Life Uncut - Uncut with Stephen K Amos - The People Who Were the Butt of the Joke Now Have a Voice

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Joining the podcast today is comedian, TV personality and camp mate from the South African jungle Stephen K Amos! Britt got to know Stephen in their month in Africa together and they formed a special friendship built on some very personal and impactful conversations. Stephen joins us today with some of the funniest accidentally unfiltered stories (yes, plural) that we have ever heard!Stephen is such a laugh and a half and as funny as he is, he is equally as deep and thoughtful.  We spoke about: Time in the jungle  His life growing up in a Nigerian family in South London Expectations and being a ‘role model’ when he didn’t expect to be Always being labelled as a ‘Black comedian’ and eventually ‘Black, gay comedian’ Push back on political comedy ‘ruining’ comedy Stephen’s encounter with the Pope and his unexpected response to Stephen’s sexuality  Performing for the Royal family Accepting himself and his body; wearing shorts for the first time EVER in the jungle You can find more of Stephen K Amos and his tour dates here! You can watch us on Youtube If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee 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 Gadigal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura. And joining us on the podcast today is somebody that I am very happy to now call a friend. He is a very, very funny comedian that has come all the way across the pond from the UK. Stephen K. Amos.

He's a writer, he's a performer, he's a reality TV contestant now, which I bet you never thought you'd know. That's your repertoire. But Stephen, welcome to Life Uncut. I am so thrilled to be here, Britt. And can I say I consider you a friend now as well. I think I know more about you than your listeners do. um we spent a good four weeks together living our best lives in the south african jungle and laura

very nice to meet you too i had so nice about you i think i know more about you than anyone because like watching it all back on tv but i'd love to know knowing that now you think you know brit better than the listeners what's my favorite sex position what did you learn about her or what was the most surprising thing about her that maybe people wouldn't know well bear in mind that i came into this program not knowing anybody yeah so i had no idea of anybody's background and anybody's uh what they'd done in the past you were like these people are not celebrities so you are this lot we're like well i had to take on board that's the title of the program we must all be celebrities so i looked at brit and i thought this is a woman who is prepared to

muck in and get down and dirty it did not occur to me once that how glamorous this woman is do you know what i mean because you look like shit loud and clear steven no no but no but you know i mean but we all looked really kind of rough and we're and we're slumming it and for some people particularly if you're in the public eye and you have a certain image to go against that is quite a big step for a lot of us yeah a lot of people in the jungle were talking about how it looked like callum was wearing makeup it looked like um sky was wearing makeup do you know what i mean and it looked like even khan was wearing makeup but there's certain a group of us who were just like definitely not wearing makeup that was me i like to think of myself as like and i think i've

always said this and people have never believed me but now i think the audience believes me i'm like the ultimate catfish like me with makeup and hair is completely different person to the second i wake up but i'm okay with that completely untrue mucking in is what i mean in fact you know you look as a woman with no makeup you are stunning thank you but this was not supposed to turn into this okay let's get back to you again i'm more about me you're stunning but with the makeup and all that you know when i first saw you outside of the jungle that's the first thing i said i went wow and your response to me is yeah i scrubbed really good don't i and it was like a lovely piece of self-deprecation and it's just great and just the fact that we all mucked in together

yeah and i didn't realize the laugh i mean this came through in the jungle this very distinct laugh which is very similar to your mum's where you get it from i also learned really a lot about the closeness of your family which was really nice to see because one of the things i wanted to get from this experience was to talk to people who you'd never normally meet but have really good, interesting conversations and hear about the closeness of your family and you mentioned about how your parents had struggled to look after all four of you

and that you're quite close in age and the struggles your parents went through, they didn't ever express that to you, but it's only as an adult you saw that and you could recognise what the sacrifices they made and that was great to hear. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I'm actually chuffed that you remembered that because I think a big part of our connection in the jungle,

I'm speaking for myself, but there are so many different characters in the jungle, but I had a pull to Steven because we could have some very deep conversations and some conversations that probably never made it to air because they were just genuine conversations. We were never having conversations just for TV. I mean, sometimes you do.

You're like, oh, they'd probably love that to air that. But there are different people in the jungle give you different things and provide different things and there's not a lot to do in there. like you have a lot of time on your hands you can't read you're not getting up to date with the news well you don't know what's happening world politics and then so i think that steven and i sort of got that from each other some some more i don't know we just say conversations of substance i don't want to yes i yeah i mean not to be disparaging about any of our uh campmates

but for example because we don't know what is going to be aired and how we're going to be portrayed yeah and that's one another thing i learned big time because whenever i do my own shows or radios or whatever I'm involved in the edit so I know what's going out so when you've got no idea what's going out you've got no control and that's one thing I've learned by myself relinquishing control ain't my thing no it's not not my thing baby I want to have a bit of a say in this like for example I remember having a chat with Karen about us being in South Africa I think you might have been there and how important it was for me as a black man to go to that country where 30 years ago, I would not have been allowed to.

And we discussed apartheid. And Callum, 26, had no idea about the history of South Africa as a country. And I thought to myself, wow, this might be a really good conversation to air because it will still educate people about a point in history that should never, ever be repeated. And I've not watched the series about myself yet, but I've heard from my friends that that wasn't aired at all. It wasn't aired.

Which is a shame. I mean, we can get into the nuance and unpack that, but it must be frustrating to be like how are you 26 years old and you've never heard of this like how am i educating you on this but again i didn't have a go at callum for not knowing that no i found a way of educating somebody yeah who's uh he's 26 and he just told me that there may be a lot of people of that age bracket who simply don't know and just to like double down on that there is not like we all learned something from everyone the amount of things that steven and i learned from callum about what his field is health and nutrition and fitness and there's so much that

he can educate on which is why it's so beautiful because everyone in that jungle took something from everyone so I don't want to make it sound like Stephen and I had conversations that we didn't have with anyone else that's not it but it was definitely something that we connected on yes yeah and I did have conversations with Callum about things and you're right Brittany he did the whole health thing the body and whatever he told me things about my body that I hadn't even got a clue about I mean look at me I'm a man of a certain age I'd like to say 30 but that would be a dirty lie but he taught me things every single one as you said every single one of us had a story to tell i would love to know because when you say you're someone who struggles with

