Camp Gagnon - Speaking Chinese as White Guy, Doing Comedy in China, & Marriage To Hannah Berner | Des Bishop

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Whats good people! We got stand up comedian and Irish Sensation Des Bishop in the tent. He's a legend and today we talk about learning Mandarin as a white guy, doing comedy in China, & how he met his wife and fellow comedian Hannah Berner. WELCOME TO CAMP!

Did you find any interesting relational dissimilarities or things that you would adjust to dating in China? They have a different attitude towards sex? They're not as open about it for sure. However, I was surprised how quick converted into sex. They don't shave their prunuch. This is a joke, but it's a 100% true story. I didn't know what the word for like when a woman is like loving it. Right?

It turns out that the word that Chinese women say when they're like loving it is shufu, which translates to English as comfortable. Comfortable in English has a meaning, but shufu in Chinese, Chinese means I'm loving it. Obviously, if a Chinese girl came to America and she was with some dude and he was like, oh, my God, oh my God, oh my God. A Chinese girl would be like, why are you bringing God into this? Whereas for me, I was doing what I was doing. And she was like, oh, shufu. And I was like a couch? Jesus Christ. I thought I was killing it here. I'm the IKEA of Kondolingas. I was so into being an altar boy that you were supposed to be in fourth grade, but I asked if I could start in third grade. So I actually became an altar boy early. You want to get like advanced treatment? Yeah, me and Brian Byrne. We both went to Monsignia Fogarty and we were like, we're ready. Yeah. I just wanted to be up there, man.

Did he agree? I mean, I have a joke about it, but like the joke is based in truth, which is like, I just thought it would be cooler to be up there than down with the, in the crowd. The peasants. With the audience. I want to be up there. I think you saw it as the stage. I mean, I, I think it's subconscious.

But I do think I preferred to be up there. Like, I did get a kick out of that. Oh, yeah, 100%. I like, I enjoyed being an altar boy. Did Monsignor, what's his name? Monsignor, Fogany was cool. You know, later on. Did he agree? Did he agree? You were right?

I agreed. I started. But he looked at and he was like, yeah, you got it. And he was, see, Monsigny Fogarty wasn't like that. I've encountered plenty of that were, but Monsignor Fogarty was, he was actually, he was cool. He was fine. You know that Monsigni Fogart actually once said to my mother, he's going to be some sort of performer. He's got, he's got something. Oh, really?

The priest said to my mom. See, I carry a weird guilt with this. Because like, same thing. So I've had, one, as a caveat, amazing priest in my life. Like, again, there's obviously this fucking stereotype priest. Yeah, I've had good and bad, honestly. I've never had bad. Oh, you didn't live in Ireland.

That's a good point. That is true. No, I've had only great priests. Actually, my wife and I were introduced by a priest. I was like, hey, come to Bible study. It wasn't direct, but he was like, yeah, come out, come hang out. That's where we met. It was wild.

But with that being said, I only had, like, good experiences, and I remember that feeling of wanting to be an altar boy and seeing, like, them, like, process through the mass and being like. It's the ceremony. You know, that should be me. And my mom wouldn't let me. She's like, no, we're not dealing with that. I think she was a little afraid of like the whole fucking.

Yeah, but you're younger than me. So like there was none of that. Like none of those concerns when I was doing it. And yeah, it's the pageantry. The pageantry is like it's addictive. And I remember this is the difference between our upringss is that people saw you and like your desire to like kind of like perform and they were like, oh, this guy is going to be a performer. My mom saw my desire to perform.

It was like, you're going to be a great priest. She told me. She was like, you're going to be a fabulous priest. And then as soon as I started doing stand-up, she's like, but you're not interested in, you know, seminary? Really still? Yeah. Her only goal for me, my entire life, was to go to heaven.

That was the only thing, I swear to God, I was like, mom, like, should I go to college? She's like, go to heaven. Like, that's like the only thing she wanted. So she was like, be a priest. That's all you should do. So now I feel like I'm using my gifts that God gave me to be a priest to fucking tell dick jokes. And I'm far with that because the bad news for your mom is there's no heaven. Mom, if you're listening, we're going to edit that.

Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's funny. I sometimes, you know, I did this show about my mom and I joke about the fact that I don't believe that there's a heaven. You know, people are fine with the joke, but, you know, like people, a lot of people don't want to be hearing that. And I'm, I don't want to hear that. I'm fine with the, I'm fine with the, I'm fine with people that believe in heaven, you know. But. No, as I say in my show, I say, the one thing I know for sure is that we don't know, you know. We're all guessing, pick a guess, whichever one works for you. one day we'll know. Yeah, yeah. And your guess is just like, yeah, probably not. My guess is that it's just like it's the end of the Sopranos.

It's just black screen? Yeah, no music. No journey. No journey comes on, no credits. I just think that that's why I mean, I don't want to, spoiler alert, but that's why in the end, as I got older, I started to think that actually that's, that was a genius ending because actually it 100% represents my belief in death. That's actually cool. I never, I never saw it that way. Oh, yeah. That's how I came to see it that way, actually. Not originally.

And I wasn't watching, I didn't watch the soprano's tele after, so I wasn't part of that, like, the great disappointment of like, what the fuck? You know, because I watched it way later and I knew that that was coming. Yeah, I still haven't watched it. There's so many amazing shows that I'm, like, catching up on. Like, Sopranos is one. Like, I don't even know. Like, the wire breaking bad. Yeah, the wire soprano's breaking bad.

Those are the three that I feel like kind of changed TV. they're worth a shot. They're worth watching. And even sometimes, like, there may be parts of the Sopranos now or the wire, maybe even breaking bad where you go like,

oh, that's a bit, you know, dated. But, like, at the time, it was untouchable. Can you explain, just for any of the people listening, your kind of, like, come up your journey, like, coming from, like, being born in London, growing up in New York, moving back to Ireland. Like, what are the beats of the early parts?

The London beat is, like, it's like a unnecessary. Sarah beat. My parents happened to be living there. I was born. They took me home within four weeks. Like I was born November 12th. My first Christmas was in Flushing Queens, 1975. So I have no connection to London other than my birth happened there. Then I grew up in Queens. I was a Queens kid and whatever, typical kid. But at 14, I flunked out of St. Francis Prep. Wait, why? Just like no interest. I mean, there was a little bit of bullying going on. I had sort of fallen. You were bullying kids.

No, I fell a foul of the strongly backed Italian Americans in St. Francis Prep at the peak of the, at the peak of the Teflon-Dahn era. So anyway, I had some stresses, but I also had my own demons going on. And I just literally had no interest in school. You didn't like it? I just suddenly just like, you know, I think in modern times they would say that I was suffering with like severe anxiety. I follow this guy on Instagram who's actually an autistic comedian and he just does memes for us.

He does memes for comedians. That's awesome. So he does one of those memes where somebody's making like a face like, really? And it says when the comedian says he's not autistic. So I have no doubt that a lot of us are on the spectrum. Yeah, autistic comedian is a little redundant, I think. Yeah, like on the spectrum, fine.

But no, but at the time, you know, whatever. I was just dealing with all my demons. I was drinking a lot. At 14? Yeah, I started drinking at 12. Wow. Just, again, not because I was any great rebel. I just was the youngest of my neighborhood crew.

Joe Lane was the oldest. When I was 12, he was 17, but we were close. And then I was the youngest. Everyone younger than me was in like the next crew. And he was hanging with you? Me and Joe, yeah. He's still my buddy to this day, you know? Really?

And so he was 17. The majority of that crew was 16 and I was 12. But we were all buddies. Neighborhood kids growing up playing wiffleball. So when they started becoming like proper adolescence, I just tagged along. Yeah. So I started drinking at 12 with them. Smoking cigs, the whole deal.

I wasn't big into smoking cigarettes because my parents smoked and I hated it. But I loved booze. Because, you know, whatever. I think I was actually quite tortured in my youth, but we didn't, people don't talk about. Like, and I'm conflicted now about how much we talk about it because I don't know how much talking about it would have helped me or not. But anyway, at the time, I was tortured, but I didn't know that.

But I do remember that when I got drunk for the first time, I remember thinking at 12, finally, like relief. I felt relief. Wow. Real relief. And even at that young, and I know it sounds like I'm going back in time and I'm like, I'm writing this perfect moment,

but I can remember the tree that I was looking at. I can remember the tree that I was looking at in the corner of 47th Avenue 188 Street and looking at the tree and just feeling peace. Wow. And I was aware that normally it wasn't peaceful, subconsciously. And where was this like the discontentment? Was it from like street life or was it like from home?

No, it was from home. Oh, really. Anxiety at home, stress. You know, my mother was very, like a lot of anxiety. But you know, none of these labels existed. I just knew that myself, and if you talk to my brothers, they will agree. Like, we were stressed. Yeah, we just call it being Irish.

That's just what it is. Yeah. A lot of just a lot. of unnecessary stress, like drama for no reason, you know. And I've had the full journey with my mom, so I'm comfortable talking about it now, but at the time I didn't know that we were odd. You know what I mean? So I just remember thinking that it felt good, the relief felt good.

So anyway, by the time I was 14, I was drinking quite a lot, you know, drink on my own. And needless to say my grades, the joke in my show, I say I got kicked out of school because I had a problem with alcohol, and my mother had this idea to send me to Ireland, of all places, which is, it's a joke. It's not really true. The truth was I flunked out of St. Francis Prep for numerous things that were going on, and I was doing, like, graffiti, and I was going out with this girl, and I was, like, obsessed with her. So all my focus was not on school, you know? Were you ever drunk in school? I never, no, I never actually went to school drunk. The very last day of St. Francis Prep, I smoked weed for the first time with my buddy PJ and skipped first period. and went in high.

But you know the first time you smoked weed, I wasn't even, I didn't even know what high was. I wasn't aware of being high. I actually, like, it took me a long time of smoking weed to really be aware of being high. Did you have that experience? Yeah, the first time I smoked weed, it felt like drunk adjacent.

Like, I was like, this is like if alcohol studied abroad. It was like a weird kind of like sophisticated drunkness, I guess. And weed never really did it for me. Like even from 12 to 19, I drank and used drugs. but weed was never my jam and even like being super stoned I never felt relief like I felt from from booze and other things

That's a paranoid thing though Like to go to school high for the first time And like try to be in math class But it was the last day It was irrelevant Yeah I guess the last day is kind of chill It was irrelevant And it was just a fun thing to do with him

And he's still my best friend to this day In fact he picked me up After this stupid ski accent that I had He was the one that picked me up from the airport So I know him since I'm two years old He's still one of my closest friends But anyway, needless to say, I flunked out of school and my mother was fucking mad stress, man. Like really thought that like I was about to really go down like a bad road.

And I had some family, you know, distant family members that had had a tough ride older than me. So that was on her mind. And she really thought that I was going to become like a crackhead. Her own parents were bad alcoholics. She stopped drinking. My dad was an alcoholic. So she just basically was like, there's only one way. this is going. So I actually, a cousin of mine was visiting from Ireland and she said to me,

because I was doing summer school and she was helping me with my summer school. She was older to me, Fiona. And she was like, why don't you go to boarding school in Ireland? Just a random thing that she said, sitting with me doing math homework at my kitchen table. And I was like, yeah, fuck yeah. Get the fuck out of here. You know, because I was so unhappy. Wow. And so I actually said to my mom and my father like, why don't why don't I go to Ireland? And they kind of laughed at me. But then Fiona talked to her dad and like suddenly the ball was set in motion and it all turned out to be cheap and doable and six weeks later I went to Ireland. It wasn't like any great, you know, long preparation. It was very random. That's really cool. So I went to boarding

school in Ireland. Did you like it? Was that relief? I loved it, man. Ireland saved me. Ireland saved me from booze long term, but in the short term Ireland saved my education. It like gave me my confidence back. You know, I had this shitty first. year in school, fucking, like I fell out with these Italian guys. One of them ended up turning out to be obsessed with the girl I was going out with. So I fell foul with this. So I, you know, all my confidence, like, went to the floor. Yeah.

And then I'm in Ireland. I'm like, unique. All these Irish guys were awesome. It was all boys' school. And I don't think 100% that all boys' school is the way to go. But for me, it so sooned me. All boys schools are awesome. I went to one when I did a semester in Paris in France when I was in high school.

I just wanted to go abroad. And, like, I thought it was just be cool. And my dad was kind of like going back and forth. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. And I went to an all-boys school for, like, probably three, four months. And I loved it. There's something about dudes when there's no women around. Yeah, it's fun, bro.

It's like there's no expectation. People aren't, like, posturing. Yeah, you're not showing off. There's no competition. Yeah. Any of the competition stuff is, like, easy to expel. Fucking sports. Yeah, yeah.

A bit of jostling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's wrestling. Like, there's still, like, fights and shit. Yeah. It's not, I don't know.

It's different. For me, it was necessary because I was easily distracted. I was obsessed with, you know, like I loved female attention. Suddenly I was, honestly, I was in like, I mean, you're talking about culture clash. I went from like Queens, New York, St. Francis Prep. Girls are wearing like fucking short skirts. You know, like we were way advanced. I'd already lost my virginia.

I was going out with that girl. I lost my virginia. I was 14 before I went to Ireland. And like, suddenly I'm in, like, the same age group in Ireland was not having the same life. Rural boarding school. Half of these guys were farmers, kids. And it was like a real eye opener. But it was great for me to just step.

away from drinking at 12 and smoking weed, doing graffiti. Suddenly I'm just like supervised study for three hours and having fun with these Irish dudes and like, I loved it. Did you like school at that point? Did you like learning? Then I did. When I went to Ireland, I did. You know what?

I always say Irish history saved my education because I, you know, when you're Irish American and we were very Irish American, marched in the St. Patrick State Parade, love the IRA. You know, I joke in Ireland, because in Ireland, like the IRA was much more complicated. Yeah. But in Irish America, the IRA was not complicated. Right. There's distance. We were up the rah.

My mother was very heavily Republican, very involved in, you know, like northern Irish stuff, you know. And so we'd march with county down. And so, like, when I got to Ireland, I just thought I was Irish. And Irish people were like, you're not. You're American. And I don't know if you remember, but like, America wasn't an identity. In Queens, Queens is very culturally diverse. So when somebody, I say, what are you?

and they would say they're American. I'd be like, what you mean? There's no such thing as an American. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, what are you? Yeah. Are you Dominican? Are you Puerto Rican?

Yeah, exactly. Are you Irish, German, you know, a Polish German mix, whatever? Yeah. So, like, we would literally say there's no such thing as an American. I remember we used to say that in Queens. That's so funny. You know, in that, like, America was your, like, your passport,

but your identity was... A different thing. It was where your parents came from. It was what you did. In our neighborhood was mostly Irish, Italian, German. There was a few Latinos. But, but, like, it wasn't. The neighborhood was very white Catholic, you know, and some Jewish kids from Fresh Meadows, right?

So anyway, I'm digressing, but so I was very confident that I was Irish, you know? And then I went to Ireland and they were like, you were American. And I'd never really been, you know, I'd never really had to be like, oh, shit, I'm not Irish. So, and then I remember I was in this civics class, they call it, which is just like a, it's like a nothing class where you just talk about like life and, you know, it's not even like a real, you don't get a test on it, you know. and he gave us all these dates and all the dates were like significant Irish historical events and one of them was 1916, Eastern 1916, which if you're Irish is like the moment that are all changed.

Everything changes because of the 1916 rising. It's one of the most important events in Irish history. I'd never heard of it. Yeah. I had never heard of it. And that was the beginning of that year and at the end of that year I had to take the state exam because at the end of three years in Ireland,

you take the intersert, which is now called the junior ser. So it's like a big deal in Irish education. And I didn't know anything about Irish history, and I became obsessed. Because when you learn Irish history from the beginning, it's like you. You've never seen The Sopranos. Right. People have probably heard you say that and they're like, oh, man, I would love to fucking watch Sopranos from the beginning and not know. So you got all of Irish history is like.

All of Ireland from the top at like 15 years old. Irish history is like the Sopranos. Wow. It's fucking dramatic. Yeah. And it's horrible. Yeah. You know?

And the English were horrible and there's a lot of death. And I was fucking going through Irish history like the wire, you know? Yeah. Well, it is a story of struggle, right? Yeah. It is literally a story of like, yo, everyone's against us. Fuck everyone. Yeah, we're going to keep on fighting.

Fucking the fucking Vikings and then the Normans and they kept coming. But anyway, the Irish Republican history, like the Irish history of how Ireland became a republic is fucking fascinating. So I had to learn all of that. And I was obsessed. That's cool. And that made all my other subjects do better as well because I just understood that you fucking get the knowledge. You absorb it. and then you get an opinion on it,

and then you regurgitate it onto a piece of paper. So suddenly I actually cared about learning. That's interesting. Because so much of your stand-up, like all the things you've done, you've done a bunch of things that are very much like immersive learning, like going to China. But that was kind of an accident. Learning Mandarin, like even learning the traditional language of Ireland.

Gaelic, right? Gaelga, yeah. Garlic. They call it garlic, right? Some say Gaelic is the northern way. And then Gwega is the way that most of the Irish would say it. And in Guelga is, because Irish people say Irish in English. Because Guelga is actually Irish in English.

And then Scots, Gaelic is the Scottish dialect. But Irish people in English say Irish, because that's what it is. It's the Irish language. But then when you say Irish here, people go Irish, you mean like an Irish accent? But that's okay. That's just a cultural misunderstanding. But you grow up not liking school. And then you learn all these foreign languages and immerse yourself in cultures and learn foreign cultures.

