The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Greg Proops Returns

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

The Smartest Man In The World, Greg Proops, returns to the show 13 years and 468 episodes later to discuss his new album, Kidding. But STILL.A stand-up comic and improvisor from San Francisco, Greg is best known for his appearances on Whose Line is it Anyway? but also as one of the two-headed pod racer commentators from The Phantom Menace! We discuss:the process of riffing a whole album live like a jazz musician Bill Hicks’ advice of "less jokes and more me"we delve into all things Whose Line Is It Anyway?is a comedy album legacy, or just proof of what you were thinking that yearhow he can't agree with George Carlin's "watching humanity burn" and we find out if he is happy…Join the Insiders Club at Patreon.com/ComComPod where you can instantly WATCH the full episode and get access to 25 minutes of exclusive extras where we discuss the power of riffing live, crowdwork and the night in Glasgow that nearly broke him.👉 Sign up to the ComComPod Mailing List and follow the show on Instagram, YouTube & TikTok.Catch Up with Greg: Greg Proops' new album, Kidding. But STILL. is out now on all good digital shops and streaming platforms, find out more at gregproops.com.Support our independently produced Podcast from only £3/month at Patreon.com/ComComPod:✅ Instant access to full video and ad-free audio episodes✅ Exclusive extra content with Greg✅ Early access to new episodes where possible✅ Exclusive membership offerings including weekly(ish) Stu&AsPLUS you’ll get access to the full back catalogue of extras you can find nowhere else!Everything I'm up to: Come and see me LIVE ON TOUR, find out all the info and more at stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy. Discover my comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate.Get in touch: If you’re listening and thinking ‘I’d love to work with ComComPod on getting something out there’ or ‘there’s someone you should absolutely have on’ - drop us an email at [e-mail]! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stuart here. You can go to Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for tickets to my national tour. That's right. I'm taking my second ever climate comedy show. It's called Canary. I'm taking it to the Edinburgh Festival for the last two weeks of August at the Monkey Barrel, Cabaret Voltaire. And I shall see you there in the last two weeks of August. And then it's a national tour for this guy. Cambridge, Glasgow, Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, Maidenhead, Sheffield and Birmingham, culminating in my biggest ever tour show at Bristol Old Vic. Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for all your tickets. Hello there, I'm Stuart Goldsmith. This is the Comedians Comedian podcast, and today I'm talking to Greg Proops. He returns to the show. He's the smartest man in the world. Returning to the show 13 years and 468 episode later to discuss his new album, Kidding, but Still. He's a stand-up comic. Obviously, you'll know him as an improviser as well. He hails from San Francisco, and Greg is best known for his appearances on Whose Line Is It Anyway? And he's also one of the two-headed pod racers. are commentators from the Phantom Menace. I believe it was him and Scott Capuro. And this isn't a conversation we have on this episode. But maybe he told me in person or maybe I've just heard this somewhere else. Apparently, what happened was they went in and improvised a script together. They like improvised a, you know, a funny interaction is the pod race of commentators. And then they got there to see that their funny interaction had been turned into a script. That's showbiz. So in the first half, we're going to talk about more showbiz things. We're going to talk about Bill Hicks's

secret advice of less jokes and more me. We'll talk about the process. This is unbelievable. The process of riffing an entire album live, like some sort of jazz musician, and we will delve into all things whose line is it anyway. You can support the Comedians Comedian podcast at patreon.com slash comcom pod for only three pound a month or more. You get ad-free access immediately to the full video and audio archive and back catalogue. You'll get exclusive extras with Greg Proops and the new formats, Stu and A, and loads of, wow, just, uh, what, um, what's the vibes. Just loads of vibes. But the key, the key vibe being supporting a thing you love. So here, at long last, after 13 years, once again, it's Mr. Greg Proops.

I think I did it with you the first time in 2014. I think that's right. Let's, let's start and let's talk about briefly about that first time. Because that's, That was episode 50 and now we're on episode 500 something, which I would normally, I'd really kind of swagger around with that a little bit, but I think your podcast, the smartest man in the universe, is even older than that? Is that right? Even more senior. Are you on... 2010, I think we started. How many episodes have you done now? You're still going right. It's changed. Yeah, but we haven't done very many in the last couple years. Now it's sort of infrequent from

my house with Jennifer and I don't do them live much anymore. Maybe one of the few last live ones I did was in South by, which is what two years ago? I think we were there two years ago, yeah. Well, let's, we'll come back to the podcast because let's start with, let's start officially with this. When I saw you at South by Southwest, I had heard you were in town. Someone said, oh, Prude Dogs here. And I was like, oh my God.

And we'd had such a fun conversation on this episode of this show that you did live at the Edinburgh Festival many years ago. And I was just thinking, I wonder if Greg remembers me. And you came into the room and you're like, Stuart! And I felt so loved. It was just a wonderful thing, man. It was like it's one of the great joys of the comedy circuit is that when you encounter, you know, the orbits in which we find ourselves, you go, oh, I love this guy.

And then you don't see each other for God knows what, 10 years or more. It's so wonderful to see you and I'm thrilled you wanted to come back on and talk about your fantastic new album, which I'm pleased to have listened to. I have a sent to an advanced copy of it. So I was listening to it thinking, I've not heard much of your stand up for a while now. I wonder what kind of thing I can expect. Has he mellowed?

And not at all. Right. Yeah. So tell me about it. Tell me, tell me about the album. Tell me about switching your focus. I mean, I remember from a long time ago, you had a lot of kind of bush, lacerating bush.

And now that's lacerating Trump, who's worse and you've got funnier things to say. So just tell me where you're at. Give you a bit of context on the album and where it finds you. Well, I mean, you know, we recorded last year on New Year's Eve in San Francisco, which is sort of my hometown. And I play the punchline there pretty much every New Year's Eve. And a few years ago, I decided to do a new album every year.

