Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 132: Harry Hill (Christmas Special)

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

Spreading festive cheer this week is absurdist comedy hero Harry Hill! But which Christmas special is better? There’s only one way to find out… Harry Hill’s autobiography ‘FIGHT!’ is out now. Buy it here. Harry Hill is on tour with ‘Pedigree Fun’ in 2022. Buy tickets here. Harry’s podcast ‘Harry Hill’s Noise’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Acast. Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive. Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations). Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial. And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show. Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy, now. Please? Welcome to the Off Menu podcast, the little pizza table that keeps the hot cheese of bad vibes from the pizza lid of the internet. How's that? I liked it. Switched it up a bit? Yeah, yeah. So, sorry. I mean, the listener won't know that you didn't take one at that where you were kind of saying, kind of sounding like, you know, that we were stopping the

good times getting to the lid of the internet, almost. No, I guess it's the cheese is the bad times. Yes. Which is not true, obviously. But we're the little... Finally, he admits it. We're the little plastic tape. I confess, and he's trying to blast through it, but he finally confesses that cheese is the bad times. No, cheese is the good times.

We got it on wax. Cheese is the good times, especially with the Yard Sale Off Menu Christmas Dream Pizza. All now from all Yard Sale Pizza locations. He confessed. He confessed that cheese is the bad times. Ed Gamble confessed it. My name is James A. Kester, and I'm a winner. This is the Off Menu podcast. We invite Kester to the Dream Restaurant, and we ask them their favorite ever start a main course dessert, side dish and drink, not in that order. And this week is a Christmas special. And our guest is...

Harry Hill. Kester's second Christmas special in this run of two Christmas specials. Very excited to have the wonderful Harry Hill joining us. Wow, we, Harry Hill, everyone's favorite cheeky uncle. He is a cheeky uncle. Yeah. Especially, I'm guessing, if he's your actual uncle. Yeah, then he must be like super, super cheeky uncle.

He's a double uncle. Yeah, he's a double uncle, because he's everyone. He's a nation's uncle, but he's also your uncle. Yes. What a wonderful comedian. Harry Hill's TV burp, one of the best TV shows ever. Absolutely. You love it. I mean, looking back for probably over a decade afterwards, everyone was trying to do it as well. That's how you know a good show. You nail it, and then everyone goes, Joe, what we should do? We should all do clips that we've found online or on other TV shows. I bet that'll be funny, just like Harry Hill. Nope.

Nope. No, no, no. No one's as funny as Harry Hill, so bad luck. I guess they found a way of doing it with Gogglebox. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sort of a riff on TV burp, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, that's ultimate TV burp. And now, like, you know, all over the Internet, people do reaction videos to stuff. I mean, Harry Hill started it all. Still the original.

Still the OG uncle, watching the TV and reacting to it. You've been framed. Well, I mean, he wasn't the OG that. No, of course, but he resurrected the format and perfected it. Thank you, Harry. But looking forward to speaking to him. But of course, even though he's done all of these wonderful things, as well as being, let's not forget, a fantastic stand-up comedian. Yeah, even though he's done all of those things, if he says a secret ingredient that we have predetermined, we will kick him out of the dream restaurants. James, what

is the secret ingredient for Harry Hill this week? Secret ingredient is hooves. Hooves. He did a show called Hooves, that's why we're being cheeky. Yes. We're thinking maybe. We're trying to be cheeky uncles. Yeah.

We're cheeky cousins, aren't we? We're cheeky little cousins. Each other's cousins? Or we're both brothers and we're someone else's cousins? So we're someone else's cousins, but we're cousins to the same people. So we only really see each other at weddings. Yeah. Yeah. But we get on.

We get on, but we only see each other at weddings. That's what we aspire to one day. Yes. Yeah. Once this facade, this hellish facade of a podcast has come to an end, we'll only see each other at weddings. Just see each other at weddings. I mean, let's face it though, by the time it is over, more likely there'll be funerals. Yes.

So we are cheeky cousins. Harry's a cheeky uncle. Yeah. What's the great bonito? Well, the great bonito is obviously the scrappy little nephew running around with a snotty little nose. Yeah. How do you feel about that one? Yeah.

Likes it. We'll probably be chatting to Harry about his new book, Fight. Yeah. Autobiography. Everyone should know what that's a reference to. Yes. If they don't. Well, where you been?

Where you been, guys? Where you been, guys? Great book. Can't wait to ask about it. Can't wait to hear what his meal is. Yes. Very excited. Also, we're not going to chat about this, but I'm on tour in February, James.

I'd start my tour in February, goes through to April. Ed Gamble, Electric. EdGamble.co.uk for details. Buy yourself some tickets for Christmas. I'm gonna, because Ed still refuses to give me freebies. No way. You won't do it. We must act like the general public, James.

We're not the government. We're not the government. Well, look, if Anton Decker doing satire, I'm going to join in as well. Yeah. You've done well. Anton Decker doing satire? We'll talk about it later. But now, here's the off-menu menu of Harry Hill.

Harry Hill. Welcome, Harry Hill, to the Dream Restaurant. Thanks very much. Oh. Welcome, Harry Hill, to the Dream Restaurant. We've been expecting you for some time. It's the genie. Yeah.

It's the restaurant. How do you feel about genies, Harry? Well, one of my first breaks in show business is when I was nine, I was with a twankee in, you know, the name of the panto, I think. Aladdin, I believe. Aladdin, yeah. Genies would know this. Yeah, yeah.

I know the name. May I say, before this anecdote even continues, nine, pretty young to play twankee. Well, yeah. The youngest twankee in history. It was, sorry, I should have prefaced that. It was the cub panto. Okay.

Right, okay. But even then, I was young. Yeah. Because, you know, cubs goes up to about 11, I think. Yes. I think you're right. So there were a few people, obviously, that were passed over for the role. And I can't remember who played the genie, actually.

That's a big role, but it's ageless as well. So it could have been one of the newer cubs. But it was really, you know, Aladdin is what put genies on the map, I think. Yeah. Big time. It was huge for us. Aladdin. And also, I mean, to be fair, Aladdin did a lot for widows as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It's between them and Scottish widows, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. The two main widows were promotional devices. Yeah. Certainly in terms of, like, positive representation of widows, because in a lot of the other stuff, they're very sad, aren't they?

Well, there was the TV serial Widows, which is quite on the nose as a title for it. They weren't messing around. Oh. I suppose the spider, the black widow. Now, of course, the superhero black widow, you know, in film franchise. Probably wouldn't have happened were it not for Widow Twanky. Did you do a lot of research for the role? Did you talk to a lot of widows before you played Widow Twanky?

I did research. I hung around the undertakers. Yeah. Excuse me. Nine years old. You visited your husband. Yeah. So I did do a lot of that research.

I know that the kid playing Aladdin had ginger hair. Right. It wasn't a natural choice. Already, that's not exactly it. For the role. Want to give him a shout out? Yeah, I was just talking to him in the car on the way here. Funny enough.

Really? Yeah. Because his mum's just died. OK. Sorry. It's true. Yeah, that's true. My mum.

You know, like, I don't know about you. My mum's 84. Yeah. And she's all her friends keep dying. And so she's got so blasé about it. So this is my best friend out from school. Yeah. And she says, she just texted me saying,

yeah, great to see you at Christmas. Adam's mum died. It's like that. Yeah. Another one gone. You know, this has just become so blasé. Did you ring him up to give him? Because obviously you yourself have been a widow before.

Did you ring him up to give him advice on the grieving process? Well, he wouldn't be a widow. No, that's not what they call it. No, he'd be an orphan. Yeah. I know the kids don't get called widows. Widow junior. Widow junior.

There's a film. Yeah. Widow junior would be a film that you could pitch. Just going to say it again. Kiddos. There you go. There you go. What's that?

Ed's joke is, sorry. I'll tell him. Kiddos. Kiddos. I'd like to spell it. But with a W at the end? Yes. This is one of our strongest starts.

I think so. I'd say. This is a strong start. I'd like to hear some of the other starts. I'll tell you. I guess you should just do like a start special, which is like a compilation of all the starts. Yeah, we should actually, yeah.

So maybe like get all the starts and put them in a certain order that they might make their own narrative somehow. Exactly the sort of thing you'd think of. Yeah. This is exactly the trend. Yeah. This is one of my beef about, forgive me, younger comedians. Absolutely.

