Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (2014–…): Season 3, Episode 7 - Watch Out, Wanky Bill's About - full transcript

ALAN DAVIES AS YET UNTITLED 07
CTO M916B/82
BF000000

Good evening. I'm Renee Zellweger.

I've got one foot
that's slightly hurting,
so I think I was limpingon it.

Looking forward to making
some jokes but, more importantly,
making some friends.

APPLAUSE

Hello, I'm Alan Davies
and this is As Yet Untitled.

The show with no name and no agenda

or preparation
or proper intro or anything.

But we do try, during
the course of the programme,

to come up with a title for the
show, that's our simple aim.

And, in order to do that, I invite
four very funny and talented guests



and then we have a conversation.
So please will you welcome my guests.

APPLAUSE

Here they all are.

Hand-picked. Welcome.
Welcome. Welcome.

Alun Cochrane is here.
Alun Cochrane knows his place.

Alun Cochrane is here.

APPLAUSE

Jo Brand has a very colourful CV
and knows the real cost of knowledge.

Jo Brand is here.
APPLAUSE

Tommy Tiernan. Tommy Tiernan,
who is a very charitable man

and was once told a very strange
thing by a very strange man.

Tommy Tiernan is here.

APPLAUSE

And Chris Martin. Welcome to Chris.
Chris Martin, who isn't Chris Martin.



Chris Martin's here.
APPLAUSE

THEY LAUGH

And perhaps we should clear
that up straightaway, Chris.

Oh, yeah.
That you're not Chris Martin...

I'm not, no, no, no I'm not.
..out of Coldplay. Out of Coldplay.

Every day, I will get... All right,
pack it in with the groaning.

LAUGHTER

You weren't expecting Coldplay.
You're bloody lucky they're not here.

Yeah. No I get it all the...
It's every...

Actually, weirdly, Alun, the first
gig I ever did, you were the MC.

I spoke to you after, I said, "Do
you think I should change my name?"

And you said "Nah,
it'll be all right."

Did I? But it's been
the bane of my existence, so...

I have other bad advice
available if anybody wants it.

Sorry.
It's all right.

You said it wouldn't matter
and it doesn't really matter

but it's, like, I did do a gig
in The Slug And Lettuce in...

Yeah, my career's going really well.

Which branch of The Slug And Lettuce?
The Slug And Lettuce in Waterloo.

So, you know, it's zone 1,
it's all right. And, er...

LAUGHTER
And, er...

It was just like a new-material gig.
This is maybe a year and a half ago,

around Christmas time,
and I did the gig.

And afterwards I sat down
and these two people

were aggressively talking to the
promoter, sort of pointing at me.

Like that. And I said,
"What happened there?"

And she said, "These two people
have flown over from Denmark

"because they thought they
were going to be watching

"the lead singer of Coldplay."
LAUGHTER

And then they were like,
"No, no, no."

So they were like, "Chris Martin,
like, that's not him."

And I was like, "Yeah,
it's a relatively... I don't know,

"in Norway maybe it's a rare
name, it's quite common in the UK."

So they were, like...
Then they were like,

"Are you sure he's not
going to be here?"

Then they got a photo of him
out on their phone and went,

"Are you sure?" Like I was going
to be like, "Myeh! Yes, it's..."

And then, I don't know,

I thought the clue was the fact that
it was in The Slug And Lettuce.

That his career is better than
The Slug And Lettuce at the moment.

Well, they thought they were on some
special, low-key, unannounced gig.

I feel bad because I could have
stopped that story happening. Yeah.

If you'd said, "Do you think
I should change it?"

And I'd said, "Yeah."
That would not have occurred.

You basically cost
some people airfares there

because of your terrible advice.
If you'd just gone with Mick Jagger
as you'd intended. Yeah, yeah.

LAUGHTER

You could probably get away
with touring in Rwanda or...

..Micronesia.

Very small countries.
As THE Chris Martin, you know.

LAUGHTER

I'd feel pretty guilty.

A lot of guilt taking money
from not that wealthy African people

and conning them into...
Who said anything about money?

Just go and enjoy the hospitality.

"No singing today,
no singing today." Yeah.

I'll just do some
stories about my life

and have a different face
for the whole thing as well.

I had a weird... The other
one was when I was a student,

I tried to extend my overdraft,
so I rung up and said my name.

