Desert Island Dicks - SHAPARAK KHORSANDI

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

This episode we're joined by the Shaparak Khorsandi, who shares her worst people and things for her to be cast away with, and you know what? She's very good at it. 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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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 Lipson Ads. Go to lipsonads.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N ads.com. Hi, I'm Dan from Desert Island Dicks. This episode, we've got Shabbarat Korsandi. She's brilliant and I hope you'll enjoy this podcast very much because it was a lot of fun chatting to her and having her discuss who and what she hates and would hate to be stuck with on a desert island now i just want to say thank you to everyone who came to desert island dicks live last week we had firm brady and steven k mos and they were both brilliant um so yeah we had a lot of fun doing that it was great to meet some of you

as well uh the full shows will be published at some point in the coming weeks, but yeah, it was really fun to do, and we're going to do more of them. So February will be the next one. I will confirm all the details as soon as I can on here, but their guest is very good. So watch this space. I'm really tired, and I can't think of what else to say. Oh yeah, look, now that we don't have to keep pushing the live shows as much, want to get back to compact dicks so if you've ever listened to this and thought you'd like to have your say on who and what you think is a dick then just tell us go to dickspod.com contact and you can tell us there or you can get in touch on twitter and instagram at dickspod right i think that's it on with the show show. It's Sheper Up Corsandi. 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 and author Sharparukh Korsandi. How are you doing? I'm all right, thank you. How are you? Yes, good. Ready to listen to some dicks, I suppose. Well, I live my life pretending that I don't think anyone's a dick I'm such a big liar I just always try and see the good in people so this has been quite a challenge for me because I've I bottle a lot of how much of a dick I feel people are I think that's a very useful thing to have in life I think it's much better than being annoyed by everyone all the time yes and and also don't forget I was on I'm a celebrity get me out of here I was thinking about haven't I already done this yeah you've got experience of basically this kind

of environment although I suppose now it's dicks of your own choosing rather than yes you've been put with or or you know got to know I suppose over time yes no it's interesting because I my my personality is that like if someone is really bossy I just go into a shell I go into a shell I'm I'm working on it with my therapist and I'm getting better at it. But rather than stand my ground, I'm like, oh, have it. But on a real desert island, I have thought long and hard about who I would so not like to be marooned with. So whenever you're ready, I shall reveal the real me. Okay, well, yeah, I mean, now you've set it up like that,

I'm not going to wait any longer. Let's hear who's going to wait any longer let's hear who's going to be the first person joining you okay the first person joining me is um a guy I met last night he was this is weird this sounds like I've just thought oh what should I do so I met this guy last night when I say I met met him, he was a taxi driver. And within three seconds of getting into his taxi, I learned that he failed his English GCSEs. His stepson was an alcoholic. He liked reading Andy McNabb books. He mexico as long as you didn't step off for the resort he just told me so much about his life before i even shut the door and then once i

shut the door and had a half hour journey ahead of me he told me everything and i love a chat and so when i would ask him questions, he wouldn't answer them. He would just tell me other stuff that he would need to tell me. And he talked to me in a way that told me it didnked me because I think I'm or at least I used to be like that myself I used to sort of meet new people get really excited and tell them like quite private things about my life straight away and I think that's something that comes out of um shyness a lot of the time and so I I just took against this poor cab driver because he reminded me of me before before I had shit loads of therapy

yeah I think it's so difficult in those situations because I always start off with really good intentions but my attention span is quite short with like in a taxi you know especially now you know I've got two kids just sitting traveling with no sound is really nice it's so rare that I can do that that I'm kind of like you know you could be my best friend driving me and I'll happily just stare out the window and not talk to anyone. I completely understand that. So since having children, cabs have been a place of peace for me,

children and dog. I get so much kudos for being a single parent. Oh, my God, thanks for doing this. I know you're really busy with a single parent. It's actually being a dog owner that also takes up an enormous amount of my life so yeah cabs are often places where like no one can touch me but that said you know in the those cab driver i want to date i went on a date with once after we had such a lovely chat and you know one there was one cab driver I had some years ago who was a buddhist and we had the most beautiful intense conversation and we you know exchanged a

few texts and I swapped numbers exchanged few texts so I'm I love a chat a proper exchange of personalities and sharing and thoughts and ideas but lists of things from your life yeah why you're moving like and it's you know what it is it's the negative when everything they say is negative i'm not saying um i just realized i said that he loved reading andy mcnab novels i'm not saying reading andy mcnab is negative but even that he dressed negatively like you know I um didn't really like reading I only like reading this and even then I only like reading it when I'm on holiday and that led to Mexico and Mexico being fine on the resort but off the resort forget about Mexico um oh I'm married I've got a stepson oh have you oh you've got so this is me. I've got a stepson. Oh, have you? Oh, you've got a stepson. This is me. Oh, you've got a stepson. Yeah, he's an alcoholic.

