Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Bringer of Spiders - full transcript

Er, I'm actually a mate of Alan's.
He said this'd be cool.

Has it got a lockable toilet?
Excellent!

What's my secret to keeping the boys
in line? They witness the fitness.

Witness it.

In here to do my pull-ups.

I would like to take this
opportunity to formally deny

all the charges against me.

I'm entirely unprepared.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, I'm Alan Davies
and welcome to As Yet Untitled.

Now, tonight I will have four guests
with no preparation, no script,



no rehearsal, no clue, actually,
what they're about to talk about.

And, by the end
of the evening's conversation

we will, hopefully, have come up
with an appropriate mantle

for the show,
which will become the show's title.

So, without further ado,
please welcome our guests.

CHEERING

Hello, hello.

So, it's so nice to see you all.

First of all, I have a former
podium dancer and oil rig worker,

Marcus Brigstocke, is here with us.

CHEERING

I have a man who once
got so nervous on stage,

that one of his balls
retracted into his body.

LAUGHTER
John Robins is here with us.



CHEERING

And the woman who was once
stalked by an inflatophiliac. Yes.

Katherine Ryan is with us.

CHEERING

And lastly, I'm absolutely delighted
and thrilled to have with us

a man who has an unusually
uniquely high arse.

Bob Mortimer.

CHEERING

So where to begin, really, from this
smorgasbord of odd anecdotes?

I cannot believe, for a start,
that you were a podium dancer...

How dare you? ..at any point
in your life. I know, it's just...

Cos when you said podium dancer
and oil rig worker... Yeah.

..it's important to say, like,

I didn't dance on an oil rig.
LAUGHTER

They don't have those.

Were you in an oil rig worker's
outfit at any point...? No.

..on the podium? No. What was
your outfit? I wish I were...

It was the early '90s

and it was, sort of,
quite high-waisted, black,

quite voluminous trousers

and then, often, a waistcoat
with nothing underneath and...

basically, Aladdin.

Aladdin was roughly it.

So nothing, you know, like...
I wasn't naked or anything.

Was the intent sexual?

Whose?

I worked at Ministry of Sound,
Equinox, Limelight

and Hammersmith Ballet
and it was just...

These are all...
Katherine's from Canada, by the way,

and I should, these are all discos.

Yeah. These are all discos?
LAUGHTER

They're... they are discos.

They're all discos.

You know, the standard, with a
lit-up floor and they had music

playing often and I just used to
get up on a podium and dance.

Was the idea that you would
attract people towards you

or was the idea to repel
them to the bar?

That was to drive people
towards the bar, yeah.

"Cor, look at the state of that,
I need a drink.

"Do you want a drink?"

The idea was to excite the crowd.

So, maybe, it was partly sexual.

Were you buff? Were you down the
gym? Were you fit as a fiddle?

I wasn't, sort of, cut, you know,

but I was what I call dance-fit Alan.

I was lithe, yeah.

Were you scouted for any other dance
work? Perhaps as a videhoe or...?

A videhoe?

Yeah, it's these lovely ladies
who dance in the background

and mostly underneath rappers.

I've seen them.

Yeah, and you were never spotted?

No, although I did dance
on TV in Canada.

We have TV in Canada?!
LAUGHTER

Yeah, yeah. Where did you dance?
Was it Electric Circus?

Yes, it was. That's exactly what it
was called. Shut up. You were there.

I don't believe this.
LAUGHTER

I was not going to remember that.
I was a dancer on Electric Circus.

Come on?! Yes. Wow. Yes.

The rest of you, go away. This is...

No, all of you. Are you serious?

Yeah. Wow! And OK, Electric Circus.
What year? Cos it probably...

Yeah, like, really early '90s. '92...

No, that would have been very
illegal if I'd been there. Um...

I spent a summer in Canada

and I'd obviously ran out
of things to do very quickly.

Not being of the hunting-fishing
type? No, not so much.

And yeah, so I went down
to Electric Circus and said...

Where was this? What town was this?
OK. Electric Circus.

It's in Toronto and there was
not MTV in Canada for a while,

we had something called MuchMusic.

There is MTV there now.
We've JUST caught up.

But MuchMusic is great,
it's real Canadian content,

like Canadian-funded music station.
Lot of Corey Hart.

A lot of Corey Hart and there's a...

This is now just
a totally different language.

There's a Friday night channel,

or programme on the network,

called Electric Circus
and it's just dancing in a room.

And if you're very good,
you get a podium.

And if you're not so good, you just
dance around the podium on the floor.

You get a bucket.

I hate to tell you, but there
was not a lot of pornography, then.

So it's the show that young men would
watch late at night and go, "Ahh."

Hit Man And Her. Do you remember
The Hit Man and Her?

I do remember The Hit Man And Her,
yeah. Michaela Strachan.