And she went,
"You're not THE Chris Martin?"

And I was, like, "I'm extending my
overdraft from £1,000 to £1,500,

"I think he's got..."
It's not likely. No.

Nah!

I think you need to worry because
I do a lot of hideous corporate gigs

and they're normally a surprise
to the people you're doing them to.

And I get, you know...
My name is announced and I walk on

and I get a lot of depressed
sort of sighs.

And that's when you need
to worry really, they just...

Because I'm inappropriate for them.

I did a gig a few months ago

with a load of builders
in Southampton. Lovely.

And, you know, when I came on,
there were, like, sighs of despair.

Because they were looking up
thinking, "We want someone
to talk to us about building.

"What on earth can this
fat menopausal woman

"possibly have to say to us?"

And you know it's always
a surprise, I said to them

"You will be surprised because
I know a lot about building."

My dad's a structural engineer,
my brother's a quantity surveyor

and my husband's a fucking plank.

LAUGHTER
So there you are.

A lot.

APPLAUSE

Have you had people thinking
you're related to Russell Brand?

I do tell people
Russell Brand's my son.

Occasionally.

But, obviously,
looks-wise, there's not...

I have the beard in the morning.
But, um...

No, not really. But actually,
it is kind of hilarious

people's sort of
sketchy knowledge of you.

So I was in a chip shop
the other night.

I know I don't look like
I go in chip shops.

This woman pointed at me and went,
"Dawn Saunders."

LAUGHTER

I was like, "Hello.

"First of all, I'm not Dawn
French or Jennifer Saunders

"but well done for eliding
them together and getting it wrong."

I had one when I was
at the World Cup

and I was with the Scotland
supporters in Bordeaux

and one of them looked at me
across this particular beer tent

and he looked a bit more pissed than
the others and he went, "Alan! Alan!

"Fucking hell, Alan..."

"Partridge! Partridge!"

LAUGHTER

And then he went, "A-ha! A-ha!"

And he was made up, you know.

I had a guy when I was
walking through Bristol...

I'm not at all well known
but a pissed guy got out of a cab,

pointed at me and went
"Uglier version of Jenson Button."

Then got back in the cab
and it drove off.

LAUGHTER

Like, he'd got the guy to pull over,
"This is worth an extra fiver."

Lookee-likee cab driving, weren't we?

We started at three o'clock
on Good Friday,

just as Christ was being crucified,

and I talked until
he got up from the dead.

I think I have normal
bathroom grooming habits.

As one gets older,
I think more of them creep up

on you than they used to, you know.
I caught myself

moisturising my elbows the other
day, which is a strange development.

I can't remember ever thinking
that my elbows were too dry.

And then I'd had a bath
or a shower and I thought,

"Oh, I'm moisturising
my elbows again."

And then thought,
"Again?! When did this begin?"

But I was recently
in Glasgow with my family

and my children and my wife and
I went swimming in the hotel pool.

And after it, me and my son were
in the hotel gym changing rooms

and there was an older gentleman
in there, quite a fat man,

who, in a public changing rooms,
walked across to the hairdryer

blow-dried his hair and then
just did his genitals.

And just stood there and hair-dried
his genitals in a public...

And I thought,
"I've never felt that need."

And it shocked me to an extent.
So there you have it.

Is that a thing?
Is that an actual thing?

Because, you know, I've towel dried

and I occasionally
get a handful of talcum powder

and throw it at the bit in-between
the genitals and the bum hole.

Shall we just do a straw poll?
Hands up, guys,

anyone that's dried their
genitals with a hairdryer.

LAUGHTER

Really?

Three people, four people.

Now, I have now obviously!

But not in a swimming-pool
changing room? No.

It's a complicated system of rules
and etiquette in one of those places.

About where you're supposed to look.
I looked and it wasn't on the chart.

There was "No Diving. No Bombing."

But there was no... "No drying
your pubes with a hairdryer."

I'm convinced in every gym
there's always one bloke

who's just way too comfortable with
being naked in a gym changing room.

Yeah, but I wouldn't have
had it pegged for this guy.

LAUGHTER

Is this too modern a grooming thing?
When I was at university,

me and all my housemates decided
to separately Veet our bum holes.

Is that a weird...?
Oh! Just to...

Hang on. Do what?
So...

