Life Uncut - If you don't laugh, you'll cry! Using humour to overcome trauma - Uncut with Reuben Kaye

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Hey Lifers! Britt is the peacock of all peacocks and ready for the arrival of her international lover! We unpack some ageism that Ryan Gosling is experiencing for his role of "Ken" in the new barbie movie; a type of scrutiny that women have been put under for a long time but seems quite new for the 'hot' men in Hollywood.  Then we are joined by multi-award winning Australian comedian and cabaret sensation Reuben Kaye! Reuben is the child of Russian peasants and German refugees. His grandparents survived the holocaust. In this chat Reuben speaks candidly about how we tend to use dark humour to cope with bad things that happen in our life.  WE COVER: His incredible family story Using humour to deal with trauma Performing in drag Subject v object in comedy & making sure his audience know they're in a safe space When a joke backfires  For all of Reuben's upcoming gigs, you can check out his schedule and grab your tickets here!Check our Reuben's Instagram Are you a Lifer? Join us!  Follow us on Instagram  Join the Facebook group Follow us on TiktokAnd tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xx  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany. And I'm in a great mood. You are not, Brittany.

You are a peacock. You are the peacockiest peacock that has ever walked into the studio. You are fluffed. You are primed. The eyelashes are done. The eyebrows are ready. Everything looks plumper and more vibrant and luscious. Yeah, I am a peacock and you've got to let me fly.

It is time to shine. It is D-Day or should we say B-Day? Well, it's not my birthday. It's Ben Day. It's Ben Arrival Day. Yes. Ben is getting here at night time and I've never seen Britt walk into the studio looking more like a fucking supermodel. She's like, I'm ready.

like nails are done literally from your toenails to the top of your head everything has been primed if only Matt was that lucky I don't prime anything anymore I have I feel like if it was a normal relationship where they were here full-time Ben was here full-time we lived together and we saw each other I wouldn't be like this but I haven't seen the guy in two months I need to I feel like we're still in the honeymoon phase so yeah I'm primmed I'm primed I spent a lot of time and a lot of money this week trying to fluff up my feathers i look like i haven't fluffed my feathers so i'm trying to look like i haven't fluffed them that much you know when you want to like go under the radar fluffy babe you walked in last week looking like you just crawled out of a swamp

i was shrek last week and i had a real glow up i did literally oh yeah i had a rough couple of weeks yeah i did look very swampish because everything can kind of go as downhill as possible and then it's like it's because he's not here so you're like doesn't matter and then it's the one week before his arrival or before you leave everything just very quickly and miraculously gets polished and you walked in this morning to the studio I mean we're recording quite early it's Monday Ben arrives tonight and I've not seen Brit for a couple of days and everything is done I was like is she wearing contacts like even your eyes are more glowy they're more blue than they've ever been no I am not wearing contacts I do have blue eyes you know what I think it is too

I genuinely think it's a reflection of how you feel as well so like when you know I was really channeling my inner swamp last week and I felt it I was a swamp I felt the swamp it's like method acting I didn't feel good and I think I got to the point and I've realized this with a long distance relationship I definitely need we need to make it every two months because I feel like I'm getting to that point where it's the last week of not seeing each other for the two months and I felt it I was getting really like frustrated quick and snappy and short and I even said to Ben I was like this is I think this is because I'm just at the point that I want to miss you and so now I've realized it can't go for that long so I feel like I was channeling that now I have like

supermodel energy I am like I am waxed I am shaved I am slicked I'm tanned I've lashed I've browed I've haired I've cut I've colored I've nails this is a song I just feel like I'm I'm good to go I've been on my green juices i told you i was in my green juice era i've been in my vitamin era okay well it's radiating out of your whole persona but also i know exactly what you're going to be doing at 11 o'clock tonight like i know what's going to happen and this is the thing now your life will just be you having sex for the next four days and then on thursday you're going to walk in and you're gonna be the happiest person that's ever existed and i'm so i am so thrilled for you i'm not gonna be able to walk in i have to roll you maybe wheel me in a wheelbarrow you're crawling

no okay hear me out what I've been considering is I've been doing a lot of reading you know we do a lot of research for the podcast I've considered doing like the ultimate edging like a 24-hour edge sorry what like isn't that isn't it called edging yeah yeah you know when you stop someone from coming to orgasm what is that what we're doing yeah you know how like in um this is what I told Ben it didn't go down very well you know when you speak to like a sexologist just or you do your reading they're like you know edging in sex in a sex session is really powerful like it really makes your orgasm better and i was thinking of doing like a 24-hour edge so wait so you're not gonna let the guy come for 24 hours i was like what if he just comes here

tonight without coming that's the only coming he does is the arrival okay is there a reason why you've given it 24 hours it's like a time limit like the poor guy's gonna explode on the walls i don't know i just felt like a day was like a good but then it didn't go down well i was like I floated the idea and he was like, well, the actual fuck, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. But I don't know. Maybe we'll see what it's like. I'm down for it.

Do you know I once met up with my ex-boyfriend? I was going to Budapest to see him and we had not seen each other for months and I got there. Budapest, unusual meet-up place. Yeah, it was. It absolutely was. But it was a great holiday except for the fact that when I arrived, he was like, we can't have sex because I hurt my –

you know the bit that like connects the foreskin to the tip of the penis? Yes. What's it called? The connector. Okay. Okay, that little bit of thing that keeps it upright where it's supposed to be. Anyway, he told me that he had torn it whilst masturbating

and I thought that was a bit of a fishy story. Turns out he tore it whilst he was having sex with a chick in Poland. I love that the Poland is a necessary piece of information. Yeah, so maybe Ben's going to be very, very suspicious if you are saying that you're not going to allow him to come for a whole day. Do you know, I just thought we'd try something different, but I don't think it's going to work. And then I think it's, like, taking us back to the teenage years,

you know, which is, like, you just dry hump for, like. Please don't. Please don't. Also, Brit, like, slid into the DMs very late last night. Oh, it's the frenulum. Sorry, we're doing some live Googling. Producer Keisha really likes the facts to be correct on here, and I'm all for it.

