Desert Island Dicks - RAJIV KARIA

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Comedian Rajiv Karia joins us to share who and what he'd hate to be stuck with on a desert island. Be sure to follow the podcast @dickspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine. And disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes. Brought to you by the FDA. Hi, I'm Dan Benedictus and welcome to Desert Island Dicks, the show that sees you marooned on a desert island after a plane crash with the worst people and worst things imaginable. Who they are and why they're a dick is up to our guest and here to share their desert island dicks with us today is comedian Rajiv Kharia. Hi. Hi. Pleasure to be on the show. How are you doing? Yeah very well. I'm currently in a duvet tent in my girlfriend's parents house which I haven't left in a couple

of days. Your tent is acoustically sound but I can't actually see your face so it's kind of adding a layer of mystery to the whole thing. Yeah well kind of like like I don't want to be discovered that kind of thing secret correspondent. Yeah you look a little bit like you're in hiding but that's fine. Rajiv how did you find choosing your choices for the island today? was quite interesting i i realized i i think i'm the kind of person who tries not to dwell on the specific people and things i i dislike so it was challenging uh but i think i managed to trawl out some particular example of people i kind of get under my skin to an extent um. And also with the food and drink and stuff was kind of more unusual,

but I think I found a few things. Okay, great. Well, let's delve right into it. Who's going to be your first choice? My first choice is American right-wing conspiracy theorist and political pundit Dinesh D'Souza. Okay. So Dinesh kind of exists in the family of people like Alex Jones, the people who are very conservative commentators, very sort of anti Obama, mostly pro Trump, but kind of so far right that they've kind of bled past reason and into just, you know, conspiracy theories and whatever they feel might be true and and Dinesh is kind of an example of that he's said pretty much everything he's the guy who um compared a

picture of Greta Thunberg to Nazi propaganda he's uh the guy who has sort of just said he I think he he used to out gay people while he was at college. He was a birther. He sort of like chasing after Obama's birth certificate. Kind of like a classic inflammatory pundit. But my real reason for disliking him more than the rest of them is because he's brown. And I find it pretty embarrassing. For like a long time, there wasn't that many Asian people on TV. But those who were on TV were sort of representing in a good way, you know, TV comedians, actors or whatever.

And Dinesh was kind of the first example that showed us like, oh, representation goes both ways. And he's kind of a villain. There can't be many. I he must be in the in the minority of that group yeah but he's kind of um he's kind of ushering in that age of you know like any minority group says you know when they're demanding equal treatment will say things like well you know we just want to be treated like everybody else and he's come along and said i just want to be loathed like everyone else. So it's like, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, it's bizarre.

And also, I mean, because he was born in India, so he's come over to America, which again sort of makes it seem more strange. You'd think if you sort of come over to a country and then, you know, become a citizen of that country, you'd sort of be less hardline about these kind of things. But I don't know. But I guess to him,'s the the immigrant dream like come over build up build up an empire and then uh use that empire to criticize anybody else planning to come over yeah yeah shut get that get that door firmly shut and because he's pretty prolific isn't he's kind of he's done books and whole films on things. I think there was one about how the left wing is actually closer to Nazism than everyone thinks and has its roots in Nazism. Yeah, he's got this sort, he's kind of managed to put a decent suit and tie on it. But as soon as you start to get really into the readings, it's firmly tinfoil hat no trousers it is he is some seriously bonkers stuff and he's kind of

he's uh i know he's he did a film in 2016 which a lot of conservatives were like yeah it's a really good watch and any kind of moderate film critics were like well it's the the rantings of a madman and i don't know how this guy managed to turn on the camera. It's funny, isn't it? I always think it must be so difficult to get a film made, but then conspiracy theorists seem to be able to knock them out quite easily. I mean, obviously the quality is going to be a lot worse than films we're used to seeing. But I mean, I'm surprised they could just scrape everything together.

Is it just because they're so desperate to have their opinions heard? They just steamroller through it all? You've got a good point there. They've got a really brilliant way of... together or is it just because they're so desperate to have their opinions heard they just just steamroller through it all you got a good point there they've got a really brilliant way of you know all of these people no matter how crazy they are 100 million subscribers on youtube or like you know 2000 videos or quite notably podcasts they really can get the content out there i guess if you're not concerned about how you sound or what people think of you you've got a lot more time to focus on editing and i suppose you know i just want to put out some kind of vaguely light-hearted content maybe once a week you know i'm not driven by this sort of

deep fury inside me maybe maybe that would see me go up the charts a bit further maybe the reason we've been marooned on the desert island is because the new world order have sent us out for speaking out against the powers that be so yeah and i think i mean to be stuck on a desert island with him you'd sort of probably start off thinking right i'm not going to engage with you too much i'm just going to sort of try and get along but then every now and again you'd be like do you really think that satellites are controlling us and you know making us into pedophiles or whatever you know i think he would find the most like minor things on the island so say it's just the two of you and um you sort of decide to draw a stick figure on a rock to have a third friend and you call him like rock steve

and pretty soon dinesh is going to be like, have you noticed that Rock Steve has got a pretty weird skull shape? I don't know if I trust him because of that. It's like, Dinesh, give it a rest, okay? It's just you and me. We don't need to find reasons to pick out, like, he's not a front for like Pizzagate or anything like that. We don't have to worry.