Pete Waterman.
Mainly Michaela Strachan, for me.

LAUGHTER

In terms of a porn substitute...
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

..Pete Waterman's not cutting it.

But Pete was always there,

looking through a crack
in the curtain, wasn't he?

What was your dance style, Marcus?
Was it urgent or...?

It was very urgent.

It was very urgent. And it was
very big. It was very expansive.

Lot of arms?
It involved a lot of arms.

Did you ever try out jokes
in-between? Kind of going...

"Rhythm is a dancer,
coming at ya...

"Now, you know the thing
about the tube is..."

Yeah, no, it was all... Is there
a crossover between your dance life

and your stand-up comedy life?
No, no it was all pre-stand-up.

At that time,
I was like madly into comedy.

Uh, this could turn the conversation
awkward, but mostly into you and Vic.

I was mad keen on the two of you,
obsessed and actually...

You've put that in the past tense.

Yeah. I did tell you it'd get
awkward. He's a working comic.

Are you still,
are you still..? Well...

Oh, that is absolutely wonderful.

Well, thank you.
Never mind all the dancing...

It's youngsters like you, that
remember us, that keep us going.

That's right, that's right.
That's great.

Where? What sort of stuff?

I should say, as well, I should
declare a love for Bob's work

at this point.

And current work, too.

But I remember going down to...

Brace yourselves, young people,
but I'm going back to the '80s.

..to the Greyhound in Sydenham. Wow.

And Vic was on stage and you
were in the corner, at a table,

with some other people,
giggling constantly

and then Vic would join you between
acts or at the interval or whatever

and bits of paper would be passed
around and then you'd go back on.

Anyway, I went back six months later
and you were on stage

and Vic was singing a lot and then
he'd fall down and he'd say,

"Bob, I've fallen."

And you'd say, "Are you all right,
Vic, can you get up?" Yeah.

And everyone was falling about
and I thought, "What's going on?"

And then you did a quiz in which
the prize was a five-litre container

that had some fluid in,
at some point,

filled with potatoes,
with a biro Sellotaped to the side.

Yeah, well, it ain't bad.
A good prize.

That is a good, decent prize.

I mean, if it was Potato Friday,
especially.

And at some point,
he'd turn to the audience and say,

"What's the score?"
And the whole pub,

which was packed, said, "One all."

Yes. "It's not one all,
why do they know that?"

And then you said,
"What does that mean?"

And they all went, "Tie-breaker!"

At that point, I thought,
"These two are on to something."

We used to...

It's nothing to be proud of,
but we used to...

If an act wasn't going down
very well,

we used to throw our shoes at them.

That's like
an Iraqi thing, isn't it? Yeah.

And there's a few people
I occasionally meet now,

who were on the circuit, then,
that still remember being shoed

at the Greyhound in Sydenham.

But Bob, we must draw attention
to your uniquely high arse

and could you perhaps explain
what that involves?

Well, it's as it says, it's a, um...

the hole, put it that way,
is much higher than is...

acceptable is not the word,
but usual.

LAUGHTER
It's like a...

It's not as high
as an elephant's eye... Sure.

Don't get me wrong.

That would be... That would
be too high. Yeah, much too high.

So, it's in...
it's in the correct area,

but if you poked your finger,
thinking, "There",

you'll go, "Higher, higher!"
LAUGHTER

Are you able to use a normal,
you know, normal facilities

or do you have one with like a...

..like an arc. Like a urinal?

Yeah, a poo...a poo-rinal...

LAUGHTER
I suppose it would be.

No, so if I was to do it the way
normal people...normal?

Well, the normal-arsed people...

By normal people,
you mean everyone else.

Yes, the un-anally challenged
and all that thing.

Then there would be problems
with it hitting the seat.

I see, yes.
Cos you'd fire over the bowl?

Alan... Jesus, Alan, it's not
that high! I wouldn't miss it.

It's not below the belt,
that's what I know.

It's not going to land on the top of
the cistern, is what you're saying?

It would if I was stood. If I was...

Well, no, Jesus, I'd have... No.

You're talking about
actually projecting it up.

No, I'm not going to claim that.

So, no, to cut a long story short,

it's not a problem in my life,
cos I just reverse my positioning,

because the bowls are egg-shaped
and the pointy end's at the front.

So I sit facing the cistern and,
in that way... No, no! Yeah.

And in that way, I have no problem.

So do you have to take one
trouser leg off, then, completely?

It's Sherlock.

My arse is normal.

Lock me up. Tell me about...
I once had a... Sorry, go on.

Well, I gave myself a terrible
fright on the toilet once.

It was late at night
and we had a very loud fan,

like, one of those fans that comes
on as soon as you turn the light on.

Oh, I thought you meant,
like, a punter.

"Yeah, he's on the loo again!

"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"

Selling lollipops
and aftershave in the toilet.