The frenulum. He tore his frenulum while boning a Polish girl. Okay, RIP. Yeah, anyway. So, Brit last night slides into our messages at, like, 10.30 at night. Group chat. Yeah, just to tell us. i was like wake up guys important information let me read exactly what was written because i do think

it kind of was like paramount to the whole peacocking experience brit wrote guys and then usually when she writes guys as a single message with no other context it's something bad i was like fuck what's happening like guys you won't believe this and then she wrote don't want to brag but then there was another pause for dramatic effect full brazilian this is on single lines full Brazilian two strips four minutes trophy and then sent a gif of a sphinx cat can I tell you in my defense I thought that was a private message I didn't know that was gonna go viral no no defense needed like I'm I'm all for it I'm proud of you I think that this is something that needs to be celebrated I've often told Keisha if she wants to watch and learn I will show her but

she keeps denying it don't know why she doesn't want to see my legs spread she seems to be opposed to that you did this to yourself where do you think I went at 10 30 at night for four minutes and 2.5 strips yeah I am a queen if there was a world champion Brazilian waxing I'd probably win it you wax your own vagina 2.5 strips yeah four minutes yeah 4.2 maybe do you not have any feeling down there I guess not no I mean you feel it but I'm just I'm pretty good with pain I have a good pain tolerance. It might come from the thousands of laser peels I've done on my face, but I feel like I'm really good with pain. And I have, you know, I've told you, I have Brazilian waxed since I was 16 myself. I have always, I have not once in my entire life had a Brazilian done at an actual

waxing place. I just have always done it myself. Like do you paste it on or do you just use the plain strips? No, hot wax always out of like the, like the tub that you put in the microwave. I never personally use the strips that are already on with the wax the pre-made strips yeah i don't find them i have used them in the past i don't find they work as well but hot wax just an old old school strip of material that comes with the wax you use the same ones you wash them they're brilliant and that's it boom boom boom boom boom boom sphinx I'm not kidding it's amazing I have never ever ever ever ever in my 37 years of life had my vagina waxed is that weird it for some never doesn't shock me no I didn't I just waxing I

can't do it I think I waxed my legs once and I got ingrown hairs and so I was like not for me never waxed it not that it matters but did you just let it go wild shaved because wouldn't it slow you down if it was coming out the sides it would be like a drag through the water I didn't just I mean like I didn't just like let it grow down the sides of my legs it was pretty contained to the v-shape of my swimmers anyway but no I shaved and I know that that's a controversial like I feel like people don't want to admit that they shave down there but I just shave whatever sometimes it's a bit sparky well I used to shave in the early days right no one hits 16 17 and starts waxing usually and maybe these kids these days I think they do now no back when we were in

it when we were whippersnappers you wouldn't have done that everyone shaved right I would just get the worst shaving rashes I don't know if I have sensitive skin but it didn't work for me and then I could only shave down the grain not against the grain if I went up the grain to make it smooth I would get shaving rashes so if I went down it was okay but all that does is trim it it doesn't just like do you know what I mean gave it a buzz cut short back and sides that's all it does maybe little runway strip but short back and sides and it just didn't land for me okay well i'm glad that we found what works for us because i can shave that real close although it only lasts for a couple of days i pretty much just shave every other day in the shower but then it's so like

i'm it's so prickly everyone looks shocked everyone in this room is shocked by the admission but what is your show why what's going on i'm bold oh keisha's i'm bold for two days as well keisha's a bald eagle but if you shave doesn't it like if you're getting freaky if matt's down there it doesn't like cut his little face no does you cut your face when you make out with ben and he shaves his face no he's got nice fluff but like yours would be spiky wouldn't it no it's not like no it's not spiky it's just sometimes a bit fluffy it's just like cuts all over his face i would say it's the same as shaving like i would say coarseness wise it's less coarse than face hair on a man really mine would always be harder and thicker and spikier yeah no it's fine also

there's this big myth okay i know that we're getting way too into the way that our vaginas look right now vulvas look no but this is the real talk okay can i tell you this though people you have been lied to your hair does not grow back thicker if you shave it is not true people think it's not true google it it's not true the only thing that happens is if you shave your legs or wherever your underarms the hair's not thicker it's just that you've cut off the tapered end so it feels thicker because it feels more coarse because you're cutting it at the thickest part of the hair but it's not scientifically possible for the hair to grow back thicker otherwise it would just mean that any guy who was balding could go and get a buzz cut and his hair would grow back

it's not true can you look into that i've looked into it before i'm telling you it's absolutely true also lee campbell who is the beauty editor for mamma mia shaves her face and she talks about it all the time it's the same as derma planning she like very much is an advocate for the fact that we have been all lied to throughout our lives. Shaving does not make your hair grow back thicker. Do not be afraid of a razor. Embrace it. Could be your best friend.

Scientifically, that does make a lot of sense. Yeah. Because we would be overrun with hair if every time we shaved it doubled. Totally. We've been lied to. We've been lied to our whole lives. Anyway, look, we have a great episode for you guys today. We are speaking to Ruben Kay, who is a very, very funny comedian.

Although, interestingly, this interview and episode is not so much about being funny. It's about how we use humour to cope with really dark periods of life. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting. I really resonated with it because I know you're the same most of the time, but I'm not going to speak for you. But for me, humour is my go-to with everything. I will be in the depths of despair. I will be in a deep depression.

I will be upset. I will be angry and I'll crack a joke or I'll make a joke. That's how I cope with anything that goes wrong in my life. Even some of the most traumatic things that have happened, I make ridiculous jokes about them to this day. like that's just how I reflect and sometimes sometimes I think that can definitely be taken the wrong way by somebody if maybe they don't know you well or maybe that's not the way they cope with a trauma or something going on in their life if humor is not the go-to sometimes people

don't understand it but I it's something that I have realized I've sometimes made even Keisha and I you know the last couple of weeks we've both been going through some stuff not together like with each other you know just like some things in our lives and we've helped each other through it But we said to each other, we have made so many wildly inappropriate jokes to each other. We both know that that's how we cope with stuff. And it makes us laugh even more when we're going, you know what I mean? So I think that for us, that works because that's how we cope. But definitely doesn't work for everyone.

I mean, I think it's interesting that you say it doesn't relate to everyone. But I think most people, even if you don't use humor yourself to cope with negative things or bad things that are going on in your life, I think that we can often appreciate it when other people use it because it's like a way of deflection. I think as humans, we're quite bad in really emotional and stressful situations, especially with dealing with grief, with dealing with trauma. It's something that makes us and rightly so feel uncomfortable. And on the flip side to that, a lot of people use humor as a way to bring people in during those periods of real struggle. Now, I think that Ruben Kay has such an interesting perspective on this. He is a queer

icon. He really struggled with bullying as a child and also in coming to terms with his identity and his sexuality. He also is a descendant of like third generation Holocaust survivors and has such an incredibly interesting story about intergenerational trauma through the Holocaust and also of his own personal and family history and how that humour has kind of been passed down to him as well. So while Ruben is a comedian and is known for being funny, I think this is an interview that shows a really different side of him and it really explains the reason why he makes the jokes that he makes and he uses humour in the way that he does and how it's been a really profound coping mechanism in his life. Now before we get into that interview there were a couple of

things we wanted to speak about first. Brit, how invested are you in the Barbie movie that's coming out? I have become a lot more invested than I thought I would mainly because I think it's everywhere I look so I feel like I'm getting sucked in. So I mean I'm sure you've all heard of it it is the big barbie movie it's coming out in july i think july 21st it has ryan gosling who plays ken and it has margot robbie who is playing barbie it actually has a huge cast of very famous people playing all the barbies but they're the well i mean they're the most important they're the ones that are like literally on every single piece of advertising social media whatnot that's been making the rounds i think the reason why this has become so viral is because barbie is

nostalgic to everybody like barbie has been around for so long that all of our generation it was such an important part of our childhood and upbringing. And I know that there has been this quite complicated relationship with Barbie throughout the years in terms of physical appearance and the impact that that's had on kids and Barbie and Mattel over the last sort of, you know, 10 to 15 years has really done so much work to kind of be more inclusive in terms of the different types of Barbies that you can now get. I mean, when I now go shopping and buy Marley and Lola Barbies, which is so weird that that's still a toy that's around now that we used to get, But you can get everything.