It's just a coconut. i think as well one of one of the scariest things about him was that he'd committed a federal crime but has been pardoned by trump and just i mean not to get sort of too dark or serious but when you find out that people like this are getting you know pardons by the active president of the usa. I mean, that just adds an extra veneer of just scariness to it all, doesn't it? Yeah, it's kind of bizarre as the line is blurred between, say, like, you know, like a shock jock, like someone who's just got a podcast who claims that they're not affecting real change. And then you've got someone like Dinesh, who's kind of a bit like that. But he was also like a policy advisor for Reagan and stuff. you realize like oh yeah you can just get away with it provided

you've got the right sway yeah um but I think he's such a fruit loop that he's hopefully not going to have and make any sort of lasting damage just because no one's really going to take anything he says seriously I mean maybe you could hope that he'll eventually just run off into the sea because he'll be convinced that you've put cameras in all the palm trees or something like that i mean maybe maybe you'll be free from him that way yeah that being said it would be that'd be a real shame because the man's bound to have some stories and you know when you're on the desert island you think you know what after a while i wouldn't yeah dinesh tell the one again about obama being a lizard person go on regale us with that yeah yeah maybe it would be quite good value truth becomes a bit more linear

when you're on the island yeah or maybe you could see what you could get him to believe you know just come out with the most crazy stuff although it's probably turned out he's already written a book on it or something exactly yeah okay so dh D'Souza joins you on the island. And who's going to be your second choice? My second choice is a man called Matty Healy. And he's the singer of a band called The 1975. Yes. And what makes him so awful?

The thing about The 1975 is I don't want to take them away from anybody. I don't think, you know, if you like them, that's fine. But I hate them. And he is sort of the head honcho. And he's just like a bullshit machine. He's kind of had this band that's become relatively successful. And he's decided that a big part of that is just forking out opinions on absolutely anything to anybody who'll listen

without really knowing anything. So he's sort of, you name it, you name the kind of cringe rubbish, he kind of went on a tirade against religious people for being allowed to be offended by anything uh but uh he said why can't i be offended as an atheist and it's just like give it a rest man like just just just just just do something else he's just kind of an incredibly irritating soft lad that's kind of putting the rest of us soft lads to shame with this sort of weird opinions on just about it's just like you don't have to have an opinion matt you can just keep

it to yourself just get back in the studio make another album make some money you seem to seem to be going pretty well yeah and he's sort of what he's probably in his mid to late 20s or something something like that and you know they do very well. Nobody really knows why, but they do. It comes to a certain point, you think, like, what do you care about people, you know, sort of crowbarring his opinions? You've already succeeded. Yeah.

You don't need to drum up more controversy. The next album, it's going to sell. It's a cash cow, good or not. I think there's something really galling about someone who i mean i'm not saying that you can't have opinions when you're a certain age but it's something like when someone's kind of really earnestly sort of explaining something to you when they're younger than you that just really gets my back up and they're like well actually i think uh it's actually like this you know and i know quite a lot about this stuff and you think oh god shut up and

there's absolutely no sense of um well this is as far as i know and you know maybe i'm talking rubbish but i read an article about no it's just firmly i've got the facts guys uh i've read half a kerouac book and i'm pretty sure i know about it yeah I know no one's asked me this, but I'm going to tell you anyway. And I mean, also, there's never a decent perspective in it. I mean, I wouldn't demand that of my pop singers. You don't have to have a message. Just get the tracks down, fine. But he's effectively the worst kid in your year 11 English class.

He's sort of bending your ear about some rubbish. And the whole time, there's just this incredibly lechy, kind of obviously doing it all to get laid and impress women vibe, which kind of takes away any... Legitimacy might be too strong of a word if you used to feel that to get to the point of success where you're allowed to lecture people you had to be sort of a u2 or a cold play in their later years you know you had to get a certain level of fame before you could start sort of banging on about a subject or a cause didn't it but now it's like yeah straight

out the traps here's here's my thoughts it's like come on you know just get a few albums deep you know yeah so maybe maybe like are you that bored of the music already i think i don't know that much about him because uh i work for a commercial radio station that plays one of his songs uh or used to play one of them quite a lot and that one song alone was enough to make me hate everything about them. So whenever there was an interview with him, I was never anywhere near it. Or if there's a magazine article, I just think, well, it could prove me wrong. But I'm just going to swerve this.

I think heavily he represents the school of indie that I am now too old for. And I think anybody has that as a lingering resentment of the music that came just after they got out of their peak interest. So maybe it's just a sign of me getting old. And I wouldn't deny him to anybody, but I think it's confirmed he's incredibly irritating. On the bright side, I think on the island, him and Dinesh would completely annihilate each other. Yeah, I mean, maybe they'd just be locked in combat so that you could kind of just get on and forage and do your thing

and learn how to make fire and they'd just be sort of arguing. You know, they'd keep each other busy, cancel each other out maybe. Yeah, completely. And then eventually if one of them kills the other i can sort of sidle in and be like oh oh oh look what you've done yeah oh no all right i'll get the fire going we better we better divvy him up although the flip side is they just keep locked in in conversation for eternity and you know it's just this background noise the island's never quite big enough for you to escape this sort of low-level debate on anything that never stops and never gets resolved because i

imagine as well people like this quite you know like dinesh de souza strikes me as someone who doesn't necessarily care if other people believe he's right he just wants to keep having the opinion yeah you know it's not even about convincing people it's just about being having a platform to shout at people from yeah the man is a content machine it's a book every two years it's constant talks but i guess if you get that far away from really having anything meaningful to say you really can churn it out yeah and it may be nice to have the two of them kind of having constant senseless debate because I'm presuming there's no Twitter on the island, so this would kind of give me some sort of access to that.

