BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 129 - LatePod!

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

The lads chat about mental health for men, the real world, Sean Lock, Dominic Raab and literature generally Get bonus BudPod on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Budpod129, LatePod! LatePod, but still GreatPod. 129, um, last year was 128. Um, 128, yeah. 129. 129 is, um, is a German on a diet who's been tempted by chocolate. I want to... Nein!

Willst du ein bisschen Chocoladen? Or I want to... Nein! Nein! I think it's the word for fat in German just F-E-T-T just Fett Fett

like Boba Fett Fett Boba Fett Boba Fett Fetten Are the Germans fat? I guess there's a sort of jolly German

that kind of big round opera German Yeah the German the Liederhosen and drinking the beer and eating the chocolates. But, no, I guess not.

I think of, well, what's the kid in Simpsons? Oh, Otto. Otto, yes. Please, I'm full of chocolate. But I think he's, is he Austrian? Not German. Maybe he is, I don't know. He's always wearing lederhosen anyway.

Yeah. Which I've never really like properly considered before that he's austrian and not german no that he's always wearing lederhosen yeah like he's turning up to school every day in national dress yeah that's pretty good good pretty cool pretty good pretty good oh man uh um yeah i i i every german i ever met really was well not every single one but the vast majority of them were sort of just tall and thin yeah and that's that's the image i have as well kind of like the dutch as well it's very tall and sort of thin yeah maybe it's just self-discipline. Or just national discipline keeps them all standing up straight or something.

Yeah. Yeah. And no one's particularly sporty. They're good at football, I guess. Maybe they're just still so guilty about the war that they're like, no, I don't deserve this. They're just full of self-effacing, no, not for me, no. Have you ever worn lederhosen?

No, no. No, I don't know culturally appropriate that would be a very uh funny for you to for you phil to be cancelled by germany yeah i don't want to be cancelled in berlin cancelled in berlin sounds like a trance album like some kind of electronic music album released in the sort of Twitter age yeah I don't want to be cancelled by the Germans historically they take their cancellations quite seriously

and you're a huge hit so far on German Netflix you wouldn't want to lose that Netflixen yeah I'm big on Netflixen you're making people laugh on Netflixen and you're making a lot of deutschmarks you don't want to get you don't want to lose it you don't want to lose the endorsement of the niedermeyer sausage factory or weissbeer speaking of uh uh speaking of um my netflix Netflix special and...

For fuck's sake, my brain's not working. It is early. It's early for us. But the thumbnail of my special was featured on The Onion Story. That's right. This week, which was really great, even though it was an Onion Story about a fake Jeffrey Dahmer stand-up special.

Yeah. But in the image of his Netflix graphic in the bottom, in sort of examples of actual Netflix shows, my special is the first one. Yeah, you're right fucking there, peeping out from over the little end of the picture, a little um uh leroy whatever the character is who peeks over the wall it was such an unexpected endorsement and a sort of complicated one because i'm being associated with a serial killer but you know what all publicity is good publicity

would you uh prefer a different serial killer to Jeffrey Dahmer? Well, I'm not a young white woman, so I don't really know my serial killers. I don't think I have a preference I don't really know anything about Jeffrey Dahmer I kind of have to look him up and he killed some men and boys and maybe ate a few he ate bits of them yeah

he tried to create zombies I think oh shit really yeah he would drill open people's heads and inject stuff inside and see if he could make zombie slaves and stuff wow bit of a goth then was he bit of a goth that's a weird thing about serial killers is that the stuff they do is like the most like gothic and goths are really interested in it but they always dress in like

plaid shirts and jeans and that's it yeah almost every serial killer is really really normcore super normcore I guess I I would want who was the guy that David Tennant played recently on the ITV oh Dez Dez what's his name

he's another it's not Dez Dez Dez Lynam. It's Des Lynam, the serial killer Des Lynam. Yeah, it's just Des. His crime's coming to light. Only just now. I can't remember his name, but yeah.

