Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / DAVID WALLIAMS & JOSH: Little Britain, Gender & Satire

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DAVID WALLIAMS & JOSH: Little Britain, Gender & Satire · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and few comedians have made
• 0:07
  people as uncomfortable and tested the dangerous edges of propriety like David Williams.
• 0:15
  If you're in America it's probably hard to articulate just how huge his BBC TV sketch
• 0:22
  comedy show little Britain was.
• 0:25
  For years wherever you went you would overhear someone in a pub or a park or an office
• 0:31
  mouthing off one of David or Matt's catchphrases from characters like an old-fashioned
• 0:37
  transvestite but I believe it I do have them to the carer for a wheelchair user.
• 0:47
  That's what you think someone when somebody died.
• 0:57
  To the gay political staffer who is in love with his boss the prime minister.
• 1:02
  To the least helpful customer service agent in the world and when earlier this year a global
• 1:25
  IT failure grounded planes and wreaked havoc on banks and businesses all over the world the
• 1:31
  front page of Britain's son newspaper ran only one headline computer says no 21 years after
• 1:40
  that phrase left David's lips on TV for the first time and entered the global lexicon.
• 1:45
  David had a second TV sketch comedy show with Matt Lucas come fly with me he did 10 seasons as a
• 1:52
  judge with Simon Cowell on Britain's Got Talent he's written 43 children's books that have sold
• 1:58
  over 60 million copies and David and I recently went on a 15 show six week tour of 13 cities across
• 2:08
  Australia and New Zealand where I interviewed him in front of tens of thousands of roaring fans
• 2:13
  and hysterical punters it was an absolute gas it was a laugh and before our final show in Perth
• 2:20
  he reluctantly agreed to sit down with me I suppose we had become somewhat close over the
• 2:26
  course of traveling together for six weeks and he he sloughed off his polished showmanship and was
• 2:33
  willing to have an unrehearsed uncomfortable conversation about taboos, defensiveness, sexuality,
• 2:40
  comedy, transgenderism and how he and Matt created some of the most memorable characters of 21st
• 2:46
  century television the video of this podcast looks great by the way not the bit you're looking at now
• 2:52
  the bit that I shot with David it's lovely to see David's reactions and the twinkle in his eye so
• 2:58
  this would be a good chance to hop over to the YouTube page if you're listening to the audio
• 3:02
  version and to watch this conversation there as always all the best stuff of this show including
• 3:09
  extra episodes and interactive live streams are on substack which you can join with one click
• 3:14
  for free using the link in the show notes please enjoy even half as much as I did one and only
• 3:20
  comedy legend David Williams how you feeling why thank you it's been 15 14 shows we've got a final
• 3:30
  15th show tonight yeah what's your take away um well it's been great I've really enjoyed it I mean
• 3:39
  it's fun to be on stage if you if you like performing it's it's a new sort of thing for me because I
• 3:45
  haven't done a kind of Q&A type show um like this before other than maybe being interviewed at a book
• 3:52
  festival something but it's a different and um you know hearing laughter is you'll never you never
• 4:00
  tire of that yeah so I'm in so much of my time you spent writing books or scripts or whatever
• 4:07
  is that you know I'm I'm the performer side of me doesn't get to always express itself and
• 4:13
  and the thing is a book is of is a slow burn in terms of the the the sense of
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  I don't know this the buzz from it is is a much slower one than it when you walk on the stage
• 4:26
  yeah of course I'm uploading and that's like oh wow and you don't get to spy on the people who
• 4:31
  are reading the book and chucking to themselves no I get a list here I get a sense of it twisted
• 4:35
  sometimes yeah I'm gonna sense where people come up to you and say they've enjoyed them and stuff
• 4:39
  but yeah but you don't hear them laughing it bits in the book so it's good isn't that I mean it's
• 4:46
  interesting it's been interesting for me I mean I've never interviewed somebody who after having
• 4:50
  just interviewed them 14 times over the past four five weeks with exactly the same questions
• 4:57
  every single time but I've made it feel fresh and spontaneous you've made it feel so fresh and
• 5:04
  spontaneous no one would have any idea we've done it but well there's always things that that
• 5:08
  didn't happen the night before and sort of yeah little things yeah that's why she quite like it
• 5:13
  when there's a likely audience and there's a few people making noise in there or someone
• 5:16
  usually was happening someone's coming in late yes someone's brought a child to show them the
• 5:21
  new asshole if they've come in late or if you see a youngster in the front row well it's just
• 5:27
  something I feel like the audience like to see something they know didn't happen on the night
• 5:32
  which is why they're bothered coming out yes because they've going see something like I mean people
• 5:37
  always say when you do a show they say oh the bit I really loved was the bit where it went wrong
• 5:42
  or people love the stand-up so they love the heck or the people love the crowd works so he said
• 5:49
  you know the heck or less like this and then the comedian came back and said this yes yeah and I
• 5:54
  and I get it I like those things too yeah so when you started out with Matt and you guys were doing
• 6:00
  live comedy because one doesn't get given a television show without doing live comedy how did that come
• 6:06
  about the two of you doing shows um well we'd met as teenagers in the National Youth Theatre so I'm
• 6:17
  now 53 and he's 50 so I've known him for 30 years and and so um we ended up being in a play
• 6:27
  together weirdly considering Matt is such an incredible performer he was moving the senior
• 6:33
  effect that's the weirdest thing he was moving the scenery yeah it was literally it was the
• 6:39
  tempest that the Shakespeare play and I was playing tranquilo which is one of the comedy parts
• 6:45
  there's two there's a sort of comedy double act but I mean it's Shakespeare so I mean it's you know
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  it can actually be so fun well it could be funny in the hands of someone who's who's funny
• 6:56
  yeah I'm not saying I'm funny but I mean if you just read it you know off the page you probably
• 7:02
  wouldn't make love it anyway so I was playing a kind of good comedy role and there were these people
• 7:06
  it was like a sort of you heard of Lindsey Camp ever no it was this sort of he must have a sort of
• 7:13
  the he was a sort of talk bowie mind and he and it was in the style of one instructions lots of
• 7:19
  white faces and sort of um it was quite um avant-garde in some ways even though it was National Youth
• 7:26
  and there were these people called the Koken and they were all black and they had to move
• 7:30
  seen who he around so below the lowest cast member is the person who is black and he moves the
• 7:40
  ferns around and actually well one is it's so bizarre that someone didn't spot his talent in
• 7:47
  that sorry and also also good is that he still wanted to do it yeah because there is a kind of
• 7:53
  thing isn't that sometimes if you we're getting a really small part in the play or something you're
• 7:58
  like you know but if you still have hunger for it got to say yes yeah so we so we were spending
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  lots of time to go it's time together doing this play chatting laughing talking about the comedy we
• 8:09
  loved and then soon after Matt started doing a character on the stand-up circuit one probably a few
• 8:19
  years later called suburned chumbly and he was an old actor even though Matt was only probably
• 8:24
  about 20 at the time he could convince in a lot of ways as this old actor it was about like Peter
• 8:29
  used to not telling stories right and he wore the wig that he'd had been given when he was like
• 8:37
  10 or something because he had a alopecia right and he was given a woman's wig to wear because
• 8:42
  there were any children's wigs and he used that wig he wore that wig and people would think it
• 8:46
  was his hair in the halfway through he's like push push you know just go like that and then the wig
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  and then he would get an amazing laugh at that and this was a one-man show that he was doing stand-up
• 8:57
  stand-up comedy circuit and I was doing a little bit with someone I was at university with
• 9:02
  we were doing a kind of double act but that sort of reached a conclusion and then
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  Matt a couple of things one is that so it's quite a lot of information but basically he was doing
• 9:18
  that and it was getting to be quite successful and I think Bob Mortimer because you don't know
• 9:24
  and Bob Mortimer a huge yes I know of the legend of reason he actually claimed and loved
• 9:31
  comedians in the UK, and Bob Mortimer, and they were, you know, at the sort of very, very popular,
• 9:38
  perhaps even at the peak of their popularity, or about to be. And he saw Matt second gig and Matt
• 9:46
  then was cast in there. They were doing this panel show called Shooting Stars that was a huge hit
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  and Matt was in it every week. And so he had a, he had some visibility, you know, and he was like,
• 10:00
  he's the guy from from Shooting Stars. So then we got a chance to take a show to Edinburgh
• 10:08
  which we did in 1995. Well, because we were writing together and we were creating stuff together.
• 10:15
  Writing what? We were writing, well, we were writing, we would come up with a television show
• 10:25
  that we wanted to do. And it was called the Sunday Club. It was quite a good idea. I keep
• 10:29
  on thinking we should still do it. And basically the idea of the show was there was a show like a
• 10:34
  kid show called the Sunday Club. And it was never, ever broadcast and it had become this mystery
• 10:40
  what happened to the show. And, and so it was like a sort of, was it like a found footage?
• 10:47
  Yeah, it was like a found footage, but also with someone commentating. It was quite, quite, quite,
• 10:52
  I want to see this show. Well, it's not the show you get made, but it was a sophisticated,
• 10:57
  it was a quite sophisticated idea because the Sunday Club, so we constantly meet up and
• 11:02
  making like huge notes about what's happening in the Sunday Club. Right. And, okay,
• 11:07
  it was you're like, we should do it in Edinburgh. Yeah, well, we all couldn't go that show,
• 11:12
  mate, but I'm even had a meeting about it. But it was almost like it was, I don't know, like
• 11:16
  Scientologists were running it or something. There was something, you know, there was some kind of
• 11:20
  conspiracy going on or some other agenda was going on. They could terminate the minds of
• 11:25
  young children. Yeah, something like that. So, and then it just felt natural, might have done
• 11:31
  a little bit in Edinburgh the year before. And then it was like, I will go back to Edinburgh
• 11:36
  the next year. So we were meeting night. We were on at midnight. You did this bonkers show in
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  which he was playing this character of like an old character. I think it was only playing that.
• 11:45
  Well, it was a sort of queen of an actor or a foolish old fashioned actor who'd never really
• 11:51
  had success. I remember there was one really good Jack, where in the first time we did this show,
• 11:55
  I played the, um, direct show of the show. I came on as a direct, I've got some news for you
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  on this guy. So, and then you go, I said something like, and you know, I need you in tomorrow morning,
• 12:08
  I can't come in tomorrow. And I've got to fly it back down to London to sign on. You know,
• 12:13
  signing on means getting you run employment. I remember that game. That game a really big one.