Everything is like, oh, have you been driving a cab long? Well, a lot longer than I want to be driving one. But everything's negative, negative, negative. And you can't go anywhere with that. Yeah. You can't go anywhere. You know, when you're talking to someone and everything, and I realize as I'm saying this, what I'm saying is a very negative thing. And that's your fault and the premise of your podcast yeah exactly that's on

us that's on us we've invited that from that's on you yeah so it and it just wears you down and in the end I just sort of I don't know what I was pretending to do I just pretended I was had some sort of condition when I went catatonic once we got past the Westway. But it's difficult with people like that because it's like, well, I've just met you. Do you want me to sort of, do you want me to help you fix your problems? Do you want me to sort of say, oh, yeah, you know,

I understand that can be difficult. You know, this might help. It's such a sort of draining thing and they've got you captive. And he must do that all day long. Yeah, that's really interesting. I did think, do you like this with everybody? What if a couple come on and they've just had a row or they're snogging? And I'll tell you another thing about where we live. The bin men have gone on strike for the third week running. There's nothing I had to listen to, by the way. For the third week running and the council have made no provisions. Now, he doesn't know when I got into his cab, he doesn't know if my dog had just died.

He has no idea. Maybe in this car journey, I was making the really personal and huge decision of whether or not to get a boob job. He has no idea what was, by the way, I was considering that briefly in the cab. That's where my brain wandered to. So like I say, like the cab driver, I occasionally blurt out really personal stuff inappropriately so yeah he did remind me of me before um i got uh diagnosis for adhd i just think though having someone like this on the island like you'll start off thinking oh well at least we won't be short for conversation and then after the sort of third time you've gone god look at that beautiful sunset and he's like well glad you like it you're going

to be seeing plenty of them exactly although although thinking about it he might be one of those rare people that are brilliant in big doses and no good in small doses because some people are like that there was this one woman I used to find really annoying on the comedy circuit and I found her like impossible to gig with like so irritating she'd be right up in your face telling you all about her stuff and never asking about you or how you are and then I had like a really long car journey with her. This gig was in the middle of nowhere. I thought, oh my God, that's like a four and a half hour car journey. Do you know what? She was amazing. Absolutely. I just thought you needed to,

you just needed someone to go, you've got the job. You are here. You got the job you are here you got the job of being here socially and once you calm down we had the most lovely conversations and stayed friends did she flip back to being annoying though in small doses actually yeah yeah yeah so it's just but it's annoying if you knew there was that good person in there somewhere but you just need to be there for long enough maybe just start having to arrive for gigs earlier if you know she's also on the bill or something I don't know give her time give her time to settle yeah like when you shake a can of coke yeah just give it time to settle before you open it I know I mean she doesn't um she's not really around on the circuit much anymore but I think that there are some people that need to calm down and again I think the thing that I find most irritating about

other people are character traits that I possess myself and have been made aware of quite brutally sometimes when you see someone behaving in a way that you find really annoying but realize it's a trait of yours and then you've got to feel annoyed by it but also recognize your own imperfections as well it's it's so frustrating it is and i used to get more bothered by people when i was younger um in a way but i used to engage with it more i used to get dragged into being bothered by people more and then you get older and you really see um time as being finite you just you just can't you just can't be bothered you just remove yourself from situations but i can't on a desert island yeah that's it i think this is a good first addition to the island because i think it's you know when all you need to do is sort of pool your energy and resources you're going to have this dick just dragging you down constantly never listening or

reciprocating just yeah a one directional flow of negative energy so i think that's a strong place to start who's going to be joining him and you oh i can't stand this guy i have this this visceral hatred for this person. And I'm afraid to say it's Daddy Pig. Daddy Pig. Oh, from Peppa Pig. From Peppa Pig. So my son, who is five years older than my daughter, was much more about the Octonauts than Peppa Pig.