And I didn't, I don't sit down and like, the last one I sat down and wrote was probably 2018. But all the ones I've done subsequent to that, of pretty much Rift. I was going to ask about this. Go on. Yeah. So I'll go in with some ideas. And generally,

the preceding ones to this, I had some idea what I was going to talk about or, you know, thought about it a little. This time I almost went in with nothing. I really did, you know,

like Phil Kay or, who's the Australian, Russell? Who's the one who, Ross? Ross, Ross Noble. I've worked with Phil and Ross. I've worked with Phil and Ross.

Australia, yes. And Phil, wonderful, wonderful, both of them. Super. And of course, when you work with Phil or Ross, they don't have a set list. People always go, like, how can you improvise stand-up? Well, I've known two guys who've done it for 30 years. And they really just get out there and wing it. So I got out there this year and with nothing but the furious anger of having lived through the first year of the nonsense. And so my presumption was that the audience felt the way I did, which was, you know, frustrated. insane with with uh you know what are we supposed to do how are we supposed to act how are we supposed to feel and we'd had that uh you know the charlie kirk assassination and all that so i just came out swinging i thought i'm going to come out swinging i'm going to go off the top of my head and i am going to just blast off here and so it's all my usual targets billionaires rich people white people men um and of course uh quiet quiet piggy i i won't let him go you know yeah I did an album in 2018 during his first term, and I had written epically, and that one was called The Resistance, right, because that's what we were doing in 2018.

And that had loads of written stuff that was, you know, comparing him to Hillary, comparing him to Obama, and detailing it all. And now I'm done with all that. You know, what was it, Fran Liebowitz? You know, Fran Leibowitz, the wit said, I used to be able to listen to Republicans. Now I don't care about anything. They say, I just hate them. And I think that's where we're at, you know.

So I approached it with no notes and no jokes written. That's insane, Greg. That's insane. You were like, were you, because I got the sense that that was what you were doing. This is the first thing really I wanted to get into is that, like, being on stage riffing it, it's clearly a club set. Only by the end did I realize it was New Year's Eve. Only after looking it up did I realize, oh, that's a thing you do is you release an album on New Year's Eve every year,

having done this set. But I was thinking, like, you can tell how clubby it is from how you're berating the audience in a very kind of, you know, tongue in cheap way, but it feels really like, it feels very, it feels very much like you're at the gig rather than kind of like a polished special kind of, you know, that's, that might have calcified. And I think the, in terms of, like, surely, these are your walking around jokes. I was like, okay, so this is, he's riffing a special, but you're like, this is the stuff you're doing in clubs at the, the moment, right? No, and here's why, because I'm on the road with whose line is it anyway. And we, I'm in an improv group with Ryan Stiles. And we do so many dates a year that it's

become impossible for me to go do clubs anymore. You know, like we do 100 days a year of dates. So we're on the road for 150, almost 200 days a year. So my wife, Jennifer, finally was like, on the weekends when you're home, I can't have you going. to Phoenix or Denver or whatever and doing another weekend and then coming back, which I did through all my, you know, 40s and 50s. I work a million days a year. And so now I've cut back to doing hardly once in a while I do a comedy, a stand-up set. And then on New Year's, it's really my chance to do stand-up. So it was four sets this time. Sometimes it's six, but this one was four. So the first one I go out, riff it. Second one, I kind of know what I've said a little bit so I can

add to it. Third one, I can kind of focus it more. So you're getting on this album, it's basically two sets from the four sets, you know, sort of boiled down. Okay. But it is, it is, I mean, by the fourth set, I know what I've said already. So now I have a basis of what to do. But the first set coming out, it literally is off the top of my head. That is absolutely insane. And I want to just take a minute to honour the craft required to do that, the experience in comedy required to do that. And also, you talk about, like, obviously, Ross Noble will riff, you know, three hours sometimes, but he'll do it by bouncing off the crowd. He'll be taking suggestions over-accepting the offers improv style. And someone like, you know, not someone like Phil Kay, specifically Phil Kay,

will, he will just put himself in this, he'll just sort of put himself beyond reality. and so, you know, I did a little tour. I was very lucky to tour with Phil in Switzerland for a few dates when I later realized I'd been booked with him as a responsible one to make sure he got there. So it's kind of like, booked as his opener and mind there. Yeah, 100%. We had a great time.

And it was different every time, but the way in which it was different every time was that it would be stand-up ideas, bits of music, kind of clowning, that kind of stuff. What you're doing here is very distinct from both, Ross Noble and Phil K. You are live writing the sorts of bits that sound like they're your gear. They're walking around jokes. Do you know what I mean? That's an extraordinary achievement. Well, thanks, Stuart. So well done you. I mean, you know, I'm old and I've been around forever.

And I have the confidence and the chops. I think of it like jazz, you know, the analogy. It's a tired analogy, but it's an apt analogy. When you're in full flow, you're walking backwards, right? So you know where you've been. You don't know where you're going. And because I have it all in my head, I like just try to blow like a jazz musician, right? And get it all out. Imperfections in all.

So my biggest qualm and my biggest note to myself when I make these albums is stop using so much profanity. stop beefing jokes up with fuck. Try to be more eloquent and use more illustrative and descriptive phrases. Because people say to me, you use a lot of descriptive phrases more than most people you, you know, Joe Closick said to me once, it's like you're writing a novel up there. And I appreciated that. And so when I get closer to that, I feel better about what I'm doing. When there's a little more poetry to lean on.

this album I like because I think it's warts and all fury and the feeling is there. And I have this discussion with Jennifer, who's my main person I bounce everything off of and my conciliory, and Ryan McManumannan, who has produced all these albums, who off he engineers them. And because they've heard me a million times, I'll say, well, I didn't like this part and this part didn't work. And they'll go, the enthusiasm of the night and the impetus of the crowd is enough to carry this. You know, like, it doesn't have to be perfect. You know, Stuart, when you're writing a set and you go to clubs and you work it, work at, work at, and you're changing the wording here. You're moving this, as we call it in comedy, this chunk from here to here.

