Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (2014–…): Season 3, Episode 2 - Thirty-Five Quid for This - full transcript
I'm very excited.
This is cash up front, right?
It's arguably too hot for
this coat but it's my best one
so I really had to wear it.
You might notice a certain swagger
about me today.
That's because I've flown here from
Manchester and I got an upgrade
from cargo to economy, so...
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Hello and welcome to
As Yet Untitled.
I'm Alan Davis, this is the show
where I get to talk to
four very funny people
about whatever we like.
We don't have any agenda
and they don't have anything to flog
particularly, we're just here really
to try and come up with
a title for the show.
And to do that, I need my guests,
so, please, will you welcome them?
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.
Welcome to you all.
Now, who do we have here?
We have Sarah Kendall.
Sarah Kendall has upset rock royalty,
Sarah Kendall is here.
John Thomson is here.
John Thomson closed Euro '96 and
once had socks with Victor Meldrew.
Fantastic to have Matt Lucas with us.
Matt Lucas knows a lovely place
to stay in Denmark.
So that's good.
A very nice place to stay
in Denmark, yep.
Very good. And Stu Goldsmith.
Stu has a lucrative sideline
in men's toilets.
It's true.
It's slightly...
Are you at the right temperature?
Because this is the moment
where we can adjust it.
I think I'm going to get hot.
You think you're hot?
I think the air con is on now.
OK, I can't take this jacket off,
though.
Why, what happens?
The T-shirt smells a bit.
I don't care, do you care, John?
You don't mind? Do you mind?
No, I like that...
You know, like the song,
Feel Like A Natural Woman? Yes.
You probably smell like one.
I definitely smell like
a natural woman. OK.
But it's... Sounds like we're
all for it. Really? Yes? Absolutely.
I'm, I'm not for it.
You're not for it? No.
I think you're at a safe distance.
Yeah, well, OK, we'll see.
That's ominous.
Performance shirts
get a funny smell about them.
That's your gig shirt at the moment,
is it? Yeah, yeah.
What's on it? Who is it?
It's just Fleetwood Mac.
Oh, just Fleetwood Mac? It's just
Fleetwood Mac. But I don't know,
I think performance sweat
is a bit smellier.
It's a different smell,
you think it's a different scent?
Yeah, it is, I think
it smells a bit like cat piss.
It's got a scent of panic
or something in it.
Well, that's totally different.
The natural woman, I'm all right
with... The scent of panic.
..but if you're going to take that
off and smell like a litter tray...
Yes, you make me feel...
..I'm against it.
Tell me about when you've upset
rock royalty, what happened there?
Well, I was in the Hare and Tortoise
one day, just having...
in a restaurant with my kids
and Brian May came in... Right.
..and there was like this palpable
excitement, everyone's like,
"Right, Brian May!" and he's got
this iconic mane of hair
and people were trying to be cool
but everyone had sort of clocked him
and he was sitting
at the next table.
My daughter was just staring at him,
she's just five and she just
couldn't take her eyes off him.
Massive Brian May fan? Yeah.
And then she just said
really loudly,
"Mummy, why's that old lady
wearing a wig?"
Amazing!
That's so great.
I said, "Shut your face!"
But I think, I don't know, but I
think he might have heard her,
I don't think he gave a shit,
to be honest, he's Brian May.
Who gives a shit? Oh, it would've
been good if he'd just taken it off.
And it had turned out to be
an old lady in a wig,
it would have been great.
It's always fascinated me as a
style, cos it's only him who has it,
I don't know if anyone else
kind of wants to emulate it.
I can appreciate the length here,
but it does beg the question,
is it a piece? I don't think so.
I think it's real.
It looks very real to me.
I really don't think it's a piece.
I've really always thought
he looks like a Vic Reeves drawing
of Brian May, do you know
what I mean?
He looks like a kind of a character,
it's all sort of elongated, isn't
it? It is extraordinary, though,
when you're sitting across from
someone and you just think...
I can hum, like, guitar solos
that are such a part of our culture
and they're so famous and there's
just this person sitting there.
You can hum guitar solos?
I can hum...
I wish I hadn't said it like that
now, but I'm familiar...
I'm pleased you did,
because now you can.
Yeah. No, I can't actually. What...
Go on. OK...
What about "Hello", Lionel Ritchie?
The acoustic one.
Oh...
SHE HUMS
No, that's the song.
Can you sing it?
HE HUMS
HE HUMS MORE ENTHUSIASTICALLY
Sort of like that.
The good thing is, you only
have to pay permission
if it genuinely sounds like
the tune, so... We're all right.
For copyright, so you're fine.
We're fine. Oh, sorry.
No, it was good.
I'm a drummer, really, so...
You are a great drummer, actually.
That's not my... Are you? Really?
I'm a proper drummer, yeah, yeah.
Do you still drum regularly?
No, not as much as I should.
Have you got the kits at home?
I've got two, I've got an acoustic,
which is a Gretsch,
and then I've got a digital TD-20,
it's a rolling...
I've been wondering about
whether to get one, a digital one.
Are you detached or are you semi?
Right, OK, well...
STU: You're making this up!
This is not real!
No, this is serious!
Neighbours are an issue.
He's talking about neighbours.
He actually means houses.
Not detached kits. Oh, OK.
You can't have a semidetached
drum kit. Well... Well, you could.
That was my point.
I have this really childish thing,
when everybody says semi,
I think of a hard-on. Do you?
If someone does...
A detached one? Jesus.
If they go, "It's a semi," I...
SHE SNORTS WITH LAUGHTER
JOHN: It's like semi-professional.
SHE SNORTS AGAIN
I think of professional with a semi.
Someone who really just
enjoys his work too much.
Just a little bit too much,
a little bit too much. Yeah, yeah.
Have you ever been aroused on stage?
I mean, talking about
semi-professional...
Has it ever happened to you during
a gig or something like that?
It's happened to me filming, yeah.
Really? Really? Yeah.
What happened? Oh, it's a
long story. Go on, we've got time.
It's an hour long, this show.
Don't tell him.
No, it's a long show,
it's a long show.
Well, it feels long.
Go on. Joke, joke, joke.
OK.
What have I...?
Why, I oughta!
OK, I was filming Cold Feet
and there was an episode
that was kind of very sexual
and I had a fantasy girlfriend
who worked behind the bar
and I had my wife as well
and what we had to do
was film two scenes.
One was like, you know,
I was making love to my wife,
but I was seeing the girl
that was my fantasy,
but a really hard job,
I had to do it to both...
Yeah.
So anyway, so they got Fay in
and she had to straddle me
and she kind of like simulated
quite a way away from the old chap
so there was nothing...
There wasn't really any contact.
Very considerate. When they brought
in the other, my fantasy girl, who
I was subsequently told...
I think she was a Dolly Dealer
on Play Your Cards Right...
And I think these weren't real,
the way they moved...
Anyway...
..she did the polar opposite...
Right. ..and got right on it...
Right. ..and ground me. Right.
And then you became... Alert!
Yeah, well, then she got off me
and then there was a kind of...
A make-up artist went...
MOUTHS SILENTLY
And I went...
So, yeah, it was a semi, though.
It was a semi.
It wasn't a full salute,
it wasn't the...
I wonder if there's...
Is there a job on TV sets...
Like, you know on porn sets, you get
a "fluffer", is there a "de-fluffer"?
A de-fluffer? For sex scenes,
that runs on and distracts you
with some facts about
the Battle of Britain.
Yeah. I used to do it and I would
always carry a picture
of Ann Widdecombe
and I would just...
"Here. Yeah, good? OK?"
And then you run off.
But could you joke... I mean,
did you joke about it with, er...
Fay was furious,
and she tells the story that I...
Oh, because she didn't arouse you?
No, I didn't get it up for Fay.
but if Fay had just moved
that few inches further,
I would gladly have done it.
She was nowhere near it. Of course.
It's only right to do it.
Well, I do have another one.
Another actor did...
A similar thing happened, he was...
He went in a pair of pants
and the wardrobe gave him another.
They double up your pants, usually,
to protect your modesty.
And my mate, he had... Steel pants!
My mate told me about,
he had to do a scene
where the same thing happened,
and she got off and then they had to
re-jig the cameras
and he looked down and he...
You know those stickers
that say "quality control"?
"Checked by number two."
It was stuck round the end
and he went...
He had a look and he went...
"Bloody hell."
Anyway, he turned to the actress
who'd he'd just done the scene with
and said,
"Here, have a look at this,
"you're not going to believe it."
She went, "What? Go on."
And he went...
And it had gone!
STU: Oh, my God.
The sticker had come off
and she went "You dirty bastard!
"How dare you!"
And he was frantically
looking for...
So there you go.
LOUD APPLAUSE
They loved that story.
Thank you. Thank you!
Do it, I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to do it,
I'm not going to do it.
Still do it.
I'm not going to do it.
There is a game that I played
at Glastonbury Festival
with some friends of mine last year.
Right.
And the name of the game is
Get Down, Mr President.
And the way you start... Do you know
one of those drinking games where
everyone has to, like, touch the
table and when you see people doing
it, you've all got to do it and the
last person to do it has to drink,
are you familiar with that?
You're all looking at me blankly.
There's some people in
the audience... Three people
in the audience going
"Yes, I know the game."
So this game, how you play it
is you start a round by...
You're always playing it forever
from now on.
And you start a round
by going like that,
as if you're part of
the presidential security detail.
And then everyone else has to do
that... Just play along, guys.
OK, so because you're last to do it,
you didn't... Take your hand down,
say you didn't get there in time,
we are all now the security guards
and we all look at him
who hasn't noticed and we all shout
"Get down, Mr President!"
And bundle him, right? Ah.
So it provides a narrative sort of
theatrical context for the game.
Can I just interject briefly?
Sometimes, does someone put
their hand there and it's quite
a long time before everyone else
starts going, "Oh, hello, we're on"?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. A bit like
Wink Murder? A little bit, yeah.
