Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Until I'm Married or You're Dead - full transcript

Thanks, bye.
Yeah, I've got my sandwiches

Hey, why not follow me
to Alan Davies' show?

Oh, traffic was terrible.
Rock and roll.

20 rounds of corned beef sandwiches
with piccalilli.

I have not had sexual relations
with any of the guests.

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

I've got four guests and we'll
be having a conversation

that is entirely unprepared,
unrehearsed,

not previously drafted,
um, not scripted, like this.

And even as we speak,

channel executives are throwing
themselves off the roof,



that was actually scripted
but not, er, by me.

Um, by the end,
by the end of the hour,

we will have come up with a title
for the show, that is our sole aim.

So, please will you
welcome my guests.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening, everyone. Er,
Bill Bailey is here. Hello, Bill.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Bill is

an honorary member of the
Society of Crematorium Organists.

It's one of the things
I like about Bill.

Isy Suttie is here, ladies
and gentlemen, Isy Suttie.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Isy Suttie, regional winner for
composition in the Daily Telegraph

Young Jazz Musician
of the Year 1995.

And has a GNVQ in wine tasting.



Two of the things
I like about Isy Suttie.

APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER

Craig Campbell is here, fantastic.
Hello, Craig.

Craig, er, once exchanged details
with the head of Iraqi police.

LAUGHTER
Details, not fluids.

That's an important distinction.

And Kevin Eldon.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Kevin was once
a pirate at Alton Towers.

LAUGHTER Is that true?
Good times, good times.

Yeah.
You were an actual pirate?

I wasn't an actual pirate.
I was a pretend pirate

in the context of, er,
the Alton Towers set-up.

But it was... We were in
a little isolated wooden cabin,

which was set on this
little false island,

which had a little
tiny train going around it.

And we were in there for eight hours

and every quarter of an hour,
the train would go round us,

full of kids,
and we'd have to act out

a sort of mini play as pirates.

Were you getting
much work at the time?

No. Because in that cabin were five
unemployed actors, right, so...

How old were you at this time?
I was four. LAUGHTER 28, 29.

But the thing is, we had to do
a show ever quarter of an hour

and what kind of made the show
go downhill a bit but uphill for us

is we had an enormous amount of
alcohol hidden away in the cabin.

As indeed pirates would have done.
Yeah, exactly.

And so by 12 o'clock, it was SLURRED
"Yeh! Good, we're pirates. Argh!"

By 12? By 12, yeah,
we started at half eleven.

And it was so... Sorry?
What happened in the play?

Well, you basically had to have a
false fight and you had to shout,

"Look out, there be skellingtons,
so that was it."

Oh, right.
And that went just on a loop?

There was a lot of impro involved.
Oh, yeah.

And you had to climb over the
false island and shake a sword.

It wasn't the most exacting of
roles I've ever taken on. Right.

But also, then somebody,
some of the pirates brought

cannabis into the equation.
Oh, no, no, no.

And some of them did
and so it got very slow. Yeah.

It got quite introspective.
Yeah.

It was paranoid pirates?.
The paranoid pirates.

"Where have they gone?"
"They're still in the cabin."

Yeah, "Pieces of eight."
"Who said that?"

Yeah, pieces of eight. I did that
but I was in London at the time.

I'd have travelled anywhere to be a
pirate for ?15 a day cash in hand.

Did you have to wear an eye patch?
I had to wear an eye patch,
you had to bring your own.

Did the lack of depth perception
cause any trouble?

Yeah, it caused enormous problems
Bad around kids with a sword?.

Exactly, especially after four
joints and a pint of scrumpy.

Yeah, it goes...
All your distance goes all out.

Do you keep your eye closed
when you've got a patch on?

Or do you keep it open underneath?
I always wondered that.

You do, you overcompensate,
you hold it like that,

because you're actually
trying to go through the darkness.

One eye's normal and the
other is four times normal size.

Could you not make
a little hole in the patch

so it looks like the patch but
you can see out of the patch?

If I had a time machine
that took me back 25 years,

then that's exactly
what I'd have done.

Just do an experiment,
let's all close one eye

and pick up your drink, right?
OK, here we go.

That went much better
than I expected.

It does explain why the cabin
was ankle deep in scrumpy. Yeah.
It would've been, wouldn't it?

LAUGHTER

What I was going to say was that,
probably, your depth perception

goes out and then, look, exactly.

Who are you people? LAUGHS

You've never seen these
people before on the show?

?15 a day cash in hand.

Hang on, one of them has got
a wooden leg, wait a minute.

If I'd actually had an eye patch
on there and he'd suggested that and

you'd had a compass, would you have
actually poked me in the eye then?

If you'd let me
finish my vodka, yes.

Is that a pint of vodka?

Lovely. Wonderful.

Don't give him another drink.
No, don't give me...

Just a half.

Ah, thank you. Argh!
Argh! Argh!