Why would you want him? Because he's already got an ITV thing. I guess it's because he's British. Des Nilsson. Dennis Nilsson. Yeah, there you go. Because he's British, you know, I want to keep it British. And I'm a big David Tennant fan.

I met David Tennant once when he was hosting Have I Got News For You. Oh, yeah? I think it was my first one. And I just watched Jessica Jonesica jones on netflix david tennant is the bad guy in that and he's amazing in it is i love that series so much the first series of jessica jones is so good and david tennant is amazing in it and um i make a habit of saying hi to people i really admire just as they're coming out of the bathroom yeah and you want to he came out to get us and. You want to get a bit of the scent

of what they've been up to. And it's like, oh, David. And I was on the way to the bathroom. So, you know, the subtext was, I have piss that I need to expel from my system. But before I expel this piss, this toxic, toxic, disgusting piss, I'd like to shake your hand and say,

I really love you and Jessica Jones. I thought you this piss. It's toxic, toxic, disgusting piss. I'd like to shake your hand and say I really love you and Jessica Jones. I thought you were great. But I thought at the time, I wonder if he was... Because at the time, he must have still been getting so much Doctor Who stuff. Oh, yeah.

It never stops. That's a lifetime of madness. And I thought, I bet he appreciates someone saying they loved him in something else. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, you'd think so. Maybe loads of people said they liked him in Jessica Jones.

Because, like, Doctor Who fans are crazy. Mm-hmm. Like, I mean, you and I know a few Doctor Who fans, and sometimes you'll see one of them tweet or retweet someone else's tweet, and it'll be like, terribly sad to hear the news of the passing of Andrew Jimminson,

Doctor Who star or performer or whatever, and you sort of go, oh, who's that? And I don't know if you think that... Yeah, it's like Doctor Who prop designer, 1968 to 1972. Yeah, or sometimes it's just like he was inside one of the non-moving

Daleks on the 17th occasion that we saw Daleks. He was the orange one and people would be like, no! And they'll all know. Yeah, I never ever got a Doctor Who thing I tried to watch a comic and I just thought this is like watching a school play

someone filmed I can't do it I liked some of them when I was young I enjoyed it but I'm quite a hard sci-fi fan so when they started every episode when every episode was about something being solved with love, I just was like, come on.

Oh, really? Yeah, it's very like, oh, the universe can sense the power of your love, and sometimes that can reverse time or whatever. It's that kind of thing. Not all the time, but sometimes. And you just think, oh, no, use a laser or something. Come on.

That is naff. Although the Christopher Eccleston period, when they no, use a laser or something. Come on. That is naff. Although the Christopher Eccleston period when they brought it back was quite exciting. Although I was slightly too old at that point. I still enjoyed... That's the David Tennant one, isn't it? No, Christopher Eccleston was the first one. The first one.

The first new one. The first new one? You know that Doctor Who wasn't on TV or being made for like 40 years, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the first Doctor Who when they brought it back was Christopher Eccleston. Oh, this is how little I know or care about Doctor Who. See, compared to you, I'm going to be the one tweeting the condolences to the family of Mercy Jenkinson, who was the sexy dancer in episode 503,

The Doctor's Regret, set in a Las Vegas strip club, 1968. It's funny you talk about that love thing, that the universe can sort of sense love. I've just started reading Dominion by Holland. What's his name? Tom Holland, the historian. Oh, yeah. Not Spider-Man.

No, Tom Holland. He's busy. Spider-Man hasn't. He's a bit busy. But, I mean, I don't really know anything about it, but I'm sort of getting the idea from the first few pages that the thesis is about. It was about, like, how much of the modern world,

especially the modern Western world, is Christian culturally. Yeah. And even if we are largely secular societies now. And so this idea of love as this force in the universe, kind of like gravity, is very Christian, I think, right? Yeah, it is, yeah.