And so,
I went in with the light off.

And sat down to do a wee,
cos obviously aiming was an issue.

And you realised
you and Bob were back-to-back.

And we had a cuddle.

And I'd left the toilet and, as
I was walking away from the toilet,

I felt this, like,
water sensation down my legs

and I remembered a story about
a goalkeeper who broke his back

and he said all he could feel
was like his legs were in water.

And I was terrified, cos I thought
"Well, it was a regulatory wee."

I hadn't taken a run up.

I was really worried and so I
came out turned on the main light

and my dressing gown cord
had dipped into the toilet.

LAUGHTER

So, it had just been dripping all
down my leg, which is embarrassing,

but less, sort of,
worrying, medically.

Talking of dressing gowns reminds me
of, like, burnt cock on AGA.

Anyone had that experience?

Is that a band?

Anyway, no, it's just a passing
thought. Burnt cock on AGA? Yeah.

You approached the AGA
to make toast or something...

Yeah, cos you're
at your most relaxed

when you're stirring porridge,
aren't you? That's scientific.

Yes. And so it opens up and...
Next thing you know.

Next thing you know, cock on AGA.
Is the front of an AGA hot?

Oh, yeah, red hot.

Oh, well, that's bad design.
LAUGHTER

It's got fire in it. It's a
bad design for men with cocks.

As opposed to those without.

Are you familiar
with the AGA, Katherine?

Are we losing you with the AGA?

I'm familiar with cocks.
LAUGHTER

I just followed
that bit of the story.

Yes, someone bring a spoon!

I want my money!

Mate, what is wrong with your balls?

Tell me about this, now.
I've got it written down.

Tell me about this inflatophiliac,

what does that...?
Inflatophiliac, is it?

Yeah, I wish that I did not know
what inflatophiliac was,

but sadly I do, sir.

Uh, I was waitressing
and the restaurant where I worked,

you had to wear stockings
and a man called the restaurant

and he sounded
like he had a radio voice.

I'm not a complete idiot, I know
what a radio voice sounds like.

He said, "If you girls can figure
out a way to inflate your stockings,

"I'll give you $100!"

And he had this name from
a local radio station and I thought,

"This is my lucky day."
That was a lot of money, then.

And our manager said
"Don't do it. It's dodgy."

I said, "There's nothing dodgy
about inflating your stockings.

"Sounds like a fine way
to spend an afternoon."

So I gave him my mobile number and
my flatmates and I all got together

and we realised that if you put
clear bin bags down your stockings

uninflated all the way to the toe
and then the top sticks out here,

that you can use a bicycle pump
and inflate it

and then you look crazy,
like a big balloon man.

Completely not sexual...

we thought.

So, I sent him photos and um...

LAUGHTER
Oh, my word.

And we rang and he said,

"They're great, but we need more
for the radio challenge."

We did more. He had us going on
excursions out to petrol stations.

He wanted us doing it
just in different locations.

And we did it,
cos each time, we'd get $100

and then the money never came...

LAUGHTER

He did, though. And that's...

He would ring at midnight and say,
"For the radio challenge,

"we need you to speak to each other

"as though
you're inflating each other."

And like, "Oh, Cindy,
I'm flying up to the ceiling,

"I might pop at any minute.

"You're getting so big."
Still not sexual.

That's...alright.

LAUGHTER

Did you never think
to tune into the radio station?

Well... There's so many points
at which you could have thought,

"I smell a rat here."

What sort of a place
were you working at at this time?

Well, it was Hooters. So...

Hooters is quite tame,

so I went down
to the radio station with Cindy...

Oh, really?
And we demanded our winnings.

And the lady laughed us out.

She said, "Girls, this is
this known sexual predator..."

Were you...? Sorry... When you
went down to claim your winnings,

were you fully...?
LAUGHTER

Struggling with the revolving door.
Had you got in?

Your friend
was holding you by a string.

"I want my money!"

Well, see, we got one up on him.

The police wouldn't do anything,

the radio station
wouldn't do anything and I said,

"I've had enough of being
pushed around by this guy."

So, we wrote him an e-mail.

By this time he knew where we lived

cos he was meant
to have sent the money.

We were, kind of, afraid,
but we just said,

"You'll pay us
all the money we worked for."

Our pictures were on websites.

We Googled what the lady told us,
inflatophilia. It's big.

Are those photos still...
Oh, no, I'm not bothered, um...

Could you still access them?

Listen, I'll go down to a petrol
station with you, we'll take a few.

Um...

He's a known sexual predator,
that's what they said.

And why a petrol station?
Because they have a... Pumps.

..pumps to do tyres.
pressure air, of course.

Oh, the dream! Of course!
LAUGHTER

You get that little sign that says,

"Do not use these on inflatable
boats, bikes or women."

LAUGHTER

Yeah, and he ended up paying us.
He sent the money. Oh, fair play.