Yeah, but, you really do
look like a pirate,

in a way, in a sort of comedy pirate
way, beardy, long-hairedy.

We don't have a huge tradition
of pirating in, er, Canada.

Well. we don't,
really, in Hampstead.

I used to want to be
an albino when I was a kid.

I think it's because of an albino
rabbit. When you're a kid you
look at rabbits a lot, don't you?

Yeah, well, you don't.

You're taken to see rabbits. Yeah.
It's not... Unless there's rabbits

in your home, I suppose, then,
because you would look at them.

One in your bed when you wake up,
looking at you. Yeah. I'm not sure

if a white rabbit is an albino
or just a rabbit that's white.

I don't know because it's got
red eyes, hasn't it? So I think...
I think it is.

I think I knew about the Draize test
before I knew about rabbits.

What's that?
What's the Draize test?

It's when they put shampoo in
their eyes. Oh, right. Oh, yeah.

And quite wrongly, I think.
Yeah, well, it's not ideal, is it?

Um, and you'd think there'd be
another way of doing it, surely?

I mean, is there not some other way
of finding out whether it stings?

Prisoners.
Exactly. LAUGHTER

I was going to say human. You know,
there was a guy at university

who would get paid to try out drugs.
And he took all sorts of things,

beta-blockers, anti-depressants,
all kinds of drugs.

And he had to keep
kind of samples of his wee

all around the flat. He used to keep
them outside on the window ledge.

Why did he have to leave it on
the window ledge? Was it to do with
the temperature? Yeah, exactly.

It couldn't be too warm in the flat.
Student accommodation is freezing
anyway, so it doesn't really matter

where it was but I think it
froze a couple of times, pfft!

Shocked the people below.
Get a bit of frozen urine in...

Is that an urban myth
that sometimes you can get

out of a plane
will fall some frozen wee?

Oh, yeah.
And then it'll land on a person

and then they'll die
because of the impact.

When they're found, they're
lying in a puddle of wee.
People just think they're dead

and, yeah.
LAUGHTER

It's like the old stabbing someone
with an... Icicle. ..icicle, yeah.

An icicle of wee. Or something else,
like custard or something.

Can you freeze custard?
You could. If you were
going to kill someone with it.

But not if you're going to eat it
because dairy doesn't really...

Freeze well, yeah, other than
ice cream. It separates.

Yeah, it separates.
My mum froze my birthday cake

when I was very little and it
shrunk to about half its size

And all the writing
went really weird.

But she also breastfed me
till I was three so...

You know what, right?
The other day,

my mate was still
breastfeeding her kid

and it can speak
and it's got teeth and stuff.

And I was like,
"Oh! This is a bit weird."

I remembered that I was breastfed
till I was two or so I thought.

I went home and I was like,
"I can't believe you
breastfed me till I was two

because I've just seen..."
Um, I'll change her name,

"..Carolyn..." No-one's
called Carolyn, are they?

"..um, breastfeeding her kid."

My mum said, "We didn't breastfeed
you till you were two,

we breastfed you
till you were three."

So it explains a lot about
why I wanted to be an albino.

But you know what?
I googled "Breastfeeding older kids"
to try and make myself feel better

and I found all these
articles about it

because it's a big thing.
A lot of people go longer.

Huh? A lot of people go longer
than that. Yeah, much longer.

There was a woman
who was still breastfeeding
her eight-year-old son. I know.

There was like a picture of him
on her lap and everything.
And a laptop at the same time.

Doing his accounts. Yeah, texting
his mates, going, "This is weird."

She still wants to do it.

But in the interview...
And a blanket to hide the erection.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Oh!

But in the interview
she said that she said to him

"When are we going to
stop doing this?"

And he said, "We're going to do it
until I'm married or you're dead."

Oh!

LAUGHS

Awesome.
That's scary.

That could apply to so many things.

We're going to do this until
I'm married or you're dead.

An old-fashioned wife crushing.

Argh! Argh!

I refuse to be questioned
about papier-mache.

Isy, you're quite creative because
you made a papier-mache penguin.

Yes. Can you tell me at what
age you made this and why?

I was about 25 or 26.

LAUGHTER

LAUGHS

Hold on... Most people have left
papier-mache behind by then.

You finished breastfeeding.

I was trying to save
an ailing relationship.

So we'd been to London Zoo and
his favourite animals were penguins.

We'd fallen in love, well, he had
really with this penguin called Roy

who was a bit slower than the
other penguins and lagged behind.

I know. He had one leg longer than
the other and stuff like that.

So we were like, "Oh, poor Roy,
he never gets enough fish."

And that was a really good day,
we were at the zoo. And then

it was coming up to Christmas
and I thought, "Oh, what can I do?"

"I've really got to
pull the stops out."

So I decided to make this penguin.

And I wanted to make it as big
as a real penguin but it was

probably about five-foot high
and really fat

and it took about two months.
It cost about ?180,

like, to buy all the material.
Wow! And, um,

it had this stuffed head and a beak
and his head could go at any angle

and, er, so he could look in
all different kinds of moods.