In the old days, you just used to be able to just tell jokes for an hour. Yeah. You didn't have to build to anything. Yeah. You didn't have to be any narrative. So-called narrative. We weren't all storytellers back then. We were just funny.

We're just funny people with jokes. You can't make out Harry Hill. Like, that's all you did with your shows. You put a lot into the structure. I put a lot into it. You would take a routine. You would divide it up into all its separate bits. And then you would shuffle it all together like that.

You put a lot. You think they're probably- They're most talking about effort. Older comics. Older comics will get at you going, look at that with a structure back in my day. You could just do a routine as a whole. You didn't have to shuffle it in with all the other routines.

Yeah. Have it all be all the callbacks at the end. This is absolutely- What are those? Those haunties honking. Actually, they like those. Those were stolen from my lock-up recently. I went to get them.

I thought maybe, you know, when you've got a tour coming up and I'm thinking, oh, what can I recycle? There must be something I could do. That sort of panic. Yeah. And I go down there

and I've got this big metal case for them in this lock-up under all this stuff. I share the lock-up. It's a double garage. Yeah, yeah. Right? It's a lock-up garage. One side of it, his side,

is piled high with, look like, rags. It's just like rags. Okay? And I get down there one day and I've got all my props and stuff. Stuff I don't really need. He's there with a white van and he's sorting all this stuff out.

And he said, oh, I'm from Nigeria and I send this stuff back to Nigeria. I run this charity. I thought, oh, fair enough. And on close inspection, it wasn't just rags. And then one day I go in,

it's been cleared out. He's gone. Two years pass, locked down. I go to investigate, to get this metal box. I hope the metal box is empty. He's taken it. So you think...

Well, what's he doing with them? What was in there that you were looking for? The horns. The horns from your show that were lined up. Well, I don't know if you've seen Bill Bailey's latest show. I think I know exactly where they've gone. So you think that maybe

the man who sent stuff for charity to Nigeria maybe sent your horns to Nigeria? Before he went, he had a little route around. There were also two Lylos that were missing. Why do you think he specifically took the horns and then the two Lylos? I'm thinking maybe he's floating the horns across. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A note. Why can he send... Oh, so the moat, and he's not floating them all the way to Nigeria. There's a moat in Nigeria that he needs to get the horns across. How far do you reckon?

Let me answer it. May I just address that question? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying stretch of water. I'm not saying specifically a moat. How far do you reckon you could get those horns on two Lylos if you had to get them from here to Nigeria? How far do you reckon you could get?

Me, personally. If you got... Yeah, you got the two Lylos, you're putting the horns on them. Yeah. What's the verb? We asked this to everyone, by the way. Further so I can swim.

So you would... You would swim with them all the time. Two lengths. Two lengths. I personally would... Eventually I'd push them and hope that the sea takes them. If you could get the tides right,

if you could judge the tides correctly. So if you could ride those tides, you could get all the way to Nigeria. As you were swimming towards the shore of Nigeria, pushing the two Lylos with the horns on them. Honk, honk, honk, honk, honk, honk. Who's that? That's how you would get the attention.

Your book's out. Fight? Fight, yes. It's an autobiography. It tells my story. I thought there was a bit of a gap in the market this year for comedians and autobiographies. Finally.

What do you think it sits in the... Who's life story? In a chart. Who's life story? Who's life story do you think you've definitely got a better life story than that comic? Well, superficially, my life story is not terribly dramatic.

I mean, it's a nice life, but it's not a good story. Is it a real autobiography, Harry? It is, yeah. Because sometimes I don't trust you to tell the truth. Yeah, I have written... I wrote one which was... It was called Living the Dream, which was...

I had committed to writing... It was like a diary thing. An entry for one every day of the year. And I came up ten days short. So I engineered that I would hit over the head and went into a coma for ten days. Yeah. So there's a cap.

It's a cap. And I wake up from the coma. It's a useful literary device. Very good. The coma. I always thought that was a thing with a... If you were in a coma, if you went into a coma for like five years or something,

they would keep you up to date with the hairstyles. The man in bed four is looking terribly dated. Could we do a Peaky Blinders? We always start with still a spark in water. Still water. I'm saying still water. Really still. How still?

No ripples. No ripples. Because it's like, you know, these... Ripples of time. The ripples of time and, you know, how one small movement can end up with a huge effect. You don't like to be reminded of the chaos theory. Yeah, the butterfly effect when you're sitting down

for a glass of water. I understand that. I always took that butterfly effect thing. You know, like, was it the... If a butterfly flaps its wings in... Stretch them. Yeah. There's a typhoon in...

There's a typhoon in the Maldives. And I always took from that that what we should do is kill butterflies. That's the... Because they're causing so much trouble. Yeah. Pop it up as all bread. Pop it up as all bread, Harry Hill.

Pop it up as all bread. Bread. Straight away. Any particular sort of bread that you're into? I like a bread that is sort of elastic-y and oily. Wow. So where does that take us? For capture.

Exactly. Yeah. Coming at you. Yeah, for capture coming at you. I mean, bread's changed so much in my lifetime. Is this going to be a run about younger comedians? Here we go. Here we go.

Here we go. The old popper bear feeling threatened again. Bread needs structure now, doesn't it? The narrative. Yeah. You know, there weren't all these different types of bread. No. You know, it's one of the things that I'm, you know,

I'm lucky to have lived through. Yeah. Do you think that's sometimes? I do, yeah. Yeah. It was just white-sliced. But you were happy with it. Brown came in.

Yeah. How many breads were... So there were like two breads when you were... Crusty loaves. Yeah. And just regular soft loaves. Soft and crusty. We were told that the crust had more fiber in it.

So that's where the whole thing of make sure you eat your crusts comes from. It gives you a hairy chest. I was always told that if you eat your crusts. Look at that, Bob. It's worked. I mean, for the listener, Harry, he'll just flash his hairy chest. It's funny because I don't think of you as having a hairy chest. And then...

When would you be thinking about it? So like... Harry back? Not so much. I guess we should stop that line of questioning at the back. Well, it's you up next. Arms? Yeah.

Harry arms? Four arms. Pits? Taking the pits, bad luck. I don't want to talk about it. So you want stretchy, elastic, oily bread? Yes. With anything with it?

You want some butter? You want some... Oil. I'll have some olive oil with it. Olive oil. Yeah. Balsamic? Just olive oil.

Just olive oil. What do you want against balsamic? I just prefer the oil. And it's a bit sweet, isn't it, the balsamic? I find it a little bit sweet. Can be. Yeah. Can be sweet, can't it?

Mmm. Do you like an olive within your focaccia or a sun-dried tomato? Well, you know, my son drives tomatoes. Your son drives tomatoes? Yep. Ah! Oh, fell for that for a second. Look, line and sinker.

Yeah, that is... I was doing a gig with Harry last night and he said that on stage. He let me out. And they fell for it, line and sinker, to the extent that Harry had to explain what the joke was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had to look at my watch and do that one. I like those jokes sometimes that you only let half of them get.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, you should come and see me one day. I must. Yeah. Yeah, so sun-dried tomatoes. I mean, I think I just like the focaccia straightforward focaccia. There was, you know, this whole thing about the lockdown, everyone started baking bread and all that.

I did actually try it. Yes. And bake focaccia with some success. Some success. I made the dough. Yeah. I forgot to put the olive oil in. Quite important.

Initially. Yeah. So the dough is like dough. Yes. And I thought I'd better add the...it's not too late to add the olive oil. So I poured the olive oil. But then it becomes like a big slippery ball of dough because you can't then get the olive oil to penetrate into the...but, you know, I persevered.

And at the end of it, it was quite convincing. Wow. Yeah. It always looks hard for capture. Whenever I see people do it on bake-off or anything like that. It's easy. Really hard. It's really easy.

You did well on bake-off, didn't you? Well, yeah. Given that I was against Martin Kemp, who put his buttercream icing in the oven. I mean, like, there, he got his...whatever it is, the batter mixed up with the icing. Oh, he switched them out. He put the icing in the oven and the dough in the fridge. Yeah. What?

A prat. Yeah. So I was up against him. Yeah. I was up against Rachine Conaty. Yeah. So, you know, to go any further with that. She made so much gingerbread.

It's like a mountain of gingerbread. Just great big lumps here. And she's rolling it, rolling out. And it's like this thick. She's rolling it and then it's that thick. And it's just so much rolling and rolling and rolling. And Bill Turnbull, who, yeah, just beat him. Yeah.

Have you done it? You've done it, right? Yeah, I've done it. James is famously the worst celebrity bake-off contestant of all time. Oh, I saw a bit of it. Was it something really runny you made? Yeah. Flapchecks.

I would absolutely trade places with Kemp in a heartbeat. I'd kill for that story. I wish I just put eyes on it in the oven. I was surprised because I thought, oh, this is just a laugh. And then you get the instructions through and it's all like, do this and what are you going to blah, blah, blah. And then in the tent, they were quite serious. Martin Kemp was quite steely-eyed about it.

I think he had to change that attitude pretty quickly once he put the buttercream in the oven. He had to pretend that he hadn't come in to win. And he laughed just a gaze, all for charity. A bit of fun, but he went home, just trashed his room. Dostoev Harry fucking hell. Yeah. Have you seen Harry on TV? He's a scamp.

He beat me. Is it which one's he made? Is Shirley or Pepsi? Shirley, I think. Yeah, he's most Shirley, yeah. I put me buttercream. In the oven, Shirley. Never mind, have your dinner.

Come on. More Junior Bake Off? Yes. I filmed that in the summer. That is, I have to say, the best job I have ever had. Wow. I loved Junior Bake Off so much. I get so invested.

Yeah. It's so good. They're great, those kids. They're so funny. They're just constantly surprising to me. I mean, obviously, some of them give me a bit of a hard time. And I've had to sort of take one or two into a corner and say, look, mate, the bits that stay in are the bits with me.

I'll put up a bit more. What they don't show you is all the crying and the, yeah, trying to cut that out. It's a very cruel program. And the wasp, because there are a lot of wasps as well. You know, kids' wasps. That sounds funny. I'd like to see the wasp edit.

Yeah, I'd like to see just pure wasp cut. Just like you flapping wasps away from the kids. Well, what they do is they put up a fake wasp nest. You know this? No. Yeah. You can buy these commercially. They're fake wasp nest that you hang up in the,

and the wasps think are already taken. Oh, right. Because I would have thought that would have attracted wasps. Because if someone like put a fake shop up somewhere, I'd be like, oh, we'll go over there and have a look at the shop. Not if you're a shop owner. Oh, that's true. Yeah.

There you go. You say, no, I'm not going to. Yeah. Yeah. You think, well, I'm not going to open a shop here. There's another shop. Well, that doesn't, it's not the same with antique shops, is it?

You often get a string of antiques. A cluster. What if you attract a bear, though, because you've put up a big wasp nest, and the bear thinks this is great. You couldn't cut. What? Harno.

You couldn't cut that out of Junior Baker for the bear caveman. You'd have to leave that in the edit. You could cut around some of it. To try to take it out of a zapped tennis racket. Just trying to zap the bear. Yeah. Well, I've often thought, you know, that, like, people talk about in the future

when mankind has died out, what would take over? And often it, well, back in the sort of 80s, people would often say dolphins, because they were considered intelligent, able to communicate with each other. I always thought it would be bears. Yeah. Because they can pretty much move straight in.

Yeah. Because everything is the right height. Kitchens, cars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Big clothes. Yeah.

The bigger side of clothes. Yeah, baggy clothes. Yeah. Yeah. True. Yeah, they could slot right in, didn't they? Yeah. Wouldn't have to do any alterations pretty much.

Just take it over. Yeah. They'd love to go to Paddington Station. They've already got the staff here. Yeah. Yeah. They even picked the station up for us. Yeah.

This is great. This is great. Your dream starter. We're getting into your meal proper now. What? I saw that. You were trying to look at it. You got a bit down.

I thought you were trying to look at it. I thought you were trying to look at it. I don't want any spoilers. You don't need to keep on top of me. I promise I might be in a head. Well, I've got Potted Shrimps. Oh, lovely. Potted Shrimps.

They are nice. Now, I'm going to hold my hands and find out what shrimps are, but I've never heard of Potted Shrimps before. Well, they're like shrimps. Well, they are shrimps in butter. But the butter's like hard. Hard. Yeah.

Hard cold butter that's got like a nutmeggy flavor to it. Yeah. And it's embedded in it. What is the ratio? Because I'm now picturing like Jurassic Park, you know, the amber with the mosquito in the middle. Think again. It's not one shrimp in the middle of a load of butter.

You don't need to. If you want a fossil reference, it's more like sedimentary rock. Yeah. You know, with the little shells all around. Yeah. So what's the, like how much space is there between each shrimp? Some of them are actually very, would be touching each other. Yeah.

I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rush hour on the tube, on the central line. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. But with butter. If you were to fill a carriage of the central line with butter. And shrimp. No, the people of the shrimp. Oh, the people of the shrimp. Yeah. Yeah.

For this analogy. Yeah. And then chill it down. Yeah. Because you'd never be able to eat that amount of Potted Shrimps if it was shrimps. But a giant could eat that amount of human. If it was in the tube carriage on the central line. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Put your hand in. Yeah. Rip the end off and put your hand in there. Yeah. I love, I love Potted Shrimp. Rarely appears on a menu anymore.

You don't really see it. It's sort of, I'll be honest, we, initially for our wedding, Harry, not me and James, my wife. Congratulations. Thank you. We had Potted Shrimp on the menu. Oh, you did? And then the caterer went bust.

And the new one was not on board with Potted Shrimp. They didn't have Potted Shrimp available. Went bust. Wow. Yeah. It was over COVID, of course. Right. But we were really looking forward to those Potted Shrimp.

Yeah. Well, it's, you know, this is, it comes back to your question about bread. Because it's served with toast. So you've got more bread now? It comes with toast. So actually you probably wouldn't order bread. So you're going to change it to Poppinoms? No.

It's a fault in the format. Of course. In that you, it's rigid. Yeah. Oh, there's many faults in this format, Harry. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I've just picked one up. What kind of toast do you have?

I think it's just, is it brown bread toasted? I think it is. Yeah. Brown just sliced white. It's cold. It's all cold. The shrimps are cold. Yeah.

But the toast is warm. The toast is warm. Hot. Yeah. And do you like put the knife in and then spread this stuff on the toast? Yeah. That's what you do. Yeah.

Yeah. I suppose it's a bit like a sort of terrini type thing. Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, the classic is more convey, isn't it? More convey potty shrimps. Right. There's a lot of shrimping goes on there.

Uh-huh. And when I was a kid, we would shrimp. We would go shrimping. You know, this is when the oceans were stopped full of living creatures. You know, you just have to dip your, your shrimp net into the water down there in the east spawn and come back with, it would be teeming with all sorts of living creatures, shrimps and sea horses. Sea horses.

Yeah. Yeah. Potted sea horses. Potted sea horses. Not as popular now as these days. No. You wouldn't get as many sea horses in, I guess. How big is a sea horse?

Because I'll be honest, when I imagined it there, it was the size of like a small dog. I think they're about that big, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. A little action figure size. You get three sea horses and a potted sea horse. Yeah. Which isn't good enough.

There's no relationship between sea horses and sea monkeys, is there? Um, no. No more than there is between like, I guess, monkeys and horses. Right. I think it's as distant as that. Yeah. But think about Planet of the, in Planet of the Apes, monkeys ride horses. Oh yeah.

Good point. Do you think there's a sort of scale down remake of Planet of the Apes possible where a sea monkey can ride a sea horse? A water one. I was just thinking about that. If you were a horse and you think, and the monkey gets on and starts riding, you're thinking, what? Come off it, wouldn't you?

You don't think you'd accept it? No. Straight away? No, not at all. No. I mean, if your version of the future's true, they're going to have bears trying to get on them. Yeah.

They have a bear saddling up. Yeah. I mean, at that point when you were a horse, I reckon you would still think, what? But you would think, I'm going to have to part with this. Yeah. Because this bear's going to eat me if I don't move to be useful. Yeah. Whereas monkeys, you could go, I don't know, buck this off.

Yeah, exactly. Run off. Yeah, yeah. Who cares? What was the question? Seahorses. A sea monkey riding a sea horse. You used to catch a shrimp with a little boy.

Yeah, I would catch those shrimps. And then we would take them back to the holiday home, you know, if we had a bed and breakfast or something. Yeah. Would you pot them yourself, though? We would boil them and eat them just like that. We wouldn't have food. As they were.

We wouldn't pot them, though. They didn't have anything. Delicious, just as they were. No, it was a lot of hard work. It was a lot of work. Because they were very tiny. Yeah. We were almost like filter feeders.

You'd have to have so many to get a mouthful. My family are filter feeders. I should have explained that. Yeah. The gaps between our teeth. You can see that. Just suck up krill. Yeah.

Carrie Krill. Is that that? Carrie Krill. Carrie Krill. Your sister. Yeah. My sister. My sister's my sister.

My sister Carrie Krill. My drag all three. Yeah. Carrie Krill, that would be great. I think people are ready for that. Yeah. Carrie Krill would be like the opening support actor. Come on in drag.

Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't be American, but it would be over. It's American. It's American, I think. Something's going on there. Something's going on there. It's American, I think.

Yeah. Hi, everyone. It's me, Carrie Krill. How are you doing? Who wants a shrimp? I think you have five buckets of shrimp. Shrimps. Yeah.

unbelievable idea that you would do that. Probably a lot of your fans will listen to us now going to hope. Yeah, we won't carry. You've been chanting that all the way through the first day. Okay, it was just a throwaway comment on a podcast. How did I know it was going to be downloaded 700 million times. It's the most popular podcast in history. We won't carry. All right, all right, That'll do it. Who wants a shrimp? It's you. Yay!

Your garage is just full of shrimp. Yeah. At the end of it. It would be turned into a shrimp hatchery. Yeah. You get a phone call. I mean, I haven't complained from your neighbor. It says your garage absolutely stinks.

And you go in there and he's turned off the electricity and all the shrimps have died. Oh, no. They all died. Another batch died. Yeah. You have to get them wholesale. I think the potty shrimp sounds very interesting.

Where did you first have potty shrimp? I'm surprised you haven't heard it. Never heard of it before you said it. Really? Never even heard of it. It's very, like, because you've got the warm toast and then you sort of get down into the potty shrimp, spread it on.

Some of it melts, some of it stays solid. You get that delicious, like, buttery taste. What did you have for your wedding starter in the end? I'm trying to remember what I had. Scallops. Yeah, I had the scallops. Two choices. Scallops with, like, a longistine beast sauce and truffle gnocchi.

What would you have if you'd gone to Ed's wedding? What would you have ticked on the scallops? What was it? Scallops? Or gnocchi. I would have scallops, probably, but I'm worried with mass catering if it's cold. No, no, no.

It was good. It was good stuff. It was good stuff, right? It was warm, but obviously, you know... It's just that with the other caterer came past and thinking how they're choosing the caterers. It's the second choice. We'll come to what was on the rest of the menu later and find out your full menu

for Ed's wedding. What food did you have at your wedding, Harry? Bloody hell, so long ago. 25 years this year. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Thank you so much. We got married in Wandsworth Registry Office.

So we started off in our house, which is a short walk. My stomach's going mantl, I'm so sorry. It was the Potted Shrimp. Yeah. They are nice. It was happening earlier. The longest. Yeah.

It was the whole thing. It was a real long, like... Yeah. Yeah. And I was, like, trying to figure out... Your stomach's got tinnitus. What is that? And I realised it's Ed's stomach.

I'll leave it alone. I don't know why. And then it just really went off on one again, like a... Like a theramine or something. I apologise. The start of Doctor Who. That would be an act. Yeah.

It's got talent, wouldn't it? What are you going to do for us today, Ed? Theramine sound from the beginning of Doctor Who with my stomach. So the weddings at Wandsworth Registry Office, you can walk from your house. So we went... Well, we... So everyone came to our house. Because the wine bar that we had it in, the dew, we could only get 50 people in.

So that's actually quite good. I don't know about you, but if it's open-ended, everyone says, Oh, what about Auntie Sansa? Yeah. Yeah, about Sansa. Oh, she'd like to come, you know, and it all starts spiralling. Everyone's got their input. So we were quite...

In a way, it was quite good. No, we met at the registry office. Registry office. Back to our house. Yeah. For Champagne, right? I bought Sailor Return. I bought loads of bottles of champagne.

And everyone got absolutely trashed, right? Really drunk in a sort of crazy way. There was a cigarette burning one of the speaker fronts. That gives you some idea of the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Sodom and Gomorrah.

And then we go across the road. We walk across the road to the wine bar. And in answer to your question, I think it was choices, and I know one was duck. And the other was like Confit of Duck, that's what I had. I don't remember what the starter was or the pudding. I was just so happy. Don't tell us who if the answer is yes, but were there any comedians at your wedding? Al Murray.

I mean... What? It's not funny. I said, don't tell us who if the answer is yes. Oh, I see. I'm sorry. I was trying to do a guessing game and we guessed what comedians were at your wedding. And I would have guessed Al Murray, because we all know you're...

I mean, Fedda say, Thick as Thieves? Yeah. So, your main course has got the Potted Shrimp to start. What's that tea in us up for? The mains. I'm going for Spaghvong. Spaghetti vongole. Spaghvong.

No, no one's ever called it Spaghvong before, and I don't know why. No. Spaghvong. No, this is another dish I've not heard of. Oh, mate, you have. This has been on the podcast before, Spaghvong. What? Spaghvong.

Spaghvong. Spaghvong. Spaghvong. Spaghvong. Spaghvong. Spaghvong. What? Someone's had spaghetti vongole before, definitely.

No way. Or vongole, sometimes, isn't it pronounced? No way. Vongole. Describe the dish, maybe. Well, it's spaghetti, yes, with the sort of... Well, with clams, little baby clams, aren't they? Yes.

I don't know why it's called... Where's the vongole come from? It's Italian for clams, perhaps. It must mean baby clams. And that's the sauce is sort of... What is it? Sort of oily, garlicky... A little bit of chilli in there as well, yeah.

Lovely. A little bit of tomato. It is nice. And what I like about it is, unlike some of the other, obviously, the spaghetti vongole nays, although there's a kind of... You remember here Prince Charles pronounce spaghetti vongole nays? Spaghetti vongole nyesi.

You know, we have some spaghetti vongole nyesi. Is that it... I'm very fast into it. I mean, obviously, we've got to ask you where you heard the... In the news or something. It's just somewhere... The whole story was... Don't come into it.

We had so much to get everyone in nyesi. I don't know. Do you want to work out what news item that would be? And you saw it and you thought, I'll never forget that. I'm never going to forget it. Well, I have a sort of slight obsession with those two. With those two?

Who's the other one? Camilla. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a bit with Princess Anne. What does this obsession entail? Do you think about them a lot and what they'll be doing on a day-to-day basis? I'd rather not go into it.

I kind of think... Well, it's just a funny... It's just a very funny character to me, Prince Charles. This sort of big, big baby. It's kind of come across as a big baby. And I'm fascinated by his... Look at his hands in some of the photographs. They're like big red, like sausages.

Big wool sausages. Swollen. And his rings are all sort of tight on his fingers. Is that a medical thing? I mean, you've... I thought that. If you looked at it thinking, is that a medical thing? It's not one I know of.

No. That's not saying a hell of a lot. Yeah. Because I guess people... Like, everyone knows... There's not many comics who everybody knows what they did before comedy, but with you, absolutely everyone knows

that you were a doctor. And... I tried to keep it quiet. When I first started, what I didn't want... I didn't want to be known as the doctor-comedian. Yeah. Because there was a couple... There were a couple around there

and there was that struck-off and died. Do you ever see them? They were like a double act. No. They were like about being a doctor and, you know... And they rose very quickly because it was like a new thing. Oh, you know, junior doctors lifting the lid.

And I was really sort of dogged about not mentioning it in interviews, but you only have to mention it once. And it's kind of such a good story to the public. You know what I mean? Yeah. For some reason, they just... I don't know if they...

They don't even like the idea. They don't even like the idea necessarily, but it's just like, oh, wow, you gave up all that five years at medical school and, you know, all that. And I've had that... I've had, you know, very rarely, but it has happened.

It's like cab drivers saying, oh, you're... You're wasted. Oh, you should be going back to it, mate. We need doctors. What are you punching about on stage for? And this people are dying. The stomach's going again?

I can't. I just unbelievable. Did you hear it? I didn't catch that one. Absolutely wailing. You got a diagnosis? Yeah, yeah. Did you have lunch? I had lunch, yeah, but...

I saw him eat it. I've been eating a lot this week, Harry, and then I had quite a sort of lightish lunch, so maybe it's just not... It's not used to... Talked with rings on fingers as well. You got more rings than I thought you'd have. One is a wedding band.

Before you came in here, I thought he's going to have nothing on his hands and the smoothest chest I've ever seen. He said that to me. I love a vongole. I wouldn't pick it a lot of the time, just because I'm so sort of meat-focused. Oh, are you?

Yeah. But are you... We've had two shellfish so far. Peter, are you just a shellfish fan? I do eat meat, you know, of course, but I'm trying to eat less. I mean, not terribly successfully, but I'm aware that, you know, this is the drive now.

Yeah. My wife has stopped eating pigs after she saw that documentary where they sort of trained them to play the xylophone or whatever. Did you see that? What? I don't know who it was.

Was it Hugh Ferney Whitting still one of that bunch? Oh, I think... Was Hugh Ferney Whitting still trained a pig to play the xylophone? Was it Jamie, one of them? They made members of the public rear animals with the expectation that, at the end,

they would send them off to slaughter. Yeah. So they had some families had chickens, some families had pigs. And the pigs were... And if you watched it, you did think, yeah, this is like a really smart dog. Right.

They'd go and get the blue ball, you know, they'd go off and bring the blue ball back. Now go and get the red ball, right? Yeah. Now go and tidy your room. I don't know what it was. And she watched this, and since that day, she wouldn't...

She wouldn't do that anymore. Some of them do tidy their room. Greg Davis told me that he saw a video... Greg David. What did he say? Greg Davis. Oh, Greg Davis, yes. But similar.

Yeah. Similar. Both born to do it. He saw a video of a pig tidying his room. It's probably the same program. What Greg told me. He saw a pig tidying his room. Yeah, he said that he saw a YouTube video,

and the only would be like, tidy your room pig, and the pig would go... and then tidy your room. That's how Greg told it. He did the snorting noise. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's what he told me. He told me it during a TV show that where he is in charge

and everyone else has to do tasks, and he was comparing the pig to my performance in the show and saying that the pig was better. I see. Yeah, because he told the pig what to do and he does it. Right. Yeah, yeah. That was fair enough.

That is fair point. So it didn't put you off pork, or did you not see the show? I was sort of drifting in and out of the show. I didn't see all of it. You know, I saw some elements of it, but not enough to convince me of that. If you saw a video of a shrimp tidying its room, would that put you off body trim?

I mean, it's about interpretation. Is it tidying its room, or is it just sort of swimming around its room, and there's sort of... every now and then its tail would flick something into place by accident. You know, given an infinite amount of time, a shrimp will tidy its room. As the old phrase goes, yeah.

And what about if you saw a clam get the blue ball? Yeah. Well, we'd have to get the blue ball and then get the red ball. Yeah. Okay. Just the blue ball. Look at it. Once is a coincidence.

Where do you think spaghetti vongolais would factor into Carrie Krill's act? Do you think Carrie Krill would get the... because it's a seafood-based act? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're saying it's... I mean, it was just a coincidence that her name was Carrie Krill. It doesn't sound like a coincidence.

I thought you'd got to lean into it. Okay. I think the audience would probably start chatting. Vongolais! Well, is it another persona called Ivongole? Yeah, Ivongole. Like that. Yeah.

Where's my best friend? Ivongole. Who comes up with... Enter Al Murray. Al Murray. Yes. As Ivon Vongole. Of course, yeah.

But Al's got, you know, previous, like, dicey history with characters and people taking them at face value. So for the rest of his life, everyone's going to be like, you know, he absolutely loves seafood that guy and he loves throwing spaghetti into audiences. Yeah. It's just what he's genuinely into. Yeah.

And that empowers me and I like to throw a spaghetti at people as a result of watching Ivon. I feel like Ivon would maybe use the shells as castanets. That's the instant... Yeah. Yeah, I had in my mind a dance, some sort of dance. Yeah. Like a flamenco style dance.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hadn't got flamenco as far as flamenco, but I thought dance. Yeah. Carrie Krill and Ivongole. Yeah. I can see.

I'd love to see UNL. Oh, good. I did have an idea for a character very briefly, which was Clary Nett, which was me. Notionally, me dresses a clarinet, so you can imagine it's got like a top, like a hat that goes into a tapered top

in a sort of clarinet suit, which incidentally, you can't get from Smithies because I checked. Yeah. And then I would come on and I'd go, I would make, because I can do a clarinet noise and I would just do tunes.

Go on. We're going to need to hear this. Hang on. Sorry. Please. Yes. Hang on. Hang on.

Start. Hang on. Start. So get into it after awhile. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be honest. Real liberal use of the phrase, I could do a clarinet voice. You try it. I mean, it's not. No, see, there's a timbre to it.

Is that anything like Woodwind? Anyone listening to this will know that. Yeah, they'll be able to tell the difference. There'll be people listening to this and go, is Harry playing a clarinet? You know how he must have played a clarinet? Yeah. And they're pretending that he's... HUMMING

You did the first time ever I saw your face. Yeah, I thought, yeah, yeah. See? See? Yeah. Yeah, it draws you in. Great. HUMMING

So, Harry, this is a Christmas special. So, we like to ask our guests on the Christmas special what you like to eat on Christmas Day. What's your dream Christmas meal? Well, yes, this is a slightly odd question because isn't there only one meal, really, unless you're a vegetarian? Interesting.

Do you reckon? Roast turkey. That's it. Do you like it? Trimmings with all the trimmings. Do you like the turkey and the trimmings? Yeah, I do. I like it.

Do you carve it? Does someone else carve it? I cook it and carve it, mate. You cook it and carve it. My brother, who is a farmer, an organic farmer, he supplies the turkey. Uh-huh. Dead.

It's a dead turkey. It's dead. Yeah, just for clarity. Yeah. And then we... I roast it. I usually do all that, you know, with the potatoes.

I won't list all the things that everyone knows. This is sort of patronising to the listeners. Well, no. We want to hear your favourite trimmings in... Oh, OK. The trimmings. The trimmings. The trimmings.

The trimmings. I would say... I do the roast potatoes. Yeah. It's just so pathetic. I can't believe you're the first guest that's actually said that. Roast potatoes. And I would try and get goose fat for those.

You know, there's probably Nigella who first turned us on to goose fat. Yeah. And roast those. Boil them first. Shake them up. Whisk them around the pan. Yeah.

Shake them up. Shake them up. Get them crispy. High heat. I would smother the turkey and butter. Yeah. And then I would turn it upside down. This is, I think, a Nigella trick, isn't it?

Yeah. Why are you turning it upside down? So that the... To confuse it. Yeah. Disorient. Disorient. All the fluid stays in the breasts.

I mean, I'd say that. Turn it upside down. So they remain moist and succulent. And then you're flipping it back when you serve it. You're not serving it upside down, Turkey. No. And you turn it over for the last something, half an hour or something.

Right. Just brown that off. The only problem is it then does have a sort of cuboid look. Okay. I see. So the top, you've got a flat top turkey. It's a flat top turkey. Yeah.

That was a song. That was a song, wasn't it? Yeah. Fat's Domino. Can you play flat top turkey on the clarinet? No, I can't. Are you done? Yeah.

Since it's turning into a wobble board. I can't just turn it on like that. You know, I need to get into the character a bit with it. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah.

It's just out of no way. It's like you're repertoire. Flat top turkey. Yeah. So you got the crispy potatoes are number one on your trimmy. Oh God. Yeah. As far as we've got, we've roasted the turkey.

Yeah. Stuffing. I just like, you know, pesto, sage and onion. Yeah. Nothing anything meaty or heavy because it's a very rich dish anyway. Carrots getting a look in here, Harry? Carrots, yeah. Batons or coins.

Yeah. Are you roasting or are you boiling? I thought you were just boiling. Boiling. You're boiling. That should be a new Christmas section we do. Batons or coins. Batons or coins.

Batons or coins. Harry Hill. I'd always go batons. Roasted batons. I roast a carrot. I love a baton as well. Roasted baton. I go roast a carrot.

Yeah. I think it's a different flavour, isn't it? Yeah. Sweeter. Yeah. Sweeter. Carrot coins are a bit. School dinners, aren't they?

Yeah. You lose respect for people who serve you carrot coins? Do you think? Oh, maybe certainly. Yeah. Pigs in blankets. Are they not getting a look in now because your wife no longer wants to eat pork? Well, we would have them.

She's actually seen a pig tidying up its own blanket. She folded it up negatively and put it on the foot of its bed. Stare it away. Yeah. It's bedroom. Yeah. I've taken the sheets off with you. It's like the pig talks.

Yeah. He's only stayed one night. Yeah. Like Carrie Grill. I've taken the sheets off. It's like someone else coming in tomorrow. So the pig's only staying over for one night? Yeah.

It's just bedding down for one night. Yeah. It's not even his room he's tidying. Doesn't know where anything goes. Just be the good guest. Pigs in blankets. Yeah. Well, this is a problem if you have one member of the family and we have a complicated family

and I've got one daughter that's vegan. One I think is vegetarian. One is just regular. And so am I. My wife's just pork. So then you have to cook these things separately, don't you? Which increases the washing up, which is... Would you do the washing up as well or would that fall to someone who hasn't cooked?

Well, that's the idea, isn't it? The idea would be that someone who hadn't cooked would do the washing up, but my kids don't ever do the washing up. You can't do the washing up. Rips in water reminds me of the passing of time. I'll have it before you. Yeah. Yeah, you like that.

He remembered it. Do you like that? So it's the narrative creeping. You're a natural storyteller. Well, we've got a dishwasher, but obviously that doesn't really do pans, does it? No. So, you know, it's a bit of a struggle. And I try not to have an argument on Christmas Day with anyone else.

We always end up having an argument. Really? Yeah, there's always... I imagine it's very hard to argue with you and not laugh. No, I'm very short-tempered. Yeah? Yeah. I mean...

Very short-tempered. You're standing there with your big collar having an argument with you. I mean, I can't see how they're keeping that straight face. What's happening? I'll argue with Harry. Hold on. Yeah. No, I'm hardcore.

Well, you wear the big collar for work, though, right? So, Christmas, do you wear a very small collar to really take a day off? Yeah, I just wear a T-shirt. I cannot imagine it. I cannot imagine it. Bank holiday Mondays. Christmas Day. Queen's birthday.

I think my head would explode if I saw you in a T-shirt. I don't think I can handle it. I get that all the time. I didn't recognise you with that big collar on, mate. Yeah. Why aren't you working in their hospital, sort of? There's people dying in the streets. There you are, punting about.

You've been framed. Anyway, tell you what I do like to do, which is... Because we have a roast. We probably have a roast most Sundays. I know that's quite unusual these days. But Christmas Day, I do the Devils on horseback, which are nice. They are fiddly. Yeah.

Warning. They are fiddly. And you can only eat three or four, can't you? They're the prunes wrapped in bacon, right? Prunes wrapped in bacon with a bit of mango chutney in the middle of the prune. So why can you only eat three or four? Are they so rich? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Obviously, you've got the big meal coming down the line. Yeah. I reckon I could eat five. He could. I'll back him up on that. He's not just chewing his mouth off. Yeah, I could eat five prunes wrapped in bacon.

What do you reckon a horse would say when a devil gets on its back? Jesus Christ, oh, fuck. Oh, God, it's a devil. Yeah. I mean, scared. Yeah. And fair enough. Yeah.

It's going to be like, I guess the devil's staying on there. Yeah. Well, where's the devil going? That's the point. If you were a devil and you got on a horse, where would you be heading? Stringfellows, I suppose. Stringfellows now! Whatever the devil's voice would sound like.

That's about right. Your dream side dish? So you wouldn't really have a side dish with spaghetti vongole, would you? Or vongole? Well... But, you know, you don't need to necessarily worry about the menu all seeming like it fits together. Oh, OK.

If you just want to throw a side dish in there that you like, no one's judging you for having a little side dish. OK. Well, I'm saying munch too. Lovely. I like the munch too, but I couldn't eat a whole one. It's a joke. That's not really my side dish of choice.

It's not. You just wanted to eat the munch too. I just wanted to resurrect that joke in 1997. That's a good joke. It's a good one. I've got to mention, when you're talking about roast dinners, your hackle put down goes around the circuit a lot of saying that you're going home and there's a nice roast chicken in the oven.

Yeah. Well, you know how that came about? No. I had a roast chicken in the oven. It's as simple as that. You know, I always struggled. You know, when you're... I don't really kind of think of myself as a character comedian,

but I've got like an exaggerated persona. I mean, I suppose it's like a character. And whenever I got heckled, I couldn't deal with it because you can't just go, you know, off. Yeah. I mean, that's what I did to start with. Yeah. And actually, that's a bit in the book.

I get heckled at the... Hack me up. I knew after the year and they used to hold the heats in the pub next door and I was on there and I got heckled and I just told this guy to airf off. And he shut up, right? But then I got out of the pub and was walking Helen Austin.

He used to be, do you remember her? Guitar Act. She had a car and she was going to give me enough back. I came out of the pub and this guy came after me with a bottle. Oh, my God. Yeah. He smashed this bottle. He's going,

he called me that and all this. Oh. And I said to Helen, bring the car around. Right? So I'm sort of chasing me around this car. She pulls up, she opens the door,

jump in, slam it shut. Boom. Off. So I struggled to come. Yeah. And then one night, I did have a chicken in the oven. And this guy heckles me.

I say, oh, you heckle me now, but I'm safe in the knowledge that when I get home, I've got a lovely chicken in the oven. Yeah. Big laugh. And then I came back and... ate the chicken. Amazing.

And then you said it every time someone heckled you from then on. Well, I came back and wanted to tell the chicken, told it on my own then, wanted to tell the chicken how grateful it was to it. You never believe what happened tonight. Did you put a chicken in the oven to cook and then nip out and do a gig?

I must have done. Wow. That's, I'd say that's good planning and also pretty brave. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy.

Must have been a local gig. Must have been. Slow cook the chicken. Brown it off initially. Yeah. Slow heat. Would you flip, would you flip a chicken?

You don't need to. You don't need to flip a chicken. No. You just don't need to. Also, this was pre-Nigella, I guess. Yeah. So you've known about the keeping the juice in the breast.

No. If we can say that. I like to try. I like them dry, the breast. The chicken breast. Yeah. Is that enough of a heckle put down? They never came up with a better.

We got that. Don't need one. What was yours? I just turned the fuck off. Yeah. And then get a check on the car park. And then quit for a year. Yeah.

When I first started, you know the stage newspaper? The stage. Yeah. So when I gave up medicine naively, I thought, I went out and bought the stage. Because I thought that's what you did if you were in shape.

And there was an advert in the back of the stage, 120 heckle put down lines that you could send off for. Because it's pre-internet. Yeah. So I thought, oh yeah, I've got to have that. So I sent off and it was like photocopy sheets that came back.

The staple in. So it had the situation and the heckle put down line for that situation. So, man with moustache. Heckles. Do you know what the heckle put down? No. Is that a moustache

or have your eyebrows come down for a drink? Which is one of the better ones. Yeah. You've got a face I'd like to shake hands with. Hey, do me a favor. Close the door from the outside. There's one stuff like that. It's very specific.

Yeah. You'd really have to learn them as well. Right, wait there. Got one for this. Moustache. Moustache. Wow. I think close the door from the outside.

Yeah. I'm going to use that one. Yeah. There's a door for the... Yeah, from the outside. So, moustache isn't your side dish? No. On the Vongole?

No. So, we don't have a moustache. You can pass on the side if you want or just have the moustache for a joke. So, it gives you the opportunity to do the joke at your dream. Yeah. Yeah, well, I will do the joke then.

Yeah, so you'd like the moustache so that you can do the joke. So, you can say, couldn't you? A whole one. Because if truth be told, I find that sometimes moustache is a bit stringy. Will we come on to your dream drink in that case? A dream drink might be overstating it,

but I like white... Particularly with this meal. Yes. Because I am looking at this as a meal. Yeah. A glass or a bottle of Gavi di Gavi. The... Gavi di Gavi.

Italian wine. Yes. A crisp white wine. A crisp white. Are you much of a boozer, Harry? I do like to drink, but only alone. No, I like to drink, and I like the effect of drink.