relinquishing control and when you are a comedian so like a lot of people expect you to be funny but then probably don't realize that just because you're a comedian doesn't mean that you're funny 24 7 like you also it's a performance as much as it is part of your character do you watch back reality tv and question like how funny you were or whether you were supposed to play more of a character in that instance what a great question laura absolutely when i was in the midst of it and i was wondering okay maybe they put me here because i'm a comedian and i'm supposed to be this role but as soon as i got in there were massive personalities in there some people who are larger than life and i just thought to myself i cannot compete with this i came here because i

wanted to show a different side of me and that side of me is the person off stage on stage is an extension of who I am and it's all about performance I'm in control but in a setting with 11 other people my whole thing was to take bits in you know kind of figure where I am in in the pecking order of the group find my space find my tribe if you will yeah but not to be that annoying person doing jokes 24 7 because that would be so tedious yeah do you find that in your real life and your friendship groups that you go to a dinner or a group event and you feel of pressure to like oh i've got to be the one that entertains tonight i don't actually but what the thing is in my friendship group people know me and i've got the same friends i've had for 30

odd years and we've all got our sort of roles uh good friends of mine katie and tim who live in the uk but they've moved to australia about 15 years ago katie's really organized and we all leave things to her tim is very very sensible and very calm i'm the jokey one so within that friendship group we all laugh everyone's funny as well so even though that's my job on the outside it was on your laptop when we recorded the last episode it's just been flying around this whole time oh my goodness it's like being back in the jungle again i wanted to give you an immersive experience today steven so yeah i don't feel the pressure too but if i'm out with people i don't no for example if i finish a gig and i'm walking through the streets and there's people who came

to the gig they expect you to be funny are you like why did the chicken cross the road yeah yeah people come up to me in the street and go i'll tell this joke now and like i'm going i'm not working right now and their normal response is well you're not funny then because they expect you to be like what they see 24 7 yeah like for example i did a show last weekend at the gold coast and sky from the jungle and denise came yeah and sky's partner came as well and after the show their mouths were open they were like you're really funny because that's not that's not what i did in the jungle i wasn't 24 7 do you know me because you were just you yeah it was just me and they were genuinely shocked that i was really funny and i was like you know what guys that's

what i do that's my day job i love that and i can't wait because i'm gonna go see you this weekend so i can't wait to see it i mean my mission in the jungle i didn't really tell steven that but i was like i'm gonna make this guy laugh at some point but i was like dropping jokes left right and center and you're like trying to get a laugh so you could be like i made the comedian laugh no i did and there was one time one joke and i think it was the masturbation joke which is funny in itself i told a masturbation joke and he actually laughed and i was like yes get that on record get it i made the comedian laugh i did i howled i howled and laughed what was the joke it's too long i'll tell you it needs when you have to explain a joke it's no longer funny well speaking

of being the funny one we do do something on every podcast episode we ask every one of our guests the same question and it's called an accidentally unfiltered story so it's basically just your most embarrassing story my most embarrassing very humbling yes very cathartic i've got two for you actually we got time okay great the first one is when i was about 22 and i had a job with a magazine and i was the advertising sales rep so i had to uh sell advertising over the phone what a different life sounds as dull as it is cold calling companies going do you want to buy advertising no what do you anyway you know when you're really fed up in a job you start going late you don't really care about it anymore there's one day and my parents

are from nigeria okay that's that's quite important and i'm from london there's one day i thought you know what i don't want to go to work today i'm gonna ring in and pretend i'm sick but i'm gonna ring in on behalf of my dad so i rang i rang my own boss and put on an african a nigerian accent and i said hello is brian there please uh we'll put you through hello brian it is stephen's father here yes i'm afraid stephen is not very well okay he will be in tomorrow okay and he put the phone down and i was like boom got away with that and i had a great day off in my house dancing in my underpants and the next day i went to work and the guy goes um steve can i have a word and uh i said yeah i went into his office he went do you think i'm stupid

and i said what he went you called me yesterday with an accent pretending to be your dad how did he know because i did a really bad shitty accent no i was convinced maybe you've gotten better at accent since then but I maybe I've got better but the thing is remember I worked in telesales so he hears my voice all the time all day every day right and I was trying to do an accent where I wasn't overdoing it like that to make it sound exaggerated so I was kind of midway between English and Nigerian but I sounded like me and I honestly at the time thought I got away with it and did you get fired I got bloody fired mind you this is a step up at least you were selling things on the phone steven started door knocking selling tupperware oh that's horrible can you

imagine yeah door to door as a like a 17 year old right we were all put in a van at the bottom of the street and told to work each side of the street and the one thing back in the day that people had in their houses was tupperware to be fair though people would have bought it from someone coming it's very convenient you always need more tupperware not from this boy knock on the door and they opened it what tupperware shut the door in my face that's so bad he only got one sale yeah yeah how long did that how long did that job last that job lasted a day and a half i guess a day and a half i guess you weren't being paid on commission then that's what it was it was commissioned can you imagine it felt like we're being kidnapped to

be like the jungle right where they i didn't know any of my colleagues but i met we all met on a street corner right like boys of the night i was huddled into a van given our wares driven down to a street and going right go what i did this when i was a kid i must have been 13 14 it was my first job and it was delivering the phone books you know the yellow pages phone books we used to have in australia but i don't know in england as well okay i don't know what they're like in england but they're so big yes they are fucking huge and i was this little 13 year old trying to lug phone books down the street and i think i got paid seven dollars an hour wow living the dream i know look at me now it was commissioned okay and the second story because i know you we love a poo

story and you shoot yourself you love a poo story okay do you know what okay i'm gonna tell you one that you may not use before i do that other poo story do you know back in the day when you meet someone online yeah i mean i met my partner on baby i know i said back in the day because i'm trying to be nice okay because uh this was years ago for me and there i was chatting this this chap and uh as we were chatting he said what are you into and i was like oh just you know the regular stuff and then i said what you into and he says i like dirty folk and i said what do you mean dirty folk he says i like it when someone hasn't really washed and i went okay how do you mean then he went like if you go to the lavatory and you don't wipe your ass and i was like that sounds

interesting okay sure not to yuck someone's yum but let's try it each to his own and so we arranged to meet that afternoon and i don't know why but i decided to have a thai curry and i went to the bathroom you lent in to his desires i absolutely went for it and i thought you know what this can be awkward i'm not gonna wipe though i'm not gonna wipe didn't wipe your man comes over and he's lying on the bed and i instantly just sit on his face and this is all i heard and got up and ran to the bathroom and threw up and i was like he threw up but surely when he said i like it a bit dirty he didn't mean take a dump on his face well i didn't know what he meant he said he said he's like that's too dirty man that's too dirty you went too far you didn't

give me a pie chart exactly all i did was just sat i mean there was a squelch noise as i sat but i thought that was what was required suffice to say i never saw him again he was like i like dirty you're fast yeah you're filthy what a pig that's that's better than your shitting in the car story that is one of my favorite accent unfilters we've ever had oh really and that's No, I mean, please don't judge me. You know, that's never happened since, I should point out. No, if there are, you should have just said musty or something, you know, or moist, something else. But don't say, his phrase was, when you go to the bathroom and you don't wipe.

Yeah, but didn't he mean for sex, like the penis, not the lips? He didn't want it on his face, did he? When you go to the toilet and don't wipe, is what he said. No, but he didn't, yes, but didn't he mean that for sexual purposes? I don't think he wanted you to sit on his face. Didn't even occur to me. but I sat oh my goodness and you know it's like you know I don't even ever met somebody and years ago this is funny actually years ago on the old uh dating app thing I met someone and the person

came to my house and clearly was not the person in the photograph just a totally different yeah and I could not hide my horror I was just like huh and he went it's not happening is it I went no that's equivalent to sitting on somebody's face yeah I don't think you can compare those two I think they're pretty different. It'd be like that person that was the different person sitting on your face. That would be the equivalent. It's rejection, isn't it? Yeah.

I thought that's what you wanted, but I didn't think outside the box. I'm actually shocked, but one thing I'm impressed at is your commitment. Like 24 hours before, you thought about what meal you have that's going to make the most damage in the toilet to sit on his face. Do you know what? If there's one thing about me is I will commit to a story. Yeah? I will commit.

If you want something, ask Stevie Boy. I'll make it happen. I'll make it happen for you. You've got a fantasy under you. Yeah. Do you know what? I've never said that in public, but now it's out there. Do you know what?

He's never asked someone to do that again. He has never texted someone and said, I like a dirty. He's like, he doesn't ask. I like a clean boy. I've taught him a lesson, a life lesson. Please wipe. Yeah. Not all heroes wear capes, Stephen.

Let's talk about who you are before comedy. Like, what was your life like growing up? I come from a family of six siblings. Parents arrived in London in the mid 60s and London mid 60s, very, very different place. In the same way that, you know, we talked earlier about you and your family, your parents having sacrifices. My parents never, ever told us the things they must have gone through in the early 60s when they arrived in London. They really shielded us from that. But as a result of that, they shielded us from everything. So we didn't get to go to on school journeys. We didn't have sleepovers with friends.

We weren't allowed to play outside on the street, nothing. Are you saying that in terms of racism that they would have faced, like they were protecting you from going on a school camp because they didn't know how you'd be treated? Or was it just like they just wanted to wrap you in cotton wool? 100%. Because they were very much parents from Nigeria. And when they were growing up, Nigeria was under British rule.

So they were kind of invited to the motherland, in inverted commas, to come and help out and do whatever. But when they got there, the reality was completely different. Before they could find a place to live, they were met with signs it was very popular in the uk signs on doors that said no blacks no irish no dogs so like england was like the catfish england was like yeah come we'll welcome you but then you got there and the reality was like i don't think so and to get different like my dad for example he's not a drinking man he was pulled over by the police on a fake charge

of drink driving and the reason why he got off when he went to court was that they spelt his name incorrectly because no matter how drunk you are you don't spell your name incorrectly you know how to spell your name that's one of the basics and the judge was like threw it out so he went and had to stand in court and the judge was like i don't think this is real yeah wow yeah so many stories and even when i was growing up you know being followed by the police you know there's one i lived back then i lived in southwest london and i had an orange beetle you know volkswagen beetle and i was in the west end with my friends driving back home about 45 minute drive and i was stopped on that journey four times by four different police cars and you kind of think

this is the side of it that we you know and it's like it's such a privilege of the way in which we get to grow up is that like we never will see or experience that type of racism that type of profiling what impact does that have on you when like your whole life you grow up being like got to be on high alert knowing that it'll be assumed that i'm doing something wrong when i'm not or i'm trying to sell tupperware and i'll have the door shut in my face yeah i mean it is a weird thing when you are playing second fiddle or you're on the back for all the time and that's that's why i think the phrase people got a chip on their shoulder yeah whenever i hear people say you've got a chip on your shoulder my response is i can't see it and if you can see it who put it there

you put you've made me be aware and conscious you know i've got friends for example asian backgrounds indian backgrounds uh nigerian backgrounds with very distinct names and that alone was a source of comedy and and humor and ridicule you know in the classroom when people are reading out the register the teacher's going and everyone's sniggering you know if you have that from when you're like five until you're 15 that does something to you i think you know michael hing the australian comedian do you know yeah so he was at our live show we've interviewed him he's wonderful we talked a lot about like micro aggressions and micro racism and it's one of these things where ignorance is bliss it's easy for us to sit back and say oh yes we don't stand

by racism we know what racism is but when you speak to someone like you know conversations that we had in the jungle where you I mean you told me once that you you got punched in the face you were standing up for some girls you got punched in the face and there was a lot of like racism sniggering there but there's a lot of these day-to-day things that we don't think about so So the sniggering at someone's pronunciation of a name is something that we don't even consider. And I think that that's why these conversations are so important, because that is a cumulative effect. Maybe one time won't last with you, but when your entire life is that. Absolutely. And even something as simple as you going to school and you smelling a bit like your parents' home cooking is enough to make them laugh at you, to make you stand out.

One of my earliest jokes when I started doing stand-up was this. I remember going to school, my first day at primary school, I ran into the classroom and I ran straight back home and I said, Mum, Mum, apparently there's a black boy in my class. I can't find him anywhere. What that joke means is that in my household there were no differences. No one talked about race. As soon as I stepped out of that door and into the classroom,

that's when it became an issue. You know what I mean? Did dealing with that throughout your life, especially your childhood, make it challenging for you to be proud of your heritage oh god i remember back in the day if my mom for example would go shopping i would pray that she wouldn't wear her national dress because we didn't want to stand out now i embrace it of course i do i'd pray that she didn't bump into somebody that she knew from nigeria and they'd speak in their language because people would stop and stare you know i mean all those little things that you just i just want to fit in i don't want

to be the odd one out especially as a kid because that's all every kid wants is to just be accepted by their peers exactly slot in and don't and you know i've had people ask me when people ask you questions and you know but that's that's what i loved about the jungle that we all came in there with a level of respect for each other so therefore we could ask questions that you knew came from a good place yeah but when you in the outside world and people ask you questions well you've got to question what they really mean what's their motive do you really wash your how do you people wash your hair how do you people wash your hair yeah i mean that's a loaded question how do you people what do you mean ask me how if you're interested but don't make it like i don't answer for the

group totally but that's that's also something that i think when we would discuss this before on the podcast as a privilege of being white is that when we walk into a room we're not speaking on behalf of all white people but somehow people who come from any minority within a community they become representative of everyone who's that minority so you speak on behalf of everybody this was one big thing that was brought out when we we did a an episode around like it changed the date and so indigenous australians and the person we interviewed was like when i'm doing this interview i'm now the voice of every single and she's like it's such a responsibility yeah and you know what naively i didn't think of that but when i started doing stand-up and when i started doing stand-up

on tv in the uk i would have young black kids young asian kids come up to me in the street and go thank you for representing me yeah it dawned on me that oh my god because there aren't many of us it's something that i have to have on my shoulders and if i did a shit job wow can you imagine and then you hear people say oh black people aren't funny or all black people do they talk about race in their comedy yeah when there's a lot more you know and we're not all the same i remember starting stand-up and being the only black person on a bill of comics yeah back in the day where on a bill of comics there'd be no women well i remember you making a joke in the jungle and it was a joke that was laced with truth obviously because that's where a lot of jokes

come from isn't it you were saying that when you were trying to get into comedy you had to wait for the only black comedian to die because there was one black comedian you're like oh i wish he would just die so i could it was a joke so i could take that one spot it's also i think how a lot of women comics feel as well it's like oh well they've got their token female comic you know in this run and and line up as well yeah when it comes to making jokes on stage and that's saying when people say oh the only thing you talk about is race where's the line for you in making jokes about race like where do you feel that you are comfortable with it i personally believe that any decent comic can tackle any subject you know there is a myth that you can't say what you want anymore you know you

can't do jokes that's a myth that's something that people say when they want to harp onto a bygone age where anything was permissible the thing is as we know the people who were the butt of the jokes back in the day now also have a platform yeah you know the people who used to joke about you know women or ethnic minorities or the lgbt community or whatever those people now are superstars and doing jokes themselves and language and attitudes change over time you can't harp onto a bygone era And I think any good comedian, a white comedian can do jokes about race, a heterosexual comedian can do jokes about LGBT, as long as it's tackled in a really funny, clever way. So you don't mind a white comedian doing a race joke? I guess it's about the context and the delivery.

What's the punchline? Absolutely. I'm not a fan of punching down, personally. I know other comics do that. I'm not a fan of shock comedy either. Other comics do that. There's something for everyone. You know, find your own tribe, as it were.

but for me there is no line I might self-deprecate myself to make a point or or sometimes people misinterpret the joke and I've got to kind of explain it and then it loses its funniness talk about the masturbating joke from the jungle for me for me the playing field is leveling up yeah and therefore you can do jokes about anything when I first started I used to just just do jazz hands aren't I funny but then the more yeah just like just do jokes yeah not make any points but then i thought you know what i've got something to say i know funny now but let me try and say stuff that means something to me because i've heard some outrageous things during my times of doing comedy or people come up to me and say the most outrageous things and think i'm

just gonna go no no what changed what made you go from wanting to just say funny jokes and make people laugh to also saying funny jokes but having a statement around how you feel or think about issues a couple of things firstly was that thing about knowing that you're representing people yeah yeah and also it's that thing about the press the media they like to label people you know i've yet to see any of my white colleague comedy chums be described in any newspapers white comedian but for me you always see black comedian do you still get that now oh god yes oh god yeah still it would be black comedian yeah oh but now it's black gay comedian that's the thing now yeah you really handed that to him on a platter didn't you now it's black gay comedian that shits on

people's faces is performing on the weekend and the weird thing about that is that when the masses see that that's enough to put people off going to see you because they assume they know what you're going to talk about yeah you know what i mean whereas just say comedian you know don't have to give me any of these monikers and some press you just go oh he doesn't talk about being black enough oh we don't talk about being gay enough and i talk about things that matter to me yeah and once you're in a position where you've got a captive audience for me personally it's not for everybody i think you owe it to yourself and your community to say something represent there's a part of me that like i get so angry and there's a part of me that hates that we even have this conversation

now the fact that we even have to to highlight the racism that you experience still because we shouldn't be having to have these conversations but we do but the fact that now in 2024 you are still being headlined as black comedian enrages me and upsets me on your behalf and then it comes back full circle that's why we're having these conversations still so it's like it's a bit of a like we're almost chasing i say we you're almost chasing your tail i'm having to have the responsibility to talk about it to educate people to make the change but you're still living it every single day you do live it every single day and i try the reason why i'm doing it is because I want to see I see history repeating itself and things not really getting much better you know I

just want to be honest and true to myself and I look at my nephews and nieces who are coming up and I don't want them to experience what I experienced. Do you think that the needle is shifting at all I mean when you say you see history repeating itself there's been so much conversation in the last couple years especially around the Black Lives movement do you think that it's shifting i think it is shifting but i think it also is in the interest of certain political parties and whatever to keep those divisions flaring up you know because that's how they keep control i don't want to sound like a conspiracy there is but that's how they keep control of everybody keep them fighting amongst each other oh look the uh the black folks are

getting all this oh what about us you know sprinkle all that little nonsense into it and watch them fight and argue. Whereas we all know, it just sounds so trite, but if we all are united together, like when I see young kids in London coming out of school, London is generally a melting pot, you know, a multiculturalism, people are now saying, doesn't really work, doesn't really work.

You go to an inner city school in London, you'll see kids of all colours who all sound the same. Yeah. Because they're all mates, they've grown up together, right? Back in my day, there were pockets of groups of kids sticking together and who knows what their parents have told them well it's even like you've just made me think of this right now so my brother-in-law is indian but born raised in scotland so he's scottish but even when he he moved to australia but everyone always says to him

oh i didn't expect you to sound like that to somebody it's a throwaway comment but to him he's like well i'm scottish so why why not you know and i guess it comes back to this a level of ignorance maybe like oh but you look indian and you sound scottish so i just i just this funny it's funny hearing you talk but you know what the thing is that as i said earlier there's a way you can approach someone and ask somebody a question as opposed to making it funny and as you say you've mentioned your brother-in-law before and i do scotland quite a bit so i know what you're talking about but if he hears that 24 7 totally that's irritating you have to justify yourself like when i sometimes because i remember getting a taxi from the airport in london i

arrived i rang for a taxi the taxi turned up and he looked at me and oh oh i didn't expect you to be a i said what and he backtracked you like finish that sentence keep it in your in your brain keep it in your you know why do you have to vocalize it you know just go oh that might you might learn something yeah you know not everyone is the same yeah you know like when i used to joke as well about going to america and americans have got no point of reference for a black english man they don't because apparently my face does not fit my voice and i said to those people this is my face this is my voice deal with it and so i'd like to mess with them and so i go i went to a coffee shop and this is all i said this is all i said my good man come

hither and the guy was like oh my god oh hold on hold on alopecia get over here and i kind of get over here say it again so i just kind of like and i like to play with the notion of race as well yeah to get people kind of thinking like i do i used to joke it's not about doing my first ever stand-up gig doing five minutes not one single laugh i was too new not good enough jokes and so to console myself i got drunk after the show and i'm staggering home at night and in the distance i saw a little old lady and folks as she saw me she clutched her handbag like that so something inside me died yeah so i went over to that little old lady and i took that handbag see that's the joke that's the joke but if you notice in that joke

i didn't say the race of the little old lady yeah yeah so you've already assumed she's a white she's a little white lady yeah that's what i mean and that's i like to play with that does she have any cash in the bag oh god yeah that's why i bought this watch so steven something that i think will surprise people because you are known worldwide as a comedian is that you weren't always a comedian you're a lawyer well yes i that was my first foray again i think that stems for two things my parents were the kind of parents who said in the uk get yourself an education yeah once you have that degree in your hand nobody can take it away whether you go on to get a job is another thing whether anyone employs you as long as you've got that they instill that in us

from a young age and i really really kind of embraced that in fact i do a joke about as well i'll just throw this in before i did my law degree uh i did something called o levels and they will determine whether you go to university or whether you take them again yeah i did six of them and to rebel against my parents i failed all of those i failed them all and it was in the days where you got a piece of paper with your results on and you'd had to take that piece of paper back to your parents right it wasn't on computers and i can remember handing that paper to my mom and And she was like, oh, Lord Jesus, how can we look our friends in the eyes when we tell them our son Stephen is not just a simpleton, but he has a certificate to prove it. So I kind of played with that.

So I wanted to study law because my passion was to look after the underdog, people who faced injustice, you know, because I felt it from my family and some of my friends. And that is what drove me to kind of want to do that. But then as I was studying it, and I've got a real passion now for real-life crime documentaries. Oh, yeah. That's what we bonded over. Oh, my God. Love those.

Yeah, I fact-check. You guys are sick. We're sick. We're sick. I love it. Sick in the head. No, no, we're just very aware. I can't.

I would know, Laura, how to kill you and dispose of your body. And I would do it with him. I can't sleep at night because all I think about is all the many ways that someone's going to sneak into my house and kill me. How Stephen is going to sneak into your house. And get away with it. Okay, you guys are doing nothing for your own cause. It was like, stop it, okay, the two of you.

And so then I went travelling to New York and I met a friend who was living there and he had a sad story as well. He lived in London, had a 19th birthday party and nobody came. So he moved. Yeah, it was so sad. That's actually like devastating. It was a nightmare. You put a birthday invite out and no one comes.

So he moved to America. So I went to see him. That's a big reaction. I don't want to get it. You're like, I'm out. Oh, I would. I've got no friends here. Yeah, I would.

Nobody cares for me. Nobody cares. And when I say, maybe this might give it more context. For his 19th birthday party, he had balloons. He had balloons. I don't get it. Am I missing? He blew balloons.

Well, no, they're balloons. He's just a dork. He was a dork. He blew balloons up for his own birthday party and no one came. I do not even think of a dork. I think there's nothing wrong with balloons. 19-year-olds are getting lit with a punch bowl, you know. They get lit with jelly shots.

I just did Ben's 32nd birthday and I did balloons everywhere. Does that make me a dork? yeah it does but that's quite that's quite charming i see why why is it 32 that's like oh you're old now because you're a dork still but that's that's ironic yeah when you're a teenager okay so he's moved to england yeah and then i would see him and then staying with him at the same time was another girl and i didn't know her she was also in england and then she said after this long weekend after bottomless brunches you're already funny you should do comedy and it didn't occur to me that what I wanted to do as a lawyer I could do with comedy and the difference

is I won't take people's baggage home yeah how do you mean you could do the same thing I get people sending me uh stuff on social media or back in the day letters telling me how a joke or routine has really saved their day has made them forget their worries or or so one young man sent me a about i saw your show today and it's it's inspired me to tell my parents that i'm gay you know things like that that you don't think about because i'm quite a passionate soul believe it or not but that's why i'm in awe of social workers nurses doctors people like that who take on real heartache and tragedy and drive i couldn't do it i'd be so invested in your story broken and i'd be broken i would be of no use well saying this you know you have children or children but you

have teenagers who message you and say you know you gave me the confidence to speak to my parents about being gay what was that experience like for you because when you're so you're spending so much of your adolescence trying to impress everyone trying to fit in trying to not stand out and to be like perceived as being like the good kid how did they respond to this or were you able to have a conversation with your family about it oh my goodness the one do you know what i had i had to spend time dealing with the fact that i was a black person in london so let's let's do that's what i mean you're already like i can hide the gay stuff you already minority yeah i did i that could stay on the back burner so i didn't talk about that i wore a ring on my wedding finger

when i think back it was obviously some sort of decoy people made assumptions i never told anybody i was mad never told anybody i had a girlfriend people made assumptions let me just deal with the race issue first let me just deal with that and the other stuff can come along but the older i got and i thought you know i'm comfortable with who i am i don't ever want to be that person who looks over their shoulder who's quite scared i've got friends who are living what they call on the down low leading double lives yeah can you imagine but it also living a life like that just leads to self-loathing it leads to you feeling as though the person you are authentically is not good enough or you won't be accepted or you'll be that 19 year old who has no friends that's what it

leads to but excuse my ignorance but at the time and now i'm not sure i know there are a lot of african countries that accept being homosexual and i know there's a lot of african countries that absolutely do not what is nigeria like or what was it like so were your parents going to be accepting if you told them or did you feel like there was an extra layer of fear because of you know, where they've come from and what they grew up knowing? Good question. I would not have sat down and told them. And I didn't because I didn't want to put that onto them.

Because I know the history of the country and I know that it would bring, apart from the shame to me that I felt, can you imagine going through your life feeling ashamed of yourself? I didn't want the shame for them. So having to carry something on your shoulders that is invisible to everybody else is so devastating and it crushes you and you don't realize you don't know who you are anymore so it was easy for me to say nothing and just keep going and not to burden them with anything but the moment i was able to leave my parents house and live on my own i owed nobody a single

thing you know i paid my own rent i paid my own bills i'm not asking for anything and you can judge me all you want but as long as you're not putting food in my mouth say what you want i don't know if your parents are still alive so please forgive me if this question comes across as ignorant did your parents find out and how did they respond uh my mother passed seven eight years ago now my dad is alive basically he uh found out when i did a program called the pilgrimage the road to rome where the group of us followed a genuine roman catholic pilgrimage from the bottom of the swiss alps into the vatican how incredible and that was bloody incredible it was extraordinary I think it got shown in Australia as well.

And on the last day of this incredible walk, because I don't walk at all. Walking, really? Excuse me. I love that that's the most outrageous part of the whole. I'm Stephen King. I'm not here to walk. And backpack.

Oh, God. Someone else is carrying this, right? Yeah. And so on the last day of filming, they said, can you all wake up very early? Because we have a private half-hour audience with the Pope. Wow. And I was like, my initial reaction was absolutely no way.

You know, I've got issues with the Catholic Church as an institution. you know why would i want to be in the company of the head of this church which in my view would rather i did not exist yeah he says i'm sinful just by being just by being so i was on the back foot but then one of our group is a british tv presenter of the islamic faith a marine good friend of mine she said if anybody of any other faith invites me to their home i would go and that taught me a lesson i thought one so i said yes i will go and meet the pope because he has invited you because he's invited me i'm not going to be a dick about it but however i want to ask

questions you know and so again to my representation i thought if i go on this program and i'm seen sitting with the pope as far as you are for me and he's just praising me or or blessing me and touching my forehead and i say nothing i would feel like a bit of a dick so i just said to him you know i've got a couple of people in my life who were quite religious and they passed away i want to know as a gay man will i ever see them again i said to him right there and i was ready for his answer i was ready for him to say oh they're all god's or something to blow me off right pardon the phrase uh he definitely didn't blow you off because he wants to go to heaven so he said people put too much emphasis on the adjective gay rather than the noun man this is

not good. Those people who put too much emphasis on the adjective gay, those people do not have a human heart. We all have dignity. You do not lose your dignity. And I was just like blown away in that moment. So I misunderstood. What was he saying? He was saying that if you put too much emphasis on gay rather than the noun man, right, that's not good. We should be judging people by being a man. So, I mean, does that not go against everything that the Catholic church has always said that homosexuality isn't natural it you cannot be two males or two females and get married does that not completely contradict it does because he didn't explicitly say you're going to hell yeah you didn't get yeah he didn't say you're going to hell and he didn't explicitly say

oh you're all welcome to heaven it doesn't matter he didn't say that what he did was what i thought a very kind of general but applicating way of kind of saying you know what just because you're gay I'm not going to be hounding you about that we should be thinking about mankind and what the evils that man do

what you've got you're being gay but you don't use your dignity I mean that was that's what I took away from it you know

and the weird thing about that that hit me in the face and I was nearly in tears I mean you know I was just like oh and some of the others

asked him questions about women's rights to their bodies in terms of abortion etc and he sort of skirted around that but when that

program was aired I was like oh my goodness He's going to get a lot of stick from this. I'm probably going to get a lot of stick from this. But my number one was Ed. I even had the BBC call me up and go, we're just getting ready just in case anything blows off.

And nothing really blew off. And I thought if I was maybe a high profile white comedian or maybe someone like Stephen Fry or somebody, and the Pope said that to him, that would have been worldwide news. Because that was quite deep. it should have been like quite a big moment in time yeah on tv yeah i mean so my ego was no no because i just thought wow this is and people and i had people so many people reach out to me when it came out gay straight whatever going i'm really proud that you asked that question yeah i'm really

you represented me or someone who is gay and and a christian struggling with who they were so things like that that we don't even know that we're doing that has such an impact to other people is why i do this job well there was the moment where you did come out as gay in one of your stand-up routines yeah and i'm assuming that moment was pretty monumental in changing the way people viewed you and and actually when we talk about having an impact you don't realize the impact you have on people's lives talk us about the the show the decision to say do you know what i'm not hiding anymore i'm going to publicly make a joke declare it what was that moment in time like it was a situation where i had uh just done a season in australia and i flew

back to london and i was just you know unpacking my case being not very in the present and the news was on in the background and they talked about a body that was found in a place in southwest london called clapham common yeah who was the person was killed in a homophobic attack and i glanced up at the tv and they put a picture of the person and it was somebody that i knew and i was incandescent with rage and anger that we live in london this cosmopolitan city yet there are people who will attack a complete stranger to the point of death because of their sexuality or what they perceive your sexuality to be and i thought it was that moment i thought you know what i can't sit back and say nothing i've got to lend a voice voices together and numbers i can't just

wait for pride and go you know wearing hot pants i've got to do something and so i thought i'm going to write a show uh called all of me where i just and i had to have someone direct the show because i found it difficult because the one line i said in the whole show i didn't say anything else all i said is i did the show up and talked about him and then i said oh and by the way i'm attracted to men that's all i said and you could hear audible gasps in the room i even heard a woman's voice go what a waste i take that as a compliment i took it as a big compliment and but i said there's plenty of stevie to go around uh so literally again maybe rather naively people started saying oh amos has come out in this show one of the best shows ever written and from that

day forth is what i was described as black gay comedian so it was kind of a double-edged sword in a weird way but we're talking quite a few years ago now so i don't even know whether that held me back in my career because people don't know where to pigeonhole you but it also brings you into a whole new audience demographic as well i mean i think of someone like ursula carlson like i went to her show last year and it was humongous like we're at the entertainment the triple c which is like 5 000 people like you couldn't even see her she was a blip on the stage and it was like such a momentous but also like the whole audience i would have said majority of people were a gay audience they were all people who they're advocating within like the lgbt community

so i guess it also in one instance people who would never have been interested would have been interested in your comedy if they thought you were straight but then have some deep-seated homophobia in them are going to be turned off the comedy now but you've opened yourself up to a whole authentic community who also like we appreciate the humor and we appreciate the subtleties of things you're talking about as well i would agree with that laura if i had done the show in the last sort of five years right you think it was back then it was a completely different time i mean i can't remember exactly when it was it's probably something probably like 15 years ago yeah that is not long enough ago for someone to have been murdered it is not long ago but the

point is when i did the show about there weren't many at that time black comics on the circuit in the uk yeah and there was a black comedy circuit but there was no sort of crossover so did that because i'm trying to put myself in your position in that moment did you feel like that was putting a little bit of a bullseye on you in terms of okay i know there are people out there murdering people for being gay and black i'm a public figure a lot of people know me they know where i am they know where i'm performing and now i've just laid claim to this obviously because you are trying to change the conversation but there must have been a level of you at that time that's like holy could Could I be in danger now?

Well, do you know what? My saving grace in many ways respects is the fact that social media wasn't a thing back then. You know, definitely you'd been a target for abuse and online hate and whatever, because people think they have a piece of you. They can get to you. Even when I first came to Australia, I could count gay comics, openly gay comics on less than one hand. You know, fast forward 15 years. i mean you mentioned ursula carson reese nicholson hannah gadsby you know 10 years ago a hannah gadsby show would not have been a thing totally you know what i mean yeah and the hate would have

been and the hate would have been extraordinary that's what i mean about how times and attitude and language have changed so the people that were the butt of the jokes are now having a voice and that's what people tend to forget every single person on this planet has a story to tell and It's how you tell that story. I love how that's come full circle in terms of what you said at the very beginning, this idea that, you know, comedians who were punching down, but punching down so significantly. And now it's like the playing field is more even because the people who are representing minority groups are able to have just as loud a voice. And that's probably the beauty of social media is people are able to find their communities. Exactly. And also that you extend that to people like Sam Campbell, who's just doing blazing stuff around the world right now.

And all the other kind of on the edge kind of comics who don't quite fit in, don't fit a mold, who have got an amazing voice, an amazing platform because we're more receptive to that. As a public figure who, you know, is public on multiple different platforms, TV, stand up, radio pod, writing, and somebody whose whole job is to walk the line and push the boundaries and to make people gasp. What is your thought on cancel culture? And like someone making a mistake, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing. I think cancel culture is dangerous. I think there are certain people who claim to have been cancelled, who are clearly not cancelled. You know, that there's another double edged sword there where, you know, you still got a massive platform. You've still got $23 million off Netflix.

You're not cancelled. But it's now a thing to say. Also, people jump on a bandwagon. That's a thing. If you weren't there, you didn't see it and you didn't get the context. You've got no voice. You know, don't add your voice to a story that you know nothing about. It's easy to do that.

What we should be doing is educating each other. People make mistakes. People do make mistakes. I'm not saying that people should be given a free pass to say and do whatever they want. We live in a society where there is something called freedom of speech, right? But if we have to uphold the values of freedom of speech, we also have to uphold the values of freedom of expression, whereby we can react how we see fit, depending on what it is you say, yeah?

but to counter someone immediately without having a due process i think is ridiculous if it's a comic you're talking about you counter that person by not buying a ticket to their show yeah what you don't do is you just go oh oh i heard through so and so and so and so so that he might have said and it's all muddied the waters it's not even factual anymore and also in terms of comedy i think like and we've touched on it as well but like jokes out of context and with that you can't take a joke out of context you have to look at a joke as a bigger picture or or look at the political statement that it's making as well rather than just it being like a written down line because things when they are typed up sound very different and hit very different to things that

are spoken yes I think and also we live in I don't want to sound like an old man but we live in a society where you know everything is quite immediate yeah you know social media immediate that's one thing I learned from the jungle I've now decided to put my phone down one day a week for 24 hours really yeah absolutely I don't care what's going on in the world that's why you haven't written back to me the last two days just one day and i think we could all do with that just to kind of take stock and just be present in the world you know because nothing is that important well before we started this we were talking about i asked you what was like your biggest surprise from the jungle and you said something really beautiful about it was discovering more about

yourself can you give us a bit more on that and like what was the thing that you took away from it not just the phone but about your own like sense of self well my sense of self i've always been very self-conscious about my body and my image for example my skinny legs i've never ever had shorts on display anywhere and i think i told some of the guys in the jungle day one you're never going to see anything below my knees steven when he says that he had literally his entire life never gone outside in public not once in shorts and the jungle was the first time in his life because you're embarrassed because you like what was the reason because as a kid i was made fun of by my skinny legs and as an adult i didn't feel comfortable about my skinny legs i didn't think

my torso matched my legs you know all the ways that you see yourself they don't recognize how other people's and my arms you know thank goodness for these guys you know my campmates because they were the ones going oh my god you've got really strong arms because you know you don't see the back of your arms you've got i think callum was the one who told me what this muscle here is called because you took your shirt off one day to get whatever it was swimming or getting changed and everyone was like dang because he always covered up everyone's like damn steven like you'll get your arms out jacked and he was like oh my god don't look at me we're like what we're like but your your arms are amazing but i don't think anyone maybe ever said that to you before so

you just had this preconceived idea that was ingrained in you from a child from somebody being mean to you as a kid yeah and i think all those things that form us in our formative years stay with us and unless you have a situation where there are people who can validate you and encourage you and support you and that's one thing i found again with the jungle i allowed myself to be vulnerable with 11 strangers and if you ask any of my friends that's not me at all i would not give relinquish power in that way to give you like that's why i was annoyed when i when i started to be described as gay black black gig or whatever because it i get you're giving people ammunition to do things to you yeah it's like you're giving the power back yeah to describe

you in a way absolutely and i think also like a lot of people and not just comedians we all do this often we will say a joke and be self-deprecating and it's not actually because we want to make the joke about ourselves but it's like well if i make the joke you can't make it because i've already done it okay i'll give a really silly example i was with a friends of mine in i well as soon as left the jungle went to brisbane do some shows and some friends of mine were there with two of their friends one of whom i'd met before on one occasion and he uh was quite merry quite drunk bought me a drink and i accepted bad mistake someone's drunk offers you a drink in your company you're now accepting him into your fold the next thing he said to me i'm not even joking

he said oh oh let's let's do that nigger thing and brought his fist towards me like a fist pump yeah let's do that and i'm like whoa whoa whoa what wait you don't get to call me these where you know we're not bad when did this happen when did we become you know there's certain friends of mine, as we all know, that when you say things to each other, you wouldn't say it openly. But no, no, no, no. Because you bought me a drink and you're in my company, does that give you license to say what you want? Here's my question, though, in that, to you, when something is offensive, how important is intention? Because he would say, oh, I didn't intend to offend you, but that doesn't matter. You're offended. So where does that line sit between intention

verse offense well it's a very fine line i'll give you that but as i said before i think you can always tell if someone is being genuine in their curiosity in their question if someone's being provocative and the reason why i know uh for him is because a friend of mine had already told me that she had challenged him about using the n-word before right and he was like i'm gonna do it he felt like he had liberty too and i think because of the drink you know and because he'd seen me on stage you know whatever i use the n word on stage in context as a joke so you must have thought oh he's okay with that totally but no let's take a pivot because i could talk about you i could talk to you for so long but i know we have a time frame let's pivot pivot pivot to

the royal family i mean your hint on i'm a celebrity was loved by the royal family but that's because you have been invited to perform for them before you do have a bit of a connection to them talk to us about the time that you actually got to meet them and perform for them Oh, I done Prince Charles. Well, the former Prince Charles' birthday. I was on with... You forgot their name? Yeah, two legends.