Yeah. And that adds to kind of the
tension, you can be there for ages,
going, "Any minute now." I mean,
a lot of the time, you then remember
you didn't explain the rules
to anyone and you're just...
But what can also happen, as I found
out to someone else's cost...
The festival last year was...
We'd mentioned the game but people
really hadn't gone with it,
but I was like,
"I'm sure it's a great game."
And they definitely all knew
the rules, so we were chatting
with my fiancee's friend, Rick,
who is a lovely, slight man,
he's a really lovely guy and I went
like this and he went like that
as well, although, on reflection,
he may have been on his phone and...
..as a result, his friend went like
that and so then I just saw that,
saw red, I shouted at Rick,
I went, "Get down, Mr President!"
No-one else joined in
and I basically jumped on this guy
and clobbered him onto the floor and
his foot hit the metal tent post.
Oh, no! And he seemed to be OK
but he was a bit drunk
so maybe he wasn't. And then the
next morning, we woke up in our tent
and we got a text and he'd been
taken to the medical tent
and he had to leave Glastonbury.
And he missed Dolly Parton.
JOHN AND SARAH: Nooooo!
And I'm a total beast, I'm
a complete bastard. Oh, I'm moving.
Cos, from everyone else's
point of view...
Playing a childish game, Stu.
It just look like
I shouted for no reason.
You did! You did.
I'm not that kind of... You are.
I'm not one of those horseplay sort
of people. You are. You're horrible.
You can tell by the way I go
"horseplay", it's not really me.
So I just landed on...
I felt so bad.
If this had happened in California,
you would have been sued,
and quite rightly.
Horrible man, what a horrible man.
Thanks to my brief.
Why did you introduce me
to this horrible man?
Where there's blame, there's a claim.
"Thanks to my brief,"
I just got that...
Tell me about having socks
with Victor Meldrew.
What does that even mean?
OK, sounds like
a right name-drop story, so...
Well, he's not a real person,
so don't worry too much about it.
I remember working
with an actor and he...
This aside, cos there is a bit of
name-dropping coming into this.
We were doing a film and we're all
sat round in someone's hotel room
like you do, all drinking
and everything and he decided to do
a character assassination of
everybody in the room.
And he was like, "You, you talk
too much. You, you're angry
"and I don't know why."
And he went to me, "You, John,
you name-drop all the time."
And I went...
HE GASPS
"Wait till I tell Roger Moore."
Ha-ha! So I was doing a film
and Richard Wilson was in it
and Bill Murray was in it as well...
Clang. Pick that one up.
It was really exciting cos it was
one of the first feature films
I'd ever done
and I was really excited.
And, er...
The wardrobe, er, bus was...
They're few and far between, these
particular modes of transport.
It's a wardrobe bus where it's like
there are changing cubicles
all the way along.
So you go on and when you're
on location, sometimes you change
in whatever you're in, a Winnebago
or a three-way, they call it,
so it's like your own little area,
your own little space,
but this, it had kind of like
cubicles all the way along.
And I seemed to remember
at that time in the film,
it was split shifts,
so, as I was leaving...
I was playing Russian KGB
at the time.
As I was leaving... Of course.
Vic...
Richard Wilson was just arriving
and so I heard him come in
and they went, "Oh, hello, Richard."
He went, "Hello."
And they went, "Are you OK?"
He went, "Yeah, I've just
got to get myself a cup of tea."
So he went off.
Anyway, then I was there...
and I thought, "Hang on,
I can have some fun here."
So I'm behind this curtain,
changing out of my clothes,
my costume into my thing,
and the woman,
the wardrobe woman, went,
"Is everything all right, Richard?"
And I went...
HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
AS RICHARD: "No!
"As a matter of fact, no,
one of these socks is brown
"and the other one is blue."
"Show some bloody professionalism,
woman!"
And she went, "I'm so sorry!"
I went, "Well, sort it out!"
"Good God, woman."
And I just got ready and went, but
to this day I'd have loved to be
a fly on the wall when he comes in
and goes, "Hello," and they've gone,
"I'm so sorry about the socks,
Richard!" And he went,
"What are you talking about?!"
Do you know what I mean?
But you never told him or them?
You just walked away and left it?
I just walked away and left it. They
hate him on the costume circuit now.
I left it!
But you've pretended to be people
before, haven't you?
I've done it, yeah. I've done it...
The thing is about being
an impressionist, it's kind of...
It's hard because it's a bit naff,
really, and ended up here
and kind of, I feel ashamed...
Can I just say... No, it's amazing!
..you have done it, but it's been
tremendously entertaining.
Yeah. Yeah... So you've enriched.
But I'm really suffering
at the hands of Yewtree now.
There's so many people I can't do.
Oh, I can't do... I'm the same.
I do a great...
I do a great Jimmy Savile.
Oh, Jimmy. I used to do Jimmy Savile
in my first ever stand-up act.
Rolf Harris, it's a great Rolf. Do
it, do it. I'm not going to do it.
I do still do it.
I used to do this bit in my first...
Do Vicky Pollard instead.
I love Vicky Pollard.
Tell me, cos it is just for me...
Yeah.
..where Vicky Pollard came from.
Cos didn't you meet somebody
or something
who was the inspiration for it?
Yeah, I was at Bristol University
and actually, so was David Walliams
before me, cos he's considerably
older than I am and...
LAUGHTER
..and I was on this Theatre,
Film and Television course,
which wasn't really an acting
course, it was more like
you would make films
and you would write about theatre.
And we were set the task of doing
a little six-minute documentary.
We were in groups of four
and I had the idea for our group,
which was to go up to people
and go, "How are you?"
And just see how they responded,
because my theory was that people
would not answer honestly.
And we went up to...
It was actually a little boy
and I went, "How are you?"
And he went...
BRISTOL ACCENT: "Sort of like,
do you know, but, like, I dunno?"
And I went... So I'd do
a follow-up question,
"How do you feel about me
asking you that question?"
BRISTOL ACCENT: "Sort of like,
I dunno, but, like, sort of, like,
"I dunno, I feel like, I dunno,
like, you asked me a question,
"but, like, I dunno, like,
"the question or something
or nothing, I dunno."
So I showed this film to David
and we just laughed cos I said,
"Look, this is the least
articulate person on the planet."
And so we were creating
these characters and I said,
"Wouldn't it be great to have
a really inarticulate character?"
And then we started to think,
why is the character inarticulate?
Because they've done something wrong
and they're buying time
and defending themselves.
Then it just kind of morphed into
a teenage girl, which felt fun and
it was just a very happy accident
because I think we just caught
something in the public mood that
it just felt like there was a Vicky
Pollard on every street corner.
And also, if I may say, obviously
a massive influence on us
and something I was a huge fan of
was The Fast Show, obviously.
We're all a little bit jealous
of you because... Why?
..when we kind of folded,
we were still on VHS... Ah.
Yeah, and we did miss out on
a few DVD sales that you...got.
But your stage show...
But that's just voluntary.
Your stage show, loved your TV show
but your stage show...
We did a double bill with
The Fast Show, which actually,
you were off for a week
and I played a lot of your roles
in the Fast Show Stage Show
when you were away.
That was the tour, was it? No, it
was at Hammersmith Apollo, but we
did the Shooting Stars Stage Tour
at the end of 1996 and it was...
We were so popular at the time, but
Vic and Bob didn't really know...
We didn't really know
how to put that TV show on stage.
But we did know that there were
millions of people that wanted
to come and see it. Exactly, yeah.
So it happened and Vic and Bob
and Marc Lamarr and Ulrika Jonsson
and myself went on tour
and the opening act was three people
from Stars In Their Eyes.
A Rod Stewart, a Neil Diamond
and an Elton John. And I thought,
"Oh, this is something brilliantly
ironic from Reeves and Mortimer."
Oh, my God. No, they genuinely
thought people wanted to see this,
which they didn't. But...
Presumably, you were sat there
waiting for the joke to happen.
Yeah, yeah.
Or some kind of twist on it.
No joke, no joke. The brilliant
thing was, I think tickets were,
I don't know, £30 or £35,
far too much, I'm sure.
And there was a long delay
on opening night.
We were in Manchester and we're
all stood behind the curtains
and there were some
technical problems.
The audience were sat there
for quite a long time
and the lights would dim and then
they would come back up again.
Oh, no. Wow.
Cos there was a problem.
And the audience were
getting restless.
And just my abiding memory is,
finally, we got the go-ahead,
we get the thumbs-up from the
tour manager, "We're going, OK."
And the lights are starting to dim,
but still everybody's waiting
and I just hear some bloke
in a Cockney accent shout out,
"35 quid for this?!
You fucking cunts!"
..and then,
just at that split second,
"Da da da da da daa"...
and the whole auditorium...
Oh, God.
..heard this, the whole auditorium.
There was nobody that couldn't hear
it, it was beautifully projected.
Brilliant. In Manchester as well,
the only Cockney...
"35 quid for this,
you fucking cunts!"
And then the show started
and we all came out like,
wahey!
# Welcome to Shooting Stars
Welcome, whoever you are... #
Big shit-eating grins on our faces.
The whole stadium goes
absolutely mental and I went,
"Oh, my God, this is what it
feels like! This is like Elvis!"
I met you when you were quite young
and you were doing Bernard Chumley.
Sir Bernard, yeah, I was 18.
And you said to me...
And you were doing this course
and you were saying,
"I'm thinking about leaving
the college course and doing comedy."
And I said to you, "No, I think
you should stay at college for
"another three..." Thankfully, you
ignored me, didn't you? I did, yeah.
You never finished that course,
did you, in the end?
I didn't, no, I kept it open.
In my second year of university,
I did The Smell of
Reeves and Mortimer
and Shooting Stars.
Then David Walliams and I went
to the Edinburgh festival after
my second year at university and we
did our first show together and then
got offered a TV series on Paramount
which is now Comedy Central...
Yes, that's right.
..off the back of it. Yeah.
And so I expressed a desire to
my family that I was going to leave
university and my mother, who had...