And I do... If I could be drunk all the time and be able to work and not suffer any ill effects, I think I would be. This is a very... Going back to you being a doctor again, but a lot of doctors I've met, I say would have this opinion.

It's not so unusual, is it? No, well, no, but I've just met a lot of doctors who really love drugs. No, I never did any drugs. No. No, I never did any drugs. I'm surprised. I never knew any...

I knew one. Yeah. He became a psychiatrist, but... Drink, yeah. Well, there was a big boozing, but I like to drink it. I like to drink before that. Yeah.

I mean, I can't hold my drink. I mean, this is the... You know, as you get older, you can't... This is the thing we were... Me and my friend, we used to drink like... I don't know, five or six pints, that's when beer was a pound for a pint.

Yeah. And now we can only drink two pints. So it's sort of costing around the same amount to get drunk. No, I do like to drink. I mean, I don't know about you, but I like... I find it very difficult to come off

after a gig and not have a drink. Yeah, especially if it's in London, straight back home, and then, lovely, have a little glass of something. I like doing a tour show and, for whatever reason, it finishes a bit earlier that night. Maybe it started earlier.

Whatever it is, you get back to the hotel, you're tour manager, and you realise you haven't stayed up and had a drink for a few nights. You've just been busy during the tour, and then you've... I like when the idea pops into your head.

I want to suggest to my tour. Why don't I suggest to Paul? Why don't we drop our stuff off in our rooms and then we just meet back in the bar? That's the nicest part of the drink. I like what I do. And then having the drink is awful. Well, I did that on my last tour,

and I don't tour much, is I had the tour manager waiting at the side of the stage with a pint of lager. Oh, OK. For me to come off. Oh, that's bad. So I could come off.

That sounds awful. And that... Neck it? Not neck... No, not quite neck it, but knock it back quite quickly. Yeah, but it is... Did your tour manager

got a sad look on his face? Looking at you quite awful. Here you go, Harry. Oh, dear. But what I did when I first started was I used to go to the gigs. You know, when you're in the open spot. I would go to the gigs

and then I would stay for the gig and I would drink as well. And so at that time, I was getting drunk a lot. So then I started driving to gigs and not drinking. Because at club dates, I don't drink.

Do your own getaway car, I guess, after you've got a heckle put down. You don't want to be running around a musical ax car over and over again. Yeah, I mean, the music acts are the ones with the cars, obviously, because they need the boot space

for the instrument. That's a good tip if you're starting out as a comic, is get to know a music act. You'd always get a lift. Jim Tavare was always good for a lift. He had a massive instrument as well, didn't he? So he must have been driving around

in a minibus. You mentioned you've been framed earlier. What's your favourite food-based you've been framed video that you've had to comment on? Or does that include drink? Yes. Oh, especially because we're on the drink course.

Yeah. Well, there's the classic, you know, teenage kid walks into patio doors with a tray of hot drinks. He doesn't see you, he looks through it rather than at it. Yeah. Oh, dear.

I loved listening to you just describe that then. Have you ever suggested to ITV that it would be even cheaper for them to make if you just described them rather than like an audiobook? Yeah, I would like sort of, you know, old lady at a wedding,

she's dancing on a table, oh, she's fallen over and you can see her knickers. See you after the break. Kitten on a draining board. Oh, he's fallen in the swing bin. Don't worry, he's fine. Yeah.

All that. Slipping on the diving board. Yeah. Well, you could do that. So is the tray of hot drinks one a genuine one? Or is it like a classic archetype? Yeah. No, I've seen that.

You've seen that? Yeah. I've seen it a lot. It's like one of my favourite videos on YouTube to watch is the Jackass video where they have a massive hand that they can pull back the size of a human, the hand,

and they can pull it all the way back so it's only like a, so it snaps by a doorway and they get one of their friends to carry a tray of soup into the room and then they let it go and it smacks it. Really funny. They forgot about Jackass.

Yeah. James hasn't forgotten about Jackass. He watches videos about what they're all doing now. Yeah. I regularly watch videos catching up with what the Jackass crew are all up to these days. Johnny Knox.

Johnny Knoxville, yeah. Knoxville, yeah. Yeah. Steve Oh has his own podcast and I've watched the videos of that because the people he interviews a lot at the time are like similar era people who you think what are they up to

and he interviewed Aaron Carter recently. I don't know if you remember Aaron Carter. He was a pop star, a child pop star like in primary school still but was like singing a song about having a crush on a girl. What was the song then? Crush on You, it was called.

Crush on. How did you know? Cause I never told you found out I got a crush on you. I've noticed that when you sing it's not a criticism. It's not a criticism.

But you don't tend to sustain a note, James. That's just the song. Have you noticed? That's just that particular song. But it's very staccato and I've seen you singing other songs. Oh, okay. Well, I didn't know you looked into it.

And you don't sustain and it's very stop. So it would be like... Some songs I would like I'm a barefoot boy. No, you're doing it. I love the feeling of the ground I'm a barefoot baby boy.

I got tended or toes and they're pleased to meet you. Yeah, it's a very good point. You sort of back out of the note quite quickly. Try something that is... that does require... I always love you.

Well, that one. Yeah. That would be ideal. No, but what I do is like when I die bury me with cost and praise. But even you're breaking out you're breaking this long note

up into like four notes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's hard, isn't it? It's something to work on. That's it. You got it.

It's very hard. Go on. We'll always love you. We'll always love you. Got a crush on you. That was good. Yeah, that was good. You held that note for sure.

Yeah, that was good. That's broken. I felt good about that. The curse is broken. Thank you, Harry. You are truly a doctor. We've come to the dessert now, I believe. Yeah.

Yes, it's that time. Now, I'm nervous going into this. Why? Because Harry couldn't remember the dessert on his wedding day. I saw you get a bit nervous there. That's concerning. But also... Yeah, I wonder what that was.

My wife would know. Shall I phone her? No. Early doors. I mean, you can phone your wife if you want. No, I don't know. No. She's at work.

She'll kill me. She'll kill you. Early doors. There was something in you said you didn't like the sweet. You didn't like the sweet. In the bread. Balsamic vinegar. Yeah.

Too sweet. I don't like the sweetness. Yeah. And I immediately was like, oh, dear. I might be in trouble here with the dessert. I'm a puddings boy. I love the dessert. I've even put some little chocolate miniature campus heroes on the table to see.

Well, you say you put them on the table. You put them in front of you. Yeah. Why did you do that? I was going to eat them. But you know you can't eat during the pub. Yeah. Yeah.

As soon as I sat down at four, I can't eat this. Yeah. So I've had them there. So you've just been looking at them for the whole thing. Yes, because I've been clocking all the way through how many times Harry looked at them. It wasn't any time. Yeah. He hasn't cared about them, which makes me worried about this dessert course.

Now I'm reading the ingredients in a whisper bar. No, I'm just, no, I'm making a point here that these, what are these from? These are cabris. Heroes, miniature heroes. These are heroes. Yes. So in the celebrations. Yeah.

This is how you can tell the difference between the celebrations and the heroes. The celebrations have a tiny slit here to aid the opening. Yeah. Of the, of the confectionery. So that, I mean, they have them here at the top, you see. See, they've got those little notches at the top there. It's not easy. And this one's even got, this one's the, the crunch.

It's not obvious that. The crunchy bits has got an arrow here to show you. Yeah. It's even an arrow. It's saying pull down. Well, that, if you pull on that arrow, it doesn't work. So. That's a good point actually.

Oh no, there you go. I don't know what that is. It's going to work. Well, it's a little bit on Ed's one. And you just open your whisper. Yeah. I have to eat that now. You've got to eat it.

It's on your dessert course. It's like your dessert. Don't worry about the dessert, James. Yeah. Okay. Because I am a dessert person. I am a pudding person. And I like, what I particularly like is cream.

I don't like anything too sweet, but I like creamy, creamy things. Yes. Cream in all its forms. Pouring cream. Yeah. Double cream. Whipped cream. Clotted cream.

The champagne of cream. Chantilly cream even. Oh. Suncream. What other creams are there? Suncream. Suncream. Yeah.

Even some of that. Yeah. So I've chosen trifle. Lovely. Jamie Oliver. I'm Mando Iainucci and now you. The trifle boys. The trifle crew.

Jamie Oliver was the only person to ever complain about our portrayal of him on TV. But how he used his... Really? Yeah. I know if you remember, there was a program which I think was a low point for him. It was Ministry of Food.