I think Matt Healy as well, he's bound to write a few songs about his experience and he'll want to share them, won't he? Yeah, it'd be fun to have someone to jam with. He's got a very grating voice to me it's one of those it's very i mean it's quite original sounding but it's just a weird sound isn't it yeah i mean i can't objectively criticize i don't like the music lots of people don't like it and i think those people are right but a lot of people stadiums of people seem to like it which is fine um musically

wise the one thing that they did that really annoyed me was they um i think somebody must have bought him a talking head cd about three years ago and uh they performed and he was thinking oh these guys are pretty good how come no one's heard of these guys and so he thought it was it'd be a fun idea to do like i think an album which was basically a massive talking heads ripoff and they did a performance on jonathan ross which was honestly like a complete remake of the stop making sense era of talking heads he's in the big suit he's got the the big like the the band is set up just like they did for the dvd of stop making sense and i was just watching it thinking like there's there's taking influence from bands and then there's just oh i guess we'll just do exactly what they did

and um that that'll be fine yeah there's homage and then there's just, you know, absolutely stealing the ideas. Yeah, I was just there desperately thinking, I wish David Byrne were a litigious man and not this lovely zen New Yorker that everybody likes. Yeah. OK, well, I think that's already quite a heady combination you've got there. So who's going to be your third dick on the island? My third dick on the island would be sort of an amalgamation or any of the poshest people that I went to university with. Okay. So I went to a state school,

and then I decided to go to Bristol Uni. And I was told by quite a few people, they were like, you know, there's quite a lot of posh people. There's going to be a lot of posh people there. I thought, yeah, that's fine. I like posh people, fine. G- lot of posh people there i thought yeah that's fine i like posh people fine g-lays combed over hair whatever uh it was only when i arrived there i realized that none of them had g-lays if anything they kind of dressed just like the people that i knew from home a bit more like adidas vintage street

wear a lot of harem pants and a lot of gap yard clothing. And after about a month there, I realized what was going on. I was like, oh, these people are very rich, very posh, but they dress like they're not rich and posh. And they've all come back from gap years. So they're all wearing weird clothes that they've got from Thailand and Chile and stuff. And most of them were perfectly nice. Most of the people I met at uni were really great, regardless of what school they went to. But then there were these type of people who would, they almost always went to the top 10 country, top 10 schools in the country. And they all dressed like bohemians and weird haircuts, weird clothes or whatever.

But the top rule of their bohemianism was only ever hangcuts weird clothes or whatever but the top rule of their bohemianism was only ever hang out with people who went to the top 10 schools in the country right okay and it was these weird false bohemians we would off we would either call them um flat peak millionaires or signet rings yeah and these were just probably the worst people i've met in real life just for their sheer oblivious nature of what they were doing culturally i think you might call it cultural appropriation now but it was of like from the upper classes to the working class so i don't know how, whether you could consider that appropriation.

It was just the most infuriating thing ever to see this guy sort of walking around, smoking rollies, wearing Adidas trackies with a signet ring on. Yeah, that's the giveaway. They were just really terrible, terrible people. And I imagine would be really awful on an island because you'd crash the island be like oh well don't we go to uni together and then they're like uh yeah uh have you seen chas around anywhere i think we're gonna go we're gonna go hang out with chas all right cool i'll see um see you later yeah and they always uh you know

it's kind of because if you only hang out with the same people who went to the same schools, you know, the same sort of group of schools, you're always comfortable everywhere because you always know someone. And it's sort of you're never out of place or you feel like you're never out of place. It gives rise to that sort of ownership of everything, doesn't it? Yeah, that's the really frustrating thing about these people is that you kind of just say, oh, you'll never be uncomfortable. You'll just do fine forever because you've got a lot of money and you've got a nice path laid out and i wish you well but also i don't wish you well and i hope you fall down a ravine i i can imagine in a sort of survival situation they're either going to be very lazy and entitled and expect you to do everything for them or they've been on sort of survival situation, they're either going to be very lazy and entitled

and expect you to do everything for them, or they've been on sort of quite a lot of like Duke of Edinburgh or sort of cadet force leadership style programs. And they're going to sort of, right, okay, well, here's the thing. We've got to keep the morale up. So here's how it's going to be. And they'll kind of chivvy the chaps along. I mean, yeah, that would be great if they could establish a class

system on the island pretty quickly because then i could be like yeah you know what i do have a place and i'm sure that some of those coconuts will trickle down to me eventually yeah i think it's not going to be it's not going to be great and i mean they're probably quite into the 1975 you know up for getting stuck into a bloody good debate with Dinesh oh yeah you know because uh they've done a fair share of debating I think they're probably going to find themselves agreeing with a lot of the things Dinesh says yeah yeah you know what Dinesh for an Indian guy is actually pretty pretty good guy pretty nice guy yeah he's got some quite interesting takes on things I wasn't really expecting that but yeah fair play fair play these were just I think I've been pretty

fortunate in that like throughout my life, I've never really had to spend too much extended time with terrible people. And you can say what you like, these kind of people at uni, they were terrible, but they genuinely didn't want to spend time with you, so it was fine. But it just gets under the skin, these people. And I think anybody who went to a red brick uni will have had plenty of experience with these types of people. They've existed for 50, 60 years.