Made it sound like we were
a blood pact or something.

But we were just talking about...
I don't know how it came up

but someone said, "Someone,
such and such has Veet..."

Veet is like hair-removal cream

and obviously the bum hole
can be a hairy area. Yeah.

Veet is just like... Is it like
Immac? It's a brand name, like Immac.

I think it did used to be called
Immac and it's changed to Veet.

Is that right? There's a bit of
murmuring. Yes, there's murmuring.

It's like Marathon and Snickers.

LAUGHTER

Although,
not to get them muddled up.

Mind you, a Marathon in your bum
hole, that's a whole different thing.

Maybe that's why you're Veeting it.
I don't know.

LAUGHTER

Yeah. It all went a lot more
smoothly.. Yeah. ..after the Veet.

How many of you? Once you start
doing it, though, you can't...

The floodgates are open,
you've got to do it every
few months after that.

Like Pringles. Yeah, once...
Once you pop, you can't stop. Yeah.

It makes... I'd really
recommend it, genuinely,

because you don't get... This is
disgusting. You don't get the...

Like I thought it was going to be
anything but with this subject.

You don't get the bum chunks,
you know?

No-one ever talks about them
but every guy has them

and it gets rid of them.
That guy, see, he knows.

I'm not sure every guy has them.

It can take ages, it cuts out
a lot of the time, you know?

What can take ages?
Wiping your bum without... You know.

What are you doing... What are you
doing with all this free time?

Have you taken up squash
or something?

Do you know, if there was
a programme called Loose Men,

this is what it would be like.
LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE
It would.

The door's open for you.
That is a very good title for a show.

That really...
Loose Men? Loose Men.

Well, I'm pleased everything's
going so well for you now. Yeah.

Did you all do it? I mean, how did
you verify each other's bum holes?

No, we just trust. You had to trust
in each other. We trust each other.

"So I have Veeted." Was it a pact?
It was a communal tube in the
bathroom, so it was just...

Why is that now the weird bit?
It's like...

"If you do it to yourself,
it's fine with your own one."

That's why it feels so peculiar
because the bloke's drying himself

with the hairdryer.
The hairdryer's not in contact
with any of his body parts, is it?

No, in a way, it's fine, isn't it?
It's fine isn't, it? Yeah.

He's only had it in his hand
like everyone else but it's odd.

If it came to it, you might
use a different hairdryer, for no
reason that makes any logical sense.

And, for some reason,
people here find it disgusting

that you didn't have
your own tube of Veet.

LAUGHTER

Even though the tube
isn't going anywhere.

It's just in the hands of you
and your weird friends.

In your weird hairless house.
LAUGHTER

Now tell me, "Tommy Tiernan
is a very charitable man."

What's gone on there, Tom?
It's a big story this one, Alan.

Um, I'm not even sure
where to start it.

It's a long... I could come at
this story from a myriad of...

..er, places.

I'm not even sure the one I'm going
to choose will be the right one.

But I have to decide now.
I'd say, about eight years ago,

I was getting very tired of
my style of stand-up, you know.

I was angry on stage
and I was shouting

and it was a very
kind of sneery comedy.

So I thought I need
to change my style.

How do you change
your style of stand-up?

I thought I'll go on stage
and I'll keep talking

until I'm not angry any more.

I'll talk it out of myself.

So I decided to establish
the world record for the...

In my shy, retiring way...

..for the world's longest
stand-up comedy gig.

Er, and I thought
by the end of it...

You couldn't be angry
for 36 hours, you know.

..that, eventually,
a softer style would emerge.

And I decided that I would do it

for a charity in Galway that deals
with homeless boys, you know.

So, er, we did the gig.

It lasted 36 hours and 15 minutes

and we raised 20,000

Irish pounds for this charity.

And the charity...

On the board of management
are the Catholic Church.

And they refused the donation...

..because...

LAUGHTER
Yes?

I decided that Easter weekend

would make a great...

LAUGHTER

..weekend for a
long stand-up comedy gig.

So we started at
three o'clock on Good Friday,

just as Christ was being...

LAUGHTER

..was being crucified

and I talked until
he got up from the dead.

LAUGHTER

I talked, er...

APPLAUSE

I talked until dawn
on Easter Sunday.

And the, er...

When we went to give money to the
organisation, they said it was...

