Comedy of the Week - Mark Watson Talks a Bit About Life

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Multi-award winning comedian and author Mark Watson continues his probably doomed, but luckily funny quest to make sense of the human experience.This series is about time - the days of the week, the stages of our existence - and the way we use it to make sense of things. We make our way through the working week, tonight considering 'hump day' - Wednesday. Wednesday's child, famously, is full of woe. Both Mark and Esther are in this category. Is the woe a real issue or merely a fairy tale? What is the bleakest joke ever told by a four-year-old? And what would Thomas Hardy make of this series?Expect jokes, observations and interactions galore as Mark is aided, and sometimes obstructed, by the sardonic musical excellence of Flo & Joan. There's also a hand-picked comedy colleague each week - here, we welcome Esther Manito.Producer: Lianne CoopAn Impatient production for BBC Radio 4

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts Mark Watson talks, what a surprise Mark Watson talks, will he ever stop? Mark Watson talks a bit about life, better be good Good evening. I found that a bit passive-aggressive. I might have been over-acting. I think it's the better-be-good thing. It just puts a little bit of pressure on before we've really got the audience on.

So, anyway, it's fine. If you were confident, you wouldn't feel that pressure, I don't think. LAUGHTER Have you met me? LAUGHTER Welcome to the show that has already been called, Mart Watson talks a bit about life. We have to register it in advance for the listings.

I'm Mart Watson, a Wednesday's child, full of woe, ordained by fate to be a total miserable bastard. Obviously, that's not really the vibe that works for a comedy show, so I thought I would try and overcompensate with some high-energy, audience warm-up stuff. This is based on a format which I've seen Americans do successfully ready okay are you ready but you had very little option there I'm Mark Watson and I've come here just oh yeah why not yeah yeah

shouldn't it be with something rousing Is this or nothing? Oh, sorry. Fine. So we're going to do high energy audience warm up with gentle lounge. I'm Mark Watson and I've come here to do stand up comedy and kick ass, but I already kicked several asses on the way here. So what's left? Stand up comedy. Very good. Some people just went for comedy.

That also does. It's only if you yell opera or something we're in trouble with. I came here to make jokes and fire my tax return, but the 14-digit payment reference is not being accepted by the website, so we'd better do some. Comedy! Yes, this is working. I came here to offer up some raw observations and make fresh lemonade,

but I've forgotten to bring 140 grams of caster sugar. And without that, the lemonade will be unpalatably bitter. We're just gonna have to... Salud! The answer was offer up some raw observations, but it's not easy. Yeah, I'm worried if anything, the music whipped them into too much of a frenzy,

but it's fine. If you found that difficult, well me too. High-energy hectoring doesn't come that easy to any of us in this country, but especially not to Wednesday births, the saddest, grimmest people out there. Make no mistake, we're the pits. If you've got people come around to your house for a party, ask for birthdays on the door. Anyone says Wednesday, send them straight back home. Give them a goody bag if you want, don ask for birthdays on the door. Anyone says Wednesday, send them straight back home. Give them a goody bag if you want, don't let them over the threshold. They'll put on Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division.

During Truth or Dare, they'll ask questions like, what is your greatest unresolved trauma? Even as they leave, they'll say something like, you've got a lovely house, wish I had Le Pack in my fridge, but hey. Some people are just born to be own brand, I guess. But why are we like this? Are we all like this? Wednesday people? Or is it more just a me problem, as people half my age say? Well, for balance, I'm joined this evening by a fellow Wednesday's child, Esther Milito. Say hello to Esther. Hello.

And as ever, the singing sisters are answers to the Jackson 5 without most of the members, but also without most of the scandals. It's Cloe and Joan. We have had a fair share of plastic surgery and scandals and stuff, but my boob once fell out of the Super Bowl. She means the kitchenware department at IKEA. But otherwise we're not like them at all. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- Yes, please. We thought because this is a woeful episode, it'll be quite full of woe, so we wanted to start with a good vibe to get people in the giving. It's called the Happy Happy song.

Here we go. Happy, happy, happy, nice and rainbow smiles, candy floss and singing birds, the smell of baby child. All these things are happy and never, never sad. Oh, what a lovely day, depression is a myth. Handing out sweeties to children who are sad. Nothing here to worry about is a happy, happy song. Helping an old woman who's fallen on the floor.

Oh no, she's dead. Everyone's looking at me. Don't think I push the woman. The police are on their way. I need to camouflage myself or dress up like this bush. Oh no, the birds are pecking me and also it's my birthday. I'm screaming, no one's's helping I've got to run away I'll stay in my house forever and this is how I'll die It's a happy happy someone help me happy happy song That's happy stuff! That was Woe on Drone!