Oh, well, all right. He sounds
like a decent enough bloke, now.

LAUGHTER
But it's not over.

I did a charity dance
for Comic Relief

and I had an inflating bum.

Ten years later,
I'd forgotten about him,

but he had not forgotten about me.

Oh, my lord. So, he's around.

Not to want
to be the third super-fan,

but you and Vic did a sketch where
you had inflatable boobs and bum.

Yeah, so I think we've all got
a little bit of it in us.

We've tried to harness it for
positive reasons, for a comedy show.

Maybe it IS you!

Can you tell me about your ball?

Yes, I've one cowardly testicle.

Let's say reluctant. Let's say
reluctant. OK, let's say reluctant.

Let's say French. Yeah.

LAUGHTER

One ball, one boule.

So anyway, I was doing
a late-night gig in Edinburgh.

Everyone's boozed up and it's crazy
and mad and I don't really have

much time for that, which makes
what happened equally depressing.

In this show, in the middle,
you're meant to have one person

who can plug their show
for a minute,

as long as they're totally naked.

And I was compering and that
person didn't turn up, so I went

on stage in from of about 350 people
and I just said without thinking,

"Oh, the naked promo's
not here tonight,

"so no-one's going to be getting
their clothes off on stage."

Immediately, in unison,
they start shouting,

"Off! Off! Off!"

Now, usually as a comedian,
when you hear that, it's bad news.

So I said, "No, of course, I'm not."

But they kept chanting and there's
something about when people chant,

in your head you think, "Oh, fuck,
this is going to happen, isn't it?"

LAUGHTER
So I said, "OK, I'll do it.

"But if I do it,
you have to support me

"and go properly mental..."

And shut your eyes.
"And shut your eyes."

So, I went behind a curtain to,
sort of, prep myself

and... Sorry, I'm...

LAUGHTER
Little bit more about the prep.

Well, let's just say there's...
Is there a machine involved?

No, it was on the blink.

There's nothing bleaker than a man

trying to slap an extra millimetre
out of himself.

LAUGHTER

I was, kind of, like, "Come on!
Now is the time to shine!

"Come on, The Fonz!"

So anyway, I got the crowd to do
a countdown. So, 300 people go,

"5..." And I start to think this
could be, this could go viral.

This could be my rock'n'roll moment!

You know, this could be, this could
be a thing on the BBC website.

LAUGHTER

It's not often you're stood naked
while people shout at you,

looking down at your penis,
thinking, "This could go viral."

And that that's a good thing.

So, I come out on stage, kind of...

there's an immediate,
kind of, "Whaaayy!"

and then, I get to the front

and the first thing I see
is 300 camera phones...

Of course. ..like that,

which I just had not thought and the
second thing was stunned silence

and I'm looking around thinking,
"I didn't just dream the bit

"where you asked me to
take my clothes off, did I?"

And then a guy in the front row
breaks that silence and just goes,

"Mate...

"what is wrong with your balls?"
LAUGHTER

And I just... To my knowledge,
absolutely nothing.

They've had the prep of their life.
And I looked down.

Now, I've found out since then that
this happens in the animal kingdom.

A guy at Bristol Zoo informed me
that, when kangaroos fight...

Which is after it'd gone viral.
The zoo got in touch.

So, when kangaroo's fight,
in order to protect their virility,

they retract their testicles.

They have a massive ball sack,
the red kangaroo. Massive, massive.

Absolute humdinger.

And, um... So I...
Just overly prepped.

LAUGHTER

I tell you what,

they couldn't make porridge
on an AGA, could they?

Terrible!

So, yeah, I looked down and for
the first and only time in my life,

I'd gone half roo.

Potsie, the cowardly fucker,
had gone back up in there...

LAUGHTER

..leaving Ralph Malph outside,
to fend off any potential attackers.

But... I love that
you've completed, by the way,

having referred to your penis
as The Fonz earlier.

None of us picked up on it,
but all registered it, I think.

And that you've completed
that with Potsie and Ralph.

You don't want to go
to Arnold's Drive-In.

I was going to say.
I was going to say before...

That does require quite a good
knowledge of the set of Happy Days.

For people to notice
from the audience, can I ask...

was the one good one
incredibly low?

Well, obviously there was an awful
lot of slack in the housing.

LAUGHTER
So he'd taken up that slack.

So it...it must have
looked like a second member.

It explains the silence, anyway.
Yeah, yeah.

And also the bafflement,
cos they were all pissed

and it was, like, suddenly,
they all sobered up

and the phones went down, as if
to say, "Not now, guys. Not now."

Yeah, it wouldn't be right. Yeah.

I may have a useful contribution
to the ball...losing balls.

I... When I was very young,
I don't know if you remember

when football goalposts
had the hooks on the back?

Oh, yes. To put the net on.
I slid down one.

