He was dressed as Travis Bickle with Mohicans and stuff like that.
• 1:36:20
  And now he's got a... Not as...
• 1:36:23
  Not at all.
• 1:36:24
  A geeky Gleswigean ice cream man.
• 1:36:29
  No, he's great.
• 1:36:29
  I love him.
• 1:36:31
  I love him.
• 1:36:32
  It diminished my love for him for a little bit.
• 1:36:36
  Do you have a favourite, I mean, you just mentioned a couple of bangers there.
• 1:36:38
  Do you have a favourite De Niro film or performance?
• 1:36:43
  Well, you know, as I said, I think as a comic actor, he's deeply underrated.
• 1:36:48
  I know he's, you know, he does meet the focus and all that stuff like that.
• 1:36:51
  Of course, yeah, the new one.
• 1:36:52
  You know, he's far more, you know, he's great at all that stuff, but...
• 1:36:56
  In New York, New York, he plays this sax player who is a guy who is, he's a kind of waster, except he's fabulous at the saxophone, but he's also a charmer and he's witty.
• 1:37:12
  But he makes terrible gags and jokes, but he's so charming he gets away with it.
• 1:37:17
  And it's just funny.
• 1:37:18
  I can't quite explain it.
• 1:37:19
  He's just very, very funny.
• 1:37:21
  Obviously, taxi driver's a mess, but Vito Corleone,
• 1:37:25
  made that character real.
• 1:37:27
  I kind of believe that person existed in that way.
• 1:37:32
  And he only speaks about two lines of English.
• 1:37:36
  He can't speak Italian.
• 1:37:37
  He's not an Italian speaker.
• 1:37:39
  He just went off and learned how to say those lines.
• 1:37:43
  Amazing.
• 1:37:44
  Yeah, because that was what he did at that time, wasn't it?
• 1:37:46
  He was all about the method, wasn't it, in the research.
• 1:37:48
  Like King of Comedy, which is probably my favorite.
• 1:37:50
  Well, King of Comedy is great.
• 1:37:51
  He would talk about humor.
• 1:37:53
  He went off and did stand-up gigs in prep for that.
• 1:37:58
  He wouldn't headline it, but he'd go into a nightclub and do a gig.
• 1:38:02
  in the run up to that.
• 1:38:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:04
  But he also seems to be, I don't think he's a classic method actor in the sense that he gets himself into a zone and will not allow any interaction during the filming process.
• 1:38:18
  I sense that he's a slightly more open than that.
• 1:38:22
  And I have heard him say to actors, you know, let yourself off the hook.
• 1:38:28
  You know, don't,
• 1:38:28
  make it so difficult for yourself by concocting all of these challenges for yourself.
• 1:38:35
  There's an elemental truth that you can pursue and touch, which all that research helps.
• 1:38:42
  I think the older you get, the less the research is valuable to you, or you've done it.
• 1:38:47
  I mean, it's like if I play a detective now, I'm not gonna go in a squad car for,
• 1:38:53
  But when I was young, I'd go in a squad car and be with police people and detectives to see what that was like.
• 1:38:59
  Did you ever do that?
• 1:39:00
  Go on a ride along?
• 1:39:03
  It was useless.
• 1:39:05
  Except I was able to say I'd done it.
• 1:39:07
  And I sort of, I think I needed that, needed to validate my authority in that way.
• 1:39:16
  But it was not really helpful.
• 1:39:18
  I appreciate you mentioning New York, New York, as far as De Niro, because that's a bit of a deep cut, I think, for Scorsese De Niro.
• 1:39:22
  That's one that people don't often talk about.
• 1:39:24
  Yeah, I think so, a little bit.
• 1:39:25
  I think he kind of...
• 1:39:26
  It's great.
• 1:39:27
  Yeah, it sort of slips through the cracks a bit in between, like, you know, your taxi drivers and your raging bulls and your king of comedies.
• 1:39:31
  But it's like, because he is funny, but he's also so sort of brutal as well to Liza Minnelli.
• 1:39:36
  As well, he's got his moments of, like, real visceral, kind of, like, you know, anger as well, as amongst the charm and the kind of... Yeah, it's a fabulous film, because also it's...