Over to the other side of me, Esther, I mean let's get it out there We're both Wednesday's children, I'm going to come on and talk about how I'm quite sort of downbeat. Have you ever felt like there's some sort of curse over you that you're full of woe? Or is it just you sort of defy the stereotype? I mean, I wouldn't say I was full of woe. I'd say I was full of being annoyed and fed up and angry. Yeah, I don't cry, but I'm annoyed.

Right, right, just woe. And I do feel like I am quite cursed, actually. Basically. The mood is not lifting any T by the way. I want to tell you a little story about what happened to me. I was doing a gig and there was a stag do in the front row, lads, legends. And they were very, very drunk and the stag was wearing a veil. And I walked on stage, I was the first actor of the night, all I said was hello and the stag leant forward

and threw up everywhere. Oh! All across the front of the stage, across the tops of my shoes, bits of vomit in his veil, and I just thought... That's the worst detail. You should never have vomit in the veil. And I just thought, isn't it ironic that right now,

out there somewhere, there's a woman on a hen-doo sat with all her girlfriends just thought, isn't it ironic that right now, out there somewhere is a woman on a hen who sat with all her girlfriends just going, oh my god, I'm so lucky to have found the man of my dreams. My dad lives with me, and my dad is a 78-year-old Arab Muslim man, and I went home covered in specks of vomit, and he opened the door to me, and he just took one look at me, and he was like, I wanted you to be a lawyer or a doctor. He gets his English idioms mixed up quite a lot, right?

Which is fair play, because they are quite nonsensical. And I was telling him about what happened with the stag do. And he was like, you know, you know, these people, they really bugger my beliefs. Now, I know the idiom is it beggars belief, but doesn't it buggers my beliefs just makes so much more sense to me? I've seen some people out and about in town that buggers my beliefs after saying that. It buggers my beliefs.

So I stand by that. So yeah, I'm not a lucky person getting puked on. Woe is me. Unluckily, you can be born on the third day of the week and then 40 years later someone chucks up on you, But this is the thing. 39. I love the way you said that. And there's just like some women over there like,

oh, that will piss her off. I took a big gamble on 40, I have to say. I'm 43. One thing I've mentioned a few times in this series is, well, yes, I'm a middle-aged man. I've got two children. I think quite a lot about what I'm passing on to them personality-wise. That is obviously not material positions. I'm a comedian, I'm already paying for the bloody heating, and I let them share a bag of Quavers recently, and it wasn't even the weekend.

To deal with the question of whether my sort of Wednesday woe has gone down to my kids, I'd like Flo and Joan to tee up what we traditionally call a fun little anecdote and this one actually contains a joke, it's going to be an actual gag, so maybe this thing could incorporate that. Take it away. Fun little anecdote anecdote anecdote fun little anecdote and there's an actual joke fun little anecdote, Annika Ryder-Richardson. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Pretty much bang on. LAUGHTER Thank you to the Flo and Joan, too.

LAUGHTER So when my son was about three or four, he used to hang out with the son of another comedian, a man called Alex Horne. Well, he was a comedian, he's a sort of a game show host or something now. LAUGHTER Alex is a great friend of mine for 20 years, but he sets a slightly intimidating example

because he's one of these people who just do life really well. Three kids, still got a wife, how'd you do that? And now all this taskmaster stuff, it just makes us look bad. It was much tougher for him when he had to do it freelance. He'd go up to people and just say, ring this bell as many times as you can in a minute.

Most dongs wins. And they'd say, bus drivers don't really want you to do that also. LAUGHTER Also, who are you? LAUGHTER In this period, our respective young children spent some time together. And one time, Alex's son told mine a joke.

What flies in the sky and what was about anyone? Very good a gel copter. Yeah, I wouldn't open with it So that was the answer what flies in the sky and what was about a Jelicopter my son who was also for said or a doomed plane or a doomed plane. Bad, right? So there's the difference between me and Alex Horne played out through our children at an alarmingly early stage.

That was the first time I could remember thinking, hmm, is my kid all right there? But of course, at that stage of life, the stakes feel pretty low. Around that same time, I remember the boy finding a huge branch in a park and walking around with it, the way that kids love to do, but he couldn't do his consonants properly at that point.

So he's wandering around the park, shouting, big dick, big dick, like strangers. That was a golden day for me on social media. That same summer, I took him to a city farm and he held a guinea pig and the animal handler said, okay, the main thing to do is not touch his eyes. And the boy immediately went, eyes, eyes, eyes, and the jabbed the animal in the eye.

