Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (2014–…): Season 3, Episode 4 - It Must Have Been Big to Serve a Lot of People - full transcript
ALAN DAVIES: AS YET UNTITLED 04
CTO M744J/82
BF000000
I think I've left the iron on.
Hi, guys! This is nice, isn't it?
It's quite swish.
Deja vu.
Oh, no, I HAVE been here before.
Buenos dias, pussycats.
If Russell Howard mentions
our holiday in Alicante,
I WILL make a scene.
I'd better wash...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello. I'm Alan Davies.
Welcome to As Yet Untitled.
This is the show where we have
no preparation or agenda
or...intro properly written.
We do have four hugely talented
guests and what we like to do
is during the course of the show
come up with
a suitable mantle
for tonight's offering.
Please welcome my guests.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello.
Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome.
Lovely to have you.
So let's see. Who do we have?
We have Tiff Stevenson.
Tiff was put to sleep
due to her troublesome tongue. Yeah.
CHEERING
John Robins. Welcome back to the
show, John. Nice to see you.
John performs better without
the burden of clothing.
Well...
CHEERING
Fantastic to have
Reece Shearsmith here.
Reece has a difficult relationship
with small birds and Tarmacadam
and has a room in his house
where the magic happens.
CHEERING
And Russell Howard.
Fantastic to have Russell with us.
Russell has never really been
in a band...I understand.
Yes, yes, yes.
CHEERING
So it's very nice to have you.
I wanted to ask you
before we do any other talking...
It's quite interesting to have you,
because you two know each other.
You shared a flat together
with a couple of other people.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm quite interested
in you... Not ignoring you Tiff.
That's all right. That's fine.
I just wanted to ask about you,
Reece,
because you met your two mates
in The League Of Gentlemen. Yes.
Which, if I may
blow smoke up your arse,
is one of the best comedy shows
I've ever seen. Thank you.
By a mile. Very sweet of you.
I just absolutely love it.
..while you were at college, which I
sort of hoped would happen to me.
Right. But I didn't meet anyone
as clever as you.
There wasn't anyone
as clever as you.
You were looking around for someone.
You met those two lads
and you started doing that.
But when you were in the flat,
you two and two other comedians,
what my question is, is why does
three people like you get together
and collaborate and do something
all together in one thing,
and the four of you all in one flat
do four completely individual things?
I think it's probably
because stand-up
is such a selfish sort of medium.
Would you agree?
What I'd say mainly, you were a
functioning alcoholic at that stage.
That's not....! Here we go!
But in a brilliant way.
"Who wants to see one of me shows?"
"It's two in the morning.
We're gonna go to bed."
Well, to be fair...
You used to pretend to be
Rik Mayall. It was brilliant.
Well, some might say I still do.
Yeah.
But I went into that house teetotal
and I'd been free from alcohol
for a year
and then living with these weasels.
One afternoon, someone had cooked
a very lovely slow-roast lamb
and it demanded a Chardonnay.
Did you move in because you knew
he was a stand-up and you were one?
Yeah, we'd all... What was great...
Yeah, we were all sort of
at different levels.
I'd just started. Richardson
had just probably gone full-time.
Olver -
Mark Olver, another flatmate -
who does the warm-up
for this show...
He's in this very room as we speak.
You can smell him.
He is very funny, I must say.
Yeah, he's a very funny man.
And Russell was headlining uni gigs,
so there was this nice
drip-down effect,
where if Russell couldn't do a
gig... Did you get cast-off gigs?
Well, what would happen is
Richardson would get
Russell's cast-offs,
Olver would get Richardson's
cast-offs,
then there were probably about
ten other people and then me.
If none of them could make it.
You'd have to watch them ringing
round people, "Are you free?"
It's like a human centipede
of comedy.
If Olver had had his way!
But did you share a place with
Mr Pemberton and Mr Gatiss?
I shared a flat with Pemberton,
not with Gatiss.
Oh, well, actually, for a while,
yes, I did with Mark as well.
At different times, yeah. And I...
When you were at college?
After we left college, yeah.
I think the thing that saved us
was that we didn't try to keep
college going after college.
You know these people
that don't want to let go of it
and try and keep the band together,
even though you're no longer
part of the college and you've left.
Did stand-up interest
any of you three? No, never.
Was it always about writing
and character?
Yeah, acting and character.
We could never do that.
When Steve and I lived together,
it was a kind of funny time.
Quite serious.
We got a lot of work done,
but I remember one running gag
that never...
There was no fruition to it,
which was a shame.
Because in 1994,
he wrapped a banana...
A pretend shit in a banana peel
and glued it
and left it on some fruit for
whoever may come into our flat
and say, "Could I have
a banana, please?"
And would we would sit and wait
and it never came off.
Which was annoying.
So imagine every day of our lives
for about four years...
A pretend shit. Yeah, in a banana.
Talk me through how he made it.
Oh, yes. Well, we peeled it.
He was doing it, to start with.
So you were in on it as well?
Well, I was half in on it.
He said, "I'm just doing this
thing where I will peel a banana."
What happened was, in the end,
we abandoned it and unpeeled it
for our own amusement and it had
gone all soggy, horrible.
I had an image of him hunting out
for healthy-looking friends.
"Do you want a banana?"
"Want a banana?"
You need more smoothies made
in your flat. I know.
That would've been it. We didn't
have them then - it was '94.
No. No-one had a blender.
It was all vintage.
No such thing then.
But you had a funny showbiz start,
didn't you?
Yeah. My dad managed Wembley
stadium, so when I was a kid,
that was pretty much my playground.
The result is, I'm never sort of
that impressed by anything.
I was spoilt so much as a child,
it was ridiculous.
I remember specifically
Eurythmics were playing
and I'd have these trip-A passes
and I'd be skipping around.
I was dead cute. I had pigtails.
I was adorable.
I'll just hold you there. Triple-A
pass means Access All Areas.
Yeah, trip-A pass. Trip-A, guys.
Trip-A.
How old were you
when you were saying "trip-A"?
Oh, could you imagine
how precocious that would be?
So you'd get them, stick them on
and you could sort of go anywhere.
But I remember specifically
before they went on,
Dad took me backstage and Annie was
in her dressing room and she was...
I thought you were going to say
she was in the toilet.
Trip-A, so...
LAUGHTER
I've got a banana skin.
Oh, yeah, I think you'll find
I can do what I like!
But she was just so sweet to me.
She was in the middle of doing
her makeup in her dressing room
and I just sat in her lap
and she just carried on.
I was small enough
that it was adorable.
If I was 14, 15
and a moody teenager...
She probably thought she was
having a breakdown, just going,
"Triple-A, triple-A! Oh, God,
there's a little girl in my room!"
You could have had so much fun,
just freaking people out.
I did. It's very lucky, basically.
I would get to sit in the
Royal Enclosure to watch things
and I remember going to see
Wham: The Final
and half the members of
Spandau Ballet were there.
Which half? Which half?
Gary or Martin?
I think it was Martin
and Tony Hadley.
Tone. Tone.
Tone, as he's known to you, Alan.
Great bloke. I know Tone.
What year was that,
if you don't mind me asking?
OK, let's rephrase that.
Did you go to the Freddie Mercury
Tribute concert?
No, I didn't. I think that was past.
I think it was sort of...
'86. Oh, no. OK...
No, that was '91.
But you went to Live Aid in '85.
Yes, I did.
That was good. That was a good
performance by Freddie.
I hadn't noticed your Freddie
T-shirt.
My dad's a big fan of Freddie
as well.
Well, I've spoken to your dad
about Freddie.
Quite a lot, haven't you?
Extensively.
I think on probably too many
occasions for his liking.
What's his best Freddie story?
Penis cake.
Penis cake. There you go.
I think Freddie's 40th birthday
at Wembley. And if you're Freddie,
you can't just have
an innocent-looking gateau.
You've got to have a massive dick.
The interesting thing...
Tinder Cake is actually
my brother's Tinder name.
I fucked that joke up!
I was so excited!
I had a little joke in my head.
So I forgot... Shit!
Tinder Cake's quite sweet.
But it's not as funny as penis cake.
Now I look like a buffoon!
He was a man who just wouldn't want
run-of-the-mill stuff.
He'd look at a run-of-the-mill cake
and say "Not interested.
"Unless there's a wang on it,
I'm not eating it."
"Make it cock-shaped, my darling!"
he'd probably say.
He'd only eat things
that are cock-shaped.
So does it look like an actual cock?
If you did a double take, you'd go,
"Jesus Christ! There's a cock
on the table"?
It must have been big
to serve a lot of people.
I don't think it was sort of scale.
I must make a mental note, cos I
think we might've come across
the title for the show -
"It must have been big
to serve a lot of people."
Well, I'm not imagining it... Wasn't
like the size of a real penis.
It would be erect, not just some
horrible shrivelled husk.
Standing proud.
Slipping into Alan's peccadilloes
quite disturbingly!
Freddie Mercury ringing up
Mr Kipling and asking for
an exceedingly big cock.
There you go - back in the game!
CHEERING
Exceedingly big cock!
Oh, the illness of being a comedian!
I said, "That's in your mouth,
Grandad." "What?!"
Can you tell me about your difficult
relationship
with small birds and Tarmacadam?
Well, it's not me, but my mum
went out one day to work
and told me that this had happened.