They couldn't accept it
because of the blasphemous nature

of the way it had been raised,
that laughing

over the course
of the crucifixion, er...

LAUGHTER

..was ill-judged and not sensitive.
I have a problem with that.

So what we did was...
So they refused the donation.

And, eventually, what we did was
about three or four months later,

the charity mysteriously received

an anonymous donation of £20,000,
which they accepted.

Oh! Mmm!
LAUGHTER

So that's the story of that.
Were you doing

the same show repeated
or did you manage

to make up new things
for that entire time?

Well, I've been doing
stand-up for about 15 years,

so I had everything
I'd ever come up with.

I got it out in front of me
and I reckoned I could do...

I reckoned I had
22 hours of material

and I thought I'd
just busk the last 14.

LAUGHTER

I thought, by that stage,
you know, I'll be on a roll.

And the new softer style
will be emerging.

It would have to.
The new tired style.

I want to know what happened
to your anger, though.

Did ii dissipate?
Do you know what? It did.

Um, I didn't notice it
until October of that year. Er...

By the time I had the strength
to start doing shows again. Yeah.

But, absolutely, my style changed.

It became softer,
more playful and a bit more...

Before that, it was so...

I was like Frankie Boyle
on cheap speed.

You weren't like that when
you started off, were you?

No. Do you remember him being
angry and sneery? No. I don't

No, I don't remember you
being that way. I'm surprised.

Do you think you felt that of
yourself? Or was that really...?

Er, I know I got into a lot of
trouble with the angry stuff.

Did you? Yeah. With the audiences
or with reaction by...? No.

I was banned from tours of America,
banned from tours of Canada.

I had a hit... There was..

The Irish police came
and told me there was...

My name was on...
A hit list. ..a hit list.

Genuinely. No, it was very bad.

I got into lots and lots of trouble.

Because, at the time, it was the
destructive stuff I found funny.

You know,
just causing the most mayhem,

saying the most offensive thing,
that's what I got a kick out of.

And then I kind of
got tired of that.

That's fine and that's a legitimate
way of doing stand-up

and it's good to have
stand-ups who do that.

But it's a terrible place to live.

So, after two years, I said
"I need to change style here."

And the only way I could think
of doing it was by doing...

Just keep talking,
get up and keep talking

until you're not angry
any more and it worked.

Well, it sort of worked,
though, because surely

you talked the anger out of yourself
and they gave the cheque back

and you went, "Oh, for f...!"
LAUGHTER

Immediately.
"Guess who's back?!"

"Fuck you! Fuck you!"

LAUGHTER

"Oh, we've got to do
another marathon.

Ring on the doorbell. Guy with a
really fantastic bunch of flowers

from a friend of mine.
Me, really bad tempered,

"Oh, for fuck's sake, got to
find a fucking vase now, have I?"

You know?

Jo Brand, your CV is colourful.

It's not really. Is it just
that it's on coloured paper?

SHE LAUGHS

No, it's just... I'm sure everyone
has a CV with very weird jobs on it.

But you did lots of jobs before you
started comedy, didn't you? I did.

You really were a proper working
human... I was. ..out in the world.

My first job was pulling
the heads off chrysanthemums

in a flower nursery,
until I got the sack

because I pulled every head off.

You're actually meant to pull the
little ones off so the big one grew.

But I didn't really listen..

I didn't really listen
to the instructions.

You just went around taking
the heads off all the flowers?

I know, that seems a bit cruel,
doesn't it? I bloody hate flowers.

Actually, I don't hate them
that much. But when I was...

When I'd just had my first baby...
Women here will concur with this,

You don't get any sleep, so you're
extraordinarily bad tempered

the whole time
for about eight years.

And, um, I remember, like, the first
week, I'd had no sleep at all.

Ring on the doorbell. Guy with a
really fantastic bunch of flowers

from a friend of mine.
Me, really bad tempered,

"Oh, for fuck's sake, got to
find a fucking vase now, have I?"

You know, every joy of life

is ruined when
you're tired, isn't it?

Anyway, I hate flowers.
So, what else have I done?

Oh, yeah, I worked in a kitchen for
a while for a very temperamental

French chef, who once got me
to peel a whole bowl of garlic

and then he knocked it off the side
when he walked passed it

and just went, "Pick it up!"
Like that to me.

So I did...
Where's he buried?