And so in Doctor Who, when they do that or in fucking harry potter when the the answer is love and that defeats the wizard for zero reason it's all it's all everyone's just being everyone's just being jesus and they don't even realize it this is the problem with like um that kind of performative Richard Dawkins atheism. Because, well, that actually, to be fair, Christopher Hitchens and maybe Dawkins said, you need to read the King James Bible cover to cover to understand properly any Western literature ever. Well, since it was published in the 1500s. Because all the turns of phrase, all the language, all the ideas are so deeply written into the fabric of society. Whereas like in the Soviet Union, when they when the Soviet Union got all formed, they thought they could they thought that you could snip those roots away like scissors.

You know, you could just cut them and you could create the new Soviet man, e.g. a human being born in a kind of neutral, amniotic sack of society that doesn't have any outside influences of the old corrupt ways. And it was purely rational. Yeah, yeah. And it didn't work, obviously. Because you can't divorce yourself from it, which is why when people say, oh, the West is very Christian, people are like, oh, actually, Sweden's really atheist.

And you go, yeah, but I bet they still have all this love stuff. Yeah, but they still have like welfare and equal rights. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the thing. I mean, I remember. And a weekend and fucking, yeah. Well, your friend and mine and excellent comedian, Mr. Ahir Shah had in one of his shows a few years ago pointing out that when he talked about contemplating picking a religion he was saying maybe Christianity because we're all Christian really and he was pointing this out

he was pointing out as well that it's the origin of the idea of human rights as well it's kind of very hard to divorce from how incredibly chriso everyone was yeah yeah yeah yeah it's interesting incredibly crizzo everyone was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. I look forward to reading this very long book. But I just finished my book and I have to get straight on another. I've always got to have a book going. What's the last one you were reading? The one I just finished was Filth by Irvin Welch. That's right.

Which I loved. I loved it so much. He's such an amazing writer. I've still not seen Trainspotting, but I've read it. Ooh. Mr. Literature. Yeah. I do like reading something before I watch the film, if I can. I tried to do it with Lord of the Rings, and it was bloody impossible.

Yeah. But there's one bit with Lord of the Rings and it was bloody impossible. Yeah, yeah. But there's one bit in Return of the King, the third film, yes. At the beginning, they show how Gollum became Gollum, right? Yeah. And how he used to be a hobbit and he's corrupted by the ring. In the books, that happens right at the beginning.

But in the films, they save it to the last film and so i had read that that sequence before i saw it and it was shot for shot how i imagined really and i and i felt so good i felt so clever and i was i felt so clever and I was, I felt so reassured by the, about the value of literature and filmmaking in one, in one moment. It was, yeah. And so now I kind of, now the challenge for me,

if there's a book and a film out, I want to read the book, see if I picture it correctly and then check with the film. The film is like the exam results. I want to read the book, see if I picture it correctly, and then check with the film. The film is like the exam results. I know that's a reductive, dumb way to look at literature and culture, but it's fun, and I like to do it. It is fun. Anyone listening, and also to you, Phil, I recommend reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy before you don't watch the movie and watch the TV series instead. Oh, the tv series from like the 80s 70s not sure no it can't be the 70s that was when

the book came out must be the 80s let me find out but the book is incredible and the movie is absolute dog eggs dog eggs really really yeah i've only seen the movie and i i came out thinking i guess i'm stupid because i had zero idea what any of that was about i read the book before i watched the movie and i didn't understand the movie yeah because it's gibberish it's one it's one of the best cast most beautiful looking worst films i've ever seen yeah and I love that book yeah but I know what you mean when it happens and you feel clever and you it does ultimately

I think that's one of the best examples that you've given there of like the point of engaging with art like when it all lines up it feels good yes yes yes yes it does feel good and I don't know why you can't only put a finger on a reason as to why that felt good when i saw when i saw the lord of the rings

depicted in the way i i imagined it because i guess there's a kind of connection i guess you feel a connection between yourself and the people who made it like we we have not been shown these images we all we've we've just seen the text. And in our own minds, we've interpreted the text and built our own, built the world that the text describes. You know, imagine the characters, imagine the movements and everything. And to have that,

to have those two interpretations sort of agree with each other. Yeah, I guess you feel a connection, don't you? You feel a connection to society and culture and other people it's impossible to look inside another person's head but art is the only way that you can get close to that and a hammer oh he is a jeffrey darmer stand-up yeah yeah yeah that was the thesis he was trying to disprove there yeah that was his defense that art was the thesis he was trying to disprove that was his defence that art was the only way into someone's head that was his defence to the baffled police detectives

