The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Alan Davies Returns

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

478 episodes later… Alan Davies returns! He’s an all-round fixture of British comedy as a respected stand-up, writer and actor - from the unflappable Jonathan Creek to the permanent mischief-maker on QI.His second memoir Just Ignore Him was widely praised for its honesty, and his follow-up, White Male Stand Up, continues that deeply personal journey. He’s now back on the road for the first time in a decade with Alan Davies: Think Ahead.We discuss Alan’s choice to open up onstage for the first time about his traumatic childhood, the breakthrough moment when a WIP becomes “a real show”, the trick to building momentum with monkey bars, how writing offered Alan emotional relief as well as a record for the future and why when dishonesty is everywhere, being honest matters.Please note: this episode includes discussion of child sexual abuse. If you’ve been affected by these issues or need support, please visit napac.org.uk and 1in6.org.I need YOUR HELP for Episode 500! Complete the ComComPod survey 👉 stuartgoldsmith.com/surveyJoin the Insiders Club at patreon.com/comcompod where you can WATCH the full episode and get access to 20 minutes of exclusive extras inc Alan’s rare ability to openly admit failure, navigating the pull between creative integrity and financial opportunity and the crisis of confidence that lead to a 10 year break in stand-up.Support the Podcast from only £3/month at Patreon.com/ComComPod✅ Exclusive access to full video and ad-free audio episodes✅ 20 minutes of exclusive extra content with Alan✅ Early access to new episodes (where possible!)✅ Exclusive membership offerings including a monthly “Stu&A”PLUS you’ll get access to the full back catalogue of extras you can find nowhere else!Catch Up with Alan:Alan Davies: Think Ahead is now on tour throughout the UK, find all the dates and more at alandavies.live.You can also now read Alan’s newly published memoir, White Male Stand-Up, available wherever you get your books!Everything I'm up to:See me live (when there's dates!)… Find out all the info at stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy.Discover my comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate.See Stuart live on tour - www.stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stu here. Episode 500 is somehow fast approaching. It's already in the cat. I can't wait for you to hear it. I need your feedback. I want to gather some data on your favorite episodes, your best moments, see if there's any fun anecdotes I can uncover along the way. Something must have happened in your life in nearly 500 episodes of podcasting. And as a thanks for taking part, myself and producer Callum, will be gifting an Insider's Insider 12-month membership on Patreon to one lucky respondent. You can pay this forward if you're already one. The survey's super short, all the questions are skippable, and this would mean a lot if you could just take five minutes out of your day to go and fill the thing in. Head to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey, or the link is in the show notes. There's going to be a very short break in September before we approach that milestone, but lots of exciting stuff in the works.

Hello there, welcome back to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith, and today 470 episodes later, Alan Davis returns. Alan is an all-round fixture of British comedy. He's a very respected stand-up writer and actor. You may know him as the unflappable Jonathan Creek or the permanent mischief maker on QI, and of course the host of Alan Davis as yet untitled, who you may have seen a familiar face in series, episode two, you may not. It's a good episode. But that's not it. His second memoir, Just Ignore Him, was widely celebrated for its honesty, its emotional depth, and his follow-up white male stand-up continues that deeply personal journey. And I feel I need to tell you that Alan's story could be very triggering for someone who has been through some of the things

that he went through as a child. And in his show, when he does his stand-up show, Alan Davies Think Ahead, which I listened to a recording of from the Edinburgh Festival this year, he doesn't trigger warning the show. We'll talk about that decision. But because this is the sort of podcast that does include trigger warnings, then please consider yourself duly warned if you're the sort of person who benefits from those. In the first half of this episode, we will discuss the breakthrough moment when a work in progress becomes a real show. We'll talk about the trick to building momentum with monkey bars. And there's some lovely analogies. My eyes are absolutely lighting up during this bit. And Alan's choice as well to open up about these experiences his childhood, first in his book and now on stage. I think it's fair to say, if you like the Comedians Comedian podcast, this episode has got absolutely everything you're looking for. I think this is a gold standard episode because we're going to talk about, talking about some very difficult things and we're going to do that through the lens of this conversation with just a genuine comedian's comedian. Here is Alan Davis.

Welcome back to the podcast, Alan. You were episode 16. I don't know if you remember recording that. You were episode 16. You will now probably be something like episode 496. Oh my God. You've been so busy. What year was that?

Do you know? I don't know the year, but you was live at Edinburgh. So it would have been one of the years you were doing. I forget the name of the show you were doing. We were in the Gilded Balloon in the Turret. probably would have been well the last time I did a show that that was I mean until the

recent Edinburgh the most recent Edinburgh the last one I did was 10 years ago well it was either that or the one just before that yeah so a long old time very long time well it's nice to see you you haven't changed a bit thank you mate it's only when I have my hair

this short that you can't see how grey I am so I have changed a little bit but I've I saw that photo of Seinfeld recently where he's like wearing a cap and big bouncy trainers and you think he's 70 but he's really dressing like a young guy so I'm doing the same with my hair yeah um so you are currently you're about to go on tour I've just started the show you've just started I've done five shows um I'm doing 27 in the UK and 15 in Australia so I'm far and then I'm stopping and then I'll restart again next year

okay so it's quite a long tour but having a big chunk of time in the middle yes okay and the show is called think ahead that was that was the show that you did at Edinburgh which I didn't see at Edinburgh

but you were kind enough to send me one of my favourite things to get from comedians who are going to be on the podcast which is your own recording from your phone presumably on a table during the show I love it it's the most warts and all unvarnished it's actually better than seeing someone live

I think actually to get their own recording It feels more like a sort of, it feels more of an intimate document. I record everything I do just for audio. I do as well. And I can, and so I still take my phone on stage with me and the audience. But I think for a moment, think, what's that? As I put it down on the little table with my set list. I used to try and conceal it, but then I noticed all Americans do it.

All Americans take their phones on with them and put them down on a little stool. Yeah, it really helps as well to keep track of, the time. Yeah. And the idea that, you know, and I think a lot of the audience will feel the same. We can't actually go an hour

without having your phone to hand. I mean, that's not. That's how first world humans function. So the things that we will mostly talk about are that show and the big thing in that show and your book,

your recent book, White Male Stand Up, which I think, I think uniquely, or not entirely uniquely of all the guests I've had on the show who've written books I try to read them and I often get a third or halfway through but I finished this yesterday

I've read it cover to cover I'm sorry this isn't a good representation of it because I took the dust jacket off so it wouldn't get ruined in my bag it's absolutely brilliant I've finished it yesterday in a car park and I sat and sobbed in the car

for a minute or two after finishing it it's very kind I can't tell the listener how wonderful I think it is because it is so moving and so powerful and so matter of fact you have this incredible way of writing and we'll talk about the writing course that you went on and I'm aware that this is your third book and I haven't read the first two I must confess but I will because you have this phenomenal ability to simply say the facts in exactly the right way. So it's like the writing of it is invisible,

but I just feel like I'm inside your head. So I want to talk about the book and I want to talk about the show because they reflect each other. I suppose in some ways the show is like a kind of, not exactly a summary, but they've definitely have themes in common, right?