LAUGHTER

No, I picked it all up and it took
bloody ages on my hands and knees

and then I up-ended the bowl
on the floor again and went,

"Now you pick it up."

Do you know what? It made me feel
great. But I didn't keep that job.

LAUGHTER

I also worked
cleaning a TB hospital.

That's one of my favourites.
Yikes! I know.

Did you say TV?
TB. Oh! Yes.

What did you think I said?
I thought you said "TV hospital".

Like you were a reporter
on Casualty or something.

That sounds all right.
But TB hospital sounds awful.

It was, there was a lot of coughing.
Yeah?

Yes. Where and when
did they have TB over here?

Er, well, this was
in the early 1970s,

I'm actually a lot older
than I look. Not!

I'm 71. He's like Paxman
over there, isn't he?

Um... Paxman!
He's like Paxman, rigorous!

"When was this?"

I'm more like an Aldi
version of Roy Keane.

Ah! Um...

What I used to like
about that job was that

they would give us a free lunch
and when I went home I would...

My mum had also cooked lunch as well

and I'd never tell them
I'd already had one.

And this is the result,
obviously, I feel bad about it.

But I think my favourite job
was being a hop-picker,

which I think I've mentioned before
as a precursor to something else

that happened in my life.
But hop-picking,

if no-one's done it, please have
a go, it's such a brilliant laugh.

I did it with...
There were no woman at all,

it was all teenage blokes who
were stoned right from the get go.

So we would just have a load
of dope sprinkled on toast

before we started work

and then the giggling would start
and that would go on all day.

And the way that it worked was,
one person drove the tractor,

one stood up in this crow's nest
and another one hooked the hops in.

That's what you're
meant to do anyway.

What we would do is, we would
stick a knife up in the ground,

drive a tractor over it,
"Oh, we've got a puncture."

So that would take
about four hours to mend

and then, when it was mended,
because we were down in Sussex,

we would just go on
a drive to Bodiam Castle

on our hop-picking tractor. Have
a little rest, come back, go home.

It was marvellous.

I was quite rebellious. I got
thrown out of home when I was 16

for being "not a very nice
person to live with"

and having a boyfriend who
was the local heroin dealer.

Which, for some reason,
my dad didn't really like.

I don't know why. I thought
that was very unreasonable of him.

The problem with my parents was they
did not compromise one little bit.

And that's what I learnt
from being a teenager

that you do actually have to do
a bit of give and take, you know.

But they never let me do anything
and I think that's what happens,

you know, as a teenager, if your
parents are really strict.

Compromise would've been useful. It
would. You could have said to them,

"Is it OK if I go out with
the local heroin dealer?" Yeah.

And they could have said,
"We'd prefer the ecstasy guy."

LAUGHTER

Compromise. You could have
had some better nights out

and everything could have
moved along fine. Yeah.

Now, Tommy Tiernan,
"the very strange man"?

Was it someone you knew, the strange
man who told you a strange thing?

No, no, no.

It was a long time ago.
Was it? Was it as a child?

No, it was on the occasion
of my 22nd birthday.

I was given a present of, like,

a real, genuine, bona-fide

astrological reading
by an astrologer.

So you come with your time of birth,
your place of birth

and your date of birth and he
gets that information beforehand

and then does a huge
chart of your life.

So I went to this...

It was Ed Sheeran's uncle...

Really?
..who was doing this.

So he had all the information for
about a week beforehand and then...

You just never know, do you?
No. With Tommy.

Bill Sheeran, Bill Sheeran,

Ed Sheeran's uncle

was an astrologer
in the west of Ireland. Um...

So he did out
this huge chart for me,

saying where all the planets were,

when I was born and all
the different influences

and explained all the different
things that would happen in my life

and had happened and stuff like
that and it was all overwhelming

and it seemed very scientific
and stuff like that.

And the idea came into my head

of asking him,...

.."Do you know when
I was going to die?"

He said he did.

He didn't normally tell people

but because it was my birthday...

LAUGHTER

He... So he unfurled
the last bit of the chart,

like something from a movie
on a pirate ship.

And he told me
when I was going to die...

..and what I was going to die from.

That's the end of that story.
LAUGHTER

Has the date come yet?

Unless this is the afterlife.

LAUGHTER

And this could be a repeat.
LAUGHTER

I may have... I may have...
Well, I...

Have you ever told anyone
the time and the date?

Did you keep it to yourself? I told
the girl who got me the present

of the reading and we're
not together any more.

So, yeah,
I have that information. Yeah.

And he was really serious about that?
Absolutely, completely, yeah.

He was shocked when I asked him
but a very honest man.

There was no... He didn't seem
airy-fairy or stuff like that,

he seemed to take it very seriously.

And after persuading him he
said, "Yeah, OK, I can do that."

So he told me when

and then he, um, he said,

"I can probably tell what you're
going to die from as well."

I said, "OK." And so he did.

So, what are you
going to do on the day?

I mean, is it an accident...
I thought... ..or an illness?

It's a er...

It's not an accident.

It's a murder.

By him just to prove he's right.

Yeah, if you wake up in the morning
and Bill Sheeran's on your doorstep,

don't let him in.
No.

I find it inspiring, actually.

I don't know, I'm 46 now.

I don't know if it's a getting-older
thing anyway when you start to,

you know, lose your hair and
become aware of your mortality.

But I kind of feel as if it's
not a bad pressure to have,

the pressure to live a good life
and live as fine a life as you can.

What will you be like if you wake up
the next day and it hasn't happened?

He hasn't given me a day, he's kind
of given me an 18-month time.

Oh, so he hasn't actually
named a date?

No, he just said,
"Around this time."

Are we in the 18-month window
at the moment? No, we're not. No.

Is it coming up soon?

No, er... I feel like we're in it.
I know.

Two things.
One is this is absolute bollocks.

The other thing is, it seems like
the most private and personal thing
that you shouldn't asksomeone.

If that was a thing that people knew
in life, the date of their death,

and no-one ever told anyone
what it was. That would be
the biggest secret in your life.

I tell you what, it would
revolutionise the credit card
industry, wouldn't it? If you knew.

LAUGHTER

Suddenly, we're not
so keen after all.

"Graham spent a lot on his card
Tuesday." "Oh, shit, did he?"

"Normally, such a sensible guy."

Then Wednesday morning...
Yeah.

Did it make you a cynic
as it happened?

Like, when he was telling you
the early stuff like,

"Your life will be like this, it'll
be great, you'll drive this car

"and then you're going to die at
that period." Were you like,

"Oh, this is all
bullshit after all!"

No, I kind of... I suppose
I'll be highly suggestible

and I... I... I... I kind of...
I liked believing him.

Oh, right.
Oh, great! And, er...

So, yeah, it's far away enough
now that I... And close enough.

Yeah. I don't know how
seriously to take it really.

I haven't...
Hopefully, he'll call you and say,

"I'm so sorry, I made a terrible
mistake." "It was the wrong chart."

Someone else's chart.

So, yeah.
Oh, no.

I know David Renwick,
who writes Jonathan Creek

and many other things.
When he started his career,

he was a journalist
at a local paper in Luton,

and one of the jobs
he had as a young journalist

was doing the horoscopes.

HE LAUGHS

The person who normally
did them wasn't in that day.

"Do the horoscopes." "What?
I don't know anything about it."
"It doesn't matter."

Just write stuff.
Yeah.

Some stranger's going to come into
your life. You might meet someone.

Some 18-month window
in the future you will die.

I mean, I could have said that
and it's exactly the same amount

of credibility, really, hasn't it?

What's this about you knowing your
place anyway? What is your place?

Oh, I don't read reviews.

I used to read comedy reviews
and I used to Google myself

and all that stuff you do when
you're naive before you realise

how people are mean about you.
And the positive bit of me thinks,

"Oh, they're not writing that
stuff online for me to read."

They don't think for a second
I would go home and google

"Alun Cochrane at gig"
or "Comedian Alun Cochrane."

So I don't get involved
in any of that now.

I know it's out there and I'm sure
there are some people saying nice
things and slagging me off.

I don't read any of it.
But you literally can't escape it.

I was walking my son to school
earlier this year

and he said to me
something along the lines of,

"Dad, I'm going to put
the family into an order

"and the game is you have
to guess what the order is."

And I said, "All right, let's do it,

"this sounds like a fun way
of whiling away the short
journey to your school."

I think that's what I said.

And it was the dog.

It's not a good start already,
is it?

The dog is the first out of the hat.
Even on the journey to school,

I was thinking, "This had better
be fastest fucking runner." Um...

We've got a whippet, she's
definitely the fastest runner.

Actually, my name should be next
out the hat, I'm second fastest.

The dog is the best one in the
family. She's the best at something.

And so I was thinking,
"It's probably fastest runner."

It was the dog, his little sister,

his mum, him and then me.

And it's not a long walk
to his school but I was
on it like Hercule Poirot.

It was, as he perceives it,
age seven,

the order of funniness
of members of his family.

LAUGHTER

And I, the professional
stand-up comedian,

got bottom billing in my own home.
Well, you're the opening act.

Top billing went to a creature
that regularly eats shit.

That does not seem fair, does it?

And I felt terrible having the dog
destroyed, I'm not going to lie.

What is it about the dog
that's so funny to him?

No idea, I never got to that.
I was too self-absorbed.

"What do you mean
you don't think I'm funny?!"

And then going,
"I don't read my press anyway."

"I'm not interested in the reviews."

But, yeah, you know, it's quite...

You don't want to be that dad
in the playground going,

"My funniness paid
for your school shoes."

All the other parents going,

"Oh, God! That guy that is sometimes
on Dave's angry, isn't he?"

LAUGHTER

Yeah, so I know my place.
You know your place.

Yeah, they do serve you up a slice
of humble pie when you want it.

How old is your oldest?
He's the oldest,

he's coming up to eight. He's seven.

When do you think you might let him
watch one of your gigs? Oh!

18? 16, maybe 16. Yeah.

He'll YouTube it, though,
before then, surely.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Has he got
any sense of what you do, though?

Yeah, yeah.
He does know that...?

There was a little while where, I
think, other people tried to give
him that sense and theywould say,

"You know your dad's a comedian?"
And he would be looking as if,
like, "Yeah? And?" I don't...

It just didn't really...

"Think he's funny, check out
the dog." Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That is exactly it.

And then...
He's got two-million subscribers.

My daughter came home from school,
her first day at primary school,

and she went, "Mum?" I went, "Yeah?"
She went, "Are you Jo Brand?"

LAUGHTER

It was lovely but she doesn't...
You know. She doesn't...

You don't normally call your mum
by both names. No, absolutely.

"Cathy Martin, can I have
some dinner?" That's my mum's
name by the way, obviously.

My mums name's Mrs Cochrane,
we're a very formal family.

I still don't know her first name.

My son came to... When he was
16, came to one of my shows

and the last 15 minutes
of the show were just filth, like,

complete muckeridge. And...

LAUGHTER

Aural porn, it was just the most...

I had a potty mouth.

And, er, we had
a three-hour drive back after

and he spent the entire time just
looking out the passenger window.

LAUGHTER

At night, at his own reflection.

When you're doing the monologue,
crying to your children

of just inserting
"Fucking wake up, Dad!"

LAUGHTER

I did a school play and I was
Macduff in Macbeth and it's about

half an hour and I look in the front
row and my dad's there asleep.

Half an hour in.
Did you try and wake him?

Or do your lines loudly?
No, I just was like,

"Come on!" He falls asleep,
it's his son in a play.

It was kind of minimalist,
and so I was Macduff

and there's a bit
where you have to...

It's so minimalist,
the only prop was my baby.

You have to cry over
your dead babies as Macduff.

My babies were a pillow.

So I'm, like, crying over
this pillow, and he slept
for the whole thing basically.

You weren't attempted to use,
when you were doing the monologue,

crying to your children
of just inserting,

"Fucking wake up, Dad!"

LAUGHTER

No?

"This child doth sleep the long
sleep of... For fuck's sake!"

LAUGHTER

"Long into the night of death...
Fucking wake up!"

LAUGHTER

"All the other fucking dads
are awake."

Maybe they weren't, the whole row...

And all the dads go,
"Blblblblblblbl!"

Oh, you're very funny
when you're angry like that.

LAUGHTER

Now, Jo Brand,
is the real cost of knowledge

is it in anyway similar to
knowing when you're going to die?

Is it that sort of knowledge?
Well, it came out of a seance...

Oh, did it?
..that statement, Well, no. We...

I used to share a flat with
three people in Tunbridge Wells,

which, as you probably know,
is a very posh place.