And I took him round and,
um, unfortunately,

he got put in the corner of the room

and then just used to look at us
with his head on one side like...

It was awful actually. Like sort
of slightly... What mood was that?

That was in a sort of melancholic
lost mood. Imploringly. Yeah.

Yeah, like...
"Why?"

When I knocked on the door,
I had him next to me

and I had my arm around him
because I'm only five-foot four

and, er, he sort of
looked at both of us and

he was like, "Oh!"
I said, "This is Roy."

And he was like, "Oh, hello."

Yeah. But did it...? Did it...?
I mean, you know...

No. I don't want to be
personal but did it work?

No, it kind of... I think it
bought us another two months.

Do you think he felt obligated
to stay with you

because you'd made him
a papier-mache penguin?

Yeah. But he got put in a loft

because he moved house
and he got left in this loft. Oh!

Where is he now? Have you got him?
No he's still in this loft

in Herne Hill as far as I know.
Oh, no! I don't know if his
head's on or off. Going back

and saying,
"You know it didn't work out

"but any chance we could
have the penguin back?"

It's a good idea, like a kid.
Yeah, exactly, yeah. I'm back.

Hi, er, any chance of, er,... Roy.

Isn't papier-mache quite messy?

Yeah, but it's funny.
What is it? A lot of glue and paper?

I'd forgotten how to do it but I
think it's glue and paper, yeah.

Water. Yeah, maybe a bit of water.
Is it flour and water?

I thought it was flour. Anyone know?
How do you do it, Kev?

I don't know how, I haven't
done papier-mache for years.

Come on, pirates know about all this
sort of stuff, don't they? Surely.

Being a pirate is a very
small part of my life, Bill.

You know, and I refuse to be,
er, questioned about papier-mache.

See, you call it papier-mache.
Yes, I do.

Well it's French, isn't it?
FRENCH ACCENT Papier-mache.

Yeah, monsieur.
Ah, oui. Yeah. C'est bon.

Tres bien.
Yeah, tres bien.

Not bad, huh? Yeah, oui.
Papier-mache. Oui.

SPEAKS FRENCH

Tres bien.
SPEAKS FRENCH

SPEAKS FRENCH
Oui.

SPEAKS FRENCH
LAUGHTER

That was a Eurovision entry.

Yeah.

APPLAUSE
Tres bien, tres bien, tres bien.

Encore!

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Are you bilingual, Canadian man?
No, I say no.

Western Canada.
No, I like to say I'm, no....

We're famous for being Texas
of the north, they call us.

You can imagine how much
we've embraced Francophone.

Are you British Columbia?

Alberta. But I like to say, and it's
only from living among the English,

that, although I'm not bilingual
I am very French-familiar.

And I only say that I'm familiar
with it because English people

are the first people I've ever lived
with that have actually, like,

when French comes on the radio
in my presence, have said,

"What's that?" It's like,
"You don't even know it's French?"

LAUGHTER

I might not know exactly
what they're saying but
I can confirm that's French.

I had a wonderful experience
recently where I'd hurt myself

quite badly on Mont Blanc and ended
up in a French hospital in Chamonix.

And can proudly say that
I was able to speak more French

to a French surgeon than a French
surgeon was able to speak English

to me and the crowning moment
was him looking at my X-rays,

I'd smashed my finger quite badly,
you might happy to know

it was an Englishman that knocked
the rock on top of me.

Using mountain lingo,
he said, "Rock!"

The French doctor looked
at my X-rays and he said,

"I do not know
how you say in English

"but in French we say this
bone here is pureed."

Oh, that's not good.

No, no.

What did they do? Did they
put a pin in it? No, no,

In fact, one of my favourite
things to reveal to people,

if you haven't broken
a finger in your own life,

if I can save you any time,
you break a finger,

go into any hospital in the western
world, here, Japan, across Canada,

walk into any emergency room and
just say, "Hi, I broke my finger."

They'll say, "Do you have a finger
you didn't break?" "Yes, I do."

"Well, tape it to that. Enjoy
your life. Good luck, bye."

"Parking isn't free."

LAUGHTER

I ran over my wife's foot
and broke it.

Oh, right.

Still your wife?
Yeah, she's still my wife.

It was a hire car. You got
through that? I got a hire car.
How big was the fucking penguin?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It was pretty big. I'm working on
a woolly mammoth. Yeah, I'll bet.

No, we got a hire car
and the handbrake...

You know sometimes in cars now
there isn't a handbrake. Footbrake.

There's a little thing and
there was a little parking brake

on the dashboard and I pulled that
but it didn't...

When I got out of the car
it felt like it moved a bit.

I thought, "I'm not happy with
this." So I left it in gear

just so it wouldn't roll away,
I'd only just got it.

Anyway, she's putting
the kids in the back,

strapping them in the car seat.