They sort of, they end, certainly the version of the show I heard when you do the bit about the day that didn't happen, the 3rd of August. They sort of end in a similar place. have similar beats in them. And which one would you like to start with? Do you want to talk about the show or the book? Should we start with the book? Well, the process of it was they was kind of connected, really. And I and because I wrote my book, Just Ignore Him, which was published

five years ago, in which I talked about childhood abuse and particularly about the bereavement, my mother and what my father did to me. So that was out in the world as far as I was concerned. you know so that was a big a huge deal this was almost like a dormant volcano or something this was this had been with me all my working life all my life and through years of writing stand-up material and doing stand-up shows and doing the very thing that i wanted to do since i was 16 which is do comedy and acting and being funny and you know being in plays or television and so i got to where i wanted to be quite quickly but i had this was dragging all this stuff And then I did some work in progress shows.

I go to the Pleasance studio in North London, near where I live. The Pleasance Theatre has a little studio upstairs, seats about 50 people. And I've been there a lot doing work in progress. And so January last year, so January 2024, I'd put myself a week in there. Trying to work up something, including the abuse story, including the thoughts that I'd had trying to work them into stand up in a way that I'd previously thought

was impossible because it's too bleak and too dark and too difficult and too triggering for people and lots of reasons and triggering for you as well and triggering for me as well and traumatising for me sometimes and one of the reasons

why I decided to try and do it was because I, when I was writing my first book, I came across a website called one in six.org, which I mention a lot when talking about abuse because I'm conscious that people listening might be survivors themselves. And it's a very useful resource, one in six.org. One in six is the number of men or boys who have been assaulted or abused sexually. It's a pretty shocking number. It's much worse for women, as you can imagine, but it's still nonetheless a shocking number. And there are lots of links on there, lots of articles and lots of resources. And it made me really think of all the people in my audiences over the years who was sitting with this kind of story and not having shared it

or not able to share it. And if I put my hand up that maybe in the dark, lots of hands would go up, you know. And so I started to talk about it in those work in progress shows. And by the end of the week, I thought, I think I'm on to something here. There was one in particular that Katie came to, actually, where everything really quite clicked that night. And so then I went away and I was in the process of writing white male stand up, which was always the working title for the book and then never really thought of a better one. It was a kind of descriptive term that came about from when I started in stand-up. Someone referred to the likes of me as white male stand-ups and in the context that there were too many of them and they were taking over the world

and where were all the weirdos and the eccentrics and the street performers and the double acts and the a cappella groups and circus people and the unicyclists and where were they going to go if the comedy circuit was just full of white-mouth stand-ups. And the answer to that is, I don't know where they all went. Oh, they do. They still exist, yeah. They still exist, but they are way more underground now. And we'll come back to that, because I do know, Sham, who you mention in your story, setting fire.

Yeah, I've not seen him in a long time, but I knew him as a street performer at Covent Garden. And memorably, he once punched me in the face at a stag do, leading my friend to joke. What do you call an argumentative clown? No, no. So I think of Sham as no-no. And if you're listening, Shab, do get in touch.

You think it's forgiven. Well, he was a fantastic street performer. Raising. He's the only, like a giraffe unicycle performer I ever saw who deliberately wore big clown shoes. Like that thing that you see in cartoons and comics isn't a thing. No one wears big clown shows, but sham did. So, yeah.

We were saying the thing I didn't want to, I didn't want to lose track of is you said with the night that Katie came to see it, something clicked. What does that mean? Do you remember what it was that clicked? Can you drill a bit further into what hadn't clicked at that point and what it meant that something had clicked? I think it's that a laugh happens and then you are quickly able to, you know, it's a bit like monkey bars. You quickly, if you're a monkey bars, and sometimes you can. can I mean I'm 59 now I can't do monkey bars obviously I dislocate everything but if you get swinging you can go through but sometimes you get on a monkey bar and then you're kind of hanging on one and you haven't got the momentum to get the next one so you need to swing yourself a bit no one likes watching that people like seeing kids go flying along the monkey bars no one likes the bit oh no he can't get there oh come on reach for the next one please please get the monkey bar thing going we want you to get to the end it's fun to watch someone doing it's not a

fun to watch someone failing and if then their fingers get tired and one hand comes away and then you think no no he's no way now he's going to drop and comedy's a little bit like that and work in progress is a bit like that because you know the bunky bars represent the notes that you have on your page which by about the fifth or six work in progress you've started to reorganize into something approaching a set list or some kind of an order where you think well this piece could go with that idea and that idea go together they can blend that idea can segue as the american say to that and these these stepping stones i could get across this river if the gigs are river i could get across it on the if the stones are in this order you know yes and so each monkey bar

represents a thought or an idea and you're trying to get to them and if if you start to get going and flowing and reaching and reaching and the laugh doesn't start and you're in control of the laugh you're in control of when it stops and comedy is it's a strange beast the object is to get laughs but the object is also this once that's established the object is also to control their laughs to control how many there are and when they stop and when they start again i did it very lucky to do two interviews in my life with dave allen the great irish comedian one of my heroes. And he said you've got to be careful with an audience. No arrogance in the man at all. You've got to be careful with an audience because, you know, he talked about making someone

laugh so much once that they broke a rib. And he always thought about that. He thought about that. You've got to give them a breather. You've got to get them a chance. They're with you for an hour or more. And you've got to give, you know, they want to engage with you. They can't laugh non-stop hysterically for 60 minutes. That's not the goal. So I think when something clicks, it means that I felt like I had this thing. I've got the laugh going now and now I'm in control of it a bit. And I'm not fearful of the next piece.

I think it'll be okay. I can get to here. I can get to there. I can get to there. And then once that's happened once, it's still very raggedy and messy and, you know, you can't remember it. That's the point of recording it. once that's happened once then you feel like you can replicate that

I could do that show again it's proof of life isn't it you go that can work it's a sort of a template yeah this these monkey bars are now strong enough to withhold my weight now all I need to do is swing along them right well what I love about the monkey bar analogy is it does suggest that sometimes you do just dangle and it may not be pleasant for the audience to watch but you can beat, in circus we would call that a beat when you flip the legs up to try and start swinging again. You can beat

for a little bit and then attempt to keep going. It suggests that you know it's momentum but the pauses in momentum aren't failure they're an opportunity to find the momentum again. You've got to dangle for a bit and you go oh this is eggy. Here's a bit of eggy dangling. But actually

there is the possibility of continuing. Do you remember specifically what the click was which leap you made, a creative leap, a bit of material from that one where it clicked. Do you remember a bit that hadn't been getting a laugh did for the first time on that show? I don't remember a specific thing, but what I do, what I think I can talk about is the feeling that it goes from being like a work in progress gig to being like a gig in that I can talk to the audience, I can refer to them, someone laughs in a particular way, or something.

someone's sitting in a particular I can do a little bit of that kind of observation because a stand-up show is in the room you and those people in that room for that time and if you're feeling able it starts to feel more like an actual gig rather than

a sort of vaguely apologetic reading out of a list of notes and you feel like that that's I suppose what the click is so that's the kind of okay we're actually I have now assembled the skateboard and I'm on it. And it is moving people.