You know, my parents had worked
so hard to send me to a good school
and, you know, my mother and my
grandmother, they were mortified,
because the deal was, "Yeah, all
right, you can go and be an actor
"but you kind of should
really get a degree..."
Finish your course. Finish your
course. That's what I said to you,
like a parent... Yes, yes.
..and I'm 25 myself.
I remember a conversation with you
in Watford in the Pump House.
That's right, yeah.
It was the end of 1992, we had
this conversation, you and me.
And, er...
And the deal was, I could go off
and be an actor or a comedian
or whatever, but I had to have
a degree first so that,
if I wasn't working, I could teach.
And it was actually my late father
who said to me...
Who supported me leaving and he
said, "The risk is in not leaving,
"because you don't know if these
opportunities are going to come..."
"You know, come and find you again."
So I left, but for ten years,
I held my university place open.
Did you really? Yeah.
I had another friend who's a comedian
and when she was at university,
one of the blokes on the course said,
"I'm thinking of leaving,
we've got a band together."
And they were like, "Don't be
an idiot, finish your degree!
"He's got a band together(!)
Everyone's got a band together!"
Anyway, he left...
and he was Simon Le Bon. Wow.
So, thank God he didn't stay
to finish the course.
My housemate at university,
his cousin was in a band.
And he said, "Oh, look,
my cousin's band are touring
"cos their album's coming out
and they're just playing in the pub
"just round the corner,
do you want to come?"
I was like, "What kind of music?"
"Rock and roll."
I was like, "Nah, don't
want to go." It was Oasis.
Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about closing Euro '96 -
what's that about?
I suppose I'll have to, won't I?
Yeah.
OK.
Comedy and music...
don't work together,
as a rule of thumb.
I'll give you an example.
Tommy Cooper supported the Police
at Finsbury Park many moons ago
and Sting was a huge Tommy fan,
as I am and a lot of comedians are,
as you know...
And Sting thought it was a good idea
to have Tommy Cooper
as the support act for The Police.
Anyway, no matter good
you think Tommy Cooper is,
he died on his arse
and they threw bottles at him
and it was really quite bad...
It appals me to hear this, you know,
and stuff was thrown at him and,
in the end, he cut his act short.
But, as he left, Sting was there
waiting with his bass,
and the rest of the band, and Tommy
Cooper took one look at Sting
and went, "Huh. Follow that."
So...
..then I got asked to do Euro '96,
with the knowledge of this,
and I had to host the show.
And at that time my character...
For those of who that don't know,
I do a politically correct version
of Bernard Manning.
So a PC Bernard Manning, er..
was kind of a...
Was the show you had to host,
was it a big...?
Massive, massive concert, yes.
With M People playing it.
That's right. I went to it.
You went to it, I...
Massive stadium music gig.
Yeah, massive.
So they thought it was a good idea,
so a local lad who does comedy,
who does a parody of Bernard Manning
to bring on the acts.
It was a massive rock concert,
really, 40,000 people, you know.
And I thought, "Yeah, all right..."
naively.
It was me and Frank Sidebottom,
Chris Sievey,
who's sadly no longer with us.
But Chris wears a papier-mache head
and can do anything and doesn't
have to speak, which he realised
was a good idea, really.
So he just put on a dust coat
like Arthur English used to wear
in Are You Being Served
and just sweep up a bit, you know,
in the background
and he didn't say much.
Anyway, I'm quite nervous because
I've never done a gig this big ever
and my job was to bring on
the first act, which was Madness.
So stage management were holding
Madness in the wings
and I went on and my opening....
In a cage.
..my opening gag
as Bernard Righton is,
"There's a black fellow,
a Pakistani and a Jew
"in a nightclub having a drink..."
Right? Pause...
"What a fine example
of an integrated community."
At this point, the whole stadium
goes absolutely mental
and I went, "Oh, my God,
this is what it feels like!
"This is like Elvis! This is..."
And I looked over my shoulder
and Madness had rushed the stage.
And it wasn't for me at all,
so I went...
"Oh, no, God, this is just hell."
So I went, "Give me an M,
give me an A."
And I think I spelt it wrong
in the end...
STU: "Give me an N... Oh, God."
Yeah, it was mandess...mandess.
So I thought, "I've got to try
and get this back,
"I've got to get one laugh
before I go,
"I've got to get a laugh, even
if I can just barely hear it..."
Do Victor Meldrew, do Victor Meldrew!
So I had to bring on M People...
Yeah. ..as you said. Yeah.
And I said, "OK, right,
I've got a gag here."
I went, "All right, people,
yeah, I got it,"
so I said, "it's not often
that two bands get together.
"Two separate bands form a new band
so they separate..."
What is it?
Hang on, let me think...
"It's not often that
two separate bands get together
"and form a new band entirely.
"So I am of course talking about
The Village People,
"right, and Boney M."
I just want to say,
"35 quid for this? You fucking..."
LAUGHTER
Oh...
So, The Village People and Boney M.
"So, ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome on the stage...
"Boney Village!"
And it got a laugh, and that was it.
But, I mean, that...
I mean, there's not many people say
they've died in front of 40,000.
Oh, my...
Oh, Ricky Gervais, when he had to
do it at G8, do you remember?
It was supposed to be Live Aid...
Live 8, wasn't it?
I did Live 8. Bloody terrifying.
Did you? Was it...?
We introduced Elton John, yeah,
absolutely terrifying.
In character?
As Lou and Andy,
but I did actually...
Weirdly, talking about the mid '90s,
I was a big Blur fan
and I went to see Blur at Mile End,
then about three weeks later I was
cast in the Country House video
and then...
And I kind of got on with them
and then a couple of months later
they were touring around the UK
and I went and...
I was their support act on tour
as Sir Bernard Chumley.
I did about eight or nine gigs
and it's the only time
in my entire career that I've ever
got down on my knees and prayed
before going on stage because
the audience was just baffled by me.
Oh. Baffled.
They don't want to know.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, no.
They don't want to know.
They don't want to see a little
fat man before the band.
Well, Bernard Chumley
was an old actor, wasn't he?
Yeah, so you do these anecdotes
and theatrical anecdotes and...
Nothing to do with Britpop at all.
Nothing to do with Britpop.
"Spotlight, come on, hurry up!
25 quid for this?"
Exactly, the comedy and music thing,
you're absolutely right.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work at all.
Did you have to do the whole tour?
Were you...?
They were doing
a huge national tour,
so they were doing
an eight-date mini tour
when they released The Great Escape,
which had Stereotypes
and Charmless Man
Country House and The Universal.
They were doing a miniature tour
of seaside resorts... Right.
..to kind of...
to get to know the material,
and, yeah, I was on the tour bus
with them for this week and a half
and two or three gigs
went really well
and the other five or six
were disasters.
And, erm, I got... I got...
Have you got any footage of it?
..bottled off.
I think there is footage exists but
it's never been released, thank God.
So that's the end of that anecdote,
but yeah.
Stu, tell me about your lucrative
sideline in men's toilets.
What can that possibly mean?
Well, you may ask...
Basically I do this podcast,
as you know -
you've been a guest on my podcast...
I have.
..in which I interview comedians
about their writing process
in depth.
On the podcast...
Podcasts are sort of exploding.
We're ten years behind the Americans
but they're sort of
becoming really successful
in the UK.
They're very difficult to make
money out of unless you've got
such a huge listenership that
you can sell advertising on them.
So what I do on my one is...
I used to be a street performer
so I busk on my podcast and say,
"Send me a donation online
"of however much money you want
or just come up to me in person
"at a gig and press a fiver into
my hand and say something cool."
It's kind of developed into
a bit of a gag
over the last couple of months.
People have started doing it,
people have come up to me,
getting ready to go on stage
or in the interval of
a stand-up gig I've just done,
they'll come up and they'll
just palm a tenner into my hand
and go, "Get yourself
something nice,"
do you know what I mean?
I had this lovely lady
come up to me,
like an older lady and go,
"Get yourself an ice cream, son,"
and walk off like that,
and I'm like, "Thanks very much."
And of course
you can never tell at the time...
I mean, this must be
because of the podcast.
This isn't from a street show I did
20 years ago, this is what it is.
So I was at a festival, a brilliant
comedy festival in Wales
last weekend and I was having
a wee in one of those...
You know,
like the Portakabin urinals
where they've got like a trough
down either side, so I'm...
At least you said urinal, thought you
were going to say someone's house.
It was a bit more public.
So I'm having a wee,
and I won't mime -
I was using my hand.
That's it,
I regret saying that at all.
I wasn't doing this, I was just
having a wee in the normal fashion
and there was a guy having a wee
behind me and it was very dark
because it was outside at night.
There were no lights in the...
So he was weeing on you? No.
This is why I mentioned
it's a Portakabin urinal.
There's a trough on either side.
I don't understand
what you're talking...
It's a boy thing.
I wee that way, he wees that way...
Like ABBA. He had his back to you?
Like the girls in ABBA,
back-to-back.
OK, that makes sense.
If you'd just said that
at the start...
I will think of them as ABBA wees.
Yes.
Yeah, but then one turns to
the side, the other one turns...
It could go horribly wrong.
# If you change your mind
I'm still free... #
Stop it!
This is not too far from the truth
because what happened was
I was weeing and I felt a hand
go into my back pocket... No!
..pushing a crumpled £20 note
into my back pocket.
And I laughed and I said,
"You have got to be kidding me!"
And the cool thing he chose to say,
in line with the running joke,
was, "Don't speak," so that's...
LAUGHTER
I later spoke to him.
His name's Darren
and he came up and said hello
and said, "That was me, by the way."
I was like, thank Christ
I don't have to wander round
for the next two days
at this festival going,
"He's out there somewhere."
He came up and said hello
and said what he'd wanted to do,
but hadn't put it together in time,
cos he knows how my mind works.
I like the idea of a bank heist
or something spy-ish,
something secret, you know.
Say a secret code word.
He said what he wanted to do
was get a £20 note,
put it inside a cheap briefcase,
like get a little black briefcase,
put a pair of handcuffs on it
and then walk past me in the street
and cuff it to my wrist
as he went past.