To start this car, you had
to put your foot on the clutch,

when that became a safety option,
I have no idea.

I've left it in gear, haven't I?
When I took my foot off the clutch,

it went forward and up onto her foot

because the handbrake was
not engaged. And then sat there.

The thing that I'd pulled, I thought
was a handbrake, was actually the
handbrake release. Release, yes.

Fucking hell!
Why is the handbrake release
not the same as the handbrake?

That would be good if they were the
same and the handbrake didn't exist.

Wow! There was no handbrake,
there was a tiny black footbrake...

Yes, a footbrake. ..concealed by the
black carpet in the dark footwell.

Foot well, invisible. Quite a
standard piece of kit, no excuse.

Anyway, we had to go...
To the hospital. ..to the hospital.

Was it actually flat like a cartoon,
about sort of like that wide? Yeah.

I went up onto it
and then she was going, "Argh!"

And both the kids were
in the back going, "Aarrgghh!"

I could hear her screaming. She was
going, "Go back" Go back!" Oh, no.

"Go back!"
But I'm not good in a crisis. No.

Um... I went forward and
completed the, er.. So you...

LAUGHTER

Woah! Hold on, hold on, hold on.

APPLAUSE

You're all applauding me.
You finished the job.

You finished the job.
Finished the job?

I couldn't find reverse,
I was in a panic.

You used your wife as a speed bump?
Is that what..?

I should've just got out
of the car and pushed it back,
it'd have been easier. Ay, caramba!

I couldn't think. You were on it
while you were freaking out?

I was on it, I was on it, I've never
heard the children scream so loud.

I'm in the car, they're behind me,

if they make any noise of distress
at any point in my life,

my brain goes into some sort of,
I don't know what,

primordial spasm, is that a thing?
Yes. Yes, it is.

You really... It's primitive,
"I must protect my children."

Yes. "I shall do that by immediately
driving away from the scene."

LAUGHTER

That feeling of protecting
your offspring

doesn't work at the wheel
of a hire car it turns out.

Evolution does not... Technology's
really outpaced evolution. Yeah.

Our basic instincts are not
compatible with the equipment
around us. No you're not a...

That's my excuse. Yeah.
Yeah, don't become a pilot. No.

Or a pirate. Did you actually...?
Did you break it?

Did you break it? It cracked,
it cracked, the foot cracked.

An old-fashioned wife crushing.

And then when we got home,
right, my little boy was...

They were acting it out. Yeah.
My kids were acting it out.

He's going round
with his little trolley

full of bricks with
the alphabet on... Argh!

..making his sister lie down
on the floor and going,

"I run over your foot,
I run over your foot!" "Aarrgghh!"

And everyone who came
to the house for days after,

"Daddy ran over Mummy.
Yeah.

LAUGHTER

This is the pattern that we're
doing and nobody get it wrong.

Did you hit him?

Bill, can you tell me how you
become an honorary member

of particularly
crematorium organists?

Are they different
from other organists?

Er, yeah, there's, I guess, there's
a certain amount of deference

you have to try and imbue
into the organ playing.

You can't be too show-offy,
I don't think, you know?

It couldn't be

You couldn't do that as the thing's
going off into the flames.

I'm here all week. You know,
you couldn't do that.

Is it like...? Are there pipes?
Is it a churchy organ with pedals?

No, no, no, no.
Or is it really like an electric?

It's a little, yeah,
it's a Bontempi-esque.

It's not even like The Doors?
It's not even like a proper...

No, you couldn't, there's no...
There's not two levels of keys.

You can't really...
Rick Wakeman. Do a Rick Wakeman.

Journey To The Centre Of The Earth,
although, I suppose, you know.

In some respect, in some ways,
you're on a journey somewhere.

Yeah, you couldn't play
Light My Fire, that would be...

That would be, you know, that would
be... Although it's tempting.

I'm sure that's been done.
I'm sure it has, yeah.

Have you played the big ones...?
I have played the big ones, yes.

You still talking organs?.
Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, er...

No, I played the one
in the Albert Hall,

which is probably, like, the biggest.

I've heard that's a massive organ.
It is, er, it's a huge.

It's a huge organ.

That was like some scene
from some 1960s review then.

Yes, it was.
Oh, I hear it's a massive organ.

My mum plays the organ.
Yeah? Yeah, and she bell rings.

Yeah, she bloody does, yeah.

Never had a lesson.

I tried bell ringing once
and I let go of the ropes.

The bells are really heavy,
have you ever tried it? Yeah.

It's mad. Really difficult.
They're really kind of like,

"This is the pattern that we're
doing and nobody get it wrong."

They all wear waistcoats and stuff.

And, um, it's quite full on.

I didn't really realise how
many rules there were.

I used to get so bored, I used to go
and sit on these tapestry cushions

and just wait for
the bell ringing to end.

But I tried it once and I let go
of the rope while I had it down.