AUDIENCE GASPS

Opened up my ball sack.
KATHERINE: No!

And the ball came out.
Oh, you son of a bitch!

MARCUS: Heavens above.
Heavens above, indeed.

Right out?
That's it, he's gone again.

LAUGHTER

Have they gone in? He's gone in.
You've scared him. Mine have.

They're really odd.
They're on a long string.

Oh, wow! Did you see it? Yeah!

You must have just
thrown up immediately.

Cos the sight of that...
I was so young, I have no...

I remember the ambulance
coming over the field

and they're putting me bollock
in a little stretcher.

Its own little hammock.

Like an egg and spoon race.
KATHERINE: No...

Yeah, someone bring a spoon.

No, teaspoon!

Ladle!

They love that, the other oil chaps.

Every time I went to a cloakroom.

If I ever won,
he'd kick the shit out of me.

Now, you worked on an oil rig?

I did, yeah. An actual,
in the North Sea, oil rig?

Yeah. Well, what they do is,

they bring the rigs into the firths
on the north-east coast

of Scotland to repair them
when they're all knackered.

You're not from there, are you?
Where did you grow up?

Well, Home Counties, really,

but my father knew the chap
who owned the oil company.

LAUGHTER

Which is a, uh...

It's a very popular way
of getting a job on a rig.

They love that,
the other oil chaps(!)

LAUGHTER

It's terrible.
Really, really terrible.

Can I ask you one or two little
questions, like...? Please, yeah.

How many people work on it?

Uh, when they're at full stretch,
sort of, between 80 and 120.

Plus one dancer. And one dancer.

And always one dancer, yeah, yeah.

Sometimes two if, you know...

but then there's no bedding
for the choreographer, then.

And when I was working on the rig,
part of the challenge for me

was I felt it was important
to conceal from the other men

that I was a dancer.
LAUGHTER

I tell you what
would be fabulous, Marcus,

is if they did the exploration,
they've drawn a blank,

sad faces everywhere
and you would say,

"I'll just try this one thing."

And you've gone
on the deck and danced.

And, then, the oil...!

And I throw my head back...

LAUGHTER

And then off the rig, when did
you get into stand-up comedy?

What, mid-twenties or something?

Oh, a couple of years
after that, yeah.

I tried to, uh...

I had an audition for, like,
a proper...a proper drama school

and just assumed that I would get in.

Cos that's the sort of posh
that I am, you know. Just entitled.

LAUGHTER

So when I tried to get into
drama school, didn't get in and then

I was gutted and a mate of mine said,
"Oh, but you're really funny.

"You should do stand up."
And then he booked a gig.

See, things just happen for me.

He booked a gig for me the next week
and, uh, that was it.

Then, like, I've never wanted
to do anything else.

Bob, you were totally different,

because you did all kinds
of different jobs.

Mmm, well, yeah a few.

You started out
living up in Middlesbrough,

working as a binman, were you not?

And all sorts.
Why did you go and do...?

It started as one
of those summer jobs,

but I just thought... I loved
the job, so I just stayed there

for about a year and a half.

Cos, you know, there were...
You finish very early.

Didn't work on Fridays.

You pretended to work
on Fridays, but you didn't.

I remember, there was one fella,
he, like, really took to me.

He'd keep me quite close
to him all the time.

And if we were, what they call...

Whipping out a road
is where you used to bring

the old-fashioned bins out,

that little skill
of making it go forwards.

Anyway, so he would...
If ever there was a shop

towards the end of the road,
he'd say, "The first one to whip

"them out by the shop
buys the other one...

"gets cakes from the other one."

But he made it quite clear

that if I ever won,
he'd kick the shit out of me.

I used to work in a warehouse
for a mail-order company

and it was made up of a mixture
of people who'd worked there

all their lives and people temping.

And I was temping, back from uni...

And I went to Oxford

and the people at the warehouse
found out about this.

So, first off, my name was Oxford.
So they'd go, "Oi, Oxford!

"Oxford! How you doing, then?

"You reading any Shakespeare,
are you, Oxford?"

The second thing was,
they'd give you numbers of packets

you had to collect
and put on the vans.

And so they'd always send me
to a section called Heavy And Large,

without me knowing it,
which was stuff that, basically,

you legally had
to have two or three people lifting

or you could sue the company,
cos they were so heavy.

So, like, oak doors and stuff.

The third thing was they used to
wrap me in bubble wrap and punch me.

Which hurts an awful lot more on the
inside than it does on the outside.

There was a guy on the rig,

the crane operator, who was a Mackem.

His name was Keith and I struggled...

I really enjoy accents
and I always have, like doing them.

I like how they feel
when I try and do accents,

but a Mackem accent
is something I could never come near.

And he used to swing
big, heavy stuff above us

and give the instructions
through a PA system

over the noise of a crane engine

with ten tonnes of shit
swinging above our head and go...