I was like, "Why have you spoilt
that?! Do that, please!"
If I can walk up the street
and come up with six briefcases...
Ah!
I want...just want to say,
I had a strange experience
not dissimilar, which is once
I was in the back of a taxi cab
and the driver was, you know,
monosyllabic,
completely straight deadpan
for about a 25-minute journey.
And then at the end he went,
you know, "£4.80, mate,"
and I went, "Oh, great."
I gave him the money and said,
"Can I have a receipt, please?"
and he went, "Sure,"
and he went to give me this receipt
and he just went...he ripped it up
and went, "Eh, eh, ehhh!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I was very impressed,
I was very impressed.
That was so great.
Yeah, yeah. Really good.
Wrote it out, ripped it up.
Very good.
It didn't so much burst as hatch.
Yes!
And they were prodding it
and it went blup!
Hey, spiders everywhere.
Oh, God, oh, God!
Cos I'd, you know, fly to Australia
quite frequently
and you know when
you're about to go on a flight
and then some mother with children
who are out of control
and they're going crazy,
the mother's crying...
I'm that mother.
I am the mother in that scenario,
and it's such a long flight
and, er...
Have you got two children?
I do, yeah, and my daughter...
Which one do you prefer?
It depends what day it is,
in my experience.
Yeah, they... Yeah, it changes.
Right.
But she's organised,
she's got the headphones on
and she's watching the movie.
And she loves popcorn,
so I bought her loads of popcorn
to, you know,
feed her during the flight.
And so she's eating all this popcorn
and she's watching the movie
and she's TALKING LIKE THAT
EVERY TIME SHE TALKS TO ME
BECAUSE SHE'S WEARING
THE HEADPHONES.
And I went up to go to the toilet
and as I got up, I was about
two seats away, she went,
"Mummy, I've run out of cockporn!"
LAUGHTER
But, you know, I'd never...
I'd never arranged the word like
that. I'm stunned that as a comic...
It never occurred to you.
..I'd never called popcorn cockporn.
I was angry at myself
that I hadn't seen that.
How did you deal with it
in the moment,
when she shouted in front of the...?
I didn't give a fuck.
I was so tired...
"It's all right, lovey,
"it's all right, lovey. Just press
the button for the attendant."
Yeah, she does say these things.
And just an hour out of Sydney
my son threw up all over me
so I was just... He just...
And I thought, "Oh, he's eating
a lot on the flight,"
just kept on eating.
"Mum, I feel terri... Woaugh!"
But he wasn't, he just went, "Ahhh!"
and I was like, "Oh, Jesus,
oh, God," and he, you know...
My daughter threw up in my face once.
We were lying in bed and she was
asleep on top of me... Yes.
She's about one at the time,
it's pitch dark and then she...
I could hear her making this noise
that I knew she only made
when she was about to vomit,
and I said to her,
"You're going to be sick.
"Come on, we're going to have to go,"
and she said "No, I'm not."
It's a big sign.
And then she went, "Bleugh,"
and then it went in my mouth.
It actually went in my mouth,
went into my mouth.
I think you just get used to it.
But, you know, I didn't think,
"Ugh, that's disgusting."
No, you just go for it.
All I thought was, "Oh, God,
now we've got to get out of bed,
"change the pillow cases..."
Has anyone here been
having sex with someone
and they've been sick?
We haven't, Matt, no. No. No.
Just asking out of curiosity. No.
Tell me a lovely place to stay
in Denmark, on a cheerier note.
Oh, this is a peculiar story.
Oh, you're engaging me already!
Gather round.
Oh, Matt!
This is how it went.
I used to do these adverts for...
on Danish television
and so every three or four months
for a couple of years I would go
to Copenhagen and do these adverts
and, erm, they used to put me up
in a very nice hotel.
I really liked it
and they used to...
They were very proud
when you arrived at this hotel.
They'd say, "This is where Michael
Jackson stays when he comes here."
Know him well.
Knew him well, sorry.
Knew him well. And, erm...
I'm not going to say anything!
OK.
And it was a lovely hotel
and I used to enjoy staying there.
And one time I went there
and I didn't stay in that hotel.
I stayed in another hotel, which was
fine, but when they booked me
to go back there I said,
"Oh, the other hotel's lovely
"but if it's possible,
can I stay at that nice hotel?"
And I sort of... And the name was
something like Skejborg or something
like this. I'm sorry that I don't
remember the exact name.
You know what they're like, Danes.
I don't know,
they've invented, like, this...
They've got this other language
and I can't really speak it, so...
So, erm, and I said, "Can I stay?
I think... I can't remember,
"is it called Skejborg
or something like that?"
and they said,
"Really, you want to stay there?"
and I went, "Yeah, it's a lovely...
it's a nice hotel.
"I would like to stay there
if possible," and they said,
"Er...OK."
Anyway, I got off the plane.
The hotel's about 20 minutes away...
Is this the original hotel?
Yeah, so, the hotel's
about 20 minutes away
from the airport, and I was...
I think I was up six hours later,
so I was quite keen to just
get to the hotel and go to bed.
And there's a drive
to take me to the hotel
and this drive does not last
20 minutes.
It's becoming 30 minutes,
40 minutes, an hour,
an hour and a half...
We're driving through
the Danish countryside... Oh, no.
..right to the coast, right?
And they drop me off at this place.
It's an hour and three quarters
I've been in the car
and I'm absolutely baffled. And
I've spent the night in this place
and it was very odd. I arrived
and there was a very large lift
and there was a gurney in the lift,
and I walked past that, but the lift
wasn't very auspicious.
Anyway, I go into my room and it's
a really grubby little room.
It's a...it's a very, very,
very small room with a rickety old
single bed, one beaten old pillow
and a kind of flickering television.
Anyway, I don't really understand
what's going on.
But I spent the night
in this hotel...
and got picked up the next morning
very early,
at sort of quarter to five
or something,
to get me back for filming.
Yes, because it's 200 miles
from Copenhagen. Exactly.
The whole thing has baffled me
somewhat and, er,
when I arrived for filming
they said, "How was the hotel?"
and I said, "Well..."
Cos I wasn't going to mention it,
but I said, "Well, it was..."
He wasn't going to mention it.
Love him!
"It was a bit..."
I didn't know what to say
because I asked for it
but I don't...
I'm pretty sure that's not the place
I stayed at last time.
I said, "It was a bit unusual,"
and they said, "Well, we thought it
odd that you wanted to stay there,"
and I said, "Well, that was...
I always stay there
"but I think maybe I stayed
at a different branch of the hotel."
It turned out there I...
The name I'd quoted
was something like Skejborg.
I'd stayed at somewhere
like Skejhella - I'd stayed at
a hospital for infectious diseases.
LAUGHTER
I spent the night in a hospital,
stayed in a hospital.
What was the room service like?
Well, they didn't even...
There was no...
I don't think there was that option
available.
The large lift and the empty gurney,
it sounds like Saw!
Anyway, if you ever get infected
with anything, I do recommend it.
By the coast, lovely. Yeah, yeah.
I had to stay at an infectious
diseases unit in Tooting Bec,
er, when I...
What? Yeah.
When you say you had to...?
I had to, yeah,
a couple of years ago.
Did you have an infectious disease?
I did, it was suspected....
Now it's falling into place!
Yeah. Yeah.
I was doing a Danish commercial...
No, I came back from visiting
my brother
who was working in South Africa and
I had all the symptoms of malaria.
It wasn't malaria,
it was just, er...
Did you die? I did.
My fiancee's brother came back
from the Ivory Coast
with a weird little lump on his
that he thought was a bite...
Spider nest! It was a spider nest!
Argh!
Took him to...
For real? A real one?
For real. Bang! But it just popped.
He was having it examined
and it kind of... It kind of
didn't so much burst as hatch. Yes!
They were prodding it and blup!
Hey, spiders everywhere.
Oh, God, oh, God.
Did you ever see
the burrowing worm in the skull?
There was a worm in the skull
in a guy and the only way....
Oh...
It had burrowed its way in
or maybe gone through the ear
or something. What they did, they
drilled... They drilled a hole,
but to coax it out
they got a bit of bacon...
Yep. Have you seen it?
Standard practice - you tape
a bit of bacon to the thing
and the creatures come out
looking for the bacon.
And you go like this with the bacon
and it comes out like this.
Yeah. Well, I hope...
And then you keep pulling
the bacon out so it leaps for it.
And eventually you can train it.
I hope this never happens to me -
I'm Jewish!
LAUGHTER
That's me dead, then.
"Sorry, sir, the worm
will have to stay in." "Fair dos."
"Make your peace with the world."
Yeah.
What if the worm's
burrowed into a pig?
Oh, God, yeah. Having the time of
his life. Didn't know what to do!
Look, we need to think of a title
for the show based on something
that you've heard this evening.
Surely the title of this show is
35 Quid For This? You Fucking Cunts.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I don't know if we can have that
on your planner, on your TV guide.
It wouldn't fit, it wouldn't fit.
35 Quid For This? You Fucking Cunts.
Just 35 Quid For This? You F...
And then leave it there. Perfect.
Yeah, no, say "fucking"
but leave the C and "..."
so you get the sense of it.
Bringing up swearing,
my daughter did a brilliant thing.
We know a family whose son is very,
very badly behaved and we hadn't
seen them for a while and my
daughter went to play with them.
And she's really good friends
with the sister
and she came home and I went,
"Did you have a nice time with Mia?"
She went, "Max has got
really naughty, you know,"
and we went,
"Really? What happened?"
She went, "Well, you'll never guess
what he called Mia."
I went, "Well, what did...
what did he call her?"
and she went,
"a F-U-C-K-I-N-G cunt."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Please will you thank
all my guests -
Sarah Kendall,
John Thompson,
Matt Lucas
and Stuart Goldsmith.
APPLAUSE
I'm Alan Davies
and you have been watching
35 Quid For This?
..You Fucking Cunts.