Who's Daddy Pig character? Just even his voice, just I was like, who are you? What are you? Just pointless. You're useless. You're useless to the family. I don't even know what you contribute. What do you bring to the table? So I kind of got off lucky with my son, but then my daughter, five years later, was a Peppa Pig addict. Like it was magical what it did. Like, oh, Peppa Pig. It was everything. what it did like oh Peppa Pig it was everything and I just thought Daddy Pig because she doesn't have a father and I think Daddy Pig was the person that reassured her the most that it was okay not having a father I should be probably grateful to daddy pig for doing the lot of the therapy that she won't need later um but it's the fact that the whole family have to sort of find his buffoonery and

his ineptitude kind of adorable oh daddy oh you've fucked up the day again look at you daddy and the fact that he always thinks you know the way he speaks is very wise and he thinks he absolutely has the solution to all problems but knows fuck all i mean that is a problem to me and he i would have to kick him into the sea if i'm getting angry just talking about him being on a desert island with me um he'd either have to just sit and be eaten or just walk into the sea that's the thing you can't even eat him can't even have like a delicious roast pig on a fire because it's a cartoon pig so it's like it's not even you can't even yeah yeah i hear a lot of blokes kind of parents you know just sort of moaning about the depiction and obviously you know let's not pretend that men have it harder than women when it comes to parenting but a lot of them are just like

fucking useless you know and it's like homer simpson's okay because you know it's like there's just such chaos with him but like there isn't the humor with daddy pig he's just a useless prick he is just a useless prick and i think I think you're right I think the depiction of the dad in a lot of things is someone useless and everyone else has to pick up their their slack um which is you know like I I asked my son to sweep the floor the other day and he was, he's 14, and he was sort of sweeping the floor and then stopping for a break and then sweeping it again and just doing it in the whole kind of, oh, if I just do this bad enough, she'll just take over and sweep. Homer Simpson. You haven't been given that strong male role model that mucks in because cartoons tell us that it's all right for the dad to be a slacker and for the mums to do everything and the dads to do everything. And I was in the middle of this rant to my 14-year-old son when my eight-year-old daughter went well mommy you've got a lot out

of him not sweeping very well so i do go on my little tirades um but yeah no i i think daddy pig um is it would be utterly useless to me on a desert island i'm not going to humor him like his family do i would tell him that he's being a real pain and he's actually a burden yeah and he should consider the actual piggy in the lord of the flies and what happened to him every day he has to sort of that's the end point as he has to mess it up so you know you're just going to wait for it's like when is it going to happen today when's he going to sort of like lose all the drinking water that we've carefully harvested when it rained you know yeah oh god is waiting for daddy pig's calamity again do you know what

i think i'd find the taxi driver and daddy pig quite entertaining i'd feel that they would take the burden off me that i think that the taxi driver would be infinitely more intelligent than Daddy Pig and would be utterly exasperated by everything that that swine had to contribute. And I think the taxi driver would just, once he'd sort of got exhausted all his stories about Mexico and his alcoholic stepson would actually eventually go, what is actually the point of view and deal with him and i would enjoy it yeah i sort of have a lot of issues with pepper pig in general though i think there's obviously the way that they've got their weird perspective so their faces are kind of

always looking sideways but forward at the same time i hate cartoons where everyone's animals but then there are also pets in it right yeah like in one pepper pig they were talking about vets and they're like who knows what a vet does and it's like well to you it's a doctor right you know you're all animals and they said oh they look after pets and then this animal vet came in that was like a goat or something and then he brought in like a lizard that was so why is that animal a pet it's like george orwell it's like some animals are more equal than others. Oh, do you know what?

You've just added a whole other dimension of horror to my Peppa Pig experience. You're absolutely right. This creepy world where a goat's vet is tending to a lizard is a world that I don't want to think about. No. And if he comes to the desert island maybe that's what happened to me where maybe I'll become maybe I'll become daddy pig's sex slave yeah this is this is um putting images in my head that will deprive me of sleep

for the rest of my life well I'm sorry I'm. I'm sorry. Let's try and distract you, Shappi. Who's going to be the third person joining you on the island? Oh, I feel really mean saying this, but it's a young woman on Twitter who I will track down. She put 20 as in her age and her biog which I always find really strange when people go I'm in it's 20 and here's how much I have to say and again I think this is echoing what I said earlier about finding bits of my irritating younger self in other people this young woman I don't know how I got embroiled in a conversation about um The Catcher in the Rye which is one of my favorite books and it's I know as my 14 year old son said it's a bit of a lame

favorite book but I loved it so much when I was younger and I loved Holden Caulfield and his character and his descent into mental illness and his grief about his brother and and the relationship that he had with his little sister, like his little sister was the only person that made sense to him in the world. So when I wrote my novel, Nina's not okay. I gave my alcoholic 18 year old Nina,

a little sister that I, that was my homage to, to that book. Anyway, this young woman and her very opinionated Twitter page had a proper go, a proper laugh at me because I failed to understand that Holden Caulfield was a typical public school educated, privileged cis male and how I could ever regard him as a literary figure to be taken in any way seriously or examined and made me an idiot and I'm 48 years old and I should be more compassionate