• 12:20
  Right. So yeah, we were doing a show, um, Edinburgh, like midnight together. Yeah. And, um,
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  and it would got some, you know, some buzz around it. Not like tell the story about the,
• 12:32
  about the gag that you put on the poster for the shows since you were on at midnight. And you were
• 12:36
  on after Graham Notten, uh, Graham Notten was having a show at 11, then you would bump in it.
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  I think, yeah, I think he, because we did a few years there. So sometimes it's slightly kind of,
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  we actually played the same room like two years in a row. So sometimes it gets fuzzy, but Graham
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  was definitely on for us. Maybe like 10, 30 or something. Right. And, um, so we sometimes see him.
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  Well, we don't, we see him every night when we're doing the show. And he was, uh, he was great. Um,
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  and we'd see his show. You get to the other people shows for free. And this was great. Um, but yeah,
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  we'd arrive at the venue with our suitcases full of like props and costumes and things like that.
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  So funny, isn't it? 11, 11, 45 or something. Uh, and anyway, so yeah, the, the show was called
• 13:18
  Suburned Chumly's Gang Show. Oh no, Suburned Chumly is dead and friends. I don't know why I'm
• 13:27
  I don't know. I don't know. It was, it was weird. It was like strange. It brings out some of your
• 13:33
  worst ideas, but it was, I don't know why we called it that. It should have been called Suburned
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  Chumly, but anyway. Um, and, uh, we were on at midnight. So the poster, you know, had the
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  time on it. And then as a joke, we had on the poster free crash, crash as we, we pronounce it
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  in the UK. And we didn't think anyone would turn up and with a child, but we should have
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  remembered that we were as gone. That woman did pushing, pushing a toddler in a, um, uh, uh,
• 14:05
  a push chair. Where's the crease? Where's the crease? So come on. You said there's going to be a
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  crease. He says on poses a crease. It was just a joke. I want me money back. That's it. So
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  but she was the only person who thought they really wanted to bring. And you were saying that
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  in order to get to the bathroom, the audience members had to walk across the stage in front of
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  and being midnight in Scotland. Uh, fair few people have been drinking for, uh,
• 14:31
  bank seats. Yeah. So you, you came in, you walked across the stage to get to your seats and,
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  and yeah, and it was a constant stream, which is the right word, I guess, of man you're needing
• 14:42
  to urinate because they'd been drinking all day. I mean, people would come in with their points,
• 14:46
  you know, I mean, it's really would want to be the little little bread and live show in arenas.
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  You know, it's like the, it's only like 50 minutes and maybe 50 minutes. There's two people
• 14:54
  in here to go. The toilet is going to buy drinks. Yeah. People would walk past the stage with the
• 15:00
  tray of like four drinks. Like that. So you know, we're doing a shot. I know. Can you just,
• 15:06
  do you know, you have to be your money? I know. You hold it in for a bit or maybe just get the
• 15:12
  drinks. So let's see what is the interval. Yeah. But it's just like popcorn in the movies and
• 15:18
  you know, making lots of noise in the movies, rustling things and like do you have to eat all of
• 15:22
  those rustly lollies right now? Well, I wait, it's only 90 minutes. I went to see this incredible
• 15:27
  movie called Zone of Interest, did you see it? It won a couple of Oscars. Yeah. This genius directed
• 15:33
  Jonathan Glazer and it's all about the Holocaust. And there's still people in front of me
• 15:39
  like eating popcorn. And it's kind of think, yeah, like Deadpool Wolverine. Okay, but not
• 15:45
  so you know, yeah. And then he came on to like give a talk at the end and there's like people
• 15:50
  scrolling through their phones and things like that. While he's talking. Yeah. And there's sort of
• 15:57
  how, how rude. And just also like you've just seen a really profound film about kind of the
• 16:05
  greatest horror, one of the greatest horror in history. And you still need to eat some popcorn
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  or scroll through your phone. I know. Yeah. And also scrolling. It's not like you've had an
• 16:15
  emergency call and you need to take it. It's just like, I mean, the phones are a whole separate
• 16:19
  thing, but even, but even the eating the popcorn, I don't quite understand. Like I get that it's a
• 16:23
  tradition, but also like dead Jews buttered popcorn don't have to go together. You could just sit
• 16:31
  with the dead Jews for a hundred minutes when you're watching Zone of Interest. Now it's not
• 16:36
  joining in your, you're not, I'm not if you're framing this to be honest with you.
• 16:42
  You think dead Jews and buttered popcorn do go together?
• 16:51
  So, so yes, after Edinburgh, yes. Then you know, everyone who goes to Edinburgh wants
• 16:58
  someone from London to come up and give them a television show. And eventually this turns into
• 17:04
  little Britain, but how there was another show in the rock profile we don't need to dwell on that
• 17:09
  too much. But when you get like how does little Britain come out? Well, first of all, we'd done a
• 17:17
  very nice producer called Richard Wilson came to CS and he wanted us to do something on Radio 4
• 17:22
  with him, which was often a way also that people would end up going from BBC Radio 4 comedy
• 17:28
  to then to the BBC television comedy. And so we did a pilot with him, but they didn't get picked
• 17:34
  up. It was kind of around basically what we were doing in Edinburgh. And then we did another pilot
• 17:43
  that was also rejected for Radio 4 comedy. I think we just had two words back, lacks conviction.
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  And so we really had to think again, because we were not going to get another roll of the dice.
• 17:56
  And then that was when the concept of the show, because before that we were just trying to do
• 18:00
  characters and sketches without really an overriding idea. And the overriding idea had become
• 18:06
  kind of more important. There was a great comedy group called the League of Gentlemen,
• 18:11
  who they had such a distinctive style and a kind of simple but strong idea of like,
• 18:20
  oh, these characters all live in the same town. And there have been other sketch shows again,
• 18:24
  with similar sort of an identity beyond just some sketches and characters. And so that was
• 18:32
  what was required. And then we came up with this idea of a sort of survey of British life.
• 18:37
  And I think it was so helpful, because it made us have to feed into that idea. So we weren't
• 18:47
  doing sketches about, you know, I don't know, Admiral Nelson or Charlotte Holmes or
• 18:52
  whatever, we were doing sketches that were all set in contemporary Britain with characters who
• 18:58
  were sort of, you know, satires of people that you might find in some way or not. And so I think
• 19:05
  that really helped shape the content, because those were the kind of things, contemporary characters
• 19:12
  in modern Britain that are going to resonate with an audience much more than just a kind of very,
• 19:18
  if you know, a funny one-off sketch about Julius Caesar or something, you know. And so I think
• 19:26
  that was what really suddenly everything fell into place. Suddenly we kind of knew what we were
• 19:32
  doing. And we weren't flading around. And also we weren't to behold into our past in terms of what
• 19:37
  happens is you sort of, if you're comedian and you get laughs early on doing certain characters
• 19:42
  and stuff, you feel very hesitant to leave them behind, because they're the things that
• 19:48
  propelled you to this place. But sometimes you're in a different place now, and you need to adapt.
• 19:54
  So we kept on sort of trying to do our stage show on Radio or Television, but it didn't work.
• 20:02
  So this new idea was the one that took us into Russia. And Suburnich and we had a few sketches
• 20:08
  with him in the show. I'm in the first season, and they're good sketches, but they're not the ones
• 20:14
  that people remember, because we had a whole load of new characters that sort of resonated more
• 20:20
  with people. And then your mission, I guess, probably becomes, all right, who are the characters,
• 20:25
  who I can put into this, who are emblematic of some particular slice in every British life.
• 20:30
  They all start off with one sketch, and if that sketch feels good,
• 20:37
  seems to work, and there seems to be a suggestion that it could be another scenario,
• 20:40
  then we do that. I mean, people often complain like, oh god, it was the same character every week,
• 20:45
  it's like, there are some practical reasons for that, because you can't have,
• 20:50
  you know, shows made on a budget, you can't have like a hundred different,
• 20:53
  say there's a hundred sketches, you don't have a hundred different sets, a hundred different
• 20:57
  costumes. Yeah, but you're selling yourself short a little bit, I think, in the sense that it's
• 21:00
  not just budgetary. There's a creative and emotional reason for people to enjoy the familiarity
• 21:07
  of, of like a comedic trope that becomes, you know, part of their family, and sort of they like
• 21:13
  tuning in each week, and they like the fact that they know that they're going to hear computers
• 21:17
  as no at some stage during this sketch. It wouldn't be the same if they didn't. I mean, I used to read
• 21:22
  the Bino when I was a kid, this is this comic for kids, and it would, it would be the same characters,
• 21:27
  and you would really like it. I'm going to read Dennis, the menace first, because I love him,
• 21:31
  then I'm going to read the pastry kids, and I'm going to read many of the minks, and it was like,
• 21:34
  and, and there was a great, I don't know if it's big here called Viz, if you've ever heard of it,
• 21:39
  it's like a spoof of that for adults, hilarious. It's one that you, you laugh out loud, funny,
• 21:45
  and that had all these great characters in it. I mean, very, the character could say the sexist,
• 21:51
  another one called the fat slags was one thing. That was turned into a film, and it was very
• 22:00
  political. Roger Mellied, a man on the telly, he was a sort of, really funny, and, but again,
• 22:06
  I would turn to that and go, I'd really love this character, and I'll watch that one first,
• 22:09
  but it was always pretty much the same characters that we've got, but you didn't mind that.
• 22:15
  You would have been disappointed if someone wasn't in there. And so when you're creating the first
• 22:19
  season of Little Britain, like take, take just a couple of the most legendary characters for you,
• 22:25
  like a computer says no, where does that come from? From my genius, my, well, sometimes things are
• 22:34
  observed, and so for that one, that was observed, and I really did go to the bank to get alone,
• 22:44
  and I was sown into a room with a lady who was close as we are with the computer in the middle.
• 22:52
  And I said, I'd like to borrow £5,000, £5,000, what's your name? It's just put all the details in.
• 22:58
  And then she did that press sort of return. I'm like, let's see what the computer has to say,
• 23:03
  and we sort of sat there in silence for a minute, and then the computer says yes,
• 23:08
  like that. And so, you know, and then the next day you're in the writing room and you talk about
• 23:13
  this funny thing that happened, and then you start chewing the fat, and maybe for an hour and a
• 23:17
  half, two hours, you actually even written anything down yet because you're going through lots of
• 23:21
  scenarios. But it's a different kind of writing because we were always writing in order to perform.