She was walking along and she
spotted in some newly laid Tarmac
a little sparrow that had got
stuck in it, by its feet
and she thought she would rescue it.
So she went down, she picked it up.
Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, jeez!
And pulled it off its legs.
ALL: Aww!
So she thought...
It's all right - it can fly.
..the damage is done.
You can get it a couple of
little helicopter feet.
It can fly, but it can't land.
Only on something soft -
not on a branch.
Like a shark,
it'll have to keep moving forever.
Exactly that.
Just two lollipop sticks.
So on the one hand, it's going,
"Yes! ..Oh."
She tried to
balance it back on the legs.
Like that was all right.
Instantly crippled it and done
all this damage and thought,
"Oh, actually,
I'll put that back."
She just put it back and walked on
and came back to tell me about it.
But exactly, if it took off,
it would never land.
It's the idea of his mates
coming along
and he's just slightly
at different angle on his legs.
"All right, guys?"
"Why are your feet backwards?"
"Just for a laugh."
He could only land on his feet.
He has to dock himself like an iPod.
Why does that sparrow live there?
He has to - his legs are there.
It's like those mice
when they get trapped on
what they call a humane trap,
which is where they try to bite
their own legs off to get off.
No-one calls that a humane trap. A
humane trap is the one with the box.
Not where their feet are glued and
have to chew through their legs.
We had an infestation of them
in one of our flats,
me and my boyfriend, when we shared.
Of what?
Mice. It got to the point where
I got quite attached to them,
because I sort of imagined
they had personalities, you know?
Like in Ratatouille.
Yes, so you would have...
The Rescuers.
One would come out with rollers
in her whiskers of a morning,
you know, look at
the other skirting board -
"Have you seen her over there?
47 kids.
"None of them have got the same dad.
When is she NOT in season?"
It was like EastEnders
but with mice.
So I want to get rid of them
but I don't want to kill them,
so I say to my very
Scottish boyfriend...
Which is important
if I tell you this story.
I said to him,
"Can we get rid of the mice?
"I don't want to kill them - just
set them free somewhere else."
He said, "No danger, baby.
What you've got to do
"is get one of those humane traps.
"It's a wee tube. You just put
down a little bit of bait.
"So you put down a wee bit of
shortbread or something."
Shortbread? That's very Scottish.
I know. It's like, are you trying to
catch yourself?
You come home
and he's got his face in the tube.
It's like a cat flap.
"There's nothing humane about this!"
So he laid down all this bait.
What happens is they'll chew that,
they'll go in,
they tip the tube over
and then you drive away
and take them down the road, you
shake it like a Polaroid picture,
which apparently
disorientates the mouse,
then you let it go and in his words,
"It cannae find its way back."
So we put, like,
six of these traps out
and I go to bed feeling quite smug
that we've dealt with
the mouse problem.
And then about 2am,
I wake up with this noise...
SHE SQUEAKS
I nudge him and I say,
"Babe, wake up."
Not now!
He's got the full mask on.
I've combed my whiskers - come on!
Is he eating a mouse? So I say to
him, "I think we've caught a mouse."
And he says, "It's all right.
I'll deal with it."
So we've obviously caught the mouse.
So he goes off and
I'm about to fall back asleep,
because about 10 minutes have gone
past and he's obviously, you know...
And then I'm sort of woken up
by this noise.
Yes. He comes, gets back in the bed,
has the nerve to spoon me.
And I say "What happened
to the mouse?"
And he went "The wee mouse is
running away up the road, so he is."
I was like, "You're lying."
And he went,
"The wee bastard nipped me
"so I had to beat him to death
with my shoe."
That's the most Scottish way I've
heard a mouse dealt with ever.
We had a neighbour
who killed squirrels.
Sorry, hang on, you what? Had a
neighbour that killed squirrels?
That killed squirrels.
And we met him... Cruel.
I used to sit in my living room,
doing some work
and the squirrels would come and
eat the food from the bird feeders.
But I didn't mind.
It was quite fun watching them.
And they'd come about three in the
afternoon. They were quite regular.
Anyway, one of the neighbours
was very elderly and he'd died
and there was a bit of a do
amongst the neighbours.
Sort of a wake affair.
Did you not like him?
A celebration.
Anyway, I'd met this guy and he very
proudly killed squirrels.
And he would catch them, humanely,
in some kind of a trap with bait
and then he would take the lid off
a barrel
that was full to the rim of water.
Oh, you're kidding me? No!
And just chuck them in
and put the lid on and drown them.
But was he like a really posh crazy
eccentric like those weird guys
that have no jobs -
"Yes, I'm a squirrel killer"?
"If I see one of those blighters
in my room..."
"What's your actual job?" "Er..."
When he talked about it,
he was deadly serious.
Your hair's quite grey as well,
isn't it, Alan?
Would you like to come into
the hot tub with me, Alan?
Wake up!
The grey squirrels
came over here, didn't they?
And took over from the reds,
so was it that kind of...?
A bit like that.
Well, they are legitimate vermin.
You are supposed to actually...
Are you? Like pigeons flying round?
..get rid of them in the same way
that you are as rats.
You're meant to try
and get rid of them? Yes.
You're not allowed to feed them.
If you throw aspirin to pigeons,
their stomachs explode.
Wow! That's an episode
of MythBusters I need to see.
But not immediately.
They fly up, then...
Was it your mother
who found this out?
"He looks like he's got a headache."
But it's the idea of them going,
"Look at that prick down there -
he's got no legs!" Boooommm!
I didn't know that. Is that a law?
Birds can't fart.
How do you know? Really?
He's scared a lot of birds.
Like that. How do you know that?
How do I know that? Yeah.
Because of my research.
So when you feed them I think
aspirin or bicarbonate of soda,
the bubbles build up
and it's got nowhere to go.
Anything soluble with a frothing...
Berocca.
Berocca. They can't do a Berocca.
That's a colourful...
That's like a firework.
That's why they're all so hungover.
Refreshers. Yep.
Those popping candy, they hate.
Alka-Seltzer. Another one.
When that popping candy
first came out,
I remember giving bits to
my grandad in his Robin Reliant.
I was about 10. I said, "Try it"
and he thought it was raining.
He did. "Has it started raining?"
I said, "That's in your mouth,
Grandad!" "What?!"
It's like the perfect reverse
of the Werther's Originals.
Yes, these explosions in his mouth.
So I should say, on the subject of
exploding birds,
please do not try this at home,
with the aspirins.
Unless you want a great laugh.
Berocca, maybe. No, best not.
I remember once I gave a friend
of mine, James, a Berocca.
He didn't know he had to put them
in water, so he went like that.
"Got some kick, innit?"
He was like the Ready Brek man.
It was just falling out of his face.
Russell, can you tell me why you've
never really been in a band?
What do you mean? What's that about?
Um, I... You look like
you could be in a band.
Thanks very much.
A sort of boy band, I feel.
I started doing stand-up
when I was 18
and I didn't tell anyone about it.
I only had one job. I worked at
the RAC for six months
and I sort of
told everyone I was in a band.
RSC in Stratford?
It was the RAC in Bristol.
Oh, R-A-C. I see.
Yes, RAC. Very different.
I thought you meant acting.
No, very different.
They pull out,
they get out, they do...
Magical. I'm very sorry. Carry on.
Exactly. "I'll be there
in half an hour!"
But I didn't want to tell anyone I
was a stand-up in case, you know,
they came to watch me
and I was terrible,
so I told them I was in a band. Oh!
But I kind of got into it a bit,
cos I'd be doing gigs
and I working part-time,
so I'd sort of come in knackered
and they're, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, it was a big gig last night."
And I would embellish it.
I'd smashed a guitar up,
you know what I mean? Oh, no.
"Bloody mad! We're getting
really edgy these days."
And I was building this lie up
and then just one day,
I think I was it was Comic Relief,
someone brings a guitar in -
"Have a go on that."
Yeah, exactly!
And I should've just came clean,
but I didn't.
I sort of tried to go for it.
Did you? Yeah. I was
really giving it some stick.
So it's like catch me while you can?
Oh, it was brutal, man.
What was the name of the band?
I can't remember the name.
Did you have a made-up name
and everything?
I must've done
but I can't remember it.
But I was just bored
and bullshitting,
and just answering
the occasional call going,
"Yeah, your tyres are knackered.
They'll be there in a bit."
You should have just smashed
the guitar, flicked the Vs
and walked out
like an absolute ledge.
It was just weird,
because when we were working there,
they wouldn't let us read books
in between calls.
They wanted us to just read stuff
about the RAC,
so you were better prepared
to deal with the emergencies.
And my brother was working there
as well. John knows my brother.
He's an absolute moron. He's lovely,
but, yeah, he's an idiot.
There was a bloke there
called Mr Trotter who rang up
and Daniel was like,
"Yeaaahhh! Just been down
the market stall, have you?
"How's Rodney? Waaaahhh!"
This bloke's like this,
"Look, I'm in real trouble.
"My car's broken down,
my wife's at home..."
"What - Raquel? Waaahhh!"
and all this.
And he got called in to the manager,
who said,
"Did you have an altercation
with a Mr Trotter earlier?"
My brother's like, "No, don't know
what you're talking about."
And they played the entire tape.
So could we say you created
your own plankton?
Ewww...yes.
How is THAT
the gross part of the story?!