Like that to me seems sort of antithetical to each other. Well, I didn't know I was into learning. Coming to Ireland first was the first thing, history, because I ended up doing history in college. So history, realizing how into history I was was what happened from coming to Ireland. The immersive thing, you know, because I got into stand-up when I was in college, but the immersive thing was also an accident, which is a little bit connected to coming to Ireland as an outsider and having to assimilate. So, like, I even called one of my stand-up tours fitting in because basically, like, You don't realize, but you're learning all these skills on how to fit in.

Because I went to Ireland on my own. I didn't go to Ireland with my parents. Right. I'm a 14-year-old Queens kid. You know, staying with my cousin, and then suddenly I'm in a rural boarding school. So you learn how to assimilate, you know, and you absorb all that stuff. So then the first real television show I ever did was about living on minimum wage, like working minimum wage jobs, four jobs, one month apiece, and doing an immersive documentary

and stand-up about that experience. Now, that wasn't my idea. That idea came from a woman that had been working in the UK and then got a job in Irish TV. She pitched the idea to me based on a book called Nickel and Dimes by Barbara Aaron Reich, which was a great read. And I happened to have read it.

So she was like, have you read the book? I was like, oh my God, I have. She was like, I think you'll be the guy. I want to do this. And I was like, fucking awesome. So the idea of immersion did not come from me. So the fact that you bring that up like, oh, then you become this guy that likes to immerse himself.

That was an accident, like a fortuitary. moment of... But you chose to do it. Yes. And it became great at it. But I was good at it because of the experience that I had had of coming from another culture and assimilating into Ireland. So then I was good at going into this abercababra.

It was the first job. I worked in a cabab shop called Abercabra. And I worked on the wage. But also that episode actually came, wasn't really about the money. That episode really came about the way that people were being treated, particularly new immigrants to Ireland. Ireland had just started having immigration. And there was these Chinese people working with me.

And they got treated like shit, actually, by drunken people coming in. Because it's a kebab place. The main business is people coming out of the clubs at 2 in the morning and getting fast food. And it was chaotic. And it was – I mean, it was funny, but it was kind of hard-hitting because it really was a bit of a negative mirror to Irish society. Right, yeah. But a huge percentage of the population were willing to see that. and accept it as entertainment, but also like eye-opening.

But again, all that fitting in and connecting with them was a skill that I had learned from coming to Ireland. Wow. But I don't want to seem like I was cynical, like, I'm going to manipulate these people into taking part in my documentary. I don't mean it that way. I mean, it was authentic. Right, yeah, of course.

It's just where you lived. Yeah, but it comes across. Like, when I made that series, you know, I wrote stand-up about the immersion, but the narration is done through the stand-up. So there's no, like, hi, I'm, you know, like, there's no my voice coming through being like, I started the job today. There's me doing jokes about starting the job. And then it goes to the situation, which was like a narrative tool.

Was there, I guess, like, an aversion to your New York energy in Ireland? No, stand-up-wise never. I mean, by some people in that, like, you're not, not everyone's going to love you. Sure, sure, sure. You know what I mean? But I guess in just, like, everyday life, I guess stand-up people can see as a performance and be like, oh, this guy is performing. and so the character of being a New Yorker is more palatable probably. But I just met like an everyday conversation.

Like if you're just at a pub and talking to someone. No, I think people thought I was loud when I first got there. Like I definitely got less loud. My cousin, Cormick, he was my older cousin. He was 17 when I came and he became like my older brother. And he was great for me. Like he was one of my closest friends those first couple of years in Ireland. And we were on a par.

I was 14, but I was already drinking. Like I was into the same shit he was into. But I wasn't allowed. My cousins actually were quite. strict. That was another thing that saved me. Actually, I stayed with my cousins at the weekend. They were strict, man. They made me study, and they didn't let me go out. They were right.

I needed that. You weren't rebelliously. Like, you weren't... Well, I couldn't... I did eventually rebel. Were you angry at that time? Like, hey, you can't go out. You can't talk to his girls. Were you ever like, fuck? You know, honestly, for a period of time, no. I started breaking out again when I'd settled into Ireland. So the latter half

of my second year in Ireland, my demons began to rise again. But that didn't come straight away. my cousin Cormick, I remember we're in the kitchen one morning and he was just like, why do you have to speak so loud? We're not that loud here. He shamed me into lowering my voice.

That's funny. Well, it's good. Okay, New Yorkers are loud. And still to this day, I notice it like when I'm in the Delta lounge or like at a fucking restaurant, you know, I'm just like, dude, you don't, the whole fucking Delta lounge doesn't need to know about your dumb fucking business.

Americans are loud. Americans are not. And again, I say this as an American, but part of me changed is like when I'm on the phone, I speak softly. And like, I am aware of when people can hear my conversation too much. And that came from Ireland. Well, I got shamed into, which is good. I got shamed, you know? And, like, because I don't like being in a restaurant.

I'm like totally hearing other people's conversations. And I'm not a killjoy, but that is definitely something that got shamed out of me. I'm not as loud. Yeah. But I will say that I can be a little bit bitter. because Father Butler, who was a fucking asshole. Is the Irish guy? He was my dean.

Not a pedophile. There were actual, that shit went down in my school, but we won't get into that. But Father Butler wasn't that, okay? But he was angry, very angry man and still gave the strap. You know that I still got the strap when I went to boarding school in Ireland. Like if you fucked up, it was literally like, boom, like on your hands. Like I'll give an example. Like in study hall one day, I ripped a fucking, I mean, prize winning fart.

which in your boys, boredical farting is a currency. And I really, you know, I probably had IBS, but the IBS was good for me because I really could rip like really loud ones. Yeah, just natural talent. Michael Jordan level. I'm the Michael Jordan of farts. And farts are always funny,

and debate me if you want, but farts are funny, right? So anyway, I ripped like a fucking, like a prize winner to the point where the teacher who was over supervised study got pissed off at me because I got a round of applause. Literally. The whole study, in the whole study hall is not. just people in my year, it's the entire, all the borders. Yeah. Because there was about 180 borders. The full school also had day students, but there was about 180 borders. And I got a, I got a

round of applause from 180 people. And the teacher was pissed off. So he put me on the front on my knees, right? And I could hear fucking Butler's shoes coming down the hall, you know, the sound of shoes on the fucking the floor. And I was like, bollocks. And he saw him and he goes, right, I'll be back. And he went and he got the fucking leather welt that he had. and he gave me two on each hand in front of everybody and then I was able to sit back down. Damn. Old school.

Did it stop you though? No, come on. This is the Irish mentality. They fucked me up. They gave me a round of applause. That's what I'm saying. They try to stop you from farting. You're like, uh, nope.

No, but anyway, the reason why I bring up Butler is, I was bitter because in my first Irish special, I opened it up because Butler used to always say to me, used to call me a stupid loud mouth of an American. And he would always say that one of these days, these big mouth is going to get you in trouble. because he didn't like the fact that I was like a jokester. Yeah.

You know? And I actually got on fine with him because he was like that with everybody. But he always fucking told me that I was a loud mouth and that it was going to get me in trouble. So I opened my first special and fucking sold out Vickers Street in Dublin. And I said, Father Bala always told me that my big mouth was going to get me in trouble. Well, how's that fucking working out now, Father Bueller? Did he see it?

He hates me. I know that. I've heard from people that still see him that he, I was not expect. I was expecting to be like, yeah, actually, we grabbed a pint after the thing. He was there. He came on stage. Because he, I don't know. Who knows? I don't think he wants to admit that he was, that he was angry and he took it out on us. Oh, yeah. But he did. I mean, it was, at times it was pretty heavy. I'm curious, the time that you were there, I don't want to be rude as far as age here.

But, like, how close was this to the troubles? Oh, they were going on at the time. So I got there in 1990. Okay, yeah. So there was a. A few years left, but that was not, I have to tell you, that that was not a presence in my Irish life. In fact, the Troubles was more of a presence in my life in America where people were avidly Republican and very aware of it. And we marched for County Down. And my mother was a, like, in fact, I, when we were, my mother, my dad died and we sold the house 2015. So I was cleaning out the house.

And I found that there was drums from like the marching band from the St. Patrick's Day Parade for County Down. Oh, that's cool. And one of this bumper stickers on the drum said 26 plus 6 equals 1, which is very provisional IRA propaganda, right? And then the other one was get the Brits out of Ireland, on the drum. In, like, that was the atmosphere we grew up in before I went to Ireland. But that was not the atmosphere in Ireland. And obviously when you're in Ireland, you're exposed to the Irish media, which was definitely very critical of the IRA. And then the British media, you know, in Ireland you basically,

got British TV. Right. You know, anyway. So the British media obviously very critical of the IRA. So, you know, suddenly I was in a less pro-IRA atmosphere. And that was good for me because I, first of all, I became obsessed with learning about the IRA because I used to love debating Irish people about why they were wrong. But also, I also had to accept that, like, you know, some of this, this violence was probably unnecessary and, like, horrific. Right, but this is all happening in Belfast. It's all nothing to do with me. Now, my mother's, all my mother's, all my mother's first cousins, my mother's uncle was still alive. So I would go up to County Down. I visited them Easter of 1991. That was the first time I went to the north. So, you know,

I saw the checkpoints and I saw, I had soldiers pull us over. But I didn't experience, I didn't experience any other than like I would see the armored cars and think it was cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was cool to be in like a quote unquote war zone. Right, right, right. And I crossed the border and I thought like, wow, this is the border. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but that didn't last too long. I mean, the Good Friday Agreement was 1995. That was the end of it. So very soon after I arrived, there was an IRA ceasefire, and then the ceasefire ended when they blew up Canary Wharf.

That was probably the biggest event. The IRA blew up Canary Wharf. And then after the Good Friday Agreement, shootoff of the IRA had a horrible bomb in OMA. That was really the last, like, major violent event. And then that was it then. But you were in like a little wave. at this boarding school.

Yeah, that wasn't, I think I was already in college actually when the Omaboma, I think Omabama was 1997, but anyway, there wasn't a big presence in my life, except for my own desire to know about it and understand it, because I didn't know about how that all started. And all these Irish kids are raised with it, they're kind of like sort of, I'm immune to it, I'm assuming, and you're coming here being like, wait, there's a war happening in this country that I'm now living in, and you just get to download all of it. Like, it's all so interesting.

Download. We weren't downloading. I guess download it proverbially anyway. Yeah, yeah, I was, I got their books, and I was like, I was obsessed. And I had conversations, you know, there was a seminary connected to our school, coincidentally. And the school musicals and plays, you would do them with the seminarians. And some of those guys, they were older than me, but they were very smart. And I remember having, like, some pretty, like, interesting debates with them.

I was definitely, like, absorbing information. But, like, it's so funny. I thought I was so into the normal. and the IRA and all that. But I was so unaware of the division that in 1986, Mexico 86, the World Cup in 1986, Northern Ireland

was in that, you know? Oh, wow. And I didn't understand why I wasn't supposed to root for them. Right, they're Irish. Yeah, but it turns out, it's like sectarian, right? Generally Catholics, largely,

not wholly, but largely Catholics do not support that team. They support the Republic of Ireland. But I was like oblivious. And here's me thinking, that I'm like this little Provo and I actually had no idea. Somebody eventually said to me like

oh no we don't support them. I was like why? It's no one. That's my grandfather's from. My grandfather's from County Down. But then, you know, later on I understood but at the time I was clueless. Now the thing I love about boarding school, just when you get a bunch of guys together and you're all young and there's nothing to do, you find awesome shit to do. Awesome things will happen.

Fight clubs, like you'll find like a way to hurt each other in some capacity. Were there anything that you guys did at the boarding school? Like just like general shenanigans. I mean, they're like, oh, this was an awesome day. I mean, nothing too crazy, honestly.

I mean, there was a lot of cool games. You know, again, I didn't know anything about Irish sports. So my school was a big hurling school. Did you explain hurling? I actually don't understand how this game works. I mean, the best comparison to immediately get an idea is lacrosse. Right?

So imagine lacrosse with no nets, but just a wooden plank, basically, that is like a flattened version of a baseball. bat and then a ball which is like a smaller than a baseball and like a little bit lighter so you can catch it with your bare hand but

you cannot run you can't run with the ball in your hand for more than three steps so you have to put it onto this flat surface of the hurl you can hand pass and you can hit it but you can in the net is a goal for three points but there's also a bar like

like the net like the bar of a American football and over the bar is for one point. And it's two 35-minute halves. And it's a very skilled game. It's a very fast game. Do you like it? I love it.

Really? One of my favorite games to watch. But I had never held a hurl in my life before I went to Ireland. And then I went to a very, very hurling boarding school. Very Gaelic athletic association. That also has associations with Irish independence. You know, that was all part of the independence movement. So I'm in this, like, charged up sporting atmosphere.

So there was a lot of different games. we played with hurling and I loved, I loved all that shit. That's cool. Stupid, like, not actual hurling games. Organizing a hurling game could be complicated, but there was like different games, like, you know, trying to hit a ball a certain distance, we used to call it walls, so we used to play all those games.

Then sometimes we would sneak into town, then we got into girls. Yeah. You know, sometimes if, like, the Loretto was the girls. Like the sister school. The nuns school. And like, if they had a musical, so the other fucked up thing about this crazy Catholic society

was the Loretto and St. Peter's, they wouldn't let us do the musicals together so in st peter's the the younger kids dressed up as women and in loretto the older girls dressed up as men it's literally like shakespearean yes like playtime yes that's so funny so we were allowed to we were we were always be allowed to go to the loretto musical oh that's so but the whole mission was at the break of the intermission of the musical was to just try to fucking meet somebody find a woman just talk to a girl just make out with them or You saw anything. Dressed as a guy?

No, no, I wasn't in. We were just watching. But you find a girl that's dressed up as a dude. You're like, fine. This is what I'm looking for. No, this is just girls like, you know, around. Not the ones in the show. That's so funny, though.

You know, so did you do a play? I did numerous plays. Did you dress as a girl in the play? No, I was always big. So I was always a guy. Damn. But the first years and second years were dressed up as women. That's so funny.

We did paint your wagon. What is that? Hand me down that can of beans. Clint Eastwood did the movie. If you ever... The Pania Wagon, we did Percy French, the Golden Years. There's something so funny

about a traditionally conservative Catholic society. I mean, like, yeah, you guys can dress as chicks. Like, that would be front page, conservative news. God forbid we should interact with women. It's so weird. The whole thing is so fucking strange.

You guys can cross-dress. Just like the concept of like, we can't let these teenage boys and these teenage girls do something together. So let's dress boys up as women. That's so funny. But like, let's face it,

When it comes to sexuality, these guys were warped. You know? Anyway, especially St. Peters. I mean, St. Peters was, you know, Google that shit. It was the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church all started at my boarding school, man. The Ferns Report, Google it. I don't want to get into it because it's too dark, but I'm telling you listeners right now, Google the Ferns Report.

I went to school. I was my principal. One of the three main protagonists of the Ferns report was my principal. Father Collins went to jail. He's dead now. So anyway. Whoa. But there was all that oddness going on because this was before.

this is before the awareness of that. So the Catholic Church was still reigns supreme in Ireland. So this kind of oddness wasn't even questioned. Wow. So that would be the other thing we'd get up to. You'd try to meet a girl. Like when I got a little old 15, 16, 17,

try to meet a girl. Then I'd sneak into town or I tell Father Bell. You were allowed to go into town. Say, Father Bell, I'm going into town. You had to be back for tea, which was like dinner. You had to be back for tea at 5.30. So then I would try to go in, you know, meet up with some girl. I remember one time, like, making out with this girl.

I won't name her. We're still friends, actually, but making out with this girl. in like in a band, like a ruin of a church. You know, it's just so exciting, right? He was making out with somebody. So fucking cool. And then it was like, damn, I got to go back. You know, she's going back to her fucking family.

I was going back to boarding school. Oh, wow. Just in a pew somewhere? Just in an old church? No, like literally like a ruin. Like the ground was like rocks. So romantic, though. It was cool, man.

There's a medieval church. It was a medieval ruin. That's the difference between Ireland and America. You can fool around in a medieval ruin. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because it's 2024. And it's time to talk about something important. When you are seriously hurt, your injury could be worth millions.

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Now let's get back to the show after the short disclaimer. So when we, I went with my family, we went to Scotland, we went to this place called New Grange. Have you ever heard of this? In Ireland. Is it in Ireland? Ireland. That's the summer solstice you're talking about.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in Ireland. Yeah, that's Ireland. That's a county me youth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we went there. Yeah. And we went inside and it was so funny. Like, this is like this old historical, like, it's a mound effectively, but it's kind of like a pyramid. Like it's an old, old, ancient, like, I don't even know, ritual, like, how,

I can't remember maybe it's that the druids are what, but I mean, it's essentially it's pre-Christian. And the front wall faces, it might be like the oldest historical site, like that's still around, I think. That's what they were telling us. And the front door basically faces the sun during the winter solstice. The winter and the summer solstice. It's always a big event. Right when it comes up, like people buy tickets, it's a whole thing. And as we're going inside, the woman told us, she was like, so unfortunately, you know, this didn't become a national heritage site until, you know, the 80s or 90s.

So there's a lot of graffiti. And we're going inside. And I'm expecting it to be like 1960s, like, you know, fucking sex pistols shit. Like, that's what I'm anticipating. So we go inside and it says, like, John and Susie Lovers Forever 1812. Wow. I was like, what? That's the graffiti is other history?

And they're like, yeah. And then, like, she was telling us. She was like, yeah, actually, my grandma used to, like, come here and, like, play when they were kids. And it was just like an abandoned old shit that they had that people would just go to. And I was like, wow, that is a different experience than being in America. The idea that you could just go play in a ruin is like, what? Yeah. I even used to say when I used to walk to college from where I lived in Cork,

I used to cut through an old British Army graveyard and all the graves are from like the 1800s. It's insane. It's absolutely. That's one of the big differences in Europe in general is just the history. You can't avoid it. It's easy to avoid the history here. I don't want to fast forward too much, but I'm so curious about the China thing.