• 23:28
  So therefore we could spend a lot of time just sort of improvising and come at voices, characters,
• 23:33
  scenarios. And then when we felt we had something, we'd actually start putting it down on the
• 23:39
  computer. And how did computer says yes, become a computer says no. Because once you've been
• 23:46
  throwing the idea around for a bit, it just seems funnier that someone would be negative.
• 23:51
  And it was more funny. It's a funnier that somebody is more frustrating, it's more
• 23:57
  comic, isn't it? Not getting what you want than getting what you want. And also someone being
• 24:03
  incredibly unhelpful. But I did go on a whole day once to Barbados. And I remember I was giving
• 24:08
  my passport to the lady at the hotel. And so I put it down and she said like that. And I had to
• 24:16
  move it like an inch. She's not going to pick it up until it's within her zone of yeah,
• 24:23
  she doesn't want to move her. Yeah. And it was some carol had that quality. I mean she was
• 24:29
  completely nothing like the lady who helped me with the loan. But it just became it's same thing.
• 24:34
  No, I mean, I think it's becoming especially resonant even in the intervening 20 years
• 24:39
  since you created it. I think it was like the idea is a seed and then you've got to grow something
• 24:43
  from it. Because I think people think, oh, well, the idea just you were lucky. You just got to
• 24:47
  meet all these people who inspired you. And there's nothing more to it than that. No, no, no.
• 24:52
  But it is a stupid person would think that because what you're doing is putting your finger on
• 24:57
  something that we all have to deal with pretty much every day, which is government or bureaucratic
• 25:03
  or organizational annoying kind of, you know, malachy where you have to fill out the form in
• 25:08
  triplicate or you see someone who the driver doesn't want to take you the right way because the
• 25:13
  app isn't working. Compute says no, it's the deferring to the technology. Which is quite strange
• 25:22
  because the technology is meant to grow in your life. You know, you're waiting on hold for an
• 25:27
  hour and 15 minutes to talk to someone at the airline and then you realize three minutes into
• 25:31
  the conversation that their job is just to get you off the line without having helped you at all.
• 25:35
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:38
  Wearing dresses, I'm a lady. It's probably the other big sort of character that you're best known for.
• 25:44
  Where does that come from? I don't know exactly, but obviously I'd been dressing as a woman
• 25:49
  for most of my life as a childhood. Or maybe we need to ask the prior question of where does that
• 25:54
  come from? Well, I'd certainly, my sister used to dress me up, but I can't blame her because
• 26:00
  obviously I like doing it as well. Just to me, it was always something fun and something freeing
• 26:06
  dressing as a girl and playing girls' parts in the school plays. Why is a boy drawn to
• 26:15
  what's considered feminine things? It's hard to say exactly. I mean, I like Wonder Woman.
• 26:20
  There was a massive show at the time. Linda Carter. I used to play Wonder Woman in the
• 26:26
  playground, you know? Yeah, right. Because you used to spin around. And did you do it for laughs
• 26:30
  or did you do it because it felt good? I think it felt good. And then I think what happened is
• 26:34
  you get bullied for it. And then you turn it into laughs as a way of deflecting the, you know,
• 26:42
  the being laughed. You're being laughed at. So that's your worst fear. So you then go, oh no,
• 26:47
  it's a joke. It's a joke. I'm going to own it. I'm going to own it. And actually I'm going to be
• 26:51
  camper and more feminine and flamboyant than you can ever imagine. And now you're going to think
• 26:57
  I'm funny because of it. And that's going to be my thing. So do you think you were a little
• 27:00
  sort of trans curious? Yeah. I mean, I think it's not uncommon, is it? I mean, I still, I always say,
• 27:09
  you know, with friends and stuff like that, can we just have a night out or we all just go,
• 27:13
  you know, dress as women, wouldn't it just be wonderful? You know? And so I do enjoy it. Yeah.
• 27:19
  Um, but I don't want to sort of, I know some people, you know, it's like a kind of big part of
• 27:26
  there. I didn't see there's a need to do it and all that kind of thing. I wouldn't say that.
• 27:30
  It's me playing around. But I still like, if someone said, if you said, we've got some weeks
• 27:35
  and dressers and stuff, when we're going to go out for the night, I'm just going to be like my
• 27:40
  favorite night ever. I mean, my friend had a drag stag and we all dressed up in women's clothing.
• 27:46
  Stag night is what Brits call a bachelor party. Yeah. And we were all in drag. That was the best
• 27:52
  fun ever. A bachelor party. A drag bachelor party. And I had a costume made, which is Grace Jones's
• 27:58
  costume for that she wears in a view to a kill where they go to the races. I think it's
• 28:05
  asked something. And it's a whole massive like pyramid headdress of red dress. I mean,
• 28:10
  it was like, you know, I went to all that trouble. And it was like, why would anyone?
• 28:17
  Have you ever thought about just going stuff that I'm just going to show up for two
• 28:20
  on awards ceremony in a dress? I mean, I sort of would do, but it's become sort of so politicized,
• 28:26
  isn't it? Well, it has now. I think people would be worried that you were, well, I'd wear a
• 28:31
  nail varnish or something, but I suppose now it's, it's sort of, it's become sort of serious
• 28:41
  subject. So therefore, you know, you would be, you wouldn't want someone to think you're,
• 28:47
  you know, you're somehow laughing at them or something like that. Right. It is. I just wanted
• 28:51
  to bring in there because he looked, he interestingly, you know, I saw his, he's such a fan,
• 28:58
  but he, he, he just looks amazing, you know, he was almost like a sort of David Bowie type thing,
• 29:03
  like, where I see maybe with no shirt and maybe a little bit of jewelry or something,
• 29:07
  some makeup, but in his hair, his normal, he wasn't like trying to pass as a woman. It was,
• 29:12
  it was just like he, he's got his own way of dressing. That's really, really cool. And he's
• 29:17
  going to wear high heels, like a fitted shirt, I'm sorry, a fitted velvet jacket or something.
• 29:23
  It looked great. Yeah, interestingly, I was watching this is it, which is the Michael Jackson
• 29:29
  a documentary about him putting on his last concert they never got to do. And I was watching
• 29:33
  it with, who was my ex-wife, who was a model. And she said, these are all the clothes he was wearing,
• 29:40
  Michael Jackson was wearing, all women's clothes from Catwalks. And he said, that's, she said,
• 29:45
  that's straight off the Chanel cast, what that straight up, that's Balmain that jacket. And
• 29:48
  there was all these things he was wearing. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I know he's very slight in
• 29:52
  everything. Yeah. And I had to see a Plum Boy on my dress. It was quite interesting. I hadn't
• 29:55
  really considered, because I didn't know where he's, I thought, well, maybe he gets the maid or
• 29:59
  something. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Eddie has been on this show. And he's also very,
• 30:04
  or she or they are, is very kind of like whatever about the kind of line of questioning about his
• 30:11
  gender identity as well. Like he's extremely relaxed about. I think it's great. I think the
• 30:17
  precious about it. No, I think Eddie's, but also has the identity to see, but sometimes
• 30:24
  when Eddie's performing, it's Eddie. But I actually think he's always, he's been a brilliant
• 30:33
  advocate for that. But also, I just feel he's been his own person. And I think there's nothing
• 30:39
  better than that. Yeah. Just going, this is me. This is, this is, this is who I am. And it also,
• 30:44
  I think it, it, um, you know, it meant everyone knew who he was as well. I mean, it was
• 30:49
  fantastically funny, but it was interesting. Yes. It's transverse. Yeah. And he's kind of,
• 30:55
  it tries us like a medium, but he's not a drag act. No. And he also never seems to be doing it
• 31:00
  in a look at me. Why? No, he's just doing a lot of things. And he looked fabulous. So I kind of
• 31:06
  always responded to him. I'm saying him because then it was Eddie's art.
• 31:13
  Um, but yeah, I'm not going to get you canceled for dead naming a chance. No, but he's still,
• 31:20
  Eddie's still, it's Eddie is hard in. Yeah. Yeah. One man hamlet. And so, and the, why is the
• 31:28
  I'm a lady character dressed in like Elizabethan or Victorian clothing? Um, it was because
• 31:37
  there was a sort of observation that I felt as some truth were often when you'd see a transvestite,
• 31:46
  it would sometimes be a kind of heightened version of women's clothing or something from
• 31:55
  perhaps harking back to us got another era. Perhaps it was, perhaps it could be just guessing,
• 32:03
  but if your first experience was kind of wearing your mom's clothes or something like that,
• 32:07
  maybe you were thinking, oh, that's sort of, that's what I'm drawn to, you know,
• 32:12
  something that's sort of in the past a bit. I know more sort of idealized versions of fashion.
• 32:18
  I mean, it's different now. Because women now it's different, isn't it? My mom would have now,
• 32:24
  I don't think ever wore a pair of jeans in her life. Right. Um, but, you know, now you can wear
• 32:29
  black jeans, black t-shirts and some trainers and it's, you know, going, you're saying the world's
• 32:34
  gone to hell. Women just wear whatever they want to be. But anyway, it was just an observation
• 32:39
  really. And so it became, I don't know, it was just when we were thinking about what Emily would wear
• 32:46
  that's we were thinking, oh, what if, you know, instead of just a normal kind of wig, it was like a
• 32:51
  kind of, you know, like Elizabethan wig. Right. But a lot of these things just happened by accident,
• 32:55
  like we went into the makeup for the, the, the wig, BBC wig store and there was a wig that was
• 33:00
  like Mary Antoinette wig and we just sort of put that on. Right. Right. Right. I think also we
• 33:05
  needed to differentiate it between, because obviously we were playing a lot of female characters
• 33:10
  in Little Britain. So we need to differentiate Emily, who had to be a transvestite character
• 33:17
  to us, just pressing words. Yes. Yes. I see. So I think that's probably why it ended up being
• 33:24
  one drag extra. Yeah. Yeah. Drag to the power drag. And how do you, have you got
• 33:29
  copped any flank for that? Because in the 2020s, the idea of, I suppose, ridiculing a trans person,
• 33:35
  because I think we were ridiculing. I always think characters are like celebrating
• 33:41
  that personally, because I think it's like, I don't know, that's what I felt all our characters
• 33:48
  were sort of winners. And then we sort of, we were celebrating extra and eccentricity. And
• 33:53
  they're funny as you want to spend time with these characters. And yeah, well, it's just changed.