And you're trying to edit it and make sure, you know, not like in a Seinfeldian way, but I mean, you're definitely moving words and punctuation here and there. And like a lot of times people say, well, what are you thinking about when you're up there? If I'm doing a set that I've written, I'm trying to get it perfect. The wording. You know what I mean? Like the wording, the timing. Because you're, oh, I got rushed this part. I slid through this part.

I mispronounce this part. And then, of course, from doing the podcast for a million years, I began to appreciate the Leonard Cohen phrase, forget your perfect, what is it? Forget your perfect universe. Cracks are where the light shines through. So I started to embrace mistakes. expand on the mistakes and make the mistakes part of what's happening. So now when I approach it, I'm not as trepidacious because I know that if I mess something up,

I can just ride the top of it. And I mean, you hear me at one point in the album, like you say, it's clearly in a club. I go, what the fuck was that? And I backed into the microphone. Okay. There's another time there's a balloon on the ceiling. And I mess with the balloon forever. And you have no idea as a listener what's happening.

But those are, and so I leave them in because I want that spontaneity and I want the audience to know that I'm really, really in the moment doing it. And as far as the politics go, I know what my politics are. You know what I mean? I don't have to think about it or rearrange my precepts or my notions of what's right and what's wrong. I've had the same morality and the same take on politics for 40. years, you know. I mean, I've developed it, obviously. I'm trying to be less sexist.

I'm trying to be more inclusive. I'm trying to think about other people more. I've quit making fun of women almost entirely. And having said that, of course, the whole first routine is about Erica Kirk. Let's, I want to come, I want to come into the politics. Lots to talk about that. I want to just stay with that, with the writing live on stage stuff. This is, this is like an incredible.

I would urge any comic listening to this to listen to this album to hear what it sounds like when someone writes on stage. Because there's something that comes up in the podcast a lot. You know, writing, plucking the stuff out of the air. And what you said there about how when you have a script, you follow the script. And we know as performers that's such a different experience to when you don't have a script and you're writing the script in midair as you're doing it. And obviously that has more risk to it. as you say, you're experienced enough now to ride the top of it, you know, make it okay, whatever happens.

But that, it is so much more compelling to hear someone, not only is it more authentic because we're getting the real, the unvarnished you rather than the you that has come off stage, listened back to yourself and thought, oh, I'll change that in order to appear more X, Y, Z, or appear more erudite, or I'd like to be more, I'll try and be more authentic at this point, you know, that kind of paradox. So more authentic, but all.

also hearing, like, so I'm taking another show to Edinburgh this year. This is my 10th hour of stand-up climate show. And I'm going through it, realizing I've been working on the show for like two and a half years. Did it work in progress last year. A big chunk of that is in it, new stuff as well. But I'm in that position now where I'm like, Christ, I have to unlearn this now because I've ended up, there are bits in it which are over-polished. And now I'm like, God, I've got to try and I've got to do like, it occurred to me, and I've never done this. I'd probably should. I'd like to run the hour, but rephrasing absolutely everything, like as an exercise. I'm not going to say any of the phrasing or the waiting that I've worked on, just to give it

some cracks to let the light in. Have you done this? Have you booked a room or a place? Have you found a place where you can do that? Because I think it's a great, it's a good idea, isn't it? I'm too scared so far. Well, right? But like, I know exactly what you're saying. I mean, years ago I was doing a club and I found myself doing my routine and I was walking through it. And so where the punchlines were, weren't getting the reactions. And it's not that the jokes aren't funny. You know the jokes are funny because as you said, you've worked on it for two bloody years so you know where everything goes. But once you start to kind of not feel it, you're just doing it and you're not giving it, like you said, you really want authenticity. And sometimes as a performer you can manufacture

or authenticity. And other times as a performer, you have to shake it out of yourself. And in order to do that, like you're saying, it would be a really good idea for you to deconstruct your set and hear it back to yourself or let someone else read it to you or something so that you know how it sounds, that you're not listening to yourself. Because when you're in yourself, you're always in your head. You know, you're thinking about what people don't, I think, understand. about comedy is that we're more critical than the audience is.

An audience is cheering for you. They're desperate that you'll be funny. They really are. And as soon as you're not funny, they're like, oh, God, please let it be funny again. I mean, they can be wrong, obviously. As I learned early on, one great comics advice to me was they're wrong and you're right, which is what I always tell comics when they're starting. Yeah.

That's good. But I think you're right. Like, so I found myself on that instance, I'd worked through, I was bored of my own material. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wrote my own material and your materials are children. You love them, you know, and like King Solomon, you have to cut them in half and, you know, do all these terrible things to them. Uh, and so the next set I went out, it was Atlanta years ago at a place called the Laughing Skull Lounge. The next set I went out and I determined I wasn't going to say a word that I had ever written, not one word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I went out and started telling stories. And a couple people were watching at Seth that night and we're like, this was so much better than the five sets you've done previous because now we're seeing how you feel. You know, we're getting you're angry, you're peremptory, you're all these other things, but you're also informative and sincere. And I think that's what you really want to be as a comic. Being lovable is my least favorite aspect of what stand-ups do.

And it's not something that I've, obviously I haven't worked on it. But I mean, I don't like seduction. And when I lived in England and was really learning about stand-up in the 90s, and there were so many genius stand-ups then, not just in the clubs, but doing giant tours and whatnot. Everyone from Frank Skinner to Jack D. And, you know, Donna McPhail and blah, blah, blah, Rona, Cameron, whoever I can think of.

there were comics that were really winning, you know, and there are now in England. I won't name names, but the giant corporate comics of England that do the hour-long specials and make the audience feel real comfortable about their bougie existence, and we know who I'm talking about. There's lots of them. It's not to be denigrated. It's absolutely a part of comedy, too. That's not something that ever interested me.

I always liked contention and, uh, content. I want to know how you feel. I want to know what you're, what, what is making you emotional and, and how you're dealing with that. Like when I first was in my early 30s, I'm a little older than Bill Hicks, I believe it or not, but I saw Bill Hicks and I was like, what am I doing up there? You know, why am I not, not doing what Bill Hicks does, but why am I not expressing how I feel more? And because Bill Hicks said, less jokes and more me. And, you know, as a comic, you know what that means.

It doesn't mean you're less funny. It just means stop suppressing whatever it is that you think the audience doesn't want to hear about you. Yeah. And open it up. Yes. This is where I'm. So you have every chance to be angry, incisive, instructive, insulting, and also uplifting. You know, there's all these elements to what it means to us.

It's our very survival, right? The topic you've picked is so elemental life and death. There is no, the topic you've chosen right now as your motif is imperative. It's imperative. So if you don't feel imperative when you're up there, you got to get that back, you know. Don't you just love Greg? Isn't he wonderful? Oh, he's so, he's such a fun guy to hang out with.

And I feel like for all of his kind of performative or conversational kind of, I don't mean bells and whistles, but for all his Elan, for all of his style, you get a really genuine conversation out of him. Should I mean? He really says what he means. Thrill to talk to him, his new album, Kidding, but still is out now on all good digital shops and streaming platforms, but go to Greg Proops.com to find out more. I am on tour for the first time in a long time with Canary,

starting tonight at the Cambridge Junction. I think there's one or two tickets left, but it is very full indeed. I'm recording this in early August. Is this hubris? We will have to wait and see. I feel like Cambridge always sells out. Come on, don't let me down, Cambridge.

Then I'm at Glasgow. I'm at the stand in Glasgow on the 16th of September. Then I ping around Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, Maidenhead, Sheffield and Birmingham, concluding in my biggest ever tour show at Bristol Old Vic on the 18th November. Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for your tickets and to sign up to the Comcom Pod Monthly mailing list.

Now, in the second half, we're going to talk to Mr Proops about whether a comedy album is legacy or just proof of what you happened to be thinking that year, why he thinks right-win comics don't actually have anything to say, how he can't agree with George Carlin's notion of watching humanity burn and we'll find out whether the Proop Dog is happy. Let's get back to Greg. There's a moment in the special where there's like an alarm or like a siren outside.

And you just, off the top of your head, you said, this is the bit I was describing it to my wife. I was like, oh my God, this bit's so great. He's the sort of guy who, what was it? It's when you talk about, is that, what was that? A Waymo crashing into a McFlurry or something like. Oh, the language, Greg, quick. Please, this is delicious language.

As well as that kind of stuff, there was the fascinating revelation, fascinating to me, that you and Clive Anderson did not get along. Oh, we, we, we do get along in real life. But he is, he is sometimes a hard sledding. We don't obviously, for people my age who know you predominantly from whose line is it anyway from when we were growing up. Like, that's like, say it ain't so, Greg, surely, surely a glorious happy family. The whole, the whole stick on the show was that I would go, righty-ho, Mr. A.

and he'd go righty-home, Mr. P or whatever. Or I'd go, because he'd ask for a suggestion, and someone would say something great over here where I could hear it, and he would take the thing that someone said near him that was awful. And I'd go, there's gold over here. Why are you taking the shitty suggestion from over here?

And like, he won't be countermanded. You know what I mean? Sure. I will not. He's a very funny man. And I do like him, of course. course. We've known each other a really long time, well, really long time. And, um, but he won't be corrected and he won't be countermanded. And will you, will you be corrected or countermanded?

Or does there in lie the rub? Right. Got it. Exactly. He won't be bested, right? Like, he's got that Cambridge barrister thing going on. So in court when he was a barrister, judges would say to him, will you please stick to the subject at hand, Mr. Anderson? Because he would sass off. and say something shitty in court. Like, you know, and that's what he's like. So on the old whose line, he'd say something, I'd top him. And no way was he going to let me top him. So he would say something because he had the conch, you know, the conch.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, you know, and that all of that stuff was very, very true. Tony Sottery. Well, this is, I was going to say, this, the most wonderful bit on the, on the, on the album, and was just this incredibly heartwarming thing of hearing you kind of basking in how wonderful Tony Slattery was. Yeah, that's, I did that for me.

And also because because Tony passed away, I believe in hagiography for people that bring other people joy. You know what I mean? You don't need to know anything. I just nodded on the phrase, hey, geography, and I don't know what they mean. To take someone's image and work and uplift it and make it into a mythical, positive, wonderful thing.

Like you could take Johnny Cash's life, the life spent taking drugs and burning down forests and being kind of a petty criminal and then drop all that and talk about what a servant for justice he was and what a right guy he was and how he went through 7,000 different periods of career and really at the end of the day, he's a much more important country artist or American artist than other people because he actually took up the cause of people who were on death row, took up the cause of the poor. The things that Johnny Cash talks about are the things that blues singers talk about, are the things that civil rights activists talk about. So, or Bob Dylan or whoever you want to, you know, like folk singers get ascribed with caring, but country

singers don't get ascribed with caring because they're often flag-waving assholes. But Johnny Cash was both the flag-waving asshole and someone who literally talked about the dregs of society and gave them, uplifted them. Yeah, got it. And Merle Haggard, too, who also had been in jail, but was going to spend a lifetime in jail and went to see Johnny Cash when he was in prison.

And that's what turned him around. Merle Haggard watched Johnny Cash's concert and went, I've got to quit stealing cars. And if I ever get out of here, I'm going to do what I do, which is write songs. So when Merle Haggard died, I remember on the country channel on Sirius FM, the satellite, they had a tribute to him and they were letting people phone in. And it had to go on for two days. It started with one day and then it went on to another day.

Because people were calling up and going, I killed my brother-in-law and I did a 20-year bid at Brushy Mountain or whatever. Or I did 15 years at Huntsville. And the only thing that got me through was Muriel Haarlem. You know, like, we're talking about, like, real reality here. You know, like, I killed my family. I feel bad about it. But Merle Haggard. So, getting about here.

So Tony Slattery is the Johnny Cash of the Who's Lion World? Yeah. It wasn't that he struck a blow for freedom. It's just that I want everyone to remember how lovely and funny and sexy and talented and clever he was. That's all I want them to remember. If you remember other things about it, that's up to you. My experience with working with him, I admired him greatly.