You sort of pull it down, don't you?
And it loops up and you let go.

And it goes really high
and then you pull it down again.

And so on.
And I let go when it was down

and it hit me
in the stomach and the face,

it gave me a nose and mouth bleed.

Which one of those
is in your stomach?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Isy Suttie's famous tummy mouth.
Wow! My second face.

Ah!

Can you tell me about
exchanging details with
the head of the Iraqi police?

Oh, right. Yeah, well, he was the
future head of the civil force

appointed by George Bush to Baghdad.

And I dealt with him
as an 18-year-old.

We'd called him
because I'd been robbed

and we'd held onto
the robber in Times Square.

He had shown up and released the
robber who'd robbed me immediately.

Then interrogated me and a couple of
friends as to who was buying drugs.

So an argument ensued in
a way that, as a young Canadian,

I was very respectful of authority
and especially the police.

But now I was dealing with a guy
that had released a criminal,

was accusing me of buying drugs

and hadn't washed his uniform for
quite some time, nor his vehicle,

had a big ponytail and about
eight earrings in each ear,

which, at a point in the argument
I referred to him as "Disco dad."

LAUGHTER

Not realising at the time
that he was also teaching

special weapons and tactics to the
entire New York Police Department.

I mean, this is in 1989.

And, um, he became confrontational
beyond interrogating me for drugs.

And, finally, to his credit
as a police officer, he said,

he said, "Where are you from?"
So I said, "I'm from Canada."

And he said,
"You're not in Canada now."

And then we exchanged information.

And then I went in to complain
about him in a police department.

There was a young cop sitting behind
the desk. We came in and said,

"What would happen if we complained
about one of your officers?"

And he very casually looked at us

and then looked
at the waste-paper basket.

LAUGHTER

And then looked back.

And we had a laugh at that
and just thought, you know,

"America's doomed when this is the
type of authority that's in charge."

And we walked away and he said,
"Out of curiosity,

"who were you going to complain
about?" I said, "Officer Carrick."

He said, "Yeah, he's a prick."

And then called us back and wrote
down a half-dozen different bars

that we could drink in underage.

Addresses. "We never go in here,
we never go in here."

"You can get in here." Wow.
And then the next time I saw him

was on the third page
of the Telegraph,

there in his uniform as the,
appointed by George Bush,

head of the Iraqi Civil Police.

And you'll be happy to know
as well that he failed at that

and he's in jail right now
for embezzlement. Right.

So, yeah, there's George... Yeah,
yeah, exactly. That's where he is.

There is... There is...

George Bush's ability
to assess character.

And if they'd just asked
an 18-year-old Canadian,

the prick wouldn't have got
the job in the first place. Yeah.

And if you're listening at all,
Officer Carrick, you're a prick!

Bill, now, Bill Bailey,
you have been detained

for possession of a kazoo,
is that correct? Yeah.

That's right, yeah, I was.

Um, firstly, can we establish
everyone knows what a kazoo is?

You know, it's sort of like a small
device that you blow into

and there's a little membrane at
the top and a little sort of bowl

that sits on top and traditionally
it was a comb and paper arrangement.

You don't really blow,
you more kind of... bbbrrrr!

You sort of... bbbrrrr!
You know, you force air through it

and it creates a vibration
and creates a tone,

which is the same as whatever
you're, you know, humming.

And so I've used this
kazoo in the show.

I was touring, I was travelling
from Australia to New Zealand.

Bing the sort of person that I am, I
had to get the best kazoo there was,

which was a large metal
sort of affair,

with a metal bowl and it had
inside, unbeknownst to me, was...

Hash.
Um, well, yeah. Well...

A tiny phial of heroin.

A tiny phial of, yes...
A tiny speck of uranium. You see...

In New Zealand terms,
it was the same contraband.

It was a feather and instead
of just a paper membrane,

they used a feather,
I had no idea about this at all.

So I was going through
and he said, "What's this?"

And, of course, when you take a kazoo
out of your travel bag, it does...

And the way... I'm more resembling
Craig back in those days.

And... You're not far off, mate.
Well, I know, yeah.

But this is not a good look
for international air travel, right?

LAUGHTER

MAKES ALARM NOISES
Straightaway...

"Check him for feathers!
Check him for feathers!"

"He's got something in his beard."

"I reckon he keeps bees,
it's something to do with bees."

And, um...

That was the worst, going into
Australia, when they say,

"Have you got any bees
or beekeeping equipment?"

I mean, that's just, you know, like
you'd be pushing a hive, you know.

MAKES BUZZING NOISES

Don't need to ask. They just
need to go, "Ssh! Ssh! Ssh!" Yeah.

No, you're all right.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, so I said, er...

And he pulled it out and it looks
so incriminating, a kazoo,

it just looks like
drug paraphernalia.

And this guy was...
He'd never seen a kazoo before,

didn't even know what kazoo was,
so he just said, he said,

"What's that then?" I went, "It's a
kazoo, surely you know what that is?"