• 34:00
  The definition has changed as a trans. It's now a much bigger umbrella term for lots of different,
• 34:09
  lots of different people and lots of different situations, doesn't it? Because it was very,
• 34:13
  when we were, I mean, we came up with that character probably like 25 years ago. And then I think
• 34:18
  it was there was transvestites. And there was what was called transsexuals. And so they were
• 34:22
  seen as very separate things. Right, I see. I'd say. And then, and so,
• 34:29
  right, so the idea of a transvestite was still the dictionary definition is someone who
• 34:36
  dresses, cross-dressives for pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I guess, different to it being
• 34:42
  something to do with your gender identity or that's one more serious kind of issue around the
• 34:47
  way you feel about yourself. Right. And what have you made of the kind of move towards? I guess
• 34:51
  a more dogmatic interpretation of identity politics in the past 10 years. I think it's interesting.
• 34:58
  I mean, I find change interesting. And I mean, you know, I wrote a book called The Boy in the
• 35:05
  Dress 15 years ago, which was sort of seen as a bit more daring then. And so it's something I've
• 35:11
  always sort of felt like celebrating difference. And so I've always thought, they're exciting. But I
• 35:18
  sort of, some 53 now. So you never kind of think you're going to be old and you're kind of going
• 35:23
  to look at younger people. And they're doing something different, you know, but they are. And it's
• 35:29
  exciting and interesting. And you know, I rather like it. I sort of think, what would I,
• 35:38
  where would I be positioning myself? Maybe if I was now 19 or 20? Because I went to Bristol
• 35:44
  University at a drama degree. And you know, if you're going to find, I'd say that course is where
• 35:50
  you're probably going to find not trying to do down the lawyers and the doctors and stuff like that.
• 35:56
  But you know, it's sort of people who are probably, if there's a group of people are going to
• 36:00
  be most interested in that sort of area or most drawn to that area, it's probably going to be drama
• 36:05
  students. Yeah. Who are used to sort of playing and I don't know. So what do you think you would be
• 36:12
  doing if you were 19? I don't know. I mean, I think in a way, I probably say I'm non-binary, I think,
• 36:17
  probably. I don't know exactly because I, but I mean, it was actually, I had this girlfriend
• 36:22
  at the end of university and we used to go out, I used to go out, we used to go to like eight clubs
• 36:26
  and dance for like six hours and I'd be wearing like a skirt and stuff like that. But we were like,
• 36:31
  the kind of, we were like, you know, sometimes in nightclubs, people sort of dress up and you
• 36:36
  become like a bit of a star in a nightclub. So she was sort of dressed like as an angel or something
• 36:45
  like that. We're like wings and stuff like that and have a Barbie magic wand and stuff like that.
• 36:50
  And we'd like get a photograph in nightclubs. I was like, oh, look at these, you know, look what's
• 36:55
  happening in this nightclub, isn't it fun? You know, these sort of, someone's dressed as I don't know.
• 36:59
  I mean, Centurion and yeah, someone's painting themselves red as a devil and look at these two,
• 37:05
  they're in this sort of, he's in make up and stuff like that. So yeah. And what about your
• 37:10
  sexuality? Well, you're always, you always lean into the, you know, Britain's most famous
• 37:16
  bicarious comedian or something. Was that, is that a real reflection of your adolescence?
• 37:21
  Did you fall in love with guys? Yeah. I say so. But again, it just still seems odd because it
• 37:26
  was feels like a sort of, like these kind of things were like, it's like a big deal to talk about it.
• 37:31
  This is like, I mean, it's not if it's not, isn't it? I mean, it's like, it is. It's only as big
• 37:38
  a deal as one makes it. Yeah. So I was always at kind of home with that as well. Yeah.
• 37:44
  Sometimes I think my life would be a lot simpler if I was just gay because everyone seems okay.
• 37:51
  I really, really drawn to gay thing. Yeah. Really like gay culture. It's interesting because Matt
• 37:57
  Lucas is gay and he's like into football and he's into musicals as well, actually. But I'd say
• 38:08
  I need lights out by so anyway, it's just I'd say it's just a football thing. But like there's more
• 38:13
  traditionally, well, heterosexual and his interests, you know, only maybe the only little share. Now
• 38:18
  I come to think of it. But yeah, I'd say probably I'm sort of camper than him. Yeah. It's hard. I
• 38:26
  don't know. I mean, being gay is easy. It does make things easier, you know, speaking as someone
• 38:31
  who's whose first relationships were all with girls and then married a guy. Now people and
• 38:37
  people ask, I can just say that I'm gay. And I have to go into details. You know, nobody's like,
• 38:42
  well, how gay exactly? They're just like, well, right? You're married to a boy. Yeah. It becomes
• 38:47
  a binary thing, which is frustrating in some ways because it flattens you into like a representative
• 38:53
  of some community or other. And I think probably most not everybody, but a lot of people probably
• 38:58
  are somewhere on the kind of spectrum out there. Because I mean, you know, it's just bound to
• 39:04
  there. I mean, just you see it all around you, don't you? So, well, if you're bicurest, you do.
• 39:13
  If you were straight, you'd walk straight past those waggling penises and give them
• 39:17
  narrow pain, narrow any attention to them, David. What I'm saying is, you know, the probably
• 39:24
  plenty of straight men who do, who have interest in that direction. Yes. And probably
• 39:29
  is again with girls. I think men and more sort of wound up about it, I think, then go, then girls
• 39:37
  are definitely. Yeah. Well, I mean, not all the way. But the saying that I'm 53, maybe if you're like
• 39:45
  18, 19 now, you don't think like that, which would be good if you don't. At the risk of getting
• 39:50
  myself into trouble with my LGBT QAA plus peers that I do think that our community, so to speak,
• 39:58
  has been partly responsible for making it more difficult for people to come out and for a
• 40:03
  bicurest, straight guys to just sort of fall around because the pride thing has become so intense
• 40:09
  that I think it feels to young guys that they have to open up an entire pandora box of identity
• 40:14
  issues if they wanted to go there. You know, it's like all of a sudden, you're going to have to
• 40:19
  join a parade and you're going to have to be straddling a giant inflatable penis, you know,
• 40:22
  going driving down the main street. I know what you mean. It feels like from the outside,
• 40:32
  it feels like there's quite a lot of things that kind of, you know, cultural identity that goes
• 40:38
  with it for gay men. It feels like like, do I have to vote a certain way and dress a certain way
• 40:42
  and look at? Well, that's what's quite interesting when you meet like, you know, like gay Republicans
• 40:47
  and things like that. I've got a very close friend who's like, works on Wall Street and he's
• 40:56
  going, and his partner's gay, well, they're both gay. That's good. It's made life easy. Anyway,
• 41:02
  but he's, he's a big, yeah, I've had the sort of Trump conversation with him and he's,
• 41:06
  he's like, you know, he's the Wall Street guy. He's always going to vote Republican. Right.
• 41:10
  And it's quite, I find it kind of old. Although Trump actually isn't, there's not much evidence
• 41:15
  of him being homophobic, I don't think. I mean, the man wears makeup every day and high heels.
• 41:19
  But I don't think he's actually, he may be a lot of things. Obviously misogynistic and
• 41:25
  unracist, but I don't, I don't, the homophobia isn't, I don't think. No, I mean, I think he's just
• 41:31
  quite been expressed. He's probably anti-trans, though, isn't he? Well, he's, I don't even know
• 41:35
  that he cares. His policies probably are. Yeah, I think there were. He's probably just a 70-something,
• 41:42
  you know, Rich White dude, straight dude. He probably just has views that align with most
• 41:48
  white 70-something. I don't know. Anything easy. I think he's evil. I don't think.
• 41:52
  I'm talking specifically about towards Gays. Yeah. Who knows? I don't know. He will
• 41:57
  be a big brother about him, John. There you go. Enough said. How did Daffod come about?
• 42:04
  Um, Daffod came about because when me and Matt were in the National Youth Theatre.
• 42:10
  This is the, I'm the only guy in the village that I don't have the people who don't remember
• 42:13
  there a little bit. There was a guy who was there who was Welsh and you say, come up to people
• 42:19
  and say, I'm Shadwell and I'm bisexual. So we were sort of thinking about that and the fact that
• 42:28
  Shadwell, um, that he, uh, that he sort of like, he'd say that but it never seemed to have a
• 42:39
  part or anything like that. And so there was a slight sense that he owned that space and that
• 42:44
  made him special. And so I think that's what we were trying to feed in with the Daffod sketches.
• 42:48
  Right. He liked being the only guy in the village and didn't like there being someone else.
• 42:53
  And you said there was, there was another guy on, on campus who was gay, but he, but this bloke
• 42:58
  didn't. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a long time ago now. So I don't know how well my memory
• 43:03
  serves me, but yeah, it was a sense of he was, his whole identity was gay, but it was unclear
• 43:09
  whether he did anything about it exactly. Um, and so, um, and so that's what we're feeding into.
• 43:16
  I mean, it's quite, it's quite a, and in some ways, it's quite a sophisticated idea.
• 43:21
  Um, he's in his village or sort of the moment being gay, but then why
• 43:26
  so everybody? Yeah. Yeah. And he's using it more as a marker of his own exceptionalness than,
• 43:35
  yeah, than anything else. Um, I thought it was quite a sweet character actually.
• 43:41
  I think he was sweet and it was very, I mean, your recollection may be off, but in the show
• 43:46
  that we're doing, you claim that there was another bloke. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there's
• 43:50
  a sense of a sense of he was the only gay in the luxury theatre and he sort of, I don't want to,
• 43:57
  you know, so, all right, but I feel like I felt like that's how it felt from the outside that
• 44:04
  it was like, I'm the, I'm this, I'm like the gay one, or the bisexual one. And so that's me. So
• 44:11
  no one else can quite own that because I'm the one. And it is, it is, if you were the, you know,
• 44:18
  it's nice having something special about you. Listen to it that you go into a group of people
• 44:22
  and you're going to stand out because of a reason, you know, it's exciting. Yeah. And I mean,
• 44:28
  everyone instantly knows who you are as well. Yeah. That's right. Because there's a lot
• 44:32
  of people. He's the guy. Yeah. Well, he's, you met him. Yeah, he's well, he's gay. And you know,
• 44:36
  he's very sort of forthright about it. And also, this was like the end of the 1980s. And it wasn't,
• 44:42
  you know, it wasn't like everyone who was at the youth theatre who might have been gay. I mean,
• 44:47
  there was no one out at my school. Yeah. Nobody was unthinkable. Right. Thinkable. Right.