You can get Barbies in wheelchairs. You can get Barbies that have skin conditions. You can get all different types of nationalities in terms of Barbies. There's not just one type of look or variety anymore. It's come a long way. It's come so far. Now, Margot Robbie, she's 32. She is playing Barbie in the movie and everyone's thrilled about it

because she is. She nailed the look. Spectacular. Spectacular. Ryan Gosling, on the other hand, he is 42 and he is playing Ken. And I think that this is kind of funny because I mean, I shouldn't say it's funny, but I think it's very interesting. Ryan Gosling has received quite a bit of backlash because people think he's too old to be playing Ken at 42. And the reason why I think it's funny is because very, very rarely

do we see the narrative flipped where a man is being positioned as too old to play a role. Usually that sort of criticism is being held or is received by the female in any sort of TV show. so in this instance it's really unusual that that criticism has fallen on ryan gosling who for our generation brit when i say our generation i mean like you and i brit we see him as like this smoke show he is like the fucking hottest man that's ever existed he is gorgeous he is he's sweet and caring he's hot he's a great actor he's ever since the notebook ever since the notebook which is highly problematic and if you watch it now with the lens of everything you know about relationships you go fuck that's a toxic relationship but i also just want to i just

want to not look at that with a lens like let's just leave it for what it was and the way it made us feel at the time but we all have seen ryan gosling throughout the years and at some point or another have thought god i'd like to sit on that man's face oh everywhere i'd sit everywhere there you go and now he's being put in a role of ken not once did i think god that man's too old for it but the young generation don't feel the same well this is what some of them have said some of them have tweeted saying ryan gosling is too old to be playing ken i'm sorry his wrinkles are taking me out of the experience another one said i like ryan gosling but idk which is i don't know why he looks a little too old and dry not sure if it's because of the hair or the tan but

that guy needs some moisturizer ryan gosling is too ugly and too old to be playing ken they should have cast henry cavill or chris evans okay wash your mouth out ryan gosling is too ugly are you kidding me are we looking at the same person i mean i get it i get why people who are maybe in their early 20s think that this because like obviously he's he's a doll he's meant to be like a 20 year old doll i understand why people in their 20s think i mean he's even younger isn't ken like how old is ken someone google this someone said how old is he meant to be someone said ken's actually 67 in barbie years metal is 67 yeah i don't know if they have i'm looking at picture of the promo, right? It's Ryan Gosling. He's in this beautiful denim open jacket. He's

got Ken underwear on that's supposed to be like Calvin Klein, but it's Ken. He's tanned. He's beautiful. I don't know if they've painted that six pack on, but he's ripped. This to me is a beautiful Ken. Okay. The reason why this is so funny is because Ryan Gosling has come back at the criticism with such spectacular force and he has called a spade, a spade. And by doing that, what he said is, is nobody has ever cared about Ken. And it's so true. Remember your childhood, You had Barbie. She was the main star. She was the event. You could have had any Ken doll. Nobody cared about the Ken doll they had because nobody actually ever cared about Ken. They only cared about Barbie. And he's come out saying, it's very funny that now people care so much about Ken

because they think that Ken is too old. And he wrote, if you ever really cared about Ken, you would know that nobody cared about Ken. So your hypocrisy is exposed. This is why his story must be told. And he's gone on to say, I care about this dude now. I'm like his representative. Ken couldn't show up to receive his awards. So here I am ready to accept them for him. I don't know why when I read this, I found this so, I found it really funny. And I also found it really interesting

because I think that this is criticism that women have faced for so long in the entertainment industry that they're too old to play certain roles. Even when they're not too old. I mean, think about the Sex and the City cast. When they did like the rehash of Sex and the City, the show and just like that,

the cast were criticized for looking too old, but they were literally playing their own age and themselves. Yeah, they've grown. That's how hypocritical it is to be a female in the entertainment industry. But in this instance, we're seeing it and the genders flipped. I think it's because we hold this ideology of who Ken and Barbie are supposed to be. But at the end of the day, they're not real. No, this was my favourite part, right? He said, I would say, you know, if people don't want to play with my Ken, there are many other Kens to play with. This is who we told GQ interview, because there's so many Kens, versions of Ken in this movie. He went on

to say he thinks it's funny given that people didn't think about ken before he was cast but suddenly it's like no we've cared about ken this whole time um no you didn't you never did you never cared barbie never fucked with ken and that's the point it is the point barbie and ken never got together that's the whole thing no one cared about ken so he's like fuck off with your criticism you never cared about me until i'm with margot robbie in a movie did barbie and ken never get together i mean they did in my version of ken and barbie when i used to play it as a kid i think every kid version did they just rubbed the dolls together I reckon that that's most kids first understanding of having some sort of sexuality I used to get my Ken and Barbie and be like they

are lovemaking bro they were the gold standard of edging they have been edging Barbie and Ken have been edging for 67 years because they can't do anything else it's also because they have zero genitalia and they just have weird curved plastic parts I think Barbie wears underwear these days it's like curved but it looks like underwear underneath whereas before it used to just be like this bulbous round curved area with a butt crack can get them nude anymore I think they've come which is weird like why why not because you can get dolls with genitalia it's like you can get anatomically correct dolls now I don't know here's a question this is a good question because I was thinking okay you used to make these dolls but not put the genitalia in and it was like okay

why we're supposed to be loud and proud but as a mother would you want the dolls to have accurate genitalia because I guess there's a level where you're like cool it's important they learn what it is but is it also going too far what do you think about that um okay so I this is definitely taking a weird tangent Marley and Lola have dolls that have genitalia right so there are some they're babies there are some dolls I can't remember the brand of them but they're actually quite good they're like baby dolls and they'll have a penis and they'll have a vulva but they're babies I think it's different when they're adult dolls to have genitalia so Barbie is obviously an adult doll I don't think it would be necessarily appropriate for their age demographic for them to

have adult genitalia because I just think it has a different connotation and when we go back to this idea of like we all used to rub them against each other like you know let kids be kids for a bit longer well totally we didn't know what we're rubbing I mean mine were just kissing I didn't know that they were edging I thought they were just kissing I don't know what I was doing I know what I'm doing now but I didn't know what I was doing there look it's food for thought but I think it is interesting that I mean off the top of my head I do feel like this is probably one of the first times that a man in Hollywood has been on the receiving end of ageism I don't think we've seen it a lot because generally speaking we celebrate men aging like we look at the George