Okay. Like that's such an amazing part of your special. which is awesome, by the way. Oh, thank you. I've really, really enjoyed it. I'd only seen you do stand up a couple times, just, like, around the cellar, just, like, popping in and, like, watching you.

The special is phenomenal. I really, really enjoyed it. I mean, I kind of cheated, because it is a little bit of a... It's 50% like a greatest hits. Oh, really? Well, like, in that, you know, like, I've recorded a lot of those bits before,

but they've just all gotten so much better now that I work in the United States. Since I've been touring in the States, I've just made them all so much better. But that's smart, though. Yeah, it's fine. Why are you trying to, like, reinvent? when you have all this great shit that you're just like, nobody's seen.

Yeah, exactly. This is the thing nobody had seen. This all goes out overseas. You're like, yo, let's just like refine this thing down. But it's genuinely. I love talking about China. Genuinely, but you have, smartly, the opening of the whole special is just you speaking Mandarin.

That was Hannah's idea. Really? Yeah. I mean, she was inspired by the Shane, one of the, I think the Shane Gillis YouTube one starts with a bit of crowd work. But we were basically homeless pimped at, you know, he recorded it. And he was basically saying that like intros are pointless. that like actually you got to capture people straight away.

So Hannah had come up with the idea of just like open with a bit of crowd, or open with that crowdwork. Yeah. And then actually the editor, John Sheridan, came up with the ding. and then basically it's just like, you're in it. So basically it's just like, you're in it. But when I did the China thing, I never think, thought that all that material would be so strong in the United States. But actually, it really,

it was the thing that made my transition to come in because, you know, just through various parents being sick and different, I started spending more time here after I finished in China. And so can you explain that to me? You go to China for the explicit purpose of learning Mandarin and to do stand-up in Beijing. So the quick backstory, those Chinese guys that I worked with in that abacabra, one of them I became very close with. And I had. had gone to visit him in China when he was on vacation. Oh, wow. In 2004.

And I spent four weeks in China, and that was my first experience with China. Now, I also grew up in Flushing Queens. So my neighborhood completely became Chinese in my lifetime. And my next door neighbors, I would shovel snow with them when I was visiting from Ireland, and I couldn't speak to them. They didn't speak English. So I did begin to get a little bit of an obsession with learning Mandarin. And then after I went to China, I was really obsessed with learning Mandarin.

Then we won't talk about it, but I did make a documentary about learning. Irish, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is relevant because it turned out I was really good at learning languages. So in a year, I learned Irish, and I did stand-up in Irish, and that was a very successful series. So after that was done, I break up with my fiancee, and suddenly my whole life was different to what I expected it to be. So I was like, I can do whatever the fuck I want. So let's do this in Chinese. Let's fucking go to China and try to do stand-up and Mandarin and tell the world about China through my journey of trying to do stand-up in Mandarin. But it actually took a That was 2008.

I didn't go there until 2013. It took five years to finally get somebody to fucking back it. My dad died in the interim, so I did a whole thing with that. So I had like this, right? So anyway, needless to say, the pitch was, Irish American comedian goes to China without a word of Chinese, and he has one year living in China to learn enough manner to do stand up in Mandarin.

And everything that happens in between will be part of this journey. And I will also do stand up in English about my experience in China. which helps again to tell the story which was always the, that was always the way my series went. That's awesome. Was man has experience, does stand up about it

and we see the experience happening and hopefully it's entertaining. So cool. I mean, just as a caveat, like I would love to see this everywhere. You know, I did once pitch it to Andrew because what happened was after the China series came out,

you know, Sharon Hogan, she made bad sisters, for example, on Apple, and one of the best actual comedy series, I think, Catastrophe,

which is on Hulu. Anyway, that's not the here and there. She actually had, at one stage, paired up with me trying to get the Arabic version of the China series,

but I didn't want to do it just for Irish TV again because the budgets were so small. I wanted it to be like an international thing because I feel like it has, you know, the flavor of, but we couldn't get it off the ground. So a couple of years later, when I was, like, frustrated with it, I said to Andrew, like, do you think,

I actually pitched him the Arabic thing. He was just beginning his, like, all his stuff was just starting to kick off. It's awesome. There was just, like, a weird. But he was, we had a good conversation about it. That's like a dream of mine personally. Like, my favorite thing to do, and I think this comes from my dad. My dad worked in Europe so much.

Like, he would come home after like a week or two doing a business trip and be like, Dutch people are like this. And he'll do like a Dutch accent and explain what the Dutch, the Dutch, like, bluntness. Or he'd be like, you know, Spanish people are like this. And he would explain all of these different cultures. And I just thought it was so funny. And it really informed a lot of, like, the things I like about stand-up. It's like exploring culture, understanding people.

Yes. And all of those things, to me, are, like, my favorite. I really liked, like, Russell Peters when I was a kid. Because he would just explain the difference between North and South Indians. I was like, this is so interesting. Yes. And it's all, like, obviously, the humanity is the same across the world, no matter where you go. But the cultural little affects, like add flavor and spice to, you know,

who a human is. I'm obsessed with it. He doesn't get enough credit, by the way, for how good he was at observing Chinese stuff. After I lived in China and I actually watched his stuff about China, I was like, God damn. He's one of the, I think, genuinely, one of the most astute observers of culture.

And underrated in the comedy world. Like, I don't think people, they think somehow what he did was easy. No, it's annoying. It's extremely difficult. It's extreme, like, the nuance stuff, because he's not doing like hack shit. He's like, hey, this is like the inflection of the accent

of like Tommel versus Hindi. It's like, what? And obviously he's an Indian dude, but he didn't live in India. Like, he's just observing this thing just from being there. It's like so cool. So with China...

But I love it. I just think it's so fun. The second time I visited was 2009. That was like a little recon trip. I was trying to see if I could get some money from China to make the series. But like the Olympics had happened. And like, the whole world was starting

to really become upset with China. So I was really thinking like, like this could... People would be into this, you know, to tell the story. China through this way. But like, you're still just some white dude going to China in 2013 trying to get them to trust you.

So, you know, it takes a while before you go like, oh, yeah, this is really happening. Because actually what happened with that series was that, like, it really only got good in terms of, like, the content we were getting when I could actually speak Mandarin. Because before that, we were relying on, like, these, like, you know, production company, like researchers, but like they're just going to go, oh, today you're going to learn how to do calligraphy. And that's their job, right? You have to get content onto the camera.

Sure. But like, that wasn't what we were looking for. But, you know, like, it's not their job to just understand, like, what's going on in your head. But once I was able to articulate it myself, then we were really the second half of the series, it gets really good because we're able to really start to do what we want. It's about the connection. It's about talking to people. It's not about seeing you fucking paint.

I mean, like, I want to see you with a guy and have him be surprised that you speak Mandarin or, like, getting immersed in it. And so that's where, I'm like, yeah, that's where it should start. But also because there was an Irish connection because Leo, the guy from Abu Kababra, had, in the meantime, moved back to China. So, Leo actually is a big part of the series because he's a translator. He's a cultural conduit. He ended up doing the door in my comedy club for years. Like, he moved up to Dublin. So we remained together.

So then in China, we started an English language stand-up night. me and him together. So there was this lineage back to my initial series, but that only mattered to Irish people, you know what I mean? But like, it was great because me and Leo, there's elements of it are basically like a buddy journey through China. Is he a comic as well, Leo? No, he's just a fucking random dude. Now he just, now he lives in Fujian, he's married with a kid. And, you know, he was always, you know, just a guy I never went to college, just was working in Ireland, like, and we just became buddies. And he's been a big part of my, he's been a big part of my journey. But anyway, that was the China stuff in English was actually pretty funny, you know, which I wasn't expecting.

Like, for example, like my Irish language stuff in English, like my stuff jokes about the Irish language in English, it doesn't travel. But my jokes about learning Chinese and being in China, it does travel, which is interesting. But that's because people are fascinated by China. Yeah, and there's also, like, the Chinese diaspora, I think, maintains a little bit more of, like, the cultural curiosity. Like, I don't know anything about Gaelic, really, other than, like, I saw a clip of Connor McGregor speaking it. But, like, what it means to be Irish, I think, has, like, been so infused with American culture that there's less of a curiosity. Yes. Whereas, like, I go to Chinatown, and it is Chinese people speaking Mandarin, and I'm like, what is going on?

What are they talking about? What are they eating? Like, they've maintained a cultural, like, insularity that I think makes me more curious. And so to have someone like you, be like, oh, this is why they do this. is why they squat and smoke cigarettes. Like if you can explain these things, then all of a sudden I'm like, ah. But like I need a guy like you, you're Irish. And I'm like, oh, I don't need any explanation.

Exactly. Which is, that's a very good point. And part of my motivation, one of the things I really wanted to show, because I had already been there twice, was that, number one, Chinese people are really funny and their sort of stoic appearance or the sense of like that they're not, like, that they're very not interested in you. You know, the way there is this sort of sense of separation, you know? you go to China Town and you feel like it's another world.

That is basically just a communication barrier. But actually, when you learn the language and you get to know them, they're fucking hilarious. And I wanted to show that because Western media focuses a lot on the negative aspects of China. Of course. Especially these days. But, you know, if you go back to that time, there was still always about human rights and the government. And like, I'm no propagandist for the Communist Party. Like, all that stuff is real.

But when that's all you get, you can get too much of a sense of other. with the people. You lose the humanity of like, I know, these are funny people. They like to joke about this kind of shit. They love their kids the way you love your kids. Chinese people are humans, obviously.

But we lose that because we see the government and we're like, oh, China bad. Yes. And it's good to know about the, there's some stuff that's totally different, you know. And we showed that and we had some fun with that. And, you know, I mean, that's what the series was. Okay, what else do Americans misunderstand or misconstrue about China

and Chinese people? Well, there's really no The cock size varies the same as any other race You know Like I was in the shower And some guys had big ones Some guys had small ones So that's a stereotype

So you can dispel that There's some people Some guys were hanging Yeah This fucking, you think Yao Ming has a fucking little dick Who knows? Compared to him You know what I mean?

It might look small on him Maybe in relative to him It might look small on him But yeah So that was one What else? Well you know The big thing, which is, this is less about humor, but the real takeaway at the time was like,

the family structure is like way more sacred there, you know, and that goes a little bit down to like their Taoist kind of Confucius politic. So the kind of essence of like Chinese values kind of comes like from Confucianism, a little bit of Taoism, Buddhism, but at the heart of that is like hierarchical structure of Shao Shan, which is filial piety. And so, They really believe in respecting elders a lot more than we do. Not always a positive, but in general, I would have taken that as a positive of the respect that people have for their parents and for the elderly more than us. And that is a noticeable difference. That's cool.

But as a result, you find the older people I think are happier. And I think that travels over here, because I live downtown, Lower East Side. Now, I live near Seward Park, and, like, you can see that those older people have more of a zest for life. They still feel more part of society than I think the average American older person does. I think, now, I could, that's my subjective. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I need to tell you about one of my favorite new products in 2024. It's called Zippix.

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Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Zipmore, smoke less with Zippix nicotine toothpicks. Now let's get back to the show. I think you're right. I was actually talking to someone about this just the other day. I think that the ancient cultures possess more of respect for the elderly because there's one, there's just a, the wisdom transmutes. Like it just goes generationally and people like pass on things. Whereas like for me, I don't know anything about my grandparents.

Like a lot of them didn't even make it to America. Like they stayed in fucking Montreal. Like there's such a disconnect because everyone that comes here is leaving something. They're leaving something behind. So as a result, I don't go to my grandparents for wisdom. I don't learn anything from that. And then also as times change in America, we're so open, I think, to like modernity and culture changing.

So the wisdom of my grandparents is less valuable. So as a result, I respect them less because they have less to offer me. Whereas I think in ancient cultures, you know, China included, you're able just to, I think there's less of a change culturally. And as a result, you respect the wisdom of your elders. And as a result, you respect your elders. So I just think it like transmutes through. ancient cultures.

Now, if I had my way, I would say that in China, there's too much filial piety to the extent that I think sometimes it can stunt your growth as an individual. And you feel that in China. You feel that pressure. So I would like somewhere in the middle. I would like an evolution from the very rigid filial piety that they have in China. But it would absolutely like a retraction from the almost selfish individualism of dismissing. the elderly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're the exact opposite. Yes. But they are, there are ruts of conformity that they fall into where it's like, oh. Yeah, and the pressure is immense. And funnily enough, it comes up a lot in the stand-up. You know, when I started getting involved in this like nascent stand-up scene in China, it comes up.

You can feel that the pressure of, like people talk a lot about their parents more in Chinese stand-up. Well, I'm sure also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure every Chinese comic is in some way doing a disservice to their family, at least like either on a practical level or just like on a familial level I can see their parents being like they're going to be a comedian because there's no ancient precedent for being an entertainer. Well, especially stand-up is very new. That's what I'm saying. So I wonder did you find that with a lot of Chinese comics where they're like, yeah, my parents are a little disappointed.

Not unlike some Chinese stereotype like become a doctor type shit, but just like there's no precedent for that in our family heritage. Yeah, I mean I didn't feel that as much. You would feel that more here in the sense of like I feel like the tiger mom slash Asian-American. American experience. Yeah, it's different. It's almost so odd in China that I didn't feel too many people feeling the pressure from their parents. But what I did notice is that like, because people always say to me, oh, you can't say

anything because of the government. And it's like, it's true. Like you can't do political humor there. But actually, what's just as groundbreaking and it's hard to see is people talking very open and honestly about their families and about themselves. That's not traditionally Chinese to be like open about who you are. So that was fucking groundbreaking

So it's like Hey, let's hold off on the revolution You know, because it's very easy over here Because we're free to say What we want So we think like

Oh, it's not fair They can't say what they want And it's like it's true But that's like the That's like the American slash Western point of view Let's focus on what's actually Pretty revolutionary

About what they're doing Which is like Talking about themselves opening And being critical of their familial upbringing You go on stage Say my dad drinks too much Everyone's like

Wow Like that would be shocking That level of openness Because if you look at there comedy traditionally, it's very sort of like, you know, it's two-hand or Abbott and Costello stuff, but it's like, it's not very

personal. Right. And stand-up natural, like, not all stand-up, but a lot of stand-up is personal. I find that, like, Andrew and I, we went to, we went to Moscow in 2019 and did stand-up there, which was such a cool experience, but it's kind of a similar thing where it is a very

new comedy scene. Yes. And the evolution of comedy, it seems like, within a society, it really restarts every place from the beginning. Yes. Like if you look at early American standard, like Borshbel, Katzkel's shit from like, you know, 40s even,

like Henny Youngman, it's very much like, like, you know, kind of hokey, it's sort of one-linery, it's kind of like puns, it's almost like puppetry or like clownery. Very like China. But it needs to begin there, though. But it's interesting that it always starts, like it doesn't like hand off. Like even if you're

inspired by American comedy, like in Russia, all these people were consuming American media, they love Dave Chappelle, they love Louis C.K. Like, this is what comedy is. But they didn't take the baton and start there. They restart from the very beginning. It'd be like, you know, taking like basketball and importing into China, and they start with like, you know, two-handed bouncing and like, you know what I mean?

And just like layups. Yeah. Now, obviously the journey from the restart. The journey from the restart to like more modern. It's quick because they have access to a lot. So like obviously those guys, that, American stand-up and British, you know, British slash, well, really British stand-up. Those two sort of scenes are sort of like the two main veins of, like, what we know as modern stand-up.

But, like, those evolutions took a long time. I don't think the evolution takes, like, I find in the 10 years since I left China, stand-up or talk show, as they call it, they eliterated from talk show. Oh, it's literally talk show. Yeah, because, like, comedy is Cijiu. But they didn't use Ciju, they took talk show, and they call it Tocosio. So if you said to them like, oh, I do comedy, I do CG, they wouldn't think of stand-up. They would think of a comedy movie? Yeah, or like sketch or something.

Oh, interesting. But like if you say, Toko-sov, that's stand-up. Like when you say talk-o-so-you, immediately they know what you're talking about. And is that because they're like getting influence from like late-night TV? Yeah. Like when people began to think about what it was, it was like, you know, probably they were seeing videos of like lettermen or like people doing like the Oscars or something like that. So, in fact, one of the guys that I knew he was inspired by seeing somebody do something at the Oscars. Anyway, the Toko Siao from when I was there to now has evolved a lot.

And it's not 100% like the same line because the money gets involved. And then the way the Chinese entertainment industry works, which is very different to hear gets involved too. And obviously there's not a lot of freedom. So it is complicated. But it has evolved very quickly and has become quite popular since I was there. When I was there, it was like really new. Whereas now, if I'm, like, in an Uber and the guys from China and we start talking, like, we'll be, like, talking. Like, he'll know a lot about Tokosyo.

And he'll know a lot about, like, guys that I started with that have become famous. How cool. Yeah. So, like, it really has become, like, somewhat mainstream since I was there. But on the flip side, because of that, there's actually a lot of control of it now. More than when I was there. Like, a lot. Yeah.

What would be, like, a sanction that would be put on a comedian? Or do you have an example? Well, I give a quick example. was a buddy of mine was just here, spending some months because he's not happy in China, actually, because they're cracking down so hard. But he was showing me that like a government, like, email went around to, like, all the different groups. Because stand up there still, there's a little bit of collectivism with it, which is, like,

nobody's really an individual. You kind of get, like, signed into these, like, groups. And they're companies. They're basically, they're content creation companies. So that part sort of, like, tracks with what's going on here now, except that, like, like you just make content for that company that you're in. And this is not, it's hard to describe because it's so fucking complicated that I don't 100% understand it myself. But let's simplify it, right? So let's say stand-up in America was like stand-up in China. Like you, Andrew and you guys

would have created a company. Let's just say flagrant. And like you would be a fragrant comic. So you guys would make content for a flagrant. Your shows would be flagrant shows. And it would be very rare that you would go and do a show for some other company. Interesting. Joe Rogan's company. It becomes a tribe that you kind of create and then you operate underneath your tribal identity. Yeah.