Timing, brilliant.
Subtitles by Ericsson
This is cash up front, right?
It's arguably too hot for
this coat but it's my best one
so I really had to wear it.
You might notice a certain swagger
about me today.
That's because I've flown here from
Manchester and I got an upgrade
from cargo to economy, so...
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Hello and welcome to
As Yet Untitled.
I'm Alan Davis, this is the show
where I get to talk to
four very funny people
about whatever we like.
We don't have any agenda
and they don't have anything to flog
particularly, we're just here really
to try and come up with
a title for the show.
And to do that, I need my guests,
so, please, will you welcome them?
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.
Welcome to you all.
Now, who do we have here?
We have Sarah Kendall.
Sarah Kendall has upset rock royalty,
Sarah Kendall is here.
John Thomson is here.
John Thomson closed Euro '96 and
once had socks with Victor Meldrew.
Fantastic to have Matt Lucas with us.
Matt Lucas knows a lovely place
to stay in Denmark.
So that's good.
A very nice place to stay
in Denmark, yep.
Very good. And Stu Goldsmith.
Stu has a lucrative sideline
in men's toilets.
It's true.
It's slightly...
Are you at the right temperature?
Because this is the moment
where we can adjust it.
I think I'm going to get hot.
You think you're hot?
I think the air con is on now.
OK, I can't take this jacket off,
though.
Why, what happens?
The T-shirt smells a bit.
I don't care, do you care, John?
You don't mind? Do you mind?
No, I like that...
You know, like the song,
Feel Like A Natural Woman? Yes.
You probably smell like one.
I definitely smell like
a natural woman. OK.
But it's... Sounds like we're
all for it. Really? Yes? Absolutely.
I'm, I'm not for it.
You're not for it? No.
I think you're at a safe distance.
Yeah, well, OK, we'll see.
That's ominous.
Performance shirts
get a funny smell about them.
That's your gig shirt at the moment,
is it? Yeah, yeah.
What's on it? Who is it?
It's just Fleetwood Mac.
Oh, just Fleetwood Mac? It's just
Fleetwood Mac. But I don't know,
I think performance sweat
is a bit smellier.
It's a different smell,
you think it's a different scent?
Yeah, it is, I think
it smells a bit like cat piss.
It's got a scent of panic
or something in it.
Well, that's totally different.
The natural woman, I'm all right
with... The scent of panic.
..but if you're going to take that
off and smell like a litter tray...
Yes, you make me feel...
..I'm against it.
Tell me about when you've upset
rock royalty, what happened there?
Well, I was in the Hare and Tortoise
one day, just having...
in a restaurant with my kids
and Brian May came in... Right.
..and there was like this palpable
excitement, everyone's like,
"Right, Brian May!" and he's got
this iconic mane of hair
and people were trying to be cool
but everyone had sort of clocked him
and he was sitting
at the next table.
My daughter was just staring at him,
she's just five and she just
couldn't take her eyes off him.
Massive Brian May fan? Yeah.
And then she just said
really loudly,
"Mummy, why's that old lady
wearing a wig?"
Amazing!
That's so great.
I said, "Shut your face!"
But I think, I don't know, but I
think he might have heard her,
I don't think he gave a shit,
to be honest, he's Brian May.
Who gives a shit? Oh, it would've
been good if he'd just taken it off.
And it had turned out to be
an old lady in a wig,
it would have been great.
It's always fascinated me as a
style, cos it's only him who has it,
I don't know if anyone else
kind of wants to emulate it.
I can appreciate the length here,
but it does beg the question,
is it a piece? I don't think so.
I think it's real.
It looks very real to me.
I really don't think it's a piece.
I've really always thought
he looks like a Vic Reeves drawing
of Brian May, do you know
what I mean?
He looks like a kind of a character,
it's all sort of elongated, isn't
it? It is extraordinary, though,
when you're sitting across from
someone and you just think...
I can hum, like, guitar solos
that are such a part of our culture
and they're so famous and there's
just this person sitting there.
You can hum guitar solos?
I can hum...
I wish I hadn't said it like that
now, but I'm familiar...
I'm pleased you did,
because now you can.
Yeah. No, I can't actually. What...
Go on. OK...
What about "Hello", Lionel Ritchie?
The acoustic one.
Oh...
SHE HUMS
No, that's the song.
Can you sing it?
HE HUMS
HE HUMS MORE ENTHUSIASTICALLY
Sort of like that.
The good thing is, you only
have to pay permission
if it genuinely sounds like
the tune, so... We're all right.
For copyright, so you're fine.
We're fine. Oh, sorry.
No, it was good.
I'm a drummer, really, so...
You are a great drummer, actually.
That's not my... Are you? Really?
I'm a proper drummer, yeah, yeah.
Do you still drum regularly?
No, not as much as I should.
Have you got the kits at home?
I've got two, I've got an acoustic,
which is a Gretsch,
and then I've got a digital TD-20,
it's a rolling...
I've been wondering about
whether to get one, a digital one.
Are you detached or are you semi?
Right, OK, well...
STU: You're making this up!
This is not real!
No, this is serious!
Neighbours are an issue.
He's talking about neighbours.
He actually means houses.
Not detached kits. Oh, OK.
You can't have a semidetached
drum kit. Well... Well, you could.
That was my point.
I have this really childish thing,
when everybody says semi,
I think of a hard-on. Do you?
If someone does...
A detached one? Jesus.
If they go, "It's a semi," I...
SHE SNORTS WITH LAUGHTER
JOHN: It's like semi-professional.
SHE SNORTS AGAIN
I think of professional with a semi.
Someone who really just
enjoys his work too much.
Just a little bit too much,
a little bit too much. Yeah, yeah.
Have you ever been aroused on stage?
I mean, talking about
semi-professional...
Has it ever happened to you during
a gig or something like that?
It's happened to me filming, yeah.
Really? Really? Yeah.
What happened? Oh, it's a
long story. Go on, we've got time.
It's an hour long, this show.
Don't tell him.
No, it's a long show,
it's a long show.
Well, it feels long.
Go on. Joke, joke, joke.
OK.
What have I...?
Why, I oughta!
OK, I was filming Cold Feet
and there was an episode
that was kind of very sexual
and I had a fantasy girlfriend
who worked behind the bar
and I had my wife as well
and what we had to do
was film two scenes.
One was like, you know,
I was making love to my wife,
but I was seeing the girl
that was my fantasy,
but a really hard job,
I had to do it to both...
Yeah.
So anyway, so they got Fay in
and she had to straddle me
and she kind of like simulated
quite a way away from the old chap
so there was nothing...
There wasn't really any contact.
Very considerate. When they brought
in the other, my fantasy girl, who
I was subsequently told...
I think she was a Dolly Dealer
on Play Your Cards Right...
And I think these weren't real,
the way they moved...
Anyway...
..she did the polar opposite...
Right. ..and got right on it...
Right. ..and ground me. Right.
And then you became... Alert!
Yeah, well, then she got off me
and then there was a kind of...
A make-up artist went...
MOUTHS SILENTLY
And I went...
So, yeah, it was a semi, though.
It was a semi.
It wasn't a full salute,
it wasn't the...
I wonder if there's...
Is there a job on TV sets...
Like, you know on porn sets, you get
a "fluffer", is there a "de-fluffer"?
A de-fluffer? For sex scenes,
that runs on and distracts you
with some facts about
the Battle of Britain.
Yeah. I used to do it and I would
always carry a picture
of Ann Widdecombe
and I would just...
"Here. Yeah, good? OK?"
And then you run off.
But could you joke... I mean,
did you joke about it with, er...
Fay was furious,
and she tells the story that I...
Oh, because she didn't arouse you?
No, I didn't get it up for Fay.
but if Fay had just moved
that few inches further,
I would gladly have done it.
She was nowhere near it. Of course.
It's only right to do it.
Well, I do have another one.
Another actor did...
A similar thing happened, he was...
He went in a pair of pants
and the wardrobe gave him another.
They double up your pants, usually,
to protect your modesty.
And my mate, he had... Steel pants!
My mate told me about,
he had to do a scene
where the same thing happened,
and she got off and then they had to
re-jig the cameras
and he looked down and he...
You know those stickers
that say "quality control"?
"Checked by number two."
It was stuck round the end
and he went...
He had a look and he went...
"Bloody hell."
Anyway, he turned to the actress
who'd he'd just done the scene with
and said,
"Here, have a look at this,
"you're not going to believe it."
She went, "What? Go on."
And he went...
And it had gone!
STU: Oh, my God.
The sticker had come off
and she went "You dirty bastard!
"How dare you!"
And he was frantically
looking for...
So there you go.
LOUD APPLAUSE
They loved that story.
Thank you. Thank you!
Do it, I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to do it,
I'm not going to do it.
Still do it.
I'm not going to do it.
There is a game that I played
at Glastonbury Festival
with some friends of mine last year.
Right.
And the name of the game is
Get Down, Mr President.
And the way you start... Do you know
one of those drinking games where
everyone has to, like, touch the
table and when you see people doing
it, you've all got to do it and the
last person to do it has to drink,
are you familiar with that?
You're all looking at me blankly.
There's some people in
the audience... Three people
in the audience going
"Yes, I know the game."
So this game, how you play it
is you start a round by...
You're always playing it forever
from now on.
And you start a round
by going like that,
as if you're part of
the presidential security detail.
And then everyone else has to do
that... Just play along, guys.
OK, so because you're last to do it,
you didn't... Take your hand down,
say you didn't get there in time,
we are all now the security guards
and we all look at him
who hasn't noticed and we all shout
"Get down, Mr President!"
And bundle him, right? Ah.
So it provides a narrative sort of
theatrical context for the game.
Can I just interject briefly?
Sometimes, does someone put
their hand there and it's quite
a long time before everyone else
starts going, "Oh, hello, we're on"?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. A bit like
Wink Murder? A little bit, yeah.
Yeah. And that adds to kind of the
tension, you can be there for ages,
going, "Any minute now." I mean,
a lot of the time, you then remember
you didn't explain the rules
to anyone and you're just...