Can you tell me
about the burden of clothing?
Well... And why you perform
better without it?
Well, I think...
Are we allowed to tell the story
of what you did?
It's such a funny thing. It was real
sexual, sort of... Are we allowed?
Oh, God, if my mum's yoga group
are watching, then...turn off now.
So...
So me and Jon Richardson
were sat on the beach.
And Jon, who is probably
the most sexually dynamic
out of the three of us...
Go on.
Well, we went to this beach
and I think it's fair to say
I'd had quite a relatively
sheltered adolescence.
I had never experienced
a nude Spanish beach before
and was quite overcome.
He does have a gift for it,
doesn't he?
Oh, wait. It gets extraordinary.
Imagine Jim Carrey in The Mask,
where he's going...
It was like that.
He was all over the shop.
I was kind of aware of
the concept of a nude beach,
but as a child of the dial-up
internet generation,
I'd just no idea what it was like
to be a part of one.
And I was, you know, made up.
I remember he said very loudly,
"Fuck me!"
And we knew.
We knew something was afoot.
These two cats were just drinking
their sangrias, fine with it.
You've invented that!
The idea that you're going,
"Phwoarr!"
and we're going "More sangria.
Oh, I'm so tired of flange."
Were you all in the nude?
No. Well, tops off.
We had tops off, but, you know...
We had tanga briefs or Speedos,
depending on your choice,
and one of us had binoculars.
You didn't need binoculars -
that was the thing.
They'd be sat there
and you're like...
"This is free? Is it?
"I'm not going to get arrested?
This is what you do?
"You disgusting perverts!"
And so it got to the point
where I couldn't...
Get it up?
Well, get it down was the problem.
One or the other, wasn't it?
So this is what happens.
So he's clearly restless
and a bit, you know,
all over the shop.
Were you face down in the sand?
Exactly! there's probably some
lifeguard going,
"Some kids have been playing
Swingball here."
If your mum had picked me off the
Tarmac, it would've stayed behind.
But he didn't tell any of this.
It was all with eyes and lots of...
And then he just left.
He just strode out...to the sea
and he swam out really far.
Like Reggie Perrin!
He was gone for about 15 minutes
and me and John were like,
"There you go. That just happened."
Nobody quite knows
what that was about
and then he came back and was calm.
Did it cool your ardour?
Well, no. Tell everyone
what you'd done out at...
Oh, no! Oh, no.
Yeah, he'd swam out to sea and then
on his back, like a dirty otter...
No, no, no, no!
Not on my back.
"I'm not an animal!"
I am a human being.
On my tiptoes
with the water up to about here,
so as not to... The last thing you
want to be is rescued in that state.
No, the last thing you want to do
is drown.
So using one, you know... Hand.
To steady myself, buoyancy-wise...
Yeah, he came back
like a wonky Popeye.
He'd been out there for ages.
So could we say you created
your own plankton?
Eww!
How is THAT
the gross part of the story?!
It's so weird where the line is
in these things.
Somewhere there's
a half-whale, half-me.
I came back to the beach...
A different man.
..a different man, and they said,
"What have you done?"
You didn't tell us straight away.
You were acting like
it was all normal, like,
"It's just girls. It's fine.
Let's all hang out."
Then you sort of 'fessed up
what you'd been doing.
And I said it was either that
or kill myself.
That was the line.
That was the line.
Let's talk to Reece, because I,
in common with all the audience,
are intrigued by the room in the
house "where the magic happens".
All it is, I've got a...
I like magic.
And rather than have it
all around the house,
I've designated it
upstairs to the attic,
where I have a room
which has a secret door to it.
So there's a bookcase and you take
the top of the banister off,
you press a button
and the door opens... Shazam!
..and you go into the magic room.
Yes, nice.
That was a beautiful noise.
Did you hear that?
Thank you, everyone. Like proper
Bedknobs And Broomsticks.
Literally. Or if you don't want to
use the remote, you can...
On the shelves of the bookcase,
there is a Nefertiti head
and you can put the candle back.
And when the police come,
do they just knock it down?
They don't know anything about it.
I get in there
and I'm just there hiding.
That's the genius!
Is it like a pump in a pub?
It's literally like that.
And that opens the door? Yes.
That opens the door
with a sort of hydraulic thing?
It latches from the other side.
Anyway, so in that room,
there is lots of magic stuff
and lots of horrible mummified
werewolves and heads
and babies and dead things.
Babies? people may worry about that.
Not real ones.
Has your mum been up there?
There's the rest of the body
of that bird.
There's lots of little things.
All things that if the children's
friends come round,
they don't see them
and aren't traumatised.
Does it say that
on the party invite?
And Social Services are not called,
like last time.
Do the children know how to get in?
Yes, they do.
But a few years ago, I acquired...
Because all my life
I'd wanted a Zigzag Lady.
Which is a big box trick.
It was invented by Robert Harbin.
It's a brilliant illusion where a
lady goes into an upright cabinet.
It's got her picture on the front
and you slice her into three
and you push the middle out.
It's brilliant.
And I've always, since I was little,
want to know how that worked
and ultimately own one.
And a few years ago, Andy Nyman,
my friend who is also a magician,
told me someone was selling their
Zigzag Lady, so I bought it.
And I went and bought it and
I brought it back to the house,
took it upstairs and put it in the
magic room. It was brilliant.
Can I ask you, do you have to be
in the Magic Circle
to buy one of those things?
No, I didn't. No, I'm not.
Not in the Magic Circle?
No. I've been tempted to,
but I was just able to buy it
by knowing the man.
He grilled me about it. He was like,
"You are going to treat the box
with respect, aren't you?"
My wife for many years
and I toured with this.
There was a history to it,
so I felt it was quite
a prestigious hand-me-down.
Did he have to show you
how to work it?
I knew by then,
but he showed me it, yes.
So anyway, I went upstairs,
put it in the room.
And then it was just delicious,
playing with it,
because I was finally able to think,
"This is fantastic!
This is the Zigzag Lady!"
I got my wife to go in it.
But then, one day...
Just snuck that through.
One day, very early on
in the excitement of having it...
My two little children
were very small. They were about...
Now they're a third smaller.
Three and five.
I went in the Zigzag Lady and I
shut it and I couldn't get out.
And the children were on the floor
in front of it with the blades.
Oh, my...! In the attic,
with all the stairs to tumble down.
And I was trapped in the
Zigzag Lady, head through,
one hand with a tissue...
Oh, my God!
..and my foot out. I'm going,
"Could you...?
Right, do see the lock?"
They were too little
to understand it
and they started to wander
like Linus down the stairs.
I didn't want to push it,
cos I don't want to break it.
I was more bothered about destroying
the Zigzag Lady
than my children
falling down the stairs.
But I did have to slightly break it
to get out of it,
and it was really annoying, but I
did have to save my children, so...
That's my Zigzag Lady story.
Were you able to repair it?
Yes, it's fine. The handle on the
door that shows the stomach...
Don't tell us how it works!
No, as if I would do that!
There's a little handle that opens
up and you see the stomach through
when you push the middle
to the side.
And that had somehow gone back
on itself
and jammed the whole door from
opening. I couldn't get out.
The Zigzag Lady sounds like
a cocktail
especially for aunties, isn't it?
"I'll have a Zigzag Lady."
"Look what happens
after a couple of these!"
But if you're in your room
and anything happened to you
and no-one knew about the Nefertiti
doodah, how would...?
No-one would know. I've got other
family members that know about it.
They would say,
"He's probably up there".
He'd be in the panic room.
Or they'd leave me to mummify.
Yeah! Are you into Egyptology?
I get the sense that you are.
I'm not. That's just a by-product.
The Nefertiti head
is just a one-off.
And the mummified...?
There's a few mummified things.
And the big pyramids
you built in your garden.
Yeah, there's that.
Do you do any close-up?
Are you good? Can you do stuff?
I'm quite good at some things, yeah.
It depends.
I've not got anything on me now.
A bit of sleight of hand
and card manipulation? Yeah, yeah.
The terrible thing is
I did a few children's parties
and they are the most unforgiving.
They just get up and leave.
They just go, "What's that?
What's that, Mister?"
Adults won't do it,
cos they're polite.
"You can see it up your sleeve!"
Yeah, they just say it as it is
and you want to smack them.
Can you tell me when or how or why
you were put to sleep
because of your troublesome tongue?
Basically, I'd got this lump on
my tongue. It appeared overnight.
So I woke up one morning,
there was a lump,
so I went to go and see my GP.
Are we talking about, like,
a pea size?
No, it was like the size
of a lozenge. Ooh!
It was kind of about that big, yeah.
like a Tune?
Like a Tune. It wasn't square.
It was more like a Strepsil.
OK. Yeah, a red Strepsil. Overnight?
Yeah, overnight.
It just appeared, this lump.
Where?
I'll show you the scar in a minute.
Basically, this lump appeared.
I went to the GP and I said,
"I've got this lump on my tongue."
You didn't say it like that,
did you? What?
MUFFLED: "I've got a lump
on my tongue."
I went, "Lick it!"
I said, "I've got this lump.
It's appeared overnight."
And he said, "I think it's thrush,"
and I went, "Eugh!"
Because I'm a grown-up.
And then he said,
"Look, put this paste on it.
"Go away for two weeks."
Just leave me alone, basically.