And a lot of times people are on like salaries rather than like money for shows. Now again, can I just put the caveat that I've never fully understood how it worked? So I'm very open to correction on this. But for a basic understanding of the difference, that would be enough. That's really interesting. So anyway, all these companies, all these people, people that are involved in stand-up throughout China, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing. They all got the same email about how they need to be very rigid with their content.

And, like, I didn't see the list. It was in Chinese characters. And my Chinese is good, but it's not good enough to read a government email. Yeah. But it was basically, like, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. And just, like, just be very conscious of the fact that, like, you guys are a problem. So, like, don't make it any worse. Oh, interesting.

And, like, you know, there's a lot more control of the media there now than when I was there. Did the comedians like that? Did they like the sense that there was like a rebelliousness? Or are they, like, were some guys charged up? Or did some guys just say that? You know what? It's not worth it and quit. I wasn't aware of any deep desire to be rebellious.

But it's only natural that some guys. So there's an incident. I'm not going to name any names, right? But this is a real incident that happened. A comedian that I didn't really know, but had blown up in the meantime. But I believe somebody told me that I hadn't met him once, but I don't remember meeting him. But he got very big in China as a talk-or-shio-yanur, as a stand-up comedian. Wasn't famous with something before I got into it.

He was a breakout young Chinese guy that did stand-up as we know it. And he did a tour in the States and Canada with one or two other well-known Chinese comedians. And he decided in the States that he was going to speak freely. And I don't even think the video went viral, but a description of what he was talking about went viral in China. And he was wiped from the internet immediately to the point where my buddy who was just here told me that he went to contact him when he heard something was going on. And his we chat didn't even exist. His we chat identity was gone. Everything was gone.

He doesn't exist anymore. And this is a real thing. you can Google it. But there's not a lot on the internet about it, though. Wow. Because it's very Chinese. But actually, I don't know where he is now, but I don't know if he's in hiding or not. So I don't want to like over-dramatize.

But there was a period of time where people didn't know where he was. Wow. And certainly my friend wasn't able to contact him. But his career is over in China because of what he said. That is wild. And it's not on some like, okay, I understand. This is not like some punk rock like Lenny Bray. Bruce like I'll say fuck and then I'll get arrested and then I'll become a hero.

No. It's like. No, because nobody knows now. Yeah, we'll just smother you and you won't exist. It doesn't exist. Now, I don't think he's in, I don't, I actually don't, I actually don't, so that story is the limit of my knowledge, but that, that, that did happen and it happened not that long ago, like within the last year.

Wow. Interesting. So the government, to an extent, sees this as a potential issue. Everything, but they see everything. Do you know that? Wow. My nickname amongst my Chinese buddies is Laobie, because I took the last name B, fourth tone B. I have a joke about it, but that's my family name because I'm a bishop, right?

So I just took the B eye off a bishop. And B is a Chinese last name. But the reason why people call me Laobie is because actually like a more traditional kind of like Johnny Carson type, hosty type comedian, was Bifu Kien, but they call him Laobie. And he's famous. You mentioned Laobie. People know Laobie. So when I got to China, he was huge, and he was the host of the Chunwan, which just happened because it's Chinese New Year. The Chunwan is like the Chinese Spring Festival gala.

It's the most watched show on the planet. Every year. Every year. The most watched show on the planet. Humongous gala for hours. People's careers are made, and it's humongous. And Bifu Jian was the fucking host, Lau Bia. I mean, couldn't get more famous.

He did a corporate. While I was there, by the way, I was still there. He did a corporate for some Chinese businessmen. and jokingly made fun of Mao Zadong with some song, some old school song. It was like a lighthearted kind of making fun of Mao and making fun of like the way that you used to have to sing the Mao songs. He's never had a career since.

His career, because it went viral and he has no career for making fun of Mazadon. Not even the current regime. Not even the current... No, not even Xi Jinping, whose father was fucking imprisoned by Mazadon. And he was sent down to the countryside. He was, you know, sent all these kids during the Cultural Revolution were sent down the country. He experienced the horror of the Cultural Revolution.

Yeah, he was like abused by the people, right? Yeah, like he experienced the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution, right? So he knows, he knows in his heart that Mao Zedong was a total failure. But the official government line is that he was 70% good, 30% bad. Wow. And for some reason, and I think largely it has to do not so much that the Mao Zedong joke was really bad. But I think at that time, Xi Jinping was. actually trying to get rid of prominent,

um, prominent entertainers who he considered their entertainment to be a little low. He has like this cultural snobbery. So there was another guy, um, uh, Zhao Ben Shan, is this like northern Chinese guy. So fucking funny man. And he was an actor, but like if he had been a stand-up, he would have been like George Carlin, but not, not like George Carlin like just like a like an old legend, you know. And I even watched a couple of his movies and they were incredible. His sketches are like hack and hokey, but like there was just something about him. It was so funny. Jalban, Shan, one of the most famous comedians. And literally in my time in China, suddenly, Xi Jinping just, Xi Jinping decided one day, very early in his regime that like

a lot of that stuff was like low, you know, just like low culture, that were of a higher value than this type of comedy. And his career fucking disappeared too. Wow. Now, he wasn't like canceled to the extent of Bifu Jian. But just suppressed. Yeah, nothing's happened with Job and Shannon. I don't think he's done anything for 10 years. And he was like, he was like, it's hard to just, because I'm just throwing these names at you, but like he's like in his 70s, the old guy, but he was just so funny.

Like, you know, like, especially the more I started to understand Chinese. Like, it was just amazing how good he was, just a natural, like a total natural. His career is gone. Those are just three quick examples of how fucking difficult it is over there. Were you concerned at all? I wasn't concerned because I was just this like, you know, we had official permission. Like, we did everything, well, sorry, we had all the official permissions, but we were doing things we weren't supposed to do. But at that time, particularly, it wasn't a problem.

Like, every single stand-up show that I put on was, quote, unquote, illegal. You're supposed to shen-pee. You're supposed to go to the censor, tell them you have a show, and you're supposed to send them the script. Oh, really? And that's still today's day. That's a fact. Like, that's not like me being dramatic. You're supposed to shen-pee.

So any public performance that you don't go to the censor, the local sensor. It's technically illegal. Yes, but they don't care. At that time, these small stand-up shows did not show up on their radar. In fact, I'll tell you how, so we had a guy from the carft, I think, was the, that's an acronym for the Chinese government organization that watches over foreign media making media in China. So we had a carved guy. Chen was his name. And, you know, he eventually trusted us because he could see that like we weren't doing it.

anything bad. But at the beginning, he was on us all the time. And he stopped us doing a few things, you know. But on the very, one of the last things we filmed was one of our, I then started a Chinese language comedy night in the venue that I was using for the English language comedy night. Me and Tony Cho, we called it Yomot Shoe, which actually means like humor neighborhood, because it was in a bookshop. So the humor section was the name of the English language show, because it's kind of funny, right? Humor section bookshop. But it doesn't translate into Chinese. But we just directly translated it anyway. So to Chinese people, very odd name of a comedy club, the humor neighborhood.

Because there's no like humor section of the bookshop, you know? So Yo-Mo Xia Chu was our Chinese language stand-up night. And Chen came, Chen, my censor, and I did a very not acceptable joke where I turned. So the joke in China is always, every night the Chinese evening news comes on. Shin Wen Lianboa It comes on and it's like The government are doing well The people are happy

And the West is a mess That will be like That will be over the half an hour That will be the journey It begins with like all the government people In the building Then they'll show like some government figure At like some factory

And all the people are like smiling And then it'll be like And you know ISIS is killing people You know what I mean It'll always be the West is a mess That's so funny Right So then I made a rap song

Because they have a very obvious sting, you know? You know, the way like all news shows have like a sting here. So I took the sting and I turned it into a beat and I, you know, I made a rap song called Xuen Leambor and I, I, it was funny. It was basic. It was basically a rap song based on that idea of like, you know, the government's good, the people are happy and the West is a mess. That's funny. And the chorus was good though. Oh, Shuen Leumboe, Maitien, I can't even remember it anymore. But anyway, it was a fun rap and the beat was good. I got a guy to make a good beat. And we're at the fucking, I'm closing the show at the bookworm. And everybody's waving their hands in the air. And I have a shot. We put it in the documentary too. I got my

censor laughing his fucking ass off at my Shunwenli unbore, which this is like 100% against the rule joke, you know, like making fun of. You're mocking the media. I'm mocking propaganda. And the, and the censor guy that's supposed to arrest you is laughing. Laughing. Because they don't care. And it would only be an issue if like they saw it. They weren't going to watch it. It's actually funny. So they're like, yeah. Wow. But there was like one incident when we were filming where we, so in episode three, I went up to the northeast of China. I went to a small city where Leo grew up to work in a restaurant, right?

That's where a lot of those jokes that I do in English come from. And that was a real thing. But anyway, I was staying with the staff for a while. And like they just used the public toilet. And the public toilet was disgusting. And we did a shot of the public toilet and it was fucking disgusting. and the next day it was pristine

because they had gotten word that we filmed it so the town cleaned it so it was pristine the next day it's a little shit like you didn't even put it out they just heard

no they heard that we were in there filming Americans filmed our toilet yeah we have to clean it and it's funny because later on in the same episode we do a toilet joke which is basically that you don't get privacy in China which is true because you still like shit

and there's like four holes in the ground and you're just shit and it's a guy next to you oh is there there's not a No, you just shit. And then you get used to it, actually. But like... There's no guard?

No. So in the way that you and I are looking at each other right now. But we would be side by side. And there's just two holes. But yeah, but you end up just like chatting. You're just like shit and chatting. No way. They're usually smoking to get rid of the smell.

Now, you see that less and less, but at that time, I mean, I've been to China many times. I've shat in a hole many times where other people are shitting in a hole. Well, that's a different area also. Like, I do think there's a Western idea that, like, there is such a thing as China. when it's like, no, there's these different cities that all have different cultures that are all so different levels of

wealth. Yeah, like I had a friend of mine actually, I wonder if you know him. He's an Australian guy that did a similar thing as you. He worked in Beijing. This is more, actually, I wonder if you know him.

He has, maybe edit this out, actually. He has half a white. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about Andy Curtin. He helped me out a lot. So he ran Kung Fu Comedy. Oh, wow. I knew you were talking about Andy. I should have just interrupted you.

Yeah, Australian guys speaking Chinese in... All my English language comedy stuff at the beginning, Andy and Turner Sparks, who lives here now in New York, helped me out a lot. He's the man. He's an awesome dude. Yeah, so both those guys help me out a lot. That's cool. Yeah.

Yeah, so he was telling me that, like, there's an area in China that, like, they just eat anything, quote-unquote. I forget the area. It's like, Gua Xin or something. Oh, somewhere down south, I think, yeah. But he's like, Americans will look at China and be like, oh, yeah, they just eat anything. you got like the stereotype and he's like well there's a part of china where they look at that as like

the China of China. Yes. And it's like, oh yeah, I forget that like in America, it's such a massive country. We have all these stereotypes for all these different parts of the country. Alabama, California, New York. It's the same exact thing in China. And you see that a lot in the stand up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like some of it I didn't get or I started to get after a while, but a lot of making fun of the different regions and the stereotype. So you would end up seeing a lot of like cultural similarities between the way people find things. funny over there. So if you're shooting in a hole with your friend, like, in one small rural part of China, that's not to say that everyone in Beijing is going into business meetings and then shitting in a hole

next to you. No, like, and there's the great well, the great thing about China is it's public toilets everywhere. The problem is that a lot of them are disgusting. However, like when you're in an emergency a fucking disgusting toilet is better than no toilet at all. So you never have a situation like in Manhattan. It's like, where the fuck am I going to go to the bathroom? There's always public toilets all over Beijing.

Now you have like, you would publicly admit it. I will let you know that you have IBS. potentially. Oh, yeah. I don't actually think I have IBS, but something was going on. Maybe. Something was going on. So I'm saying if you're in a public bathroom in a hole next to a guy and you're having an episode, an IBS problem, is that not awkward?

Is that not like crazy? Well, here's a real awkward situation. So in 2004, when I went there for the first time, I went to visit Leo and Leo's family, of course, to be a routine. You know, they're so hospitable. So they take us out for fucking hot pot, myself and my then girlfriend at the time. and we like you can't not eat. It's like rude not to eat. And they fucking fill my bowl up with all this fucking hot pot.

But the problem about hot pot is sometimes you don't leave that shit in long enough. Both myself and my angs got so violently ill that we ended up in the hospital in a suburb of Dalia in the northeast China. I've never been, I was, it was coming up both ends to the point where like it was just so disgusting. Anyway, we're sitting in this hospital. I'm with Leo and I'm on a drip at this stage. But I have to go to the bathroom. but it's not like, it's like a clinic. So I'm not like in a room.

So I have to go to the fucking public toilet, which is not even that clean. And it's a hole in the ground with no, no, there is like a divider but no door, but I'm on a drip. So Leo had to hold onto my drip while I fucking shatten the hole.

And I remember saying to Leo, I was like, Leo, we're fucking friends now. That's wild. Did he think it was intimate? What could you do? We just had to do it. Like, for him though,

culture was that like, no, I did this for my dad and like. I think holding up a drip, while somebody's got diarrhea in a hole. No matter where you are. That's pretty weird. That's fair. That's fair.

Yeah. But like Chinese guys in the shitting in the hole, they'd be like sitting there reading the paper and stuff. It's just so interesting. But anyway, if you're bored one day and somebody's watching episode three, the same toilet that looked disgusting at the beginning of that episode is the same toilet

where we do the joke. So I do this joke about how you never get privacy in China. And one of the jokes is there's three guys. I got it. This was a setup shop. There's three guys sitting over the hole. And like, it's one of the examples of like not even when you're taking a shit.

because like the guy's fucking ask me questions. But that's actually true. Like, I often be taking a shit and they'd be like, oh, Nisha little slur in a lot. Like, are you from Russia or something? You know, like start talking about you while you're shitting. Wow. I mean, there's something nice about the squat, I'll be honest.

I'm a pro-squat guy. All I can tell you is that we were meant to squat as shitting. You know how when you shit in the toilet have to, like 50% of the time, it doesn't come all the way out, right? And then you have this fucking annoying, Eddie Murphy did the joke about it years ago. You know he's taking the shit and you cut it off? But like, it's very rare that it's, doesn't all come out when you're squatting.

Squatty potty. Squatting is the way to shit. Do you have a squatty potty? I don't have a squatty party. Somebody told me I should get a squatty potty. Yeah, dude. You're the poster child. You're the one that actually experienced the way it should be.

Yeah. No, I loved. And when I was working that shitty job, because I did it for real. Like, everything I do for real, because people always go like, oh, why wouldn't you cheat? But it's like, because then I wouldn't have the real experience

to do jokes about it. So in actual fact, it's cheating to do it because you're just having all these experiences just makes it easy to write material. To not do it was actually just make it harder on myself. Interesting. Because I wouldn't be having the experiences to talk about. Yeah, yeah.

But you know the way, like, back when you worked like shitty jobs, right? Because I was working a real job. I was working in this fucking restaurant and I would get bored. So, you know, I remember when I was younger and I was working a minimum wage job, I would just like go to the bathroom, you know? And just like sit in the bathroom for 10 minutes just to get a break. Wow. But in China, you have to get good at squatting because if you want to chill in the bathroom,

you got to squat. But I got so good at squatting that I would just like hide in the bathroom for 10 minutes. minutes in a full squat. They have such good ankle mobility. Yeah, but I never got that. I can't get my heels to the ground. I'm so, I was always so jealous of these guys, you know, sitting on the side of the road smoking with their ass all the way to the floor with their heels on the ground, because I cannot do that.

Do you think they're better at it? Like, biologically, do you think, like, they're just good at that? Or do you think they just do it for a long time? I think either they do, either they've done it from birth so it's natural or actually, you know, sometimes I really feel like they might be more genetically flexible than us. Yeah. I mean, they have... They certainly can.

care more, you know? Like, Chinese medicine, you know, like, trust me, I don't believe in all the Chinese medicine bullshit. But, like, the things that are good about it are, they're very into, like, blood flow and they're very into mobility and exercise. So from a young age, you're thinking about your flexibility. You're thinking about your muscles. Interesting.

I mean, the greatest. And you can see it. Go to Chinatown, go to Flushing, and watch old people walking around, hitting themselves, stretching, swinging their legs back and forth. They're much more naturally concerned about mobility. That's a good point, actually. That is a funny thing that I'll notice that I feel like people don't talk about.

You'll just see like an older Chinese woman like hanging on to a fence, just swinging her leg. Swinging her leg? And you're like... Or an old Chinese woman walking backwards hitting herself in the back. What is that? And you know, it's so funny.

I used to make... The walking backwards thing, I used to think was weird. But then, you know, my buddy got older. He's like, oh, you got to check the knees over toes guy. Do you know about the knees over toes guy? Of course, dude. Yeah.

Yeah, well, what's one of the main things that the knees over toad guy says when you're starting to work on your knees, walk backwards? And the fucking Chinese were way ahead of the game. They're walking backwards because you're working other muscles. Interesting.