One of the other royals. Joe Rivers, who's left us. And Robin Williams was also on the film, left us. He's my favorite person. And again, it's a perception. The members of the royal family that I've met are quite funny people. Are they? Yeah, they've got a sense of humor.

Yeah. But we only see one side of them, which is them opening something, them smiling at something, them waving at something. Cutting a ribbon. Yeah. than delivering a speech in a very sort of stilted, very professional way. But like all of us, we've got different facets to our personalities. They're very funny people.

I remember doing a joke when I met the late Prince Philip, and I did the joke about, oh, I really want to get another BBC series. But as we know, the BBC has a diversity policy, and apparently I've got to wait for Lenny Henry to die. You know, one in, one out, let's not rock the boat. Joke, joke, joke. And in the lineup, Prince Philip comes to me and he goes, oh, you're the comedian who wants Lenny Henry to die. We can arrange that.

I mean, wow. I mean, my whole thing is if you don't know people, we can't judge them. Like all the flack that Prince Harry and Meghan are getting, which I mean, not man. I defy anybody to be, what, nine years old and go through the death of your mother in the public glare. And to top that all, have to walk behind her coffin. yeah with no emotion and show no emotion as a child yeah wow you know my when i lost my mom i was in my late 40s and i cried like a baby you spoke about it on i'm a celebrity you spoke about palliative care that was the charity that you represented yes thanks yeah and i i mean unless

you're somebody who has gone through it i don't think it's an experience that anyone could really understand was it your mom that you were with alongside was that who you were representing in the jungle what i was representing my twin sister uh essentially and that's when i first saw firsthand work that palliative care charities and organizations do and the thing i took away from that is that none of us use those services until we need them yeah and so you don't think about you don't think about them and a lot of the people who end up working for these charities organizations are actually volunteers who have been through it and are so grateful for what they've done that they give something back yeah and i was so grateful and that's why i started a

thing in the uk collecting money doing charity nights for two palliative care charities in the uk that are close to me and when i came to australia i thought i'd continue the same thing but find a palliative care charity in the area that i was in hence coming across banks here because their whole ethos as with most of these is the quality of life they don't think about the end of life but the quality of life and maintaining that and it could be from anything from the person who's going through it to their family you know take them out for a day out or going to the movies or something just to add to the knowledge that yes the life is limited but we don't have to be all sad and gloomy till the end we can still embrace the time we have left

yeah wow it's incredible isn't it also just that you're not alone doing it you know that i think there's so many we're going through it with my mum and my stepdad at the moment my stepdad he's entering palliative care and we have someone who's like going through that transition with my mum and she was so alone and she was so like I don't know what to do there's no one here to help and it's been revolutionary for her really has helped her so much so yeah I think unless you've unless you've seen it firsthand like you really don't realize how important it is oh Laura darling I feel you I feel you because honestly that's why I really wants to highlight I don't want to say the industry but this whole area because it's so important i can see the emotions uh coming out of

you already because i went through the same thing and i'm really good friends now with some of the people who work in these palliative care charities because i'm in awe of them yeah i'm in awe because like i said earlier i couldn't do that job because you take it all home yeah i will take it all and you see people were so selfless and the little things matter when you think you're alone and you can pick up a phone or you can a referral to this or that and they are there for you 24 7 takes a very special person yeah steven i said it before we could talk to you forever but unfortunately we do have a time frame but i can't thank you enough for coming on and i'm so glad we got to do it while you were here in person before you chuffed back off to the uk one thing i will say that i

almost forgot about but talking about crazy experiences coming full circle when i got out of the jungle I facetimed Ben like my boyfriend Ben straight away hadn't spoken to me in a month and Stephen was there at the hotel where and Ben goes to me Stephen taught me English and I was like what Stephen you were like doing this on the side was Stephen an English teacher and he's like no when Ben moved from Switzerland to the UK at 15 his English was not great right like enough to get by but the way that they would learn English is to watch something that you love in english so he used to just watch the comedy shows on the apollo online and he just watched steven over and over and over again and he's like i literally learned english from steven and i was

like how amazing is that like 17 years later i'm locked in the jungle with this guy that taught my partner english i think that is such a crazy and how fortuitous that i was there in that moment and then you put the the facetime phone into me and i got i had goosebumps it's amazing and that i think you're absolutely right when it goes full circle you have no idea what you do how that affects somebody else if it wasn't for me ben would not speak english and i wouldn't be with him so i think you owe me i owe you my relationship but isn't that it's amazing how you touch people's lives in some sort of way without knowing without knowing and that's why i think i said to brit when my partner was in the jungle and i introduced him to brit the first thing you

said was his sister who lives in rural england listens to this podcast can you believe that amazing isn't it what's her name her name is rosie sington hi rosie but how crazy like it's so cool to have someone that lives in like rural england yeah also i just felt a bit of flex in that moment because i was like oh cool i got some credibility like steven knows i'm someone in here you're like see people actually listen to the podcast not even that it's the fact that i had a connection with you with ben and then i had a connection back at you with my part it was great no it was just like because you don't know how things are connected you know but i didn't know about your story and all i can do is send all best wishes to your mum and the chap because it is a difficult time

but with a palliative care team behind you it can be better yeah and slightly easier and that's all you need steven thank you so much for coming and being a part of the podcast like i said i feel like i already had seen such a version of you meeting you in the flesh he's better in real life right yeah i mean everything's better in real life right but it's so nice it's so nice to meet you thank you so much for your vulnerability thank you for sharing everything so openly and yeah it's just been it's been a real pleasure if you guys ever get a chance to go and see steven in australia or in the uk anywhere in the world that he is you are constantly coming back to australia like you have a big family here and you're always performing back at home as well

please go and see him he's got what's your website oh steven k amos.com we'll link it Is that it? I love the confidence. We'll put it in the show notes. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you very much. Thank you.