And the guinea pig made a noise, which I think will probably be the last thing I hear before I die. Last summer, I tried to book tickets for the same place. And even though the card details were right, my payment was rejected. tried to book tickets for the same place. And even though the card details were right, my payment was rejected.

But then in a heartbeat, the boy has got a smartphone, as I mentioned earlier in this series. And it's as if that small version of him, you know, never existed. Not long ago, I handed him his phone and the background was this mad, swirling animation, far beyond anything I've got on my own phone. I said, how do you even make your phone do that?

My son, patiently, the way you speak to someone who's relevant to the world is diminishing. He says, Dad, this is the modern world where all things are possible. So now that my son is at that level of awareness, I've got every reason to worry about whether I'm passing on my woe to my kids. I know that the doomed plane thing is something that my son picked up from me

because I was exactly that sort of kid prone to grim statements. There was one day at school we were doing tests at the D'Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy, your classic woe writer, some really miserable stuff. He was a Tuesday child but he would have fitted in with us. The teacher read this typically deterministic passage about everyone has a birthday, everyone knows the date of birth, but we also have a death day which is already out there written in the stars and none of us can know that.

And there was this impressive hush among the year 11s and I put my hand up and said, well, unless you kill yourself. And I'm pretty sure if you did that in school nowadays, there'd be parents in, There'd be a welfare officer. But this was the 90s. The teacher just looked at me and thought, you'll get straight A's. I did, by the way. Academic success was my consolation prize for all the woe.

But we'll come on to that. I don't know how fun an anecdote that was, in a way. MUSIC PLAYS Grim little anecdote, anecdote, sprinkle of death in the sinister Anecdote, anecdote, mooh-ah-ah, little anecdote, anecdote, anecdote, anecdote, Are you alright? LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Are you happy that we're here? Am I happy that you're here?

Oh, yeah, I'm definitely happy you're here. Whether anyone is happy is a bigger question. What I like is sometimes you both sing different words, but then it sort of still is fine. LAUGHTER Did you criticise Tim Minchin like this when he was your musicer? Yeah, and that's why he only did the one series. Obviously, Esther, you've got kids as well, so what's your relationship like with just

the whole idea of being upbeat and stuff? What, kids? Yeah. What, my kids? Yeah. Nah. That makes me feel better. Nah.

No, they keep you humble though, don't they kids? They keep you grounded. If you ever feel like you're getting a little bit too confident, they will very much bring you back down to earth. I mean, my daughter is very into history. She loves history at school. I remember walking her home from school and she turned round to me and she was like,

mom, what did you used to wear in the Anglo-Saxon times? Yeah, wow. My worst one of those is my kids asked if I was alive in the war, but Anglo-Saxons put that into perspective. LAUGHTER I was doing it again. There was a young girl on the front row, she was like 21 or something. I am 40, and when I said I turned 40,

her genuine reaction was to lean forward and go... ..'Aww!' LAUGHTER I know, like I was some kind of rescue dog in a chat. Well, good luck with it. You can see why of all my potential genetic legacies, whoa is the one that I'm most worried about passing to my children.

Neither of them was born on a Wednesday, that's a good start. But there's definitely other things that I have already transmitted to them. They are, and this is statistically unlikely, both my kids are left-handed, when they could have just had their mum's much more useful right-hand gene. There's definitely other things that I have already transmitted to them. They are, and this is statistically unlikely, both my kids are left-handed when they could have just had their mum's

much more useful right-hand gene. So even if they're not predisposed to be full of woe, they soon will be, because they'll live out their lives without having opened a jar, or used a corkscrew, or got the lid off the milk. Yeah, you probably haven't thought about this, but the 90% of you in the room that are not like me,

where are the lefties? Woo! That's your right hand though, scab. That's what they want. But there you are, you heard at home how few that was, and that's because most of us die of packet opening related starvation if we live alone for more than three days.

You don't know how we suffer as left-handed. Really, we should go on a protest march, but our placards would be all smudgy. Here we go. What do we want? I can't read that now. There you go. It's in the written in fountain pen.

When do we want it? I'm gonna be 10 minutes late. Actually, couldn't get out of my front door. What a combination. Wednesday child and left-hander. I've got the natural depressive tendencies of Vincent van Gogh, but I can't get the scissors around my ear.