And then they're hitting themselves all the time because they believe in the meridians and blood flow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're always, they're into. And honestly, some of it's mumbo-jumbo and some of it's just, like it holds up against the most, you know, the most rigid science, a lot of that stuff will hold up against it.

Look, I'm one of these guys that I'm kind of just like on board with this type of shit. Like I've just, first off, there's just too many people that have been doing this for too long in China for me to think that it's all bullshit. Like, and I've seen it first and then, so my wife is a midwife. She delivers babies. That's what her job is. And they, so it's already that kind of world is a little bit more holistic, right? Like they have a much more like open attitude towards like, you know, Eastern medicine, as we call it. And they will do acupuncture on women in labor.

and my wife personally, anecdotally, has had amazing success rates with giving laboring women acupuncture and them having babies within like 10 minutes. Really? She's like, it's remarkable. We don't know exactly. She's like, we didn't grow up with any Eastern medicine tradition.

We don't know Chinese medicine, but they bring in a Chinese guy that doesn't speak English, and he puts like three little needles into three specific parts, and then the baby comes out. And it's like, this is so, it's so bizarre to her.

They do a couple of other things, my wife pointed me to an article. And again, maybe this is some woo-woo bullshit. I genuinely don't know. There's a thing that happens where babies will be breach, obviously. So the feet are basically pointing down. You're going to be born feet first, which adds a lot of complications to birth.

But there's a treatment that used to just be kind of like Eastern medicine, kind of whatever, mumbo-jumbo, that now has been accepted by like the modern medical society, where basically, and it sounds crazy, you burn a specific herb near the toe of the woman. And in like 85 to 90% of cases, the baby will flip around in the womb will flip around and be able to be born the natural normal way from burning an herb next to your foot. She pointed me to an article and she was like, no, no, this is published by like a Yale peer-reviewed study. It's legit.

She doesn't understand it. She's like, we do it and it works. I don't know why. Who knows what it is? And I was like, that's crazy. I don't know if it has to be near the toe, but that's like the Chinese meridian line where that specific thing attaches to your uterus. believe that there is, you know, like some acupuncture does hold up to like, like real experiments. I believe.

It's wild. It's wild. But the one thing for sure that you can't argue with is that their obsession with mobility is healthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I only wish that I had fucking done the shit that they did when I was younger because if the only advice I could give to people is fucking work on your hip mobility from youth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From youth. Yeah.

No, dude, the best power lifters in the world are Chinese. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, some of the best that are coming out. Like, obviously, historically, I don't think they have, like, a powerlifting culture, so they weren't really doing it. But then in the last couple years, I think the gold medalists at, like, last year's Olympic games in, like, all these Olympic lifts, like, you know, overhead and split squat, they're all Chinese people.

And it's just, like, these diesel Chinese dudes that are lifting insane weight. They're, like, breaking world records for, like, deadlifting. And they're, I don't know. I assume it's just, like, a cultural heritage of, like, mobility, flexibility, and just, like, working on fucking squatting. I don't know. It's just, they're good at it. I wonder if your wife knows.

about the other Chinese thing, which is when you have a baby, they call it Guo Yu Edsel, that a woman is not supposed to get out of bed for a month. A month? Yeah. Wow. They say if you exert yourself too much in the month after birth, that you'll have pain for the rest of your life. So Chinese woman in China, and again, I'm open to correction on this, but I'm pretty sure

that this will hold up to a Google. they will literally do hardly anything for a month after birth. That is so interesting. Yeah. Guo Yu'i Ed's like go a month. Yeah. Go a month. Yeah.

That's funny. Do you have other stories of like times when you were in China specifically that got like hairy or like illustrated a cultural touch point that like just blew your mind that changed your perspective on the people? Not really. Not really. You know, I really focused more on the similarity. Like I can't.

I remember one time I gave, I had eaten a bit of a cookie, and then I gave the cookie to the daughter of the people that I was living with. Because, you know, I lived with a family for a year. And they were like, no, no, no. Like, they were very, like, negative that I had given her or something that I had bitten. But I don't know what that's about. But nothing, like, honestly, nothing jumps out. Like, nothing immediately comes to my mind where I was like, oh, that's a big,

that's a big no-no. The stereotypes obviously around, like, food culture? Food culture, there's a lot. And then you know what else? There was a lot of. there was a lot of like social obligation stuff that like

particularly like with Leo and then like with some other Chinese people oh okay I'll give you one directly related to stand-up so Beijing Toko Sioux Julebou they call themselves Betwa they were like they were this

the first Beijing stand-up troupe right again like I said with this collectivist mindset but it was very new and they they they welcomed me with open arms and they're a huge part of my series

like Beto. I'm like incredibly grateful to them. But you know they're running they were running shows like fucking Chinese people do and I'm fucking, what was this was 2013? I've been doing comedy since 1997 like I fucking know how to run shows. So I found a room in Renmin

University where I was studying and this cool Canadian Chinese guy had a cafe and he was like yeah let's do it. So I started this fucking stand-up night in the Renmin University it Mandarin won and uh I was gonna like start having different comics on and I didn't ask the leader of Beitua you know because I didn't consider this to be like a Beijing Tokosur Jula Boucho you know and it was a huge fucking thing huge thing like so I let him go up because they were like you can't like he's the

boss like he's the boss you have to let him on and I was like fine but like you guys don't understand this isn't a fucking Baito show like I don't understand like I don't understand You guys are stand-up comedians. You're not beat-twat. So that was the first time I realized I was clashing with the collectivist mindset. That's so interesting. Yeah. And we had drama.

I had drama with him. He was a cool guy. He was a cool guy. But in fairness to him, like the way I was doing it was a clash to the way that they do it in China. So he was like, who the fuck is this guy? Wow. You know, and so I actually have a lot of sympathy for him thinking that I was being an asshole because I was just coming in with my way.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I could imagine here we have all of our unwritten rules for stand-up that we just don't even think about. Because it's just the way that it is. And if someone came from a different culture, and was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to bump you and jump on right now. You'd be like, the fuck? No, you're not.

Well, I actually, I hate emcees giving my credits because I came from Europe where we don't do credits. Oh, that's funny. And I'm always like, they're like, what credits? I'm like, I don't need a credit. That's how I feel. I always do that. Yeah, but then they, you know what happens? I feel like I've actually, maybe I've actually been being a dick because

they're used to the rhythm of saying a credit and saying the name, so then they don't know what to say. I always just say my credit is performs all over. Yeah. Like just say that. Like I don't know. I always feel like... Because crediting is nonsense.

Yeah. My whole career was no credits until I came to the States. That's a high field. I have no... And in Ireland, I had real credits. Yeah, yeah. My fucking credits over here suck.

You know what I mean? If I could say, you know, like, I did a TV show you'd never heard of? Yeah. You've seen on Mark Gagnon's podcast. They're like, no, you haven't. I just don't get, like, I don't know, the credit thing is just so weird.

Like, yeah, he was on a show on MTV, too. And the audience is like, okay. I guess it's supposed to like make it feel like... Yeah, I think it comes from back in the day. Yeah, yeah. Also, like another cultural difference between Ireland and here is like, in Ireland, they don't have table service and they'll always be an interval. So they usually be like, on a showcase show, it would be like,

host two comics, break host to comics, because they go and they get drinks and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I love, but now it seems weird to me when they have breaks. I'm like, come on, let's go. But I just, I've gotten used to the American way now. When I was, when we were doing shows, we just got back from Dublin at the, I think it was the Olympia. Yeah.

Oh, no, no, you did the O2. The O2. You guys didn't. arena. Very impressed. So awesome. Yes. It was so cool. Like, one of the best crowds I think we had in the whole tour. Like, the Irish were just so good. There's something about poverty that makes people laugh more.

You mean like, yeah, traditional. No, well, Irish are more fun, bro. If you're in the UK and then you go to Ireland, you're like, wait a minute, this is way better. The Irish are more fun. And everybody says that. The Irish are the best crowds. Yeah, yeah, it's the best. But yeah, we had to tell people during the show, like, hey, there's no intermission.

Because they told us, they were like, hey, if you guys run it straight through, they might get up before Andrew goes on stage. Yes. And so I had to tell them, like, after my set, like, don't leave. Like, I could see people kind of started to get up after I was gone. I always have an interval in my Irish shows. Really? Always. I have an opener, interval of my show.

And I love it. Really? Yeah, like, if I wasn't going to have an interval, I would only have somebody do 10 minutes and come on. Because I don't want them getting tired. Ah, that's a good point. But that is a difference. Like, it always shocks me. Like, I remember Aziz Ansari had like four openers and then him, no break. I was like, what are you doing?

the fucking endurance test Yeah But that again That's because I came from that side Whereas people over here I think it's weird That we do an interval That's interesting

When you were in China Were you single? So I was single when I went to China And then I met In my second I stayed in China for an extra year Because I loved doing stand-up And Mandarin

But I was no longer making the series I was now just A comedian that lived in Beijing So I did the Melbourne Comedy Festival I did Edinburgh I went back to Ireland for one run of shows. You know, so I was like living in Beijing,

but working around the world. But most of my time, I was focused on getting better at stand-up and Mandarin and developing the Chinese stand-up scene. Yeah. And halfway through the second year, I ended up going out with Shrenshend,

my Chinese girlfriend, who honestly, we were very close. The problem she didn't want to emigrate. So we tried to keep it going long distance for a while, but eventually, you know, it just, it didn't work out. But Shrensman... She's a Chinese citizen, grew up in China her whole life.

Yeah, and she's stand-up. And she's doing it. really well now with the content. Oh, that's so... We're not really in touch, but... You know, my buddy came over from China and he let me know that she's after blowing up on, like...

On Du Yan? Doyen and Xiao Hong Shu and a couple of the other... A couple of the other ones. Oh, that's cool. And doing sketches. She's in like a sketch group, you know, so she's doing great. I had a quick chat with her. She's doing great, but she actually didn't get married. But anyway,

that was actually a very... It was a good relationship. Can I speak that it was a wonderful relationship, and I'm not speaking about it in terms of the practicalities of my life. However, I learned a lot more Chinese, and I learned a lot more about China from going out with her. All my friends that speak multiple languages that learn them from immersing the culture,

typically I find that if they were single and pursuing women, they got better at English, or it got better at whatever language they were learning. If you go to Italy and you're married and you live there for three months, I think you learn less Italian than if you go there's single. Oh, 100%. town about, meeting girls, trying to flirt, trying to be funny, making jokes, like, all in the language. I think it really helps.

So I'm curious for you, did you find any interesting relational, I guess, like, dissimilarities or things that you had to adjust to dating in China? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely more chivalrous. You know, there's, like, certain sort of chivalrous expectations. Like what? Like, this is like a tiny thing. It'll mean nothing to you. But, like, one time we went out in a double date, but, like, a proper Chinese guy and his girlfriend.

and he was like, so, you know, in China it's communal eating, right? So all the dishes just go out in the middle and you just be taking shit off. So this guy, this boyfriend, had a girl, he kept taking like a bit off and putting it on her plate. Which to me, in my Western mind, is like, how condescending, you know? You don't know how much she wants. You don't even know if she wants it. And then Shwen Shwenz said to me, after he was like, it's so cute that he does it, you should do that. So she, you know, that would have been like just a quick.

example of like a chivalrous expectation. That's so funny. Do they have a different attitude towards sex at all? I mean, the sex thing was, the sex thing was like, they're not as open about it for sure. And like none of those stand-up comedians were really talking about it, for example.

Sex jokes would have been crazy. And like, people are saying, oh, you must have been killing over there. I did not have, I was not with a lot of Chinese women. I had one or two, like, one or two quick flings and then my very serious relationship with Schwenz's friend. So like, I didn't have a ton of experience

with that. But certainly when I was there, I didn't feel like sex was as casual as it was in the West. However, I was often surprised in the few sexual experiences that I had, I was surprised how quick it converted into sex because it just never seemed like that would be the case. So it's almost like the great unsaid is that we're just as into it as everybody else, but we're not going to talk about it. So you'll be quite surprised when it's happening as fast as it does. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it seems more closed off, but then once you're in a relationship, it's like,

hey, date three, four, five, like, we can get it cracking. Yeah, and it was, it was, you know, it's really hard to, it's just not as open. 100%, it's not as open. They don't shave their prunan, which I'm fine with. Oh, that's interesting. And this is a joke, but it's a 100% true story is, I didn't know what the word for, like, when a woman is, like, loving it. Right? So we obviously be like, oh God, oh yeah, fucking, you know, I love it. Yeah, that's so good. Right. So it turns out that in the word that Chinese women say when they're like loving it is shufu, which it translates to English as comfortable. Right. But this is hilarious. I didn't know that, you know, like, so obviously like comfortable in English has a meaning, right? And but like shufu in Chinese means I'm loving it. So like obviously if a Chinese

girl came to America and she was with some dude and he was like, fuck, oh my God, oh my God. A Chinese girl would be like, why are you bringing God into this? Like, this is not a God time, right? So that would be weird to them. Whereas for me, whatever, I was doing what I was doing. And she was like, oh, I'm shufu. And I was like, fucking, like a couch? Jesus Christ, I thought, I was so funny.

I thought I was killing it here. I'm the IKEA of fucking connollingus. That's so funny. But that was, that was like a funny little, that's a moment. That was a, that was a language moment of, oh shit. Did you dirty talk in Mandarin? So, well actually, funnily enough, I had a funny experience with a Chinese woman that lived in Ireland that I got closer with after I learned Chinese.

And we had a brief, we had a brief fling. But I tried to talk to her dirty and she said, I'm actually, I only comfortable sexting in English. I feel weird when I sexting in Chinese. Really? And I thought that was a very interesting insight into the connection between language and culture and identity. Because actually, she felt dirtier texting dirty in Chinese. And I can't articulate that 100%, but I think the story speaks for itself. So interesting.

Like either there's a sacred, like, perspective to the culture. Like, it's the way her parents spoke. In English, she just feels freer. Yeah, yeah. And I wonder if there's less restriction on the language. Like, in English, there's so much slang and you can add, words and make it. Yeah, but they have it. They have it. Yeah. I mean, do they... I never got great at speaking dirty in Chinese, actually. Do they bastardize the language as much as we do with English?

I'm not the, honestly, I'm not the best person to say that, because at the end of the day, my fluency or not of Chinese is, like, still pretty basic. Yeah. So there are definitely other white guys and certainly other Chinese guys that would have a better grasp on, like, the evolution of language. Just like English, like language evolution is on steroids. now because of the internet. So like, I even remember then that there was always like buzzwords. So like the comedians would often have jokes about whatever the sort of new buzzword was. You know, same as us like, you know, people say mid now or, you know, any of these new words.

Like there was comedians that were joking about whatever the mid of 2013, 2004, Slay or, you know. So they're having the same language evolutions. I'm just not like, I'm not on top of it. Yeah, yeah. And I was never, I never got to a. language proficiency where I could heavily deal with the language jokes. Right. I was very much my humor, my understanding was fish out of water, funny double meanings

based on like English translations, you know, that kind of stuff. Like do you watch Rafi, Rafi Bistos? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. So like when I watch, I love his material because I can see that he's having the experience with English. Now he has a much better understanding of English than I do of main. but I can see he's having the same experience of English

as I was having with Mandarin because you begin to see the humor in the differences and double meanings. Dance, dances? Yeah, I had jokes like that. And Guelga too actually. In Irish language, I had a lot of jokes about like why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a why joke.

Right, right, right. And that's a great, I mean, that was like a career maker for him. He dances, she dances, well. So, you know, and I, that's why, one of the reason why I love him is because, I know how entertaining that journey is. It's like so personally satisfying. So it's great then when you put it out there and it's like it's satisfying to the masses as well.

That's a great point. You go through this experience where you understand or you observe something about a culture that everyone else missed a billion people in this country and they all missed this thing about the language. Yeah, because you only see it as an outsider. Exactly. That was my whole Irish career.

And so Rafi coming over from Brazil, right? He's able to look at English in American culture and be like, he dances, but I dance? Is he dancing more? It's just such a good bit. Yeah, but it's funny to us. Yeah, exactly. We see the peculiarity of it, which you don't see because it's just innate.

Of course. You know, so there are certain things that you don't see. You're naturally blinded by familiarity. Right. And that has been a huge part of my career is the seeing, the third eye of the outsider. Of course, of course. And that makes sense, as we were kind of talking about a little bit before the show. Like, you've had such immense success, obviously in Ireland.

throughout the UK, obviously in China. And I think to your point, like you are a true outsider there. Yes. And you're able to come into the culture and observe things that they all miss. That's so satisfying to see. And it's so much harder to see those outsider-ish things when you're an insider. A hundred percent. Two things going on there.

First of all, it always frustrates me how much I don't feel like an outsider in the States because I have lived a lot of my life out of it. So I don't actually see those peculiarities. But number two, even if I did, doesn't hit the same way because it's like, I don't know, there's something about the outsider noticing it that's funnier. Yeah. I don't know why that is, but I was, I've benefited from it, but I also don't benefit it from it on this side. Right, right, right, you know? Yeah. But you mainly you just don't see it, though, you know? Yeah. No, you just miss a lot of things. I mean, even me, I have a lot of

jokes about being in New York and how different New York is than Florida. So like, I'm probably noticing things about New York that you don't notice despite you living here for, you know, the early parts of your life. But weirdly enough, I mean, it's been great being back in the States and it's made me a way better comic and a lot of great material. But weirdly enough, I don't get, I definitely don't get inspired by American differences the same way I got inspired by Irish differences and Chinese differences. Yeah, I mean, once you see those differences, though, they're so stark. And I think the interest factor is just, it's so night and day. Like, just the way that the culture is in China, the way the culture is in Ireland, compared to an America, it's

from homogenous. Yeah, there is, yeah. There's actually this great comic in Ireland called Damien Clark, but he was from Australia. And he talked about how, like, Ireland is this tiny country, right, with so many accents. You know, you could drive like a half an hour, get out of the car, and it's like a different

fucking accent. He's like, Australia, like, you could get in the car, drive for three days, get out of the car, same fucking accent. How you doing? All right, everywhere I go. So there is a certain amount of homogenous aspects of American culture. But obviously, there are differences too,

but I have to say I'm not a great, I don't have the awareness of, like I was even watching a Shane Gillis bit the other day. You know, he has the bit about, it's from, I think his first special and he's talking about how the, you know, Alabama, they were all white until the 70s or whatever. But then he starts talking about football

and he's like doing a joke about the fact that they had white corners. And I'm like, well, I know this is so funny, but it's so interesting because I'm so not up on American football that I don't have. even know why it's funny that they like why is a corner black i feel the same way i feel genuinely the same way no one in my family ever watched football my parents didn't watch football i've never been to a football game like i understand it culturally but like that that joke specifically the the shame joke

where he's like you know there's no black corners there's endangered species there's one at the zoo it's like it's such a funny i knew i knew it was funny and i laughed because i knew it was a great joke but i also and even though i watch football like i you know i i i can watch a football game and enjoy it but I do not have a full understanding of what a corner does. I texted my buddy Derek. I go, why are corners black? I genuinely. It's so funny.

It must have popped up on yours recently, too, or you saw it at the time. Yeah, I saw it at the time. Because I knew it was funny, but I just don't know enough about football. So, like, I was like, why, what is the deal with that? Like, if it was something about, like, sprinting or something,

like the joke would make more sense because I understand, like the racial connection with sprinting in America. I people are fast, that stereotype. But the corner thing just made no sense. But even watching that bit, it's funny, because it kind of ties into the conversation we're having. I remember being so. I remember thinking, because I only saw it just the other day,

and I remember being like, this is a perfect example of like how, like, not having gone to high school here fully and just like certain aspects of not being here, like I will never write a football joke. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I never will. Or. And he, but he played football.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I thought was so cool. I was like, yeah, and it inspires his material. And I think that's awesome. Or you might write the best football joke because you are an outsider and you're learning about it and you're like, wait a second, this makes this part of this. the game is so weird. Yes.

I can tell you right now, at 48 years old, I'm not going to fucking... I'll continue watching with my limited knowledge, and I ain't fucking... I'm not learning. There is something funny. I just got into football. Literally, in the last, like, six months. I sat down with a buddy of mine that played college football, and I was like, explain the game to me.

I genuinely was just like, teach me everything. Why is it good? What's interesting about it? And the breakdown that he kind of gave me is like, it's war. It's strategy. Like, put yourself in the coach's position, all of a sudden, the game is way more fun. Soccer is a player's game. You play soccer, and it is just all flow.

It's fluid. It's almost like art in a way where it's like, yeah, we're just going to kind of feel each other out. It's improvisation. Exactly. It's all improv. It's like once the game starts, the coach is kind of irrelevant. You don't need it. Like the coach obviously makes some decisions.

But you're just kind of feeling each other out and getting a collective energy with the other guys on the field. Whereas football is all chess. It's like strategy. It's like, what are they going to do? What are they going to do? What are they think we're going to do? So we're going to double reverse psychology to do our thing. He was literally like, imagine soccer.

Imagine set pieces. You have corner kicks, free kicks, penalty kicks. imagine the whole game is a game of free kicks. And you're like, ah, that makes it way more fun. And now I'm watching it. And I'm watching games and enjoying it, but there's still like 50% of the game that I don't know what's happening.

Yeah, I mean, I pretty much know what's happening all the time. A pun goes, the guy catches it, kneels. Well, yeah, but they fucked that up. What is that about? The kickoffs, they fucked it up. As a European sports fan, the changes that they made to football with the kickoff was very unfortunate. And then they all gather around it.

They did that for safety. Is that what it? it is. Well, you could always touch, you could always kneel, but now the kicker is more forward, and most of the time it's just automatically going to the 20 or the 25-yard line. Like, they've taken a lot of the

randomness of the kickoff out of the game, which I think is unfortunate. Like, I don't get when they kick the ball, and then all the guys scatter around it, and they kind of like... They wait for it to go to a certain... They're trying to get further yards one way or the other. Oh, is that what it was waiting for... I think so, yeah, but it's a good question. Put it out to the listener. I'm watching the game

and I'm enjoying it. Imagine watching a movie and being like I don't get half the jokes I don't get half of the plot like that's how I feel watching football I'm still enjoying it but I'm still like this makes no sense to me that's how I get when I watch I still try to watch Mandarin television to keep up my Chinese but the stories are always so fucking complicated and even with

subtitles I always end up going to like episode three recap just to be like on YouTube check something like who the fuck is this you know which was that guy when you know and then then it starts to make sense did they have stereotypes about white people I mean I wasn't that aware of you they didn't have a name for you like

Gringo. La Wai. La Wai. Yeah. It's one of the jokes in the special is a La Wai joke. La Wai means foreigner, but like did you watch everything everywhere all at once? Yeah, yeah. So they say La Wai a lot than that because the Chinese immigrants still call us La Wai. And La Wai, and I feel I'm open to correction here for any of the Chinese diaspora listening, but I feel like amongst the Chinese diaspora, La Wai, has very much come to mean like white people.

Now, I think they probably call black people La Wai too, but like, you know, like I read this great book. she forgot her name about a Chinese immigrant came and lived illegally in America for a long time. It was a very good book and I'm sad to have forgotten the name. But anyway, but she talks a lot about Lwai. And some of it's kind of negative because, you know, she's, you know, fucking white people treating these immigrants like shit. So anyway, they call us Lai.

That makes sense. I mean, most of their foreigners would be white. Like, we do the same thing in America. Like, if we were to say like WAP, without papers, like that could refer to anyone without papers, but it means specifically Italians. Yeah. Because those...

You know that all the time they're calling people Waps, I never knew that it was without papers. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I heard it was. Wow. Yeah, yeah. We call them guineas. And I still do to this day. Because Irish Americans and Italian Americans, we have our own thing. It's an ancient piece. But my aunt, my aunt Mary, she's still alive. She's so cool.

But her and her husband, when I brought Hannah to meet her for the first time, because my mother died before, my parents never met Hannah. And so I brought her my aunt Mary. And she was telling the story of her and my Uncle Sal, My Uncle Sal Paozola, big Italian. And, you know, they broke up and then they were getting back together. And in front of my Uncle Sal, as Italian as they come, she goes, and then my brother, Kevin, said, are you still meeting up with that guinea? Like, no issue.

Hannah calls it the G word. I was like, it's not that way with us. That's so funny. Yeah, I don't think. We're grandfathered in. I don't think you have to abbreviate it if it's also the name of like an animal. You know what I mean? It's grandfathered in.

The Italian-Americans, Irish Americans, it's a love-hate, man. You know? You call us mixed. We call you guineas. It's all good. We're good. We're good with each other. Oh, that's so funny.

Yeah, I guess the northeastern, like, beef amongst Irish and Italians, I never even understood this. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, bro. It's real, bro. You don't have it at all. Like, it does not make sense to me.

But it's love hate because we're the one, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a love hate. And I grew up in a very Irish Italian neighbor. So I was like, I was acutely aware of all that stuff. I mean, you were getting bullied by these guys. Yeah. I mean, there's a deeper story to that, but I'm still.

stop telling it because I literally feel like it sounds more dramatic than it was. But there was some mafia connections to some of the people that were involved in threatening me. So it was stressful. It was genuinely stressful. But, you know, I'd rather not tell me because I feel like if I tell it too much, eventually these people are going to hear it and then they're going to be like, why the fuck is this guy, you know, like, why is this 48-year-old man? You know, it was teenage shit. It was no big deal. Nothing bad happened. But at the time it was stressful, though. Like, I have to say it was stressful, but like nothing bad

happened that it's not a big deal. It's just part of who I am today. This is so funny. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because we got to talk about your amazing dick game. Yes, you.

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Actually, I meant to tell you this before, which I said kind of, the unapologeticness of you not like shying away. you don't have a fear of, it feels like of who you are, right? Like you open the special, obviously it's tongue and cheek, but being like white guy, yada, yada, yada.

But it's, it's in your face in a way that I find so fun. Like my favorite comic ever is Daniel Tash. I think he's like, he's my favorite comic in the world, which no one talks about him, in my opinion. I know. He's so underappreciated.

Ask any comic that knew him growing up. They'd be like, oh yeah, he would just kill. He would show up. Oh, he would kill. I worked at it, would you believe it in Ireland? Really? Really? The year, 2000 or 2000?

Please tell me. No, but he was hot then. And then back then he was supposed to blow up. You know, he signed a deal with Letterman's company. And he was about to blow up. And then that didn't happen initially. Tosh 2.0 came a number of years after that. So for a while, I remember being like, I wonder what happened to him.

And then suddenly he was like, and then suddenly I remember my little cousins were becoming aware of comedy. My first cousin's kids. And they were like asking me about common. And I was like, who do you like? They were like, Daniel Tash, Tash 2.0. And I was like, oh, I worked with him in Ireland, and they were, you know, Daniel Tasha, you know, so then I realized that he had become humongous. He's the man. I've never met him. He had that killer bit about the Oscars. That was, that's what, like they put him in the way back. Yeah, you never see that happening. He does the whole act out. He crawls out of the chair, goes down. Free to bet. Yeah. He's the best. Right. It's funny. I, I'm funny if not familiar enough, but you know, I know you say that about the unapologetic. I mean, that's just like my performance style.

Is this very natural? It's who I am. I think it's a New York thing, personally. I don't know. Maybe I'm making a judgment that's out of term. No, but I have a joke that I took out of the special because it was so new that I was like, you know what? I'm going to save that.

But the joke is that it's a problem in my real life because people misconstrue that whatever the hell you're feeling as like aggression. When it's actually not, it's just the way that we all talked growing up. So like Hannah, even though she grew up in Brooklyn, she wasn't raised like around that like New York energy. Yeah. So she'll think.

we're fighting when we're not. And I'm like, no, no, I'm not. She's almost like, why are you yelling at me? I'm like, no, I'm not. This is my, this is the normal volume. This is bizarre because my wife has adopted this. We both are from Florida. We're both like pretty chill, kind of like,

just regular kind of almost borderline soft spoken in a way. And specifically my wife, like she's just an angel. And she now works with Hasidic Jews as a midwife. She literally, like she's with like Brooklyn Jews all day. Why? She in Borough Park or something? All over. Anywhere there's like Orthodox Jews, religious Jews. She's in Crown Heights.

Right. In Long Island. She's in Williamsburg, obviously, where we live. Rockland County. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so as a result, now, we will kind of argue and she'll yell. But not actually yell. It'll just be like that New York. Her way of expressing you. She's like, if you're going to go with your friends, then go. Or you can stay with me and we can hang here. Just do what are you going to do? Just pick something. Yes. And I'm like, where is this coming from? I swear to God, we had a conversation where I was like, hey, babe, I don't know what's going on. We're just talking right now. And you're kind of getting aggressive. She's like, I'm not aggressive. Yeah.

And then she sat down with me and she goes, hey, Mark, I think I need to apologize to you. I was like, why? She was like, this is just kind of how we talk at work. And it's sort of coming over in my personal life. And I didn't realize it until I went back to work. And I was like, oh, I'm adopting this like Brooklyn Jewishness. And it's my bad. And I was like, whoa, this is great.

She doesn't stop it. She does it, which I actually love. It cuts out so much old miscommunication in our relationship where now she just tells me what is going on. Yeah. It's awesome. fucking point. Especially because they're in birth. She's delivering babies. Like, there's no time. So it's just like, hey, give me the thing. Like, it's just so direct. Whereas before

she'd be like, um, excuse me, would you mind passing me the thing that I, like, it's just so, it's awesome. I'm genuinely a fan. That's one of the things like when I get together with my cousins, like the cousins I grew up with here, I just feel so normal because we are all so loud and like aggressive. But we don't mean to be aggressive. It's just the way that

we talk. So it is, and the kids I grew up with in Queens too. It does feel good to be like in your natural habitat. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, the fact, I never made a decision to have like an on-stage persona. It's just kind of an exaggerated version of who I am. Which is, I think, how it should be. Yeah.

And the only thing that's annoying me, I don't know if you looked in the comments. I'm not a big comments guy, but it's hard to avoid the amount of people that are saying that I'm copying Bill Burr, which is driving me insane. It's interesting. It's driving insane because, well, I've been doing comedy since 1997, and I love Bill Burr, but he is not an inspiration of mine. I haven't even seen a lot of Bill Burr. I have a huge admiration for him, but like I've never watched a full special of Bill Bear every clip I see of him I love. But like, he's just not my inspiration. And these people just can't not hear Bill Burr.

And I'm like, yo, it's just a coincidence. It's just, we're two angry white northeastern guys whose parents were probably a little bit aggressive. That's what I'm saying. Like I think people that are not from the Northeast might hear it and be like, oh, it's the same thing. Yes. But it's like, no, no, no, you just understand these are people that come from the same environment. And so, of course, they're going to sound similar. These are, like, former Irish, like, diaspora-type people that are growing up in the Northeast in cities.

Yeah. And, I mean, not for nothing, Bill, like, came up in New York for years, you know what I mean? So, like, obviously, he's like a Boston guy, but he has so much New York in him. Yeah, and also, you know, again, it was never a decision. But, like, I came from a time as a kid in the 80s when stand-up would come on TV. It was a different time. A lot of it was aggressive. Like, I'm inspired by that.

And honestly, I love the black comic because they're fucking high energy. So, like, my inspiration comes from aggression and high energy. Not, like, deliberate. It's just that's what I was exposed to and that's what I loved. Have you, have you, one thing that I loved in the special is, like, it's, I love the way you talk about generational differences. I think the way. I feel like that's easy. Like, would you believe I took a lot of that?

I took more of that out? Oh, really? You know, because I didn't want people to think that I was just like a nostalgia jacky. Interesting. You know? I didn't get that feeling. Oh, which is, yeah, and I'm annoyed at myself because I second, now, the way, the flow of the special I'm happy with, but, but, but I'm a little annoyed of myself that I was maybe a little over analytical about the judgment of others thinking that that might be considered like not, uh, unique. You know what I mean?

So I did do, I took out, I took out some stuff about getting hit and stuff like that as a kid because I just didn't want the special to be. become too hop-heavy with, too top-heavy with nostalgia. Interesting. Or like boomer jokes. I see, I see. I didn't, I get the hesitation. I didn't get the feeling personally. And as someone that's from a different generation than you, I actually enjoy hearing

the differences. Like, there's so many generational things that I don't understand how you did, like genuinely. Yeah, I don't understand it. I can't believe that we did. The rejection thing I thought was such an interesting point. Like, oh. That routine really ended up working out. Yeah, it's great.

That took a long time. Really? I actually recorded a version of that, like, five. years ago. Oh, wow. And went on to an Irish special that, you know, I never put up onto YouTube because I was like, you know what, I'm going to get that stuff better. But that journey of that routine

took a long time to get good. I think there was a time where it was pretty basic that routine, actually. But eventually I felt. It's solid. And just the concept, I think, is so true. Like, hey, getting rejected every day in real life hurts so much more than when someone doesn't

match, and it doesn't feel like rejection. I just thought it was such an astute observation. about generational differences. I enjoyed that. But also, can I point out that, like, I've had both experiences. I was a single man in my 30s. Like, I've done plenty of apps. Yeah.

And, like, I don't care what anybody says. It's fucking easier to meet women. If you're a heterosexual male, it's easier to meet women now than when I was younger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it is an absolute fact. And it's also, obviously, easier to figure out the boundaries of sexuality just in terms of, like, how open people are. and the fact that you can sex, and, like, all that stuff didn't exist.

So it was, it was, it was, there was a lot more sort of steps on the journey to knowing what you couldn't, couldn't do with a woman. Like, I didn't get into that that much on that special. But, like, all that stuff is very different, and it's really a lot easier now. I don't care what anybody says. Yeah, just being able to say to a woman, like, hey, do you want to hook up? Breaking the ice, man. It's just so much easy to break the ice with the app or even just the Instagram slide.

It's just so much easier. I don't care what anybody says. I used to fucking have to go up and, you know, it was so, anybody my age had the same experience, but like it was nerve-wracking to talk to a stranger. I think people even discount how just like logistically impossible it seems to me to go on a date. Like before cell phones,

the idea of like, hey, we're going to meet up at a time, at a place that neither of us maybe have been to that like we know where it is. And if you're 30 minutes late, it's just not going to happen. Yeah, or, you know, if you lose your patience, like you're going to be gone.

If you just get jammed up, like I'm late profusely. I'm late all the time, as you've seen today. Yes. And if I'm, like, if, I don't know, there's a possibility. Like, if I was 10 more minutes late, you would have been here and been like, all right. Back in the day, why I would have been wondering what was going on. Exactly. It's just a crazy thing.

Yeah. Now, the only thing I will say is that often maybe you might go to a pay phone and, like, call her house and say, hey, do you know if Sam left? You know? and they'd be like, oh yeah, she's on the way. They might have just been trapped. So it wasn't always like 100%. Right. But like a lot of time, it was just like, how long do you wait?

Or just like a map. A map is so crazy. I genuinely think I'm bad at directions because I never had to learn how to be good at directions. Yeah. Like I would just, if I need to go somewhere, I'd type into my phone and it would tell me where to go. And I never, I genuinely, to this day, I don't have any situational awareness. I don't know how streets work. Yeah, Hannah's terrible at it.

Do you think it's generational or do you think it's like... I think some of it's generational and some of it's, But for sure, because obviously part of that routine is I say that there are certain skills that we don't need anymore that I thought were good. And whether to be good at directions than not as important, it doesn't matter because we don't need to be. But like, we used to have to, like, it would be like, hey, excuse me, sir, can you tell me how to get to Laces's roller skating rink in New Hyde Park? And yeah, he'd be like, oh yeah, so what you want to do is you're going to have to go up there. The third light is Jericho Turnpike. You're going to take a left.

and you know what I mean like you had to remember that then so it just it just became more innate to like remember where you were going and to like visualize the journey yeah yeah yeah you know and you get the chance to like interact with another human like you had to

you were forced to like you know mesh with people you had to go to a guy be like how do I go where I'm going whereas now like you don't need to you just fucking something asked me for directions recently and I was like I literally said you don't have Google Maps like that's what I said

you're part of the problem this is a guy trying to make you feel nostalgic. I was like, what the fuck, dude? What the fuck's the matter with you? You know, but it turns out she was like, I'd say recently immigrated and was like was like, was not good with the phone. So I did end up helping her. But my first thing was you don't have Google Maps.

Look it up, motherfucker. But I remember one time, Katie Boyle, we were joking about her, but we were, sorry, talking about her before the show, positively. And so when we were doing the podcast together, sometimes just by virtue of practicality, we would do an episode in the car because I'm sure you. you know this, that cars are very good acoustically. They're essentially the same acoustics as a recording studio. So I said, I had spots at the cellar, so I was like, we'll do the episode in the car. So I was parked on West Third Street, if you know it, but close to LaGuardia Place. So West Third and Sullivan.

Okay. I'm saying I know. I have no idea. Yeah, West Third and Sullivan outside a little coffee shop there in the corner, Irving Farm. And Katie Boyle was the corner of Bleaker Street and McDougal. McDougal is the street that the seller is on. Bleaker is. is one street south from West Third, the street that I was on. So I said, I'm just on the corner of Sullivan and West Third. All you got to do is walk up, pass a seller, and take a right. And she goes, oh, can you just send me the address so I can Google Map in? And I was like, okay, but, like, you know, you just walk up and take a right.

It's a 90-degree angle, and I'll be there on the left-hand side as you're walking down. And she was like, no, no, you have to send it to me. I feel the same way. I understand. I want Team Katie, bro. I get that feeling of like, I don't know. Like, you can try to tell me, just send me the thing. And I'll do it in the way I know, which is the phone.

But we speak a different language, man. Bro, it's just, it's wild. I genuinely am so bad at it. And New York's a grid anyway, so it's all so easy. You would think it's easy, but it's not. But I like knowing a place. Like, me and Hannah and I can go on vacation. And, like, by the end of a vacation, like, I will be able to get myself around.

And she will be just as disorientated as the day she arrived. Yep, that's me. She just lets me, you know, I do all the navigating. I'm the navigator. Yeah. You know? Were there any generational difference between like the relationship? With her?

Well, she, we're 15 and a half years apart. Not many, you know, not many. Like, because obviously like, whatever, I'm a modern dude, you know. Not too many. Just obviously there's just the odd time where she'll be kind of baffled by my existence at a time which she considers history. You know what I mean? Like the fall of the Berlin Wall.

You know, like the 1984 L.A. Olympics. Are you just bring up a reference? And she's like, what? Yeah. Oh, that happens a lot. Yeah. I'm actually in between her parents' age and, you know, like, I'm right in the middle. So, like, I have a lot in common with the parents that she doesn't understand with.

And then I have some stuff in common with her that they don't understand. But yeah, there just stuff comes up. But it's just funny, but not really that much of a – especially because you're a comic, right? If you're a comic, you're just, like, on top of everything. Yeah, yeah. So, do you know what happens? Sometimes this doesn't annoy me, but it's kind of funny.

She will tell me about stuff from her childhood, like in a way that's like, oh, this was a thing when I was a kid. And I was like, well, you know that everything that was a thing when you were a kid, I know. Yeah, I was also there. Yeah, I was there. I've been here longer than you. Yeah, like, I know Usher. Like, oh, this is my jam. It's like, yeah, I remember 50 cents.

Having a mix tape. I was still going to parties when I was 25. I'm not like a fucking, what do you think I am? Yeah. So there's not, there's not too much.

But you know what? There'll be like little moments where like, like I just fucking love Radiohead. Yeah. Like I am literally the peak radiohead generation. Radiohead speaks to me

in very deep ways. And like Hannah, like she would probably say to her friends that that almost gives her the ick and that like there's every now and then where they'll just be an acute cultural difference between us as a result of our ages. To her, that's just very sort of like naval gazily, kind of like older guy.

That's funny. And she does not get great. Grunge, sad boy, 90s alternative. Yeah, she does not get radiohead. Like, we tried to listen to and she was like, what the fuck. Do you know what? One day, do you know who Seeger Ross is? No.

Oh, Sigre Roast. Anyway, I love Seagre Ross. Another fucking music of my generation. And I went to pick her up from the Long Island Railroad out in West Hampton. And she got in the car and, like, we're driving out. And like after two minutes, she was like, what the fuck? Can you turn that fucking on? It was driving her insane.

And to me, it was like the, therapeutic. I just, yeah, literally, therapy. Like, I was so deep in nostalgia and warmth. And then, like, she couldn't even, it was like, you know, it was like scratching on a chalkboard to her. You know, and stuff like that every now and then. But like, that can also happen in non-age gap relationships. How do you just meet? I slender DMs.

Really? Yeah. I think at some stage she had popped up on Nikki Glaze. her story. And I was just like, oh, cute comic. I just followed her. Nothing creepy.

I just followed her. I didn't contact her. You guys are married. It's a lot of me. No, I know, but I mean, like, I just followed her. It's not any type of, like,

creepiness if you marry her. You know what I mean? Remember that. And then I, yeah. But then, like, she would pop up and, you know, my algorithm sometimes in the stories. And I became aware of her.

I could tell that she had done some, at the time I didn't even understand, like, the culture of Bravo or any of that stuff. I could just see that she was on. what looked like to me to be some sort of like MTV kind of like reality type show, but I didn't really know much about it. But, you know, she would pop up.

So I was aware, you know, of her, like posting videos of like her in hot tubs. And then when the pandemic hit, she was popping up in my algorithm with like the stuff we were all posting during the pandemic, dancing to the weekend and, you know, TikTok-y's type stuff. So I was just aware of her. But I didn't know anything of her awareness of me. But neither to say, the heart of the pandemic, July of 2020, she posted a story from Shelter Island. She was having lunch with Luan, Countess Luan from Real Housewives of New York.

And I didn't even know who she was, but I just saw that she was in Shelter Island and I was isolating out in West Hampton, Long Island. So I'm not that far. And I checked and she was following me, which I did not know. So I actually never knew that she followed me back when I followed her. So I literally stood in her DMs and I was like, oh my God, you're out east. And she was like, yeah. And I was like, you want to meet for coffee?

and she was like, yeah. And I was like, okay, how about Saturday? She was like, yeah. I was like, I have to get the ferry. I was like, I'll pick you up from the shelter around the ferry Saturday, two o'clock. And that was it. Oh, that's cool. But she had actually, so, you know, she was a D1.

She was a tennis player all her life, thought she was going to be a professional tennis player, burnt out the end of college, decided to pack it in, got like a shitty fucking sales job, just like didn't know what she was doing with her life. So during that time in her life, she went to the comedy seller with workmen. and had actually seen me and remembered thinking like, oh, he's cute, but I was talking about living in Ireland,

so just like she didn't pay any attention to it. But when I had actually slid, she was like, oh, that's that cute comic that I saw at the seller. So she actually had been aware of me. Wow. Did she say cute or did you add that? I'm quoting her.

She said you were cute. Sorry, I should have said quote unquote. Did she say you were cute or I'm just trying to see if you're adding that, like just trying to add some extra, you know. She said, no, I'm quoting her. I've heard her tell the story. Okay.

So that's why she wasn't, that's why she responded immediately because she actually was aware of who I was. But I hadn't, funnily enough, been popping up in her algorithm. And you know what? She had actually, I was on Raya,

and she had popped up on my Raya, and I had swiped right on her. And that's a funny age gap moment, but she was like, oh, you never popped up on mine, but she didn't have to age high enough. No.

That's so funny. So she would have never met me on Raiya, It wasn't in the right parameters. Wow. But anyway, so it was a slide and then we hit it off straight away. We hit it off straight away. That's really cool. And I never dated a comic and I would have been very against it.

But actually, I take all that back because the familiarity of each other's life and just like... Wait, what about the Chinese girl that was a comic? Oh, sorry, yeah. I consider that a little too. Yeah. I guess it's different. You're absolutely right. You're calling me out.

Take accountability. No, you're right. But it's weird. That's another funny cultural. difference. Like, I never really considered her properly like a stand-up. Because I guess the way that stand-up was the time. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you're right. You're 100% right. But also, you know why the context of what I'm talking about was that like, because me and Shrinxman were just like, there's so much going on with the language and the cultural differences.

But like I just, and an English-speaking stand-up, I just always avoided it because I felt like it would be like problematic. But it's actually the opposite because it's just so great to have all that in common. And then just like not be frustrated with each other when you got to travel. Yeah, yeah. So actually it turned out to be quite practical. But I wouldn't have thought that. But immediately, we hit her off anyway.

Did you guys do shows together? We do the odd time. Like, if she's doing, like, a show in a really cool spot, I will open for her like fucking Aspen, Colorado, which is why I'm fucking sitting here in a leg brace. But, but, uh... So it's her fault. Well, it's not her fault because I'm the skier. She doesn't ski.

Oh, really? She doesn't ski. I did this with my wife. To be honest, she booked... She most likely said yes to those shows because she knew that I would love to go. And she was right. it happens. Fuck.

For those that don't know, I'm sitting here with a broken leg and a torn ACL in a leg brace. You went too hard? You know, I didn't go too hard in terms of the skiing,

but what I did was, if anyone knows Aspen, I know the sympathy level just drops through the fucking floor. That's what sucks. People are like, what happens? I was skiing in Aspen. Fuck you.

Oh, fuck you. You deserve it. That is a good point. If you break your leg in Aspen, I genuinely, I'm like, that's good. Yeah, good for you. That's what you deserve. If there's an avalanche in Aspen, I'm like, the world's getting better.

This is what the world needs. There's less than the 1% took a hit. Exactly. So, anyway, there's a place there called the Highland Bowl, which is like a famous hike. It's not like particularly crazy, but it's a tough hike. And this particular day they didn't have, normally they take you a third of the way, like on a snow cat, but the snow cat wasn't running. So I sense it's like a mile hike at 12,000 something feet, very high altitude. one of the higher altitudes in the skiing world.

And I did the hike, but I struggled on the hike. I really was not fit altitude-wise. And I got there and it was great. And it was all, one girl recognized me from Instagram. And it was all very fun. I was having fun with all these locals. And then they were like, oh, yeah, we're going to go to Ozone. You can follow us.

And it's just very early on, not doing anything crazy. I just slipped a fall I've had a million times. I wasn't like, oh, I'm sending it. And I fucking fell. I literally fell at like not a lot of pace. I just kind of slipped low, because I was fucking tired from the hike. And then the momentum kept taking me, but only one of my skis popped off. The other one didn't pop off in time.

And the fucking momentum, I started sliding. That ski finally popped, but it only popped after it twisted my knee to the point where I broke my leg and tore my ACL. And I knew straight away something bad had happened. And after that happened, I slid for at least another two minutes. I slid 1,400 feet, tumbling and sliding. I slid 1,400 feet to the point where the people that were getting my skis, were like dots. Like they were like, where'd the guy go?

That was where'd the guy go? That was, where, that's... Four different people called Mountain Rescue. Damn. I didn't even call Mountain Rescue. They just pulled up on the... They just knew. They were like, this is bad. Damn.

No, they didn't pull up on a snowmobile. Because you can't, you know, it's, you know, can't get to this run on a lift. It's unliftable. But they got there with their abilities. So how'd you get down? They, like, kind of towed you. They tobogged me.

Oh, wow. They tobogued me. Which looks fun. I feel like people discount that part. Yeah, it's not as fun as it looks, but it was fine, but they toboggined me to a lift because you couldn't get all the way down. So they tobogging me to a lift,

and then they hung me. There's like a hanging apparatus. They clip you in. And so I was on a lift like lying down, like hanging. And they were next to me. So I was like long ways. And then they tabogne me all the way down.

How do they get you off the lift when you're hanging? Like you're really just like getting hung from it? Like you're dangling? Yeah, like a, you know, like a little clip in there. Yeah, like a caribiner like climbing rope. But I wasn't hanging off the bus. bottom. When they said hanging, I visualized it as I would be hanging off the bottom. Yeah, like a helicopter. No, so they slid me into the, like, they, I don't know how, actually, to be honest, I never saw it,

because I was just lying down, but I was like, I know I was clipped into, I was clipped in, and I was just hanging there. Damn. And then they, and then we got to the top, and then they took me all the way to the bottom, and then I was put into an ambulance and brought to the hospital, and they, actually, they told me I broke my leg within 45 minutes, actually, and I nearly, I actually, that must have been the moment the shock wore off because I actually nearly fainted I had to be lied down

they had to lie me down flat because like the blood like I literally was about to faint and like shit myself and puke femur it was my fibulus so it's actually a good break

yeah it was a handy the leg break I just was shocked when they told me I was just thinking about my knee I was never thought it never entered my brain that I would fucking break my leg

yeah yeah like never entered my brain oh that sucks dude was this after the show Yeah, the show was the night before. Wow. You did the show. It was great.

And then... Next day, man. Damn. Listen, I... 10 times a day, I just go over the decisions that I made that day. But there's nothing you can do. It's so annoying. Because it's like...

I'm going to Ireland tonight to get a fucking ACL reconstruction next week. And I just know that it's like a... You know, it is what it is, man. But I'm not looking for sympathy to anyone who's been through ACL tear knows. It's just... It's just... one of those things, yeah. Do you have a generational perspective on TikTok and like social media comedy and like how

content is permeating through social? Like you have been a comic for so long, you've seen it, and now you're married to one of like the pioneers and the most like preeminent social media. Like people have blown up on social media. Like in your perspective of it, how do you find that it's affecting comedies? It's changing your stand-up at all? Number one, I prefer it the old way. Now, I'm not complaining about the way that it's.

changed, but you got to realize that, like, I'm having to upskill in my 40s. Like, I was somebody who learned how to do it the old way, which was get fucking good at live comedy enough that people want to see your show, but also, more importantly, that the gatekeepers, quote unquote, see you and think we'd like to work with this guy, and then pitch ideas for TV shows and get those TV shows to get a greater notoriety and, you know, make specials on DVD. My specials were all for DVDs. Yeah, I saw it on Wikipedia. It's funny.

DVD special. I was like, oh, wow. Yeah, that's how we did specials. Because actually in the States, it was HBO specials, but Europe actually never had a... My second special, which was also a DVD, was actually originally made as a Christmas... It went out on Irish TV at Christmas. But there wasn't like the culture of a television special.

Right. You know, I just happened to do this stand-up show on Irish TV. But anyway... And the whole thing about that was that you got good at doing live comedy. And you didn't worry about your stuff being filmed and put out in a way. And, you know, like, I'm not, none of that stuff I would complain about because it's just the way the world is now. But there were aspects of it that were definitely better, you know? And it was just a lot more about the live.

Now, there was plenty of people that took advantage of that, different comedy festivals, like rip you off. but you went there because you could be seen. But in fairness, it was good fun, and the internet has changed that. But on the flip side, the great thing about the way the internet has changed is that like some people are just not great at live comedy, but they're really good of fucking content, you know?

And like, and I think that that's underappreciated the liberation that that gave certain amount of people who just had funny ideas or knew how to be funny. And suddenly they could do it with content. Right, yeah. You know? No, don't even need an audience. Just tell the bit into the phone.

Yeah, or whatever. You know, they're visually talented. You know, like, I mean, Bo Burnham encapsulates all of it. So he just happens to have all the skills. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was an early viral guy. But, like, he has all the skills. But, like, some people don't have the live skill, but they have the funny skill.

They got the funny bones. And they like being on their own and making visually funny ideas. So, like, I think all in all, it's been a positive. It's just that, like, I didn't learn to be that. So I didn't resist it for too long, but like I was annoyed that I had to pivot. And you had to like learn it all and like learn the TikToks. Yeah, I didn't want to learn how to edit. I didn't want to know which app was most important.

I didn't want to learn any of that because I do this is I hate editing. I hate computers. I loved fucking filling up my schedule with a lot of fucking live shows. I'm a laborer, man. I'm a fucking union comedy guy. You know, like. Let me clock in, do much time, get out. Like, I'm like a physical worker.

Like, for me, working was touring, getting on stage, writing. That was work to me. Now it's changed. But I also see, so for example, like, I feel like in the States, I've actually not, like, I would have preferred to have gotten, like, more help from the industry since I've been coming back to the States. I've actually felt like it's been harder. I'm not making any, not blaming, no anger, but I've just, I have not. been happy with my progression industry-wise in the States, not creatively, but industry-wise in the States. And I very belatedly did this YouTube special. And the wonder of being able to just

take my special and put it on YouTube and then put those clips on the Internet, that is actually liberating. And you're enjoying that process? Yeah. I was good on the, I was reasonable with content, but only in fits and starts. And then the rest of the time I just had a pay. in my ass with it, but I never really, like, put in the effort to, like, record this special, put it up. And then, now it's like, I see it. I go, well, isn't this fucking great that I can put this up? I still have a frustration that I had to do it that way. Yeah, yeah. But it's great that you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? So I've 100% embraced it, but I do think that there are issues with it, but there's pros and cons. Yeah, of course. Yeah, there's so many

great comics that we know about now that came up in a different generation that we might not have known about because they weren't self-starters or they weren't, you know, entrepreneurs, and they might have just stayed kind of working in these comedy clubs and been killers that we never saw because there wasn't a network that put them on. And now it's like you kind of have to have an entrepreneurial spirit, which if you don't have it, then it's going to really inhibit your growth. But that might not necessarily be the funniest guys. I mean, we know, I noticed this more in New York personally, that there's, I think the best comics in the world are in this city, no question. And we don't know about a lot of them.