"If it hasn't gone,
then come back and see me
"and I'll have a look at it again."
So I put this paste on
for two weeks.
Don't trust myself to do it
properly,
so I did it for another two weeks,
come back, the lump's still there.
He's like, "Actually, no, I think
that is some kind of cyst,
"so we'll just get the
local surgeon in to pop that."
He comes in and goes, "I'm not just
popping it. It could be vascular,
"it could be blood-filled.
I don't know what it is."
The GP goes, "Actually, no, I think
it's some kind of ulcerated nodule.
"Do some blood tests.
Come back in six weeks."
I do the blood tests, come back
six weeks later and he says to me,
"Miss Stevenson, we can confirm
it's definitely a lump."
The wonders of medical science.
Yeah! So at this point, I say,
"Can I see a specialist?"
So he sends me out to
Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.
So this guy looks at it. Straight
away, he diagnoses it. He went,
"It's a polycystic granuloma."
He was from Bolton.
He was brilliant. He said,
"I'm not going to
lie to you, love -
"it's the biggest one
I've ever seen on a tongue."
And I went, "Brilliant!"
I feel pretty happy.
And he went, "We are going
to have to remove it.
"It's going to be under
general anaesthetic,
"but because of the size of it,
there might be some associated risk.
"It may affect your speech."
At which point, of course, you
panic, cos we're performers -
we talk for a living.
Then he said this.
"There's also the possibility
you may lose taste entirely,"
to which I said,
"Mate, have you seen my wardrobe?"
I've got a lot of leopard print
in it. I'm not going to lie.
So basically, I have to have
an operation to remove this...
I don't know if anyone's had a cyst
or anything like that
removed before.
They put you
under a general anaesthetic.
Which is absolutely terrifying,
isn't it? Yes, yes.
Some creepy guy in a gown going,
"You're going to sleep now!"
But it really is that thing
when you kind of think,
"Don't let me die!" and then,
"Oh, I'm dead."
And then you're awake.
You know, it's terrifying.
Have you had that thing where
they tell you to count backwards?
I had my appendix out,
and was like, "I can do this."
I wanted to get as far into it
as I could.
"You won't get to 12."
"One, two..."
You wake up and go, "Three, four!"
Carrying on the game, you do a
set-up before you go to sleep
and then the punchline when you
wake up in the recovery ward.
Yeah, but you have no ability,
because after general anaesthetic,
you're an absolute lunatic.
Yeah, this happened
in the recovery room.
As I was coming around, I
could hear the strains on the radio.
This was so weird, right, cos I was
like, "Am I imagining this?"
This advert came on for this TV show
that I'd done,
a show with John Bishop, and I can
hear an advert for it on the radio.
And I tried to tell the nurse.
I went...
SHE GIBBERS
And she came over and pressed
my morphine drip down full.
And then I said, "I'm famous!"
That's the best review
you can have - free morphine.
And she's like, "Everyone's famous
on morphine, love."
John Bishop's voice
must've sounded extraordinary
when you were kind of just going,
"It's going to be absolutely
brilliant -
"it's got Tiffany Stevenson in it.
I think I'm dead."
Has anyone been recognised as
they've gone under anaesthetic?
Yeah. The head surgeon of the
Royal Free who did my appendix
was a big League Of Gentlemen fan.
Wow!
So he's done it brilliantly.
"You're my wife now!"
It's really small, the cut.
He took his time. Took his time.
He did it really well for me.
He could've really shafted you
by going,
"I'm a big fan of the veterinarian
character, you know."
It's not the same thing, Doctor!
My brother's appendix
burst in Thailand
and we had no travel insurance, so I
had to pay for him to get it fixed.
And you'd think he'd say,
"Thanks for that." Yeah.
But what happened...
He was in a wheelchair
and a week later,
we were wheeling him in this hotel.
We're in the lift going up and these
people sort of recognised me,
but it was all quite quiet.
My brother could tell this.
He was in the wheelchair
and he started pretending
that he was heavily disabled
and was kind of shaking like that
and I'm getting so angry and so...
Like that.
And he's really going for it
and we get outside of the lift
and I punched him in the face.
But there were people
outside the lift
who hadn't seen what had happened,
right?
All they'd seen was a bloke
they recognised off telly
run up to a man in a wheelchair,
punch him and say,
"What is wrong with you?!"
It was just one of these
horrendous moments.
Hang on! You also rang me up
and said,
"Should I throw my laptop
in the river?"
And, to be fair,
you said, "Absolutely!" Yeah.
My girlfriend is...great.
A red light appeared there.
And I love her very much
and she's been away.
Actually, she's
been away in Melbourne for a month
and how understanding of her
is this?
She got back today after a month.
I told her I was going
to pick her up.
The wonderful people at this show
asked me to do the show.
I said, "Of course I will."
She got a taxi back from the airport
and I saw her
for three and a half minutes
and then had to leave to come here.
So I'm very excited about going back
to her.
And she's doing that wonderful thing
where she's understanding,
but livid in the eyes.
Anyway, while she was out
in Melbourne...
Another thing you need to know
about my girlfriend
is she refuses to get an iPhone,
because she's a renegade.
She's absolutely right, by the way.
Oh, she's throwing it to the system,
Alan, I don't mind saying.
And the particular nature
of her protest
is to have an iPod Touch
and a five-year-old Nokia.
Do you know what? Everyone wants
a five-year-old Nokia now.
Everyone you meet goes, "Best phone
I had was that old Nokia."
So she's got that.
"Blinding. Battery never ran out."
So anyway, she's got these two
things which together
would make an iPhone, but because
she doesn't want an iPhone,
she's got the two logistically
complex things to operate.
So she can only check the internet
if it's got wifi,
but the system works,
because if she hasn't got wifi,
she just uses my iPhone,
which she only needs to do 30 to 40
times, a day so it suits us both.
Anyway, I wake up... She's been away
in Melbourne for two weeks.
..to receive a text from her
which said, and I quote,
"I must have forgot to sign myself
out of Google on your iPhone."
And then she moves into
capital letters...
"BECAUSE I CAN SEE EVERYTHING
YOU'VE SEARCHED FOR!"
Oh, my God!
Holy fucking shit!
That was the first thing
he looked at. That was it.
Straight in Google, and there is
actually Jesus in a turd.
And also, my laptop
had sort of died,
because I updated the thing
and that had hung,
so I'm basically being strung up
by technology I haven't asked for.
But hang on.
You also rang me up and said,
"Should I throw my laptop
in the river?"
And, to be fair, you said,
"Absolutely!"
Yeah, burn it.
So anyway, I'm on Skype text
with her.
She's kind of... I'm sweating.
I've managed to get into
the Google history
that's she's able to access
and which is now our "shared" Google
history, which is fucking horrific,
and I'm thinking, "Why have Google
even got... I didn't...
"Get out of my house!
I didn't ask you!"
They're in your house.
Fuck off, Google!
They're in everyone's house.
Can I issue a word of warning too?
And when I say this happened
to a friend of mine,
this did actually happen
to a friend of mine.
It didn't happen to me
and I'm pretending.
She had a bit of a fling on a job
with a bloke in another country.
They took some photos of each other
in some compromising positions
while they were connected to wifi.
And those photos went directly
from her phone into her Cloud
and were therefore immediately
visible on her home computer.
Oh, no!
No, actually,
it was on HIS home computer
and were therefore seen
by his partner.
So try to be careful. If you are
taking compromising photos,
make sure you've turned the wifi off
and the 3G off
and you're not connecting
to the Cloud.
But they didn't realise
they'd gone into the Cloud.
They thought somehow that their phone
had been hacked
and they were paranoid that some
private detective was after them.
On a Saturday, I have a radio
show with my friend Elis,
who is also a comedian
and been on this show.
On XFM, and we asked people
to text in with their times
where technology had let them down.
This woman found out her husband
was cheating on her
when she pressed control+V
on her computer...
That is the "copy" shortcut.
forgotten to take it off
the copy/paste thing.
So she was sort of coming up with a
Word document and she pressed it
and it was like, "Hi, I'm Michael.
I'm into Thai food and long walks."
I thought you said Typhoo there.
That's not very appealing, is it?
"I'm into traditional tea brands."
Well, listen, people, we really...
I have to draw you together now
to try and think of a title
for this show. Oh, my God.
Thank you for your splendid tales.
The one I particularly liked
was your description
of John being "like a dirty otter".
Not the name of the show, Alan!
And I also quite liked,
"It must have been big
to serve a lot of people."
"He had the nerve to spoon me."
That's good. That's quite good.
That sounds like a...like a...
A B-movie! Yeah, right.
"He had the nerve to spoon me."
It's the first autobiography,
volume one. Chapter one, yeah.
Or something about Nefertiti's head
as well? That would be quite nice.
Nefertiti's head isn't bad.
Or how about,
"Daddy's stuck in the trick!"
"She tried to pop it
back on its legs."
That sparrow's
still flying somewhere!
It doesn't matter - he can't fly.
That's not bad.
How about that?
"Is that sparrow ever gonna land?"
"Did you make your own plankton?"
LAUGHTER
See, it got more the second time
round! That is a grower.
A bit like John.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
please will you thank
all my guests this evening -
Tiffany Stevenson, John Robins,
Reece Shearsmith and Russell Howard.
And you have been watching
It Must Have Been Big
To Serve A Lot Of People.