Do you remember it? Uh-huh. Where it was all about, if you teach this person how to do this recipe. Oh yeah. You teach two people. I quite liked that. I didn't like it.

You didn't like it. I thought it was pissing in the wind, I thought. Oh, there was a builder on it. There was a guy. There was a guy who was like, I can't cut. There's no point. I can't do any of this. You just fell in love with cooking by the end.

Yeah, yeah, sure. There were individual stories, but the whole thing about the campaign I just thought was a bit silly. And they had this sort of animation thing, which was if one person, it was like a pyramid, it starts off if one person learns how to cook spaghetti vongole and teaches two other people and they'd teach... By the end of a week, 64 people would be able to cook spaghetti

vongole, right? Yeah. So I did, if one person doesn't watch... And he was really, apparently really furious. And we depended on them giving us clips. Yeah, of course, yeah. So we had to try and get in with them. So the producer said to me, you've got to record an apology.

Okay? Yeah. So I had my phone. I thought, oh, well, I'll... So I recorded this apology. It was me singing... I just called to say, I love you. A video in my kitchen.

And I go, I just... Sorry, Jamie, you know. I just called to say, I love you. I said, we've even got one of your pans. And then I'm looking through my pans, trying to... Because we have one of these. Yeah. Jamie Oliver pans.

I couldn't find it. Didn't want to reshoot and put the pan in the right place. You sent him that? Well, I sent it to the producer and he said, I can't send him that. It'd make it worse. So we never got any more clips from him. Well, you taught yourself out of a lovely pair of pants.

I'd say. We were nice to Jamie Oliver. Yes. He recommended his pants that he wears. Jamie Oliver pants. No, no. They're not Jamie Oliver branded pants. They're just the ones that he likes to wear.

Which are? Sacks. They're called Sacks. S-A-Double-X. And Sacks sent us some pants to try for ourselves. Wow. And you know what? And I don't mind saying this.

They're genuinely brilliant pants. I'm wearing them right now. Sacks is a X. Sacks. I'm wearing them right now, Harry. I'm wearing some pants that I would not have chosen for Jamie Oliver. I put them on this morning.

And genuinely laughed as I was putting them on. Because I thought, what a life I've got. I'm wearing some pants that Jamie Oliver sent me. He sent them? Yeah. He hooked us up while he mentioned them on the podcast. And then we got them because of Jamie Oliver. That's how it works.

It really makes me laugh. You, Armando and Jamie Oliver, if you were layered up like a trifle, who would be what? Good question. Thank you. Well, I would be, you know, modesty prevents me from saying that I would be the cream.

But I would say I was the custard. But things that shows, that shows us how much you love cream because you've considered cream to be the best thing on the trifle and you don't want to say you're the cream. For me, the cream, that's the worst, that's the worst bit. Oh gosh, really?

Wow. The little cake and the jelly and all that stuff. The sponge. Really? The sponge, the jelly. Custard's my favourite bit. Yeah. Things working as a team.

If I should go out and share a trifle, it sounds like we all like different bits of it. Yeah. We all get a spoon. You eat the top layer, Harry. Yeah. You eat the custard. Custard up.

And I've got to wait a long while to get to the bottom, but it's worth it. Yeah. Good things come to those who wait. Yeah. So if you're the custard, who's the cream? And I find underneath the cream,

which is, I would say, probably Armando, isn't he? Because he's something of a legend. Yeah. And then Oliver underneath. Oliver, jelly and sponge. Jelly and sponge. Jelly and sponge. As is jelly, soaked sponge.

Yeah. That's very nice, actually. Yeah. I did do, to be fair, I did do, he invited me on his pier thing, end of the pier. Have you done that? I heard of it.

That south end thing. He was telling us about it, I think, when we were... Yeah. Yeah. And he didn't raise it. I didn't raise it. Oh, there you go.

It's in the past. There you go. You could have sung some of the songs in life. Yeah. Maybe it wasn't him that made the fuss. Maybe it was the producer. Yeah. Potentially.

Let's do now. See how you feel about it. Water. You want still water. No ripples. Pop it on top of the red. Catch it with olive oil. Starter.

Potted shrimp. With toast. Main. Spag vong. Christmas dinner. Boast turkey with all the trimmings. Devils on horseback. Check those in as well.

Side dish, monge to, just for the joke. Drink. Gaby to Gaby. Dessert. Trifle. Lovely. How you feel? Full.

Full. You'd be chuffed with that, wouldn't you? Yeah. Me and your whole Christmas dinner. Which is kind of rare, I'd say. Yeah. Because people just go a bit wild. I know we certainly did when we did ours.

Yep. Sometimes just go for, well, that's my favourite, you know, I always think of it. That's my favourite of that individual thing. And I'm always, when people come on and they make it work as a whole meal, I'd always think, I bet their life is a lot more organised and better than mine. Possibly. Yeah. Thank you very much for coming to the Dream Restaurant, Harry.

My pleasure. Thank you, Harry. Well, there we are. What a great menu. What a great chat with Harry Hill. Loved it. Loved every second. Great clarinet impression, of course.

I mean, one for the ages. I forget if one should re-listen to that. I would advise people, you know, maybe, like, go back, pause it just before the clarinet impression, then find on YouTube or something. Yeah. Audio of a clarinet being played on its own. And then listen to Harry. Yes, I think so.

You know, see how wrong I was. I was quite annoyed actually about it. Afterwards, I went away from it and I thought about it. And the argument that was presented to me in the room, I said, that doesn't sound like a clarinet. And he said, well, you do it. Yeah. You do it then.

That's not an argument. No, but also you did it to exactly the same quality and level that he did it. I thought I did, but he's made out that I didn't. No. I was in the room. It sounded exactly the same. But he didn't say hooves. So we can't kick him out for a bad clarinet impression.

Hooves is the only reason we could have kicked him out. And he didn't say hooves. But it'd be good if he said hooves during the clarinet impression. Yeah. Hooves. Sorry, did someone just play a clarinet? Yeah, sorry. There's a clarinet in the room.

Going by Harry's book. Fight. Yes. Buy it for everyone for Christmas. Yes. And also buy tickets to my tour for Christmas. Ed Gamble, Electric. EdGamble.co.uk for details.

Going by tickets. Going by tickets. Please also buy my vinyl available at EdGambleStore.com. I think of beauty. Does it warm your heart? Ed Gamble to know that maybe some people on Christmas Day will be unwrapping presents. And it's like the Ed Gamble vinyl or like tickets to, you know, a card in your open. It says, where go to see Ed Gamble?

Merry Christmas. And they're like, oh yeah. Unwrapping an email. Check your email. Merry Christmas. That's something the internet has taken away from us. Is unwrapping tickets. Unwrapping tickets.

I mean, it tends to be they just write it in a card now. Yeah. Or maybe you can write in a card a link to your special. Yeah. Yeah. Or you know, I'm talking to the listener. Maybe you want to buy a link. You want to buy James's special for someone.

Maybe you want to, yeah, buy my special. It's available on my website, jamesacaster.com. And my special is called, I only hate myself, 1999. But it was only released last year. Yeah. Not 1999. Don't get confused. Don't get confused.

But yeah, you can buy them that and then write down the link. It's absolutely right. And then they can go on their computer and they can type the link in. Merry Christmas. I hope you'll have a wonderful Christmas better than last year, unless you had a brilliant Christmas last year, in which case I hope you have the same. Or even better.

Even better. I've had every Christmas from now until the day of your death is better than the one before. Hello, it's Harry Hill here. And I'm recording this trailer for my new podcast, Harry Hill's Noise. Basically, it's a half hour of ambient sound. And then at some point during the podcast, I make a noise.

Now, when you're listening to it, you'll forget that I'm about to make a noise. And you'll get lulled into it. And then I'll make the noise and it'll be really funny. I mean, it doesn't sound like a regular podcast, does it? But believe me, you're going to really love it. So why don't you subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Acast. It's called Harry Hill's Noise and it's coming soon. Hello, it's me, Amy Gladhill.

You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato and our relationship's never been the same since. And I am joined by me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil it in case. Get him on James and Ed. But we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience

to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the north because look, we're two Northerners, sure. But we've been living in London for a long time. The news stories are funny. Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off.

And that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Gladhill's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy! Is it?

Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late.