to the lack of empathy that some very young people have when they are absolutely sure that they are changing the world for the better but not really doing much for anything at all and I should have been kinder but I think I ended up saying something like um wow do you have a problem talking to fat ginger people because because they remind you of what henry the eighth did which was unfair and cruel of me and i think having anyone who was constantly looking to pick a hole in what you were saying on a moral basis would drain me and turn me into a piece of seaweed to be taken out to sea. I would be utterly drained by somebody who wanted to tell me their opinions constantly and and and not having a laugh i think especially

given the other two characters on the island that you've got this new person is going to have a lot to say to those two guys in particular and then you're going to be forced to sort of go well you know i don't want her to just be locked in sort of constant sort of battle with these two idiots over here but on the other hand she is fucking annoying so either way you're gonna have to listen to it so it's like you're gonna be immediately yeah do you know what i can already hear so the taxi driver i happen to know was uh 62 and he was from the east end and i know the school he went to because my ex-boyfriend who was around the same age went to that same school and I heard all about it and I knew I know

that area and I know that school and I know that geography that these guys were raised in this girl is a million miles away from that. You know, she's 20, university educated, probably did terribly well at school. And the taxi driver need only say something like, would you like another bit of burnt leaf, love? And then she might totally go for him at the use of the word love to address her and not take into consideration any other part of his life journey that was different to hers that brought him to a place where he called a woman love and then she would like and I would say come on is that and then she would go oh my god you are normalizing misogyny and it would be all of that and i would i don't know what i'd do i'd just have to meditate i think to cope with it and i think

that's the thing i find the most irritating about people is that when they never ever consider the intent of someone and they never consider that like rather than shout and scream they can they can make a friend god forbid yeah and and um and you know have a bit of empathy and know that if that person understands that whatever it is they've said or whatever can be taken a different way, they won't want to do that anymore. So all of that, I think. And then Daddy Pig, I mean, I don't know. I'm worried that she would take Daddy Pig under her wing because he is entirely inoffensive.

And perhaps she'd have him as some sort of weird ally and take it upon herself to, because he's so benign and he's so, I guess, probably submissive as well. And also he's a pig and she would find that really diverse. And she would be over-interested in his pig culture to the point of being patronizing. she said pig she'd say pig pig am i am i pronouncing that correctly or is it is it pike um yeah she'd do all that business

the more i do this podcast the more i just think the only way to live and deal with it would be to sort of try and lose all ego just forget about anything that happened outside or politics or everything and just try and just be there's a very buddhist or zen or whatever you know the thing is just it's going to be impossible not to just pick holes in each other when you're you know even if it's the person you love most in the world like he's like god you have to peel the coconut that way every time you know so if you've got someone who's also sort of talking about like the patriarchy within your sort of setting or or sort of yeah all these things it's like it doesn't matter nothing exists anymore yeah we've got this let's just have a nice day yeah absolutely i think ego is the word isn't it it? You can't, there's nothing more draining

than someone who reacts to everything with their ego and they have no idea that's what they're doing. And I know, Dan, because I used to do it all the time. When I was 20, I used to lay traps for people. I'd go to a party and I'd be having a nice conversation with someone and then I would and so we're bearing in mind this is the 90s okay so we're going back in history a bit and my cause was the lg lgbt plus cause as it was called the gate cause back then, right? That was my every waking moment was consumed with how to tackle homophobia.

So I'd go to parties and I'd just randomly say, so what do you think that same-sex couples should be able to adopt children and have the same rights of adoption as heterosexual couples. And if that person thought about it, or thought there was a debate around this, I would be a nightmare. I would be that woman who had a go at me about Holden Caulfield. So I think what I'm getting to here, I don't want anyone on that island with me that reminds me of me when i was a dick yeah it's hard enough being with yourself in your own head half the time so without being surrounded by different versions you know yeah so i've got the uh the the versions of me the oversharing um cab driver that's so me uh the inept um guy that sort of thinks that they're a bit of a leader but actually they're just dropping with the balls at left right and center and the um the ego the woke ego yeah i really have you avoided using the word woke but there we go i said it the woke ego are the people that are exist within me and i really would like to keep them bottled and be on a desert island with people who

can sing really well to entertain me and can build things and meditate and chant so they can cope with everything nice well i think yeah i think for the like internal angst reasons and also the the interplay between these people i think it's going to be a really messy island so i think this is this is a fine selection already 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 lipsandads.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N ads.com. Okay, Shappi, now 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 um my least favorite food in that context would be any kind of meat i'm not brilliant with me i'd rather not