• 1:39:46
  a mashup of Martin Scorsese and Vincent Minnelli.
• 1:39:53
  You know, Scorsese is taking his love for new cinema and combining it with his love for classic Hollywood cinema.
• 1:40:06
  So there are scenes in it which visually look like they've been short
• 1:40:17
  You know, there's a huge argument that De Niro has with Liza Minnelli, like in a forest, in the snow.
• 1:40:24
  Yeah.
• 1:40:25
  And it's kind of like White Christmas.
• 1:40:27
  But they're giving it full-on mean streets kind of stuff.
• 1:40:33
  And also, of course, she is incredible and does New York, New York, and channels her mother so completely.
• 1:40:41
  I went to see Liza Minnelli and I was in a – this is not a disappointing story.
• 1:40:48
  I didn't meet her personally, but I was in Glasgow and I was visiting my mother.
• 1:40:54
  God rest her, she's no longer with us.
• 1:40:56
  And I'd go and visit my mother and I'd be with her and it would be like,
• 1:41:03
  We'd have gone through all the topics of conversation by about half eight.
• 1:41:06
  And I thought, well, I'll nip out and I'll stay the night, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:41:12
  And I popped into town and I walked past the concert hall in Glasgow and it said, Liza Minnelli.
• 1:41:17
  And I thought, that's interesting.
• 1:41:18
  And they said, Liza Minnelli, tonight.
• 1:41:21
  And I thought, what time is it?
• 1:41:23
  And I said, I said, box office, have you got any tickets left for tonight?
• 1:41:26
  She said, yeah.
• 1:41:27
  I saw, I bought a ticket.
• 1:41:29
  And I went to, packed, and this was about nine o'clock.
• 1:41:36
  So I'm thinking the show's, I missed the illness, I missed a little bit of this.
• 1:41:42
  Packed, crazy, Glasgow audience all going crazy because it's like, she does New York, New York.
• 1:41:47
  Yeah.
• 1:41:48
  I thought, oh, fucking hell, this is going to be some show.
• 1:41:50
  It's New York, New York.
• 1:41:53
  If I can make it, I'll make it anyway.
• 1:41:55
  It's up to you.
• 1:41:55
  New York, New York.
• 1:41:58
  Good night.
• 1:42:00
  And it's like five past nine.
• 1:42:02
  And the show is winding up.
• 1:42:06
  You can't do this to me, but it was.
• 1:42:08
  She was, I think she'd been on since eight.
• 1:42:11
  And I just caught the end.
• 1:42:13
  That's an interesting story, isn't it?
• 1:42:14
  You see, the researchers for Graham Nott would have said, no.
• 1:42:21
  Or can you work on that a little bit?
• 1:42:22
  A little bit of showbiz, a little buff for that one.
• 1:42:24
  Can you take that to one of your writers?
• 1:42:29
  Some people do that.
• 1:42:30
  Some people have writers.
• 1:42:32
  Or they'll take their material and say, this is what I'm doing on the show.
• 1:42:34
  Can you give us a few lines?
• 1:42:35
  Really?
• 1:42:36
  I'm amazed you don't know this.
• 1:42:38
  No, no.
• 1:42:39
  Absolutely.
• 1:42:40
  Hands up.
• 1:42:41
  Like, no idea.
• 1:42:41
  Behind the curtain.
• 1:42:43
  Yeah.
• 1:42:43
  So they'll have like, almost like joke writers, essentially.
• 1:42:45
  Or like, just write someone who will...
• 1:42:48
  You'll give it a little buff and be like, right, let's try this.
• 1:42:51
  Couple of lines.
• 1:42:52
  Bloody hell.
• 1:42:53
  I had no idea.
• 1:42:54
  Yeah.
• 1:42:55
  No.
• 1:42:56
  Yeah.
• 1:42:57
  I mean, some people, some people are naturally, I mean, you take Mary Margolis anywhere.
• 1:43:03
  Oh my God.
• 1:43:04
  Yeah.
• 1:43:04
  You know, and just, but it's just hilarious.