I just think that's the thing that's missing from a lot of arts education and stuff where it's sort of like do you remember in class people were like missing from a lot of like arts education and stuff where it's sort of like um uh you know like do you remember a class people like why why would we why would we read this or what's the point of this yeah and it's like well it's the point of you know all of life so i yeah exactly there's nothing else there's nothing else to do once you've nailed food and shelter.

Yeah, I never understood why people said that about maths either. It's like, what's the point of learning sine, cos and tan? We're not going to use it in everyday life. You will if you're an engineer. What they meant was, I'm not going to. Yeah, I've already decided. I've decided I don't want to do this. And these numbers...

Although I did grow to hate English. When I started English at GCSE, we had this teacher, Mr. Moore. He's from Newcastle. And this is in Brunei. Oh, yeah. So, you know, you can imagine the effect of your first Geordie accent in Borneo it was baffling

but he was brilliant at first he was like this sort of freewheeling we're just talking about poetry we're writing things I loved it so much and then the curriculum kicked in and suddenly we were just reading through this

prose and and coming and and sort of second guessing the authors and coming up with reasons that they'd written something one way and and all the hidden meanings and stuff and i never bought it ever ever ever i never bought the idea of these hidden meanings it became like a running joke between me and Mr. Moore like he'd say and of course he's used the word apple here to evoke the image of Adam and Eve and

the Garden of Eden and I'd just be in the corner just shaking my head and he'd be like Phil I can see you shaking your head and I'm like it's just an apple he's written an apple because it's an apple. There's one poem that he showed us that was about the birth of a baby or the birth of a snake or something. And he's like, the lines are all irregular because it's meant to look like,

what's in an ECG? What's the scan you do to hear a heartbeat? Ultrasound. Yeah, an ultrasound scan. I'm like, that's ridiculous. And a few years ago, I saw, it was being shared on the internet, it was like a collection of letters

a disgruntled student had sent to authors saying, my teacher says you've got all these, what you've written here has all these hidden meanings in it. Is that real? Is that true? And all the authors, pretty much to a person,

all the authors wrote back saying, nah, I just said apple because it was an apple. I just thought of an apple. Well, Phil, now we get to the top, the idea of the death of the author. Right, which means, is this the question of intention versus interpretation? Yeah also the fact that like let's say that you're reading a piece of prose and it's just full of the words like shaft and knob

and like these big long veins and you sort of say to the author this is very gay and penis-y and he's like no it's not he's really conservative like maybe he doesn't know how how penisy his writing is right so why is he the god of who's in charge of it you know

um yeah yeah i can see that and there's a good anecdote i think it's isaac asimar the sci-fi um writer he walked past a lecture hall once where someone was lecturing about one of his novels, and he thought, in the university he was working at, and he eavesdropped on it. And the guy was saying all this stuff that he didn't agree with about exactly this kind of thing you're talking about. And then he politely waited for all the students to leave at the end of the lecture, and he sort of said to the guy, oh, hi. And then, oh, my God, it's you, you know. And he said, oh, I just want to say, you know, that's not what I meant, and that's not what this is.