eat me um and meat that had been like washed up from the shore like a chicken or when I was on I'm a Celebrity I was a vegan and um part of the reason I was I became a vegan eight months before is because I knew I was gonna go on I'm a Celebrity and I didn't want to eat any meat but then when I got there I felt a bit bashful about the whole thing I felt like I'd hoodwinked everyone into oh like I felt a bit bashful about the whole thing. I felt like I'd hoodwinked everyone into, oh, I'm a vegan, so I can only have a bit of tofu. I don't have to eat the horrible stuff. So I felt bad. So I did eat some quail, and I was sick for an entire day. If I'm eating fish or chicken, anything, if the tiniest bit of bone or sinew comes into my mouth, it's over. The meal's over. I can't eat for a couple of days.

I can't have animal bits in my mouth. It makes me feel very, very sick. So like, you know, some nice ham I can cope with, something that's been, you know, but I just can't. Like when people have soup and it's like chicken soup or something they go might contain bones no get that away from me or when you're like i mash a tuna up for my kids packed lunches and every now and then i'll come across a bone because i'm mashing it and we can't there's no tuna in the house for two months after that i just can't cope with unexpected

animal stuff okay so it's maybe something that's very you know full of tiny bones like a i don't know like a sardine or something like that no good you can't fillet them no no no no nothing nothing like that no berries lots of berries bananas and nuts it will do me please okay is it more because you know it sort of reminds you that it is a part of an animal sort of or is it just to just annoy it just the texture of it just or just a bit of everything oh i wish i could tell you it was a moral issue it's just gross i mean obviously I care about animals, but I never check to see where something comes from. I just don't like the idea that a bit of someone's tooth or beak or bum

or anything might go into my mouth. I can't really argue with that. Yeah. Not that I have a problem with it, but now i'm thinking when you're talking about a tooth and a bum yeah fair enough now i went to um i went to breakfast with some friends uh yesterday and i ordered a full english breakfast but with a vegetarian sausage instead of um a normal sausage and they're like oh you're a veggie no i'm not a

veggie but you like sauce shut up sausage veggie, but shut up, sausage. No, don't give me that sausage. I wouldn't lick the pavement and I wouldn't eat a sausage. I just can't cope with what people eat and what goes on, eyeballs. No, it's really bad to put that in your mouth i for me personally for me yeah and let's not forget this is coming from an airplane as well so it's going to be particularly low grade stuff as well you know do you know what i loved about being a vegan and i got so much like yes i mean the planet but then i don't i mean i here's where I get moral. I don't buy blueberries that have traveled from Peru.

I don't eat fruit that's better traveled than I am. But just the joy of eating something and knowing that in no way are you going to get a bone in the roof of your mouth is immense. It's really immense. So I was a vegan purely for non-gagging reasons i wish i hadn't said that word gagging but anyway anyway always a fun word to throw in i just wish that everyone could see you just talking with your hands covering your eyes okay what would you what would you wash it down with what would your drink be? I've decided quite late in life that white wine can fuck off. Right, okay. White wine is anger juice.

And it's only vaguely tolerable if it's really high quality and very, very chilled. Much as I love Tim Minchin's song, White Wine in the Sun, it's such a beautiful song. And the first time I heard it, I cried uncontrollably for about an hour. That said, I did think white wine in the sun, white wine in the middle, drinking in the afternoon, regardless of the weather, always leads to disaster white wine is headache and row juice and to drink it in the sun for me is something i'll never do again and i feel that i'm fine finally in a part of my life where i can say white wine can just fuck off not interested and it'll be warm as well you know off the boat so completely useless to me I might sort of just

empty it out and use the bottles to build a shelter with or a hat or a friend but I wouldn't drink it now I'm approaching 40 I'm getting all kinds of weird things disagree with me that never used to you know including things like gluten and beer and all these sort of things that I like and so the other night I went out and I'm not going to drink beer tonight and see what happens ah I'm going to drink white wine all night and and I felt like someone had hit me in the head with an axe the next day just all day like no ibuprofen could touch it and also in a hot club or something it's just not it just gets yeah you know you're chatting for a while and you come back to your drink and you're like this is just acid in a glass now you know that's exactly what it feels like acid in a glass and i know that wine connoisseurs will tell us that we're not drinking the right white wine

and I'd like to say to them I have drunk all the white wine all of it I've drunk all of it I'm not doing it anymore you know lager is the only booze I crave sometimes it's the only time where I go oh I need a beer and nothing hits the spot for me when I need calming down than a beer but that is not the premise of our chat no unfortunately no beer for you Shappi just white wine and horrible bristly meat do you know as I'm talking to you right now I can smell that warm children's party white wine. You know that they always bring a couple of bottles for the mums and dads who loiter. And you drink it in plastic cups and you drink it because you're all at a kid's party. You're all having to be friends for the duration of your kid's childhood and the way you cope with it is getting just a

little bit squiffy on whatever is provided and it's usually white wine uh and i can smell that right now okay well i'll distract you we'll move on to another section because fortunately 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 favourite film of all time and the other is your least favourite song. What are they and why? My least favourite song of all time. Now, I love music. Who doesn't?