• 44:53
  So it was still a thing. Oh, nice sketch was big. Massively. Yeah. Well, well, when we were in
• 44:58
  the youth theatre, it was sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even in the early 2000s, it wasn't
• 45:03
  I mean, you know, it's not like gay marriage was legal anywhere at the time that little Britain
• 45:08
  was back now. And there was still an age of consent vote in the UK. And Tony Blair was, oh, no,
• 45:15
  was the end of the 90s when John Major was Prime Minister. Teller. Well, it was 21. And then
• 45:21
  the civil rights law. And then there was a vote. And it was when weirdly went out to 18 and
• 45:26
  or 16 is like weird. Yeah. And the other, I mean, one thing that's interesting about the sort
• 45:32
  of provocativeness of little Britain is that you've said that Lew and Andy, the sketch with the
• 45:38
  person in a wheelchair who actually doesn't need the wheelchair and the whole conceit of the
• 45:42
  sketches that he, you know, gets up and ends up sitting back down without his carer realizing it.
• 45:49
  That was the one that your producers were most worried about getting backlash for not the cross
• 45:54
  dressing, not the guy. He's not the putting on face paint to look like people with different
• 46:00
  racers. All of the, the, the host of things that would get you cancelled in the 2020s.
• 46:05
  Yeah, I just showed cultures change, isn't it? I mean, I was listening to Phil Specter
• 46:12
  records this morning, you know, Phil Specter producer. And there's a song. I think it's all
• 46:17
  I can't remember who sings it, but it's like he hit me and it felt like a kiss is the lyric.
• 46:22
  You know, and it must be like probably early 60s. And it's just I just listening to it,
• 46:27
  I think you God, this is, this was the sort of song that we've, you know, people bought and listened
• 46:32
  to. And I don't know whether there was a big floor about it. I've never heard there was. And
• 46:38
  and that's how much there's how much things have changed. That's a popular song of the time.
• 46:44
  And you'd never got complaints from people in wheelchairs about the sketch that the
• 46:48
  because it was a bit of a different landscape then, because if you wanted to complain,
• 46:54
  you had to get them the BBC for none firing out, register a complaint and stuff like that. So
• 46:58
  you didn't just tweet. No, I mean, but sometimes the BBC would have, they had a thing called
• 47:04
  Jerry Springer, the opera, which was a big hit show.
• 47:11
  That I should, I think, start off for now to rest. I'll richer Thomas and Stuart Lee,
• 47:14
  I think put it together anyway. And it was like, I think it doesn't have like 50,000
• 47:19
  complaints. It was the highest number ever, like a hundred thousand or saying, well, I can't
• 47:26
  remember exactly. It was huge number. And so I think we sometimes get some complaints,
• 47:31
  like a hundred or something. So I can't remember specifically what they're about.
• 47:35
  When you meet people in wheelchairs who are fans, what are they saying? Well, generally,
• 47:40
  they say, Oh, it's like Lewin Andy, isn't it? You'd be Lewin, I'll be Andy.
• 47:44
  No, they want their selfie taken their photo. Where are you doing? I don't like it. You know,
• 47:48
  that sort of stuff. I mean, it's, it's an interesting one, isn't it about
• 47:53
  representation and stuff? And like, um, you know, like, it's a comedy show.
• 48:02
  But I still think, you know, if you're, remember, minority, I don't think you'd necessarily,
• 48:08
  it's not a given that you would therefore not like being represented.
• 48:12
  Is it because I mean, you know, it's not like you've lost your sense of humor or something.
• 48:16
  It's like, it's just someone on a wheelchair and still find that funny. And I think that's
• 48:22
  the test in a way. It's like, say you had a joke, which was somehow about race or disability
• 48:26
  or being gay or whatever. If you can tell that joke in front of the person who is representative
• 48:34
  of that group, then I think it's probably okay. Right. Like, I've got Jewish friends and it's like,
• 48:39
  I've got off. I've got this, you know, like, there's a great Jewish joke. It's one of my favorite
• 48:43
  jokes. I'm going to tell you, it's this Jewish mother's walking along. It'd be better if I was
• 48:51
  Jewish showing this, but I think it, but it's a joke that I, without any hesitation, I would
• 48:55
  tell on my Jewish friends. So, um, this mother's walking along by the coast with her son,
• 49:02
  which is Jewish mother and the son, and they're walking along, having a lovely day, but suddenly
• 49:06
  a huge wave. Do you know this joke? I do, but that's because I can see it's a Jewish name.
• 49:12
  Oh, okay. So this huge wave sweeps onto the, uh, uh, sweeps onto the land and and pours a
• 49:19
  sun far out to sea and she gets down. It's a, please, please, please, God, please deliver my
• 49:26
  son back to me and then wave comes back and the, and the son is safely delivered back onto land
• 49:32
  and then she gets back to town and he's and so he had a hat. It's such a good joke. It's such a good
• 49:39
  joke. I feel like it's quite a, it's sort of, I, you know, it's, I don't know. My dad, my dad,
• 49:47
  as the, my dad was born in a refugee camp, you know, during World War Two, uh, of Jewish parents
• 49:52
  and he told that joke all the time. It's a great joke. It's a great joke. Great joke about
• 49:57
  nothing. I think it's one of my favorite jokes, I tell you. Yeah. I mean, the question then
• 50:01
  becomes who gets to be the representative of the group, right? When you say that, because it's,
• 50:08
  yeah, I don't, it's never really likely to be an individual. It's going to be a sort of,
• 50:12
  I mean, what's happened now is that it seems like we've got a sort of hecklers veto where
• 50:17
  whoever wants to jump up and down loudest enough and say that's unacceptable gets sort of
• 50:23
  defined in contemporary culture as the representative of the group. Even if there's a silent majority
• 50:28
  of people from the group who isn't offended, there's a lot of taking offense on behalf of the group.
• 50:32
  It's also hard to know, you know, if you're, you know, minorities can still be a relatively large
• 50:38
  group of people and the idea that everyone would have the same. I, same sort of sensibilities is,
• 50:44
  it's kind of, it doesn't bear, you know, it, it, it, it can't really be true, can it? It's not
• 50:50
  saying like all gay men like Highly Men O, or something like that. I don't even like
• 50:54
  Highly Men O. You don't like Highly Men O? No, I love Highly Men O. Of course you do, you go.
• 51:00
  But you know, like it's a sort of thing, isn't it? Why would everyone think the same thing? And
• 51:04
  actually it's interesting that people have different opinions about things. And you know, like
• 51:10
  when I was growing up, there was, there was this sitcom, Are You Being Served? You know,
• 51:14
  it's hilarious. And there was a character, Mr Humphries, who was the gay character, who famously,
• 51:22
  you know, and so there's a man here and he needs to be measured up for a dress. Are you free,
• 51:27
  Mr Hum? I'm free, you know, it's hilarious. But some people will say that's a negative stereotype.
• 51:32
  Some people, one other people say it was brilliant. There's this funny character,
• 51:36
  everyone loved, was on this much-lob sitcom at 7 o'clock on a Wednesday night. And so the whole
• 51:41
  country could see his character. And I don't think there's necessarily that's just interpreting
• 51:46
  something differently. And no one's right or wrong. So everyone has different opinions about it.
• 51:51
  And I think that, I don't know, it's just the way it is. I mean, why would everyone agree
• 51:57
  on one way of reading something? We read it with these things differently, don't we?
• 52:01
  Yes, but then is it reasonable for us to impose universal new norms like it's always wrong,
• 52:08
  for example, for a white person to dress up as a person of color? Like that is now a cultural rule.
• 52:14
  You can't, a white person cannot play it. It's fair enough. It's fair enough, yeah. I mean,
• 52:20
  yeah, I think it was, you know, I mean, it feels, if it does feel now, it doesn't feel right,
• 52:28
  does it? So therefore, you know, I'm think you'll find anyone doing it. I mean, you saw some
• 52:33
  people playing around with those ideas sometimes. I mean, we had a sketch in the first series of
• 52:38
  Little Britain where we played, you know, Black and White Minstrels, that's what they were called in
• 52:43
  the UK, you know, obviously people. And there's even a show, when I was growing up, there was a show
• 52:50
  on television, a sort of Saturday night show with people dressed as Minstrels with the sort of
• 52:54
  straw hats and white people with a black face. And they'd sing songs. I hated the show. I mean,
• 53:02
  I just didn't understand what it was. I didn't even know, I was only about five, I don't know,
• 53:05
  even was representing back there, but I thought it was bizarre. Yeah. And I hated the songs,
• 53:10
  my grindies to watch. Yeah. Yeah, Ronald swanning, and it was like awful. Right. And it was fun
• 53:17
  to be able to see anyway. So when we, was it a satire of like, no, it was just, no, it wasn't a satire,
• 53:24
  it was just that was a sort of a form of entertainer. Well, it was just seen as a form of entertainer.
• 53:28
  That's the Black and White Minstrel show. Wow. Weirdly in Lenny Henry, the most famous black
• 53:34
  comedian in the UK, he was on it as a sort of teenager. It's weird. Very weird. Yeah, but,
• 53:40
  you know, that's the past as a foreign country, isn't it? But what I was going to say was in the
• 53:44
  first series of Britain, we had the sketches of minstrels. We, me and Matt played these two minstrels,
• 53:51
  as if we were in the black and white minstrel show, and they were, they were basically suffering
• 53:55
  from racists. They were, they were suffering from racism. So it's quite a kind. Right. I see.