• 1:43:07
  And some people are hilarious by, you know, when you're, when you're with them and you've got plenty of time, um,
• 1:43:16
  But some people have to buff up their stories.
• 1:43:19
  Some people like me have to buff up their stories.
• 1:43:22
  And I've never used a writer, but I have buffed up my stories.
• 1:43:27
  Because that's what they want.
• 1:43:29
  Why shouldn't they?
• 1:43:30
  Why should the audience have to endure one of my dreary tales?
• 1:43:35
  Other than in podcast world, where we can be being looked at or listened to as you go to sleep.
• 1:43:44
  Are you going to sleep, listener?
• 1:43:47
  Is this the last voice you're hearing before you doze off?
• 1:43:53
  Do you listen to podcasts before you go to sleep?
• 1:43:55
  I don't, but my wife does.
• 1:43:56
  Oh, does she?
• 1:43:57
  Also, go to podcast.
• 1:43:59
  Well, she's very clever.
• 1:44:01
  So she usually listens to historical podcasts, and she's deep in ancient Greek stuff at the moment.
• 1:44:12
  kind of off the back of the odyssey is that oh no she's been she did a course at the open university in classics now like years ago when we were first got together so she's always been into all that stuff you know yeah i just listen to tales from on the buses sitcom tales
• 1:44:31
  How We Made Bless This House.
• 1:44:33
  Rising Damp.
• 1:44:34
  How We Made Rising Damp.
• 1:44:37
  I would listen to that.
• 1:44:37
  That's a series.
• 1:44:38
  I know, yeah, I know.
• 1:44:39
  It's a series.
• 1:44:40
  It's got to be a series.
• 1:44:40
  It's not just a condition.
• 1:44:43
  You know, I would listen to that.
• 1:44:45
  Well, I think this conversation wouldn't be complete, I think, without at least mentioning Doctor Who again, because we talked about that a lot when you came to the class.
• 1:44:52
  And obviously it was great to talk to you and do a bit of a dive into that.
• 1:44:56
  And it's funny because ever since you came back on, which was about a year ago, a lot has happened in Doctor Who land, I guess.
• 1:45:03
  A lot has... Has it?
• 1:45:04
  Well, a lot has... Has it really?
• 1:45:07
  Not really.
• 1:45:08
  But a lot has sort of shifted.
• 1:45:10
  I mean, obviously the stuff with the show now, the future of the show, it's kind of a little bit in question.
• 1:45:16
  Everything with the tender and all of that business.
• 1:45:20
  I mean, as someone who's obviously followed the show from the very beginning, going back to the early days, I mean, what are your thoughts on where the show is now and where it goes next?
• 1:45:30
  People keep asking me to join tenders for Doctor Who.
• 1:45:35
  I keep being asked if I would come and join this company and put together a
• 1:45:41
  package uh i don't mean for me to be in it but to to to create uh a version of it and i i haven't joined any of those um because i know how hard the show is to make sure and also because i have other things i want to pursue and you can't make a show like doctor who without it taking over your life
• 1:46:07
  It has to.
• 1:46:08
  It's that kind of show.
• 1:46:10
  You can't do it as a distant executive or a part-time role.
• 1:46:18
  So I think I'm looking forward to the show coming back because I think it will be fascinating and exciting.
• 1:46:27
  Because also I think whoever gets it,
• 1:46:32
  will really want to do it and will be really driven and passionate about it.
• 1:46:39
  I mean, what it's going to be, I don't know.
• 1:46:43
  I mean, I was thinking about this because I knew you would bring this up.
• 1:46:49
  Yeah.
• 1:46:50
  Well, as everybody does.
• 1:46:51
  Conceding to the, yeah.
• 1:46:52
  But I mean, I...
• 1:46:54
  Apart from the fact, you know, I have a life that I want to pursue.
• 1:47:01
  One of the reasons I didn't get involved in any of the tenders was I don't know what it is people want from it.
• 1:47:08
  Because my love for the show was the old show.
• 1:47:13
  That's what I grew up with.
• 1:47:16
  So that's not going to work.