IMPERSONATES MUMBLING MACKEM

"Sorry Keith, we're not
getting any of that here."

LAUGHTER
Completely... "Can you...? What?"

Brilliantly,
he'd lost his little finger

in a piece of crane wire.

But he had LOVE and HATE
tattooed on his knuckles.

But, of course, cos of the accident,

they actually said LOVE and HAT.
Love and hat.

LAUGHTER

Which I just... It made me laugh
every time I saw him.

It took seven months, I never
found... Should have put a G on.

Should have put G on the other hand.

Glove and hat! Glove and hat!

Every time I went to a cloakroom...
LAUGHTER

You do get these jobs
and you meet people sometimes.

And I met a bloke - this is
a bit of a sad end to the story,

but anyway - met this guy, I worked
at Wimbledon Tennis Championships.

And you could go down there and you
could get a job in the catering,

if you went down at four o'clock
in the morning on the first day.

And you'd get a white coat and
you'd have to clean up, basically.

And I met an Irish lad there,
called Jim Byrne.

And we laughed non-stop,

mainly cos of him,
for the whole fortnight.

He'd come in every day and say,
"What's the crack?"

It's the first time I'd ever
heard that term - the crack.

And behind the food village,
there were refrigerated lorries,

full of doughnuts and stuff.

And then, there was a tarpaulin,
which you could climb up

and you could see Court 14.

And...and we climbed it. And
there was women's doubles going on

and it was Steffi Graf and Sabatini

against Chris Evert
and Martina Navratilova,

So, it's top-end. And I'm going
back to about 1988 or something.

And we were laughing so much
and there's so much noise

from the lorries that we
couldn't really... We didn't know

how much noise we were making
and we looked down

and all four of them
are just looking at us like this.

LAUGHTER

And the umpire in the chair
is pointing at us.

And we just dropped about 20 feet
and then couldn't do anything,

we were laughing so much. We were
just incapacitated with laughter.

We couldn't do anything. Anyway, the
reason it's sad is because he died.

Jim died and he was going to try...
I can't bear it,

because he was just...

He had a force about him
that was so fantastic.

And he was going to be a pilot
and he went on a training flight

and the plane went down.

And it was in somewhere
like Florida or somewhere

where they train them, the pilots.

And I got a letter
from his girlfriend...

It's weird,
remembering this now, but, anyway.

...saying, "I'm just
going through Jim's stuff

"and I'm just writing to the people
from the addresses in his stuff.

"And I found your address
and this has happened."

So, you know...

Sometimes, though, don't you,
you just meet people and you...

and I think about him, mainly,

obviously, partly cos of that,
but also just he was fantastic.

He was just a fantastic bloke.

And I often think sometimes,
even now, I sometimes think,

"Oh, it'd be much better if
someone...you know..." Yeah, yeah.

..there's somebody in your life
who you've left behind

and you can't recover that
friendship or you lose that person

or you move on to other friends
or something. You can't recover it.

My best mate from school
has emigrated to Australia.

And he has two lovely kids
and he's married now, over 20 years,

and I saw him recently and he said,

"What I really... The thing
I miss really about England

"is when we used to go out,
when we were young,

"we used to just laugh
our heads off all night long."

Yeah.

And I thought, "Oh, God."
I said, "It's all right, Dan,

"don't worry about it.
It's just, you're nearly 50

and no-one does that any more."
LAUGHTER

But it would be a nice thing
to recover, that feeling.

Maybe it's just youth? I don't know.

But I mean, the passing of youth...

I was at a wedding recently,
a friend of mine.

And you get to a stage, I think,
where, when you're at school,

you see your mates every day and
then, when you're, sort of, at uni,

maybe you see them every week
and, then, when you're in your 20's,

you get together once a month,
once a fortnight.

And then it's fucking,
what, six months, a year?

And you look at each other,
like, "Really? A year?"

You know and then you die.
LAUGHTER

On the inside but your life goes on.

But then that is all you talk about
with those people, as well, isn't it?

That... I think that's a real shame.

You know, old friends you catch up
with after a long time

and then you see them, you're,
"God, it's been, like, a year?

"Like two years?"
"Yeah. Maybe longer."

"Yeah..."
LAUGHTER

That's it. That's Facebook
in a nutshell, isn't it? Yeah.

Facebooking can be great.

I've been away from home
for six years,

I've lived in the UK and I'm still
best friends with my same group

of girlfriends that I grew up with.

Yeah? They're still there, married
to boys that we grew up with.

I go home and it's almost
like everyone's still there,

but just littler.

Cos they've all paired off and
then reproduced. It's very creepy.

Um, but I love it.

We have a thread on Facebook

and I don't know if you know
that you can do this?

You can have ten people on a thread,

so it's this ongoing conversation

and the thread is
probably six years old.