They're never going away. Their parents did it. Their kids will do it. And the cycle continues. Yeah, I don't know really what to add to that. I completely agree with everything you're saying. I think it's absolutely fair enough. And yeah, as I say, I think those guys all together with you completely agree with everything you're saying i think it's absolutely fair enough um and yeah

as i say i think those guys all together with you sort of on the island it's just going to be just such a hotbed of opinions apart from anything else so just i mean you're going to want to walk into the sea on your own aren't you for that just to escape the debates maybe that'll be a good thing yeah i'll get there and i'll have this sort of survival instinct immediately and that'll be knocked out of me pretty within a few days and i think i'm going to get to like a lovely balanced state of oh i'm just going to swim out into the sea because i welcome death fair enough fair enough now rajiv mercifully amongst the wreckage of the plane there was some food and drink left over unfortunately for you it's your least favorite food and drink in the world what are they and

why are they so bad? Okay, so the food one was a bit of a weird one for me because I'm a lifelong vegetarian and it's not really any food that I dislike. I think I've got a pretty broad taste. I'll have a bit of anything. So what I've decided to put on there is decadent meat meals okay by that i mean the kind of things that you see built on facebook videos where they'll be like right we

took this burger we wrapped it in bacon then we deep fried it in caramel frosting. Then we wrapped it into a taco. And then we put it on a pizza. Yeah, yeah, I know. It feels like it's very much part of a sort of bro culture, isn't it? And I just don't. I mean, far be it for me to tell people how to eat meat. I don't really know what I'm doing in that world. But I know that that's wrong.

I know that you're not supposed to do it like that. Every time I see a food program and it's like man versus food or something like that i just think one day it's going to be used as propaganda against the west you know it's just kind of oh yeah just definitely just makes me just want to go and donate to unicef or something because i just think oh god look at us is this where we've got to just like here here's a massive plate of meat that you'll never finish why don't you try and we'll film it and then yeah sort of another food culture grows out i mean culture in very big inverted commas but it just sort of spawns this thing when you see pizzas with like huge meatballs on top of them and sort of you know like sausage sausage stuffed crusts and stuff it's

just yeah oh the humanity i mean i'm like go if you're hungry eat you want to chuck some onion rings on that burger go for it but i think we're getting competitive with this now we're like right this video is going to be even bigger yeah and i'm saying like it is still it doesn't have to be even bigger i mean you don't have to do that yeah also like if you want to do it for food purposes sure i just really resent it being done for entertainment purposes if you want to eat more you know eat as you feel whatever but this kind of like competitive thing that they're doing for you know facebook videos or whatever i just kind of can't see the point in it. You know, like putting hamburgers in the crust of the pizza.

Sure, you could, but should you? I mean, I eat meat, but I mean, it just makes me feel queasy just thinking about this level of like... You'd never see like a vegetarian YouTuber doing this, being like, we took some carrots, we deep fried it in some ranch dressing, being like, we took some carrots, we deep fried it in some ranch dressing, then we threw some celery on there,

and then we put it all in a big butternut squash. Just when you thought you couldn't get any more, that's when the spinach comes in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a peculiar, it's a sort of fetishization of it, isn't it? And it does feel like it's really sort of, there's this like macho dick swinging thing about it like meat equals manhood and i it's it's super weird that kind of i think it's quite refreshing to see people kind of moving away from that now because

it's just like if you want to eat meat by all means you know you do your thing i'm not going to tell you what to do but like why does it have to have this manly connotation? Why does it have to be something? Why can't it just be food? You eat sausages because you want them. You don't eat sausages because you're a man. Yeah. And also, because with this kind of food, there's a recognition, a sort of openness about how it's not very good for you

and it's not very nice, really. You know, people go, oh, it's a bit dirty. But and it's not very nice really you know people go oh it's a bit dirty but you know and i get that like sometimes you want like a burger that's a bit disgusting when you're hungover or whatever i can understand that but there's times when i think big chains like kfc have called something like the dirty chicken burger and i don't want my restaurant again restaurant in inverted commas to be using the word dirty with food they're like oh yeah the dirty stack phillip burger or something and you think when did this become okay it's a really weird thing that they do on both sides like dirty eating clean eating it's just

like isn't it just eating isn't it just food just some food and a sauce yeah the clean eating thing bothers me as well i mean that that doesn't i mean yeah the idea of like it's so much more nuanced than just clean and dirty but i mean yeah it's it's weird isn't it just stacking things on top of each other just different animals and for no good reason i i think i find it also i kind of find it disrespectful because it's like you don't have to layer it on like you know there's nothing wrong with a steak on its own or like a pork chop on its own it doesn't have to be like wrapped in a different animal for it to be worthy yeah it's fine and it's that sort of uh there's like a bit of a smugness to it you know people go oh yeah have you tried the land sea and air burger from

mcdonald's you get a fillet of fish that's the the sea, and then you get the chicken burger, that's the air, and then you get a beef burger and you stack them all up. I don't want fish and beef burgers. Come on, I mean, very clever on the wordplay, but, you know. It's very existential. Maybe we're all very aware that we're going to die. We're eating this thing that's already died and we're like, quickly quickly eat all of the burgers before

i die before i become the burger maybe this will be a sort of something that will die after we all find and get out of this current lockdown situation maybe that's when we kind of emerge blinking back into civilization i think yeah maybe i'll just have a sandwich maybe that you know maybe i don't need 17 animals on this burger. And what would you wash this down with? What would be your drink of choice on the island? I've chosen no sugar soft drinks. Okay, yeah. So when I say this, I don't mean like a Coke Zero or a Diet Coke.

I mean those particular brands of drinks which they come in a can. They're usually made by some sort of startup and it'll say something like grape flavor zero sugar and then you'll crack it open and it'll give you a nice sound as it cracks open you think oh this is going to be loads of fun it's a nice purple can grape flavor no sugar nothing to feel bad about and then you drink it and it's sparkling water with um i i think it would be rich to call it the taste of grape it would be rich to call it the smell of grape it's maybe like the vague memory of where a grape had once been it is the the tiniest hint of grape flavour.

Yeah, it sort of always tastes like, you know, when you've had a bottle of Fanta or something and then you finish that and then you fill it up with water before you go out and there's the memory of something. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. And I think we all agreed as a society, I'm sure it was confirmed in stand-up in the 90s,

that we hate this nobody likes having the ribena the ultra weak ribena would rather have water or acceptable level of ribena yeah exactly and these startups are still launching it and the annoying thing is is they're all thinking hey you know what the market doesn't have? It doesn't have a soft drink which has absolutely no sugar in it. And it's because the market doesn't want it. People don't want it. It doesn't taste of anything. People hate it.

Stop it. We've spotted a gap in the market for idiots who like good branding and happily pay £3.70 for some sort of vaguely flavoured water. And they're always called things like these sort of startup snacks or drinks they're always like the something something company it'll be the east london beverage emporium or something like that oh man they don't just they won't just have a name like breeze or tang or something it would just be yeah yeah there's always something like cutesy about it and it's i for the life of me i cannot fathom

why they still get keep getting launched and why people keep making them because i think we've confirmed that people like their soft drinks to have sugar in them or in the case of your diet coke your pepsi maxi coke zero whatever whatever they have to like mine from the moon or like they've traded with the devil to taste sweet but isn't technically sugar whatever is in those some of that at least you can't have it without sugar people it's that sensation of cracking open the can and the sound and the fizziness people will not accept if there's no sugar in that yeah it's like alcohol-free beer you know which i'd quite like to enjoy you don't realize how much difference it makes it's like alcohol-free beer you know which i'd quite like to enjoy you don't

realize how much difference it makes it's like it's something that gives you all the promise of of you know the picture on the can but it's just not doesn't quite have the sting in the tail that you're after yeah it's like um gluten-free bread it's it's all it's almost there you know i don't know why this is different but yeah and Yeah, and to be fair, it is trying, and you've got to respect it for trying. I think with these zero sugar drinks, they're not trying. No. They're not trying at all. And there's almost a smugness, like, oh, well, I think it's very refreshing, don't you? Oh, you must be a bit of a child then. It's just like, let's just have some water, guys. It doesn't need to be in this fancy can. We don't need all that fancy stuff about it. Let's just like, let's just have some water, guys. It doesn't need to be in this fancy can. We don't need all that fancy stuff about it.

Let's just have a glass of water and leave these in the weird pop-up stand where they came from. Yeah. And I mean, it's just unsatisfying. If that's your only drink that you're stuck with as well, it's just neither here nor there. It's not where you want to be stuck with. Yeah. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from lips and ads choose from

hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with lips and ads go to lips and ads.com now that's l-i-b-s-y-n ads.com okay well unfortunately you won't be without entertainment on the island the planes entertainment system continues to work but just your luck it only has two working settings one is your least favorite film of all time and the other is your least favorite song what are they and why uh so for least favorite film i don't know if i have a a film that i actively actively loathe so my most recent film that i saw where i was just perplexed at how bad it was was the movie joy um which was directed by david o russell with jennifer lawrence and bradley cooper

uh about the lady who invents the wonder mop, the magical mop, came out a couple of years ago. I think David O. Russell should be in prison. I think he should go to jail for his films. I just think he's the clown prince of style over substance. I've given him three chances. I gave Silver Linings Playbook a go. I even gave American Hustle a go. And then as I walked out of Joy,

like as that kind of stunned bewilderment turned, bubbled into anger, I thought I will never go and see this man's films ever again. And is Bradley Cooper in every single film he's done he's done yeah i think he's done quite a lot with bradley cooper and with jennifer lawrence she's in all three of those as well that's weird and to be honest she kind of is the saving grace in all three of those movies she's acting on herself and she's doing a pretty good job but joy is joy should be boring because it's

about a lady who invents a mop that's not what makes it bad what makes it bad it's just unbelievably woeful storytelling side characters who just do not feel even remotely real it opens with the narration of her grandmother being like it's sort of like a rags to riches story based on a true thing but it opens with the narration of a grandmother being like it's sort of like a rags to riches story based on a true thing but it opens with the narration of a grandmother being like oh when joy was born i always knew she was gonna do great things and it's just like halfway through the film you're thinking yeah every grandmother thinks that about their kid like what kind of what kind of opener is that like obviously you thought your grandkid was going to do well you're a nice lady you're a supportive lady it doesn't mean she was destined to do anything and i i haven't seen the film but i mean if you have a lucky break with an invention i don't know

if that's doing great things i mean that's like having one good idea that sort of flew pretty for me it's i mean doing great things would be like you know something maybe humanitarian or something that really changes the world if you just sort of think this mop could be better and then you manage to get it all the way through the sort of marketing and manufacturing process and you make a lot of money i mean you're successful and fair enough and well played especially if you come from a hard up background but is that great things yeah she's a humanitarian that but like only to the extent of raising money for herself her kids and her parents that kind of thing very very close personal charity humanitarian and that a lot of people find it moderately less stressful to clean their kitchen floor now yeah and i mean

go for it invent you you i appreciate you inventing that i'm sure it's made a lot of people's lives easier but it's it's a very boring film and what's worse is that um the marketing for it was really bizarre because all of the marketing for it would have this image of Jennifer Lawrence with a short blonde bob haircut and a pair of sunglasses on. And then when you actually watch the film, you realize that all takes place in the last five minutes. The last five minutes, she decides to cut her hair because that's the answer to everything in films, apparently. And she cuts her hair short and dyes it and she's wearing sunglasses and she goes out into the street and the end of the movie is that. And I was so angry that they used clips from the last images from the last five minutes to promote this film.

Because it's just inaccurate. Also, it's just completely irrelevant. I sort of want to watch this, but you're doing a very good job of persuading me I shouldn't. It's just boring. But I found Silver Linings Playbook very boring and I found American Hustle very boring. I just don't think...

Nothing really happens in these films but they've got all the bells and whistles to make you think that they are and they're promoted very well and he gets very big stars in his films but it is really, really bad. and i think you end up resenting films for being boring more than anything because i felt the same way about cats you know it wasn't entertainingly bad it was just boring yeah i think it's like at least if something's i mean there's

a film recently i got i haven't done this in a long time, but I got, I think, 15 minutes before the end. And I just went, I'm turning this off because it felt too early to switch it off at 20 minutes. And then about 45 minutes was like, well, there's still enough to change. And then it goes to the point I was like, well, there is only 15 minutes to go. But I know that definitely nothing can save this now. Right. That's it. And I mean, to get out of that point, just felt like you know i respect it yeah i respect that kind of sense of being like i will not late let this film take any more time from my life you know i've got a three-year-old child my evenings are very precious to me and i'm so indecisive that

usually takes me about 45 minutes to find something to watch so then i've got so little like it has to be really well well worth watching or i have to be beaten into submission by my own indecision that's what's really difficult about bad films these days because you you sit there especially if you've watched it if you're watching at home on demand or if you've gone to the cinema you made the choice to watch that film and if at the cinema you're saying no to three or four other films at home you're saying no to hundreds of other options you could have watched and when you're coming out of it thinking that was not only bad it was really bad to the point where i'm quite angry you're resenting the fact that you might have watched something else which would have been you know really like

illuminating or actually entertaining or even at the bare minimum good so i saw joy in the cinema and as i was walking out of it i was my girlfriend and i just looked at each other we hadn't said anything and then there was just this sense of that was terrible right that was really really boring and meaningless and dragged on anything we could have seen something else could have seen something pretty good but nope seen something pretty good. But no, gone forever. Or even just gone to the pub. Exactly. You know, just anything. Yeah, it feels like you've got a real,

sometimes you just have like almost like a, like an evangelistic sort of vigour to tell people, to warn people off a film. It's like, whatever you do, never watch this film ever. It is so bad. Please don't do what I did. Exactly. Learn from my experiences.

You know, almost like a sort of missionary. Maybe I should be thanking David O. Russell for changing my perspective. After that, I think, I go to the cinema less, but I decide very carefully on films. He's taken away a certain impulsive nature that I had, but in many ways I've learned from it and he's made me a stronger individual.

Yeah, I had that the other day, finding something on Netflix and I just saw something. I think, again, it had Bradley Cooper in it and it just looked like a sort of easy action film. And I thought, I'll put this on. And it said, directed by Michael Bay. And I thought, no, it's not going to happen. And that's after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.

And I thought, finally, this will be easy. No, I can't. Sorry, sorry, can't. Okay, well, that sounds fair enough. What would your favourite song be? Sorry, least favourite song. So I think the worst song to be stuck on, it's kind of a category, but I've got a specific example in there.

It's breathy covers of pop classics used on television adverts. Oh, yes, yes. It's an epidemic. we're being overrun um and i think the worst example of this was i saw a car advert or a perfume advert something recently uh we could never really tell what the advert's for until the very end um but it they had done a breathy acoustic cover of you're the One That I Want from Grease, which I thought was like the worst song to do that for.

This kind of jingly, jangly musical theatre song that's got its entire essence, good or bad, is in its upbeat nature. And it's meaningless when you do it breathy acoustic because the lyrics don't mean anything it's dreadful isn't it it's yeah it really just because a lot of fun pop songs don't live or die on their on their lyrics you know there's just all part of the fun and you don't pay too much attention to them when it's things that there was a mcdonald's one that used a you know this is the rhythm of the night that that old 90s pop song, sort of dancey tune. Oh, God.

And that's not meant to be slowed down and thought about. So it's just awful. Yeah, they've got incredibly irresponsible with it. But unfortunately, I think some advertising agencies have figured out that you can't go wrong with it. Just get a pop classic, fork out the cash cash for it pay some busker to do a breathy acoustic cover and then you're golden uh i think the the problem is maybe like 10 or 15 years ago when the french band nouvelle vague did a cover of um love will tear us apart and everybody heard it and we're like oh my oh my my God, Love Will Tear Us Apart, but sung in like a breathy,

Frenchy, Parisian way. It's really lovely and louche. Oh, this is great. And then Live Lounge came along and everyone got obsessed with covers again. And then X Factor and stuff where anybody can come along and take a pop classic and just do it in a really weird vocalizing way where they just loads of like unnecessary like elaboration on

the vocal and instead of doing it in the original disco version it's just an acoustic guitar and we're supposed to be impressed by that and i think we finally need to realize that if you take away all of the things that make the song good it probably won't be good yeah it's it's one of those things because if you like the song, the original song, then they've ruined it by doing a cover. If you don't like it, well, it's just awful anyway. I think, like, obviously John Lewis is sort of, you know, the flag bearers for this genre, aren't they?

Because, you know, now it's like, oh, what's their Christmas advert going to be? You know, which famous person are they going to get to do which version of which song now? But even then, I mean, it's getting dated with them and i just thought every time i think this trend must surely be dying out it's like the it's like the sort of advertising equivalent of like keep calm and carry on i'll see someone using that motif and think we can't keep doing this keep calm and carry on bollocks it's still going on and every time you see an advert with a breathy cover you're like are you are you serious you're still doing this it's bizarre i think i i would almost forgive it of the christmas adverts because they have this

sense of plot and they've worked they basically spent a year coming up with this perfect thing and then sometimes the song will be very complementary to that but if it's just a you know an audi driving through south of france with you're the one that i want from greece over the top it's like a david lynch film it doesn't make any sense yeah it's just someone's gone this is how adverts work now it's yeah it's, and you're just thinking, but why? Why that? And it's this kind of, and then he goes over sort of X factor where it's really popular to do stuff like that, like something familiar, a song that people know, but doing it in a way that really shows off the fact that you can do impressive stuff with your voice.

But it's just like, it doesn't make it good music. No. You know, if you want to cover something, make it your your own you've just made it the same as all these other covers and i always think there's probably a lot of musicians who they get this thing and they say to their mates look you know this obviously isn't what i'd planned for my first gig but you know like it's big money you know i'll be doing all right and he gets my name out there and um yeah it's for pc world and you know it would just you know be a hook doing all right and he gets my name out there and um yes for pc world and you know it would just you know be a hook and their friends are like okay well as long as you know

you think they won't take advantage of you yeah go for it you know it could be a really good and of course it's not and everyone forgets about it and then this person can't get a recording contract because they don't want to be known as the person who did the pc world advert there are no winners yeah i did i did a cover a breathy cover of the monster mash for this pc world ad where it's just like a guy walking along and then he opens up his laptop he's in a graveyard and he uses his laptop a bit uh it didn't really make any sense yeah they assured me it'll work in uh well stitch it together in post but yeah i'm starting to have doubts um yeah breathy covers from adverts.

That's a very, very good choice. I think if you want to cover something, get weird with it, get energetic, but don't do your whole breathy cover. It's boring. It's been done. And if you do it, I'm going to scold you on a podcast. Also, what gets really annoying is when there's there's some that um then people think that's the real version of the song you know so there'll be slow versions of things like there's this um bonnie vertune and they got covered by a sort of you know quite

breathy singer-songwriter type and then people think that's the that's the real song and that really bugs me as well not in a sort of like pretentious museo way but just out of respect for the original that we all like and you know there's like a metallica cover again done in a really breathy way and oh it's just just so annoying it can be really frustrating when you're trying not to be a musical purist but everyone's going on about uh valerie by amy winehouse and you're thinking i not to be a musical purist, but everyone's going on about Valerie by Amy Winehouse, and you're thinking, I mean, to be fair, it was by the Zootons, and then she covered it. It's a very good cover, example of a good cover.

But you don't win many friends with the musical purist game. Yeah. Well, it would absolutely drive me mad, though. I'll tell you what, just because I think it's such a good category, I'll say you can have a compilation of them to keep you company on the island. Oh, God. Now, that's what I call breathy covers, volume 600. Man.

Now, finally, the island is overrun by the biggest dick of all the animals. Which animal is it and why? I'm going to go for uh monkeys okay uh now i've been to a couple of countries where you can go see monkeys or there'll be like a part of town where there's lots of monkeys in the trees and stuff and they they seem like a proper laugh like i think everything about our media kind of makes us think that monkeys are really funny and friendly and they're like humanoid and the way they eat their food, they look like little people, it's really cute.