• 1:47:19
  So I can't come in and say, let's set it in the 60s.
• 1:47:24
  Let's make it black and white with very wobbly sets.
• 1:47:29
  Let's make it more cheaply or with less ambition.
• 1:47:35
  I mean, Doctor Who's always had ambition.
• 1:47:39
  It's just that sometimes the budgets haven't.
• 1:47:42
  met that but the ambition has always been there in the show or do they want it like does a modern audience want it like do they want you know david and kylie and all that kind of stuff going on or chris or or or jody or or matt or truti or i don't know what version it is that they want but all of those things are not um
• 1:48:11
  That show is not the show I fell in love with.
• 1:48:14
  Although I love it and I still love seeing it.
• 1:48:18
  And I enjoy it most when I sense a ripple from the old showing it.
• 1:48:26
  as opposed to a big block of, oh, this is an old monster that we're bringing back.
• 1:48:30
  I like when I sense that someone is familiar with the old show and has let some of its influence materialize in the show.
• 1:48:43
  I don't know what it would, I don't know how you, what do you keep?
• 1:48:47
  What do you think?
• 1:48:48
  It's tough, isn't it?
• 1:48:49
  Because if you look at when Russell Tadavis brought it back, I think there was probably a lot of conversation about, yeah, what do you keep from the 25 years from before?
• 1:48:58
  Yeah.
• 1:48:59
  And his decision to basically keep it quite minimal in terms of like, we keep the Doctor's the last of the Time Lords.
• 1:49:05
  You kind of ditch everything else.
• 1:49:06
  Yeah.
• 1:49:07
  Yeah.
• 1:49:07
  that's it get get out you know um deal with it yeah uh when we had mark gaitis on recently he said that he said like the economy was like a uh a flat a fire a fire break and just like you only bring in the elements that you need yeah kind of strip it down like yeah i feel i wouldn't there's i think there's something in that stripping down and boiling it down to its essentials like this is what you need yeah to work i think you can only do that when there's been a bit of a stretch of time where people have kind of people's memory of it is a bit hazy maybe and you can remind them
• 1:49:36
  Yeah, I think that's true.
• 1:49:38
  I think it's actually quite a small show.
• 1:49:45
  It's the doctor and the assistant slash assistants in the TARDIS.
• 1:49:53
  So quite contained and kind of balming.
• 1:49:58
  And then like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they open the door and they step out into this,
• 1:50:04
  drama and those dramas change shape and they've got monsters in them and they're magical and strange and weird and sad and and uh but it needs that central core of that small group of people with the doctor at the center of it in that it's
• 1:50:29
  magical wardrobe that flies around and takes you to these other places, would be my opinion.
• 1:50:36
  But I don't know whether that place, I don't know what they, it's very interesting.
• 1:50:44
  Because Doctor Who's gone on for so long, I find myself in quite a strange and pleasant place at the moment in that I meet so many young people
• 1:50:58
  who were growing up when I was Doctor Who.
• 1:51:01
  So that's not the same as when you've just finished being Doctor Who or you're in Doctor Who.
• 1:51:08
  I meet now people who show me a photograph of often a little kid with Doctor Who, me, and they've met me when I was, and they were 10 or something like that.
• 1:51:21
  But now they're in the world, you know, and they're working it, you know.
• 1:51:27
  Deutsche Bank or Sky or something like that, you know?
• 1:51:30
  And they're shy and they come, and I think this is wonderful.
• 1:51:34
  You see these are little kids who loved it.
• 1:51:39
  Because I thought when you stop being Doctor Who, you stop getting the love.
• 1:51:44
  Because there's a sort of intense kind of love that comes.
• 1:51:48
  But it's come back again, which is wonderful because also they are
• 1:51:55
  I'm theirs.
• 1:51:56
  Or not me, but, you know, my time in the show means something to them.
• 1:52:04
  And that's great.
• 1:52:06
  But I don't know what they...
• 1:52:08
  I think it's going to be fine.
• 1:52:10
  You know, I think it's...
• 1:52:14
  It's...
• 1:52:16
  It'll always work.