He went, he goes,
"So what's inside it?"

And, er, I said, "I don't know."

You realise by now Carrick
would've shot you dead? Yeah.

I said, "I don't know what's inside
it." He said, "Can you look inside?"

I opened it up and he went...
He actually was so...

There's a smug look on someone's face
when they've found... Found it.

They've found... Right.
He went, "Well, what's this?"

Held up this tiny feather, like...
And I went, "Wow!"

I said, "I didn't even know
they had them in there."

And he's going, "Oh, yeah.
You knew that was there."

And I said, um, I said, "It won't
work if you take the feather out."

"Look, look." BLOWS
It's a kaz.

I said, "Put it back in." He didn't
know what it was supposed to do.

I said, "Put it back in." I had
to show. "Look, watch. It's a kazoo."

MIMICS KAZOO
And so I'm playing them tunes.

Then got a bit carried away,
played like a medley, '80s hits.

MIMICS KAZOO

Yeah, so he impounded it.

And he said, "We can take it
off you and destroy it." Wow!

Destroy it.
Destroy it, yep.

Or you can pay, like, a $30 fine

and we will impound it in... And he
brought this massive hazard bag out

with hazard symbols
all over it and placed it,

with tongs, really sort of, you know,
ostentatiously into this bag.

Gee! That's what it was in
when I bought it.

And so it was then
taken off me and I...

It was just the feather taken? Just
the feather. He took the feather.

It took a minute to get from the top
of the hazard bag to the bottom.

Yeah, just went down to the bottom.
A few bees in the bottom. Dead.

Dead bees. "No, not the feather."

And... So I was, yeah... I had to...

Then, you know, just...
I had to improvise, yeah.

What do they put in kazoos
in New Zealand then?

Do they use indigenous feathers?
Some, probably, yeah.

It would be... Possum?
Yeah, a possum or something.

Possum's eyelid or something.
Possum.

Something local, yeah, that you would
have to smuggle in, you know.

When I first went to New Zealand,
I met an elderly fellow,

that was nice,
I was a guest in his home.

And I'm used to sort of conservation
of all things, animals, regardless

of whether or not you they're
eating your ground-dwelling birds.

And he just asked casually, he said,

"Did you see any possums?
And I said yes.

And he just went into,
"Did you hit 'em?!"

I just, "No, I didn't think to
murder the animals on the road."

But when you wrap your head around
where they're coming from,

they're being eaten out
of house and home by them.

The idea of a cull, yes.
I mean, we need... There is

a sort of, you know,
a point to their cull... Yes.

..when animals get out of hand,
the population gets out of hand.

In fact, I was pitched a TV idea
called To Cull Or Not To Cull.

It's straight up, it was...

The idea was that I would learn how
to shoot things with a rifle, right?

And then I would then get an animal
that needed culling in my sights

and then you would phone the number,

"Dial this number
to keep the animal alive."

"Dial this number to cull it.
See you after the break." You know.

This is it,
I've never felt so alive.

Stand down, it's just a goose.
Feeling decongested, are you?

Would you ever eat something
that you'd knocked over?

You're not allowed
to eat a pheasant, are you?

If you run over a pheasant and you
take it, that's poaching. Yeah.

But if you run over it
and then leave it, the person
behind finds it, then it's found.

We were doing some filming once
for an episode of Jonathan Creek

on an estate where there were lots
of pheasants and, ridiculously,

they fed them from
the back of a flatbed. Yeah.

So the truck would go around
and they'd throw food out.

So they came towards vehicles. So
all the crew turn up in the morning,

there was about 50 vehicles
arriving between 6:30 and 7.

A lot of pheasant action and one
of the sparks ran over several,

had an arrangement with another one
who would pull over and keep them.

That's the sparks for you. Yeah,
they had quite a gamey weekend.

Yeah. When I was coming back from...
We were coming back from

the centre of town and we saw
a goose that'd been hit by a car,

it was on the Mall
outside Buckingham Palace.

And it was still alive,
so me and my wife got out

and we grabbed the goose,
wrapped it in a blanket

and picked the goose up
and put it in the back of the car.

And then just at that point,
a guy with a gun just appeared

and held the gun to me and he said,

"Stop," he said,
"what are you doing?"

And I sort of froze, obviously,
and I just went,

"Er, er, er, er, it's a goose."
And, um...

You know, struggling for words. Did
he think it was the Queen's swan?

Well, yeah, but he was...
Or the Queen.

It must've just looked really dodgy.
I don't know whether there were

cameras and plain-clothes...
No need to pull a gun on you.
You put it in a blanket.

I had it in a blanket and he goes,
"What's that? I went, "It's a goose."

And he went, and he goes,
he went, "Show me. Show me."

And he sort of... And they were all
plain-clothes with handguns. Yeah.