And every day,
someone's saying something on it.

And we used it for a long time
to take the piss out

of other people on Facebook.

Like, "Look at So-And-So's
shirt she's wearing. Pregnant.

"No excuse for this."

And look as so... Just anything
and you know the people on Facebook.

The best mother in the world,
who posts all the pictures

of the things
she's doing with her kids

while sharing their image on
the internet, for me to make fun of.

And this went on and on and on

and I loved it
and I felt so close to them.

And they had babies who'd I'd
never met, but I felt so close.

And then one day,
about two months ago,

one of them got angry and said,

DITZY ACCENT: "Uh, would you
not say that about Trista?

"Cos actually,
she's married to my brother

and we're, like, really close and
stuff and I don't appreciate it."

And so,
I've gone silent on the thread.

I will keep my award-winning
comedy to myself from now on.

LAUGHTER

300 spiders
just crawled out of my face.

Oh, my God!

Hang on a minute, my sausage
is eating my chip fork...

We've got a friend who is so...

He's got a story
that remains, to this day,

the funniest thing I've ever heard.

So he... You have built that up.

LAUGHTER
Oh, yeah.

Wow! But this may well...
Let's do this. I'll call a break.

We'll have an ad break and then
when we come back, we're all going

"Oh, my God."
LAUGHTER

Great story, great story.

So he's, sort of, a guy whose never
really found his calling in life

and has ended up temping
into his late thirties.

So he's been, you know,
data entry stuff.

And he had this job he really wanted

and it was working with a
homeless charity, housing people.

And he was walking to the interview,
all suited and booted.

"Come on, come on,
you can do this one."

And he walked past a hedge and
he just sort of... You know when you

realise the hedge is in... "Argh!"

And you, kind of, "Oh, God!"

Cos you're staring
at the pavement or whatever.

So anyway, fast-forward
to the interview,

sat across from this
very imposing woman

and he's doing all
the usual stuff you do,

sort of, saying,
"I am the team... My name is team.

"I work at both ends of a team.

"I'm a perfectionist, but not
too much of a perfectionist."

And all that, kind of,
"I work too hard, but not enough

"and I always challenge myself."
And that, kind of, crap.

And during the interview,
he suddenly sees,

out of the corner of his eye,
a spider, a tiny, tiny spider,

like parachuting down
from his glasses, right?

Abseiling. Abseiling. Abseiling.
Not parachuting. Not parachuting.

And he thinks, "Oh, bloody spider,
let's get rid of that."

And so he carries on, "I was...
I was...I was in a football team

"and I played all the positions
of the team and have you seen my CV?

"I've written team."
And all that, sort of, thing.

He sees another... He sees about
three now, little tiny spiders.

And he's thinking, "Has she noticed?
Has she not noticed?"

There are spiders... And he realises
that when he hit the hedge,

one of those tiny white sacks... No.

..spider sacks
had got into his hair -

he's got quite, sort of,
floppy hair -

and they're now hatching...

LAUGHTER

..in an interview.

They think they're in a hedge.
They think they're in a hedge!

So, he realises, there's nothing...
and they're tiny.

And now it's tens, dozens.

So he starts thinking,
"I don't think she's noticed.

"I do not think she's noticed."

So he starts, kind of, mixing in,
moving the spiders

with just, kind of, gesticulations.

"I was born in a team.

"Um...I..."

And um...
So ,anyway, the interview ends

and it's been about 15 minutes
of like spider-geddon.

And they've stopped.

And he walks out and he thinks,
"I've got to make reference

"to the fact
that probably 300 spiders

"just crawled out of my face."

So, anyway, she says,
"Thanks very much for coming

"and we'll...we'll be in touch."

He shakes her hand and he says,
"Oh, thanks and um...

"sorry to be
the bringer of spiders."

And she hadn't noticed them.

And he realised that he had said

the most insane thing it's possible
to end an interview with.

LAUGHTER

Imagine you've just finished
a perfectly normal interview.

The guy was gesticulating
a bit and he goes,

"Sorry to be
the bringer of spiders."

LAUGHTER
And then walks off.

Never got called back.

I wish she'd said, "I am the fly."

LAUGHTER

I love the idea, as well,
of that many spiders,

of it looking from a distance
like his hair was just growing.

LAUGHTER

Yeah! Just like really quickly and
then beautifully like coming down.

I just imagine the spiders
are all going,

"Stop going on about the team thing.
You're saying that too much."

LAUGHTER
"Yeah, that's too much team!"

"Tell her about
the Duke of Edinburgh Award!"

"Ask her questions.
Ask her questions!"

That's a really
weird turn of phrase, too,

not to say, "By the way,
I noticed I had some spiders..."

"Sorry to be
the bringer of spiders."

It's exactly the sort of thing
he would say. Awesome.

Now Katherine, is it true of you,

that you once pretended
to have no parents?

I pretended to be an orphan,
because, um...

Still, to this day,
I can't watch moving films.

I don't like to be moved
in any way. I get really upset.

When I was a little girl in school,
on a rainy day they showed us

Little Orphan Annie in school.

And I was so moved that I decided
that I, too, was an orphan.

Then, I told my teachers
and I loved that, I loved it.

And I really identified
with this thing

and I said, "Miss Felicity,
I grew up in a Orphanage

"and I have no parents.
They're dead.

"I'm an orphan, as well."

And Miss Felicity...
Her face, I still remember,

she just went white.
She went, "Oh, no!"

And then, before I knew it,
my parents were called in

with the school psychologist.
LAUGHTER

And they were like,
"We're so sorry, we're so sorry.

"We didn't realise
she's not your daughter."

And my mom was like,
"Well, she IS our daughter."

LAUGHTER
And they were like,

"Well, we know
she is your daughter."

And you were in the corner, going...

It was a hard-knock life
that day. I told many lies.

I would take things from school.
Just say, "I want it."

That's the kind of kid I was.

What, you want
a school desk or something?

A blackboard. Yeah.

I mean, the school psychologist was
called in a lot with me, to be fair.

I don't know why they do that.
You know, why bother?

Just...
Of course kids lie, that's great.

That's what's exciting about it.

You know,
they're great feats of imagination.

My son tried for about two and a half
years to convince us he was a wolf.

LAUGHTER

He did. A special type of wolf
called a Yeni Duchy.

Is his sense of smell any good?

It's pretty strong and he's unruly
when there's a full moon.

LAUGHTER

Well, I dunno. I dunno.
I'm just...yeah.

That's a good point, actually...
and very hairy.

There used to be wolves
in Scotland, didn't there?

And they're... Did they not say
they were going to reintroduce them?

Mmm, yeah. How? In Glasgow.

LAUGHTER

They did reintroduce
beavers into Scotland

and they lasted all of about a day.

And the whole lot of them... Before
they were deep-fried. Yeah. Exactly.

"Hang on a minute,
my sausage is eating my chip fork."

Do you know what would wreck
your world? Raccoons.

Yeah. The binman knows.

They have an opposable thumb and
they can open doors, lift things.

They're very... They're not afraid.

We have raccoons in Canada
and they're giant.

How big would they be?

Size of a big dog. And they're
not afraid. They'll hiss at you.

The size of a big dog? Yes, yes.

What, like a German Shepherd? Yes.

A raccoon is that that big?

A raccoon can be
that big, fat and round.

And they're... That's like that big.

That big.

Opening your door.
LAUGHTER

"Hello!"

Showing off his thumbs.

"Just having some jam." Oh, God.

Could be quite useful,
actually, for a single mum.

"Could you open that, could you open
that?" Playing on your Playstation.

Yeah, I was going to say, how are
they with Xbox and stuff like that?

Any good? Magnificent.

Right, now listen,
it's been lovely talking to you all,

but we do, um...

we do have to think
of a title for the programme,

in what's known in television
as soft formatting.

That sounds so organic.
They'll cut that bit, don't worry.

Has anyone got any thoughts?

I mean, I did quite enjoy
The Ball Of Dignity at one point.

The Ball Of Dignity. Was that..?

It was your ball that refused

to show itself
in the boozy comedy club.

That's nice, The Ball Of Dignity.

I quite like,

Alan Davies,
The Bringer of Spiders'

LAUGHTER

I know it's you taking credit
for another man's botched interview,

but...like, if I was channel-hopping
and I was like, "What's on...?

"Oh, what? Alan Davies,
The Bringer of Spiders?

LAUGHTER
"I'm having a look at this!"

Like you were in
a thrash metal band.

Spider-geddon. Spider-geddon was
very good. Yeah. I enjoyed that.

I would say Cock On AGA.
Cock A Lager? Cock On AGA.

Oh, Cock On AGA.

Cock On AGA. That sounds
like a cookery programme.

"Alan Davies, Cock On AGA,
with me, Alan Davies."

How about Towie?
Cos a load of people watch that.

I'm drawn to Marcus' podium dancing.

Alan Davies, Electric Circus.

Oh, nice. With just you.

If they call it
Alan Davies, Electric Circus,

this may seem
slightly disappointing.

I think any of these titles...
Bringer of Spiders.

People would be like,

"I've been watching this for
25 minutes without a spider in it..."

I've had zero spiders.
Do you know what'd be best?

Call this show
Alan Davies, The Bringer of Spiders

and then edit out that story.

Gone.

"Did you see
that programme last night?

"It was good,
but funny, funny title."

It's good enough for me.

Thank you to all of my guests.
Thank you so much, it's been great.

You have been watching
The Bringer Of Spiders.

CHEERING

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd