Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (2014–…): Season 4, Episode 5 - Just Pop a Knife Near Your Penis - full transcript

ALAN DAVIES AS YET UNTITLED
CTO N221R/82
BF000000

Hello there. I'm Jon Richardson
and I'm here to be entertained.

I'm not usually out this late.

Hello. We're in the basement.
It smells quite damp!

So what they've done, they've put me
up in a hotel above the studio

and have made me leave, put my
coat on, walk away to walk back.

My dressing room!

Whoo!

APPLAUSE

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

This is the show that's completely
unprepared and unrehearsed



and disorganised
and pointless in many ways,

but by the end of it, we will come up
with a title for the show.

But in order to do that,
I need help from my guests,

so please will you welcome them?
APPLAUSE

Welcome.

Here they are! Hello!
Here they all are.

Now, who do we have?
Let's see who we have.

We have Mark Olver here. Mark Olver
fell over and ended up in America.

Mark Olver is here.

Welcome, Mark.

Jenny Eclair is here.
Welcome to Jenny.

Jenny Eclair
has had her pubes reviewed

and has a mother with dynamic
IT skills. Jenny Eclair is here!

And Alexei Sayle!
Welcome to Alexei Sayle.



Alexei Sayle no longer carries a gun.
Alexei Sayle is here.

And Jon Richardson...

Jon Richardson
is simply just not weird enough

and is somewhat risk averse.
Jon Richardson is here.

You two are friends, aren't you?
Erm... We live together.

You live together. We've known
each other for... 15 years?

They were having a terrible row.

They were having a row
in the dressing room!
JE: They were having a domestic!

Did you see the cushions thing?
Well, you're quite OCD

and had to rearrange the cushions

and he just went like that
with the cushions!

It's a good test of what OCD is,
because I'm actually just tidy

and I got up and put the cushions
where they should be

and you couldn't resist the urge
to...

You said something that I felt
was aggressive and I didn't want to
come back with words,

so I just moved the cushions.

What did I say? I can't remember.

Was it as aggressive as,
"When are you going to put
your show clothes on?"

I did say that!

This is like group therapy,
isn't it? Yeah!

How do you feel about that, Jon?

I was quite upset, but then
some of us don't wear our material,
we speak it.

LAUGHTER

I read something that you said
that I loved.

You said that snooker
is basically tidying up

and that's why you like it.

That really made me laugh a lot!
Yeah. Get a messy table
and put everything away.

So your favourite game.
It's a good sport.

And then they hoover the table,
if you've ever been live.

Ahh...!

They get right in the corner of it,
they do.

They even clean the ball,
which is shiny and perfect. I know.

Have you got a favourite
cleaning product?

Er... Well, we've switched
to sort of eco cleaning products
in the house.

That must be frustrating.
I know.

When she goes away,
I get the proper stuff in. Yeah.

So, how did you end up,
did you meet through comedy
or did comedy come later?

I'd been to the local comedy night
which you hosted.

Yes. And I was drunk and depressed
and I knew I wanted to be a comedian

and I thought the way to do that was
to grab one in the street and say,

"How do you do it?
Teach me your ways."

And I was quite nice. Yeah.

I mean, all the animosity started
later on.

For the first couple of weeks, I was
quite nice to you, wasn't I? Yeah.

You're sort of a Godfather figure
in Bristol comedy, aren't you?

You sort of take young people and...

Fuck 'em up! Yeah.

Have you lived with comics?
I find it fascinating

because it's so long ago
that I shared a flat with anyone.

I mean, I'm married now
but for 15 years I lived on my own.

I shared when I was a student.
It's an awful experience!

There were slugs on the kitchen floor

and we didn't have a bin,
we had a box.

No-one ever washed up.

It was freezing, there was ice
on the inside of the windows.

It was so cold one winter
that the cistern froze

and my flatmate,
rather than dealing with it,
went and had a shit in the garden!

In the snow!

And I don't even know
if he took loo roll with him

or if he just dragged himself
back up the garden

and then came back in saying,
"I've finished!"
That's what people were like.

When I first moved down to London,

I moved in with a Palestinian friend
of mine who lived in a basement,

a crumbling basement
in Queen's Gate,

and it turned out,
because I hadn't listened
when he'd invited me to stay,

that my room was one side
of the floor next to his bed,

he was in the bed with one
or sometimes two girlfriends

and the other parts of the floor,
the base of the bed
and the other side,

were taken up by other Arabs.

I lived on a shelf once
for about three months.

A shelf? Yeah.

He said it was a room.
It wasn't, it was a cupboard.

I couldn't fit on a shelf.
You'd roll off.

There hasn't a shelf been made
that can take me sleeping on it!

Three months on a shelf. God!

I lived in a shared house

when I was first doing gigs
and I didn't have any money
and I'd left university

and we used to get burgled,
so when I went out
I would lock my bedroom door

and then the landlord's boyfriend
was ranting at me all the time

because he thought it was antisocial
that I would lock my door.

I said, "It's not antisocial,
it's anti-burglar!"

"I'm trying to stop things
getting nicked."

It's none of his business what's in
my room, he didn't even live there.
Exactly.

Also, when people keep climbing in
through the windows and nicking
my video, I'm going to lock itup!

I pictured you only had one video
of something, I didn't...
I mean the actual...!

"If I have to buy The Goonies
again..."

We were so bad that if I went out,
I didn't like to leave a tape
in the machine

because I thought,
"When it gets nicked, I don't want
to lose The Blues Brothers, do I?"

"I'm going to eject everything!"
Yeah.

So, Jon, you're risk averse.

I'm not surprised to hear that,
but how does it manifest itself
specifically?

Well, just crippling. So you get
asked frequently in this sort of job
to prepare for shows like this

where you need some interesting
thing that's happened to you...
Yeah.

..in the last, you know,
since you were born

and I just never have any,
to the point where it pisses me off

and it really...

So I was moving house and
I was packing my things with straw

so they didn't break, obviously,

and I had a lighter and I threw
the lighter on top of the straw

and I thought, "That's stupid,"

and then I thought, "That's the sort
of thing that a comedian would do

"and then they'd have a routine
about it,"

but I took the lighter out anyway
because I thought, "Why risk it?"

And I had a builder come round to my
house, he was fitting my kitchen,

and I offered to make him a cup of
tea because I'm that kind of guy,

and then you have
mug selection moment,

where most of my mugs have
characters from Winnie the Pooh on

and I thought, "That doesn't suggest
a man who's in control of his life.

"I'm going to get screwed over
on price."

The minute you put,
you put a Piglet mug down

and suddenly the skirting board's
a bit more expensive
than it was before that!

After I lived with Mark,
I lived with some other friends

and they moved out
and left a load of stuff behind
because they're arseholes,

and someone had left behind
a World's Best Brother mug,

which I think is,
if you were the world's best brother
you'd take the mug with you...

Obviously.
..so instantly the prize is revoked,

but I had it with me
because I didn't want to waste it,

so I made the tea for this guy
in the mug

and I went to give it to him
and thought, "What if he's had
a brother or sister that died

"and if I give him this mug, it'll
bring back the memory of his sibling

"who loved him but died tragically
in some sort of accident,"

so I tipped the tea into another mug

and that's when I really realised
"Nothing interesting
is ever going to happen to you.

"Ever."

I'm so relentlessly tedious,
it breaks my heart.

For our honeymoon, we went across
America for three weeks.

"Something will happen."
Not a thing!

We arrived everywhere on time.

I picked up the car, that was fine.
I never put the wrong petrol in it.
I didn't have a crash.

We get back and you arrive on time
and they say, "How was it?"

I say, "We saw everything
and we arrived early,

"so we had time to get a snack so we
weren't even hungry at any point."

HE SIGHS

Yeah. And it's not the way your life
is supposed to go.

What enrages you?

Day to day? Yeah. Everyone.

When was the last time
you yelled at something or someone?

Oh, in the car, I'm quite...
I become quite emboldened
when I'm wrapped in steel.

I'm a lot bolder than I would be
in real life.

But then in my car,
in the boot of my car is a shoe box

which has a Pot Noodle,
a packet of cereal bars,

a screw-top bottle of red wine
and some hot chocolate sachets

in case I ever get stranded
overnight and I need snacks.

In the panel of the door
is an escape hammer.

This is my mum... I mentioned once,
I used to be a sales rep
and I would gig in the evenings

and I used to gig a lot in Cornwall
and Devon,

and I was driving back
over the bridge into Bristol
and I said to my mum,

"I have this vision that
every time I go over that bridge,

one day I'm going to keep steering
left and drive off the bridge."

So for my birthday, she bought me
an escape hammer,

which has got a...

Oh, so when your car's underwater...
You can smash the windscreen,

it's got a blade
to cut through the windscreen

and then a torch
so you can shine your way out.

Is this a genetic thing you've got?

Your mum sounds like she's prepared,
as well,

so she understands this.
I think maybe, yeah.

She's really nice. JENNY: Good!
LAUGHTER

I like the way you say that
as if that's astonishing!

Have you ever thought of embracing
the... Have you ever tried
to embrace the chaos?

I would want to try,
but then why would you
deliberately do things wrong

just to get a shitty little joke
out of it?

Even as a child,
no recklessness as a child?

Did you ever climb a tree?

No, because my friend Lee
climbed one and fell out of it
and I learnt my lesson!

I used to be incredibly reckless
and I think, as you get older,
you get scared.

Literally the other day, I thought,

"Wow,
I couldn't go to Niagara Falls now,

"not with my bladder."

When you point a gun at an audience,

it makes them nervous.

Alexei... Alexei...
ALEXEI LAUGHS

..why were you carrying a gun? Why
was I carrying a gun? This, erm...

Well, partly it is because
my parents,
although they were communists

they also had these hippyish ideas
and they didn't let me have
toy guns,

so what I used to do, I used to make
my own toy guns out of Hovis.

I used to eat an L-shape
into our Hovis

and then run round the streets with
the other kids going, "Pew! Pew!"

And I was all right
unless it rained!

If it rained... Did you toast it?
No, no, it was just bread.
It was just a bread gun.

Anyway, that's given me a lifelong
obsession with firearms and, erm...

Your parents would be thrilled!

Yeah. They... Yeah.

Well, fuck 'em! Erm...
LAUGHTER

It's one of so many terrible,
you know,

mental problems they've given me
that it has to join the queue.

Anyway, erm, I've got the tiniest...
also knives.

I've been done under the Prevention
of Terrorism - Are you packing?

I am packing.
I can't be around knives.

The tiniest little...
The tiniest little knife.

That's nice, that. It's all right.

Just pop it back in your pocket.
LAUGHTER

Is it genuinely making you...?
Just pop a knife near your penis,

what could possibly go wrong?

Let's make a more-risk me!

Anyway, erm, I like guns,

but obviously
you can't really own them in this...

Linda, my wife, used to have
a Littlewoods catalogue

and I bought,
out of this Littlewoods catalogue,
an air pistol.

So anyway, one night, in the
early days of The Comedy Store,

I had a night off
and I thought I would just stay home
and drink whisky,

so about midnight, I suddenly
thought it would be a good idea
if I went into The Comedy Store,

drunk,
and did this new bit of material
which involved me doing a quiz

and then when the audience
got the answers wrong,
pointing this gun at them, right?

Anyway, I turned up at the
Comedy Store, I'm drunk, I go on,

I think they'll love me
because I'm the regular MC,
except there's no regular audience,

I go on and I start pointing
this gun at the audience.

Now, you might not know this,
younger comedians,

but when you point a gun
at an audience,

it makes them nervous.

Take this down
because I know you revere me,
and all that, as an inspiration.

"When you point a gun..."

If you point a gun at the audience,
it makes them nervous.

So I turn up at The Comedy Store
and I'm pointing this gun
at the audience

and they're getting really upset
because they think
they're going to die.

So I get through the act,
you know, humiliated really,

and then the next act on
was the first time that Rik Mayall
and Adrian Edmondson appeared.

Oh, doing The Dangerous Brothers!
Doing The Dangerous Brothers.
And they went down so well,

partly in contrast to the
fucking drunk guy with the gun...

It does help!
..that anybody's going to go!

You know what I mean?
Anybody's going to go down well.
They went down so well.

Anyway, what happened was,
the gun had collected
a lot of negative karma

because when I got to know
Rik and Ade better,

they borrowed it for a sketch
that they did

where they came into the club
with masks on

and tried to hold the audience
hostage.

That went down really badly,
as well, as you can imagine!

And then the gun was stolen from
the council flat that they lived in

and the bloke who stole it tried to
hold up a post office with the gun

and he was shot by policemen
with real guns.

He's pointing this trying to,
this little pellet gun at them,
and they just shot him.

Killed him?
No, he was just wounded.

So history could've changed. Yeah.

Like, if you didn't have a gun
and you had done brilliantly well

and The Dangerous Brothers
died on their arse...
They wouldn't have come back.

That's brilliant.

Mark Olver fell over and ended up
in America, it says here.
What is that about?

I compere a lot of gigs, as well,
and Alexei going to The Comedy Store
and The Comic Strip,

you sort of...

didn't invent the idea of comperes
but you were kind of -

I did.
LAUGHTER

MO: But you did!
Nobody had ever introduced anyone
on stage ever before!

Nobody had ever done any kind
of comedy before me! Or since! No!

So I was compering in a gig
in Bristol about 15 years ago

and I walked on stage
and it was stags and hens
and it was really busy,

about 200 people in this little gig
in Bristol,

and I walk on and I go "Yeah!"
to the audience and they cheer back,

I turn to another part
of the audience and go "Yeah!"
and they cheer back

and as I turned for the third time,

my knee popped out...
LAUGHTER

..and I dislocated my knee
and I fell to the ground...

JE: Brilliant. ..breaking my ankle.

And they all went "Yeah!"
JE: Beat that!

Yeah. And I lay there and I had the
microphone in my hand... In agony.

..in absolute agony,
and I said to the audience,

"I think I've fucked up my leg,"
and they laughed

and I went,
"No, really, I've fucked up my leg.

"Can someone call me an ambulance?"
And you can imagine what they did.

"You're an ambulance."

And it was a Friday night and it was
about half nine, ten o'clock

and so I just thought,
"Well, you can't move,
I don't want to be moved,"

so I just did 20 minutes
of stand-up. Lying down.

20 minutes of lie-down.
Of lie-down.

Yeah.
And the pain got worse and worse

and I started passing in and out
of consciousness!

But the ambulance came
and they actually,

the audience stayed there and I got,
they gave me gas and air on stage,

wheeled me out,

I got a standing ovation,
an ironic standing ovation, as well,
as I was wheeled out,

taken to the hospital, sorted out.

And then about a week later,
a great comedian called Toby Foster,

who is a DJ in Sheffield, as well,
on a BBC local radio station,

found out about this
and phoned me up,

so I did an interview with him
about falling over on stage,

doing the gig,
passing in and out of consciousness,

but because it was the BBC, it went
on all the news cycles. Right.

So for the next week or two,

I was getting calls from journalists
all over the world

wanting to talk about my leg,
wanting to talk about what I did.

Harvard Business School
made me their Badass of the Week.

And about a month, six weeks later,
I was still living at home,

I got home from work,
and I was on these crutches,

and my mum had just,
she was just putting the phone down

and she went, "You missed them!"
and I went, "What?"

She went, "We just had a phone call
from a rock station in Detroit

"who wanted to talk to you
about your leg,

"but you weren't here
so I did it for you."

I totally understand that thing
where they think it's a joke.
They totally did.

I used to compere quite a lot,
there was a little run of gigs -

Cheltenham on Monday,
Bristol on Tuesday and Birmingham.

Frank Skinner used to have that run,
didn't he?

Yeah. I took over from Frank.
How did that go?

Not well!

Well, not the first night
because they hadn't told anyone,

and I went on and someone went,
"You're not Frank!"

Really, like that,
in that exact voice!

I'm not very good at accents
but that is perfect!

It was a great gig.
They were a really good audience.

It was in this pub in Bearwood,
a great big pub in a bay window,

so behind you was a big curtain
with a pelmet above it
and it was a big stage,

and there used to be a guy,
he couldn't work many pubs
because he was a unicyclist, right,

and he came on
and he juggled fire on a unicycle

and he's doing all this stuff
and they're loving it, 200 people,

and it's a really good atmosphere,

and then he goes over to the curtains
and he's leaning on the wall
and chatting a bit

and the pelmet caught fire.
Course it did!

I'm in the wing. By now,
I've been there for about a year,
I'm there every week,

and he looks at me,
real panic in his eyes,

and he's holding the torches out
like this.

The audience are in hysterics!

They're in stitches!
They think this is the funniest thing
they've ever seen.

And then I come on
and take the torches

and they're thinking,
"He's going to do a bit now!"

"Juggle!" "Alan's going to join in!"
They're like this, "Come on!"
I'm going, "It's fucking on fire!"

And he jumped off the unicycle
and pulled the pelmet down

and it all came down on the stage
and then he's stamping it out!

And the audience are going...
The audience are going, "Yeah!"

There's smoke everywhere
and he put the fire out

and he went off to the biggest
ovation he's ever had in his career

and I said to them,
"You have no idea!"

The landlord's downstairs, he thinks
"The comedy's going well!"

He doesn't realise
we nearly burnt the pub down!

I think the audience knew
when two paramedics
and a massive stretcher came in

but up until then, people were
going, "He's just taking the piss."

"This is a weird act."
Yeah. But I wouldn't have...

Because we knew each other then,
didn't we?

Yeah. I was, erm, greasing-up stages
at that point in my career.

I'd sort of get there before the gig
and lay down some fat, erm...

I was trying to get work, you know.
Er...

The worst thing about this story
was,

I was meant to be meeting a woman
after the gig for some sex

and we were going...
LAUGHTER

..and I had been on a few dates
with her and we'd had sex
a few times in the past

and we had decided to do
a bit of roleplay

and we decided to do proper roleplay
where she would dress up
as a prostitute...

This is getting quite bleak!

..and wait on a street corner
for me on my way home from the gig.

Unfortunately, I was in an ambulance
on my way to the hospital.

So someone had to phone her and say,

"Mark can't make it.
He's gone to the BRI."

So she went to the hospital - "But
Jon Richardson's bang up for it!"

My mum and dad didn't know
that I was dating her.

They were visiting you
and the prostitute turns up.
She wasn't a prostitute! Oh, right.

But they probably thought she was.
Well, no.

I was on the gas and air and in pain

and she arrived
before my mum and dad,

and my mum walks through the door
and there was a prostitute
leaning over me

and they've gone,
"This night has turned out weirder
than we thought it was going to."

When you say "leaning over you,"
is that a euphemism?

Yeah, it was! Yeah!

She's going, "Oh, God, Alexei!
Oh, Christ!

"Look what you've done!"
HE SHRIEKS

What's your mum's dynamic IT skills
all about?

Yes.
Well, you've mentioned your mother,

so my mother is, erm, well, she's 86
and she's northern but posh,
do you know what I mean?

She's a bit like scampi.

So in the last couple of years,
she's been widowed

and so she's doing the widow stuff

and she phoned me up
and said she wanted a tablet.

I said, "You've got tablets for your
heart, tablets for your arthritis."

She goes, "You know what I mean!
I want an Apple Macintosh tablet.

"It is not fair.
Eileen and Joyce have got tablets."

Well, this took me right back
to when I was 13
and I wanted my ears pierced,

so I said to her, "Oh, so Eileen and
Joyce have got tablets, have they?

"And if Eileen and Joyce
jumped off a cliff,

"would you jump off a cliff?"

Anyway, she wore me down.

I got her a tablet,
I got her an iPad

and, to be honest with you,
for all the trouble
this fucking thing has caused,

I might as well have bought her
a python.

Because there is,

I don't play computer games
but there is a level of tension
that can only be reached

by introducing an 86-year-old woman
to the internet.

Now, my mother is not stupid

but can she email?
No! No! No, she can't!

No, she fucking can't!
She thinks she can,
then she forgets what to fucking do!

So she didn't email my brother
when he was on holiday

because she said, "I didn't know
you could email Morocco!
Ooh-hoo-hoo!"

LAUGHTER
So I give her,

you've got to imagine this,
I give her these one-on-one classes,

and it's all right
when I'm in the same room as her

because I know where
my parents' drug store is,

I know where the diazepam is,
so it's all right,

but sometimes I have to coax
my mother over the telephone,

I live in London,
she lives up in Lytham St Annes,

and the telephone calls
always go like this,

this is me coaching my mother
with her iPad,

"Have you turned it on?"

"What can you see?
What can you see?"

She goes, "A naked man."
LAUGHTER

I say, "What's he doing?" She goes,

"He's got a vegetable
hanging out of his bottom."

I say, "What did you put into
the Google search engine?"

She goes, "Interesting things
to do with aubergines!"

That...

..is true!

What did your mum want to do with the
aubergine? She... Let's not go there!

My mother is great,
she's just not fussed by anything.

She's very stoic,
like northern women can be.

You're married to a northern woman
now

and that's good for you, I think,

because she's not going to stand
for any of your nonsense.

So my mother's very stoic.

Last time I went to stay with her,
by the time I managed
to get out of bed,

she had already made soup
and been to a funeral. And that's...

MO: Were they connected?

Sitting in the pew drinking soup!

"It's a cold church,
I'm going to take some soup." Yeah!

My wife went to Tesco,

and I specifically mention Tesco

because it's shit
and I'm annoyed about it,

because there are stores where you
ask for help and they will help you,

but she said,
"Have you got any aubergines?"
looking in the vegetable section,

and the member of staff said,
"There's no such thing
as aubergines."

I quite like that!

No, I like that! I like that!
I respect that member of staff.

It's like, "Don't fuck me around.
I can't be arsed."

Because I once went to somebody
in Sainsbury's,

"Have you got any pumpernickel?"
and they just went...

Did this person think that aubergines
didn't really exist? Yes.

Americans call it eggplant.
They looked around,
there wasn't one there.

It's not just that it's not in stock,
or I haven't heard of it,

if there's not one here,
it doesn't exist.

And also, she's a mum,
couple of kids,

so there's a feeling, I think,
of contempt for her.

You know, "Oh, fuck off." Yeah.

"Shove one up your arse
and take a picture."

That picture your mum saw

was probably someone who'd been
to Tesco about a week before.

"We sold the last one
to a naked chap!"

Alexei, your parents,
we made brief reference to them,

but one of the things I like
about your childhood,

you had an unusual childhood.
Very unusual.

Particularly the holidays.

We spent... Yeah. Erm...

It's a weird combination,
both being communists

and because me dad worked
on the railways,
because we got free rail travel,

so we ended up spending all our
summer holidays in Eastern Europe.

In the '60s,
in the height of the Cold War? Yeah.

The only representatives -
You're staying in Liverpool...

Yeah. ..and go to Czechoslovakia?
Prague or Hungary, yeah.

And the only representatives
of the West were the Sayle family!

That's all the people in the East
had to compare!

Where would the other railway workers
go on their holidays?

Erm, somewhere nice.
LAUGHTER

Somewhere without gulags.

Tell us about how you got into
art school. That's a good story.

The one where my mum
went to the interview? Yeah.
That's all there is it, really!

I was hitchhiking round Europe,

except nobody had ever picked me up
so I didn't get very far!

I spent four days on a roundabout
outside Rotterdam once.

And, erm, I couldn't go so my mum...

Did she take your portfolio?
She took my portfolio,

talked eloquently about the
influence of Cezanne on my painting,

you know, and her technique

and her admiration
for French Romanticism.

So, was she masquerading herself
as the potential student,

or "My boy's not here,
I'm going to talk about him"?

I think they probably wanted her!

I think they were a bit disappointed
when I turned up and not this little
red-haired Jewish lady!

But, erm, no, I don't know whether
she pretended to be me or what,

but I got in anyway, you know?
That's fantastic.

What's her background, your mum,
where's she from?

Oh, you know! Somewhere where
Jews come from. Erm...!

LAUGHTER

A place where...
I think it began with an "L".

Latvia or Lithuania
or somewhere like that.

So, did she have an accent?
Most of her accent was screaming.
Is that an accent?

"Oh, God! Oh, God! Alexei!
Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ!

"Look what you've done! Oh, Christ!
HE SHRIEKS

"Oh, God! Agh!"

I mean, is that an accent?

When you got famous,

did you take her to parties
with famous people?

Er, a bit, yeah.
And did she do that?

Er, no, she was nice as pie.
I was at...

The first TV show I did was
Boom Boom... Out Go the Lights,
a cabaret show on BBC2,

and I rang her up the next day and
said, "How do you think it went?"

and she said, "Well, Keith Allen
wasn't very good either."

LAUGHTER

I used to say to her,
"Look, Mum, I'm famous,"

and she'd say, "I'm famous, too."

And then she'd say,
"I'm well known for my quiche."

She wasn't even! She wasn't!
LAUGHTER

Nobody gave a fuck about her quiche!

Didn't you get on The Young Ones
because she went for the audition?

The part was for
a little red-haired Jewish lady.

Was she strict with you
about swearing? Erm...!

She said she was
and she didn't swear,

but I did a book reading
a few years ago

and, erm, it was the first volume
on my memoir before it was published

and she heckled me

and she shouted,
"Lies! Lies! "It's all lies!

And then I got to a bit where it was
all about how she used to swear

and she shouted out,
"It's all fucking lies!"

"I never fucking swore!"

You know...

Are they still in love, your parents?
No.

What did they say
when the Berlin Wall came down,
or what did they say about Stalin?

My dad was dead by then,

my mother never, erm,

accepted that there was anything
wrong with the Soviet Experiment.

The most she would say was,
"Mistakes were made."

But as she said, "You can't
make an omelette without murdering
40 million people."

She never admitted that there was
anything wrong with it, you know.

I mean, some mistakes were made
but, you know, it's...

Do you recognise
Alexei's little logo?

No, not Alexei himself.

What's that? It's the Ampelmann.

That's the man on the East German,
er, stop-go traffic lights.
Yes, it is.

And his hat is modelled
on that of Erich Honecker,

who was the first president of the
People's Democratic German Republic.

Do you not think it just looks like
he's got a massive cock?

JE: Oh, yeah. Now you mention it.

That's another benefit of socialism,
comrade.

Everybody had a massive cock
in the East.

It's somewhere to put your hat!

That was like in Prague when I was a
kid, just, you know, men everywhere,

knocking over jars of pickles
with penises.

It was, you know, it was depressing
going back to the West!

It used to be fun to watch films
for three months and get pissed

and now it's an issue that
needs dealing with when I'm down.

Can you explain to me
about your pubes?

Oh, yeah. Now, the pubes
aren't what they used to be

but, and this is a lesson
for all young women,

you do all the waxing

and there's no point, it all
falls out naturally in the end.

I've become quite sparse down there.

There's barely enough left
to make a hamster's nest.

This is natural. This is...

How do you know that?
How do I know that?

She used to do it all the time!

I did - Have you got
a hamster at home like that?

Come on in! Come on in!

Looking at pictures of
really happy hamsters from the past!

I did a play in a West End theatre,

a long time ago
when I was still quite hirsute,

and it was called Steaming

and it was set in a steam room,
a Turkish baths,

and it was full-frontal nudity,

and it was the press night,
my mother was there,
down from Lancashire,

she was on the front row,

and my bra comes off -

nobody's worried
about the old tits out, are they? -

but when the pants come off,
there is an intake of breath

and I heard... It'd be the hamster!

..I heard over the intake of breath
my mother going,

"Oh, my God!"

And then there was a review
in The Guardian
that featured my pubic hair

that said in these words,

"Once one gets over the fact
that Jenny Eclair's pubic hair
grows like that naturally,

"one can concentrate
on her performance."

That's very rude.

But also, everyone in the room is
now trying to work out how it grew.

I know. And you can all be pondering
that for evermore because...

Basically,
there's not much left anyway now.

But I used to joke
in the Grumpy Old Women Show

and there was one joke
for middle-aged women

that is universal, is global,

and so you watch the show
in Icelandic or Finnish

and you knew when you'd got to
this point in the show,

it's basically about
middle-aged women,

some of you won't understand this
because you're far too young

but you do,
it's called female-pattern balding,

your pubic hair starts to thin,

and, of course, the real dilemma
with female-pattern balding

is whether to shave it all off
or comb it over

and I guarantee that line,

it doesn't matter where you are
in the world,

middle-aged women will get that line
and they'll go, "Ha-ha-ha!"

You know what just happened? What?
There was a middle-aged lady
just sat behind

absolutely losing her shit.
There you go!

And my Icelandic and my Finnish
is very poor

but whenever I sat in the shows,
watching in different languages,

I knew that's where we'd got to
in the show.

I'm thinking about that review
and I think that's rude.

Well...
It's not phrased like a compliment.

The rest of the review
wasn't complimentary, either!

That was the best bit of the review!

And then the Daily Mail
criticised my breasts because -

The Daily Mail! Yes.
They want it both ways, don't they?

They want to show the breasts
and then have a go at the person
who's got the breasts.

The character
was meant to be a topless waitress
and I think the Daily Mail said,

"Not convincing
as a topless waitress

"considering Eclair
really doesn't have the wherewithal
to topless waitress."

Did you have a top on? No, Jon!
LAUGHTER

Were you carrying any plates?

Did you go like that?

Did you keep giving them
the wrong order? Yeah!

You used to work in a cafe,
didn't you,

that a school friend of mine
worked in?

Do you remember that? Who's that?
In Covent Garden.

The Crusting Pipe!
The Crusting Pipe!

Why would you call a cafe
or restaurant the Crusting Pipe?

It sounds like a venereal disease,
doesn't it?

It sounds like what happens
when you get lady baldness.

It's the male equivalent
of female pattern baldness. Yes!

You get a crusting pipe! Yes!

And I used to go
and it was in Covent Garden

and they used to work in the kitchen,
you know, cleaning.

You'd have loved that job.

LAUGHTER

In fact,
the kitchen window opened out

so you could chat to them
while they were working

and then I went down there one day
to have a chat through the window

and they'd blacked out the window
so the washer-uppers
couldn't talk to their friends.

It's grim, isn't it?

It's the oppression
of the working class, comrade!

You can't even speak!
You're oppressed!

You're talking to another comrade

and they won't even allow you that.

It's true! They needed unionising.

Yeah. You needed a union in there,
comrade.

You worked there, as well.
Yeah, I did.

But at the time, and I was
talking about trying to do comedy
and open spots and stuff...

Was I putting you off?
No, no. I hadn't met you yet.

..and they said,
"There's a girl here who does that!"

"She does poetry or something." Girl!
I was a girl! I was a punk poet!

The way they described you,
you sounded like a nutcase!

Like a real eccentric!

And they talked to me,

they really liked you
but they were a bit afraid. Yeah.

"Yeah, she does that! She does poetry
or something like that."

"Massive muff."

"Full of hamsters!
Knickers alive with hamsters!"

Can you remember any of your poems?
Erm, yes.

I've always been bodily obsessed.
There's one that went,

"I've got this problem..." because I
used to do it in a northern accent,

I was very influenced
by John Cooper Clarke,

oh, there was one that went,
"Oh, dear! Agony aunty,
I have a discharge in my panties.

"It's not VD, I'm sure of that,
I've never had trouble before
with my twat!"

Have I just done that on television?
Have I?

Part of me thinks a story about...
Did someone want you to be
a pop star?

Yeah. They did. Because I was
actually terribly pretty.

You have no idea when you're in
your 20s that you might be beautiful

and I was clueless about it,

and now I see pictures, and I have
a daughter in her 20s who's lovely,

and I realise that, actually, there
was a moment when I was quite lovely

and these businessmen wanted me
to be a pop star

and they wanted me to dress up
as a Pierrot doll

with a tear on my cheek
and all this,

and they put me in a studio
and I was going to sing The Kinks
"So Tired, Tired of Waiting"

and the only question nobody asked
was whether I could sing.

And then I can still remember
the faces of these people
behind the glass,

so they'd go,
"Come in after three beats,"

and I was thinking, "I don't know
what the fuck a beat is."

So I'd go

SHE SINGS FLATLY
# So tired, tired of waiting

# Waiting for you-ooh-ooh #

and their faces just dropped
and dropped

and they were like, "Is she joking?"
and at that point,

I was so embarrassed of myself,
I ran away from Manchester

where these people
had wasted all their money
and that's why I came to London.

I worked in the Crusting Pipe!
We're delighted you did!

So, Jon, you've heard Jenny's life

and Alexei's life... Yes.

..are you feeling even more
that you're not weird enough?

Er... Well, yeah,
weird enough is not my...

It's on the subject, I guess,
of not knowing how you look,

but I, this year,

was voted second
in Heat's Weird Crush poll.

LAUGHTER

That's a compliment! Well done!

I'd put you third.

Well, I was fourth two years ago

and I've been second
three years out of the last four.

The first year - You're consistent!
Yeah, consistently weird,

but not... I don't want to win

but I'm fucking tired
of not winning now, to be honest!

Who wins? Who's number one?

Er, I lost to Jake Wood this year,
from EastEnders.

Strictly does it, you see.

He's a bad lad, apparently,
in EastEnders.

Apparently, women like a bastard
but not a cleaner.

Erm...
LAUGHTER

And I don't care and I don't enter,
I don't register

and every year I get a call saying,
"Guess what?

"That thing you didn't care about,
well, you've lost,"

and I don't care that I lost
and I'm tired of...

It's always in the New Year,
you're rebuilding your confidence
from Christmas

and you've drunk a little bit
too much and it's dark

and I used to be allowed
to be depressed in the New Year,
was what I did when I was single,

and now, apparently,
I have to deal with it and I have to
have fucking vitamin D tablets

and cheer up because my mood impacts
on everyone else's mood now,

whereas it used to just be fun
to watch films for three months
and get pissed,

and now it's an issue that
needs dealing with when I'm down.

Do you know if you put mushrooms
in the garden, they generate
vitamin D like human skin

and when you eat the mushroom,
you consume the vitamin D

so your mood gets better,
apparently.

How many mushrooms are you on now?
LAUGHTER

Not quite enough!

Get some magic ones.
They really improve your mood!

So, you know,
I don't know whether to be...

It's not a compliment
and people say it is and it's not.

It's saying,
"There's something nice about you,

"despite the fact, clearly,
it's not obvious

"why you should be found attractive,

"because obviously
we all agree on the fact that
it's weird to find you attractive.

"We, as women, have all convened
and said,

"He's obviously a fucking nutcase
and he's not conventionally
attractive

"but isn't it weird how the
thought of him touching your skin
doesn't fully repulse you?"

That's basically what they mean.

When I was a young and single person,
a long time ago,

I was in one of those lists in the
magazine as an eligible bachelor.

Initially, you think,
"It's quite flattering!"

and then you look at the list
and just above me

there's a more eligible bachelor -
Prince Edward.

LAUGHTER

20 years ago and I'm still wounded.
Yeah.

You were kind of considered
quite good-looking, though.

Love the use of the past tense!

You had that tag,
"Boyish good looks."

With your curly hair.
Yeah. And all that.

But I think it was more
in comparison to the sad saps
that were around at the time.

Everyone was kind of
quite crap-looking,

so the fact that
you could walk upright...

How's this for your confidence? "You
were considered quite good looking,

"but you were mainly on
with potatoes at that point
in your career."

Potatoes with dandruff!

Thick! Who were the other
good-looking comics?

Rob Newman? Yeah,
he was considered good-looking.

Oh, yeah. I said "considered"!
He was good-looking.

He is proper good-looking.
He's better-looking than you.
Oh, yeah. By a street.

Jeff Green was considered
good-looking.

Mark Lamarr
had a little golden moment.

Can I say, as a male comic,
I find this assessment of men
as pieces of meat... Isn't it awful?

..frankly insulting and unconnected
to what we do for a living

and we should get back to talking
about whether Jenny's breasts were
appropriate for the play she was in.

One was.
The other one was a let-down!

Listen, you lot, I've got to finish,
they've told me.

It's been brilliant.
We have to come up with a title
for the show before you leave.

Are we allowed to use Shambles?
LAUGHTER

Let me make a note of Shambles!
I've written a few options down. OK.

I'm open to suggestions.

I've got at the top of my list
An Escape Hammer.

Yeah.

Aubergines Don't Exist. I like that.

I Didn't Know You Could Email
Morocco. I quite like that!

I've written down I Couldn't Go
To Niagara Falls With My Bladder.

All Communists Have Massive Cocks.

Yeah.

Keith Allen Wasn't Very Good Either.

And another favourite of mine is
Just Pop A Knife Near Your Penis.

Listen, I'm going to thank you all.
Please will you thank my guests,
it's been wonderful,

Mark Olver,

Jenny Eclair...

..Alexei Sayle

and Jon Richardson.

My name's Alan Davies
and you have been watching

Just Pop A Knife Near Your Penis.

Subtitles by Ericsson