Thank you very much.
Subtitles by Ericsson
CTO M744J/82
BF000000
I think I've left the iron on.
Hi, guys! This is nice, isn't it?
It's quite swish.
Deja vu.
Oh, no, I HAVE been here before.
Buenos dias, pussycats.
If Russell Howard mentions
our holiday in Alicante,
I WILL make a scene.
I'd better wash...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello. I'm Alan Davies.
Welcome to As Yet Untitled.
This is the show where we have
no preparation or agenda
or...intro properly written.
We do have four hugely talented
guests and what we like to do
is during the course of the show
come up with
a suitable mantle
for tonight's offering.
Please welcome my guests.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello.
Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome.
Lovely to have you.
So let's see. Who do we have?
We have Tiff Stevenson.
Tiff was put to sleep
due to her troublesome tongue. Yeah.
CHEERING
John Robins. Welcome back to the
show, John. Nice to see you.
John performs better without
the burden of clothing.
Well...
CHEERING
Fantastic to have
Reece Shearsmith here.
Reece has a difficult relationship
with small birds and Tarmacadam
and has a room in his house
where the magic happens.
CHEERING
And Russell Howard.
Fantastic to have Russell with us.
Russell has never really been
in a band...I understand.
Yes, yes, yes.
CHEERING
So it's very nice to have you.
I wanted to ask you
before we do any other talking...
It's quite interesting to have you,
because you two know each other.
You shared a flat together
with a couple of other people.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm quite interested
in you... Not ignoring you Tiff.
That's all right. That's fine.
I just wanted to ask about you,
Reece,
because you met your two mates
in The League Of Gentlemen. Yes.
Which, if I may
blow smoke up your arse,
is one of the best comedy shows
I've ever seen. Thank you.
By a mile. Very sweet of you.
I just absolutely love it.
..while you were at college, which I
sort of hoped would happen to me.
Right. But I didn't meet anyone
as clever as you.
There wasn't anyone
as clever as you.
You were looking around for someone.
You met those two lads
and you started doing that.
But when you were in the flat,
you two and two other comedians,
what my question is, is why does
three people like you get together
and collaborate and do something
all together in one thing,
and the four of you all in one flat
do four completely individual things?
I think it's probably
because stand-up
is such a selfish sort of medium.
Would you agree?
What I'd say mainly, you were a
functioning alcoholic at that stage.
That's not....! Here we go!
But in a brilliant way.
"Who wants to see one of me shows?"
"It's two in the morning.
We're gonna go to bed."
Well, to be fair...
You used to pretend to be
Rik Mayall. It was brilliant.
Well, some might say I still do.
Yeah.
But I went into that house teetotal
and I'd been free from alcohol
for a year
and then living with these weasels.
One afternoon, someone had cooked
a very lovely slow-roast lamb
and it demanded a Chardonnay.
Did you move in because you knew
he was a stand-up and you were one?
Yeah, we'd all... What was great...
Yeah, we were all sort of
at different levels.
I'd just started. Richardson
had just probably gone full-time.
Olver -
Mark Olver, another flatmate -
who does the warm-up
for this show...
He's in this very room as we speak.
You can smell him.
He is very funny, I must say.
Yeah, he's a very funny man.
And Russell was headlining uni gigs,
so there was this nice
drip-down effect,
where if Russell couldn't do a
gig... Did you get cast-off gigs?
Well, what would happen is
Richardson would get
Russell's cast-offs,
Olver would get Richardson's
cast-offs,
then there were probably about
ten other people and then me.
If none of them could make it.
You'd have to watch them ringing
round people, "Are you free?"
It's like a human centipede
of comedy.
If Olver had had his way!
But did you share a place with
Mr Pemberton and Mr Gatiss?
I shared a flat with Pemberton,
not with Gatiss.
Oh, well, actually, for a while,
yes, I did with Mark as well.
At different times, yeah. And I...
When you were at college?
After we left college, yeah.
I think the thing that saved us
was that we didn't try to keep
college going after college.
You know these people
that don't want to let go of it
and try and keep the band together,
even though you're no longer
part of the college and you've left.
Did stand-up interest
any of you three? No, never.
Was it always about writing
and character?
Yeah, acting and character.
We could never do that.
When Steve and I lived together,
it was a kind of funny time.
Quite serious.
We got a lot of work done,
but I remember one running gag
that never...
There was no fruition to it,
which was a shame.
Because in 1994,
he wrapped a banana...
A pretend shit in a banana peel
and glued it
and left it on some fruit for
whoever may come into our flat
and say, "Could I have
a banana, please?"
And would we would sit and wait
and it never came off.
Which was annoying.
So imagine every day of our lives
for about four years...
A pretend shit. Yeah, in a banana.
Talk me through how he made it.
Oh, yes. Well, we peeled it.
He was doing it, to start with.
So you were in on it as well?
Well, I was half in on it.
He said, "I'm just doing this
thing where I will peel a banana."
What happened was, in the end,
we abandoned it and unpeeled it
for our own amusement and it had
gone all soggy, horrible.
I had an image of him hunting out
for healthy-looking friends.
"Do you want a banana?"
"Want a banana?"
You need more smoothies made
in your flat. I know.
That would've been it. We didn't
have them then - it was '94.
No. No-one had a blender.
It was all vintage.
No such thing then.
But you had a funny showbiz start,
didn't you?
Yeah. My dad managed Wembley
stadium, so when I was a kid,
that was pretty much my playground.
The result is, I'm never sort of
that impressed by anything.
I was spoilt so much as a child,
it was ridiculous.
I remember specifically
Eurythmics were playing
and I'd have these trip-A passes
and I'd be skipping around.
I was dead cute. I had pigtails.
I was adorable.
I'll just hold you there. Triple-A
pass means Access All Areas.
Yeah, trip-A pass. Trip-A, guys.
Trip-A.
How old were you
when you were saying "trip-A"?
Oh, could you imagine
how precocious that would be?
So you'd get them, stick them on
and you could sort of go anywhere.
But I remember specifically
before they went on,
Dad took me backstage and Annie was
in her dressing room and she was...
I thought you were going to say
she was in the toilet.
Trip-A, so...
LAUGHTER
I've got a banana skin.
Oh, yeah, I think you'll find
I can do what I like!
But she was just so sweet to me.
She was in the middle of doing
her makeup in her dressing room
and I just sat in her lap
and she just carried on.
I was small enough
that it was adorable.
If I was 14, 15
and a moody teenager...
She probably thought she was
having a breakdown, just going,
"Triple-A, triple-A! Oh, God,
there's a little girl in my room!"
You could have had so much fun,
just freaking people out.
I did. It's very lucky, basically.
I would get to sit in the
Royal Enclosure to watch things
and I remember going to see
Wham: The Final
and half the members of
Spandau Ballet were there.
Which half? Which half?
Gary or Martin?
I think it was Martin
and Tony Hadley.
Tone. Tone.
Tone, as he's known to you, Alan.
Great bloke. I know Tone.
What year was that,
if you don't mind me asking?
OK, let's rephrase that.
Did you go to the Freddie Mercury
Tribute concert?
No, I didn't. I think that was past.
I think it was sort of...
'86. Oh, no. OK...
No, that was '91.
But you went to Live Aid in '85.
Yes, I did.
That was good. That was a good
performance by Freddie.
I hadn't noticed your Freddie
T-shirt.
My dad's a big fan of Freddie
as well.
Well, I've spoken to your dad
about Freddie.
Quite a lot, haven't you?
Extensively.
I think on probably too many
occasions for his liking.
What's his best Freddie story?
Penis cake.
Penis cake. There you go.
I think Freddie's 40th birthday
at Wembley. And if you're Freddie,
you can't just have
an innocent-looking gateau.
You've got to have a massive dick.
The interesting thing...
Tinder Cake is actually
my brother's Tinder name.
I fucked that joke up!
I was so excited!
I had a little joke in my head.
So I forgot... Shit!
Tinder Cake's quite sweet.
But it's not as funny as penis cake.
Now I look like a buffoon!
He was a man who just wouldn't want
run-of-the-mill stuff.
He'd look at a run-of-the-mill cake
and say "Not interested.
"Unless there's a wang on it,
I'm not eating it."
"Make it cock-shaped, my darling!"
he'd probably say.
He'd only eat things
that are cock-shaped.
So does it look like an actual cock?
If you did a double take, you'd go,
"Jesus Christ! There's a cock
on the table"?
It must have been big
to serve a lot of people.
I don't think it was sort of scale.
I must make a mental note, cos I
think we might've come across
the title for the show -
"It must have been big
to serve a lot of people."
Well, I'm not imagining it... Wasn't
like the size of a real penis.
It would be erect, not just some
horrible shrivelled husk.
Standing proud.
Slipping into Alan's peccadilloes
quite disturbingly!
Freddie Mercury ringing up
Mr Kipling and asking for
an exceedingly big cock.
There you go - back in the game!
CHEERING
Exceedingly big cock!
Oh, the illness of being a comedian!
I said, "That's in your mouth,
Grandad." "What?!"
Can you tell me about your difficult
relationship
with small birds and Tarmacadam?
Well, it's not me, but my mum
went out one day to work
and told me that this had happened.
She was walking along and she
spotted in some newly laid Tarmac
a little sparrow that had got
stuck in it, by its feet
and she thought she would rescue it.