• 1:52:17
  It needs love.
• 1:52:19
  I sometimes think people in BBC don't really understand it.
• 1:52:23
  I think that's sort of kind of a problem.
• 1:52:27
  I think people don't really know what it's supposed to be.
• 1:52:32
  So there's only a small...
• 1:52:34
  There are only a small group of professionals...
• 1:52:38
  That's why the show is made by Russell and, you know, and Stephen and all that.
• 1:52:42
  Because they love it.
• 1:52:43
  And they loved it from when they were little.
• 1:52:46
  And when it was not on, they loved it.
• 1:52:49
  So they knew what it was.
• 1:52:50
  So they knew what to bring to it.
• 1:52:52
  I don't think there were any executives at the BBC said, had a checklist of things that should be in it.
• 1:52:59
  I think it had to be left to Russell to do that.
• 1:53:03
  Yeah.
• 1:53:04
  And there'll be someone like that now.
• 1:53:06
  You know, I think, and I've said this before to you, I mean, I just always, I'm slightly concerned about branding and the scale of that and what that does to a piece of work.
• 1:53:20
  Yeah.
• 1:53:21
  But that it hasn't done Star Wars any harm.
• 1:53:24
  Well, someone could argue that it's always has, but the whole sort of franchisation of that.
• 1:53:30
  but yeah I agree I also think that because Doctor Who is so many things it's like every genre at once I know it's almost cliche to say it at this point but it really is and it's hard to pin down really it's why I think it doesn't always translate like maybe to different countries overseas so what is it because it's so many different tones as well it's dark and it's grim and it's serious but it's also playful and full of life and joy it's a really hard one to pin down so it makes it so unique
• 1:53:58
  Yeah.
• 1:53:59
  There are no monster shows.
• 1:54:03
  You know, and there used to be more monster shows and Doctor Who was part of that.
• 1:54:08
  And I think kids love monsters.
• 1:54:12
  I think they love
• 1:54:14
  reptilian creatures and aliens and robots and the things that come out of nowhere that are going to destroy you with ray guns and stuff like that and are defeated and or frankenstein's monster or that i think kids love monsters they used to be lost you know lost in space and stuff like that there used to be you know even star trek these different shows with monsters in them they're hardly a stranger things yeah i guess it's a monster show but there are very few of them anymore
• 1:54:41
  And I think that, I think we're working out our tender right now, right?
• 1:54:44
  Yeah, this is it, isn't it?
• 1:54:46
  Hey, you could be the new doctor.
• 1:54:49
  Would you do that?
• 1:54:49
  With this hair?
• 1:54:51
  Yeah, with that hair for sure.
• 1:54:53
  Would I have to keep the beard?
• 1:54:55
  No, you take the beard off.
• 1:54:56
  Has the doctor ever had a beard?
• 1:54:58
  He never has had a beard, has he?
• 1:54:59
  He shouldn't have a beard.
• 1:55:01
  Oh, no, wait, Shooty had the tash.
• 1:55:02
  Shooty had the tash.
• 1:55:03
  That was great.
• 1:55:05
  I love the tash on Shooty.
• 1:55:06
  I don't think that's canon.
• 1:55:12
  I don't think the doctor should ever have a beard.
• 1:55:16
  Too much respect.
• 1:55:17
  No, we've got to work tight, so you can be the doctor.
• 1:55:19
  This is it.
• 1:55:20
  And you can have...
• 1:55:22
  The TARDIS remains the same.
• 1:55:23
  But it looks like a jazz bar.
• 1:55:25
  A jazz bar?
• 1:55:26
  Well, we invent the inside, so it looks like a jazz bar.
• 1:55:28
  No!
• 1:55:28
  Are you talking about... Are you crazy?
• 1:55:32
  It's suicide!
• 1:55:35
  No, you don't mess with the TARDIS.
• 1:55:39
  I mean, like, we model it, we model it.
• 1:55:41
  So, like, no, we keep it as the tarnest.
• 1:55:42
  It's got the column, it's got everything.
• 1:55:43
  But you know how, you know, you've got the choral theme of David.