The guy, the lecturer said, who are you to say what you meant, you know? He said, you don't control this anymore. This piece of art is out there now. Yeah, and to an extent, I'd agree. But I think what I had a problem with was, you know, he wasn't saying like you can interpret it this way it was like this is what the writer was trying

to do intentionally and that I never bought. Well that's the trouble with it's prescriptive I mean it's a bit I think it's a lot easier to sell in poetry where if you ever tried to write a poem you have to like choose each word like picking a new piece of furniture from a catalog like you can't just yeah yeah yeah it's like how you only so many words per line so

you got to be very careful when it's just prose and they go he took off his his shoes and put them by the door and then you're trying to go the door and turn it into a whole thing then i'd agree but equally like um i think it's what is it about it's about engaging kids imaginations into the idea that maybe they should be looking for a second or third layer as opposed to just going to that well i don't know i read animal farm but it was just a silly story about pigs wasn't it pigs shouldn't run a farm yeah that's the trouble is that you're contending with a room full of acne ridden freaks who if you're not careful they'll just come away from Animal Farm

going the lesson of Animal Farm is humans should run farms not pigs and they do so good it was a chilling peak into an alternate reality where farms are run by pigs thank god it's not

the case. It's a cautionary tale to remind us to never let farms be run by pigs. Thank you Orwell. I only hope that the farming industry sits up and takes note

from this timely warning from history. I always love it when campaigners and whatever say we need to sit up and sit up and take note on sit up and take notice. It's like the idea that we're all just kind of slouching all the time. What? Who's there? I've noticed something. We're all just like a stoner who's about to get burgled. What have you got to do?

You've got to sit up and take notice, then you have to buckle in. Yeah, have the conversation. Have the frank and open conversation. Got to buckle up because it's time to talk about X. Yeah. It's time to talk. I always love it when people say,

especially men need to talk about mental health. Do you know how everyone talks? First of all, any appeal to talk about mental health now is like, all we talk about is mental health first of all any appeal to talk about mental health now is like all we talk about is mental health but when they say men need to talk it's time to open up and talk and I was wondering

in the street where are we meant to talk just wandering around going I'm sad they're basically just saying, like, a bunch of people without qualifications should try and kind of do therapy on each other. Yeah. While you're at it, if any of you have got, like, a pain in your lower belly,

you need to get a scalpel and just perform surgery. Get your mates to scalpel you. Me and my friends have actually organised a weekly surgery party where we just kind of get together and we open up our bodies with knives and we just perform

surgeries on things we think we might need. Look, we just, we like to get together, we have a couple of pints, we fire x-rays at each other it's good it's good for you um well also like i i found this out um uh i was speaking to my girlfriend phil and i think one of the reasons that we say all we talk about is, you know, mental health or whatever, is because we work in, that's right, the arts. Yeah. We work with, we're at the tip

of the liberal metropolitan elite sphere, Phil. It's true. It's true. Whenever anyone, that's why you and I get that resentful feeling when you see some tweet saying like, ah, has anyone even heard of this problem? And it's like the 50th tweet we've seen that day. Right. that resentful feeling when you see some tweets saying like, ah, has anyone even heard of this problem? And it's like the 50th tweet we've seen that day.

Right. And you want to say, all I hear about is this problem. My waking life is consumed by this. But I was talking to my girlfriend about some of the offices that she used to work in, in a normal proper job that contributes to society, unlike mine and some of her stories are like from the fucking 70s Yeah, this is why

you need someone like this dispatchers from the normal world Yeah, I mean we're inside the arts where people are sort of going, perhaps the sixth wave of feminism was actually the seventh if we split it in two. But also, I mean, it's still some men's mental health. It's still the kind of thing you see on The One Show or Good Morning Britain all the time.

So I do feel like it has quite a lot of mainstream cut through. Oh, it does, yeah. But it's ultimately hollow, isn't it? Because that's all it gets. You get someone on The One show going, hmm, and now a very special feature. And then there's not like any more therapists.

It's not like a there's no more money, is there? There's never any more money for anyone. No, yeah. It's just like, everyone expects that now that Philip Schofield has done an address to camera or there's been one article

in one of the less read newspapers then a bunch of incredibly repressed thuggish men are all going to break down like in a movie where you kill the head vampire

and all the other vampires kind of snap out of it. You know how all these really toxically masculine men always looked up to Philip Schofield? You know how they took all their social cues

from Philip Schofield? Well, guess what? Who better positioned to change that culture? Yeah. If anything is going to strike at the heart of the toxic patriarchy, it's this show in a basement in Soho.