And normally, if I don't like a song, I deeply respect the fact that these are artists and it's just not my cup of tea and in fact with my children it is very important to me that my children never slag off anyone else's work you can say that film's not my cup of tea that you know music's not my cup of tea but it's not shit that said this song makes me really angry and it was by noah and the whale and i and dan i've had to write it down l-i-f-e-g-e-r this is this is why i hate it i can't say it l-i-f-e-g-o-e-s-o-n goes, like it's spelled life goes on, right? Yeah. And the chorus was spelling out a sentence. And I'm dyslexic.

Yeah, same. And I can't spell out in my head. And life goes on. Like, shut up. What a basic lyric. And then to spell it out like that only to upset and confuse me and the worst thing about it was that it was a smash hit and it was everywhere and people in pubs would sing it l-i-f-e-g and i and i can't i couldn't i couldn't join in because i'd get stuck i'd get stuck in the l-I-F-E, I can't say E before G,

and then remember it's O-E-S. And just fuck off. It just really upset me, that whole period in my life when that song was in the charts and was being played everywhere because it was a tongue twister for me and I couldn't do it. Yeah, I'm dyslexic and and it's really annoying when I'm trying to talk with my wife in code in front of our kids and you know you're going oh should we get the blah blah blah and you spell it out really quickly it's going to not work anyway

because he's learning to read now so I've got limited time but I just I can't I have to spell it out so slowly he could basically run off find a crayon write it down learn to read and then decipher the code like it's just so frustrating that you know i love the fact that just as you were telling me that you had to go what i want to say should we um blah blah blah blah blah because even to retell the story you can't spell it yeah and i totally totally relate to that. It's like we're in the holiday where she asks about the girl's mother, are you divorced? And she spells out divorced. And he says, no, widowed.

And he spells out widowed. And I forgot about that bit and I'm watching it with the children. And I just went, I don't get that. I'm a window. Yeah, exactly. I'm a window. I'm watching it with the children and I just went I don't get that I'm a window I'm a window I'm diversive um yes so all of that is a problem spelling out words letters um can fuck off and that song was just not worth the effort for me yeah every few years a song that's basically an equivalent of that comes on and i think they all sort of stem from give peace a chance it's just things like going hey guys like why are you so angry just chill out and stuff like hey life's just a ride man and you're like oh just fuck off

you have no idea what i'm going through on this day yeah i had to drop a friend that was like that years ago because he was literally the sort of person that if someone stabbed you he'd instantly say I mean fair enough down the line when you all go on a journey of forgiveness I don't think it's fair if you call him a cunt for stabbing you because you don't know what circumstances in his life led to him stabbing you and now down the line maybe discuss this whilst when my wounds have healed but not right now right now i'm bleeding i need you to call me an ambulance and this friend at every turn was always trying to just show what a really good person he was and it was utterly draining yeah because it's not like any of

these people aren't also having bad days or getting annoyed at like i don't know a parking meter that won't work or some stupid like packet they can't open and go oh for fuck's sake you know and if they came along if i came along with a ukulele and start going hey guys because that's the thing that song is like that song sounds like the annoying guy with a ukulele and start going hey guys because that's the thing that song is like that song sounds like the annoying guy with a ukulele next you know he pitches up next to you and you've just got on holiday and you're like oh this is nice you're like oh no he's playing redemption song on a ukulele like that's the song equivalent of that guy because it's because the guy probably is that guy who wrote i like i like this ukulele idea It sort of reminds me a bit like when I used to live in Brixton

and they started to have classical music at the station. Apparently that makes crowds disperse or something like that. And then if we could just strategically plot ukulele players around certain corners of big cities where there's trouble and then that just might differ like like no stabbings worth having to hear a bloke play the ukulele like no anger yeah or whatever it is you're annoyed about it's gonna be what it's like a white man playing reggae or something like that or you know just yeah I got on the train once and there was like this young travelery guy and you know I'm saying this as a white man who has been

traveling on a gap year you know so I'm saying this but and he started whistling loudly on the tube which is you know obviously live in London that's cardinal sin anyway like if you're not just having a quiet conversation with somebody he's whistling loudly he's whistling don't worry be happy and it's like i'm so carefree i'm just whistling this loudly like hey guys oh you know i just looked around on the tube and i just thought oh why is everyone so bloody miserable you know and i'm gonna just like inject a bit of sunshine into their day and it's like we're not yeah we're not miserable because of our lives we're miserable because of you doing that now yeah absolutely and also what made me giggle when you went um a white guy playing reggae music um another person that really sort of annoys me and probably ties in with the capturing the awry woman for example i went to africa once with this team of people, and there was this one woman there in our group that didn't have the time of day for me.

I didn't interest her in any way, didn't have the time of day for me. While we were out one day at dinner, she started to really talk to the waiting staff who were South Africa, black South Africans, and really talked to them about their culture. And then we met someone else who was from Afghanistan. I really wanted to talk to them about Afghanistan. And I just thought, oh my God, you only have time for people who aren't white if they are of a different culture

and you can sit and patronize them. But me, you can't connect with because I'm of no use to you. And I've noticed that. I have really noticed that people who won't have a brown friend for real to properly connect with and engage with or whatever, but they really enjoy their brown people when they can go, oh, it's disgusting what we've done to your culture and your country. I would like to personally apologize to you.

This is what this woman was like. And I just thought that. So you purport to be interested in other people's cultures, but with the group of people that you're with, you have absolutely no interest because we won't be patronized by you in some way there you go i don't know if that puts me in an awful light or them probably no i get it i get it completely okay well i think it's a strong song choice and i mean because it is it's not just a twee little song it is loaded with all these other sort of like reference points

and that's i think that's why it's so annoying. Okay. What would your film be? Without even having to think about it, Slumdog Millionaire. Okay. That film, I wanted to sue the advertisers. I, right, cast your mind back. The bus advert for that was full of joy, full of flowers, people in beautiful clothes with their arms in the air dancing. And you can almost hear Jahe from the posters. And the strapline was the feel good film of the summer. Now that autumn, of the autumn of that summer, so in the early

September, I had had my first baby. I found that the difference between a mum, being a mum and not being a mum, is that when I had a baby, or actually when I became became pregnant it was like a plug into the world of all pain whereas before I had children I could I could go oh that's just horrific I can still get on with my life right but being especially in the early years of my children anyway so I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. That was our first trip out to the cinema post-baby. Feel-good film. And in the first few, whatever, however long, a child gets held down and blinded. Yeah. was utterly destroyed. I was destroyed. I had to leave the cinema. And to this day, I cannot, if I go and watch a film, you know, they tell you about the sex and violence. They should tell you if a kid or an animal gets harmed, because I can't watch those things. I can't watch a kid get harmed.

I left that film M from the, oh God, early, early in the century, German film called M. And in the first few scenes, it was clear that this little girl gets kidnapped and murdered. And I was on a first date with a guy. I got up and I left. I went to see a play where they, obviously they didn't do it, but they mimed chopping off the fingers of a child.

I had to leave. I can't watch stuff like that. But Slumdog Millionaire tricked me into thinking that this was a feel-good film and a kid gets blinded in it. And being from Iran, I'd already heard stories that my mum told me about how gangs of beggars gangs in Iran would deliberately blind children or deliberately maim children in order to make them more valuable to the ringleader of the gang. good movie i'm not saying that people shouldn't make films that involve telling those stories they probably should but not advertise it as feel good movie and make me go as my first outing post baby and have me crying for the rest of the night so that was really upsetting yeah there's some really fucked up stuff going on and it's like a sort of a trojan horse isn't it it kind of like

i think probably what happened is they made the film then they kind of screened it and people went well i found that bit a bit shocking and they were like nobody mentioned this thing because i think it was like rocket man was doing it which is basically a musical like no one you know there's no reference of it being a musical at all anywhere until you go and see it and go this is just a straight up music it's not just some elton songs when he's on stage it's like it's a music you know and it's they must have had a stumdog millionaire they're like focus on the confetti and the joy and yeah oh you're right about rocket man it is a straight up musical and things like saturday night fever is like you think it's

going to be all just like disco dancing and fun it's bleak a woman gets raped in it it's going to be all just like disco dancing and fun. It's bleak. A woman gets raped in it. It's really gritty and horrible. Yeah, she gets raped. And then she gets slapped for getting raped. It's horrible. So do the Bee Gees know about this? When they're making that jaunty tune? And also we watched that when we were kids.

It was only when I rewatched it, because that scene where she's attacked, you know, as a child, I didn't really understand what was going on there likewise with very um not Ferris Bueller's Day Off um Back to the Future where she's being sexually assaulted in the cab and when you're a kid it just you don't really that sort of passes you by a little bit or you kind of go oh you know what else is mis-marketed? Tyrannosaur. I went to see the film Tyrannosaur, genuinely thinking it was a dinosaur film. And in the first scene, he kicks his dog to death.

Actual harm to animals and children. I just think there should be a warning. Fair enough. I think they're a good choice. And I think the thing about Slumdog, maybe you'd should be a warning fair enough i think they're good choices and i think the thing about slumdog maybe you'd forget after a while you think oh but there are some joyful bits you know this is sort of overcomes all the odds and stuff and then you'd watch it and because there's nothing else to watch and be like oh god i can't edit this i have to see it every time so and also it would be easier to stomach if the situation had changed much in India.

You know what I mean? It's like I went to – I was in Mumbai a few years ago and, you know, I said, oh, you know, hello. It's still there. It's still there and you still see it and people are still hardened to it. And even as a tourist, you end up getting hardened to it and even as a tourist you end up getting hardened to it and that's just so horrific to acknowledge and uh yeah so all of those all of those sort of films would be my nightmare films to have but a nice film about um savage dinosaurs would be very welcome

okay well we're almost out of time and i will sort of save you from being angry at any more things after this but finally we need to know uh the island is overrun by the biggest dick of all the animals which animal is it and why uh the biggest dick of all animals is uh sounds really horrible uh and i'm gonna get trolled for saying this but uh ladybird oh god they're just beetles that fly in your face and in your mouth the amount of times i've had to scrape a ladybird off my tongue when i've been out riding my bike or jogging you know my daughter will have a cute little ladybird on her hand and go let me let me look and it'll fly in my eye um and also that ladybird ladybird fly away home and her kids

are all burned i mean she's a negligent parent she's left her kids in a burning building while she's out partying um ladybirds are undeserving of the status they have in the bug showbiz world. I think it is just a flash of colour, isn't it, that's the only differentiating thing? Because if you see a black beetle the same size, it would be like, oh, what the hell is this? Or if you see them when they get upside down on their back and they're kind of scrabbling about. Yeah, they're horrible. Yeah, the underneath bit. You know, it's like the underneath of a lobster.

You're like, what the fucking hell is that thing? You know, it's very kind of, there's too many sections. I don't know what it is. There's too many sections on the underside. You're absolutely right. And also it's just says everything about how shallow we are. That if something looks pretty, then we tolerate it. And we're vile and cruel to the ones who aren't.

And we stamp on them and tread on them and treat them like vermin. And that applies to living species across the board. And so I think in the spirit of body positivity and loving who you are i think ladybirds can get fucked yeah fair enough i agree by the way i'm really conscious that i'm wearing a bright bright red cardigan and and a spot a spotty top as well and a spotty top so again anything that reminds me of me i don't like fair enough well i think yeah anything over like anything insecty overpopulating the island i think would be yeah very irritating indeed shepi you've done a great job today with populating your island with awful people and things i think um it's all gonna be

horrendous and uh you know i'm just glad that it's only fictional for for your sake but uh but thank you so much for coming on it's been so much fun sheppy where's the best place for people to sort of keep up to date with everything you're doing what are you up to at the moment oh right so i don't know when this is going out um but december 13th 23rd, I'm at the Soho Theatre doing a show called It Was The 90s, which is about the 90s and the hedonistic mayhem that we made out of alive, some of us. And also on tour.

I'm on tour with that all of next year. Shappi.co.uk is me. Lovely. Brilliant. Thank you for coming and sharing your Desert Island Dicks with us today. My pleasure. Great pod. See you soon. So there you go. That was the show. Thank you very much for listening.

Desert Island Dicks is a Sink Clap production created by James Deacon, produced and presented by me, Dan Benedictus. Our editor is Chris Attaway. We have social media support from Jason Leitch and Chinsey Clinton, not his real name. And as always, a special mention to Grand Mamster Flash, our statistician, and the right honorable

john deacon so um that's that really as i said if you want to get in touch about anything especially if you want to give us any submissions for compact dicks then you can go to dixpod.com slash contact and we could read out your submissions next week we'll be back again in a week's time with another release with another very special guest who i'm excited to share with you but you know the easiest way to make sure you get every episode is of course to subscribe and while you're subscribing if you want to leave us a rating and a review that is always very much appreciated it really helps us a lot so if you could do that that would be wonderful and we'll be back again soon thank you for listening bye bye