• 1:55:46
  I think we could make this work, right?
• 1:55:48
  So there's a jukebox in the corner a lot of time.
• 1:55:50
  We could make this work, maybe.
• 1:55:51
  No?
• 1:55:52
  No?
• 1:55:52
  Am I back in it?
• 1:55:53
  It's got to retain its 60s essence.
• 1:55:57
  It's like if you go into somebody's very trendy house now and they've got a lava lamp.
• 1:56:03
  In the corner, which I've been very successful, trendy people, and they've got a lava lamp, which, you know, I don't, you know what that is?
• 1:56:10
  I used to have one when I was a kid.
• 1:56:12
  It's got to be like that.
• 1:56:14
  It's got to be slightly anachronistic.
• 1:56:18
  60s, definitely.
• 1:56:21
  It can be amped up, obviously, but its essence has to be a 60s thing.
• 1:56:29
  the doctor has to be charismatic look at you you're there already you're being too kind sir you're right there I'm spent I was comely once
• 1:56:47
  And then you could have a, what kind of a companion would you have?
• 1:56:50
  Oh, well, I quite, well, I quite like the idea of, I like the idea of like a little, little team, like a little trio.
• 1:56:56
  I quite like that about some of the older shows as well, when they have like Jamie and, you know, and it's like the three of them with Patrick Trout.
• 1:57:02
  Yeah.
• 1:57:03
  I quite like that.
• 1:57:03
  You can't have more than two.
• 1:57:05
  You need two.
• 1:57:06
  And I think a boy and a girl's good.
• 1:57:07
  Cause it's like Janet and John reading books, reading books that kids used to have.
• 1:57:14
  There was always a boy and a girl.
• 1:57:15
  Yeah.
• 1:57:16
  You need that.
• 1:57:17
  And you need the safety and warmth of the TARDIS.
• 1:57:21
  Always.
• 1:57:21
  Always.
• 1:57:22
  And that noise.
• 1:57:23
  Robot dog?
• 1:57:24
  No.
• 1:57:25
  No?
• 1:57:26
  Tin dog?
• 1:57:26
  No, no tin dog.
• 1:57:27
  Forget it.
• 1:57:29
  All of those things out the window.
• 1:57:31
  Forget it.
• 1:57:32
  One last quick question on Doctor Who before we wrap up.
• 1:57:35
  Is it true that I heard, I can't remember which one of the doctors said this, whether it was, maybe it was Jodie or maybe it was Matt.
• 1:57:40
  I can't, I'm not sure.
• 1:57:40
  But is it true that there's a WhatsApp group with all the doctors in it?
• 1:57:43
  No.
• 1:57:43
  No.
• 1:57:44
  That's not true.
• 1:57:46
  Unless they have a WhatsApp group.
• 1:57:48
  Perhaps they do.
• 1:57:49
  That would make sense, wouldn't it?
• 1:57:50
  There's a WhatsApp group of all the doctors except the one they don't like.
• 1:57:55
  The one who's too boring and dreary.
• 1:57:57
  The one who says dodgy things about the show.
• 1:58:05
  Well, I guess they all have a WhatsApp group.
• 1:58:08
  That's life.
• 1:58:12
  Fair enough, fair enough.
• 1:58:13
  I've got my own WhatsApp group.
• 1:58:16
  It's all the thick of it, guys.
• 1:58:18
  No, I don't.
• 1:58:18
  I've had a disaster the other day.
• 1:58:20
  Somebody sent me that.
• 1:58:22
  Don't do this.
• 1:58:24
  My daughter's, the link was for my daughter's in a ballet contest.
• 1:58:33
  Could you sponsor her?
• 1:58:34
  Yeah, of course.
• 1:58:36
  And then it's a hack.
• 1:58:39
  Oh.
• 1:58:40
  went through my entire address book oh no uh yeah i can read all of your whatsapps uh and i had to contact absolutely everybody and say don't go near this
• 1:58:51
  That's a nightmare when that happens.
• 1:58:53
  It happens to all of us though.
• 1:58:54
  Although of course, David and Jodie and the others would be safe.