But they can and will rip your face off. And I don't like when animals can seem really cute and playful and could kind of lure you into a false sense of safety and security and then just straight up scalp you. They are intimidating creatures, aren't they? You never know what they're going to do. Yeah, with a snake at least, we're all just like petrified of snakes. I'm not going to stick around and look at a snake nope they're bad news spiders as well most bugs especially if you're in a country where they've got like things that can bite and kill you can stay away from those monkeys there is a sense of that they're pretty funny they're pretty cool uh but they just don't know what they can do and they they're about half

the size of a human so they're bigger than your average animal so they could definitely fuck you up a bit and i just find that incredibly unsettling and they're fast and agile and strong as well aren't they oh yeah yeah and unpredictable i don't like it i've been to a few places where there's just been monkeys wandering around and at first you think this is great but yeah like they've got the worst of both worlds because they've kind of got the cunning intelligence and calculated mindset of a human but they've got the lack of moral code of an animal completely but then at least with like you know a lot of the places where there are wild monkeys also have stray dogs and at least a dog sort of still in the back of its mind however sort of wild and rabbit it rabbit is it is it still kind of knows that ultimately you're the boss so if you stand up to it it'll sod off whereas a monkey

thinks it's better than you anyway yeah you know so it will kill you if it wants to it's just you just are they're terrifying they just and to be like there i think there are relatively few accounts of that thing the thing for the amount of monkeys that there are. They don't tend to go that crazy that often. But there's just something incredibly unsettling about the fact that they might. Yeah. And this isn't like a domestic cat or anything which will eat your face after you've died. Yeah.

They'll go for you just for no reason. Yeah, you just can't tell what's happening. And yeah, I'm not comfortable around them. I think I've been to places in India where they've've got like quite big ones as well that are just they're just about they're just you know on the rooftops you're having a cup of tea and they're just suddenly you look up you're reading a book and you look up and there's 13 of them around you and you think i'm never getting out of this alive if they turn on me yeah the the way that they kind of congregate um almost as if like like birds would with birds there's

just nothing scary about it it's weird to see 50 pigeons but you know that yeah i'm the boss you're not going to do anything but there's just 13 of them and you think oh if you guys unionize i'm done for yeah if there's a mutiny here you're going to have my head on a stick and again one of those animals were because they're so like us there's not really like i don't know certain animals you could escape by i don't know jumping into water or climbing a tree because they're so like us, there's not really like, I don't know, certain animals you could escape by, I don't know, jumping into water or climbing a tree. They're good at every, every kind of bit of landscape, aren't they? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And on an island, that's their home turf. They're going to know all the little bits and pieces. Also, you're going to be competing with them for all of the food that you want they're they're frugivores like us so they're going to be going for the bananas and all the the easy fruit and stuff so if we find a nice tree you think oh there's some peaches on that tree nope the monkeys want it that's their tree you're going to struggle to fight them yeah they'll get in they'll grab it they'll run off put it somewhere high up that you can't get to it yeah yeah and there'll never be a sense of subservience that you might get if you got a dog that will kind of it will it will know that it can get food from you but it will usually wait until you're finished you know if you try it with the monkeys just yeah as i say all

the worst parts of a human and animal in one package yeah if you if you're on an island that's overrun by monkeys it's a good sign i'm sure that because yeah if you if you're an island that's overrun by monkeys it's a good sign i'm sure that because they're surviving so you'll probably survive as well uh but once once you eat all the bananas you're their dinner yeah yeah i think that's yeah it's a very well thought out uh choice there and i'm i didn't really know how how uh strongly i felt about monkeys and still we until we started talking about it but i'm i didn't really know how how uh strongly i felt about monkeys and still we until we started talking about it but i think i might hate monkeys yeah they're just they're not it's nice that they're not a problem here yeah oh god yeah monkeys in london can you imagine

christ i mean i think it would be monkeys versus pigeons for a year and then we'd only have to deal with one of them. Yeah, fair enough. Well, I think you've done an excellent job of picking a horrendous group of people and things to be stuck on an island with. So well done. It's quite unsettling now I think about it. Yeah, now I really don't like this mental prison that I've formed. Well, you've done very well and that's it's to your

credit but uh that's why it's such an uncomfortable image to live with um now rajiv uh where can we find out more about where can we sort of hear or see or encounter more of your work well uh thanks to thanks to lockdown my um my upcoming plans to do a show at Edinburgh have been postponed. So people can follow me on Twitter. It's at Rajiv A. Kharia. Or on Instagram, it's Rajiv Kharia. Or you can watch, I was in a web series for Turtle Canyon Comedy called Content. You can watch that on YouTube or you can watch it on London Live.

It'll be on catch up on there we but um apart from that uh just uh keep doing you stay indoors wash your hands um get get into skipping i've been skipping it's been pretty good i've been skipping as well brilliant it's quite fun isn't it i'm enjoying it We're going to be pros after this Yeah Yeah I'm enjoying it Not quite at the rocky stage yet But you know

Eventually That is the dream I'm not going to show anybody Until I'm at the rocky stage Yeah I know It's one of those things I think it only looks good When you can do it well

I think the bits leading up to it You look I mean I could still be outclassed By a young school girl, but one day. Cool. Rajiv, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks very much.

All right. Take care. Bye bye.