• 54:00
  Yeah. But you can't, there is no sophistication anymore. I mean, Sarah Silverman had a great
• 54:06
  episode of her show where I do know about this controversy, you know, the conceit was she wants
• 54:12
  to see what it's like to be a black person in America. So she puts on an administrative black
• 54:18
  face and goes out and people tell her that she's a horrible, awful person because she's in black
• 54:24
  face and she misinterprets that as being them. She's like, wow, it was really bad to be a black
• 54:28
  person in America. Yeah. I mean, everybody is. But that episode herself has been pulled from
• 54:33
  the scene. Yeah, it was quite interesting. It was happening and you found out how many different
• 54:36
  shows had had in some way or another done that. There was actually quite a, and there was
• 54:44
  that there's an episode of the Golden Girls where I think two of the ladies or something have mud packs
• 54:49
  on. I think a black person, a black lady comes into the house and she says, and one of the, we're
• 54:54
  not black. And it was like, so there's so many different ways in which people played with those
• 55:01
  ideas. And they all had their own contexts in one way or another. Yeah. And but none of, no
• 55:12
  context has saved any of those. No, the only one I can think of is Robert Downey Jr. and
• 55:19
  his tropic thunder. How has that escaped? Because I think it's the mob. Because I think I don't know,
• 55:25
  maybe because it's a sophisticated joke about an actor who thinks he can play any part. And
• 55:31
  that's what the film's about. I mean, I'm on my own with it. I don't know. And there's also
• 55:36
  sometimes examples of like, it's different, but like Eddie Murphy and coming to America and coming
• 55:42
  to America, two places, the old, he's amazing at it. And I'll do. Oh, I'll want to. Yeah. But I
• 55:49
  mean, I don't know who's going to. Well, there's only one that's different, isn't it? Because it's
• 55:53
  a whole thing about punching. It is just punching down. I totally get it's different, but it's
• 55:57
  but I kind of like that he did it still. Yeah, absolutely. I thought, yeah, it's funny.
• 56:04
  Yeah, I mean, it's funny because under the new norms, that's fine because you're punching
• 56:10
  up, not punching down because supposedly black people are underneath white people in the power
• 56:16
  system, but the idea of an incredibly wealthy and famous entertainer being underneath a work-in-class
• 56:28
  Jewish old white man is weird as well. I don't know. I kind of think this is just danger of
• 56:35
  overthinking it. You see him play that character. At first, you don't even know it's him because
• 56:38
  they make up so great. And it's just brilliant at it. And actually, the conceit of the film is he
• 56:44
  plays a few roles anyway. Yes. And so to my mind, I don't know. I mean, I'm not, I'm not
• 56:52
  an old Jewish man. So it's not neat. But I think I'm an aging, I'm an aging. It doesn't seem,
• 56:59
  it doesn't seem to me to be in the in the what I would consider. No, of course. I mean, an old
• 57:04
  Jewish man wouldn't wouldn't take on bridge at such a thing anyway. There are unlikely. There are
• 57:09
  other examples of it. I mean, it's interesting. I was watching
• 57:17
  Indiana Jones at the Temple of Doom. And there's quite a lot of people browned up in that
• 57:25
  playing parts of it like he has a fight with this guy who's like, seek guy, but it's actually
• 57:33
  this British wrestler called Pat Roach. Yeah, he played other parts of the other ones, but they
• 57:40
  just got you know, and there's amazingly there's a I was watching a documentary and the
• 57:46
  um in live and let die. There's this part of Rosie Carver, so the Bond Farm. She's this a Black
• 57:55
  CIA agent. And there's a bit where she comes into a door and Bond kind of throws her over his
• 58:02
  shoulder, not knowing who it is. And it was actually a black, sorry, it was actually a white stunt man
• 58:09
  blacked up because whatever we're with an Afro one. Afro like, yeah, it was quite interesting.
• 58:14
  It is amazing. I mean, I've seen the movie. I never guessed it because it goes by in a second.
• 58:17
  Of course, but again, it's sort of curious, isn't it? No, I mean, it was it's you, I mean,
• 58:22
  my dad was an actor and like, he played in one Australian show. He played a Vietnamese person,
• 58:29
  you know, like, it's unimaginable now to think of a white actor being ground up with fake eyes,
• 58:36
  like not as a caricature, but like they couldn't find a single Vietnamese person in the world.
• 58:43
  Well, a fellow used to be, I mean, until the 80s, I'd say, the BBC Shakespeare, I'm pretty
• 58:50
  sure it's Anthony Hopkins. Yes, that's right. Michael Gambon, who I worked with, he played
• 58:55
  Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, he said he was the last white actor to black uppers.
• 59:02
  And he said, one time he'd got really drunk the night for him, forgot to put the makeup on for
• 59:06
  the matinee. I mean, most people don't know what a Moore is anyway. So you could just get away
• 59:14
  with that with a modern audience. I mean, it's it's but these, you know, all these
• 59:19
  progressions are interesting. Yeah. You don't want things to stay the same. You want things to change.
• 59:25
  Yes. And it's exciting changes. Change in ways that make sense. Yeah. And changes
• 59:32
  mostly positive, not always, but it's mostly moving forward. Do you miss TV and do you miss live
• 59:39
  performing? Do you want to go? I mean, now you're basically a fantastically successful writer
• 59:44
  who's written 43 children's books and sold 60 million copies. But as part of you go,
• 59:50
  my future still resides in performing or television. Oh, yeah. Completely. Yeah.
• 59:58
  I mean, I only really started writing because I wanted to be a comedian. And I saw that
• 1:00:03
  comedians in the era that when I was sort of consuming comedy in the 80s, a lot of comedians
• 1:00:09
  I admired. Not all, but a lot of them were writing their own sketches and creating their own
• 1:00:13
  character. It's like multipy than they're the writers and performers aren't they? And that's
• 1:00:18
  here in group and things like the young ones, Rick Mail, Ray Wanda. And so that's what I thought
• 1:00:25
  was thinking, oh, okay, that's what you need to do. So that's why I started writing. And then I
• 1:00:30
  realized that I felt that writing for me at least was the most creative part. And I felt I was
• 1:00:34
  stronger as a writer than I was as a performer. But I do. But the whole reason I wanted to do anything
• 1:00:40
  was to do comedy shows. So yeah, I would like to do that more. Yeah, I would like to do more of that.
• 1:00:47
  I mean, so me and Matt are plotting various things. So, you know, that may come to pass, which I hope
• 1:00:54
  it will. Because there's something about that that is special, I don't know,
• 1:01:01
  was for special to me. And writing is solitary because even when me and Matt were writing comedy
• 1:01:06
  shows ago, that it was a social occasion. It was just the two of us, you know, they're like, okay,
• 1:01:11
  I'm going to come around your house with time for a good morning and we're going to probably
• 1:01:14
  chat about what we saw on TV last night and have a bitch about a couple of people. And then eventually
• 1:01:19
  I take Matt, we really need to start working now. Let me get dressed up in a dress. And then we've
• 1:01:25
  rye and then we go out till I have some noodles full of lunch and then buy about five o'clock,
• 1:01:31
  we sort of that we couldn't think of anything else and then we'd say see you tomorrow morning.
• 1:01:35
  It's good, isn't it? The collaborative aspect. But when I'm writing my books now,
• 1:01:40
  obviously, I write them completely on my own and sometimes I do feel a bit.
• 1:01:45
  I mean, if I have a day where I'm just, you know, in writing my books and then in the evening,
• 1:01:50
  I'm just saying, I'm not singing where it's like, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like I need
• 1:01:55
  a bit more stimulation. So I like, you know, it's a weird life, isn't it? It is a bit. I mean,
• 1:02:01
  it's very sort of, I mean, people ask, you know, people say, oh, roll dial had a writing shed,
• 1:02:06
  you know, so where do you write? I think I would say, it doesn't really matter where you are,
• 1:02:10
  as long as you're not around other people. That's my feeling. Also, the world is so different.
• 1:02:15
  You need to be alone with your thoughts. That's right. I mean, some people can do it on a train
• 1:02:18
  with some headphones. I can do on a train. Yeah. Or a plane. And that's a good thing as well. But I
• 1:02:24
  wouldn't want to sit in a cafe. Right. Yeah, personally. And also with me and Matt, when we were like
• 1:02:34
  creating characters and things, I felt I could never do it if someone else was there.
• 1:02:41
  It was a weird thing. It feels, it feels quite private to me being negative. I don't want to
• 1:02:45
  explain it, but I feel inhibited. You know, sometimes people would want to make a document,
• 1:02:49
  do you want to make film? It's like, always felt tense about that. I wanted to change the dynamic.
• 1:02:54
  I feel like you've got to be totally free. For me, there's no better place than being in a rehearsal
• 1:03:00
  room. You're playing with things. You're finding what's funny, what's not. You can throw in
• 1:03:06
  completely outrageous kind of things and immediately dismiss them. There's not the tension of
• 1:03:13
  like we're filming them. We've only got 10 minutes left. And the light's going down. We've got to
• 1:03:16
  get this shot down. And that for me, when I say action, I get a little bit tense. I need to kind
• 1:03:21
  of work on that because I don't think it's good. Been the rehearsal room. We were just playing.
• 1:03:27
  And also when me and Matt wrote and writing each other's character, I'd become Marjorie Dawes
• 1:03:32
  and do my, you know, I mean, just because it was easy. Because it was easy. That was how I could
• 1:03:38
  write it by, yeah, you know, write it with him. But the way I could do it is that she says this,
• 1:03:43
  you know, such a pretty face in the middle there or whatever. It came out of me filming. So it was
• 1:03:50
  lovely. It's awful. We wouldn't really decide who was playing. It felt natural normally who would
• 1:03:54
  play what part, but sometimes we held back on it. Just because, I don't know, it's sort of in
• 1:04:02
  a, in a, in a partnership, it felt like the right thing to do. Well, I hope you guys can get back
• 1:04:07
  in a writing room and rehearsal room. Yeah, we've been in a writing room. But yeah, it's just,
• 1:04:12
  it's, um, it's just that, you know, when we were, it's just different, a bit different now,
• 1:04:17
  isn't it? One is for older. Um, but it's sort of, there are a bit less, there are less comedy shows
• 1:04:24
  on. It's more than a panel shows and stand-up specials and those kind of things more than, I mean,
• 1:04:30
  I don't think there's any sketch show on television anymore that I can think of. Well, there's a
• 1:04:35
  Saturday night life. Yeah. But in the UK, I can't think that there is really anything at the moment.