• 1:59:04
  I guess it's a kind of rapid question.
• 1:59:06
  So in terms of what you've got coming out, you've got, you've got, uh, only murders season six coming out, right?
• 1:59:11
  And, uh, honestly quite soon.
• 1:59:13
  Yeah.
• 1:59:14
  Yeah.
• 1:59:14
  I've not got a very big part in that, but they're, they're wonderful.
• 1:59:17
  I've got, uh,
• 1:59:21
  The Mask of Red Death is coming out, which we did with Mikey Madison in Budapest.
• 1:59:28
  And again, not a huge part.
• 1:59:29
  What a great job, though.
• 1:59:30
  It's fantastic.
• 1:59:32
  That's based on the old Edgar Allan Poe slash Vincent Price movie.
• 1:59:36
  Yeah.
• 1:59:37
  That's great.
• 1:59:38
  And I'm just doing Netflix have bought the Roald Dahl estate.
• 1:59:42
  So they're doing all of the Roald Dahl stuff.
• 1:59:46
  And there's a kind of thing they're doing.
• 1:59:47
  It's not Tales of the Unexpected, but it's a little bit like that.
• 1:59:51
  So I'm doing an episode of that now.
• 1:59:55
  And really, I'm just rehearsing with them because we've got, hey, we've got these gigs.
• 2:00:00
  Oh, yeah, that's what I should be here to do.
• 2:00:02
  to sell these gigs.
• 2:00:04
  We're doing Sheffield on the 13th of December.
• 2:00:06
  Then the 14th of December, we're doing Dingwalls in London.
• 2:00:09
  Nice.
• 2:00:10
  And then we're doing Bristol.
• 2:00:13
  And then we're finishing in Glasgow later that week on the Queen Margaret Union on the 17th of December.
• 2:00:18
  Amazing.
• 2:00:19
  So, yeah, I'm just rehearsing.
• 2:00:21
  now with the band and putting that together.
• 2:00:24
  So I'm looking forward to that.
• 2:00:25
  Fantastic.
• 2:00:26
  And then something we've been asking our guests on Half the Picture a lot lately is, at the end of the show, is a recommendation.
• 2:00:31
  So like what kind of books they've been reading that they've loved, what kind of films they've seen, they've liked albums, you know?
• 2:00:35
  What have you been sort of consuming lately that's been firing you up and that you've loved?
• 2:00:39
  Well, there's a film I've seen which I love, which is actually maybe a little bit out of date.
• 2:00:44
  Maybe it comes from earlier of the year called Trained Dreams.
• 2:00:46
  Trained Dreams.
• 2:00:47
  Yes.
• 2:00:47
  Have you seen that?
• 2:00:48
  I haven't seen it.
• 2:00:49
  You guys have seen it.
• 2:00:51
  Isn't it great?
• 2:00:53
  It's absolutely beautiful.
• 2:00:56
  It's about a man I don't know who works on the railways in America in the
• 2:01:03
  I guess the early 20th century and lives in a, this sounds very dull.
• 2:01:08
  It's not dull at all because the railways, building the railways is full of danger.
• 2:01:15
  People had, you know, sleepers following them and things blow up and all that kind of stuff.
• 2:01:20
  And he just tries, it's just how he tries to eek his life out.
• 2:01:24
  He spends most of the year living in a forest and then there's a season when they go and do the train work.
• 2:01:32
  But it's quite dreamy and strange.
• 2:01:35
  It's fantastic.
• 2:01:36
  Train dreams.
• 2:01:36
  Train dreams.
• 2:01:37
  So that's the big one for this year.
• 2:01:39
  That's a big one.
• 2:01:40
  Nice.
• 2:01:41
  Great stuff.
• 2:01:42
  Well, it's been such a pleasure, Peter.
• 2:01:44
  Thank you so much for coming back on the pod.
• 2:01:46
  It really is just a privilege and a pleasure just to sit and chat to you.
• 2:01:49
  Thank you for asking me.
• 2:01:50
  No worries.
• 2:01:51
  Good fun.
• 2:01:53
  Thanks again.
• 2:01:54
  Thank you.