So she went down, she picked it up.
Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, jeez!
And pulled it off its legs.
ALL: Aww!
So she thought...
It's all right - it can fly.
..the damage is done.
You can get it a couple of
little helicopter feet.
It can fly, but it can't land.
Only on something soft -
not on a branch.
Like a shark,
it'll have to keep moving forever.
Exactly that.
Just two lollipop sticks.
So on the one hand, it's going,
"Yes! ..Oh."
She tried to
balance it back on the legs.
Like that was all right.
Instantly crippled it and done
all this damage and thought,
"Oh, actually,
I'll put that back."
She just put it back and walked on
and came back to tell me about it.
But exactly, if it took off,
it would never land.
It's the idea of his mates
coming along
and he's just slightly
at different angle on his legs.
"All right, guys?"
"Why are your feet backwards?"
"Just for a laugh."
He could only land on his feet.
He has to dock himself like an iPod.
Why does that sparrow live there?
He has to - his legs are there.
It's like those mice
when they get trapped on
what they call a humane trap,
which is where they try to bite
their own legs off to get off.
No-one calls that a humane trap. A
humane trap is the one with the box.
Not where their feet are glued and
have to chew through their legs.
We had an infestation of them
in one of our flats,
me and my boyfriend, when we shared.
Of what?
Mice. It got to the point where
I got quite attached to them,
because I sort of imagined
they had personalities, you know?
Like in Ratatouille.
Yes, so you would have...
The Rescuers.
One would come out with rollers
in her whiskers of a morning,
you know, look at
the other skirting board -
"Have you seen her over there?
47 kids.
"None of them have got the same dad.
When is she NOT in season?"
It was like EastEnders
but with mice.
So I want to get rid of them
but I don't want to kill them,
so I say to my very
Scottish boyfriend...
Which is important
if I tell you this story.
I said to him,
"Can we get rid of the mice?
"I don't want to kill them - just
set them free somewhere else."
He said, "No danger, baby.
What you've got to do
"is get one of those humane traps.
"It's a wee tube. You just put
down a little bit of bait.
"So you put down a wee bit of
shortbread or something."
Shortbread? That's very Scottish.
I know. It's like, are you trying to
catch yourself?
You come home
and he's got his face in the tube.
It's like a cat flap.
"There's nothing humane about this!"
So he laid down all this bait.
What happens is they'll chew that,
they'll go in,
they tip the tube over
and then you drive away
and take them down the road, you
shake it like a Polaroid picture,
which apparently
disorientates the mouse,
then you let it go and in his words,
"It cannae find its way back."
So we put, like,
six of these traps out
and I go to bed feeling quite smug
that we've dealt with
the mouse problem.
And then about 2am,
I wake up with this noise...
SHE SQUEAKS
I nudge him and I say,
"Babe, wake up."
Not now!
He's got the full mask on.
I've combed my whiskers - come on!
Is he eating a mouse? So I say to
him, "I think we've caught a mouse."
And he says, "It's all right.
I'll deal with it."
So we've obviously caught the mouse.
So he goes off and
I'm about to fall back asleep,
because about 10 minutes have gone
past and he's obviously, you know...
And then I'm sort of woken up
by this noise.
Yes. He comes, gets back in the bed,
has the nerve to spoon me.
And I say "What happened
to the mouse?"
And he went "The wee mouse is
running away up the road, so he is."
I was like, "You're lying."
And he went,
"The wee bastard nipped me
"so I had to beat him to death
with my shoe."
That's the most Scottish way I've
heard a mouse dealt with ever.
We had a neighbour
who killed squirrels.
Sorry, hang on, you what? Had a
neighbour that killed squirrels?
That killed squirrels.
And we met him... Cruel.
I used to sit in my living room,
doing some work
and the squirrels would come and
eat the food from the bird feeders.
But I didn't mind.
It was quite fun watching them.
And they'd come about three in the
afternoon. They were quite regular.
Anyway, one of the neighbours
was very elderly and he'd died
and there was a bit of a do
amongst the neighbours.
Sort of a wake affair.
Did you not like him?
A celebration.
Anyway, I'd met this guy and he very
proudly killed squirrels.
And he would catch them, humanely,
in some kind of a trap with bait
and then he would take the lid off
a barrel
that was full to the rim of water.
Oh, you're kidding me? No!
And just chuck them in
and put the lid on and drown them.
But was he like a really posh crazy
eccentric like those weird guys
that have no jobs -
"Yes, I'm a squirrel killer"?
"If I see one of those blighters
in my room..."
"What's your actual job?" "Er..."
When he talked about it,
he was deadly serious.
Your hair's quite grey as well,
isn't it, Alan?
Would you like to come into
the hot tub with me, Alan?
Wake up!
The grey squirrels
came over here, didn't they?
And took over from the reds,
so was it that kind of...?
A bit like that.
Well, they are legitimate vermin.
You are supposed to actually...
Are you? Like pigeons flying round?
..get rid of them in the same way
that you are as rats.
You're meant to try
and get rid of them? Yes.
You're not allowed to feed them.
If you throw aspirin to pigeons,
their stomachs explode.
Wow! That's an episode
of MythBusters I need to see.
But not immediately.
They fly up, then...
Was it your mother
who found this out?
"He looks like he's got a headache."
But it's the idea of them going,
"Look at that prick down there -
he's got no legs!" Boooommm!
I didn't know that. Is that a law?
Birds can't fart.
How do you know? Really?
He's scared a lot of birds.
Like that. How do you know that?
How do I know that? Yeah.
Because of my research.
So when you feed them I think
aspirin or bicarbonate of soda,
the bubbles build up
and it's got nowhere to go.
Anything soluble with a frothing...
Berocca.
Berocca. They can't do a Berocca.
That's a colourful...
That's like a firework.
That's why they're all so hungover.
Refreshers. Yep.
Those popping candy, they hate.
Alka-Seltzer. Another one.
When that popping candy
first came out,
I remember giving bits to
my grandad in his Robin Reliant.
I was about 10. I said, "Try it"
and he thought it was raining.
He did. "Has it started raining?"
I said, "That's in your mouth,
Grandad!" "What?!"
It's like the perfect reverse
of the Werther's Originals.
Yes, these explosions in his mouth.
So I should say, on the subject of
exploding birds,
please do not try this at home,
with the aspirins.
Unless you want a great laugh.
Berocca, maybe. No, best not.
I remember once I gave a friend
of mine, James, a Berocca.
He didn't know he had to put them
in water, so he went like that.
"Got some kick, innit?"
He was like the Ready Brek man.
It was just falling out of his face.
Russell, can you tell me why you've
never really been in a band?
What do you mean? What's that about?
Um, I... You look like
you could be in a band.
Thanks very much.
A sort of boy band, I feel.
I started doing stand-up
when I was 18
and I didn't tell anyone about it.
I only had one job. I worked at
the RAC for six months
and I sort of
told everyone I was in a band.
RSC in Stratford?
It was the RAC in Bristol.
Oh, R-A-C. I see.
Yes, RAC. Very different.
I thought you meant acting.
No, very different.
They pull out,
they get out, they do...
Magical. I'm very sorry. Carry on.
Exactly. "I'll be there
in half an hour!"
But I didn't want to tell anyone I
was a stand-up in case, you know,
they came to watch me
and I was terrible,
so I told them I was in a band. Oh!
But I kind of got into it a bit,
cos I'd be doing gigs
and I working part-time,
so I'd sort of come in knackered
and they're, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, it was a big gig last night."
And I would embellish it.
I'd smashed a guitar up,
you know what I mean? Oh, no.
"Bloody mad! We're getting
really edgy these days."
And I was building this lie up
and then just one day,
I think I was it was Comic Relief,
someone brings a guitar in -
"Have a go on that."
Yeah, exactly!
And I should've just came clean,
but I didn't.
I sort of tried to go for it.
Did you? Yeah. I was
really giving it some stick.
So it's like catch me while you can?
Oh, it was brutal, man.
What was the name of the band?
I can't remember the name.
Did you have a made-up name
and everything?
I must've done
but I can't remember it.
But I was just bored
and bullshitting,
and just answering
the occasional call going,
"Yeah, your tyres are knackered.
They'll be there in a bit."
You should have just smashed
the guitar, flicked the Vs
and walked out
like an absolute ledge.
It was just weird,
because when we were working there,
they wouldn't let us read books
in between calls.
They wanted us to just read stuff
about the RAC,
so you were better prepared
to deal with the emergencies.
And my brother was working there
as well. John knows my brother.
He's an absolute moron. He's lovely,
but, yeah, he's an idiot.
There was a bloke there
called Mr Trotter who rang up
and Daniel was like,
"Yeaaahhh! Just been down
the market stall, have you?
"How's Rodney? Waaaahhh!"
This bloke's like this,
"Look, I'm in real trouble.
"My car's broken down,
my wife's at home..."
"What - Raquel? Waaahhh!"
and all this.
And he got called in to the manager,
who said,
"Did you have an altercation
with a Mr Trotter earlier?"
My brother's like, "No, don't know
what you're talking about."
And they played the entire tape.
So could we say you created
your own plankton?
Ewww...yes.
How is THAT
the gross part of the story?!
Can you tell me
about the burden of clothing?
Well... And why you perform
better without it?