But what can also happen, as I found
out to someone else's cost...
The festival last year was...
We'd mentioned the game but people
really hadn't gone with it,
but I was like,
"I'm sure it's a great game."
And they definitely all knew
the rules, so we were chatting
with my fiancee's friend, Rick,
who is a lovely, slight man,
he's a really lovely guy and I went
like this and he went like that
as well, although, on reflection,
he may have been on his phone and...
..as a result, his friend went like
that and so then I just saw that,
saw red, I shouted at Rick,
I went, "Get down, Mr President!"
No-one else joined in
and I basically jumped on this guy
and clobbered him onto the floor and
his foot hit the metal tent post.
Oh, no! And he seemed to be OK
but he was a bit drunk
so maybe he wasn't. And then the
next morning, we woke up in our tent
and we got a text and he'd been
taken to the medical tent
and he had to leave Glastonbury.
And he missed Dolly Parton.
JOHN AND SARAH: Nooooo!
And I'm a total beast, I'm
a complete bastard. Oh, I'm moving.
Cos, from everyone else's
point of view...
Playing a childish game, Stu.
It just look like
I shouted for no reason.
You did! You did.
I'm not that kind of... You are.
I'm not one of those horseplay sort
of people. You are. You're horrible.
You can tell by the way I go
"horseplay", it's not really me.
So I just landed on...
I felt so bad.
If this had happened in California,
you would have been sued,
and quite rightly.
Horrible man, what a horrible man.
Thanks to my brief.
Why did you introduce me
to this horrible man?
Where there's blame, there's a claim.
"Thanks to my brief,"
I just got that...
Tell me about having socks
with Victor Meldrew.
What does that even mean?
OK, sounds like
a right name-drop story, so...
Well, he's not a real person,
so don't worry too much about it.
I remember working
with an actor and he...
This aside, cos there is a bit of
name-dropping coming into this.
We were doing a film and we're all
sat round in someone's hotel room
like you do, all drinking
and everything and he decided to do
a character assassination of
everybody in the room.
And he was like, "You, you talk
too much. You, you're angry
"and I don't know why."
And he went to me, "You, John,
you name-drop all the time."
And I went...
HE GASPS
"Wait till I tell Roger Moore."
Ha-ha! So I was doing a film
and Richard Wilson was in it
and Bill Murray was in it as well...
Clang. Pick that one up.
It was really exciting cos it was
one of the first feature films
I'd ever done
and I was really excited.
And, er...
The wardrobe, er, bus was...
They're few and far between, these
particular modes of transport.
It's a wardrobe bus where it's like
there are changing cubicles
all the way along.
So you go on and when you're
on location, sometimes you change
in whatever you're in, a Winnebago
or a three-way, they call it,
so it's like your own little area,
your own little space,
but this, it had kind of like
cubicles all the way along.
And I seemed to remember
at that time in the film,
it was split shifts,
so, as I was leaving...
I was playing Russian KGB
at the time.
As I was leaving... Of course.
Vic...
Richard Wilson was just arriving
and so I heard him come in
and they went, "Oh, hello, Richard."
He went, "Hello."
And they went, "Are you OK?"
He went, "Yeah, I've just
got to get myself a cup of tea."
So he went off.
Anyway, then I was there...
and I thought, "Hang on,
I can have some fun here."
So I'm behind this curtain,
changing out of my clothes,
my costume into my thing,
and the woman,
the wardrobe woman, went,
"Is everything all right, Richard?"
And I went...
HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
AS RICHARD: "No!
"As a matter of fact, no,
one of these socks is brown
"and the other one is blue."
"Show some bloody professionalism,
woman!"
And she went, "I'm so sorry!"
I went, "Well, sort it out!"
"Good God, woman."
And I just got ready and went, but
to this day I'd have loved to be
a fly on the wall when he comes in
and goes, "Hello," and they've gone,
"I'm so sorry about the socks,
Richard!" And he went,
"What are you talking about?!"
Do you know what I mean?
But you never told him or them?
You just walked away and left it?
I just walked away and left it. They
hate him on the costume circuit now.
I left it!
But you've pretended to be people
before, haven't you?
I've done it, yeah. I've done it...
The thing is about being
an impressionist, it's kind of...
It's hard because it's a bit naff,
really, and ended up here
and kind of, I feel ashamed...
Can I just say... No, it's amazing!
..you have done it, but it's been
tremendously entertaining.
Yeah. Yeah... So you've enriched.
But I'm really suffering
at the hands of Yewtree now.
There's so many people I can't do.
Oh, I can't do... I'm the same.
I do a great...
I do a great Jimmy Savile.
Oh, Jimmy. I used to do Jimmy Savile
in my first ever stand-up act.
Rolf Harris, it's a great Rolf. Do
it, do it. I'm not going to do it.
I do still do it.
I used to do this bit in my first...
Do Vicky Pollard instead.
I love Vicky Pollard.
Tell me, cos it is just for me...
Yeah.
..where Vicky Pollard came from.
Cos didn't you meet somebody
or something
who was the inspiration for it?
Yeah, I was at Bristol University
and actually, so was David Walliams
before me, cos he's considerably
older than I am and...
LAUGHTER
..and I was on this Theatre,
Film and Television course,
which wasn't really an acting
course, it was more like
you would make films
and you would write about theatre.
And we were set the task of doing
a little six-minute documentary.
We were in groups of four
and I had the idea for our group,
which was to go up to people
and go, "How are you?"
And just see how they responded,
because my theory was that people
would not answer honestly.
And we went up to...
It was actually a little boy
and I went, "How are you?"
And he went...
BRISTOL ACCENT: "Sort of like,
do you know, but, like, I dunno?"
And I went... So I'd do
a follow-up question,
"How do you feel about me
asking you that question?"
BRISTOL ACCENT: "Sort of like,
I dunno, but, like, sort of, like,
"I dunno, I feel like, I dunno,
like, you asked me a question,
"but, like, I dunno, like,
"the question or something
or nothing, I dunno."
So I showed this film to David
and we just laughed cos I said,
"Look, this is the least
articulate person on the planet."
And so we were creating
these characters and I said,
"Wouldn't it be great to have
a really inarticulate character?"
And then we started to think,
why is the character inarticulate?
Because they've done something wrong
and they're buying time
and defending themselves.
Then it just kind of morphed into
a teenage girl, which felt fun and
it was just a very happy accident
because I think we just caught
something in the public mood that
it just felt like there was a Vicky
Pollard on every street corner.
And also, if I may say, obviously
a massive influence on us
and something I was a huge fan of
was The Fast Show, obviously.
We're all a little bit jealous
of you because... Why?
..when we kind of folded,
we were still on VHS... Ah.
Yeah, and we did miss out on
a few DVD sales that you...got.
But your stage show...
But that's just voluntary.
Your stage show, loved your TV show
but your stage show...
We did a double bill with
The Fast Show, which actually,
you were off for a week
and I played a lot of your roles
in the Fast Show Stage Show
when you were away.
That was the tour, was it? No, it
was at Hammersmith Apollo, but we
did the Shooting Stars Stage Tour
at the end of 1996 and it was...
We were so popular at the time, but
Vic and Bob didn't really know...
We didn't really know
how to put that TV show on stage.
But we did know that there were
millions of people that wanted
to come and see it. Exactly, yeah.
So it happened and Vic and Bob
and Marc Lamarr and Ulrika Jonsson
and myself went on tour
and the opening act was three people
from Stars In Their Eyes.
A Rod Stewart, a Neil Diamond
and an Elton John. And I thought,
"Oh, this is something brilliantly
ironic from Reeves and Mortimer."
Oh, my God. No, they genuinely
thought people wanted to see this,
which they didn't. But...
Presumably, you were sat there
waiting for the joke to happen.
Yeah, yeah.
Or some kind of twist on it.
No joke, no joke. The brilliant
thing was, I think tickets were,
I don't know, £30 or £35,
far too much, I'm sure.
And there was a long delay
on opening night.
We were in Manchester and we're
all stood behind the curtains
and there were some
technical problems.
The audience were sat there
for quite a long time
and the lights would dim and then
they would come back up again.
Oh, no. Wow.
Cos there was a problem.
And the audience were
getting restless.
And just my abiding memory is,
finally, we got the go-ahead,
we get the thumbs-up from the
tour manager, "We're going, OK."
And the lights are starting to dim,
but still everybody's waiting
and I just hear some bloke
in a Cockney accent shout out,
"35 quid for this?!
You fucking cunts!"
..and then,
just at that split second,
"Da da da da da daa"...
and the whole auditorium...
Oh, God.
..heard this, the whole auditorium.
There was nobody that couldn't hear
it, it was beautifully projected.
Brilliant. In Manchester as well,
the only Cockney...
"35 quid for this,
you fucking cunts!"
And then the show started
and we all came out like,
wahey!
# Welcome to Shooting Stars
Welcome, whoever you are... #
Big shit-eating grins on our faces.
The whole stadium goes
absolutely mental and I went,
"Oh, my God, this is what it
feels like! This is like Elvis!"
I met you when you were quite young
and you were doing Bernard Chumley.
Sir Bernard, yeah, I was 18.
And you said to me...
And you were doing this course
and you were saying,
"I'm thinking about leaving
the college course and doing comedy."
And I said to you, "No, I think
you should stay at college for
"another three..." Thankfully, you
ignored me, didn't you? I did, yeah.
You never finished that course,
did you, in the end?
I didn't, no, I kept it open.
In my second year of university,
I did The Smell of
Reeves and Mortimer
and Shooting Stars.
Then David Walliams and I went
to the Edinburgh festival after
my second year at university and we
did our first show together and then
got offered a TV series on Paramount
which is now Comedy Central...
Yes, that's right.
..off the back of it. Yeah.
And so I expressed a desire to
my family that I was going to leave
university and my mother, who had...