Because, like you were saying, I think they're from a generation where they kind of just like to clock in, clock out, throughout the cellar every night. And there's guys, I'm sure, we're both thinking of. Greer, Greer Barnes. Sure. He's got a lot of industry rep, but he still hasn't had, like, the breakout. One of the greatest comics. Killer. Like, ask anyone.

And, yeah, he's just, like, sort of, you know, not as popular as other comedians that he's way more talented than just because it's not, you know, out and distributed in the way that people are in there. Well, I'll tell you, man, like, there's guys. I don't want to follow and like nobody knows who they are but like I don't want to follow these motherfuckers because they kill people don't know that people don't know that about New York like in LA all the best comedians you know about like there's I don't think there's like a secret gem obviously there's like comics comics that you know guys like us like but there's not like a secret hidden like murderer type dude you know whereas in New York like that happens a whole time yeah there have been people that I've talked to that move like go see a show at the cellar and

they're like, I just saw this guy. He's my new favorite community. He's the best comic I've ever seen. And tell me why that's Daniel Simonson. Sure, exactly. And it's Daniel Simonson. I'm like, yeah, he's a genius. He's truly a genius.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. Not a name drop, but Casey Musgraves, you know, the country star, came to see Hannah's show. And I was on, and they were mad cool. And they hung out afterwards, and they love comedy. And Casey Musgraves goes to me, I went to the comedy seller,

and I saw the best comic. I don't know his name. He was Norwegian. I was like Daniel Simons. She's like, he is the best comic I have ever seen. Yeah. Like they love Daniel Simonson.

I want to put more light on that, like as a person. Like I feel like I have like a personal mission just as someone that loves comedy to say like, people need to know about this shit. Yeah. They need to know about the fucking guys here. But you know, sometimes, you know,

the thing about his is like sometimes it doesn't translate on the video. So I understand why sometimes he can have an issue where like the awkwardness, you know, because it's like, It's deliberately awkward, right? Like, that's part of the jam. The awkwardness is part of the humor. But sometimes, like, the atmosphere that's created that creates a laugh, sometimes maybe might not come across on the video.

And a lot of it, too, is just some people's acts are just, like, I've had to change the way that I perform. Because I go, you know, people always go, why aren't you putting up more content? You have all these specials. And I go back on these fucking specials. They're very long-winded. Interesting.

They're not made for clips. Yeah, they're made for like one time sitting watching it like a movie. But yeah, and there's an interwoven story and the stories are long and they are funny and people are fucking laughing and I remember at the time thinking they were amazing but now they're fucking useless to me. Like honestly, like I get frustrated sometimes because I have a memory of a bit and I like, I recently got a special from 2009 and I was like so excited. I was like yeah, this is my, I started to change as a comedian and then I can be able to use. And then I'm watching it. I'm like, oh my God, I didn't fucking call back from fucking 20 minutes ago. I can't fucking use this.

Yeah, how does it work? And it's one of the biggest pops in the special, I'm sure. Yes, yes. It's the biggest laugh. At the end of the day, like, you did think about specials in a, you did, a special. Yeah, there was a bit more of a journey with them, you know. So anyway, that's the other thing about when you were asking me about content. Like, you do have to change.

But then also what I have found is that, like, you can be surprised how, like, one half of a bit actually works way better than you would expect. On social. Yeah, I've split up some bits and I've been like, ah, it's a pity because they're not going to get that bit but they don't care. The other bit's good enough. You need two punchlines.

Like, if you have two punchlines in this quarter of the bit, like, that's all that matters. That part's funny. You can chop this thing up. In your mind, you're like, no, no, it is a chunk. It is the story of this thing

that's six minutes long. But it's really a bunch of individualized jokes that can all go up on their own. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's taking me a while to accept that too. Yeah. It's tricky.

It's tricky. I mean, I'm so curious. Has Hannah's success been inspirational to you where you're like, oh, wow. Like that's how this medium can be transposed into social. Like seeing the way her clips have blown up. Yeah, I mean, like obviously I'm living with that.

So that was one. But Schultz, look, no, like that obviously is one of the inspirations. Like watching that happen for her. Right. Schultz is another. Yeah, of course. Mateo in more recent times. Like eventually you see enough people just put in the,

fucking effort and get results that you can't sit there and go, why is it not happening to me? Like, eventually you have to go, I can say that if I make the effort and it doesn't happen, but I can't say that when I'm not doing it. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the fact with Hannah, Hannah is more just, like, inspirational in that she started to just be like, you got to just do it. Yeah. You know, that attitude is so awesome.

I don't even really have that. I get, I'm really nervous by, like, putting out stand-up. I haven't really put out any. And I'm like, I getting anxious about it. I'm like, is it good enough? Is it the way I want to represent? Like, I get so in my head. And I just kind of need to have that attitude of like,

yeah, you got to just put it up. Yeah, and because the industry has changed. So you kind of have to like be less discerning. You actually have to be less discerning. But I don't mean that as like a dis on the stuff that people's putting up. But like, you know, like it's more important for it to be up than for it to be like perfect. Let the algorithm sort it out. Yeah.

So anyway, she's very good at basically just like. putting me under pressure to do it. But I did see, you know, there was a time where, you know, she finished on this reality show. And it was like a bad ending. And, you know, she was pretty deflated. And like, I remember, she just said to me, I'm going to focus on TikTok. She literally said to me, this is before, like, she had any followers on TikTok. She was like, I'm going to focus on TikTok.

And she just, like, every day was just like making content for TikTok. So cool. That was all her just like saying, I'm going to do it. People, obviously, every, everyone has their. opinions and people blow up and then they like to say that there was this bit of luck or that bit of luck. But like at the end of the day, she made a decision. She flooded fucking TikTok with content and like it changed your fucking life. Yeah.

Like changed her life. That's really, really cool. You know, so like I did see that. Now, I do have to tell you that this current run of content that I'm putting up, it's not the first time. I've, other times I have been pretty like pretty persistent and I did not get the breaks. had those conversations say with Hannah where I was like, you know, it's pretty looking frustrating because I'm throwing the shit down. Right.

The algorithm, you know, like, it's not giving me any help. So I did, there were times where I did get frustrated. Of course. You know, but I did say to her, I was like, it would be so much easier for me if I could just like, you know, just get a couple of like easy ones. You know, you're kind of like, you're waiting for that moment where like. Well, you have. I mean, there's a couple clips that have gone wild.

Yeah. This time. Right. This is literally the time that I was kind of waiting for. I don't know how to explain it but like I was kind of thinking like there has to be a time where like you get a bit of momentum

right you know because when you get the momentum it inspires you to do more whereas when you don't get the momentum when you're like oh god this is such pain of my ass it's not fucking worth it I got a couple more weeks of like

frustration before I just say fuck it you know and I did kind of give up or I would get busy or I go to Ireland or you know so there were times where I maybe I had a little bit of momentum but not enough where I like I really whereas now suddenly and I'm sure this happened with you and certainly I feel

Like it happened with Mateo. Like, there comes a moment where you drop stuff, it starts to kick off, it starts to make sense. And then you're like, I got to make more. And that's the way I feel now. You taste it, you feel it. You go, oh, wow. Yeah, this is for me. I can do it.

Yeah. Honestly, I've been doing comedy since 1997. This is the first time in a long time where I'm like, can't wait to be like making more shit. I haven't seen. For a long time being back in the States, I have really been inspired by just like, like working in the States, gigging in the States, small crowds, big crowds, just like getting better as a comedian in the United States. I really have enjoyed that.

But, like, I didn't have that sense of, like, I need to be doing more material or whatever. Because, like, there was just no need for that. I was still just going out there trying to fucking kill. Whereas, like, this is the first time where I'm like, oh, shit, yeah, people are really fucking into this. And now I got to make more of it. That's the way I feel now. It's awesome.

I think that's the best attitude. And that's genuinely what makes me happy about kind of, like, the new way. the new way. Content is kind of moving. And I'm with that now. Guys like you that are so funny and so talented and it must be even additionally frustrating for you. I don't know that like oh I'm, you've been doing comedy for 25 years. Like it's like you've been

oh I'm killing in this club like I've performed in these theaters I kill in these theaters like and then I put a clip out online and it gets 300 views and it's like there's a disconnect happening. Yes. I've done I do the thing and now when it's being put on digital it's not doing the thing that it does when it's in the room and that would

drive me fucking crazy. Well, you want to know my controversial take? I think the algorithm, at times, not always, can be ageist. Ah. But now I'm contradicting myself because my clips have been doing well. Are you posted on Facebook? Oh, Facebook's my secret place. See, there

we go. Facebook is where my people are. There we go. No, I'm being serious. No, I have 300,000 plus followers on... That's awesome. I've been quite... Actually, the last year I've been putting the effort in on Facebook. That's... That's my secret place. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to keep I like that. I like that.

No, but like Facebook is like, uh, more my age group there. Yeah. That's awesome though. Like that's, at this point, have you seen this translate to ticket sales? But like you're going to show. I feel like this time is going to be the real tester is like,

if this current like, this has been a clear change. Yeah. Like I, the last sort of four weeks of my life have been fun and exciting other than breaking my leg because I feel like for the first time that I might get some American momentum, right? Whether it continues on, I don't know.

But I haven't put it to the test, though. So I haven't actually, I don't actually have a ton of shows booked. So that has to be put to the test now over the next six months. So we'll see. You just never know, right? You don't know.

I'm excited for you. So we'll see. We'll see. I mean, it has to be a bump. Yeah. After that, who knows, you know? It's going to be really cool. We'll see. No, no, I think people are going to be coming out,

especially now that the clips, like seeing the clips pop off on Instagram makes me so happy. I'm like, oh, this is awesome. Like, there's just, you to me remind me of just so many, like, New York guys that are so talented. And I tell people about you and I tell people about other comics in New York. And people go, oh, I got to check them out. I've never heard of them.

I'm like, ugh. Like, what do you even think about, like, what do you even think comedy is if you're not watching these guys? Yeah. But that's what, you know, Mattia. Mateo was a good inspiration for me, too, because, you know, we're close enough, me and Mattio and, like, I've gigged it him many times. And, like, he, to me, it was always.

inexplicable. Now, he wasn't in the industry long enough where he would have had any great frustration. I think even without the internet, I think in the old way he would have blown up too. But like, the fact that he just stopped waiting, it was like, fucking, I'm going to do it. And like, the change to his life, yeah. I mean, like, the change to his life is immense. He's, like, shut down the club famous now. Like, have you seen this? Like, I was talking to him, and, I mean, first off, all my gay friends are just like, do you know Mateo Land? In Ireland. It's a thing. And even, like, friends of, like, my, parents are like, oh, your son does comedy?

Does he know Mateo Lane? Like, it's that level. And he was even telling me, he's like, yeah, I can't really go to, like, gay clubs anymore. Not that he really went out that much, like beforehand. Yeah, but that's fame, man. He's like, I go out and it's like, everyone. And he would be probably embarrassed.

I'm even sharing this because he's so humble. But he's like, I would go out and people, it's like, oh, he's here. The guy's here. And all from just, like, consistently posting these clubs. But the reality is that, like, I used to hate following Mateo. But, like, he's just. a killer, like an absolute killer.

And it was only a matter of time, but the fact that he just went, fuck it. And like, honestly, the way the industry is these days, I have no idea why he wasn't getting more help from the industry, because he fits into the sort of like... He talked about that with us. I asked him about that. And I was like, well, I'm sure, like, you're a handsome gay dude that sings opera. Like, how is the industry not all over it? He was like, I talked with Netflix, and I'm hoping I'm getting this accurate.

But he said that he spoke with the streamer and they were kind of like, oh, can you talk about your struggle? And he was like, my family loves me. I have an awesome, like, Italian family that I'm still so close with. Me being gay did not affect my relationship with my dad. And they were like, are you sure?

And he was like, yeah. Yeah, that's the thing, man. And that's the fucking corporate shit where they're like, hey, let's try to spin this narrative. And they were like, wait, he's like fun. And he says the F word. Like, this is not the kind of gay we want. Yeah.

And so, yeah. So he just said, fuck. I'm not going to wait. And like, look, look how that's played out. So he, Hannah and Mateo and, you know, what Andrew was doing with. That was a longer journey. That was like, that was beyond because I was like, what is this guy?

Get the fucking energy. But like, basically all the people that just said, I'm going to do it myself. Yeah. You know? And even Katie recently. I was like, look at Kate. You know, so I was like, you know, I had to just at least do it. But you know what's funny?

That's special. I filmed that in May. Oh, really? Yeah. And I procrastinated, put it. out because I actually literally thought it wasn't good. Wait, why? I just was judging the shit out of it.

Honestly, Hannah was just like, you just have to put it out. I was like, okay, fine, fuck it. Like, I finally put it. I was sitting, I couldn't edit it. I couldn't look through the edit phases. I just, like, eventually I said, Hannah, you got to watch this next. I can't fucking watch it. Like, I fucking slammed the computer down.

I fucking hated it, which is just crazy. because it's gone so much better than I expected but I hated it I couldn't even look at it I get this feeling I've only put out like a couple clips and I remember editing them with almost like shame

I was like I hate how I said that word and I wish I changed the I should work on this another week like it's just like so much and it's all internalized insecurity and shame that I'm dealing with that I'm like projecting onto this thing that is good

and I would just feel like and then I put it out and then people love it and I was like this is wild I got to figure out my head because... Yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah.

It's beyond being a critic. It's just like being just a fucking, like an abusive relationship. With yourself. Well, that's deep. Yeah, but that's true. But yeah, I was very... I was very critical of it, man. Yeah.

So I'm actually quite shocked at the reaction. By the way, it's not like a runaway success or anything. But like, I can just tell that people are like... People are surprised at how good it is in their perception, right? which to me is really surprising because I literally nearly didn't put it out. I mean, that's crazy to me. That's crazy to me. That's crazy. But, I mean, yeah.

That's the artist's mind. Yeah, yeah, I guess. You know? That's the Irish mind. And I have to say, that's one thing for me that, like, this has been a good, it's been a good experience for me. Because, you know, when you make a special for DVD, like, somebody's waiting for that. So, like, it just has to get done. You got to do it.

Whereas, like, this was just like, whenever I want to fucking say the edits done and upload it my fucking YouTube. So that was hard for me because it was just all on me. In fact, even when I put it up, I was like, this is so weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because for years, like, it was just such an event to have a special. The thing is here. It was just like... Yeah, here's the title. Publish.

Yeah, pop it up, man. Enough about me. I'm grateful for Hannah that she pushed you to put that shit out. Yeah, she really did. I have to give her crap, man. That people get to see how funny you are and just how talented you are. She's the executive producer. That's it. Some people are like, why are so many people talking about the executive production in the comments is because, you know, she went on her

pod and she was like, oh, make sure you tell everybody how good it was executively produced. I'm sure, like, her fans are now coming out to see you and becoming your fans. Does that... There's a crossover, but at the end of the day, like, you know, there is some boomer humor in there, you know what I mean? So, like, as much as it resonated with you, it's not resonating with all the girlies, you know? That's interesting. And that's fine, you know, that's fine.

Lean into that shit, bro. Like, lean in, like, I don't know, be, like, that. That's what I love you are. Just accept it. You're so authentically you. You're a 40-year-old white dude. But that's great. Like my dad will send me clips.

Oh, there's this woman. And I forget her name. She's very funny. Leon Morgan. My dad loves her. He'll send me clips of her. She was inspiring to me too just in the sense that it was just like, yeah, this fucking funny shit about being a 60-year-old woman.

Yeah, yeah. And there's no shame. There's no guilt. Like, oh, is this boomer. It's like, yo, fuck these millennials. Fuck these Gen Zay kids. This is the shit I'm on. Like, that's fire.

Like no matter where you're from. Who gives a fuck of his boomer rumor? If it's true to you, and do you think it's funny? There are a million other Des Bishops out there that are like, oh, wow, that is funny. Oh, no, 100%. I mean, you know, and it's really good if somebody young like you finds the humor in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because obviously, in my critic's mind, I go, all the young comics are going like, oh, fucking boomer humor.

Well, you have to understand. I have a gift from God, okay, and I'm very good at understanding comedy. That's why. I'm unique. I'm special, actually, does. That's really the matter of fact. But, dude, this was awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and spend a lot.

the time with me. This is great. I mean, this is the only, since I've broke my leg, this is the only work that I've done. That's amazing. Will you come back? Will you chop it with me again soon? Any, any time, especially if you have a theme that you, we need to research, let me know, man. I'm right over the bridge. Now, I want to research you. I like chopping up with you, man. This was really fun. Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate it. And everyone should check out your special immediately. Of all people. Which is a passive, aggressive. I got to, there's the last thing I'll say, as we're leaving. I went to the MTV Music Awards with Hannah. And we got a photo, like a pop, you know, one of those photos at the thing.

And so all the Irish, like, gossip sites wrote about it. But the first line of one of the Irish gossip sites was Des Bishop of all people was at the MTV Music Awards. It's very passive aggressive. But I loved it because it's so Irish and it's so, like, I love that shit. So that's where I got the name. So the name is actually a passive aggressive. It's great. Thanks.

Everyone should check it out. Thank you, Des. Let's do this again soon.