It was on the Pantiles, which is a
very ancient part of Tunbridge Wells

in a very old house,
probably 400-500 years old.

And it always felt
a bit weird in there.

So one night when we
were pissed, we decided

to have a seance and
we didn't ask any questions,

we just let the glass kind of move.

And it spelt out,
"Knowledge is not free."

Which is quite a weird thing,
isn't it, really?

Um, and so we asked it,
"What price is knowledge?"

And it spelt out, "Your life."
And just shot off the table.

"So we all kind of went, "Oooohh!"

You never get positive stuff
out of these readings. No, I know.

You never get a reading, "Everything
will be all right." That'd be nice.

You're not going to die.
So we stopped after that because

we were all a bit freaked out.
Mainly because we were so drunk.

And went to bed and I went to sleep

and woke up about
two o'clock in the morning

and in the kind of semi-darkness

saw someone standing
in the corner of the room.

Er... Yeah.

Bill Sheeran.

LAUGHTER

Well, Bill Sheeran in drag

with a Victorian bonnet on.

But anyway, he looked very nice.

At the same time, my friend
who was in the other room,

sort of quite a long way away says,
and I don't know about this,

that a coat hanger flew out of the
wardrobe and hit the opposite wall.

It was all kind of getting
a bit kind of, you know,

Hammer Horror by then.

And also she said as well

that she was sat up
in bed having a cigarette

and something made her burn herself.

But, possibly, she's a bit mad.

I don't know. Perhaps
falling asleep whilst smoking.

Yes, it may have been that,
I don't know.

My girlfriend, now wife,
once tried to scare me.

She'd just got out the shower,
she was in the bathroom,

she thought she was scaring me,
jumped out,

and she didn't have any clothes on,
but it wasn't me.

LAUGHTER

It was Brenda, our cleaner.

She's very small
and she's Irish, Irish lady.

She's full of superstitions like
don't put your shoes on the table

and all kinds of things.
Not cleaning above head height
is one of her things.

LAUGHTER

But our adorable
much-loved Brenda shat herself.

LAUGHTER

Completely. But then also
the shame of the nakedness

and all of it was too
much for either of them.

So my wife went and got dressed
and they sort of

passed each other a couple
of times in the kitchen

and she kept trying to say to her,
"I'm really sorry by the way."

Brenda would go, "No, no."

LAUGHTER

You know,
"We should never speak of this."

"It's better this way."

They've never had
a conversation about it.

I heard a story about you.
Really?

Just collecting...
I don't know if it's true or not

but I've told it loads of times.

Well then, therefore it will be.

Did you once, um, er, er,...

..get persuaded
to walk a young lady home

and enter a room full of
pictures of you on the wall?

No, that's an episode
of Alan Partridge.

Is that television?
Yeah.

I've told that story
to so many people.

No, that's not... No,
I don't think that's ever happened.

How's that come about in your head?

This little kind of moment
in my brain opened up

and said, "Remind Alan of the time

"he didn't do something
you saw on television."

With another Alan,
it's an obvious join there.

Now listen,
we need to think of a title.

I hate to bring us all down but we
all know that we are going to die,

that is, you know...
That is true.

You're looking for a title, yeah?

What about, We're All Going To Die?

Alan Says We're All Going To Die.
We're all going to die.

Tommy May Or May Not Die Before Us.

Or you could call it,
Not Even As Funny As The Dog.

APPLAUSE

Yeah. Well, in an effort
to come up with a title,

perhaps we just need to order
the guests in funniness.

We'll put Alun Cochrane first.

Finally, top of the pile.

Loose Men With Chris Martin.

Put that in the Radio Times,
we'll have about a million viewers.

Dave will crash.

But something...
Your arsehole's going to feature,

I know your arsehole's going
to feature somewhere in it.

Tommy Tiernan Knows When He's
Going To Die. I quite like.

Was there an actual ghost
in your room, do you think?

Or was it a dressing gown on the
back of the door or something?

I think it was an actual ghost.
Do you really? Yes.

Well, listen, audience, please
will you thank all my guests?

Alun Cochrane.
APPLAUSE

Jo Brand.
APPLAUSE

Tommy Tiernan.
APPLAUSE

Chris Martin.
APPLAUSE

I'm Alan Davies and you have been
watching Loose Men With Chris Martin.

Thank you very much.
APPLAUSE

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