Well, I think...
Are we allowed to tell the story
of what you did?
It's such a funny thing. It was real
sexual, sort of... Are we allowed?
Oh, God, if my mum's yoga group
are watching, then...turn off now.
So...
So me and Jon Richardson
were sat on the beach.
And Jon, who is probably
the most sexually dynamic
out of the three of us...
Go on.
Well, we went to this beach
and I think it's fair to say
I'd had quite a relatively
sheltered adolescence.
I had never experienced
a nude Spanish beach before
and was quite overcome.
He does have a gift for it,
doesn't he?
Oh, wait. It gets extraordinary.
Imagine Jim Carrey in The Mask,
where he's going...
It was like that.
He was all over the shop.
I was kind of aware of
the concept of a nude beach,
but as a child of the dial-up
internet generation,
I'd just no idea what it was like
to be a part of one.
And I was, you know, made up.
I remember he said very loudly,
"Fuck me!"
And we knew.
We knew something was afoot.
These two cats were just drinking
their sangrias, fine with it.
You've invented that!
The idea that you're going,
"Phwoarr!"
and we're going "More sangria.
Oh, I'm so tired of flange."
Were you all in the nude?
No. Well, tops off.
We had tops off, but, you know...
We had tanga briefs or Speedos,
depending on your choice,
and one of us had binoculars.
You didn't need binoculars -
that was the thing.
They'd be sat there
and you're like...
"This is free? Is it?
"I'm not going to get arrested?
This is what you do?
"You disgusting perverts!"
And so it got to the point
where I couldn't...
Get it up?
Well, get it down was the problem.
One or the other, wasn't it?
So this is what happens.
So he's clearly restless
and a bit, you know,
all over the shop.
Were you face down in the sand?
Exactly! there's probably some
lifeguard going,
"Some kids have been playing
Swingball here."
If your mum had picked me off the
Tarmac, it would've stayed behind.
But he didn't tell any of this.
It was all with eyes and lots of...
And then he just left.
He just strode out...to the sea
and he swam out really far.
Like Reggie Perrin!
He was gone for about 15 minutes
and me and John were like,
"There you go. That just happened."
Nobody quite knows
what that was about
and then he came back and was calm.
Did it cool your ardour?
Well, no. Tell everyone
what you'd done out at...
Oh, no! Oh, no.
Yeah, he'd swam out to sea and then
on his back, like a dirty otter...
No, no, no, no!
Not on my back.
"I'm not an animal!"
I am a human being.
On my tiptoes
with the water up to about here,
so as not to... The last thing you
want to be is rescued in that state.
No, the last thing you want to do
is drown.
So using one, you know... Hand.
To steady myself, buoyancy-wise...
Yeah, he came back
like a wonky Popeye.
He'd been out there for ages.
So could we say you created
your own plankton?
Eww!
How is THAT
the gross part of the story?!
It's so weird where the line is
in these things.
Somewhere there's
a half-whale, half-me.
I came back to the beach...
A different man.
..a different man, and they said,
"What have you done?"
You didn't tell us straight away.
You were acting like
it was all normal, like,
"It's just girls. It's fine.
Let's all hang out."
Then you sort of 'fessed up
what you'd been doing.
And I said it was either that
or kill myself.
That was the line.
That was the line.
Let's talk to Reece, because I,
in common with all the audience,
are intrigued by the room in the
house "where the magic happens".
All it is, I've got a...
I like magic.
And rather than have it
all around the house,
I've designated it
upstairs to the attic,
where I have a room
which has a secret door to it.
So there's a bookcase and you take
the top of the banister off,
you press a button
and the door opens... Shazam!
..and you go into the magic room.
Yes, nice.
That was a beautiful noise.
Did you hear that?
Thank you, everyone. Like proper
Bedknobs And Broomsticks.
Literally. Or if you don't want to
use the remote, you can...
On the shelves of the bookcase,
there is a Nefertiti head
and you can put the candle back.
And when the police come,
do they just knock it down?
They don't know anything about it.
I get in there
and I'm just there hiding.
That's the genius!
Is it like a pump in a pub?
It's literally like that.
And that opens the door? Yes.
That opens the door
with a sort of hydraulic thing?
It latches from the other side.
Anyway, so in that room,
there is lots of magic stuff
and lots of horrible mummified
werewolves and heads
and babies and dead things.
Babies? people may worry about that.
Not real ones.
Has your mum been up there?
There's the rest of the body
of that bird.
There's lots of little things.
All things that if the children's
friends come round,
they don't see them
and aren't traumatised.
Does it say that
on the party invite?
And Social Services are not called,
like last time.
Do the children know how to get in?
Yes, they do.
But a few years ago, I acquired...
Because all my life
I'd wanted a Zigzag Lady.
Which is a big box trick.
It was invented by Robert Harbin.
It's a brilliant illusion where a
lady goes into an upright cabinet.
It's got her picture on the front
and you slice her into three
and you push the middle out.
It's brilliant.
And I've always, since I was little,
want to know how that worked
and ultimately own one.
And a few years ago, Andy Nyman,
my friend who is also a magician,
told me someone was selling their
Zigzag Lady, so I bought it.
And I went and bought it and
I brought it back to the house,
took it upstairs and put it in the
magic room. It was brilliant.
Can I ask you, do you have to be
in the Magic Circle
to buy one of those things?
No, I didn't. No, I'm not.
Not in the Magic Circle?
No. I've been tempted to,
but I was just able to buy it
by knowing the man.
He grilled me about it. He was like,
"You are going to treat the box
with respect, aren't you?"
My wife for many years
and I toured with this.
There was a history to it,
so I felt it was quite
a prestigious hand-me-down.
Did he have to show you
how to work it?
I knew by then,
but he showed me it, yes.
So anyway, I went upstairs,
put it in the room.
And then it was just delicious,
playing with it,
because I was finally able to think,
"This is fantastic!
This is the Zigzag Lady!"
I got my wife to go in it.
But then, one day...
Just snuck that through.
One day, very early on
in the excitement of having it...
My two little children
were very small. They were about...
Now they're a third smaller.
Three and five.
I went in the Zigzag Lady and I
shut it and I couldn't get out.
And the children were on the floor
in front of it with the blades.
Oh, my...! In the attic,
with all the stairs to tumble down.
And I was trapped in the
Zigzag Lady, head through,
one hand with a tissue...
Oh, my God!
..and my foot out. I'm going,
"Could you...?
Right, do see the lock?"
They were too little
to understand it
and they started to wander
like Linus down the stairs.
I didn't want to push it,
cos I don't want to break it.
I was more bothered about destroying
the Zigzag Lady
than my children
falling down the stairs.
But I did have to slightly break it
to get out of it,
and it was really annoying, but I
did have to save my children, so...
That's my Zigzag Lady story.
Were you able to repair it?
Yes, it's fine. The handle on the
door that shows the stomach...
Don't tell us how it works!
No, as if I would do that!
There's a little handle that opens
up and you see the stomach through
when you push the middle
to the side.
And that had somehow gone back
on itself
and jammed the whole door from
opening. I couldn't get out.
The Zigzag Lady sounds like
a cocktail
especially for aunties, isn't it?
"I'll have a Zigzag Lady."
"Look what happens
after a couple of these!"
But if you're in your room
and anything happened to you
and no-one knew about the Nefertiti
doodah, how would...?
No-one would know. I've got other
family members that know about it.
They would say,
"He's probably up there".
He'd be in the panic room.
Or they'd leave me to mummify.
Yeah! Are you into Egyptology?
I get the sense that you are.
I'm not. That's just a by-product.
The Nefertiti head
is just a one-off.
And the mummified...?
There's a few mummified things.
And the big pyramids
you built in your garden.
Yeah, there's that.
Do you do any close-up?
Are you good? Can you do stuff?
I'm quite good at some things, yeah.
It depends.
I've not got anything on me now.
A bit of sleight of hand
and card manipulation? Yeah, yeah.
The terrible thing is
I did a few children's parties
and they are the most unforgiving.
They just get up and leave.
They just go, "What's that?
What's that, Mister?"
Adults won't do it,
cos they're polite.
"You can see it up your sleeve!"
Yeah, they just say it as it is
and you want to smack them.
Can you tell me when or how or why
you were put to sleep
because of your troublesome tongue?
Basically, I'd got this lump on
my tongue. It appeared overnight.
So I woke up one morning,
there was a lump,
so I went to go and see my GP.
Are we talking about, like,
a pea size?
No, it was like the size
of a lozenge. Ooh!
It was kind of about that big, yeah.
like a Tune?
Like a Tune. It wasn't square.
It was more like a Strepsil.
OK. Yeah, a red Strepsil. Overnight?
Yeah, overnight.
It just appeared, this lump.
Where?
I'll show you the scar in a minute.
Basically, this lump appeared.
I went to the GP and I said,
"I've got this lump on my tongue."
You didn't say it like that,
did you? What?
MUFFLED: "I've got a lump
on my tongue."
I went, "Lick it!"
I said, "I've got this lump.
It's appeared overnight."
And he said, "I think it's thrush,"
and I went, "Eugh!"
Because I'm a grown-up.
And then he said,
"Look, put this paste on it.
"Go away for two weeks."
Just leave me alone, basically.
"If it hasn't gone,
then come back and see me
"and I'll have a look at it again."