Yeah. It's moving. And we're going towards a ramp. Let's see. Up and down. Yes. And I think people like coming to work in progress. Because they like that moment as well. They like that moment. And one of the running gags you can,

and running gags are always a lovely thing to have in any show. But one of the running gag and a work in progress is almost always getting to a piece that gets a laugh and then going to your table, get picking up your buyer and saying, that's staying in and making a fake note on a bit of paper. Or equally, if something doesn't work, going over and say,

well, let's make a note not to say that one again, and that always gets a response from them. I find work in progress much more fun to do and much more fun to watch. And I do often think, wouldn't it be great if that's just what comedy was? Like, what does it mean for something to be finished? I love the organics.

I love it when the audience are like, will he make it? And there's genuine jeopardy. And sometimes you don't. I find that much more real, probably, because I've watched far too much stand-up. Do you know what I mean? Well, no, I think it's true. I think a lot of comedians feel like that. I think the time when you've got the time between, you know, erecting your monkey miles and the first time you get to cross them, and then you go around to the bag on right, we're going to try and cross them again.

And this, when you can, when it's second nature and you can do it easily, it's become a bit dull. That's when you're 20 dates into your tour and, you know, it's still fun. It's lovely to hear laughter and to be in control of it. But it's more exciting when it's a little bit loose. And it takes a bit of bravery. I remember years ago, I had been doing, I did two tours back to back into 2011 and 2013. And one was called Life is Pain. And then the second one was called Little Victories.

and I was working. I'd been doing Life is Pain and I was booked to do a show down in Bristol, Will Briggs, who does these fantastic shows in big tents called Comedy Gardens. And I really love doing them. There's so many people come. And the one in Bristol in particular is always,

I don't know what it is. People, that's a beautiful gig. It's a great fun gig. And I had some new stuff and I wasn't sure. And I was talking to Katie on the phone and I was saying, I don't know. There's a lot of people here. And Josh Whittaker's just done 20 minutes.

I mean, he was just talking about things that you read on the cash point when you're queuing up to wait to use the cash point. But it was hysterically funny and the audience were absolutely loving it. And I don't know whether I'm at closing this gig, right? And she's going, do the new stuff. Just do the new stuff. Why go through the old stuff? You know, of course you could do the old stuff. and it took a leap of faith

people might not realize it when you've been doing comedy for 30 years or something but it's still a leap of faith to try new stuff and to take the plunge and the reason I remember that gig and I'm recalling it now

is because the thrill of it working and it paying off and I knew from that gig I had a new show then and I was going to you know I'm on now I'll leave that one behind with going forward with this set from now on. So that was speaking about the presence work in progress.

That was that moment. Yes. It's a beautiful feeling that. I often, I think I've got several recordings in my phone with variations on the title, ladies and gentlemen, we have a show. Do you know what I mean? Or like several texts I've said to my wife where I'm just like, thank Christ, I have achieved this again.

It seems no less impossible each time. Well, I think everyone must feel like that. I imagine songwriters feel like that. I'll never write another song. And some of them don't. I mean, there are some of these one hit wonders and they produce one astonishing three-minute classic and then everything else is a bit mediocre.

Not useful to focus on that fact during the writing process, during one's own writing process. So this is Alan. It's a joy to have him back on the show. Alan Davis Think Ahead is now on tour throughout the UK. Find all the dates and more at allandavis. Live. And you can also read the book we're talking about.

Alan's newly published memoir, White Male Stand Up, which tells the story of how he threw himself into the joyous and idealistic world of stand-up comedy, it says here. I think he threw himself in an idealistic... How about this? I think he throws himself,

the story of how he threw himself, into the world of stand-up comedy, which appears joyous, and idealistic. Can the thing itself appear idealistic? I think this is a quibble that will be resolved when you read the actual book, which I cannot recommend highly enough. It's available wherever you get your books. You can find out how and where to see me live at Stuartgoldsmith.com slash comedy, and I could do with your help for some shenanigans for episode 500, which is coming up soon. Go to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey, and you can share with me your favorite moments,

guests you want to see, and a bunch of other exciting things. It's genuinely an incredibly useful tool for me and evil producer Callum to find out what you're thinking about, how you regard the podcast. Loads and loads and loads of people have already done that. I really appreciate it. We'll just do a few last shout-outs so that we can get on with hatching what we've got planned for episode 500 and the ensuing celebrations. So a huge thank you to all of you who've already taken the time to do that. And a quick reminder, of course,

you can join The Insiders Club on Patreon to get instant access to full video and ad-free audio episodes, including 20 minutes of exclusive extra stuff with Alan Davis from this interview, well, not from the interview, extra stuff, stuff that isn't in the interview, but from the encounter with him. There's the monthly stew-in-A. I'm off to record that shortly, and you get first dibs on guest announcements, including who we've got already safely in the can for episode 500. That's patreon.com.com slash com-com pod to find out more. Now we're going to talk with Alan about why when dishonesty is everywhere, being honest really matters. We're going to talk about how writing offered Alan emotional relief and a record for the future. And we will talk about

escaping the people please a trap and acknowledging discomfort in the room. And we will find out, of course, whether Alan Davis is happy. And that is a cracking answer if memory serves. This is the final bit. Let's get back to Alan. The jeopardy then, the thrill of it working is presumably because there is jeopardy. There is the possibility that it might not work. And the jeopardy for this latest show, particularly in those work-in-progress shows, must have been enormous. Because the section in the middle of the show where you talk about the abuse you suffered is so different in tone to anything you've ever talked about on stage before. and personal and and requiring something of you.

A lot of the reviews of that show at Edinburgh referred to what I can hear and what you refer to on stage of, you know, your breath changing when you talk about the stuff which caused you to have, you know, lifelong PTSD. So actually the decision to go into putting that stuff not just in a book, not just in, you know, a book feels like we're familiar with the idea of a book

where you can really get to grips and really talk about something. But in a stand-up show, particularly in a stand-up show, which is, you know, there are comics out there whose idiom is talking about suffering, talking about abuse, maybe talking about their own, you know, their own psychological landscape. And you're not so much known for that. You're a bit more, you know, you're known for gentle, relatable, not gentle in terms of laughs, but you know what I mean, minutiae. You're known for finding magical, funny, relatable stuff in mundane things.