You know, my parents had worked
so hard to send me to a good school
and, you know, my mother and my
grandmother, they were mortified,
because the deal was, "Yeah, all
right, you can go and be an actor
"but you kind of should
really get a degree..."
Finish your course. Finish your
course. That's what I said to you,
like a parent... Yes, yes.
..and I'm 25 myself.
I remember a conversation with you
in Watford in the Pump House.
That's right, yeah.
It was the end of 1992, we had
this conversation, you and me.
And, er...
And the deal was, I could go off
and be an actor or a comedian
or whatever, but I had to have
a degree first so that,
if I wasn't working, I could teach.
And it was actually my late father
who said to me...
Who supported me leaving and he
said, "The risk is in not leaving,
"because you don't know if these
opportunities are going to come..."
"You know, come and find you again."
So I left, but for ten years,
I held my university place open.
Did you really? Yeah.
I had another friend who's a comedian
and when she was at university,
one of the blokes on the course said,
"I'm thinking of leaving,
we've got a band together."
And they were like, "Don't be
an idiot, finish your degree!
"He's got a band together(!)
Everyone's got a band together!"
Anyway, he left...
and he was Simon Le Bon. Wow.
So, thank God he didn't stay
to finish the course.
My housemate at university,
his cousin was in a band.
And he said, "Oh, look,
my cousin's band are touring
"cos their album's coming out
and they're just playing in the pub
"just round the corner,
do you want to come?"
I was like, "What kind of music?"
"Rock and roll."
I was like, "Nah, don't
want to go." It was Oasis.
Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about closing Euro '96 -
what's that about?
I suppose I'll have to, won't I?
Yeah.
OK.
Comedy and music...
don't work together,
as a rule of thumb.
I'll give you an example.
Tommy Cooper supported the Police
at Finsbury Park many moons ago
and Sting was a huge Tommy fan,
as I am and a lot of comedians are,
as you know...
And Sting thought it was a good idea
to have Tommy Cooper
as the support act for The Police.
Anyway, no matter good
you think Tommy Cooper is,
he died on his arse
and they threw bottles at him
and it was really quite bad...
It appals me to hear this, you know,
and stuff was thrown at him and,
in the end, he cut his act short.
But, as he left, Sting was there
waiting with his bass,
and the rest of the band, and Tommy
Cooper took one look at Sting
and went, "Huh. Follow that."
So...
..then I got asked to do Euro '96,
with the knowledge of this,
and I had to host the show.
And at that time my character...
For those of who that don't know,
I do a politically correct version
of Bernard Manning.
So a PC Bernard Manning, er..
was kind of a...
Was the show you had to host,
was it a big...?
Massive, massive concert, yes.
With M People playing it.
That's right. I went to it.
You went to it, I...
Massive stadium music gig.
Yeah, massive.
So they thought it was a good idea,
so a local lad who does comedy,
who does a parody of Bernard Manning
to bring on the acts.
It was a massive rock concert,
really, 40,000 people, you know.
And I thought, "Yeah, all right..."
naively.
It was me and Frank Sidebottom,
Chris Sievey,
who's sadly no longer with us.
But Chris wears a papier-mache head
and can do anything and doesn't
have to speak, which he realised
was a good idea, really.
So he just put on a dust coat
like Arthur English used to wear
in Are You Being Served
and just sweep up a bit, you know,
in the background
and he didn't say much.
Anyway, I'm quite nervous because
I've never done a gig this big ever
and my job was to bring on
the first act, which was Madness.
So stage management were holding
Madness in the wings
and I went on and my opening....
In a cage.
..my opening gag
as Bernard Righton is,
"There's a black fellow,
a Pakistani and a Jew
"in a nightclub having a drink..."
Right? Pause...
"What a fine example
of an integrated community."
At this point, the whole stadium
goes absolutely mental
and I went, "Oh, my God,
this is what it feels like!
"This is like Elvis! This is..."
And I looked over my shoulder
and Madness had rushed the stage.
And it wasn't for me at all,
so I went...
"Oh, no, God, this is just hell."
So I went, "Give me an M,
give me an A."
And I think I spelt it wrong
in the end...
STU: "Give me an N... Oh, God."
Yeah, it was mandess...mandess.
So I thought, "I've got to try
and get this back,
"I've got to get one laugh
before I go,
"I've got to get a laugh, even
if I can just barely hear it..."
Do Victor Meldrew, do Victor Meldrew!
So I had to bring on M People...
Yeah. ..as you said. Yeah.
And I said, "OK, right,
I've got a gag here."
I went, "All right, people,
yeah, I got it,"
so I said, "it's not often
that two bands get together.
"Two separate bands form a new band
so they separate..."
What is it?
Hang on, let me think...
"It's not often that
two separate bands get together
"and form a new band entirely.
"So I am of course talking about
The Village People,
"right, and Boney M."
I just want to say,
"35 quid for this? You fucking..."
LAUGHTER
Oh...
So, The Village People and Boney M.
"So, ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome on the stage...
"Boney Village!"
And it got a laugh, and that was it.
But, I mean, that...
I mean, there's not many people say
they've died in front of 40,000.
Oh, my...
Oh, Ricky Gervais, when he had to
do it at G8, do you remember?
It was supposed to be Live Aid...
Live 8, wasn't it?
I did Live 8. Bloody terrifying.
Did you? Was it...?
We introduced Elton John, yeah,
absolutely terrifying.
In character?
As Lou and Andy,
but I did actually...
Weirdly, talking about the mid '90s,
I was a big Blur fan
and I went to see Blur at Mile End,
then about three weeks later I was
cast in the Country House video
and then...
And I kind of got on with them
and then a couple of months later
they were touring around the UK
and I went and...
I was their support act on tour
as Sir Bernard Chumley.
I did about eight or nine gigs
and it's the only time
in my entire career that I've ever
got down on my knees and prayed
before going on stage because
the audience was just baffled by me.
Oh. Baffled.
They don't want to know.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, no.
They don't want to know.
They don't want to see a little
fat man before the band.
Well, Bernard Chumley
was an old actor, wasn't he?
Yeah, so you do these anecdotes
and theatrical anecdotes and...
Nothing to do with Britpop at all.
Nothing to do with Britpop.
"Spotlight, come on, hurry up!
25 quid for this?"
Exactly, the comedy and music thing,
you're absolutely right.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work at all.
Did you have to do the whole tour?
Were you...?
They were doing
a huge national tour,
so they were doing
an eight-date mini tour
when they released The Great Escape,
which had Stereotypes
and Charmless Man
Country House and The Universal.
They were doing a miniature tour
of seaside resorts... Right.
..to kind of...
to get to know the material,
and, yeah, I was on the tour bus
with them for this week and a half
and two or three gigs
went really well
and the other five or six
were disasters.
And, erm, I got... I got...
Have you got any footage of it?
..bottled off.
I think there is footage exists but
it's never been released, thank God.
So that's the end of that anecdote,
but yeah.
Stu, tell me about your lucrative
sideline in men's toilets.
What can that possibly mean?
Well, you may ask...
Basically I do this podcast,
as you know -
you've been a guest on my podcast...
I have.
..in which I interview comedians
about their writing process
in depth.
On the podcast...
Podcasts are sort of exploding.
We're ten years behind the Americans
but they're sort of
becoming really successful
in the UK.
They're very difficult to make
money out of unless you've got
such a huge listenership that
you can sell advertising on them.
So what I do on my one is...
I used to be a street performer
so I busk on my podcast and say,
"Send me a donation online
"of however much money you want
or just come up to me in person
"at a gig and press a fiver into
my hand and say something cool."
It's kind of developed into
a bit of a gag
over the last couple of months.
People have started doing it,
people have come up to me,
getting ready to go on stage
or in the interval of
a stand-up gig I've just done,
they'll come up and they'll
just palm a tenner into my hand
and go, "Get yourself
something nice,"
do you know what I mean?
I had this lovely lady
come up to me,
like an older lady and go,
"Get yourself an ice cream, son,"
and walk off like that,
and I'm like, "Thanks very much."
And of course
you can never tell at the time...
I mean, this must be
because of the podcast.
This isn't from a street show I did
20 years ago, this is what it is.
So I was at a festival, a brilliant
comedy festival in Wales
last weekend and I was having
a wee in one of those...
You know,
like the Portakabin urinals
where they've got like a trough
down either side, so I'm...
At least you said urinal, thought you
were going to say someone's house.
It was a bit more public.
So I'm having a wee,
and I won't mime -
I was using my hand.
That's it,
I regret saying that at all.
I wasn't doing this, I was just
having a wee in the normal fashion
and there was a guy having a wee
behind me and it was very dark
because it was outside at night.
There were no lights in the...
So he was weeing on you? No.
This is why I mentioned
it's a Portakabin urinal.
There's a trough on either side.
I don't understand
what you're talking...
It's a boy thing.
I wee that way, he wees that way...
Like ABBA. He had his back to you?
Like the girls in ABBA,
back-to-back.
OK, that makes sense.
If you'd just said that
at the start...
I will think of them as ABBA wees.
Yes.
Yeah, but then one turns to
the side, the other one turns...
It could go horribly wrong.
# If you change your mind
I'm still free... #
Stop it!
This is not too far from the truth
because what happened was
I was weeing and I felt a hand
go into my back pocket... No!
..pushing a crumpled £20 note
into my back pocket.
And I laughed and I said,
"You have got to be kidding me!"
And the cool thing he chose to say,
in line with the running joke,
was, "Don't speak," so that's...
LAUGHTER
I later spoke to him.
His name's Darren
and he came up and said hello
and said, "That was me, by the way."
I was like, thank Christ
I don't have to wander round
for the next two days
at this festival going,
"He's out there somewhere."
He came up and said hello
and said what he'd wanted to do,
but hadn't put it together in time,
cos he knows how my mind works.
I like the idea of a bank heist
or something spy-ish,
something secret, you know.
Say a secret code word.
He said what he wanted to do
was get a £20 note,
put it inside a cheap briefcase,
like get a little black briefcase,
put a pair of handcuffs on it
and then walk past me in the street
and cuff it to my wrist
as he went past.