• 1:04:40
  So it's weird. And there's not many new sitcoms or anything like that. There's lots of comedy
• 1:04:44
  dramas, stand-up specials and panel shows and, and obviously podcasts and things. Yeah. And
• 1:04:51
  there's a lot of, when you say comedy dramas, you know, there's a lot of sort of, uh, reasonably
• 1:04:56
  pretentious high budget streaming things that are basically just sort of dramas. But every five
• 1:05:03
  minutes you go, huh, and they build themselves as comedy dramas. Yeah, but I tell you what, I thought,
• 1:05:07
  I thought it was the kind of, uh, I care of bringing to you some of the show that I mostly
• 1:05:12
  start with all these incredible taboo subjects. Um, and such a way. I mean, I've never had any
• 1:05:20
  one complaint about it. But I mean, it's incredible. I, it finished and I went back to the very
• 1:05:24
  beginning. And so I started watching the whole thing again. And I was, I mean, I was in awe of
• 1:05:30
  it anyway, but I'm just like this is genius. And the way he can deal with all kinds of subjects,
• 1:05:36
  like disability, race, sexuality, because he's basically always putting his foot in it.
• 1:05:41
  Yes. And then he's always the butt of the joke. Yeah. I think that's probably why. Yes. And he,
• 1:05:46
  he's, he's like, he did a joke about the chasbo no, who he shares are now some, yeah, are who
• 1:05:57
  transmit. Yeah. Um, you know, chasers in this, in the scene in the sketches. So I think,
• 1:06:04
  is that the episode where the trans guy who transitions has a huge pain? Yeah. Well, that,
• 1:06:10
  the chasers, that's the experience. Yeah. It's like, I mean, you can understand getting over that
• 1:06:17
  because the character is not transphobic. The character is just really impressed by the fact
• 1:06:22
  that someone who's transitioning or playing a woman with some eyes shows on a gigantic,
• 1:06:26
  to have a gigantic penis, because you can. Yeah. I'm not saying it offensive. I don't think
• 1:06:31
  maybe no one would, but I'm just saying it's, he's, he's so, he's so intelligent and
• 1:06:35
  is humorous. So sophisticated lots of ways that he can deal with these subjects with such
• 1:06:39
  intelligence that I think, you know, you, it doesn't seem, it doesn't seem like he would,
• 1:06:46
  people would complain because I feel like he's, he's thought these things through and he's
• 1:06:50
  in so intelligent he can deal with all these subjects. And we may be getting to a point at which,
• 1:06:54
  even when people do complain, everyone's a bit fed up of the complaining. Well, you know,
• 1:06:58
  it is funny and it's not coming from a bad place. So, I mean, it's complicated, isn't it,
• 1:07:03
  because if someone doesn't like something, does that mean it shouldn't exist? You know, I mean,
• 1:07:07
  people, life of Brian was banned when it came out in, in, in Ireland, you couldn't see it for about
• 1:07:13
  25, 30 years or something like that. It was outlawed. Is outrageous, isn't it? People
• 1:07:20
  protested outside the cinemas in America. I mean, and so not everyone likes it.
• 1:07:30
  I think it's like the funny film I've ever made, but so, but we can't not have life
• 1:07:36
  Brian because someone doesn't like it, can we? Even then, you know, there's not just somebody
• 1:07:42
  thinks it's offensive and maybe it's trying to be offensive. It's very, it's very complicated
• 1:07:47
  this. I think we've got into a place where we sometimes think if something's offensive,
• 1:07:51
  it shouldn't exist, but some things, a lot of things set out to be offensive. So, where does that
• 1:07:57
  lead to those things? I mean, it's complicated. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, you know, I look at like
• 1:08:04
  the photographs of Robert Maplethorpe, the gay photographer, American gay photographer. How
• 1:08:10
  frequently do you look at the photographs? I love Robert Maplethorpe. And I own a couple of
• 1:08:14
  photographs. And I went to see an exhibition of his in New York. And you know, it's still in,
• 1:08:21
  it has not lost its desire to shock because of the sexual nature of the photographs.
• 1:08:27
  But they're now considered art. Yeah. Where they are art. And probably not to everybody.
• 1:08:33
  And some people would probably question why it's in a sort of, you know, a major gallery. I don't
• 1:08:36
  know. It's just, I don't really know what we seem to need to have a, we need to everyone to agree
• 1:08:44
  on something. I could feel like that's unrealistic. Yeah. I feel like some people go, well,
• 1:08:48
  I think that's re-offensive and shocking. And so I've known people like, well, I think it's funny.
• 1:08:52
  And, you know, well, that's because you believe in a free society. Yeah. Not everybody does.
• 1:08:57
  I just think, I think, I saw it interview John Waters, the filmmaker, and he, one of the things
• 1:09:04
  is it in pink flamingos that divine eats a doctorate? I'm not enough of a John Waters
• 1:09:10
  aficionado to recall. Okay. And so he filmed a scene where
• 1:09:16
  divine is following around this dog. And they said, they fed the dog and fed the dog. I
• 1:09:24
  thought I could eat it. And the dog is all captured in one shot. Divine eats a dog poo in the film.
• 1:09:34
  Now, if you're not trying setting out to shock and offend people. And it sort of is meant to be,
• 1:09:42
  it's meant to be, well, it is, it's disgusting on every single level. But at some point,
• 1:09:48
  that crept into John Waters head. Yeah. And divine, but whatever reason was up, was up for it.
• 1:09:57
  That happened. So what's, where does that, I know there's already a victim of that exactly,
• 1:10:02
  but like, what, where do we place that in there? Well, you haven't talked to the dog.
• 1:10:08
  Maybe the dog didn't like it. It's got a gross out. It's gross out. I want to see
• 1:10:14
  little Britain 2026 begin with you eating a dog turd first sketch. David, I'm going to let you
• 1:10:21
  go and get ready for your shows. Oh, okay. Thank you for hanging on. Speaking with me.
• 1:10:25
  And well, it's a little, we've just gone an hour. Do you want to do another 10 minutes? Yeah,
• 1:10:30
  we can do another 10 minutes. What should we talk about in the final 10 minutes? What do you,
• 1:10:34
  what do you like the most when we're talking about it on stage? Oh, Simon Cowell is good.
• 1:10:44
  What do I like to the last stage? I can't like entertaining people the bad. Yeah. I like making
• 1:10:50
  people laugh. It's such a thrill. It's a great, such a amazing feeling. I sort of forgotten,
• 1:10:56
  I've forgotten what it felt like, but you know, if you're not in front of an audience all the time,
• 1:11:01
  I'm really a standup. I'm really close with Jimmy Cards, one of my best friends and he is out
• 1:11:06
  six nights a week doing his standup. So he, he never, I don't think,
• 1:11:10
  lose his touch with what it is he does and stuff like that. But also writing books is very time
• 1:11:17
  consuming. Yeah. I mean, it is incredibly, I'm not complaining, but it's not something. I know
• 1:11:23
  people, oh, it's children's books. So, you know, well, not you're doing 43 after. I think most people
• 1:11:28
  think you couldn't possibly be writing them all. So he must have a ghost writer. I just,
• 1:11:34
  I just work, I just spend a lot of time doing it and it takes up my life. And really,
• 1:11:41
  if there's any amount, any space of time where it's not filled, that's what I'm thinking about,
• 1:11:46
  so I'm actually really looking forward to the flight on the way home because I know there's
• 1:11:50
  two flights, one to Singapore, and that's what I think I'm going to stay up at the first flight
• 1:11:54
  Singapore. And I'll probably write for 10 hours. I'm going to just be in Japan.
• 1:11:58
  So I break a tea, but perth is quite close to Singapore. So you're not going to get
• 1:12:01
  tired. How far is it? I think it's only about four hours for me. Oh, well, anyway,
• 1:12:05
  I'm looking forward to being on the plane, whatever plane. Yeah. Because I know I'll have no
• 1:12:08
  distractions. Yeah. And I like writing on a plane. Yeah, I love it. And I just feel
• 1:12:15
  it's interesting. I never feel lonely when I'm doing something creative for that. Even
• 1:12:20
  the way I'm, because I'm one with the characters and stuff. And I love it. Do you ever have
• 1:12:25
  resistance to writing? Like, you know, I don't want to say writers block because it's not the same
• 1:12:30
  as not knowing what you're going to write. But I think it's really hot starting. Yeah. I think
• 1:12:36
  starting on a new plane ends up very clean on a day when you've, you've got a deadline. I think,
• 1:12:40
  I think it for me starting is hard. I look at it this way. I think, okay, I know it's not the
• 1:12:47
  same as climbing Everest, but you've got to write a book, right? And how have we? Look at it,
• 1:12:52
  it's going to take a long time. It's going to take quite a few months to do. So I'm like, I'm at the
• 1:12:57
  foot of the, of the mountain, I'm at the foot of Mount Everest. I'm at the foot of a mountain.
• 1:13:01
  A hill. A mound in my case. A grass. Maybe for James Joyce, you're right, Ulysses, it is,
• 1:13:07
  yeah, but whatever. I'm looking at a task on Instagram. It's, yeah, the Mount Everest of books.
• 1:13:14
  But anyway, I'm looking up thinking, oh god, yeah, it's so far to go. It's going to be such a struggle
• 1:13:19
  and it's going to be hard to start. But then the further you go, and then at some point,
• 1:13:26
  it's like, you're kind of going downhill and then it's exciting. Because when I start,
• 1:13:30
  I'm going to be only writing 500 words a day, but then towards the end because I know what,
• 1:13:34
  I know who the characters are. I know what needs to happen. I might write 2000 words of the day.
• 1:13:39
  Then do you get up looking forward to it? Yeah, getting back to it. I look forward to it. Yeah. I mean,
• 1:13:46
  because I like, I like the creative work and I like, I like, I'm proud of them and I like
• 1:13:52
  getting it done. And so it's, and now I know there's an audience anticipating the next one coming out.
• 1:14:01
  And you can make yourself chuckle sometimes when you've come up with what you consider a good joke.
• 1:14:08
  So, so yes, I do like it, but just sometimes I feel, I just feel like I need a bit, I just wish
• 1:14:16
  there was a bit more, you know, someone else was around. Yeah. And the other thing is you don't,
• 1:14:20
  you don't, when me and Matt would be together writing in a room, we would make each other laugh,
• 1:14:26
  we'd laugh together. That's great. When we're both laughing, we know we're really onto something,
• 1:14:31
  but I might think of a funny joke, one of my books, but I've got no one to tell. Yeah. There's no one
• 1:14:35
  and we'll understand the context of it. Mm-hmm. Anything. What about writing adult novels?
• 1:14:43
  They're too long. They don't have it to be, David. I mean, yeah, if I had the idea, I mean, I think,
• 1:14:51
  if you're writer, you can, you know, like maybe I'd like to write a play at some point. I mean,
• 1:14:56
  you know, I've written a couple of film scripts, animated movies, I've had that. So, I've seen no reason
• 1:15:01
  why I wouldn't do that, but I'd be led by the idea rather than the, you know, if I woke up
• 1:15:09
  tomorrow morning with an idea for a, for a site point for a novel for adults and I felt it was
• 1:15:14
  strong, I would bark upon it, but I've not had the idea. You're telling me you've had 43 good ideas
• 1:15:21
  for kids books and zero good ideas for adults. I haven't applied myself exactly, but I think in a
• 1:15:27
  way, I suppose I don't really know what kind of voice I'd have as a writer for growing up. That's
• 1:15:38
  interesting. I'm not entirely sure. Right. And I think. But don't you just start and try when you...
• 1:15:43
  I suppose people write sometimes in genres when they're, I mean, certain writers do, not every
• 1:15:49
  and then there's kind of, you know, literature as well, isn't it, which is then the style of the
• 1:15:54
  writing really has to be something quite extraordinary. Right, but you can write it. I think I could
• 1:16:00
  need to take it off. I could write a comic novel, but see, I am in it. I would often say
• 1:16:10
  that it would be good if I could clone myself because then I could be getting on with that adult
• 1:16:15
  novel and doing the children's book, doing a tour like this and working with Matt and
• 1:16:22
  appearing on television and, you know, because sometimes it's quite weird having different
• 1:16:27
  parts of your career because of the people who, you know, the publishers don't care about the other
• 1:16:32
  stuff. I'm not saying they should, but they don't. So that what we need to book on this date,
• 1:16:36
  and what I've got to do in that, well, you know, everyone thinks their thing should take
• 1:16:40
  places. Of course. Yeah. So sometimes there's a little bit overwhelming. I mean, that's why
• 1:16:44
  deadlines are useful. Yeah. I feel lucky to have deadlines. Yeah. Because I know that there are
• 1:16:50
  lots of people out there who are going, oh, I'd love to write a book, but they don't have a deadline.
• 1:16:55
  They don't have anyone to read it. And in a way, they often don't get it done because there's not
• 1:16:59
  the pressure. And actually, pressure is not always, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing,
• 1:17:04
  but it focuses your mind. Was your collaboration with Matt, a substitute for the pressure of a
• 1:17:09
  deadline in the early days and giving you motivation to write? I think, you know, there's times when
• 1:17:16
  you're just rising for yourself, just coming up with ideas and stuff. And then there were times
• 1:17:22
  when you've actually got a job. Right. So they're quite different. Actually, it's quite fun being in
• 1:17:27
  the first place, but I don't think you get as much done as when it's a job and your deadline.
• 1:17:34
  So the scripts are going to be online during the pre-production starts this date and stuff like that.
• 1:17:38
  So I don't mind that kind of, I don't mind that pressure. I think it's really good.
• 1:17:42
  Do you want to talk about Simon Cowell? Well, it depends what you want to say.
• 1:17:48
  I'm intrigued by your fractious relationship with him. Well, you know, we talk a bit in the
• 1:17:56
  show about him being sort of famously thin skinned and you're needling him about rumours about
• 1:18:02
  his sexuality and that tickles me. Well, I'm glad it tickles you. Yeah, I mean, it was fun. I was
• 1:18:11
  like, you know, the court jester figure and he was the king. We're in the kick court of King Simon
• 1:18:17
  and I'm the jester and you know, sometimes the jester can can get sort of one over on the king
• 1:18:24
  in a way is kind of interesting relationship. But I know that that's one of the things that people
• 1:18:29
  really liked about the show was our interaction. Because at the end of the day, if you're on a
• 1:18:34
  judging panel and there's so many of these shows now on their own, various forms all around the
• 1:18:39
  world, there's these big brands of the voice goes all around the world, pop idol and all this.
• 1:18:45
  America and I go, it was cool wasn't it? In America. But if everyone just says, I thought it was good.
• 1:18:51
  I didn't like it. I thought it was good. Yeah, you're through to the next round. It's only really
• 1:18:55
  interesting if people are disagreeing to start saying, you know, that's really what a lot of
• 1:19:01
  people are tuning in for. So it happened, it happened very naturally. Yeah. You know, because
• 1:19:07
  in the know, it's interesting because if you're funny, you can sort of get the better of people who
• 1:19:14
  you know, who may have a lot more status than you, but somehow in front of an audience,
• 1:19:21
  it's a little different. Well, especially if they're precious.
• 1:19:25
  But you know, it was it was a great, it was a great job. And when you were, when you would,
• 1:19:32
  there's, you say that there was like a Mr. Gay UK who came out and did a thing and
• 1:19:38
  then you turned to Simon and said, now I see it from Mr. Bikurius UK and this was something that,
• 1:19:43
  you know, he didn't like, you would make jokes and they would get caught. I mean, no one really
• 1:19:48
  wants to be the butt of the joke. That one isn't really a family-friendly joke. That would,
• 1:19:56
  you know, this likely to bend up in the show at seven o'clock in the summer. Not that they're wrong
• 1:20:00
  without, but there'd be some kids going, no, Daddy, you lost five. So, you know, it's not, it's not,
• 1:20:06
  but I always wanted to do jokes in the room that were just in the room. Right. Because that's,
• 1:20:12
  because I think you have to, because I think the audience there, when ever you're doing any TV show,
• 1:20:17
  the audience who've turned up to actually see it being filmed, they need something extra because
• 1:20:21
  they can't believe it. And so and so said this and that happened and that happened, you know,
• 1:20:25
  and you'll never end up seeing that on TV. And they've just waited for hours as well. So,
• 1:20:29
  they want to share. Yeah. I, you know, I'm so, I was good for that. But also, I think when you're
• 1:20:33
  comedian, I think people don't kind of necessarily think that if you are in a situation where you're
• 1:20:39
  improvising all the time, you have half a second, half a second to decide whether the thing that
• 1:20:46
  is just shooting through your mind that, that you should say or not, you have half a second,
• 1:20:52
  because if you wait too long, there is the time is off. You need to sit there. Yeah. And so,
• 1:20:57
  the idea that you would always get things exactly right is I'm completely behind the sky because I
• 1:21:04
  mean who in that, in a situation where there is not a script, you know, who's not going to,
• 1:21:11
  you know, say, you know, the old thing that they say, I mean, I often do something that's like,
• 1:21:15
  you know, you cut that out, I'm funny or something. Yeah, you're sure. Yeah. But I mean,
• 1:21:18
  that's just the nature of it. Yeah. You can't be in front of an audience for 10 hours a day. I
• 1:21:21
  think that everything you say is gold and everything is appropriate or whatever. I mean, it's,
• 1:21:27
  it's, um, it was fun. I like being the show. It was like a sort of the circus came to town.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah. It was quite funny. Like, I remember when I started doing this show, I think we were in
• 1:21:40
  Blackpool and a lady came on, and we said, what are you going to do for us? She said poetry and
• 1:21:46
  the whole audience booed. What is it like with no poetry that could be acceptable to you? There's
• 1:21:55
  not a thing, not even a funny limerick or something. Oh, poetry. No. And there was also a very
• 1:22:02
  telling thing. It was, was early on these two guys came on. And so we didn't know anything about
• 1:22:08
  them. And you know, so, oh, how do you know each other? They said, Oh, we're a couple. And the
• 1:22:14
  audience laughed, which I was just sort of extraordinary. And they said, what are you going to do?
• 1:22:18
  Bullroom party again, like hoots of laughter. Right. I mean, it's probably about 12 years ago,
• 1:22:24
  but still I'm not excusing it because it's 12 years ago. I was quite like, what? Yeah. And then
• 1:22:29
  they danced very well. And they danced to you raise me up. You know, they said, you raise me up,
• 1:22:35
  which is very euphoric song. So in the three minutes from them saying that they were going
• 1:22:42
  couple and they build on us, everyone laughing. By the end of the three minutes, I was like, hold on,
• 1:22:45
  this doesn't their feet. That's the most extraordinary thing to witness. I thought, yeah,
• 1:22:51
  they're great. They're talented. The song was great. Everything. But I was like, wow.
• 1:22:56
  What's that about? So it was quite interesting observing. Yeah. A lot of those things. It's
• 1:23:02
  quite a strange job because you're reacting. So it's really just about you reacting. And how much
• 1:23:08
  of it are you seeing for the first time? Everything. There's only a couple of times. Sometimes there would be
• 1:23:14
  that they'd say, oh, David, there's going to be a motorbike stunt. And so you're just going to
• 1:23:21
  be taught through it before it happens. Yeah. Right. Which is so essential because they're going to
• 1:23:26
  say, you're going to lie down on the floor and he's going to jump on the motorbike. So make sure you
• 1:23:30
  don't put your hand up or put your head up or something. I mean, that just sees. Yes. Of course.
• 1:23:34
  That's just common sense. But that was the only time everything else was accomplished.
• 1:23:37
  Judges. No, I mean, the thing was all of the show, the most famous, most famous moment in the
• 1:23:45
  show's history is the Susan Ball moment. And so, and I think that's what the show is like a magic
• 1:23:53
  wand, doesn't it? You know, for her, you're sitting at home with your cats and I want to know
• 1:23:56
  so you are magic wand. You know, the most famous person in the world for a period of time.
• 1:24:03
  And I think so the reactions always have to be, have to be, to be, to be real, you know.
• 1:24:12
  And then we need to be shocked for it to work. And so that's what the game was of it. But we'd
• 1:24:19
  always try and find a, and I think this is the last thing I should say on the whole podcast.
• 1:24:24
  But we'd always sort of say, oh, when you came on, it was like a caterpillar. And during this time,
• 1:24:30
  we watched you turn into butterfly. And then like, as a joke, when I'd be talking to the others,
• 1:24:38
  we'd say, we need to find a new way to say that because we're constantly saying we thought you're
• 1:24:42
  a caterpillar and you've done as a butterfly. Let's say, as a joke, you were like a flaccid penis,
• 1:24:49
  you're coming in a wrecked speaker. We'd amuse ourselves with fingers like that. Obviously we'd
• 1:24:56
  ever say. But it was just funny because we just kept on, you know, I always say the same thing.
• 1:25:03
  I'm going to think of that next time I see a judge on a talent show. I say you were a caterpillar
• 1:25:08
  turning into a butterfly. Thank you, David. Thank you very much.