So that's a big jump for you. What I talk about in the show is how I'd always been, you know, a bit of a people-pleasing comic and everything was a bit skin-deep and superficial. It's somewhat the nature of stand-up comedy anyway. It's difficult to establish big themes, particularly in short sets when you're in a bill with other people. But also that the really dark stuff that was in my head day in. day out about my abuse story, about my father's behavior, that's, it's very difficult to get into that without killing the room stone dead. So then I had to make comedy from the fact that

the audience had gone completely quiet. And one of my favorite parts in is when I say to them, now you feel less like an audience and it's more like a hostage situation. And finding a way to say, this is really uncomfortable, isn't it? And yet you know this happened to me and I know as well without actually stating it. I know there are people in this room that this has happened to. And imagine the discomfort of a child and imagine how that stays with you for life.

And imagine how awkward it would be, but what a better world it would be if everyone was just able to say it. And what I've found is I'm no less funny. In fact, the show's really going well on tour and the laughs are big and, enjoyable but there seems to be because of this extra depth that the response at the end from an audience is really it feels like the audience is saying to me go out into the world

Alan you know it's all right yeah and you know can you can tell I get quite a emotion about it when I was writing the books I do all my crying in private and that was what I learned one of the things I said and just ignore him was I learned in childhood that crying is something you do on your own. That was what I absolutely was what I did as a child. And crying in front of other people or with other people was unthinkable. But crying something you do alone. And I cried in the writing of both of my books at different times.

In fact, one of my tutors at Goldsmith's College, when I did a creative writing, I did say to me, write the stuff that makes you cry. Write the stuff that, as if no one was ever going to read it. And you can sort of do that when you're writing. But it's managing that kind of thing and then somehow through some alchemy, making it safe to present to a comedy audience

in the midst of what's really quite a laugh riot. You know, there's a lot of material about erectile dysfunction and this stuff that's very broad and hilarious about pornography and children and, you know, life. and I'm still going for the same kind of big laughs that I always relish and love to hear the laughs that you can only really achieve when you've got a routine that one thing builds on another thing

and another thing and another thing the routines each individual piece of it is quite small but the momentum and once you've got those kind of show stopping routines you always think I'll never think of another one of these but they do they do they do come that that process

of translating something so difficult and so painful into not just because there's several things in the show it really I mean it's incredible it's a go back and listen to it again and again kind of section one from from both moments

where you are quite simply having one over the audience and built the relationship with them you are quite simply saying to them and then this happened and then this happened and again like in the book you you say it's so simply but you've chosen exactly the right words and so we feel completely connected to it

all the way to those moments I mean the joke that I particularly think and I won't kind of give it away but the joke about the specialness of the special cuddle is like that is a joke as good as any joke in the show about and also it has as you say it has these layers of depth that maybe aren't what people normally associate with you with your material the layers of like

your material has an inner life you know we see you're in a life we have depth you're not a two-dimensional figure by any means but the fact of the authenticity and the reality I mean it's astonishing in a piece in which I notice certainly the recording you sent me I don't know whether you regarded Edinburgh as a finished show or as a work in progress because I know it would be a smaller version of the tour show but certainly the version you sent me that's stuff was so kind of harrowing that the material that you used to bridge back out into the

world is about school shootings. Do you know what I mean? Like the idea of teachers being armed and I sort of noticed that as a comic listening to it going, oh wow, he's picking it back up by talking about gun violence in schools. That's kind of a measure of the journey that we've been on. So I'm sort of... Never really thought of that, but yes, yes, that's true. It does seem Light and frivolous. Yeah, yeah, it does. And, you know, you're not, you know, just for the benefit of the listener who maybe hasn't heard this stuff. You're not trivialising either of those things by any means.

Had you seen any other stand-up comedians talking about childhood sexual abuse before? I'm thinking of like Johnny Pelham, for example, who has talked about that in a few of his shows, having undergone childhood sexual abuse. Had you seen anyone else do it? Did you have any template of how you might go about finding your way through it? it? No, I hadn't. I hadn't. And I didn't seek anybody out either. I just, um, one of the consequences, I think, of the childhood that I had and the family life that I had was I became a self-contained unit of, you know, human form. I just, um, most, many days would go by without any really complete interactions with other humans.

I could spend a day at school and feel like I was on my own. Being on my own feels like the natural state of things. I lived on my own for 15 years. I love going to football. I go to Arsenal home games all the time. And it's much easier to get in when I was a kid because they weren't very good. I would go by myself and I would stand on the terraces by myself and go home by myself. I had a little transistor.

radioed by the match day program. It was a day out just for me and going to a place where thousands of other men were going and doubtless many of them shouting at the football field as a release or a distraction from something. I talk a little bit about male violence and anxiety in my new book and how men struggle so much and it's really strange you know i now look at football crowds in a whole different way you know um what are all these men doing here what's happening you know um so yeah i sort of i i kind of lost my thread a little bit but yeah you're talking about being being solitary being self-contained yeah i sort of never really thought of himself as connected to other comedians or looking for influences or just or really even thinking about

what am i doing why am i once i'm in the bubble of trying to be funny it all goes on in my head you know none of it's scripted as you as you know the majority of comedians don't script things the majority of comedians that we know and work with don't work with writers or directors the majority of us are just this it's all in our heads and i do remember katie when i was going back to stand-up in 2011 and Katie and I have been together for six years by then, married for four years, and I hadn't done any stand-up.

And then I said, I'm going to do some stand-up, and she said to me, well, what are you going to talk about? She said, it'll be fine. I'll think of something. And then she came to see me do the show with Life is Pain, and there was some, it was a funny show. And we were in Australia, actually, in Melbourne.

I was doing it at the Ahtonium Theatre in Melbourne, which is a fantastic theatre. Absolutely love performing there. It's about 800. It's perfect. And she said it was vaguely disappointing, actually, to see how funny I was, given six years of living with me

and no hint of this. Oh, this is when he makes an effort. But it's almost, I can't think of a sort of a metaphor for it, but it's almost like this is all in your head. This potential for links and connections and expressions that make people laugh. It's all in your head. And then it's almost like a barrel where you put the,

this is where the penis is called a cock, right? Because the stop cock that goes in the side of a barrel. That's basically the analogy. It's like a cock. The cock has gone into the barrel and you've opened the tap and then it all comes out. So imagine that for, if your head is a barrel of beer, imagine that that hasn't been. released. It's going on in your head. And I had not been turning the tap for years. And I think it was

bad for my mental health. I think it was not a good thing without a creative outlet. And I think it's the same for all human beings, not just professional comedians or artists, without having your own personal tap that you can turn to release your thoughts and your mind spillage and let it out. I'm a big advocate for journaling because what I've done with my books in the last five years or six years of writing is really been journaling my life story going back to childhood. I mean, really, in the case of just ignoring it was literally everything I could remember about my mother. And I'm setting it down for myself and I'm setting it down. for my children so you know they can read about their grandmother you know who's died many many

years before they were born and getting those turning that tap on and getting these things out and being creative and trying to make something of what's in your head rather than just letting it go bad i think it's very important and valuable i think it's um something my wife will occasionally say to me is do you need to go and do a gig it's a faintly patronising but completely accurate way. Because I think that for stand-ups

going out and gigging is such a it's such a part of it's a bit like going swimming or going kicking a ball around or something. You're just part of life you go out and you get in front of an audience. You don't really notice or necessarily think about the mental health benefits of

not just people behaving positively towards you clapping and laughing and so on but also as you say taking the cock out so to speak and letting the stuff taking the stopper out let's say

and letting the stuff spray out and sort of settle yourself I think it's easy to forget how valuable that is that if you're working on a particular project I often find this with putting together a new show for Edinburgh say if I'm trying to solve the problem

of the show in my gigs then I'm not necessarily just there to enjoy myself at the gigs. And so I get a bit, I'm just a bit less happy, but not in a way that I notice or observe. And it's quite useful when it's pointed out to me. I think it's a, yes, I think that's true. And there's a kind of sweet spot where the thing's nearly ready to go, but not

finished. This show, think ahead, but in my previous experience of putting together shows, particularly of going to Edinburgh, is that you start off with, say, 50 minutes of stuff and then you'll finish with 70 minutes of stuff. You know, the thing will grow. But this show hasn't grown. I thought it would expand, but it didn't, actually. It kind of thickened up.

I mean, a bit like sometimes my analogies are so bad. Barrels beer, go on. All that comes to mind is a couple of Christmases ago, I tried to make some custard to go with a Christmas pudding. And Kate is very against it. She's a brandy butter person. What are you doing while you're getting the custard powder out? And started to make, and it wasn't really thickening up.

And then stupidly, I put a bit more powder in. And then suddenly this pan kind of erupted. to this. Why the hell did I start talking about customs? Did you? Probably. I'm floating off. We're talking about thick.

Oh, the jokes have thickened up, but the show hasn't grown in length in the way that a show often would. It's a bit like, in the Edinburgh, I started with a kind of a quite a liquidy pan, and then during the run, I stirred it up, and it became quite a thick, nice bowl of custard, but it didn't grow in quantity like it normally would.

And I don't know why that feels significant, but I think it's because it was really solidifying and getting this difficult stuff to work and sit and be okay rather than going on thinking, I need more, I need more, I need more, I need to keep staying on this routine until something else comes, you know. Yes. And also because you're trying to say,

with some of the show, you're trying to say something very deliberate. and rather than you've got a notion that it's funny when you go to the post office and X, Y, Z happens, and then that can grow organically and you can inhabit it. But I find at the moment, so as I mentioned before, I'm doing lots of stuff. My last two shows have been about the climate crisis, and they may well be for the foreseeable. You know, I'm really enjoying getting into that. I feel much more confined in terms of the things I want to say,

because I want to say a specific thing. I want the audience to infer certain things and not infer certain other things. you know, I'm really writing it with a sense of wanting to help either the person in the audience or myself or, you know, come up with a wider sort of, a wider idea rather than simply, rather than just make fun. You know, a lot of comedy is just about making fun. A thing happens. You talk about it. We all laugh. So there's an agenda to it. And I know that, although it's very, it's, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not to a problematic extent. But you do have a certain agenda with this stuff in that you want to explain what happened to you and you want other people to, I mean, you say in the book, you're saying, I'm not sure if you actually say it out loud in the show, but that notion of it really helped me to talk about this. I'll talk about this. And maybe if you've got something you need to talk about, you might be more likely to talk about it. There is some sort of an agenda to it in that respect. I've become aware, particularly with the response is to just ignore him, White Mouth stand-ups just out, and there's been a few reviews.

Most of them for the audiobook, the audiobook's very popular. Yes, I listened to bits of it on the audiobook while I was driving, and I'm glad that I did, because it is lovely hearing you read it. I love audiobooks, but I've become aware that people, get something from it you know that it's people have told me oh this happened to me and i've never told anyone or it's great that you're talking about this or or some people who work with people um psychologists or people who teach is saying i've used i've used your book with my students and this kind of thing it's hugely rewarding for me very nice to hear and so i've become aware that there's some value in

talking about difficult subjects but I absolutely don't want to compromise the laughs so you know it for me it feels like this the rest of this show has got to be really really funny okay I've got to buy the right to discuss subjects and talk about things but actually the audience don't demand that the audience are ready they want to hear what matters and what's important because it's in their lives as well you know it's in all about lives so it's uh it's important to feel like this this can happen and it's i think it's also perhaps i don't know this of speculating but in a kind of world of rampant dishonesty. I mean, really kind of an epidemic of dishonesty. But you've watched politicians and people trying to persuade you of things and you just feel the

dishonesty in the room. It's quite nice to say, I, for one, will be honest. And I encourage you all to be honest with your friends and relations. Yes. Yes. If that's the If that's the only thing that comes out of this, I am not joining this trend for trying to persuade you to have an alternate view of me than is the reality, you know, or a review of the world that isn't true, you know. There is an element to your writing style in the show, and particularly I really noticed it again and again in the book, whereby, as I sort of tried to describe it earlier on as kind of like a matter-of-fact quality.

And there's very poetic stretches in there. There's very poetic parts of it. But there is something I noticed, like, particularly in the way in which part of the way in which you treat your dad, where you simply state what he did and who he is and why he did what he did. But it's almost like you don't judge him. We judge him, but you don't express anger. You don't right. You would be so justified.

in writing, here's why that man was a fucking bastard. Do you know what I mean? I'm really getting into it. But you're very almost like a therapist would be. Or, you know, someone who's a really good parent. They kind of often have a matronly quality. Well, they go, well, this is what happened and you did this and you need to take responsibility. So there is that element to it.

You also apply that to yourself. I think there are moments in the book where you're walking a line between some of, when you talk about the angry boy. You talk a lot about the angry boy inside you and how he wasn't able to express himself and how the angry boy would sometimes, you'd turn back into the angry boy and it would manifest as, you know, bad judgment decisions and being rude or aggressive to people or starting fights or ending up participating in fights

that you could otherwise have avoided, were it not for the angry boy? Those stories are often told with the similar sort of, it's like you don't judge the people involved, you don't judge yourself, you say, and this happened, and those are the events, and that's what happened. Not in a way that it sounds like a police report, but in a way that it's so engaging because I feel like I'm being given, just as you say, I feel like I'm being given the honest facts of the matter. You know the way like comedians never apologise for anything. I think there's a Twitter account called male comedian apologises dedicated to this. You know, when people are accused or caught of being, it's worth looking at. When people are caught exhibiting predatory behaviour, there is this tendency amongst celebrities to do a sort of

pseudo apology. I'm sorry that you felt that way, that kind of thing. And yours is the antithesis of that. Not that you're apologising, but you know that the style, you're saying this is what happened. Those are the facts of the matter. In a very engaging way. I think it's rooted in that honesty. I think what I really didn't want to do was to be vengeful. I didn't want to write it's not an act of vengeance. Ultimately, despite the crimes committed, there are people with no right of reply, you know. And so you have to, you're writing a book where the people you're writing about don't get

to give their point of view. And I think a book can become unpleasant if you're really thinking, well, this is just what you think. What is the other person today? But we need to hear the other side of this. And so I want to be able to write something that where you weren't thinking, what's the other side of this? Well, you're just angry and bitter and vengeful. I didn't want to be angry and bitter and vengeful. I wanted to be engaging and truthful and entertaining and funny. But talking about the whole...

I said this is another one of my terrible metaphors, a few times in interviews. If I'm a cake, then when I present the cake on stage, I don't want to present the cake with lots of the... the ingredients taken out. So you can decorate it and ice it and put some dolly mixtures on top and you think you'll get in that cake, but you're not. A lot of it's still in the dressing room. I want to get closer to presenting myself with all the ingredients, whether that's in my books or in my stand-up shows. And then my challenge is a comedian and bearing in mind I've

been doing stand-up comedy for 37 years now. My challenge is a comedian is to turn that into comedy material and to make that a show that people laugh uproariously at for an hour and come away afterwards and feel great because they've had all that all those chemicals flood in their brains which happens when you laugh you know and but done it with done it with all the it's a bit like remember that show we used to go there's a what the shagely harriet used to do it I can't remember what it's called you turn up with some ingredients and they'd have to make something can't cook won't yeah it's got to It wasn't good. It was a great show, a very popular show. And that was the fun of it.

Well, what have you got for me? And these are the ingredients that we have. So, no longer just selecting the palatable ones. I'm trying to cook with a whole cupboard. All the spices. The honesty, there's a particular moment in the book, which is about, like, reading it as a comic is just a delight. And I know lots of comics listen to this podcast and I want them all to read it because you display the same sort of honesty in, there's this wonderful

moment, or I don't know if you would regard it as wonderful. It's a brilliant piece of writing and a brilliant moment for me as a comic. You talk about being on stage, going on stage when you're with Eddie Izzard and she's playing Wembley or she's playing an arena and you're on stage and she a joke like you get to walk out on stage and see what it's like

and she has a joke goes say something funny as a heckle and you just say and I couldn't think of anything and I thought what a comics moment to like there's some moments when it's firing and there's somewhere it isn't and suddenly if you're taken by surprise and it isn't firing and you just feel hopeless to mean just like oh I couldn't think of anything and it just strikes me as like again it's fair

it's a very fair appraisal and it's incredible incredibly easy to warm to you in that respect for just showing, yes, there was a moment where I could have said a thing and I couldn't think of anything. Yeah, well, I really blew my mind standing on the stage at Wembley. I've never done those arena gigs. I don't think I could shift the tickets. I remember when I, in 1998, I did a short run at the Duchess Theatre in the West End. This is a 500-seat theatre. It's brilliant for stand-up, perfect size. you know that sort of 500 to a thousand sort of thing and we i was on jonathan creek at the time and i was very well television profile was high and the tickets just went before we opened

seven thousand tickets sold out so then i knew that if we'd done one night at wembley arena we'd sold it right we'd sold it i could have done that i didn't want to do it because it didn't feel real so i've never had that experience so to stand on eddie's stage and at the microphone and see the size of this room really, really flawed me. And when he shouted, oh, she, sorry, I don't know which pronoun to use. I'm not really good at pronouns. But when Eddie called out, say something funny. Absolutely.

Sorry, nothing. How do you do this? How do you do this? This is mental. Absolutely. But what I love, I think what I love it is part of what is so, part of what your kind of superpower as a comic is, is the fact you can go, nope, nothing. And then that's the funny thing that you say, because it's the admission of failure of, oh, God, I'm just in this failing and dying and being honest about it, rather than, you know, reverting to a joke. Do you know, I mean? Like, I think there's something like that, that honesty. is really, really important. Before we wrap up, in terms of the repair of that damage, is there a therapeutic value to talking on stage every night,

to feeling like, for the abuse story, being in this show, is there a therapeutic value? And if there is, where does that come from? Is it from you saying it out loud? Is it from knowing that this horrible experience might help someone else get over their horrible experience? Is there anything like that? Or is it simply that it does you, you know, it's better to let it out than keep it in?

That's really come in writing the books, I think. The show is still quite difficult to do. It's still quite a high wire act. If the opening section of the show doesn't really land. And, you know, touch wood, so far. has been fine and I worked it out in Edinburgh it's so then it's a kind it's quite tricky so it's kind of it's a practical thing doing the show live every night it's just it's just it's a practical exercise okay I've got to get from here to here to here to here to here and

this isn't really firing in a way I want it to shit I might have to move that bit material up here because I know that will work and then I can get then I can kind of turn the burners up a bit on the stove and then I can get into this harder bit where I really need them to trust me and be, you know, so there's all these, you know, it's like, there's so many things going on in your head when you're doing a show that, you know, thinking about the rewards of it or what it means to you, that doesn't really come into it. All you're hoping for is when you get to the end, woof, you get a big ovation and they say, they basically say to you, that was great, mate that was really we don't regret the ticket money my friend you know so but in terms of a feeling

i think the reward side of it came in in the writing of the books you know getting it out sorting out my mind a bit and organizing it and producing two books although my kids aren't old enough to read them yet that there's as kind of a record of a life for for them and i think it's been beneficial for them and they don't know it because I think I'm now more able to manage I'm I think my father is less likely to act on them through me so strongly because I've done a bit of building work and a bit of kind of created some safety for them because it is a quite dark and evil person still is dead now but it's still still alive in me you know there is I read about that kind of the sort of the heroism really involved in saying this stops here,

this ends with me, like the baleful influence of an ancestor, a predecessor, being able to say this isn't going to affect my children. It stops. Yeah, and one of the things that can help people help you to stop it is to say to them, there's something you should know about me, okay? And if you think I'm this, this and this, part of the reason for that is because of this, this and this. And I've done a bit of work on that. So, you know, make allowances.

And I don't think a lot of the time in life, you're looking at people to think, got to make allowances. I don't know how many allowances you have to make, for example, for someone like Donald Trump. I just really can't understand. His behaviour is so appalling and his attitudes are so disgusting. and his pronouncements are intended to manipulate and deceive and divide and seems determined to be dishonest for every waking moment of his life knowingly dishonest

I don't know what happened to him and he must know that therapy is out there and he must have decided not to do it that's astonishing when he wrote a book he tried to write a book in which he was a massive exercise and self-aggrandizement you know and that's his default position well we're in trouble we'll go for more

self-aggrandizement. Yeah. Yeah. Shocking. Do you have then, finally, penultimately, do you have any

advice for other comics who want to write about something difficult? I know you talked about the writing course being like

the very first moment that you kind of broached putting pen to paper on the abuse and then to take that through writing a memoir

through to performing it on stage from the point of a stand-up who has a difficult thing to talk about that they maybe worry will push the audience away. Is there anything that you've kind of returned to or kind of that you could suggest? Well, I think that it's baby steps, right?

This is a land's end to John O'Grote's walk you're going to embark on. And you need help along the way. And the help comes in the form of if it's writing, then I would really recommend a writing course like I did at Creative Writing Masters at Goldsmiths and you start to write and people are reading your stuff and your workshop and your material and you're getting feedback and you're in a safe space and even if nothing had come of it I'd have completed that course and written about it and had I've still got a hardback book downstairs of my final portfolio but if with with stand-up then work in progress gigs and small gigs and going slowly along

talking about things, it's going on stage and talking with a list of things you'd like to talk about. You start to deploy your comic skills on them and they become comedy material, but it happens slowly. So it's a slow process and you need to invite feedback on what you're doing to build up to it, you know. But yeah, if you've got things in your head that have always bothered you it is worth you know getting them out i finish all my interviews like this i probably didn't when you were first on the show over 400 episodes ago so this isn't aimed specifically at you i ask everyone this at the end and uh you can answer it there are no wrong answers are you happy yeah i think i actually am and i don't think i would have said that many

times in my life or not with all that honesty but you know i I look around my house now with my kids and Kate is still here. I mean, it's really, she's the funniest person. One of my friends said, we went out, we'd go out for dinner with them sometimes. They said, Kate is the funniest person, I know. And I said, yeah, I sort of feel like that. But it's so under a bushel. It's all in text messages to me.

And, you know, so I'm with these people, with these three children and this wife who's still somehow still here and got friends in different places. I do different things with. I'm proud of my books. I would like to park up sometime in the next few years and, you know, breeze through to the end of my life without having to work. That might require downsizing a property.

This is classic. First World Retirement Thoughts. good good I'm pleased thank you Alan I've really enjoyed talking to you it's really good to see you good thanks and it's good to it's really good to hear you happy I feel like I know you so well through the book and it's funny like the one thing actually that um that I wanted to thank you for was you mentioned show me the funny and our first kind of relationship was you or our first you know meeting really was when you were judging show me the funny and that show that uh the show that did not proceed to a second series,

it asked comedians to work in these incredibly intense conditions to write material in a completely made-up kind of format way. And then we would be judged by people who wouldn't dream of doing five new minutes in front of millions of people. And you sort of said as much during the book, and that helped close a chapter for me. I thought the courage of all of you was amazing. But I enjoyed, the thing I enjoyed about that actually,

rather than being a judge, as it were, was having the chance to say to, you know, relatively new comedians, oh, if you do a bit like this or do a bit like that, or you could do this or this is working and, you know. But it did help me when I went back to stand up the following year, having spent that time with all of you, that I'd really had a good think about stand-up comedy.

And what I really took away from it was, being on the front foot getting to the audience and revving your engine up and keeping you know driving the car fast being on the front foot is what stand up

even the most mild-mannered and gentle and slow stand up they're still doing that and I think that's what that night when I walked off stage at the comedy store my engine had died you know and I remembered that that will never

happen again. Yes, great. Thank you so much. And I've told these people how to do it and I need to listen to myself. So thank you to Alan so much for coming on the show, right? What did I tell you?

That is absolutely gold standard Comcompod. I'm so pleased. That was really just, as everyone, that's like, that is a good example of why I do, is it pretentious if I refer to this as the project? This is why I do the project, right? It is pretentious. But hey, I told myself to be pretentious. Alan Davis Think Ahead is now on tour throughout the UK. I can't recommend it enough. It is. You're really seeing a show. You know those shows where you like, I can think of, we should make, we should do a thing, maybe in the Facebook group. Those shows where you go,

oh, I really saw a show, because this is one of them. You've got to go see it. And you can also read white male stand-up, which is just, it's such an incredible balance. It just, it charts this journey through, obviously, if you're a comedy fan, it's full of just brilliant, fun, anecdotal stuff with names you recognize and interesting stories and behind the scenes of various things. But it's also done in, as I talked about to Alan, it's done in this incredibly sort of emotionally honest, matter-of-fact way. Do you know what it's like? I hope, I hope this is taking it in the right way. Remember Rick Males' autobiography, bigger than Hitler, better than Christ, in which he is an unreliable narrator. If you've not read that, read that.

But it's like the exact opposite of that. He is an ultra-reliable narrator who doesn't spare his own kind of, he doesn't kind of play into his own self-image. It's completely warts and all, and I just think it's a brilliant, brilliant book. So, White Males Stand Up, Get That Somewhere Now. If you enjoyed this episode, 20 minutes of exclusive extras. we'll talk with Alan about his rare ability to openly admit failure. That's such a superpower. We'll talk about how he navigates the pull between creative integrity and financial opportunity.

Comes up a lot in the book, comes up in the extras. And we'll also discuss the gig that led to a crisis of confidence that caused Alan to take a 10-year break in stand-up. This is unmissable stuff. So please jump on patreon.com.com. Go to Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy to see what I'm up to. and a quick reminder you can also get extra comcom pod stuff producer callum has been doing

I'm even dropping the evil for this bit he's been doing some genuinely brilliant work growing me Instagram and and TikTok I'm no fan of TikTok I don't never look at it or touch it but he puts it up there as well so if you are you can find it on TikTok but mostly Instagram at Comcompod and on YouTube as well just search Comcomod

and you can find loads of little clips you I hope that those are currently already turning up in your various feeds because they should be if they all see all-knowing, uninterrogatable, uninterrogable algorithm is doing its job, as I'm sure it is. And Post-A-Bel coming at you very briefly in a moment, thank you once again to our Insider producers, R-S-I-C-D, all one word, DP, K-S-A-J-L, Gary McClellan, C-S- Dave, M-K, P-S-A-W and J-B. I don't know why I singled that, Gary, but you're welcome. And a great big thank you as well to our special Insider executive producers, Neil Triple-X,

Peter's and Andrew ABC dead and adds the super secret one as well thank you very much for your continuing support Postamble coming up soon but thank you once again to Alan and thanks to Paul Sullivan for helping organise Alan's time in such a way that we could make that work that took a while and I really appreciate your help

and thank you to Susie Lewis for the logging Rob Smouton for the music Asher Tre Levin for the title of this podcast and this podcast is brought to you by the Society for watching traitors and seeing Joe Wilkinson and Nick Maham do brilliantly well. So if there's anyone else who's on traitors

you'd like to get for the show, then by all means bombard them with suggestions that they do it because I think they're going to be quite hard to get. Maybe I'll post-amble at you about the traitors. Let's do that. Speak to you later. Okay, here's my relationship to the TV show, traitors or the traitors.

I don't know which it is. So several people, when it first started, said to me, oh, this is right up your street, which is always a bit like saying you'd really get on with my friend and you think, oh, they sound like a brick, but I gave it a go. And the reason that people would say to the likes of me, hey, you'll like this, is because I love a game called Werewolf. And I don't know if I've spoken about this on the pod before,

or indeed whether you can hear the recycling which has been taken outside. And that should be a climate joke, shouldn't it? I'm really good at recycling. That's a deep-cut climate joke because the joke there is that you shouldn't be good at recycling. It's like being good at giving up smoking. What you should be good at doing is not using as much. Listen, we're getting off the point. Lots of people said to me,

you are, or you're going to love this, because they know I love a game called Werewolf. And if you want to know what Werewolf is, it's basically the traitors without any of the guff. It's just the arguing. And you don't even need to do the kind of writing someone's name down in advance. You can work it out. It's formless and wonderful.

And kind of the format is nothing. The format is just, some of you are werewolves, some of you are villagers, and you argue. And that's it. No one does tasks. There's no presenter. You can do a games master, like, you know, an adjudicator checking it out, and you can, let's make you go more smoothly. But if you all know what you're doing, you can do it with, like, you do it with sort of different coloured playing cards so that no one in the room knows who the traitors are.

See, I'm already saying traitors, knows who the werewolves are other than the werewolves. I think John Gracie, John Gracie from Beta Males, he's probably not John Gracie from Beta Males anymore. I feel that's like a 12-year-old reference. but John Gracie, who is a sketch comic who also is very interested in games, did Weirwolf Live. He organised Weirwolf Live. So, God, it must break his heart that Traders is so successful unless he's one of the executive producers, which is entirely possible. But the point about Weirwolf is, it's just, it's like the formlessness is the point. It's a conversational game.

It can last all over the whole weekend sort of thing. And there are some observations. Dear Pete's, Pete Dobbing's wedding, we played a game of it. with 27 villagers and something like six werewolves. We worked out the numbers and we drank champagne and he gradually turned the music more and more, turn the volume up and up and up so that everyone had to shout to argue

and he had the time of his life. And we all did. So I love that kind of format. So when traitors or the traitors came along, it annoyed me because lots of people said you'd like it and I gave it a go and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're only actually playing the game for about four minutes at the end of course.

quite a long hour. And I got really frustrated with it because I, in much the same way, like this is why I don't make television for a living. Because I remember when this podcast was in the first flushes of success and I had a couple of meetings and all telly wanted, they wanted to reach in and change it and make it work for telly. And I don't, didn't want that. And as a result, I'm not a millionaire. But I saw the original traitors and I kind of went, oh, they've taken what's good about werewolf and they've kind of stretched it and squeezed it and turned it into a TV show and I don't care about this. And I really was, I surprised myself by not liking it and also felt guilty for sort of being an inverted snob. But all of this, where's this leading?

Oh my God. If you know some of the people on the show, I know, and I'm suggesting that you, like, I'm not being like, because Nick and Joe are friends of mine, but also you know them because, like, not just, like, you have an idea of who Alan Carr is, even if you've not worked with him or met him or what have you. Because you've seen him on telly. We all know what Acelia Imri is or appears to be on the outside. We all know what we think of Charlotte Church and then you'd sort of see people in a very real, I absolutely, God, this is pathetic. I absolutely love how quiet Nick is keeping. This is, oh, I don't want to do spoilers. This isn't a thing I've had to interact with before. I think it's fair to say, as soon as I started talking about

the traitors, if you were super serious about no spoiler chat, then you would have switched off. So I'm not going to feel bad about this, okay? So, where are, I'm at the end of episode four, and obviously I'm not going to give away who's gone or anything like that. But I will say watching the different ways that people adapt to the challenge is great fun, particularly if you've played lots and lots of werewolf, because you're like, oh, don't go gutting for people early doors. Stay quiet for as long as possible, but as soon as someone points out, you're really quiet. What we'd say is like, the classic thing that we'd always go wrong because everyone would be you know half paying attention to the game

someone would say stew's been very quiet and then it would turn out like oh no he's dead he died ages ago and that's the other thing is people whenever i play werewolf my uh friendship group will always uh kill me first because it's too heartbreaking because i'm i'm really good at it it's too heartbreaking for me to swear on my mother's life that it's not me and then it turns out to be me so which i think is acceptable within the terms of the game um So as a result, my friends all kill me first, which is deeply disappointing. But knowing the rhythms and the structures of it and going, oh, this person. And then you find out, oh, such and such a player has watched every episode of the show and is a super fan. And you go, yes, they're being clever.

But then some people in that position, you go, oh, they've slived up and you can see it. Anyway, my point is, it turns out I like the television program, traitors or the traitors. But given that, it would be, I think it would be, I think I would watch it even if it didn't have. comedians that I know in it. I might not have. And then you get that sunk cost thing where you're like episode seven, you go, I'm not going to go back and watch the last seven to catch up with the zeitgeist. So, um, not the zeitgeist, but you know, the momentary cultural kind of, you know, the, the, the Twitter chat. So anyway, it, I love it for that. And also, because it's pretty much the first thing that my family are all, with the kids are interested

it as well. And we played werewolf yesterday. Although, and this is annoying, we had to call it traitors so the kids would understand, we didn't want to confuse them. They don't want to play Weirwolf, the idiots. They want to play traitors, so now we have to change the language throughout the game, and that's annoying as well. I just don't like that an existing game has been sort of refit. I don't like that. I think that's not in Verges Snobbery. That's a fair reaction. What would be the equivalent? There's no equivalent because you could, yeah, you could rebrand Hayden so you get calling someone else. That's not a problem. It's just that Werewolf sort of was its own thing, you know?

It like it had, I didn't even like it when people started selling box games with cards in them called Werewolf and twiddling the rules why have you. I was like, no, no, no, this doesn't need a box. This is a non-transactional game. You don't need to buy anything to play this. And I felt out of purity that was lost as soon as people put in a box and sold it. Also, I like Claudia Winkleman as a presenter. But I can't listen to a word that she says on that show,

because it's all the kind of it's all the presenter stuff she needs to do when she goes out of the room and she says you've got to be bolder you've got you know the whoever is winning you've got to try harder and you feel like going no it's random it's sort of ultimately

random and there is no try because there cannot be a cohesive group because there are traitors in the group so I would it is not a show that I would enjoy presenting because I would feel like an absolute charlatan running round so I love kind of stoking the fire, but that I would want to be, if I was presenting it, I would want to be a presenter

who enjoyed poking them about specific things, like a kind of maverick influence, rather than what she bless her has to do, which is to be this sort of, you know, she has to sort of continually ignore, continually ignore the, um, the nastness of the game. Do you know what I mean? Ah, if you know what I mean, you know what I mean? And if you don't, then, uh, we should hang out more. All right. So anyway, all of that goes to say that my book report today is my show and tell is that you should watch the traitors because Joe Wilkinson and Nick Mohammed are in it. And without any spoilers at all, if you know that they're in it, I'm telling you that I want both of them to win. I want there to be a RuPaul-style sudden victory where just those two people win. So anyway, goodbye forever.

And I'm going to... What am we going to do now? I'm going to do the Stu and A. So if you're in the Patreon, you can look forward to a Stu and A knowing that I have got all of that traitor stuff off my chest. Perfect. Speak to you soon. Who have we got in the can?

Oh, yes. Oh, good, good, good. Well, Mum's the worst.