The thing is you can't entirely change or escape the circumstances of your birth. You can't go back in time and alter those things. As Hardy himself wrote, I'm in the right mood, I've got to say. I'm gonna paraphrase that. In a way, maybe it would be better if I lent into it, just allowed myself to be an agent of misery.

God knows, plenty of comedians just adopt the most objectionable angles possible and the audience bloody lap it up. How was the comedy show? Oh, the MC said my shirt was shit and my wife didn't love me. Amazing night. So I'm thinking, I don't normally do this style of comedy,

but I'm thinking about just being sort of mean and grim and gloomy for a bit and see, let's try a little bit of mean spirited banter. You, where do you live? Woolwich. Woolwich, yeah, it's quite nice these days. That is, it's not easy, it's not easy. You sir, what do you do for a living?

Library assistant. Library assistant, again valuable. All right. So. It's not easy. Like to try and get the sort of appropriate levels of woe and negative energy into the room. As the audience were coming in,

I asked a Wednesday child question. What was the gloomiest thing someone said to you, like a parent or respected friend or anyone, and did it turn out to be right? There's some fairly downbeat stuff on these cards. Someone's written, when studying at university in America, age 21, my best friend said,

this is the best time of our lives. I took it to mean life would be entirely downhill from that moment. He was right. That's gloomy, isn't it? Where is that person? Hi there. How old are you now?

30. So nine years of disappointment since then basically. Don't tell my girlfriend. Yeah, when did you meet the girlfriend? Three years ago. You met your girlfriend three years ago but you would still say your life has gone downhill since 21? I'd say we've plateaued. Three years ago? You met your girlfriend three years ago, but you would still say your life has gone downhill since 21? I'd say we've plateaued. I have.

In the last three. Oh, yes we have. The downhill has stopped and we're on our way up soon. Yes, I've got a plateaued. Can I just say darling, here's a keeper, keep him. Plateaued is as romantic of words as I can think of, really. Save something for the wedding vows. You can imagine the argument tonight.

I didn't say going down, I said plateau. What's not to love about the phrase even kill? I love you, you're fine. This is interesting, this is a counterpoint. This person's written almost identical sentiment, life only gets worse as you get older, so you may as well enjoy it, but then they've written brackets,

yes and no, some things are so much better now, others not so much. So there you are, sir, you're only partly right to be depressed about your future. This guy's written, or it might not be guys, but it suggests a man, no man on your dad's side of the family has made it past 70. I'm 48, fingers crossed. Potentially a long 22 years counting that down. I'm fairly concerned our last song this

evening is actually called Everything Dies. Look, we advertise woe and we've delivered hard on that. I did some googling of the whole Wednesday's child phenomenon to see if I could find a positive spin on the woe thing, and this came up on one website. Wednesday's children question everything. This leads to them carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, hence the woe. But it can also be a sort of superpower that enables them to do great things for others. Now that is a bit more encouraging. I've never had a superpower before. Oh, Jeannie did make me invisible for a bit in 2006, but possibilities overwhelming. I just

wandered around Aldi for a bit. I definitely have been somebody to question everything all my life, as we've heard a little bit already. Like many of you, if you're around my sort of age, I've witnessed enough in a lifetime already to feel pretty spun out by it all. In just a couple of decades, we've seen the rise of unimaginable digital technology, the fall of governments,

the emergence of best of both, a type of bread which magically combines the rubby appeal of white with the kudos of brown. My brain is endlessly full of questions and I think that can be very tiring obviously, but if I pass that on to my children, maybe I'm pleased about that. One day it could be a superpower of sorts for them,

at least a good trait, a nice quality. And there's no doubt I have passed it on, even by the standards of kids. And even now one of them has the ability to Google things. Mine are unbelievably inquisitive. Being with the two of them is like being in a press conference with drunk people forever. I came out of the bathroom not long ago

and they were there prowling like paparazzi. Dad, dad, dad, you know, if you've got children, you know the way children frame questions, the tone is like, no matter how urgent it actually is, their vibe is always, if I don't get an answer in the next five seconds, you've ruined my future. I said, how can I help?

And at the exact same time, I normally go with how can I help with my children. It means when I do have to give this up and get a job in the service industry, I'm already on the way. And at the exact same time as each other, my daughter asked, "'Do you know what colour beetroot is

"'when it's still in the ground?' And my son said, "'What do you think Sadiq Khan should do "'about London's knife crime problem?' I was like, I'll take these one at a time if that's okay. But you can't, they're both flower-wise. It's brown, beetroot isn't even purple. It's brown.