I was like, "Why have you spoilt
that?! Do that, please!"
If I can walk up the street
and come up with six briefcases...
Ah!
I want...just want to say,
I had a strange experience
not dissimilar, which is once
I was in the back of a taxi cab
and the driver was, you know,
monosyllabic,
completely straight deadpan
for about a 25-minute journey.
And then at the end he went,
you know, "£4.80, mate,"
and I went, "Oh, great."
I gave him the money and said,
"Can I have a receipt, please?"
and he went, "Sure,"
and he went to give me this receipt
and he just went...he ripped it up
and went, "Eh, eh, ehhh!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I was very impressed,
I was very impressed.
That was so great.
Yeah, yeah. Really good.
Wrote it out, ripped it up.
Very good.
It didn't so much burst as hatch.
Yes!
And they were prodding it
and it went blup!
Hey, spiders everywhere.
Oh, God, oh, God!
Cos I'd, you know, fly to Australia
quite frequently
and you know when
you're about to go on a flight
and then some mother with children
who are out of control
and they're going crazy,
the mother's crying...
I'm that mother.
I am the mother in that scenario,
and it's such a long flight
and, er...
Have you got two children?
I do, yeah, and my daughter...
Which one do you prefer?
It depends what day it is,
in my experience.
Yeah, they... Yeah, it changes.
Right.
But she's organised,
she's got the headphones on
and she's watching the movie.
And she loves popcorn,
so I bought her loads of popcorn
to, you know,
feed her during the flight.
And so she's eating all this popcorn
and she's watching the movie
and she's TALKING LIKE THAT
EVERY TIME SHE TALKS TO ME
BECAUSE SHE'S WEARING
THE HEADPHONES.
And I went up to go to the toilet
and as I got up, I was about
two seats away, she went,
"Mummy, I've run out of cockporn!"
LAUGHTER
But, you know, I'd never...
I'd never arranged the word like
that. I'm stunned that as a comic...
It never occurred to you.
..I'd never called popcorn cockporn.
I was angry at myself
that I hadn't seen that.
How did you deal with it
in the moment,
when she shouted in front of the...?
I didn't give a fuck.
I was so tired...
"It's all right, lovey,
"it's all right, lovey. Just press
the button for the attendant."
Yeah, she does say these things.
And just an hour out of Sydney
my son threw up all over me
so I was just... He just...
And I thought, "Oh, he's eating
a lot on the flight,"
just kept on eating.
"Mum, I feel terri... Woaugh!"
But he wasn't, he just went, "Ahhh!"
and I was like, "Oh, Jesus,
oh, God," and he, you know...
My daughter threw up in my face once.
We were lying in bed and she was
asleep on top of me... Yes.
She's about one at the time,
it's pitch dark and then she...
I could hear her making this noise
that I knew she only made
when she was about to vomit,
and I said to her,
"You're going to be sick.
"Come on, we're going to have to go,"
and she said "No, I'm not."
It's a big sign.
And then she went, "Bleugh,"
and then it went in my mouth.
It actually went in my mouth,
went into my mouth.
I think you just get used to it.
But, you know, I didn't think,
"Ugh, that's disgusting."
No, you just go for it.
All I thought was, "Oh, God,
now we've got to get out of bed,
"change the pillow cases..."
Has anyone here been
having sex with someone
and they've been sick?
We haven't, Matt, no. No. No.
Just asking out of curiosity. No.
Tell me a lovely place to stay
in Denmark, on a cheerier note.
Oh, this is a peculiar story.
Oh, you're engaging me already!
Gather round.
Oh, Matt!
This is how it went.
I used to do these adverts for...
on Danish television
and so every three or four months
for a couple of years I would go
to Copenhagen and do these adverts
and, erm, they used to put me up
in a very nice hotel.
I really liked it
and they used to...
They were very proud
when you arrived at this hotel.
They'd say, "This is where Michael
Jackson stays when he comes here."
Know him well.
Knew him well, sorry.
Knew him well. And, erm...
I'm not going to say anything!
OK.
And it was a lovely hotel
and I used to enjoy staying there.
And one time I went there
and I didn't stay in that hotel.
I stayed in another hotel, which was
fine, but when they booked me
to go back there I said,
"Oh, the other hotel's lovely
"but if it's possible,
can I stay at that nice hotel?"
And I sort of... And the name was
something like Skejborg or something
like this. I'm sorry that I don't
remember the exact name.
You know what they're like, Danes.
I don't know,
they've invented, like, this...
They've got this other language
and I can't really speak it, so...
So, erm, and I said, "Can I stay?
I think... I can't remember,
"is it called Skejborg
or something like that?"
and they said,
"Really, you want to stay there?"
and I went, "Yeah, it's a lovely...
it's a nice hotel.
"I would like to stay there
if possible," and they said,
"Er...OK."
Anyway, I got off the plane.
The hotel's about 20 minutes away...
Is this the original hotel?
Yeah, so, the hotel's
about 20 minutes away
from the airport, and I was...
I think I was up six hours later,
so I was quite keen to just
get to the hotel and go to bed.
And there's a drive
to take me to the hotel
and this drive does not last
20 minutes.
It's becoming 30 minutes,
40 minutes, an hour,
an hour and a half...
We're driving through
the Danish countryside... Oh, no.
..right to the coast, right?
And they drop me off at this place.
It's an hour and three quarters
I've been in the car
and I'm absolutely baffled. And
I've spent the night in this place
and it was very odd. I arrived
and there was a very large lift
and there was a gurney in the lift,
and I walked past that, but the lift
wasn't very auspicious.
Anyway, I go into my room and it's
a really grubby little room.
It's a...it's a very, very,
very small room with a rickety old
single bed, one beaten old pillow
and a kind of flickering television.
Anyway, I don't really understand
what's going on.
But I spent the night
in this hotel...
and got picked up the next morning
very early,
at sort of quarter to five
or something,
to get me back for filming.
Yes, because it's 200 miles
from Copenhagen. Exactly.
The whole thing has baffled me
somewhat and, er,
when I arrived for filming
they said, "How was the hotel?"
and I said, "Well..."
Cos I wasn't going to mention it,
but I said, "Well, it was..."
He wasn't going to mention it.
Love him!
"It was a bit..."
I didn't know what to say
because I asked for it
but I don't...
I'm pretty sure that's not the place
I stayed at last time.
I said, "It was a bit unusual,"
and they said, "Well, we thought it
odd that you wanted to stay there,"
and I said, "Well, that was...
I always stay there
"but I think maybe I stayed
at a different branch of the hotel."
It turned out there I...
The name I'd quoted
was something like Skejborg.
I'd stayed at somewhere
like Skejhella - I'd stayed at
a hospital for infectious diseases.
LAUGHTER
I spent the night in a hospital,
stayed in a hospital.
What was the room service like?
Well, they didn't even...
There was no...
I don't think there was that option
available.
The large lift and the empty gurney,
it sounds like Saw!
Anyway, if you ever get infected
with anything, I do recommend it.
By the coast, lovely. Yeah, yeah.
I had to stay at an infectious
diseases unit in Tooting Bec,
er, when I...
What? Yeah.
When you say you had to...?
I had to, yeah,
a couple of years ago.
Did you have an infectious disease?
I did, it was suspected....
Now it's falling into place!
Yeah. Yeah.
I was doing a Danish commercial...
No, I came back from visiting
my brother
who was working in South Africa and
I had all the symptoms of malaria.
It wasn't malaria,
it was just, er...
Did you die? I did.
My fiancee's brother came back
from the Ivory Coast
with a weird little lump on his
that he thought was a bite...
Spider nest! It was a spider nest!
Argh!
Took him to...
For real? A real one?
For real. Bang! But it just popped.
He was having it examined
and it kind of... It kind of
didn't so much burst as hatch. Yes!
They were prodding it and blup!
Hey, spiders everywhere.
Oh, God, oh, God.
Did you ever see
the burrowing worm in the skull?
There was a worm in the skull
in a guy and the only way....
Oh...
It had burrowed its way in
or maybe gone through the ear
or something. What they did, they
drilled... They drilled a hole,
but to coax it out
they got a bit of bacon...
Yep. Have you seen it?
Standard practice - you tape
a bit of bacon to the thing
and the creatures come out
looking for the bacon.
And you go like this with the bacon
and it comes out like this.
Yeah. Well, I hope...
And then you keep pulling
the bacon out so it leaps for it.
And eventually you can train it.
I hope this never happens to me -
I'm Jewish!
LAUGHTER
That's me dead, then.
"Sorry, sir, the worm
will have to stay in." "Fair dos."
"Make your peace with the world."
Yeah.
What if the worm's
burrowed into a pig?
Oh, God, yeah. Having the time of
his life. Didn't know what to do!
Look, we need to think of a title
for the show based on something
that you've heard this evening.
Surely the title of this show is
35 Quid For This? You Fucking Cunts.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I don't know if we can have that
on your planner, on your TV guide.
It wouldn't fit, it wouldn't fit.
35 Quid For This? You Fucking Cunts.
Just 35 Quid For This? You F...
And then leave it there. Perfect.
Yeah, no, say "fucking"
but leave the C and "..."
so you get the sense of it.
Bringing up swearing,
my daughter did a brilliant thing.
We know a family whose son is very,
very badly behaved and we hadn't
seen them for a while and my
daughter went to play with them.
And she's really good friends
with the sister
and she came home and I went,
"Did you have a nice time with Mia?"
She went, "Max has got
really naughty, you know,"
and we went,
"Really? What happened?"
She went, "Well, you'll never guess
what he called Mia."
I went, "Well, what did...
what did he call her?"
and she went,
"a F-U-C-K-I-N-G cunt."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Please will you thank
all my guests -
Sarah Kendall,
John Thompson,
Matt Lucas
and Stuart Goldsmith.
APPLAUSE
I'm Alan Davies
and you have been watching
35 Quid For This?
..You Fucking Cunts.
Timing, brilliant.
Subtitles by Ericsson