Clooney or Sean Connery I mean I know the world looks at them as very sexy men I do too I wouldn't kick either of them out of bed I think they're beautiful and the older they get they seem to maintain that now i don't know if that's because they've still got a hollywood glow like you know they still get their boat i mean so does ryan gosling that's what i'm saying men don't cop the same heat as women do but this is the first time we've probably seen any level of backlash for a man in hollywood part of this story that i think is really interesting that would be remiss for us to not kind of mention is that yes ryan gosling is receiving backlash for being 42 and being cast as Ken and Margot Robbie is only 32 years old. But originally Margot Robbie was not the person

who was cast to be Barbie. So the original cast was Amy Schumer. And then I think that was like back in 2016 or something. And then there was some irreconcilable differences and she chose not to do it. And she's Amy Schumer is 42. Amy Schumer is 42. I wonder if Amy Schumer had actually gone through with the role, whether there would have been an immense amount of backlash because she isn't your typical idealistic Barbie. It would have been more satirical and humoristic take on Barbie or whether people would have really lent into it and seen the comedy angle and aspect of it. But ultimately the original casting was this older, and when I say 42, it's not old, but it's an older casting of who Barbie is supposed to be. Absolutely. I think when there's

something, a project like Barbie, that's as big and universal as this is, and there's no demographic, like you just said the demographic is literally you could do from 15 years old to 65 years old because I wouldn't want to watch 15 year olds be Barbie fuck that no I mean the demographic that's watching it because Barbie is universal and it has spanned every decade so it's this is literally going out to the masses when a project is that big and reaching that many people there will always be backlash because it's not going to be how somebody imagined it if Amy Schumer came out as Barbie I'm sure it would be brilliant but there'll be people that would hate it because it's not what you said it's not the idealistic Barbie that they grew up with but there'll be people that were like

fuck yes let's celebrate difference let's modernize it she's funny let's you know have these different lens on it I don't think anyone could take on this role and not get some level of criticism except Margot Robbie she probably will too you know there'll probably be someone out there that says she didn't do it properly but that's just because of how big the audience is Yeah, I totally agree. And I do think that there is a bigger conversation in this, which we can have on a separate episode about ageism and about how, especially for women, how our value in society, our worth in society, it diminishes in terms of how we're viewed as we age. Well, it's so funny. And we've spoken about this many moons ago, but this is why people

like Reese Witherspoon have started their own production companies. It's actually why Margot Robbie started her own production company. She's young. Think of things like Big Little Lies or the hit Morning Wars that's Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. You know, they're playing the morning breakfast show. It's brilliant. Everything that Reese Witherspoon touches turns to gold. But it's because she created this production company that highlighted women who the traditional entertainment industry said that they kind of would pass their expiration date. And it's like giving these people roles, but also having representation on screens. There are so many 40 year old, 30 year old, 50 year old, six year old women who want to see themselves

reflected back on TV. Absolutely. All right. Let's get into the chat with Ruben. Joining the podcast today is multi-award winning Australian comedian and cabaret sensation, Ruben Kay. Look, I would love to be categorized as a sensation. I actually got that off the interwebs. Like they say you're a sensation. So welcome sensation Ruben to Life Uncut. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. We start every podcast episode with our guests the same way you don't get off scot-free we start with what is called an accidentally unfiltered story your most embarrassing story and i feel like you're gonna have a good one yeah i don't know why i feel like i mean i've got a couple obviously good deliveries look i've got a couple

i was in a pretty trash relationship and had a big crush on a friend and my entire friendship group knew this it was in the pandemic and i was on zoom with this friendship group and as my boyfriend walked out the door i said i love you and then called him the name of the friend i was in the zoom with and not even like first name full name like four middle names last name why did you go there because they had the same first name and in our friendship group we tend to say i love you full name yeah like laura burn i love you laura burn like i love you ruben k things like that And then as he was leaving, I just went, I love you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then my whole friendship group just went, whoop.

And everyone just kind of waited for my mate. My mate just looked at me and was like, is there something you want to tell me? I have so many questions. We were just talking about this literally, completely unrelated. But before we jumped on the interview, we were talking about calling people the wrong names. I love that this couldn't be more organic right now. What happened then in the situation? Did your boyfriend say something?

Did you get together with your crush? Um, my boyfriend spent most of his relationship being half out the door anyway. So for him, he kind of really was like, oh, that's my out. Yeah. I don't think he listened for the last three months. I like that. As you said it, he was literally walking out the door, not even half out the door. He was leaving for the day and just never came back.

No fair. That's exactly how it was. So did you get together with the friend that was the crush? Nah, this didn't end well for you, did it Ruben K? And now we're like very close friends and it's all fine. but we do laugh about this because he also had feelings for me at the start and then I started dating someone and then he started dating someone and then I broke up with that person and then I was like,

oh, I'm free and we just never and now we're just really lovely friends. It's gone too far now. You can't. It's gone way too far. Now it's too weird. Now we look at each other and go, oh, I could never now. I know you too well. It could be too nice.

You're too nice a person who I want to be friends with. I only want to date toxic people. But I can't be toxic to myself. How can I be toxic to other people? You've got a really incredible story actually. Your grandparents have an incredible story about when they came to Australia. We're going all the way back. Yeah, well, I think it flows into who you become as a person, right?

Like, I feel like that's where it starts. They're transitioning to Australia and then your parents' life and your life. I'm a firm believer that Australia is a country of immigrants, and that's the majority of population right now. So this idea of what is Australian is really a red herring and a ridiculous thing, considering anyone who came here who isn't a First Nations person is an immigrant. and my grandparents are part of that story they came as refugees from the second world war from both sides my mum came from Germany and my dad came from well his family came from Russia and

Poland my dad's side met my grandma and my grandfather met in a Russian labor camp building railroads for Stalin she was six foot two with huge breasts he was a short little he was the quartermaster in the camp so he's in charge of all the food and she thought you think that's why I want to see if I can stand my spoon up in. You're the person, so marry me. And he went, I don't know you. And she went, fine, look at me, look at you. And then started to walk away.

And he went, I'll marry you. He's like, this is a great option for me. Correct. He was punching. And if you got married, you had a larger sleeping quarter in the camp. So there was another plus side. And my grandmother and him then after the war went to post-war Poland, which was sort of like a war zone.

It was really a frontier town. There were rampant anti-Semitism. My grandfather had to like stand guard over a synagogue that was being threatened to be burnt down when there were Jews inside. It was just rough. So then they left Warsaw to Paris, where my grandmother worked as a washerwoman. And then they came to Australia. My dad was born in Paris.