There's been 40, dad, there's been 42 blade related incidents in London in the past month alone. Carrots weren't even orange at one time, it's a lie. Dad, we could arm the police, but that comes with its own problems. It's quite hard to think straight in the face of all this. Right, I'll put my trousers on and we'll see what we can do, I suppose. As I say though, all this gives me the hope

that they're growing up with healthy curiosity. And after all, perhaps it is a good thing to have, if not, whoa, at least a certain amount of circumspection. Life after all is full of setbacks and disappointments, whether we like it or not. Love goes wrong. People fall out with you. You lose your job at the deli counter after going mad

and eating an entire ham in front of waiting customers. Little Mix's hiatus shows possible signs of being a permanent breakup. The phrase, your call is important to us normally turns out not to be true. The dark chocolate version of the Mars bar is only available seasonally and at the whim of the manufacturers. I could go on. So maybe the responsible thing to do is bring your kids up with the awareness that there might be tough moments ahead sometimes. As with most aspects of

parenting, I try to take inspiration from my own parents but also from what I see people doing around me. And if you get in the habit of eavesdropping on conversations, which have been for years now, you hear some pretty contrasting approaches to being a parent. When my son came to start secondary school after the controversial open day, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it was my job to drop him off at the gates. It's a pretty momentous occasion in a parent's life. The usual stuff, I guess, the much older kids, the noise, the mum whom I told she needed to change her entire world

view. I kept it fairly minimal, just told him to have a good day and that his best would always be good enough, this sort of stuff. But as I walked away, I wondered, have I done enough really for such a major dad kid moment? And that was what led me to listen to one of the other fathers doing his first day pep talk. And as a result, I overheard something which I still think about this most days, it's a year and a half on. He got down at eye level with his son and said,

hope for the best, prepare for the worst. What? What sort of thing is that to say on day one of big school? That kid's sitting there at half past 10 in the morning in geography thinking, what is the worst? Snakes coming out of the wall anytime soon. But preparing for the worst, at least a bit, is a sensible approach to an unpredictable and sometimes cruel world.

I'm not saying you should carry around as much woe as you can in this sort of sad backpack, but aging, death, all the things that we ultimately face, they may be just a little bit easier to confront if you can at least mutter, see, I bloody told you. And so, I mean, we've really mixed the positive and the negative in this episode, but I'd say it went more one way than another. Esther, are you feeling any better? No.

Thanks for having me. any better. No? Thanks for having me. Pretty deflated tone. And so it falls to Flo and Joan to play us out on a note which I suppose is a choice, either dispels the remaining woe altogether or just alternatively celebrates it. Well firstly, can we say an enormous thank you to Esther Minito. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you! Yes, as promised, this last song is called Everything Dies.

Let's take it away. Yeah. In a bag. All the things you love and cherish every day, all the smiles they bring, well I'm afraid they're not always here to stay. So come over here, sit on my lap And look me straight in the eye When I tell ya everything, everything, everything, everything dies I tell ya plants die, friendships die, dreams die, Bruce Forsythe dead Everything, everything, everything dies Some people die in their sleep

Oh, wouldn't that be nice Add some fall off a ladder Get their head caught in a bucket Then fall in the road and get hit by a unicycle Some people choke, some just get poorly I'd do it to myself if I lived in Crawley But I'll take care of everything, everything, everything dies I'll tell you again

Bass die, cats die Nine times Blockbuster dead, the royal family's reputation... Is dangerously close. Yeah, everything, everything, everything, everything dies. And just because it happens all of the time doesn't make it any less sad. Boo hoo! Sometimes people die and you're glad they're dead And that's a very happy day indeed

When you have to poops it and everyone in your nan's knitting circle have gone Bye bye! It was nice to know you Peggy, nice cross-stitch Now I gotta sing myself this sweet little song Yeah, heroes die, paint dries The comedy industry dead, our careers after the show dead Yeah, everything, everything, everything Newspapers dead, pandas close

When that guy gets to 70. Laughter Laughter Laughter Jeffrey Epstein, who knows? Everyone you've ever loved, you everyone you've ever loved, we'll all end in the same place, six feet in the mud yeah, everything, everything everything, everything

dies see you in hell Laughter Applause See you in hell Well done everyone You've also been listening to Este Manito I'm Mark Watson, thank you very much for listening This is Mark Watson talks a bit about life Sweet dreams Mark Watson talks a bit about life

It was written and performed by Mark Watson, Flo and Joan and special guest Este Manito It was written and performed by Mark Watson, Flo and Joan and special guest Esther Monito. It was produced by Leanne Coop and it was an impatient production for the BBC. Legends. Are you fed up with... ..with the news?

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