And he was someone who dressed better than me on the show. And he had great hair. And he was a dual major of classics. And Latin or something. Him and my best buddy Richard Vranch went to Cambridge together, where they were a double-eyed. Okay. I've become friendly with Richard. I didn't know you guys were best buddies.

That's lovely. Yeah, we're besties and have them for 100 years. And he was really close with Tony. and then Tony was really close with Emma Thompson, Stephen Foy, Hugh Lowy, you know, that lot, that Kenneth Branagh, that whole lot. And he's in a couple of their pictures. I think I mentioned it in the thing. And so I was in awe of him, you know, when we started the show. And the thing that he did that delighted me, and I'll tell you one, like he'd go, we'd be taping and they'd be counting.

down and they go okay on in five four and while they're doing that we'd be sitting in our chairs and tony would go whoever you can think of uh uh norman uh or uh margaret thatcher couldn't be here tonight uh she apologizes because she's a and then they go action and i mean on the beat on the beat right and so the crowd would be screaming the crowd would be screaming and the music would start and clive would go, hello everybody. I'm climbing. But Tony did that almost every single

taping we did. He'd say something so awful right at the beginning of the show. And then we did a Christmas special and there were six of us and it was a huge disaster. They put it out anyway.

They edited it down. It was me, Merton, Sandy, Josie, McShane and Tony. And we did the Maggi. So now we're

the wise men and we get to the thing and Josie's there with Mike and they've had the baby and me and Tony and Paul are the wise men and Tony picks up the pretend baby Jesus in the improv, throws it on the ground and stomps on it, right? And the crowd at this point has completely disintegrated. And my other favorite one he did, and that I don't think ever got on the air, my other favorite one he did was we used to play a game called World's Worst and we'd stand on the World's Worst step Yeah, yeah, I remember this well. They'd say the world's worst person to do whatever, whatever, blah, blah. And so you stepped down and you did your joke.

And then you stepped back up and Clive buzzed. World's worst thing to say at a funeral, Tony steps down, pretends to fuck the dead body and goes, he's not dead yet. And goes like this, he's not dead yet. And the crowd is in hysterics. And they're like, oh my God, you know. I don't think that one ever.

went out. No, so this is what I'm talking about. Like his hijinks backstage were, I mean, on stage, on stage. Backstage he was erudite,

polite, wonderful manners, and, you know, doing, you know, high strong. Once you got on stage,

he was this irrepressible fucking seven-year-old, you know, that had, with an insane education, and evil on his mind. You know, like having said that the funniest thing that anyone ever said on the show was on the english

show Stephen fry was on once and Stephen fry's really lovely and just as erudite and you know magnificently equipped the epitome of like a a British person you really don't want to tangle with because he knows everything and he won't even raise his voice or or let you know that he's winning because he's already winning. So they go, worst thing to say to the queen mother when she was still alive. Stephen Fry steps down and with his Cambridge

accent goes, wop some skull on this bitch. But he said wop some skull. And at that point I fell over and died. And that one was a, and then there was a named Paul. What the fuck was his last name? He was at the Hull truck theater company.

And we used to do authors and he got Ted Hughes. He took Ted Hughes. We had to take our own authors and we would do them. This is something that no one would ever do on television anymore is improvised authors in the style of an author. And he said, I would like to do Ted Hughes. So they get to him and he goes, dead pig, perfect in every way. Dead pigs bristles stuck in the queen mom's throat. That was his poem of dead. news and I was like it was the funniest I thought the audience was going to fucking fall off their chairs yeah yeah yeah so tell me how did you in because I want to talk about the live show this is like as you say you're spending hundreds of nights on on the road doing the doing the the live version of

the show um so what what in terms of the makeup of the show in terms of the the casting of who's on the show on any one night what do you feel the qualities were that kept you? you being invited back? Like what was your, what was your kind of like in the kind of the A team of the show? What was what was your role particularly? Right. Well, I think I'm there to be the snotty one and to be the, you know, also I can drive. In improv terms, you know, when you're driving a scene, you're the one who's sort of directing traffic.

And Colin and Ryan are, are. astonishing improvisers. Driving isn't their mati. It's not their fort. So I certainly always hosted things. Or I was the host in party quirks or whatever because I was the one who had to guess. Yeah.

And then I think Dan, the producer, just liked me because I was political and snotty. And he let me get away with all those jokes. If you go back to the beginning of his line, there's John Major jokes. Then there's Tony Blair jokes. Then there's Bill Clinton jokes.

You know, and then when we got to America, there's Bush jokes. And there's even quiet, quiet piggy jokes the last few years of the American show. So Ryan is a very visual. Ryan and Colin are very visual. You know, Ryan will do the, you know, and that. And Colin is a great mime. He's a studied mime. So his physical comedy is amazing.

And then Wayne Brady on the American show is obviously a Broadway level singer and dancer and can improvise like Josie the genius of being able to improvise songs off the top of your head. Literally, it's a song about a washcloth. And you know, I love my washcloth. What? You know, where did that come from? You know, and so I guess I was there to just sort of fill all those things out. I can do a little bit of everything and I can play all the games. And I can sing too, believe it or not.

but um and then the old old british ones i sing so i i don't know i think i'm also i never told anyone to fuck off and i never told anyone to you know i'm reasonably easy to get along with on the set although i was a lot less easy to get along with in my 30s i think than i am now so tell me tell me about the live show that you spend so much time touring is that an official whose line show or is it an unofficial these are the people who you'll know from whose line. Oh, yeah. It's totally, you know, these are the people.

So Wayne Brady, who's on the American Who's line, he does a two-hander with Jonathan Mangum, who's on the American News Line. Colin McRey, who you know from the British News Line, does a two-hander with Brad Sherwood. And then me and Ryan, Jeff B. Davis, Joel Murray, Bill Murray's brother, Gary Anthony Williams, and Laura Hall, who is the keyboard player in the American News Line, we do a group. So there's three different groups touring America that do Whose Line. and we're all separate from each other we're all friends and we all know each other

we all do each other's podcasts we all see each other we all know each other but we do three different shows and so it does seem like the coasters sure it does seem like the most incredible way to become more to become older within comedy do you what I mean to go

like to have your bunch of pals and an audience that'll come and see you and you don't have to write anything you play some games that you can presumably by now play in your sleep and yet are still just generating delight and joy for the people in the audience and the people on stage. It really is.

Like, do you feel like you could be any happier? Is there anything that you wanted from comedy or from performance that you don't have? Well, that's a very good question, Stuart. Of course, like Mark Merritt, I'm boiling with frustration and jealousy and envy. He gives voice to his all the time, of course, because that's Mark.

And Mark and I are, of course, very friendly and have been for a thousand years. But he's also intensely competitive, you know. Okay, okay. And even if it's as on, not openly as much as like, you know that inside his brain he is or emotionally. So to answer your question since I've deflected it, no, there isn't.

I really need to be happier. We do discuss backstage, not Ryan so much, because Ryan's not the most, emotionally available human that ever lived. But Jeff and I will talk about it a lot. How lucky we are to have this gig. Because we travel all over America, Canada. We play gigs almost every night.

And people still come and see us, even though we haven't been on telling about a year or two now. I mean, the old reruns are always on until the end of time. But the new ones, I think we stopped making the year before. And like you say, it's a great. great way to get old. I feel like I'm playing doubles at Wimbledon. You know what I mean? Because we're old now. I'm 66. And I'm not a 40, 36 year old angry comic like I was in England in the 90s. I have to deal with that. The only thing I think that I wished I had more of is

I wished I'd built something that generated, I can't say that I didn't because whose line goes on and on. And I did help build the show from the beginning because I was on it from the beginning. I maybe should have done some more video specials. You know, I should have made a couple more hours where I'm on telly because it's pretty skimpy. I think I have two half hours and an hour somewhere and that's pretty much it. So when people look for video of me, they're always like, is there any video of you? And it's like, there's not a lot. And then I make all these albums and the albums are strictly audio. And this year I actually thought about making a video of this album and the guy wanted to charge me a bloody fortune and it would have taken up all this

room. And I just went, you know what? Let's just go 1958 lo-fi. What would it, what would it serve in you? Like if you could wave a magic one and suddenly you've got like four hours worth of specials professionally taped from the last three decades, what would be different? Is it legacy? What's the... I don't know. What is it that you're after? What does that serve? Right?

I mean, I just feel like everybody does it and so why didn't I do it? But again, my wife always says to me... Is it proof? Is it proof? Yeah, I think that's what it is, Stuart. I think that's one of those things why comics are so insecure every time you ask a comic,

how are you, we answer by going, oh, great, I smashed it last night at the so-and-so lounge, whatever, you know? Because it's like smoke, isn't it? There's no proof. It was there. This magical... moment happened, but you don't have a painting or a sculpture or a thing to prove it.

We don't do plastic art, you know, we do an ephemeral spoken word. The closest analogy is poetry. It always has been more than jazz because when you go to see a poet, you sit there and you listen to them talk and you hear about their emotions and their ideas. You're not required to laugh because poetry is not about that always. Sometimes it is if you're seeing John Cooper Clark or something or John Higley or whatever. I don't know if John Higley still being performed. Yeah. But yeah, it's ephemeral. And it's the ephemeralness, ephemorality.

It's the elusiveness that I always liked. So, yeah, I'm being probably somewhat disingenuous by saying I wish I had more videos. But I think you're right. It's absolutely just proof of concept. Like in this year, this is what I was thinking about. And then I made this giant TV special about it. Although when I watch other people specials, I don't always think, sometimes they think the set's awful or it's dated.

It almost, it almost embalms you in a way. Yes, that's some incredible kind of 80s jumpers visible on Montreal specials of yours. Right. You know what I mean? That's what we were talking about. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the old whose lines from the 90s in England, I have got some of the biggest shoulders and some of the coats with four and five buttons on them and, you know, like, shit you wouldn't wear now.

and or funny hair or a funny vest or west or whatever and people still comment on it. Like I wore a nine inch nails t-shirt on an old episode of Whose Line that my wife went to the first Lollapalooza and bought me a nine-inch nails t-shirt and I wore it on telly. And people have never shut the fuck up about it

for 125 years because it... It must be the only nine-inch nails t-shirt that's ever been worn on TV, right? I can't imagine anyone else. Right, possibly. So yeah, no, I really shouldn't complain at all. My wife is always reminding me that I have something that you can't, and I hate to say this because it sounds like I'm being fatuous,

but like I think people believe me as a comic. Maybe not the, I don't have wild, like insane stand-up popularity or whatever. I'm not a stand-up superstar. but other comics know that I mean what I say and that I'm not bullshit. And that's not something you manufacture. It's something you just do for 40 years. And that's why they fail that way, I think. And I'm only buying, you know, I don't have the perfect vantage point to talk about

how other people feel about me. But I think that's what's going on. When I meet other comics, and I did a set earlier this year in Burbank at a place called Flappers, the other comic who I had not met, said you had a lot of things you talked about that were substantive and about sexism and racism and stuff like that. And I said, well, what do you usually get? And she goes, there's a lot of TikTokers and YouTubers coming into the club now. And they don't talk about that. They talk about nonsense and ephemeral and stupid shit. And I always feel like it's fair enough to talk about anything.

I'm not a big stickler for, you know, you have to talk about what I like. On the other hand, I feel like bodily functions, pornography, masturbation, those are things you start talking about when you're beginning because you don't have anything else to talk about. There's nothing else on your mind. And you really need to have something on your mind to be a comic that or be a glorious writer, a glorious writer of jokes, Emo Phillips, you know, someone who, or Maria Bamford, someone who writes a world. They don't necessarily talk about topical things,

but their writing is so exquisite and the characters they draw, the miniaturism that they do. And I don't mean miniaturism in a diminishing way. I mean, a miniaturist is someone who takes something small and blows it up to make everyone understand it. So I don't mean it like, oh, they're only talking about trivial things.

I mean, they're taking little characters and making them a whole hour's worth of jokes. and I demand that from other comics. I used to say, and it's a hokey, I probably said it to you in 2014, you don't care about yourself, that's your problem. You don't care about comedy, that's my problem. I won't see people abuse comedy,

and I won't see people denigrate comedy. I don't like the right-wing comics because I don't think they have anything to say. Being a fascist on stage are supporting the dominant paradigm is not a comedy point of view. Ask Jonathan Swift. You know, like go back to the beginning of time. And people who don't support the dominant paradigm and don't support the prevailing point of

view are the people you need to listen to. And it's always been that way. I think on that, one of the biggest challenges politically of our time is that people who support the dominant paradigm consider themselves heterodox and they consider themselves, oh, I'm against the establishment. And you sort of think, no, you are reflecting the aims of the establishment. The establishment is inherently conservative. Oh, that's how it seems to me.

Yeah, it's the establishment. What could be more conservative than the establishment? So people who kind of claim to be kicking against the establishment are a lot of the time reinforcing it whilst thinking that they're the rebels. And that's, I think, the polarization, I, you know, I'm not a great political commentator at all, but I think, um, I think that's, that's one of the biggest things that happen. I feel like I've seen this in maybe in comics of your maturity, not you at all, but comics who were rewarded in the 80s and 90s for speaking truth to power, then making the mistake of thinking that because the comics in the green room

have become more liberal. They feel like they're representative of the norm. And so they've thought, ah, now I will speak truth to the comics in the green room. And you go, no, they're not the establishment. They're your fellow comics. Yeah. So I, and I'm sure you've seen that happen a lot with,

with comics that you've grown up with, where you've seen people kind of end up, there's almost a wrinkle and people end up following a path that you think, hang on, I thought, I thought I understood your politics and your point of view. And now it's kind of, there's been a sort of intense, backlash of people's perspective. I think so. I think you're absolutely right. And I can tell you

the line of demarcation here in the United States, the line in England, I think, was Brexit, and the line here was the 2016 Hillary Piggy election because I think it was the same moment when a lot of people who'd been, you thought you knew, I was invited to all these different podcasts and talk to all these different comics, Rogan,

Adam Carolla, this, that. And then after that, not. Yeah. Because I decided that I was going to vote for the woman, and that was where the two roads diverged in the yellow wood. And they weren't having that anymore. They were going to tell you what was what, like you say, and they'd had enough of the liberalism of the green room or whatever.

And also, I think we've seen people's innate fascism, racism, and sexism be rewarded because like you say the establishment is intrinsically conservative show business is conservative show business was never liberal there was no moment in show business where they went god we'd really love to hear from all the voices the voices demanded a seat at the table and got their seat at the table now there are Muslim comics now there are comics from different countries now there are women who are not white women now there are and I don't mean that in a I know people are going to go Well, there has been for a long time. No, there hasn't.

I'm old. And I was there. When I started in the early 80s, there were not as many women. Women were not giant comedy stars. Now women are mainstream giant comedy stars. And that includes black women, queer women, women from other countries. And when I say women from other countries, I mean not English or American women, women with different ethnic backgrounds, not white women. And that's been the biggest change.

and right wing people will fight me on this all the time and go what a stupid obvious thing to say and it's like it's not at all it's not at all you would have never had um maz jabrani or or or or danny boy or any of that shit in when i fucking started you just wouldn't have fucking had it because that that's not how things worked and so comedy's moved forward in a lot of ways and it's moved backwards in a huge way um and what my wife used to say to me when I was first dating or in the 80s was I can't get anyone cool to come to a stand-up show because they think all stand-ups are going to talk about how fat their girlfriend does, right? And now we're back there. Now we're back to where you're afraid if you go to a stand-up show, a white guy's going to get up and talk about how men with dicks are threatening their very existence or some idiotic shit like that. And that's where I get off, you know, like I just, I don't want everyone.

everyone to be a liberal and I don't want everyone have the same point of view as me. I don't give a shit whether you are or not. But I'm not quite at the George Carlin part. George Carlin finally said I don't care. I'm not I'm on the sidelines watching

humanity burn itself down and that's my point of view. And I love George Carlin. He's one of my favorite comedians if not my favorite. I still don't agree with that. I feel like you have to have some as we say in America, some skin in that game. Are you a human or aren't you a human?

Do you not, you're talking about climate change as we talked about. There's nothing more important, you know. Yes, lots of things are as important. Human rights. But it's going to make all of them worse. It's going to make all of the, any social justice issue, you're concerned about the increasing temperature of the planet

is going to make all of it worse. Yeah. Without discussing how we're going to live for another 15 or 20 years here. You won't have human rights or civil rights or politics or billionaires and they're living in a capsule and they're going to Mars and all the, which is a whole other topic about veracity. But so, yeah, I am always hopeful for comedy because all the comics I met that were young

when I was still doing clubs and stuff were so informed. And so hipper than the comics that I met when I first started in the 80s were all the older guys than me were really crotchety, misogynist, drug-coaked-up dickheads. And, you know, um, so I'm always hopeful. And there's always like there's millions of different voices. That's what what comedy requires now is not focusing on angry white guys who are mad that people are woke. What comedy requires now is that we focus on all the voices so that we're making sure we're here everybody, you know. I have two final questions.

for you. Yes, please. Before I ask you those two final questions, I just want to make, and I've just made a written note, and I'm just going to interrupt myself to tell you this note. Do you know Martin Urbano? You know a young comic called Martin Abano? You would fucking love Martin Abano.

Look at, he's on Instagram. If you don't find him, I'll message you on Instagram. His stuff is, he's been on this podcast, and his inciting incident of becoming a comic was being a huge fan of comics, and then realizing a lot of them were dicks. and so his he adopts the persona of a, like his tour was called the kind of the apology comeback tour. And it's, you know what I mean?

It's all set. You're going to absolutely love Abano. So anyway, back to my two final questions. First one is, did it work? Did your, do you have a sense that your comedy, which was substantive and about something and on the side of the angels, social justice-wise, do you feel that you had a successful impact in the prevailing, in the prevailing, in the prevailing, in the prevailing culture? Did it, was it, did you, did it work? I don't know. Partially, I think, because people will still listen over in small of numbers,

as far as in the broad scope of comedy, not particularly. I think we've watched everything get sort of washed away. Marin said to me on his show a couple years ago, what did we do it for? You know, what did we do it for? Did we lose? Did we lose? Because, you know, you go to one of the right-wing comic shows,

and they're not like comedy shows. They're like rallies. And they're cheering, oh, I hate this person. I hate that person. I don't like this. These people are fucking up my world with their existence. and so I'm of two minds about that, Stuart. I think it's important to not stop doing it,

so I'm not going to stop doing it. So I think that's the important part. And I think the people that want to hear it and feel that way are a quieter majority than the people who make the decisions in show business who want to keep giving right-wing guys a voice all the time and make sure that right-wing guys are heard. One of the jokes I always do is like,

when will white guys be heard from? I really want the audience to tell me, when are we finally going to listen to white guys? And it's like, well, that's all we do is listen to white guys. So I'm not sure if that's a good answer, but that's where I'm at. It's like, I'm not going to stop doing it. Did I think we win? No.

Does the battle go on and on forever? Yes. Thank you. It's not something you can stop fighting. And it's not something that'll ever end because white supremacy and fascism are just such a big winner for people. Final question. And anti-Semitism there. Throw that one in too.

Yeah. Let's really stir things up. Yeah. Final question. And we need to take a step back because this is a personal question, and I've asked it in the aftermath of a big, heavy topic. But are you happy? Not all the time.

I'm happy because I'm happily married and I have a very decent life. And I have a job in comedy. And right now, times are so scandalous and people are struggling. especially here in Los Angeles. I'm sure it's the same in London or Bristol, is it? That we've watched show business sort of disintegrate and then kind of be put back together again by hedge funds. And their idea of what we always thought show business was

that people were supposed to meet and share like ideas and connect, that comedy is only about connecting. That's what comedy is. you talking, people reacting, da-da-da, but that's not how the corporate world sees comedy. They see it like anything. Content. The word content.

I have never called my material, and I'm sure you've never called your material, content. That's something that a bean counter calls artistic things. So I haven't answered your question. I'm going to say in general, yes, personally with the world, no. Not happy at all.

Not happy that at 66, I have to fight the fight that my mom and dad had to fight. I'm old and my parents were old. They were World War II generation. My father was Jewish and had to go fight the Nazis. And here we are. So I can't be that happy about that. So I hope that answers your question. question and I don't want to bum your whole audience out to the end of time. But, you know,

part of dealing, having said that, am I optimistic? Yes. Like I said, I don't embrace doom. I always think there's a chance for us to win. And time's proven that over and over again. And also, when you look at the other side and how awful they are and stupid, I don't see it holding together. That's a great note to end on, on a note of optimism of one sort or another. Thanks, man. So that was Greg Proops' new album, Kidding, but still is out now on all good digital shops and streaming platforms, and find out more at Gregproops.com. The reason I said all is because I've realized, I was, basically, I did a lovely preview. I'm recording this in early August. I did my final preview last night. It'd always be comedy in Kennington, which is a wonderful room, but their aircon was broken, and they'd very kindly brought in external aircon units. And even with the mic, I was basically shouting to be heard above them for an hour, so thank you if you were.

enjoyed that show. I did enormously. But apologies for the state of my voice. Let's hope this isn't the shape of things to come. I used to always lose my voice in Edinburgh and forget and then get there on day one, have a lovely first show with a lovely crisp, clear, clean as a bell, clean as a whistle, loud as a bell voice, and then go and have six pints and celebrate, well, three pints, and then sit, well, okay, a pint and a half, and celebrate, and then lose my voice the next day and go, hey, what happened there? Because I'd be getting very slightly squiffy and, okay, smashed, and on a pint and a half, and then shouting over background noise,

as I'm even having to slightly do now. I don't know if you can hear the washing machine that's on in the background. But my point is that you can't be losing your voice, so I'm just going to live like a monk, an above-ground monk. If you enjoyed this episode, all of the extra, and you're still with me,

the extras are available on the Patreon. We'll talk about the myth that working hard is inherently a virtue in comedy. We'll talk about TikTok's role in making crowdwork bigger than ever and find out more about the night in Glasgow that nearly broke Greg.

£3 a month at patreon.com.com pod. As you can probably hear, the washing machine is spinning up. I mean, if you can't hear this, I sound deluded, but it is spinning up to a really exciting crescendo

before switching off and leaving the door locked for some five to ten minutes. So there's just time to thank Greg for coming on to the show. Susie Lewis for the logs. Evil producer Callum, is evil producer Callum.

The music was by Rob Smouton and the insider producers on this show to whom we bow and scrape on bended knee are hacker, spiller, Dave Powell, Simmons, Alan Lucas, McClellan, Swarbrick, McEroll, Swaddle, Wormall and Bury, and the super producers were Scrilex and

Dead Mouth 5, as I insist on calling him, or her, have no idea of the gender of dead mows. And a big thank you to our two special insider executive super producers, Neil Scrilex, Peters and Andrew Dead Mouse or Dead Mouth 5, depending on whether they're being pedantic, pedant. and to the super secret one as well.

Of course, I'm going on holiday in nine seconds. So, of course, there's no post-amble. I will post-amble at you again soon. But I think because I've been in a writing jokes mode, I'm getting out almost everything I need to say. But with so much to catch up on. God, I could talk to you about EMDR. I'm far enough away from it now

to really get stuck into that evangelical about EMDR. Also, I could talk to you about discovering I've got raised cholesterol and having to give up cheese a sad time, but plenty of life stuff to catch up. on. I've just recently bought some new vintage, but not just vintage in the sense of second-hand. Vintage, as in like vintage, I think they're Italian swimming trunks, and I'm going to wear them on holiday, and I'm going to lord it around the place like an Italian mobster. Bye for now. Oh, now the washing machine stops.