And then they came to Australia, where they had a handbag factory and then a deli. Wow. But still had, I don't know how to put it, a lot of Holocaust trauma. My dad, who'd never experienced any of it, really was scarred by it intergenerationally. His parents passed down a lot of that fear. My dad would have a lot of nightmares. Quite a really fearful person, but a very nurturing kind of man. Bit of a soft boy in many ways.

And my mum's side is wild. they got out of berlin to london just as the exterminations were happening and we have the evidence of them trying to get their relatives out and failing they're trying to get visas all the correspondence back and forth and eventually just the letters stopped coming and then london sent all of these refugees and suspected collaborators suspected aliens to australia like they always do and they sent them on two ships called the denier ships and one of those ships was torpedoed by a japanese sub and the other one had my grandfather on it wow and they spent the war in australia my grandfather was in the army here and then when the war was over they

were staunch communists when the war was over and communism was taking over in germany or east germany they went over they were the only people dumb enough to defect to east berlin and they decide to rebuild communism. My grandmother became a state-sanctioned fashion designer for East Germany. And my grandfather became a plenipotentiary, which is sort of a diplomatic position. And he was sort of a fixer. And we have lots of awards, hundreds of awards and trophies and medals that he was given by the East German government, but also microtapes, lots of microtapes of him that everything was recorded in East Germany. The Stasi, which was the secret police at the time were possibly even more vigilant and into surveillance than the Nazis and so we have

micro tapes of him in all these meetings saying oh I'll I'll make sure that person disappears or I will run arms into Angola all this kind of stuff and in fact I ended up meeting his mistress who keeps on telling me vibrant and striking sexual details about my grandfather and their affair and also that she was informing on him at the time so you know your grandfather's mistress wait did your grandmother know that your grandfather had a mistress so i don't know because my grandmother had my mum on their way to germany in the uk she then had my uncle and was not deemed fit to care for him so they put him in an orphanage but would visit him every year which kind of fucked him up and then at one point my grandmother said this marriage isn't working this

city isn't working, I've got to get out. And she investigated taking one child, both children or neither. We have the paperwork to see that she was investigating what the cost of that would be. And she just took my mum and ran. Just before the wall went up, she scarpered. And my grandfather called the police on her, that she was betraying the country, that she was betraying the communist state. And she came to Melbourne with my mum and became a couturier on Collins Street. We still have some of her dresses. In fact, some of the first drag I ever wore as a kid was some of the evening wear that my grandmother made. And then my mum and her had a pretty rough time. Mum went in and out of foster care and back into her mum's care and back out. And when my mum was 18, my

grandmother, suicide. She didn't know how to deal with survivor's guilt. Why did she survive when so many of her family didn't? Why did she leave a son behind? There's so many ramifications of genocide of the holocaust that trickles down through all these stories and even now in my mom in my dad in me there's evidence of all this and the kicker my uncle who was living in the orphanage when he was released became a comedian and a musical comedian and a clown and he tried to trade his trumpet for an American GI's uniform to try and disguise his way and bullshit his way out of East Germany. And he got caught, he got sent to prison. And there he met these guys and became a getaway driver for bank robbers. How many spinoff movies of your family history are in the making

with Netflix at the moment? I'm in the process of writing so many things about it. They're so rich and they all deserve their own unpacking because all of them are so dense and very interconnected. I mean like there's some like real trauma in what your family have experienced and what has been as you said intergenerational trauma to then lean on humor I think it can be a real coping mechanism for a lot of people in a lot of ways and you are an incredibly funny man who has gotten into having a profoundly successful comedy career she's like so what's your trauma yeah tell me about your trauma no i'm sure we'll unpack that shortly but for you being a comedian was that something i mean like what was it what drew you to wanting to entertain people to be the funny person i think

it was definitely a way for me to get self-worth as a queer kid growing up the first movie i ever saw was the marx brothers a night at the opera and if you don't have the marx brothers they're four brothers who are an old vaudeville act who then became huge in the 20s and 30s and 40s with very slapsticky vaudeville routines on camera and they're great movies show your kids they're just fantastic and they're very quick and they're pg fine but there's always overtones and i was kind of raised in that culture within certainly jewish culture there is a huge history of comedians you know using their trauma but also just humor in any survivor of trauma is a coping mechanism you see it pediatric doctors and wards the humor there is dark very dark because it kind of needs to be to

be some form of processing you know it's that really great thing of i think it was make a zubansky said her favorite emotion is laughter through tears when you've been through these things jokes about uber eats don't necessarily cut it all the time you're like that's great that's great can this be about something now not that jokes about uber eats you know aren't funny just you know and certainly as a young queer kid not only was i queer but i was culturally very different i'd be walking down the halls at school singing west side story and all this and i didn't have the same reference points and i was old jackie mason routines who's sort of a really antiquated old comic that an eight-year-old has no place watching or knowing his material

so i'm out there doing sort of like vaudeville shtick being like is this how you fit in and the kids are going what's wrong with you no that's not yeah that is not too much oxygen in the womb you know so i mean you talk about being a queer kid when did you know you were queer i reckon i knew that i was very different but i didn't have the vocab for what it was and very quickly that difference was transmitted to me that it was a bad thing on most counts and then slowly the realization was oh this is I'm gay and being gay is a bad thing and who I mean when you say that was sort of the feelings that you got did you get that impression from people before you actually came out I mean we saw back at the start of the year the controversy around Rebel Wilson

and how she was literally forced to come out and declare her sexuality and say who she is and put her hand up and there was all this uproar how are we still doing this in 2023 and it's crazy that we are still doing it in 2023. But back in the 80s and 90s, it was expected. It was expected of you to put your hand up and declare who you are and say, this is what I'm doing. This is who I am. I am dating a man. I am gay. Did you feel like your friends and family and your schoolmates already knew that part about you? And they were sort of saying, hey, like, we know what you're about to say. We know the can of worms you're about to open and we don't reckon you should do it. No, the kids at school knew before I had a vocab for it because I didn't have any positive vocab

for it and they were already raised with homophobia ingrained in their culture otherwise how else does a 12 year old know the word fag yeah i was called faggot ever since i can remember i've been called queer faggot whatever so those terms the first times i ever heard them my sexuality was actually defined for me in words of oppression before i could even understand what the joy of it was what the truth of it was which is i think it's so interesting when critics say oh these gay people being gay their whole identity and they just shove it in our faces when throughout our development all the straight identifying people have done have boxed us in by it defined us by it and screamed it at us in the streets do you know how much work it is to then unpick that because we have to

reclaim it first to find some sense of pride in it coming from quite a traditional family especially coming from a Jewish family what was their reaction when you had that conversation with your parents my mum was great she said Ruben it's 12 o'clock at night go to bed I'll buy you condoms in the morning I was 14 and then the next day she took me for a walk and she said I don't really understand why you told me because it's none of my business who you sleep with just like it's none of your business who I sleep with and I said who are you sleeping with and she said none of your business and I took one of the condoms that I gave you yeah yeah yeah exactly and when I told my stepfather he kind of looked at me and went well duh which kind of took the wind out of my sails but I was

like that's lovely it's so unimportant to them do you think it makes it easy because you're like oh I don't even have to talk about it just get on with my life yeah I always had a feeling that they would be very accepting that they'd be fine but it didn't stop the fear and the shame and the wondering what would happen the negative voice is always louder than the positive voice and in most cases the negative voice is always louder than reality because how many times have we been so hard on ourselves. And someone goes, would you say that to anyone else? Would you give that advice to anyone else? No, but we'll happily crucify ourselves. Also the fear when you've been conditioned for so long that something is a bad thing, the acknowledgement of it. And what does

that mean for who you are as a person? What was your dad's reaction to the whole experience? It's so interesting. It really affected me. He had a stumble. He had a stumble and he said something which he later regretted. We were in the car and great place to do any deep and meaningful in a car between two guys because you can't look at each other at all just keep your eyes on the road right yeah it's kind of a chickening chickening out I think he said to me after a pause he went I'm just sad you'll never be a father and it feels like I've failed which I heard as I'm the failure yeah and then there was no other conversation about it I kind of just it was time to get out of the car and he just kind of looked at me and then we didn't know what to

saying then he drove off and it was really like a heartbreaking moment and the worst thing is two days later three days later I went over to his house with my stepmom and they were fine about it they were fantastic about they were so proud and behind a hundred percent but the damage had kind of been done in that moment for me at that time I think now I would have a much better perspective on it but it's such a raw moment and when a kid comes out what they're really asking is do you still love me what they're really asking is am i okay that's all they need to hear the coming out is not really about the parents expectation it's about making a kid feel heard and safe even now in this amazing permissive fantastic age it's a very very tender and vulnerable moment and dad's

my relationship had already been quite at loggerheads because he was the most wonderful man. But I don't think he knew how to be a father who could set boundaries. And I don't think he was very conflict driven. And I was a very conflict driven child. I was of an ADHD kid. So I needed things in plain and simple terms. And dad was like, okay, well, let's just calm down. Let's just relax. Worst things you could ever say. Tell me, just tell me now. Let's deal with it now and move on this is my time this is just deal with it and just say it i'll take it i'll be fine yeah and if i'm angry i'm angry if i shout i shout but i'm getting through it mentioning that like now is a very kind of i mean permissible like celebrated time there is so much more conversation

and i think acceptance for queer community in general especially for kids these days but it's still a time with a lot of opposition and something that we've seen a lot recently there's been the discussion of drag story time in the news like what is that doing to the children think of the children the over sexualization of the kids I think it's interesting going back to something you just said earlier about how your entire experience of sexuality at school was being bullied for something that you didn't know that you were at the time or even fully having a comprehension or understanding about it what are your feelings towards the negative feedback that people have around drag story time I think it's ridiculous for straight culture or community

to accuse drag queen story time of sexualizing children when we have been infantilizing and sexualizing youth and women as barely legal women with no pubic hair this is the vibe that we want and you're telling us that the drag queens reading to kids is about sexualizing children and yet you're the one that wants your girls dressing in school uniforms as an object of sexual lust. There's no equity here in this argument. And if you really want to protect children, then I'm sorry, you would be pro-vaccine. You would be anti-gun because these are the leading causes of deaths in children. You'd be thinking about domestic violence. You'd be thinking about reducing alcohol at sports games and pokies venues. All these things that impact

children, you'd be treating drug use as a mental health issue and a social issue rather than a criminal issue you don't care about kids you just want to cloak for your own homophobia that's my view i think it's interesting that we talk about the states a lot with this stuff but even just with drag story time i mean i know a lot of people remember corny act and the uproar when she was telling her story on play school there was so much negative feedback around what that was doing or whether that was sexualizing for children for someone to be in drag and be doing story time but drag story time now exists. I mean, if you're a parent, you may be aware of it, but it exists at a lot of libraries. I mean, even in Double Bay Library, I've taken my kids to drag story time.

There's nothing sexual about it. It's like a pantomime. Can I say there's also a thing about every single human being on this planet fucks, swears, smokes, drinks, takes drugs. Even if you think you don't take drugs in this society, it is an inescapable reality that you consume a drug at some point right we all have harmful behaviors or behaviors that are not suitable for children and every single one of us instinctively moderates those behaviors around children straight people do it all the time there are straight people out there who have horrendous drug habits extreme sexual habits and they still have children so don't tell me that you think that drag is a monolith of the drag and sex work in parallel here. Drag is a genre. It spans

everything. It can span something from an adults-only club kind of situated act, and it can be, hey, day drag in a rainbow wig reading C-Spot Run. Going back to something that you said earlier about using comedy as a coping mechanism, like dancing that fine line between dark humour. Where do you think the line is between what constitutes comedy and what constitutes a joke that's okay to make versus something that is very controversial and isn't going to land? Your intention has to count for something. There's a big difference between subject and object in comedy. The subject of the joke is this topic. The object of the joke is the person you're pointing the joke at, right? So for instance,

If we try and dissect a joke, it won't be funny, but that's fine. I have a joke in my show where I ask an opinion of the crowd and they give their hands, and I go, yeah, hands, hands, and you're just pointing at him like Anne Frank's neighbour, right? And making a joke about a girl who was slaughtered by the Nazis is inherently not funny. The subject of it, the object of that joke, is actually the Nazi collaborators who informed on them.

hmm so again it's in this very fine line and also as a survivor of third generation so maybe holocaust adjacent but still carrying a lot of this history there's a place for me to make that joke where the intention is one of reclamation education acceptance if someone else made that joke i don't necessarily know if it would land within that very fine narrow bullseye of where it needs to context who the comedian is really does sometimes matter as to how they deliver a joke i'm not saying no comedian can say i believe in free speech say whatever you want just how i might feel about it or how some of the audience might feel about it but also as we see now every comedian has their audience we've got comedians out there spouting stuff that i don't necessarily

think is particularly funny they're playing great they're doing really well what about the idea of punching up or punching down in a joke well that joke is an example of that if you made that joke where the joke was about anne frank i think that would be punching down but if you make a joke about nazi collaborators i think you're fine yeah right i just think it's about for me at least i was raised in those classic drag days of the exchange and the market with really funny queens right but there's a big history of drag being a very cruel form of comedy a very mean form of comedy and i think you can't be cruel or mean if the audience doesn't know that they're safe and loved they have to know that when there's a joke that's towards the edge that's getting there and

they go oh they have to know a that you're smart enough to deal with it that you're a good enough comedian to deal with these sensitive issues and b that you're saying it with surety and with love and you know that it's not directed at the audience you're collecting the audience's collective rage you've read the room and you're directing that to the common frustration the common enemy it's not about attacking the audience is also another part of it recently you were involved in quite the controversy and i think some people may have witnessed it you were on the project and there was a joke that you made about christianity and it went down like an absolute lead balloon now one of the reasons why i became so interested in your story i became so interested

in your comedy was actually because of the complete vitriol that you received on social media there was so much backlash and public outrage around this and it wasn't public outrage that was holding you to account for the joke but it was truly quite cruel and unbelievable trolling in the thousands that you were experiencing when you are on something like the project or you're in a very public environment where you are not with your safe community or there is no context around who you are, the life that you've lived, the way in which you use comedy as a coping mechanism, your own personal experience. How do you then decide or figure out where the line is between what constitutes an okay joke to be told? I'll tell you right now, the jokes that I told on

the project are some of my gentler jokes. In fact, I've been telling that joke for about 10 years and every single comedian I know in London and Australia kind of was messaging me going, that's the joke? Yeah, right. Of all the things you say, that is the one? That's getting you cancelled. A joke that's existed in many forms, told by many different comedians in many different ways.

We've all seen memes of jokes about Jesus. It's a pun. It's essentially a pun between nailed and nailed in a sexual context. so for me that's not about oh the audience doesn't feel safe that's about the audience going here's a target here's a target for us because i tell you what some most of the aggression i get involved comments like kill yourself die faggot i'm gonna come to your show you better watch your back knife emoji knife emoji and why can't you be a real comedian like ricky gervais now ricky spends most of his time tearing down religion right yeah so that means they don't care what the joke is

they just care who's telling it what means they don't know either whatever he wants do you think in that instance for example it is homophobia dressed up as outrage about what the joke is yeah because you can chart the outrage alongside the daily mail articles that were released in 12 days there were 14 or 17 daily mail articles released in those days there's not that much news in the world in my life but there's so much other news in the rest of the world but you're going to focus this on me. And because outrage gets more clicks. That outrage is manufactured and manipulated. And I think my personal feeling is that it's an excuse for homophobia because there were prayer circles outside my agent's office in Sydney, but they

weren't a community. They were a gang of guys dressed in black, chanting the Lord's prayer, waving crosses with signs saying, where are you, Ruben? We want to forgive you. Which is very intimidating. It's an intimidation tactic. When I was at the Enmore, they were charging, 50 men were charging down Enmore Road, chanting the Lord's Prayer and intimidating queer businesses. It's pretty confronting.

So how do you deal with that level of hate? And was there a point where you were genuinely scared? When these people are like, watch your back at your show, I'm coming, do you sort of brush it off like, okay, you're just an online troll? Or is there a part of you that's like, holy shit, something could actually happen to me? I had never been exposed to that level of hate before, before, that level of targeted hate. There'd been the odd comment on my TikTok, but this was sort of

in my personal space. People were sneaking into my shows and pulling out signs. I had to have security at shows and still do. We had to have a lot of meetings with the police about it. My phone was combed through by a whole bunch of different police organizations, interstate police, because I was traveling interstate. So every state police organization got to go through my phone, which I mean for me is very funny think about all the things they'd find yeah oh don't go into that folder don't go into that yeah don't go to this folder don't just don't look at photos please or actually or text messages or or the calculator the calculator is actually a vault photo vault stay away from don't do any math this is just a dom i work with it's fine yeah and a lot of them

were coming from personal accounts that's the other thing about social media there is anonymity they're a burner accounts someone's got like ah two posts zero followers no profile pic you can discount that as a burner account but then i would be getting really foul death threats from people's business accounts people not deleting their email signatures so i'd be getting death threats coming from businesses even high schools wow so because you'd see at the bottom you'd be seeing like such such school is dedicated to the safety of every student but that's the concerning part right because this is the next generation and these are the people that we're thinking okay we're finally going to break the cycle of the older generations and their way of thinking and you know once this

next wave of people come out we've educated them we've shown them a whole new world but it's not if these are the people it's also coming from this is of major concern and the fact is that in an age where we have to scroll in 30 second segments any nuance any empathy everyone's trying to distill their points down to the sharpest edge and that means there's no place for nuance there's no place for softness it's the most confronting part first no one's interested in a discussion they're interested in a shouting match essentially it definitely was a case of not if something's going to happen when something's going to happen and what that's going to look like and that's one of the reasons why we postponed the Sydney shows because I'm not particularly vain shock

horror I understand my place in the world and what's more important to me is the safety of not just my audience but my tech my band the other comedians who were on at the Enmore that night and given the scale of what the police were talking about the safety of the businesses on Glenmore Road and how Sydney as a city functions. When you have to postpone a show because of the death threats that you're receiving, the fear that you are experiencing off the back of making a Christian joke, I mean the irony is pretty huge that on one hand people who, and obviously this is not blanket

but I feel like I have to say that just in case, that people who are in belief of love would then wish harm on someone who says something negative. Like the irony of the whole situation is just so unbelievably immense. But do you not get this sense of like, will they win? If you have to postpone shows or you have to stop doing or stop performing or whatever it is, if you have to back down, do you not then have a sense of they won this round? Yeah, I definitely, it was pretty heartbreaking and it felt like conceding ground but then what i had to remember is that i'm not the one that's viewing this as a war i'm viewing this as an open free society and i hold true to my values and i look at and go there

will be more gigs i will have more gigs the gigs were sold out in brisbane the gigs of so we just added extra shows in brisbane we almost had to add extra shows in melbourne because it was selling out we will be back in sydney at some other time i'm about to go to edinburgh are you doing the edinburgh fringe festival yep absolutely we are we're doing the whole month there and then we're going on uk europe tour you know for me there's a sense of scale what i don't want to do is the organizational hassle for audience members people who've traveled to get tickets we just want to make sure that we do the best by them my responsibility is not to these people who are threatening to kill me my responsibility is to my audience so that involves a keeping them safe

and b making sure that their time and money isn't wasted do you think it also has a reverse effect like in one instance you're dealing with the vitriol and the hatred but on the other instance it grows the community that has parallel thinking to you that believes in things that you believe and who supports your ideology yeah it absolutely does that it reinforces my community and i think it grows them and you would not believe how many people came to those shows since that we saw you on the project we loved it we hadn't heard of you until the project and we loved it do you get what benefits outweigh the yeah i mean i don't know the answer to that question and maybe you're still too in the thick of it to actually know the answer to that because i do think it is a wave and

the wave like people ride the wave the outrage is so immense when something bad first goes down and then i mean the mob always moves on to something else to be angry about i really like Ricky Gervais's point on this he was like people say you can't make jokes about anything anymore and he's like but you can't you can make jokes about whatever the fuck you like and people will respond to it and then you have to decide whether or not you give a fuck and I think like truly when it comes to comedy majority of things are not off limits you know and of course people are going to have a reaction to it but I do think that it has to come with the understanding that it's said within the context of comedy for someone who has kind of experienced what the world of social media

can do. And you're on your tours at the moment. You are still doing your shows and you are still absolutely annihilating the world of comedy, regardless of the vitriol that you've received. What is next and where do you plan on taking things? We just got our first offer for Montreal Comedy Festival, just for laughs. Oh, congrats. Huge. So I'm going to go and make my North American debut. We go to Edinburgh. I'm going on national tours. I want to be able to have a TV show. I'm writing a scripted series about my family life i would love to host a game show oh can you imagine that a late night game show that is loose

as fuck well there's nothing like it is there no no there is a book deal it'd be fab i'd have to learn to read but it doesn't work out only if you can read it again at drag story time then i'm all in oh i'll do an audio book at drag story time that's the only yeah why has anyone done like an audio book but like a comedy special where it's an audio book but recorded at a live reading what do you mean a recording book recorded a live reading but you record it at a live reading so you get the audience laughs as well you get little things you'd record it at several bits because reading a whole book takes hours and hours and hours oh trust us we did it last year stuck in a studio booth where we were reading our own book that we we had to audio our own book it's a lot

It's a lot of hours of sitting in a room by yourself talking to yourself. About yourself. About the things that you wrote about yourself. No, I don't like that amount of self-reflection. It's not good for anyone. That feels confronting. Oh, yeah, it certainly is. It absolutely was.

Ruben, thank you so much for coming and being a part of the podcast. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, you guys know we never finish an episode without our highlight and our lowlight of the week, the suck and the sweet. I've been rhyming a lot and singing. I must be in a good mood. Do you want to kick it off?

I guess somebody's getting fucked tonight. Someone's getting laid. All right, my suite is very easy. If you follow me on social media, you would know because we've shared a lot of it. We had a little staycation in Sydney this weekend and the kids were absolutely sick for Vivid Sydney. We do our suck first every week.

Oh, shit. Like four years. Whatever, I'm a positive person. Cup half full, everybody. I'm going to do it the other way around. Okay, my suite was, it was spectacular. I think my favourite was that we took them to Taronga Zoo at night time and it was fucking glorious.

They absolutely loved it. And Lola, it was the epitome of crack for a toddler. Also, she went way past her bedtime. She was just running around screaming. Marley was asleep but Lola was like, I'm so happy. Like I don't think she's ever been so happy in her entire life. She just kept screaming my favourite over and over and over on repeat. And then she crashed and burned.

And then she crashed and burned because she screamed the entire way home because it was like 8 o'clock at night. But anyways, you know, the highs and the lows, guys. That's what this is all about. and my suck for the week is so we finished filming dance with the stars last week and it's only been a couple of days since it all ended i am fucked i am so unbelievably wrecked my knees hurt my back hurts my hips hurt my feet hurt my arms my elbows hurt like every single part of my body i was like maybe this is arthritis maybe i have arthritis rheumatoid arthritis maybe i think so no i mean

at the end of the day we we're getting older anyway no no but also you've gone from zero to 100 real quick and then back to zero and back to like to literally zero I went to bed he's like what the fuck it's only last two minutes this is the most activity I've had in a long time literally every single day since we stopped filming like so since I stopped training eight hours a day I have gone to bed at 8 or 8 30 I am a broken human and I mean like I wake up at 7 and I need to go back to sleep. Like I am so unbelievably wrecked and I don't know when this feeling will end.

Well, because I think or I imagine when your body's been under this much pressure, it's not a normal thing, right? And I don't think you get a few days of sleep and rest and it catches up. I think it goes into a real sleep exhaustion debt and it takes a while to get out of debt. We know it takes a while to get out of debt. But I'm not tired.

It's the weirdest thing. I am not tired. You're dead inside. I have no soul. It's left my body. it's all of the joy has left my joints you're in dancing purgatory you're on the come down is that what it is anyway so dancing purgatory is not a real thing i made that up believe it or not is that what this is is that scientific definition i'm hoping it's like a week come down but it's

been five days now and honestly it's not i'm not sad i'm not depressed i'm not tired i'm just so unbelievably sore that i think i'm dying okay well don't die okay okay what's your sweet oh I'm like, fuck, you're getting Ben's here. No, my suck. Ben arrives in like four hours. Okay, so my suck is we mentioned that I've been doing the peacocking but I peacocked to the next level. I peacocked my car.

I got my car detailed. Like I have prepared every part of my life because. Ben is going to come here and he. He's going to think I'm amazing. He has been sold on a lie. Yeah, I'm a lie. You are not the person that he thinks you are. Nope, that's completely accurate.

He gets holiday Brit. Imagine when you actually are together. he's had holiday version of you your entire relationship why do you think the only relationships i can maintain a long distance no i don't say that real prince great don't be mean to yourself so my suck is i detail my car so i put a video up a reel up the other day of delilah i was like expectations versus reality and it was delilah not wanting to jump into the backseat in my car now a few people only one or two had the audacity to call out the state of the backseat of my car i bet you she didn't jump in because she was like i can't fucking jump in because there's so much

shit on the ground totally she's like where is my maintained soft leather backseat well she was like there's literally cups and sauces there's like there's like a two liter bottle of frank green she's like how on earth am i going to be able to jump in there and now she gets in fine you make it sound like i have a portable barbecue in the back of my car and i just like have a cook-up with my saucepans and cups no but i have a lot of shit in there right i had a lot of bags i got shoes i got all her toys i got i've got a lot of stuff in there so i was like i better get it detailed so i got it detailed it cost me a fortune I'm never doing that again it was so overpriced I mean you'll do it in two months time and then when Ben comes back six months when Ben comes back once a

year but then I had an entire coffee cup full in my car but it didn't fit in the it was like you know I was trying to save the world so it was a keep cup it was too big and it didn't sit properly in the middle of the console you know what I'm talking about so it was resting somewhere It was resting, it flapped open, it spilled all down my clothes, my seat and the carpet after I had just paid a kidney to have it cleaned. So that was my suck. How old was the coffee? It was a new coffee.

Brand new. So it hurt my soul as well. Better than like a four-day-old coffee. No, I think the hot coffee's worse, right? I got a burn on my leg, it burnt my car. I think I'd rather a new coffee than a coffee that's mouldy and a bit smelly, to be honest. And that's my car, everybody.

Your car? You guys thought my car was bad. Flora's just ten times worse. oh no my car's like it was a tip my my car is is a dump but i'm also helping the environment because i don't actually throw anything into the bin i just keep it all inside my back seat that's so gross and my sweet is i'm getting late tonight my sweet hasn't happened but i'm having a lot of sex for the next month britney is going to aggressively edge for the next 24 hours and then she's going to report back no look i'm making jokes about the sex i'm really here for the

emotional connection that i'm going to be having tonight anyway guys hello guys that's it from us If you enjoyed the episode, please go give us a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also join us on social media. It is Life Uncut Podcast on TikTok, also on Instagram, or at Lady and the Cat. Or you can also join the discussion group, which is Life Uncut Discussion Group on Facebook if you want to really get down and dirty. And don't forget, tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends, and share the love because we love love!

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