Where it's already being advertised in all the hot spots you can imagine. Where, you know, everywhere toxic men hang out yeah a lot of it a lot of this isn't it is i always think is like having a big um a big session on why skipping school is bad on monday morning at 9 a.m what do you mean well the people who skip school aren't going to be there, are they? Oh, I see, I see, I see. It's really bad to be late to school,

and you're going to find out all about that at 7am. Be on time. No latecomers allowed. At 6pm on Friday, and bearing in mind Monday's a bank holiday, we're going to have a big seminar about the power of working late and not going to the pub blah blah blah it doesn't seem to be

do you think it's helping? It's hard to measure isn't it? yeah I don't think it does help all that much all this talking about mental health I think it's good to try and undo uh the shame that comes with talking about your emotional and mental vulnerabilities i think that's positive but there's a danger of it veering into the um domain of actively

encouraging people to dredge up traumas and um because you know we are built to forget things i think we've time to we've lost sight of this yeah our minds are built to forget negative experiences and emotions and because just because you're no longer feeling these bad things does not mean you have yet to process them or or um overcome them or understand them you've forgotten you you've moved on. And I think we are in danger of losing sight of the value of that as well. Yeah, or even just, I mean, maybe you have processed it, but then people, I mean, you and I work in it.

Subconsciously, you might process subconsciously. And I feel like there are certain people now who think the only way forward in your life is to dredge up things again and, you know, and feel trying to almost feel worse about them than you did originally. Well, you and I work in an industry that monetizes trauma and incentivizes people to try and monetize it before they've processed it. That's true. Although in our industry specifically, it's a false promise. It's the kind of thing that does well at festivals and will help your career for maybe a year. And then it's over.

Because the general public, funnily enough, once from their comedians. Something a little lighter, in the long run. Yeah. Yeah, I think festival comedy has, you know, I think it's actually, I think it's hamstrung a lot of comedians. Yeah, but I would say that that's only true of the ones who can't turn it into a dramedy. Yes.

Pretty much every... I can't think of a case where that has lasted for anyone more than a year or two. I really can't. Well, I mean, it wasn't based on necessarily a direct-to-real experience, but I will destroy you on, what, 11 Emmys or whatever? I May Destroy You? Right. I see.

Yes, that's a good point. That's a kind of comedy drama thing. All comedies are dramaties now, if they're not brightly colored silly sitcoms. Mm-hmm. I don't know. I feel like I May Destroy You is the exception that proves the rule, though. It wasn't very traumatic,

but I guess Fleabag as well is kind of a... Yeah, it was lightly, sort of lightly dramatic. No, I know what you're saying. I guess I'm thinking more like straight comedian, straight stand-up,

straight comedy kind of thing. Well, I guess that's the trouble is that it's people who do it as stand-up and then it's not... It doesn't mean you can write a sitcom with a plot and it might be... It might be... The irony is it might be too horrible to portray even as fiction

yeah yeah that's a good point but then what they've what our industry has done is it's incentivized you to do a big show about it and now you've got this kind of possibly quite traumatic to relive show that you're sort of obliged to then what tour i mean god yeah that's a mad thing i mean even like russell cain who did the dead dad show by the time he did the dead dad show his dad had been dead for like years and years it wasn't recent yeah and he's reliving that that that um bereavement every night but that's but i mean he did it the right way whereas i think i mean there's been people who've done the fringe when we've been up there, where they go,

oh, this harrowing thing happened about seven months ago, so I'm going to try and make it funny. And it's like, no, you need to get your finger out of that wound, man. You've got to give that at least a few years. Oh my lord. Maybe not. Maybe you processed it incredibly quickly.

Good for you. But everyone uses the Russell Cain Dead Dad Show to justify that. But again, that was like seven year gap. I mean, some people have killed their dads. Some people we know have killed their dads, Phil. And that's, you know. And they got three stars.

It's a terrible thing. Yeah, that's the worst. Imagine doing something, having some horrible time and then people are like, Well, I mean, on the subject of comedy, it would be remiss for us not to mention the passing of Sean Locke this week.

Oh, fuck, yeah, that happened. Gosh, kind of, yeah, that was very surprising. It was. I mean, he was a guy who could, like, that was very surprising. It was. I mean, he was a guy who could, like, he could do all of it, really. Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever watch or listen to any of 15 Stories High? I watched 15 Stories High, yeah.

When I watched it at university and I was like, it was amazing. There's one episode, I think it's episode two or three. It's called The Taxi Driver, I think, which is one of the best episodes of a sitcom I've ever seen. It's really amazing. It's so funny. And it's got these great twists and stuff. Yeah. And it's got a young Benny Wong, who is, of course, now famous for being in the Doctor Strange movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It's crazy. It's nuts. That is crazy. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's crazy. It's nuts. That is crazy. But no, Sean Locke could do,

yeah, like you say, I mean, inventive, surreal, creative sitcoms, panel show, riffing, stand-up. Yeah, it was all good. It was all really high quality. And like, yeah, and just unique. It's such a shame.

He's one of the greats. Yeah, and what it's it's and and worth checking out i mean he has like albums and and stuff that you guys can buy or download or you don't have to just watch them you don't have to don't limit yourself to clips of him on on 8 out of 10 cats however good they may be yeah i mean 15 stories high is that's the the one that's the overlook yeah those like that that's for the hardcore comedian, comedy fans. I don't know why it was overlooked at the time. It wasn't really a big hit at the time. Well, there's an interesting, you can read an interview or something with him or the co-creator.

I can't remember where I read it, but they were talking about how suddenly the BBC starts putting your show on at quarter past 11. I was one of those and I guess this was before iPlayer wasn't it so like if it wasn't on at a good time you just wouldn't have seen it I think it was either him or the co-creator who said oh no it was the co-creator saying there was some petition for the BBC

to like repeat it so that everyone could have a chance to look at it but the co-creator was like nah I remember once they delayed an episode because there was a live badger watch with Bill Oddie. People are thick, people are awful and thick. Yeah.

I mean, imagine, bloody hell. 15 stories high, check that out. Yeah, mad. I mean, what was he, 58 or something. Yeah, 15 stories high. Check that out. Yeah, mad. Mad, mad, mad. I mean, what was he, 58 or something? Yeah, 58. Really young. And meanwhile, we've got to watch footage of

the Taliban dancing around and having a great time. It's like, why can't we have nice things? We can't have nice things, Phil. Everything's going to steadily become more and more. I don't know nice things, Phil. Everything's going to steadily become more and more... I don't know. It's been a very cynical feeling

week, hasn't it? Yeah. With Dominic Raab on his holly bobs? Oh, yeah. That was nuts. I swear MPs have been on more holidays than I have in the last two. Because I like to think of myself as a discerning member of our democracy. And I like to think that I hold politicians to account. But even I go, well, yeah, they need a holiday too.

I mean, they aren't machines. We all need a break. But the amount of times I see that Dominic Raab or Boris Johnson was on holiday, just in the last year, I was like, I haven't had a holiday since last summer. And that was the first one for three years. And I'm a fucking clown how many holidays how many holidays are these people they aren't constantly seemingly on holiday they're always like the prime minister was it was um playing croquet and cornwall the way but he's

the i mean obviously if you're just like like some backbench you know dickhead then go on holiday to corfu for as many weeks as you want. Whatever. That broken fence down the road can wait. But if you're the foreign secretary and you go on holiday... If someone says to you, if you go, I'm just off on my holiday, and people go, Oh, you know how the Taliban are advancing towards Kabul?

Already halfway through that. I'm advancing... I don't care. I'm advancing towards Kabul. Already halfway through that. I'm advancing. I don't care. I'm advancing towards the beach. Bye. Halfway through the word advancing, you should cancel your holiday. You should. If you're the Foreign Secretary, you shouldn't be on holiday during a phrase that can later be described as

the fall of X. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If there's going to be the fall of X. Mm-hmm, yeah. If there's going to be the fall of anything, you should be at work. But he probably went, well, there's always going to be a fall of something. I've got to go on holiday sometime. There's never a good time, Pierre. That's the thing, isn't there? There's never a good time to go to Malaga.

If you look back and it's like, the fall of is a big deal. The fall of Singapore. The fall of Berlin. You don't want to be sat on a beach in your Crocs during a fall of. You want to be at work in the fall of. So when people say, what was it like during the fall of the place?

You can say, oh yes, very busy and dramatic. As opposed to, I don't know, Steve wasn't charged that day Steve! And trying to get him on the line What gets, yeah also the sort of confusing thing about this is, the idea you get from all these guys

these sort of psychos who want to be in high level government, is that the whole reason they've sort of ruined their private lives, destroyed their family lives, turned every day of their own personal lives into a high-wire act where the best possible outcome is that they leave office not completely dishonored. You think they're willing to do this because they want to be there when these big things happen.

They want to be a part of great political events. They want to be in the room where it happened. Yeah. To paraphrase our good friend Lin-Manuel Miranda. And then when you realise they've been bunking off, you're like, well, then what have you done all this for? I thought the whole point of your psychosis was that you want to be part of this history.

But that's the thing. I think especially the current cabinet, none of them are sincere. They're all doing this ironically, except Priti Patel, who's terrifyingly sincere. That's true that's true yeah she really means it she really wants to get rid of everyone but but the rest of them i think really all they ever wanted was to say i got the gold star yeah yeah yeah look i've got the cv building i mean it literally is the ultimate piece of cv building yeah yeah for a lot of they want to say i got the biggest badge in school and that's it

yeah that's one of the reasons why they're terrifying i mean that's all those uh articles you can read about how like boris johnson and david cameron are essentially just still competing to be head boy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's incredible. Do you think Matt Hancock is going to put former Minister for Health on his CV? Like, how bad does your

resignation have to be for you not to put that on your list of qualifications? People think you're a different Matt Hancock who looks like that. But you know what I mean? Is he like... Is he going to still use it? Is he still going to play it up? Is he still going to use it to get after doing

speaking gigs? Or would he rather people forgot he was ever Secretary for Health? He's going to use the fuck out of it. He's going to say Minister for Health and National Shagger. Hi, Matt Hancock, former health minister, current fuck machine. That's how he's going to introduce himself.

If you've got the confidence to have an affair in an office that has a camera in, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. Still really weird it had a camera because they said no other cabinet minister's office has a camera and they don't know why it was there it was for the kinky

shit that he was into he put it in there that's true he was on OnlyFans yeah he's more upset about the change to OnlyFans in terms of conditions than last week than anyone Matt Hancock he was that's going to be his income now.

That's his retirement gone. Yeah. He was going to get all dressed up in all the missing PPE and wank off. All rubber and masks, it's great. Just splatting point blank into a face shield. As you can see, it's very effective. It's a bit late for that, Matthew. it's all a bit late for that isn't it yeah well

I look forward to the career of Matt Hancock fuck machine as I'm sure you do listeners oh and remember listeners 2nd or 3rd of September my best of special filming all my best shit from the last five or six years being committed to film.

And the sort of award-winning comedian, Garrett Millerick, who's excellent, doing his smash hit sold-out five-star show as well. 2nd or 3rd of September, Pleasance, Islington, North London. Yes, go to that. Come have a look. I'll see you there. I can't go because I will be on tour

In the UK Which you can keep an eye out for And also Pre-order my book Sidesplitter Which I have to go into the office today To sign loads of signed copies of Yes keep ordering signed copies Keep Phil busy

Yep Keep my wrist strong that's right like Matt Hancock surely is at the moment okay thanks bye

goodbye everyone