And he pointed it at the... Quite
implausibly at the goose. LAUGHTER

Sort of pointed his pistol
in the back of the car.

I pulled the blanket back and the
goose's head came up like this

and sort of looked over
at the gun like this. Yeah.

There was a sort of standoff between
the goose and the pistol like this.

And, at that point,
we all sort of froze,

it was this weird tableau where
we're all just sort of like this.

And then he just did that
thing with the... He went,

"Stand down, just a goose."

LAUGHTER And I was like...
APPLAUSE

"Who are you talking to?"
Did you have red dots all over you?

Yeah. "No, stand down,
it's just a goose." Er...

Did you eat the goose? No, no.
We took it to hospital around
the corner. And they ate it.

And er, yeah. We just chucked
it over Buckingham Palace. Yeah.

"Dear Queen..." No, we, er...

My dogs, my dogs caught...
One of my dogs, my family's dogs,

when I was about 20, caught
a rabbit while I was out walking.

I didn't like that, you know.
But people in the country

are used to this sort of thing.

But they caught it and I got to them
before they could rip it to shreds.

I should've let them rip it
to shreds because it was...

Several of its bones were broken
and it was limping about.

So I kind of got the leads on them
and I've lashed them round a tree.

I'm going, "What are you doing?"
"We're doing this."

"This is what we do. This is what
we do. What were you doing?"

"We caught one for the first time
in our lives. This is it."

"I've never felt so alive!
The adrenaline's coursing
through me. Let me eat it." Yeah.

And I didn't let them eat it.
And then I thought,

"I've got to..."
So I hit it on the head.

We had one of those extender leads,
it's quite a heavy bit of plastic.

And I just...
Oh, yeah, those things, yeah.

I've got to kill it. I didn't
know what else to kill it with.

So I cracked it on the head
and then I thought, "Is it dead?"

"I don't know. Is it just knocked
out? Is it going to wake up?"

I hit it several times. Then,
when I thought that must be dead,

it wasn't moving
and I put some leaves on it

and put a little cross on the top.

How did you know it was a Christian?
Exactly. Exactly, it makes no sense.

But I didn't...
You return to the faith

that you were raised in sometimes,
don't you? Of course. Yeah.

Oh, there's the only ritual
I know for death. Oh! And, er...

That was sweet.
I think about that rabbit often.

It's hard to kill something, though.
I've got this mate

and when he was about, um,
I don't know, a teenager,

about 15, there was a crematorium
with very rich people,

um, waiting to be cremated in it.

And all the, um, like,
the local drug addicts

used to get in through this crack
and steal all the rings

and jewellery off the corpses.

And, um, my mate went in and,
um, in the darkness

and he was trying to get a ring
to sell it on, didn't do drugs,

and he grabbed something
and it was wet.

Um, and he got out through
this crack into the daylight

and it was the whole
of someone's scalp.

GROANING

LAUGHS

It was fucking awful! But why
would you think that was a ring?

I don't know, it could be like a
traditional folk bone ring, you know.

How much did he get for it?.

He must've pulled it pretty hard?
Yeah, he must've done.

No, he said it came off
really easily. Yeah.

I guess... I don't really know very
much about bodies but I guess

they must just get
to a point where it's all soft.

A bit fragile. What would you say
that was, off the top of your head?

Off the top of your head.

When I was little,
I had this goldfish called Bobo

that I won at the fair, it was a
bit... Those goldfish from fairs,

they've not got a good start in life
in little plastic bags.

No, they're damaged goods. Yeah,
they are. Behavioural problems.

It's like going out with someone
who's always been dumped
and you think, "Oh!" And, um,

My mum, she'd only just stopped
breastfeeding me, actually, um...

You were 27 years old.
It was before the penguin.

Um, she... I got home and I said...
I'd looked at Bobo's tank

and it was just on the side,
I said, "Where's Bobo?"

And she went, "I'm cleaning out his
tank." I said, "Well, where is he?"

And she went, "I laid him
on the rockery to dry."

LAUGHTER

It was just dead.
Dead.

I was making a documentary
in South Africa about baboons.

And there was one, one...
We were filming on the beach

because the baboons come down
and forage on the beach

for, you know, for seaweed and stuff.

And there was a gannet,
its wing had broken

and its neck was also broken
and it was still alive.

The producer said to me, "We're going
to have to put it out of its misery

"because it's, you know,
it's clearly, it's nearly dead

and it can't fly,
it's neck's broken, you know."

He says, "I can't do it.
I'm too squeamish to do it."

"You'll have to do it." And, er...
So I said, "All right."

And so he said,
"How are we going to do it?"

"Get a big rock and just pan
its head in with a rock."

And what we didn't know

is while this was going on,
there was some people, some tourists

had gathered on the top of the cliff

and they were talking to one of the
production assistant and they said,

they were going,
"What's going on here?"

And he said, "Oh, we're making
a wildlife documentary."

LAUGHTER

And so these people...
There's the presenter.