So I put this paste on
for two weeks.
Don't trust myself to do it
properly,
so I did it for another two weeks,
come back, the lump's still there.
He's like, "Actually, no, I think
that is some kind of cyst,
"so we'll just get the
local surgeon in to pop that."
He comes in and goes, "I'm not just
popping it. It could be vascular,
"it could be blood-filled.
I don't know what it is."
The GP goes, "Actually, no, I think
it's some kind of ulcerated nodule.
"Do some blood tests.
Come back in six weeks."
I do the blood tests, come back
six weeks later and he says to me,
"Miss Stevenson, we can confirm
it's definitely a lump."
The wonders of medical science.
Yeah! So at this point, I say,
"Can I see a specialist?"
So he sends me out to
Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.
So this guy looks at it. Straight
away, he diagnoses it. He went,
"It's a polycystic granuloma."
He was from Bolton.
He was brilliant. He said,
"I'm not going to
lie to you, love -
"it's the biggest one
I've ever seen on a tongue."
And I went, "Brilliant!"
I feel pretty happy.
And he went, "We are going
to have to remove it.
"It's going to be under
general anaesthetic,
"but because of the size of it,
there might be some associated risk.
"It may affect your speech."
At which point, of course, you
panic, cos we're performers -
we talk for a living.
Then he said this.
"There's also the possibility
you may lose taste entirely,"
to which I said,
"Mate, have you seen my wardrobe?"
I've got a lot of leopard print
in it. I'm not going to lie.
So basically, I have to have
an operation to remove this...
I don't know if anyone's had a cyst
or anything like that
removed before.
They put you
under a general anaesthetic.
Which is absolutely terrifying,
isn't it? Yes, yes.
Some creepy guy in a gown going,
"You're going to sleep now!"
But it really is that thing
when you kind of think,
"Don't let me die!" and then,
"Oh, I'm dead."
And then you're awake.
You know, it's terrifying.
Have you had that thing where
they tell you to count backwards?
I had my appendix out,
and was like, "I can do this."
I wanted to get as far into it
as I could.
"You won't get to 12."
"One, two..."
You wake up and go, "Three, four!"
Carrying on the game, you do a
set-up before you go to sleep
and then the punchline when you
wake up in the recovery ward.
Yeah, but you have no ability,
because after general anaesthetic,
you're an absolute lunatic.
Yeah, this happened
in the recovery room.
As I was coming around, I
could hear the strains on the radio.
This was so weird, right, cos I was
like, "Am I imagining this?"
This advert came on for this TV show
that I'd done,
a show with John Bishop, and I can
hear an advert for it on the radio.
And I tried to tell the nurse.
I went...
SHE GIBBERS
And she came over and pressed
my morphine drip down full.
And then I said, "I'm famous!"
That's the best review
you can have - free morphine.
And she's like, "Everyone's famous
on morphine, love."
John Bishop's voice
must've sounded extraordinary
when you were kind of just going,
"It's going to be absolutely
brilliant -
"it's got Tiffany Stevenson in it.
I think I'm dead."
Has anyone been recognised as
they've gone under anaesthetic?
Yeah. The head surgeon of the
Royal Free who did my appendix
was a big League Of Gentlemen fan.
Wow!
So he's done it brilliantly.
"You're my wife now!"
It's really small, the cut.
He took his time. Took his time.
He did it really well for me.
He could've really shafted you
by going,
"I'm a big fan of the veterinarian
character, you know."
It's not the same thing, Doctor!
My brother's appendix
burst in Thailand
and we had no travel insurance, so I
had to pay for him to get it fixed.
And you'd think he'd say,
"Thanks for that." Yeah.
But what happened...
He was in a wheelchair
and a week later,
we were wheeling him in this hotel.
We're in the lift going up and these
people sort of recognised me,
but it was all quite quiet.
My brother could tell this.
He was in the wheelchair
and he started pretending
that he was heavily disabled
and was kind of shaking like that
and I'm getting so angry and so...
Like that.
And he's really going for it
and we get outside of the lift
and I punched him in the face.
But there were people
outside the lift
who hadn't seen what had happened,
right?
All they'd seen was a bloke
they recognised off telly
run up to a man in a wheelchair,
punch him and say,
"What is wrong with you?!"
It was just one of these
horrendous moments.
Hang on! You also rang me up
and said,
"Should I throw my laptop
in the river?"
And, to be fair,
you said, "Absolutely!" Yeah.
My girlfriend is...great.
A red light appeared there.
And I love her very much
and she's been away.
Actually, she's
been away in Melbourne for a month
and how understanding of her
is this?
She got back today after a month.
I told her I was going
to pick her up.
The wonderful people at this show
asked me to do the show.
I said, "Of course I will."
She got a taxi back from the airport
and I saw her
for three and a half minutes
and then had to leave to come here.
So I'm very excited about going back
to her.
And she's doing that wonderful thing
where she's understanding,
but livid in the eyes.
Anyway, while she was out
in Melbourne...
Another thing you need to know
about my girlfriend
is she refuses to get an iPhone,
because she's a renegade.
She's absolutely right, by the way.
Oh, she's throwing it to the system,
Alan, I don't mind saying.
And the particular nature
of her protest
is to have an iPod Touch
and a five-year-old Nokia.
Do you know what? Everyone wants
a five-year-old Nokia now.
Everyone you meet goes, "Best phone
I had was that old Nokia."
So she's got that.
"Blinding. Battery never ran out."
So anyway, she's got these two
things which together
would make an iPhone, but because
she doesn't want an iPhone,
she's got the two logistically
complex things to operate.
So she can only check the internet
if it's got wifi,
but the system works,
because if she hasn't got wifi,
she just uses my iPhone,
which she only needs to do 30 to 40
times, a day so it suits us both.
Anyway, I wake up... She's been away
in Melbourne for two weeks.
..to receive a text from her
which said, and I quote,
"I must have forgot to sign myself
out of Google on your iPhone."
And then she moves into
capital letters...
"BECAUSE I CAN SEE EVERYTHING
YOU'VE SEARCHED FOR!"
Oh, my God!
Holy fucking shit!
That was the first thing
he looked at. That was it.
Straight in Google, and there is
actually Jesus in a turd.
And also, my laptop
had sort of died,
because I updated the thing
and that had hung,
so I'm basically being strung up
by technology I haven't asked for.
But hang on.
You also rang me up and said,
"Should I throw my laptop
in the river?"
And, to be fair, you said,
"Absolutely!"
Yeah, burn it.
So anyway, I'm on Skype text
with her.
She's kind of... I'm sweating.
I've managed to get into
the Google history
that's she's able to access
and which is now our "shared" Google
history, which is fucking horrific,
and I'm thinking, "Why have Google
even got... I didn't...
"Get out of my house!
I didn't ask you!"
They're in your house.
Fuck off, Google!
They're in everyone's house.
Can I issue a word of warning too?
And when I say this happened
to a friend of mine,
this did actually happen
to a friend of mine.
It didn't happen to me
and I'm pretending.
She had a bit of a fling on a job
with a bloke in another country.
They took some photos of each other
in some compromising positions
while they were connected to wifi.
And those photos went directly
from her phone into her Cloud
and were therefore immediately
visible on her home computer.
Oh, no!
No, actually,
it was on HIS home computer
and were therefore seen
by his partner.
So try to be careful. If you are
taking compromising photos,
make sure you've turned the wifi off
and the 3G off
and you're not connecting
to the Cloud.
But they didn't realise
they'd gone into the Cloud.
They thought somehow that their phone
had been hacked
and they were paranoid that some
private detective was after them.
On a Saturday, I have a radio
show with my friend Elis,
who is also a comedian
and been on this show.
On XFM, and we asked people
to text in with their times
where technology had let them down.
This woman found out her husband
was cheating on her
when she pressed control+V
on her computer...
That is the "copy" shortcut.
forgotten to take it off
the copy/paste thing.
So she was sort of coming up with a
Word document and she pressed it
and it was like, "Hi, I'm Michael.
I'm into Thai food and long walks."
I thought you said Typhoo there.
That's not very appealing, is it?
"I'm into traditional tea brands."
Well, listen, people, we really...
I have to draw you together now
to try and think of a title
for this show. Oh, my God.
Thank you for your splendid tales.
The one I particularly liked
was your description
of John being "like a dirty otter".
Not the name of the show, Alan!
And I also quite liked,
"It must have been big
to serve a lot of people."
"He had the nerve to spoon me."
That's good. That's quite good.
That sounds like a...like a...
A B-movie! Yeah, right.
"He had the nerve to spoon me."
It's the first autobiography,
volume one. Chapter one, yeah.
Or something about Nefertiti's head
as well? That would be quite nice.
Nefertiti's head isn't bad.
Or how about,
"Daddy's stuck in the trick!"
"She tried to pop it
back on its legs."
That sparrow's
still flying somewhere!
It doesn't matter - he can't fly.
That's not bad.
How about that?
"Is that sparrow ever gonna land?"
"Did you make your own plankton?"
LAUGHTER
See, it got more the second time
round! That is a grower.
A bit like John.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
please will you thank
all my guests this evening -
Tiffany Stevenson, John Robins,
Reece Shearsmith and Russell Howard.
And you have been watching
It Must Have Been Big
To Serve A Lot Of People.
Thank you very much.
Subtitles by Ericsson