Smashing a gannet's head
into the ground.

LAUGHTER

Yeah, it's one of these new
sort of, like, radical ones, yeah.

Kevin, on a different area,
is it right

that you have mistaken Olbas Oil
for ginseng 25 times? Yes.

Yeah, that did happen. I'd had a
very bad cold and I'd lost my voice

and I was doing some filming,
so I had this Olbas Oil.

It's great. You put it in water,
anyone's had a bad cold. Inhale it.

And all the steam comes up.
You breathe it in

and it really clears your
whole bronchial system.

And I was also taking some ginseng
because I needed some energy

for a job that was
loads and loads of hours.

And one night I'd, you know, put the
drops on my tongue for the ginseng

and then went for the Olbas Oil and
thought, "Oh, that's the ginseng."

And then realised that I'd
ingested 21 drops of Olbas Oil.

So I looked on the side and it said,

"If taken internally,
seek medical advice immediately."

So, well, OK.
So I said to my girlfriend,

"That's funny." She said, "Phone the
national..." NHS Direct. NHS Direct.

Yeah, like that. And they go... I
thought, "Oh, this'll be all right,

I'll be alright." And he goes,
"OK. Oh, have you?"

He goes, "All right.
I'll call you back."

And I go, "Oh, it'll be all right."
A couple of minutes he goes,

"We've found it's in the top-ten
list of most toxic elements

that you can take. Can you
go to an A and E immediately?"

And so we had to wake up
our one-year-old baby and...

Say goodbye to Daddy.
Yes.

LAUGHTER
Yeah.

APPLAUSE

They go, "Yeah, I remember him as
a very pale frightened looking man."

LAUGHTER

I went into the A and E,
went to the reception

and said er, you know,
this is what has happened.

And the guy on reception said,
"You feeling decongested, are you?"

I said, "It's not actually funny."
Because the bloke on NHS Direct

has said, "We've got a list here
of possible bad side effects."

"Permanent liver damage, er, fits,
er..." I was going, "Right, OK."

So then this, this guy saw me and
he recognised me from the telly

and he said, "I've taken your blood
pressure. It's very, very high."

"You need to get that sorted out
because your career won't go
very well with a stroke, will it?"

And I was thinking, I was thinking,

"Well, you know, the reason why
my blood pressure is so high

is because I think I might've
poisoned myself and now I'm going
to go into a coma at any second."

And anyway, I tell you,
this guy was amazing.

He was sort of on the front line
of A and E on a Friday night

about 10 o'clock,
weirdly enough it wasn't that busy.

And we got talking and he was,
he was saying about, you know,

that he'd had people in
that night with paper cuts,

wasting his time,
he'd also been threatened,

you know, his life had been
threatened by drunken idiots.

With a bit of A4.
With a bit of A4, yeah.

"I'll paper you to death."

But it was one of those
moments where you realise
with direct experience,

these people on the front line
of our NHS service,

they're just absolutely
fantastic people.

I have no sense of smell, I haven't
had any sense of smell since...
Since the Olbas incident.

No, this is the weird thing,
it came back. Really?

It came back for ten minutes
about four hours later,

when I was in the taxi going back

and I had the sense of smell
for the first time

for 15 years. Taxi driver pump?
That's what it was.

LAUGHS
Kebabs and farts.

Oh, no. That's all I could
smell for the 15 minutes.

Oh, God! If only I'd been in a
greenhouse or something like that.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
or something. Yeah. Some rancid

old cab. you know, sort of driving
you home, anyway. Like Awakenings.

Oh!
But everything was all right

and I, you know, I thought
I was going to die for one moment

but er, I got away with it so...
You had no permanent injury?

No. Have you got no sense of smell?
I have no sense of smell. At all?

No. I just...
I imagine what things smell like.

I kind of imagine,
you know, like, um...

Isy, in my mind, you just smell
of lovely fresh lemon sponge.

You smell of, you know,
scented needles, a bit of bear.

You, Bailey,
you're just a bale of hay,

you smell of a bale of hay.
You're Eternity by Calvin Klein.

LAUGHTER

LAUGHS

"Oh, the smell of it!"
So I just have to imagine it.

Now, listen, before we finish up,

we have to think of a title for
our show from the conversation.

The extraordinarily varied
and meandering and weird

and very interesting
and amusing conversation

that we've managed to concoct.
Any thoughts?

Er...
Penguin Of Despair.

Flying Goose.
Until You're Married Or Dead.

What was that phrase?
Yeah.

Until I'm Married Or Your Dead.
Until I'm Married Or Your Dead.

Yeah, come on. Yeah!

APPLAUSE

Boom!

LAUGHS

Print it.

OK, well, ladies and gentlemen,
I'd like to thank all my guests,

Isy Suttie, Craig Campbell, Bill
Bailey and Kevin Eldon. Thank you
very much for coming along.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That is all. You have been watching
Until I'm Married Or You're Dead.

Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd