The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Russell Kane: How To Build Confidence & Stay Young

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

My guest this week is Russell Kane, a Multi-award-winning comedian, presenter, actor, author and scriptwriter. Russell Kane is best known for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Evil Genius, which has become a flagship show and was the best performing original podcast on the BBC Sounds platform. Russell's other podcast, Boys Don't Cry, also features regularly on the iTunes podcast chart.  Kane is also the author of two books, “The Humorist” and the very well-received memoir about his father “Son of a Silverback: Growing Up in the Shadow of an Alpha Male”. Russell went on to make history as the first comedian to win both the Edinburgh Award and Melbourne Comedy Festival's Barry Award in one year. In this conversation you see the less funny side of Russell, it is however one of the most informative, fascinating and mind-boggling conversations I've ever had on this podcast. This guy has more knowledge than you could ever imagine and I think you’re really going to enjoy this chat.  Follow Russell: Twitter - https://twitter.com/russell_kane Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/russell_kane Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. Russell Kane. He's known as a multi-award winning comedian, presenter, actor, author and scriptwriter. But man, this guy is so much more. I started doing all this biohacking to survive on less sleep, to not lose your hair or to slow down the aging process. It fucked my life in the proper sense. Everything fell apart like a junkie how can i get more of that my relationship with my girlfriend fell apart my bill started to not be paid i started to look thin it's the closest thing to a drug addiction i've ever experienced Russell Kane. He's known as a multi-award winning comedian, presenter, actor, author,

and script writer. But man, this guy is so much more. He's genuinely deeply intellectually curious, something that honestly surprised me. And this sounds like it might be offensive or a weird thing to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. I didn't realize how smart this guy is. Remarkably self-aware and to top it all off, brutally honest. He says it how it is. He has an ability to point out things that I think most of us muggles miss. And he's also genuinely just a really nice and hilarious human being. Today Today you won't hear many jokes. This is the more serious side of Russell Kane, and a side of him that I did not know and would not have guessed before speaking to him. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

Russell. Hello. One of the things I read when I was reading about your story was a quote. And I'm going to read the quote to you. You said, I remained a boy while he was alive, even when I i was 18 and i needed to be a man to tell these stories what were you talking about when you said that um well i don't think that's true of just me i think any boy or probably girl who has a reasonably overbearing and dominant father you sort of remain a child now that i'm a father myself i can see that's true so when my daughter minna is 40 she's still going to be my my baby so that's the positive side of it

the negative side of it is if it's quite an overbearing masculine energy you saw i felt sometimes a bit like a bonsai like i kept nearly growing and then the roots were trimmed so i was fully grown but small so if my dad was in the room you know i was instantly childlike i would say inside so it's just a very dominating figure and i think that would have been the same had my dad not dropped down dead from a heart attack years ago i think that would have been the same when i'd been 40 50 60 if my dad had been a 90 year old shouting in the corner i probably still would have been like that even if he wasn't in the room no no when as soon as what in his presence i think but so far as this that i think that quote might be talking about stand up yeah i wouldn't have dared to tell the

funny stories about him while he was alive i don't think just on the risk he he was offended or you know there'd be consequences what was he like for anybody that hasn't read about your story? Steroid taking, shaven headed, silverback, doorman, right wing, angry, council estate, working class, barbell, curl, semi-professional, bodybuilder, lifeguard, sheet metal worker, lagger, nutter. By lagger, I don't mean someone who gets on it. I mean someone who puts the insulation on the outside of pipes. The hardest job you can imagine, crawling in boilers, ripping out asbestos, fiberglass, cut hands, white transit van. Get out of the way.

Just massive. Shirts, tailors. When he was taking steroids, that was before I was born. Shirts, tailored, trousers, splitting, Hulk-like at the thigh. Just a force of meat called Dave. Wow. That was my dad. Actually called Dave.

Dave, actually called Dave from Essex. So, yeah, he was just very old school. So even though he's more like someone who was born in about 1920, he had sort of the politics and the attitude, very unreconstructed masculinity quite knuckle draggy but just would just you know worked himself to death to provide barely raised his voice at me and certainly never laid a finger at me but didn't didn't need to i find the truly terrifying cockney can just give you some are you fucking getting near

now and you're done i i i actually piss came out of my body once when he spoke to me like that really i literally pissed myself i was i'd thrown my brother on the bed and he was crying and there's nothing scarier than hearing those doom doom doom on the stairs if you've done something to your brother or sister and you know your dad's coming up the stairs and he's like what happened what have you done your brother and i just pissed myself and that guy never laid a finger on me that's power my mom definitely laid a finger i don't think i would have been scared of her if she didn't but i was fucking terrified of my mom like but she but she would beat me like but my but i couldn't imagine how she could have achieved that same objective without hitting me with something.

It would be analogous of the nuclear deterrent threat. If you know I've got nuclear weapons, I don't need to fire them for you not to attack me. So I knew my dad had nuclear, whereas, and this sounds incredibly sexist, but the reality is once you're a 14, 15-year-old lad, you're the same size as your mum. There are no, you know, where are the nuclear weapons?

She's going to have to put her money where her mouth mouth is and haven't you got to know how nuclear weapons work to to know that they're i just need to you just needed to look at my you know you just to be honest with you my dad's given me so many positive things it's just that the negative things are funny so that's why i talk about them disproportionately but to teach someone i'm five foot ten like a pepper army with hair on but when i stand on stage i don't need to hit people or shout they they sit in their seats and some of them in the front row shit themselves if i even look at them so who have i learned that from it's partly my craft but it's partly also what a good teacher has uh what a good dad has like my dad and what a good stand-up has male or female that authority

to stand there and hold a room with a reasonable tone in the voice pin drop it's powerful it's harder for a mum to do that particularly where i grew up there's a lot of single mums um when you've got teenage lads that are sort of thinking what you're going to do she's it becomes like an arms race where the mum starts hitting the legs and hitting the face and it's needed because that's what the mom's got to work with. I suppose. That's why, that's why I do believe this is so sexist and old school,

but I do believe if not a man, two parental figures in, in place, one who can play the bad ass. It doesn't matter if it's two women, two men, whatever. I think if you've got two,

it's double the force raising a child takes a village you i remember you know the way you've described your dad is um it's quite different from who you are today and who you are over the last 10 years i mean yeah in almost the antithesis and i remember reading about the fact that you took a dna test at some point i took a d DNA test just out of curiosity because I'm big into science. I wanted to know what diseases I was carrying. I've always been fascinated about my ethnic makeup

because my family history starts in living memory. I'm obviously a little bit darker than I should be to be a Brit. So I was interested to know what was in there. But part of me did go, what if this is the moment I discover my dad's not my dad? It did cross my mind, which is totally absurd. Sorry, mum, if you're watching. Because he was blonde hair, blonde curly hair, blue eyes, very wide. We're just nothing in common.

My brother is the spirit of my dad but i'm like i'm like my mum just energetic pepper army with hair on running around bouncing out of bed stick first thing in the morning and like in terms of like generational cycles where did your dad get it from so he always used to say to me i never had a dad so i okay so and then my mum would my mum would say so you got to understand your dad didn't get taught how to be my mum's gay man your mum didn't get taught your mum your dad didn't get taught how to be a dad so he just no he didn't know how to be around babies he'd never learned that sort of thing he never he didn't have anyone to guide him so he's

quite a rough childhood his dad walked out on him when he was about, I think he was about two. And my dad's mum, hard as nails, East End, well, it's Essex back then, barking. And it was just a tough childhood, you know, tough East London, Essex childhood where you just survived, basically. And he had a lot of dreams. I think he would have liked to have gone the same way I did. He was quite a good looking bloke. So he got scouted for modelling and things like that. He pursued that for a bit. He pursued the professional bodybuilding.

He even tried stand up, I think like a Pontins or a Butlins. He tried a little bit of acting, only for a couple of years. And then he went into the hardest, I think, of all the manual labour you can do, which is sheet metal and insulation. So that, like I say, crawling along pipes and all that. So there's a lot of bitterness, a lot of unrealised dreams, a lot of abandoned by your dad, a lot of hardness and negativity there from the childhood, and that plagued him his whole life.

So if we were on a beautiful four-star holiday to Minolco and the sun's shining, part of him would be thinking about the five-star holiday he could have. I'm not like that at all. How did you know he was thinking that? Well, he would voice it half the time. How? What would he say? It's all right.

Imagine if I get the big job, imagine if we would come back. He'd be quite positive on holiday, actually. But he was like, just imagine, Julie, if we had more. That's my mum, of course, Julie and Dave. If we had more money, that house we could have. And my mum of course Julie and Dave if we had more money that house we could have and my mum would be like Dave we bought our own council house thanks Thatcher it's a big house biggest house in the street we've got pillars out the front yes it's a former council house we've got pillars we've got a swimming pool in the garden three beautiful bedrooms lovely bathroom massive house dining room front room

two healthy sons at the point my brother's very unwell by the time he was 17 but at that point you know what was there to be negative about my it's hard job my dad did but good money but he couldn't see that he could just see his mate who started a glass company and now his son drove a lambo and he lived in chigwell and i don't and when my dad passed away we were going through the shed at the bottom of the garden and I found his diary and it was lit. It was honestly, it was one of the few things that made me cry when he died because I sort of toughened up to help with the funeral

and all that because my brother was ill by then. And it's just rain today. Didn't get the job. Shit day. James being a, can I swear? Yeah. James being a cunt. That's my brother.

Shit day. Fucking had a curry. It was like the diary of someone inunt. That's my brother. Shit day. Fucking add a curry. It was like the diary of someone in prison. That's what it was like. It's so weird that someone could be rich and not know it. I love making money. Don't get me wrong. But I'm really good at enjoying what I've got.

So I've enjoyed every level of my comedy journey. And I've never been bothered about whether I go further or not. Because I feel like if you can have two banging holidays a year and you love the house you're living in and your family's healthy done he was engaging in upward social comparisons right the whole time and if you do that you're never going to be happy absolutely and you see that with people in my profession that are earning a million pounds a year two million pounds a year and they're in debt because they're buying an AP watch every week. And they're going to the Maldives four times a year.

And they've got the, they're in a 10 million pound house. They should be in a 5 million pound house. It's ridiculous. That's consumerism, but it works on a more micro level. So we would, if we're going to Stansted airport to fly to Menorca,

traffic's probably going to be shit on the way to the airport. I'll bet you the traffic will be shit. So we're already, he's pre-imagining the traffic jam will be in if we hit a traffic jam fucking knew it holiday we'll probably miss the flight holidays fuck julie i fucking told you we should have gone for i fucking told you he didn't shout maybe he would shout to himself sort of thing did you ever figure out where he learned that behavior where that came from no idea like. Like I say, it was just all the bitterness and negativity and expecting things to go

wrong. That was his tape, his script. So if we were in a restaurant and I'd be seven years old and I'd spill a glass of water, not coke or anything, so he's not going to get sticky legs, he'd be like, water everywhere, fucking meal ruined, I've got to sit here like I pissed myself for the entire...

He'd be like, the worst thing in the world has happened. Like someone at that moment's probably found a lump on their body, but to my be like the worst thing in the world has happened like someone at that moment has probably found a lump on their body but to my dad the worst thing that can happen so he

I felt sorry looking back now you've got to you've got to feel compassion and love because it was just a constant tide of self

hating negativity basically and imagining if we go and buy something from Ikea that needs putting up you know a screw will be missing.

And it's because I'm me, because I'm cursed. A fucking screw will be missing. You can guarantee it. Fucking hell. That all the time. So for a little boy growing up, you've got to work really hard not to absorb that. I see hints of that in my dad, especially as he got older. A little bit more negative about everything.

Moods, you know, seem to be irritable at a lot lot of things and one of the things that crossed my mind was i hope this isn't genetic like how do i avoid becoming this guy when i get to that age has that crossed your mind that the generational cycle might continue to some degree without you noticing obviously yeah i mean seeing so my brother i don't i can't really go into my brother's illness because he's literally not well enough to consent for me to talk about it otherwise i would happily discuss it was an important subject to talk about but he's got some severe mental health issues let's just leave it there so my brother's really sort of i'm refreshingly unaware of his mannerisms and gestures and postures, if you like. And it's just like, he's like my old man.

So how can your, the way, your voice and the cadence of a sentence and the glances and the way you say, no, I mean, and stuff like that, he is my old man. So, I mean, on some genetic level, there are copies of how we express ourself, there must be. But apart from maybe your height i can't think of anything you can't change with loads of loads of ways education cognitive behavioral therapy if you need it i never have but you can um you can work on the way you eat

your diet your lifestyle all of those you know genetics is not destiny one of the most fascinating things you can look up is identical twin studies over and over again you get one twin that's two inches taller than the other where he's had a more successful not two inches but it might be an inch taller where he's had a more successful life eating better food so you can literally grow taller they're they're genetically identical identical so you can't tell me i'm destined to suddenly be negative about traffic jams if two identical twins can be different in height you must be able to push against behavior you see that film through identical strangers yes fantastic amazing absolutely fantastic yeah yeah made me upset yeah it's inspired you know the ending is obviously

tragic but uh yeah really powerful film and i think that shines a light on how it does it gives hope for all of us that you're not you're only 50 percent of your dad and 50 percent of your mom and although you're actually slightly more of your your mom i've learned how anyway but um so you don't you're not if you're only 50 percent if twins aren't destined to be the same you're not destined to be the same as a parent it's it's it's bad it's a bad way to think particularly if it's a negative it's a good way to think if there's something you want to copy tell yourself it chant it i want to be more like my mom she's such a cool cat or whatever we we have also grown up in a slightly different culture especially in the last sort of 10 20 years where we're much more aware of our psychology right and our and our and

how trauma and childhood experiences have shaped us as adults whereas i think my dad probably didn't know so it was like someone back there in the control room running the show without him and he was just a puppet to the shit he'd been through whereas we are kind of a bit more open as a society now so yeah that that's my biggest learning mental mental health comes on a spectrum it doesn't mean mentally we have mental health everyone had met we have physical health we have mental health even if you have no issues that's good you are mental health so mental health runs on on a spectrum to people that are cooking on four hobs like me and you hopefully all the way down to people like my brother who's severely severely ill with cognition issues and people who are severely ill or people who are trapped in time like our dads before an awakening

they don't have insight into their current state if you do not have insight into your condition you are screwed because if you're let's say for example schizophrenic without insight into the fact you have schizophrenia you will not take the medicine you just won't take it you'll look at the pill and go well i don't i'm not ill so you'll you'll be in assisted accommodation your entire life if you're schizophrenic but know you have schizophrenia chances are you can have a relatively normal life because you know i'm ill i need to take my medicine and that but you can translate that thinking to any aspect of business or commerce to stand-ups to entrepreneurs because I've noticed I call it black box thinking from the Matthew Syed book the moment you can have insight into a stand-up routine or into a business proposition in a proper way where you can look at

it and go that doesn't work you're going to be successful people that don't have insight into themselves in their personal lives they end up single they end up in unhappy relationships because they can't see their own faults they can't insight into themselves and this i mean this is just an impossibly tough question yeah because we're talking about self-awareness really right so like how does and people people have asked me this question for the last five years and i really don't have a great answer still how does one become more self-aware well i it was literally part of my degree so i'm very lucky here we go i start i started doing english literature because i wanted to do the most show-off uncounsel estate posh subject possible way i mean i was going to get a first or i was i don't know what was going to happen so i told myself i'm going to get a first

no matter what that was pre-ordained uh so i did two years of showing off about you know roland bartz and jane austin and all that and there was an opportunity in the last year to cross over into creative writing and the reason i did that is again goes back to my dad it's not very practical to be absolutely badass on jane austin unless you're gonna want to be a lecturer an academic whereas creative writing writing is a practical profession. You can go into advertising. You can go into journalism. You can try and write books.

You can, as it turns out, go into stand-up. I didn't know that yet. There's loads of places where you can go, look, I've not just got a first in English. I've got a first in writing. I can take body copy and make your brand pop. So how do you do a dissertation in creative writing? There's only one way.

You have to submit 10,000 words, normal academic poncing about, and you have to submit 10,000 word short story play, but you have to run through your own work and criticize it and say what you got right and what you got wrong. Once you've been through that and done it loads of times it just becomes natural to bring it to your life a copywriter in an advertising agency has to be able to really hate the his own work he just created and find the faults in it

because that will lift it above ogilvy's copywriter and you'll win the pitch it's as it's as simple as that the person the man who cannot realize he's domineering or jealous and work on that will not have a fruitful relationship in a woman or a man indeed in order to do that with your life or with your copy or with your work whatever in marketing you have to have a certain level of self-esteem and personal security to be to allow yourself to rise above your work and look back down on it in a critical way a lot of people's self-esteem is so fragile yeah that the prospect of being critical is it's just unthinkable like you know and this is why people get from my experience why people get so defensive and because they're because they're so if you one shot to

their self-esteem will take the whole house down so that they immediately go like this like so you could look at it that way so i would say that person needs to learn not self-esteem because self-esteem is a totally separate conversation they need to learn objectivity a piece of writing is a thing a relationship is a thing that you've built with someone. A comedy routine is a thing. A poem is a thing. The things over there, that's not you. You have to practice being able to take the piss out of the thing,

criticize the thing. No, someone's not coming up to you and going, you're ugly, you're unlovable, you've got a big nose, you're not tall enough. Stuff like that is going to hurt, and there's no way of getting objective. But if you can't look at a poem you've written and someone goes i really love the meter but the adjective there's a bit obvious and you should be able to thank that person they're giving you a gift if they know their shit but you're the one that should be saying that first

m&m style eight mile seize the bars and turn them on yourself first hard to do because everything's like better what it makes better work it makes better humans yeah i completely agree it's just really tough to do like practice it's practice i get a lot of um this is the message i get most often sent to me via my agent or an instagram and it drives me fucking nuts i had one the other week oh my god i love what you do i'm i'm really funny person this is how it was phrased the other week how how many gigs would i have to do before i could like open for you on tour can you have a look at some stuff i filmed on my phone and i'm i give them an answer that normally i never get a reply to this answer i say okay it's

quite simple lucky for you there is a really simple model to follow. You need to work unpaid for three years in the clubs, three times a week. I wouldn't recommend a relationship and just warn your friends you're not going to see them. I started to earn about two, three hundred pounds a week after five years. At that point, you're ready to give up your day job.

On about the eighth or ninth year, you're going to be ready to do a support slot. I never get that. People don't want to hear it but you if you went up to the guy in the gym who's 16 stone and five percent body fat and go can you tell me how i can get like that you'd say the machines are over there dickhead just get going yeah the machines are there you cannot skip the machine you cannot skip the tricep station if you want triceps you can't just go but it's gonna hurt uh it's too much work to get a try and then just don't get triceps but don't moan if you don't have triceps head to the dip station and see you in four years i can yeah i

now i've i've wrote about this my book came out last week and i wrote about it in my book i remember someone turning to me it was actually the ceo of my company now company have just left and he said to me steve you know this personal brand stuff and this like speaking you do on stage was like how long did it like how do i he was like how do i how do i do it and in your brain immediately scrambles around looking for like three tips right three tips to describe like a deck i remember my first talk in school at 14 years old my hands shaking absolutely the truth is like someone's seen you with a sharp sword and they've said how do i get a short sword that sharp so well start sharpening it now and then 10 years time but people don't want that no one wants to hear the answer is boring repetitive practice for most most people that are absolutely fucking

excellent at something have done a lot of boring repetitive practice that would be boring to the person asking the question not to us i loved every shit gig i did and that's the difference that's what kept you doing it for 10 years or two decades or whatever, is that you genuinely intrinsic loved it for its, people want the rewards, right? But when they, if they started and genuinely wanted, they too would discover that love. If you, if you say, I want to be a dentist,

how do I be a dentist? You start dental training and you're finding it boring and a slog. Newsflash, you don't actually want to be a dentist. You'll be rich. Yeah. So find something else. Find something where you love't actually want to be a dentist you'll be rich yeah so find something else find something where you love the journey that is a secret so that's what my dad never found he did he didn't find a job he took pleasure in it's got nothing to do with coin although i'm into

it but if you love the outdoors you're going to love landscaping whether you're on 17 grand a year or 17 million a year you're going to love it because that's what you were born to do it's such a counter narrative to the narrative that sells, which is like short investment, big returns. It's like seven days, six pack abs. That's everyone fucking signs up for that. Imagine, imagine that the like 10 years, maybe. Maybe, that's true.

And that's, and the problem is a lot of the TV we make, I make, it sells that X factor spot, do one song, live the pimp lifestyle. And of course, that is what, in all of the X Factor that's ever been on and all of pop star, the rivals, how many of those people are now platinum selling artists living in mansions? What? Harry Styles, try and name some. One Direction, that's it. That's out of every single little mix,

that's out of every single one in a show that's designed to push people to the front in an artificial way. So if you think that's going to happen, if you're Russell from Essex, you're deluded. But any business, if you're passionate, mixed with a little bit of luck, people, this is the other thing people like us

don't like putting out there, but I'm afraid there is a bit of luck involved and it sort of calls into like we always sat here again i've worked so hard oh look at me with my work hard badge but at some point we had some luck as well just we're in the right place right time mixed with the hard work so some people are more lucky than others. Luck is a thing. And what luck is, not luck as in lottery number luck, but luck as in, oh my God, you've met the perfect partner. You've got the business. Oh, you were looking for a French bulldog breeder and you found exactly the right one at the right time

when you were looking for a puppy. Why are you so lucky? Why is my life so shit? So they tested this. They got a bunch of people together. Half people who say, my life's shit, I'm so unlucky, and half people like me are like, I've got to admit, I'm a bit, I'm blessed, hashtag blessed, I do have a lot of luck. And they run tests on them. And the test they run

was very simple. The psychologist, I can't remember, he's the British Jewish guy, really funny, brings loads of books out, Richard something or other. He's written a book about it, about luck, look it up. They gave him a newspaper each and they went in there, go into your separate rooms and on a page is a picture you're looking for. Whoever finds that picture comes in first, gets £100 cash. That was the game. So everyone went in like that. On page two in massive headlines was, it's a trick, stop turning.

If you've read this headline, go and collect the money. That was on page two. All the unlucky people missed that. All the lucky people found it. Do you know why? stop turning if you've read this headline go and collect the money that was on page two all the unlucky people missed that all the lucky people found it you know why because lucky people are eyes are open the hustlers so it turns out you can make luck you can practice that you can hone it that's something you can hone next time you walk into a meeting just think right what's what's that guy do for it for a living who's that is that a contact that's not luck if i sit down next to someone and he happens to be doing a comedy streaming service startup and he signs me up that's me being a bit bold and striking up a conversation

and looking at what he's wearing and having to think you can learn these skills people don't like that because that shot puts the mirror on me and creates personal responsibility where i you know what i mean and i feel like in our society at the moment this is just an observation i've had personal responsibility is people fucking hate that yeah i did i remember doing a tweet about um because okay this was me playing a bit of fuckery but i don't care right so the left of society which i probably consider myself to be on are really in support of the nhs so i did a tweet saying the biggest cost to the nhs is like smoking eating bad etc so if you in support of the nhs so i did a tweet saying the biggest cost to the nhs is like smoking eating bad etc so if you really care about the nhs take care of yourself till you

know oh people like no steve this is literally the replies like this is not it because i'm basically saying if you genuinely care about the health service here is all the data the biggest burden on the nhs is people that are overweight and people that are smoking or whatever um well the the obesity one's particularly controversial because there's two movements at the same time there's personal responsibility in the science we're learning about obesity particularly during covid i mean if you if you want to do one thing other than social distancing obviously get a vaccine but most of us are too young to have had a vaccine so if you haven't had the vaccine and you don't and you don't want to live life like a prisoner the best thing you

can do is get in shape quick you're better off you're literally better off being a i think a thin smoker literally literally yeah but it's a controversial conversation because quite rightly we're re-evaluating beauty standards and a lot of people end up with eating disorders and fat shaming and all that needs to go away and as as soon as we associate personal responsibility longevity and health with a body type we're in a difficult area where we create shame for people based on how they look which is something we get rid of so for someone like me who's on on the left my head just goes pop yeah you don't know where to start. Smoking is a slam dunk. Don't smoke, you're a bellend. Yeah, yeah.

End off. Dickhead, don't smoke. Stop costing me money on the NHS. But someone that might be overweight, it's very, very complex to understand why someone's overweight. It's something I studied a lot, not because I've ever been overweight, but because I'm fascinated with biohacking and body and all of that. And I think the most, most illuminating thing I can tell anyone about being overweight is that eating too much does not make you overweight. This is no one understands this. I'm going to blow your mind here. Being overweight causes you

to eat too much. Once you have the metabolic condition of being overweight, that fucks your circuitry, which drives you to eat more. Obesity causes calorie surplus. So shaming people for eating too much is a waste of time because most people with busy lives and kids and no money are in a condition that's compelling them to eat more might be emotionally compounded might be psychologically compounded they might be recovering from abuse they might be recovering from a bad relationship they might just be skinned and can only afford fucking nuggets and they're just tired they're not getting enough sleep and unfortunately until you get into um a low-fat state like us where it's easy to regulate your calorie your every part of your body is telling you to feed this obesity no one understands that i've gone

deep into the sign i'm not a scientist so look it up for yourself before everyone starts trolling me saying literature degree boy but as far as i understand the science layman's cards on table obesity causes overeating now that is just boom but it helps us to be more as much as i agree with what you're saying it just it leavens more compassion into people's weight loss journey although you're absolutely correct if you don't want to die of covid and you don't want to cost the nhs money getting in shape is one of the best ways to do it but of course it's not easy and i've i've had moments in my life where i've been most stressed and it's a downward cycle yeah like you know what i mean so you eat and then you require sugar more and it sugar becomes this addictive thing in my life and it only happens to me when i'm stressed so i'll have my little

moments as a downward cycle in my health when there's a lot on my mind and so yeah i mean compassion is certainly incredibly important in that regard what about more broadly so outside of health the topic of personal responsibility i like it because it's controversial um and i discuss the nuance trying to get us in the daily mail here fat people should pay for themselves no i know just generally in your life and success and like um what you can accomplish the fortunate position i'm in which is what i talked about in my last podcast was because i came from like a very broke family where my mum can't read or write and i was born in africa and i we didn't have anything no christmas birthdays holidays my journey in life people don't discredit it they don't point at me and say oh you know silver spoon you can't fucking talk yeah so i feel like i can

have the conversation a little bit more about personal responsibility of course i'm fucking incredibly lucky like i didn't choose to be me you know what i mean i didn't choose my parents or the the good and bad things that shaped me yeah but i but i want to i want to have a conversation about personal responsibility as it relates to career success and let's let's start with hard work because in our society right now there's two counter narratives one is that don't work like incredibly hard you're going to burn out and you're going to have mental health problems and the other is i've never met someone that sat here in front of me that doesn't work really fucking hard and i i did i don't know how i would have sat here without hard work and tremendous sacrifice well first of all we sort of already made the point a lot of people

are working hard at things they of people are working hard at things they hate yeah so working hard at things you dislike hate or find stressful will bring success and money but at a cost working hard at things you love i'm i finished filming at midnight last night in mates and i got in at half one i had my dinner at two and I fell asleep at three and I bounced out of bed this morning to come here to do a podcast for the price of a car. Why? Because I love what I do. Now, if I was had got in at three from working as a hospital porter and had to get up to do another job, which was quite well paid this morning, but I hated it. I wouldn't be buzzing. And that's what releases the cortisol and the stress hormone into your body.

So you can't compare, you're not comparing like and like, even though both people are working hard. You've even got people that might be barristers or doctors, really well-paid professions, but find it stressful when they're burnt out and stuff. It's unlikely you and I will burn out because I'm like, what's next?

And you're intrinsically motivated by, you've got a sense of control exactly so that's that's what i think that i think we can we can differentiate there on hard work straight away so far i'm more interested in the first thing you said about the the join between people's origin story and how much stick they get for the success they've got. Cause I'm, I have to phrase mine a lot more than you because I get put in with the silver spoon guys, because I may just a white man.

So I'm not going to use real names here and I'm not going to use real jobs because I respect my profession is so hard. I don't give a shit whether you're Prince Charles doing standup, anyone who does stand up. I just, it's so hard I don't give a shit whether you're Prince Giles doing stand-up anyone who does stand-up I just it's so hard to stand up um and I don't think an elite background helps you in stand-up might help you in telly in production won't help you on stage with a bucket of piss but I've been told on more than one occasion uh we'd love we'd love to we book you for the X show but we've already got Ollie. And so we got Ollie, we can't have two.

And I'm like, how me to me and Ollie represent the same thing? I sometimes think, well, I've got more in common with, I could phone up, I don't know if you know who Judy Love is. I do, yeah. I could phone up Judy now and we could speak for an hour. We both grew up in a similar part of London, similar age, similar family. Yes, she's got Jamaican stories, but I've got Essex stories.

That's the only difference in our conversation. We come from the same place economically. We're fighting the same fight. We're punching up. No one would ever say that. I'll probably be in trouble for even saying that. That's the controversial thing for me to say. And it shouldn't be because

if Corbyn and people like that have got it right everyone who starts with what I call lower entitlement points I've got a lot more entitlement points than a woman of color undoubtedly but I've got less less entitlement points probably than a Ghanaian prince right so all the people that have got fuck all I'll start with I should link arms doesn't matter what gender you are what color you are that would be powerful I'm a bit nervous when we get carved up and we're people who start in life in a tower block should that tower block should be united you know I mean so that's the first point but I do I do think you we get off we do get off lightly if we've got money if we had a more council estate background it's like a license to be okay with having money

like i can wear my rollie by the pool when i'm in ibiza because i sound common yeah if i sounded posh i probably would keep the Breitling on. No, it's so true. One of my guests that I had on the podcast went to a very good school and is white and blonde and very pretty. And she basically can't give advice to anybody without the papers smashing her. Or social media. In fact, there was a meme the week before she came on media in fact there was a meme the week before she came on the podcast

there was a meme that went viral I think it did 250,000 retweets when she the day she released her book and it was this someone pinned someone up against the wall with a big trumpet

and it was like white privilege telling you how to how to become rich like she is not allowed to give advice to anybody because she's white

and went to a good Oxford and we how much good insight and business knowledge and whatever do anybody because she's white and went to a good Oxford. And we, how much good insight and business knowledge and whatever do we lose? Like so many people went to Oxford and didn't build multi, multi-million pound, two multi-million pound companies.

I still want to hear this from this person. If someone's offering you knowledge, she's not, it's not like she's telling you about her struggles. The other day there was a queue in Waitrose and I just couldn't keep that. That would be the trumpet, right? She's trying to tell you how to build a business so it doesn't matter where you if you come from space

if you can make me money tell me how if you can tell me how to start the next comedy streaming platform service where i own 40 of the shares i don't give a fuck if you've got a double first from cambridge or whether you're one of the mandem i don't care show me where to show me how to do it you've got to have you've got to have an open knowledge is is is once it's out there is democratic the path to acquiring it is not um but there's no doubt about trying to stay on topic what you're saying about personal responsibility is i'm really split on this because i don't believe it's true that anyone with enough will and luck can make it i think we're probably outliers and freaks and just wired a bit different and have got what it takes to push through.

I think if enough blocks are in place, you're a single child of a drug-using mum in a towel block. And I am built of stronger stuff. So I've bounced through my childhood and I've come out the other side, but a lot of people aren't. If we were all born the same, then why aren't I playing basketball? Why am I not sprinting? Why am I not a maths scholar?

Some of us are born genetically more equipped in other departments. I'm clearly a highly energetic person who's good at motivating themselves. Some part of that is inborn. I was like it as a baby before I could speak. You know, the other toddlers are like dribbling on their blocks and i'm like where the blocks at so it's unfair for us to go if only uh neil at the top of the tower block could have been like us he too could have been an entrepreneur because maybe he just being a single mom being of color or being transgender or being not everyone has the strength to push through those things everyone does and it's unfair to go up to a wheelchair and go just

stand mate i'm using willpower with my legs why can't you because some people that that is a wheelchair their social background and they don't have the strength and then they start using drugs and they just sink too low not everyone can pull themselves out that's why we do need more equality yeah i agree i'm definitely pro-equality i i there's a sense of helplessness i get if i like i go all the way and say no successful people while they were born with something yeah it creates a sense of like well then you're we're all just stuck in our lanes forever and if i believe that when i was shoplifting pizzas in manchester but then again so what i do understand i actually when i the harder i reflect i basically give myself credit for nothing because i was born into a situation

in a country i actually think my bad experiences are why i'm here like the fact that my parents weren't around at 10 years old created this big gap of independence etc etc i've told this story a million times but it's the bad shit that is the reason that i became an outlier i think i became very obsessive obsessed with money my book that's why it's called happy sexy millionaire because it's the first page of my diary when i was like a kid i want to be a happy why did i want to be happy sexy because we were fucking broke have you got siblings though yeah i've got so they are they all happy sexy millionaires not one of them none of them are like me and they don't understand me either they look at me and like scratch their head but what does that tell you it's almost like you've run a controlled

experiment exactly tuning out um genetics versus willpower i the the difference between my childhood experience and theirs was they were raised by parents and i basically wasn't so by i was the youngest so by the age i was 10 my parents were Oh, we've done parenting now. We will work all the time and we will be out of the house when Steve comes home and we'll be at the house when he wakes up. So I was the only one where the experiment was total independence. So thought experiment for you. If you'd have been born a fraternal twin, another boy.

Yeah. So as much your brother as your other brothers, but how many people at the same time, conditions same school everything happens so do you believe you would have another happy sexy millionaire living in the flat opposite or do you think depends what that brother's personality was like because we both know that that brother's personality is what would have decided whether he sat at this table with us today or not. And personality does come into it. We are born with different personalities to an extent. So I'm not saying we're all stuck in our lanes, but I'm saying we need more social mechanisms

because some Einsteins don't have energy. Some Einsteins might be a bit emotionally weaker. So say in my example of Neil at the top of the tower block, he might be really fucking amazing. We will never harvest that talent because our society is set up with too many blocks in place to scoop it out we had one thing in place for about 40 years called grammar schools very controversial very unfair dumping a load of 11 year olds in the thick bin my mum went to a secondary modern my dad went to a secondary modern my wife my brother-in-law my mother-in-law and father-in-law all went to secondary moderns so i know people who were told

you're no good at 11 so i don't say this lightly and i know how horrific that is but the data does suggest that there was a short period where we scooped off some bright poorer children not necessarily kneeling the tower block but at least the poorer children whose parents meant well but were were too poor we got them we got more einsteins when you watch question time switch it on and you know i went to a state school and they're giving it all that will always be a grammar school always it's very rarely i went to the local comprehensive and now i'm an m. It's always, I went to which state school? It's grammar school.

You went to an elite education then. State, but elite selective. So we need some more stuff like that. What can we do in our communities? What can our youth workers do? What can we set up in council estates, headhunters that look for talent, particularly boys?

I'm going to say that because I was a boy once. But there's a real problem with teenage boys. All this testosterone kicks in and it goes the wrong way for most of us. When I came on your podcast, you asked very controversial questions. I think you like those questions. Those are the ones that are most interesting to you, aren't they? Yeah, as long as I don't get us in trouble. Well, it's hard to tell.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. So I guess I was just thinking then, this is a controversial question, but he asked me a controversial question, so I don't get in trouble. Well, it's hard to tell. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. So I guess my, I was just thinking then, this is a controversial question, but he asked me controversial questions. So I can answer it. Is there no hope for some people? Give me, so zoom out context. Got a friend, tried really hard to help them change their life

or do something for themselves. 10 years of effort, made all the offers in the world for this person. Still job seekers allowance you know somewhat depressed can't seem to have any impact we grew up in the same street we were best friends my whole childhood i went off he stayed there i've got tons of examples like that so i have to speak very euphemistically now i'll be cancelled not by the internet but by my friends and family stroke associate stroke i don't even want to say which group these people are in uh i've all of this i've had female friends

who i'm like stop dating bastards and the next guy he's nice he's a coke dealer and he's like he's gonna fucking he's clear he's gonna shag your mate and some of these women are getting to 35 you know like with the final egg in the goblet like in indiana jones waiting to be fertilized and um this the next guy he's we've got three kids by three different women he has he's got an electronic tag but it's great because we can spend some time in just bang a boring guy or a guy that likes dungeons and dragons or an accountant what they call there's a sexual attraction there to bastard men that some women particularly from my sort of background working working class women, find hard to get over, would be one example.

But you can get over it. It is possible to do it. The mistake people like you and I make is we try to help. And say you've got a friend who's unmotivated, depressed, leaves every job after three months. It's always someone else's fault. It's always the system. It's always, if only Corbyn was in power. It's my dad else's fault. It's always the system. It's always,

if only Corbyn was in power, it's my dad did this, my mum did that. Always putting it on someone else. And then you're making it worse by putting it on you. Let me help. You're just a positive version of that. The solution is they have to switch the light bulb on in themselves. They may not get there, but the moment they wake up and go today's the day i'm going to try and change my life they should they that's the first step it might be speaking to a therapist it might be changing your career it might be enrolling in a levels that you do at night time like i did that was what lucky enough my revelation came up when i was 18 job seekers allowance at one point i was yeah i did-levels late because I had this spark moment. But it's got to come from within them.

It's not something, as yet, although science might get there one day, that we can give to you in a pill or an injection. You've got to suddenly have, right back to the beginning of the chat, insight and be like, boom, chest out. I'm going to see a therapist. I'm not going gonna use negative language

i'm gonna get this self-help book which which gives me some cb cognitive behavioral therapy tools i always monger up the cannabis cbt um so yeah it's it's got to come from them but for you and i fixes how can we solve it how can i redraft the copy what's the solution unfortunately the solution is trying to get them to have some insight so if you have got a friend like that maybe have that sort of conversation with them that spurs self-reflection because giving them a million pound a year job is just going to make them worse because that muscle that's atrophied will stay atrophied that sort of standing up making your own strength muscle one of the most um probably scary things from my perspective that you ever did was walking out on

stage for the first time for your first gig ever. Like what the fuck were you thinking? Hmm. Going out and walking in front of people and telling fucking jokes. Are you sure? With me, it's even more complex because I don't know if you've had any standups on here before.

Never. But the majority of them and quite rightly so will be like from a young age i used to watch blah blah on tv i used to watch all these american comics i used to watch chris rock bill burr bill hicks i knew that's what i wanted to do man i was like you know i was like the young boxer in the alleyway i knew i was going to box none of that nothing there is zero in my cv that shows an affinity for the craft of stand-up always been the joker i'm not being funny today i don't know why you got me on one but normally i'm always arsing around not this is not a thing i do on stage i'm just i'm like the clown person why just just my that again i've just always been

i just love making people laugh i've always been a joker. There's some data to suggest youngest children have it, and I'm not the youngest child, the oldest, or people born in August and July, purely because if you're smaller than everyone else, you've got to develop your personality quick. So if you look at the premiership, you won't find many footballers born in August.

I'll explain why i never made it august august 26th so you won't find 26th as well you won't find many sportsmen or anyone that requires size or physical prowess those professions so even if you turn out to be a very tall teenager you're less likely to become a basketball player than a teenager one inch shorter than you who was born in October the reason being you'd have been pushed by the coach and taught and everything early doors at six seven eight years old so and there is some data to suggest that people who work with their personalities for a living people that have to solve entrepreneurs and find little rat runs and alleyways develop that based on being smaller

or more vulnerable but i could take lots of forms i've got an overbearing dad as well so i'm an august baby overbearing dad and some of it will be genetic my mom's very funny and you talked a little bit about i was reading some some of your um previous interviews you talked a little bit about how it was a bit of a defense mechanism maybe in school if that's you found a place by being a yeah i wasn't but i but i don't know how i wasn't bullied but i wasn't the smallest no girlfriend um wasn't in with the in crowd at all i was sort of like an ex in a sort of external group that had diplomatic immunity definitely virgin definitely no cool friends definitely one of the idiots but we don't punch him

because he's sort of alright obviously I did get as a working class school I did get punched a lot but not as much as I was in that league you probably won't even remember them

just above the bullied the boring grey league yeah no point yeah which is the place to be at school because if you're popular at school

we all know you're going to have a shit life that would be a promo just like that which is the place to be at school because if you're popular at school we all know you're gonna have a shit life so anyway so because of where i grew up it's not people like well how can you have no contact with stand-ups you've got to remember my age i know i look young young for my age i'm 45 so what was my dad watching on tv jim davidson bernard manning jimmy jones it's like bruce forsyth and jimmy tarbuck like you know live at the palladium and all that it's not obviously they're all talented comedians and i do i do mean that but it just didn't resonate with what it's not it's not about my life so i'd like i'd laugh because my dad was laughing but i was like what's

this crazy art form i've got to learn more. Me and my friends, mostly either smoking, it's all about getting high, or we'd watch old young ones or whatever the funny sitcom of the day was, Men Behaving Badly or whatever it was. That's what I thought comedy was. No, we didn't go to the theatre at the weekend. We didn't like, which cultural pursuit shall we do this weekend, family? It was like, dad works all week, he's tired. We have a have a curry your nan looks after you and then when you get to 15 16 you get stoned over the park get someone pregnant work in a shop die that's it that's the finish

line so i managed to like i say have this weird entrepreneur turn my life around get my first class degree moment but just by sheer bad luck i ended up at a university that did not have a stand-up night most of them do so again i went those three years without any exposure to in the student bar stand up it was all music there was some theater no one talked about stand-up we didn't have this sort of slightly fashionable thing now being obsessed with american stand-ups i like to say to my british colleagues just remember if you start having this sort of slick quality to your stand-up, it can look a bit mannered. That's just a side point. So I went all the way to the office to my dream job as an advertising copywriter with no content with stand-up.

Just being funny as fuck, the clown, you know, legend on a night out, first one up dancing. But I didn't know that that was something you could do for a living. And I ended up doing a job I loved, branding, copywriting, headlines. I still love it. You can tell by the way I'm describing it. And then the creative planner was like, you're always the one up at the pitches. I would do like, if we're pitching to a big client,

I would do like the funny bit with interaction to get them on side when I'm presenting the creative. He said, why don't you try standup? Stephen Workman, if you're watching, thank you. Why don't you just try standup with your mind in these gloves? And I thought,, you know what? Do it once, like doing a bungee jump or a skydive or karaoke. It's just, that's as far as my thinking went.

Something to tell the kids. So I wrote a few ideas down in a book, booked an open spot in and I went and did it. It was very scary. I think I did a pack of Imodium before I went on and my hand was shaking and i got that it wasn't obviously wasn't great but i did wet ish well ish first laugh was like someone stuck cocaine heroin ketamine everything in my not that i've done those drugs but everything in my veins

and i was hooked you know in the proper sense of that. It fucked my life. Everything fell apart like a junkie. How can I get more of that? I want to gig three nights. I want to gig five nights a week for no money. I've got a creative director. We're talking about multi, multi-million pound accounts. Advertising is you work till 8pm.

You have pizza on your birthday under your table. You sleep at the office. I'm running off to do unpaid gigs in Manchester. My relationship with my girlfriend fell apart. my bill started to not be paid i started to look thin because i suffered with my nerves in the beginning i'm throwing up like both ends it's the closest thing to a drug addiction that i've ever experienced i would have not seen my mum for a year to chase this dream it was i was hooked with on that laugh i'm like this is what i'm born to do i just fucking know it how can i monetize it basically how why were

you hooked on the laugh why did the laugh matter so much to you it's a rush it's a rush anyone is i've not taken any serious drugs but anyone that's taken any recreational drugs which is a bad analogy because they're not actually addictive. But coffee, for example, I can't live my life without it. Why are you addicted? It's as absurd as asking me why I'm addicted to coffee. Because I go, I wake up, I feel alive and I have an amazing day.

The same, laugh goes in, buzz, serotonin, pupils dilated. Afterwards, I want to tell everyone about the gig i was taking shit footage into work and showing it to people and playing it in the office look at me that's me look look at come and look at me this grainy footage and i mean that's so embarrassing that i did that uh i just i couldn't i just couldn't believe it i couldn't believe i was getting laughs from strangers it was it's straight to the ego straight to the cortex everyone has that but do you have you ever considered that you might have that might have mattered more to you maybe because of your childhood or whatever than other people that that sense of like that validation and that yeah maybe i mean i'd had plenty of validation

at work i'd had the whole office cheer i've rung the bell when we've won big pitches i've got the rush in the meeting but it nothing were it is the difference i'm trying not to talk about drugs all the time it's the difference between going from a beer to mdma right i don't recommend any hard drugs obviously particularly people that work with their brains you're a fool if you mess with the equipment but you can't compare them when you say everyone has that not everyone stood on stage to a thousand people and seeing people standing and clapping that is different it's of a different category of ego rush very dangerous what problems does it give you well initially all of come with it so initially that my life fell at my life fell apart like a junkies i was down to 10 stone at one point um so it come to the point where i had to say this needs to not be a drug this needs to be a food

and i left the agency and then i was you know off still today though right so all all things come with their their costs what is the cost today of that that career and that rush and that i suppose the worst thing is the travel that is a genuine negative one since min has been born my daughter um i actually quite like traveling i like being in the back of a car i love watching movies i love reading and i love eating on the move so all the things that most people hate i just happen to quite enjoy just pure i don't know I like being in the back of a car. I love watching movies. I love reading and I love eating on the move. So all the things that most people hate, I just happen to quite enjoy just pure. I don't know why,

because I'm always on the go. I like being forced to sit still and watch a movie. So I love flights, for example, the longer, the better. You still shit yourself now when you get, when you're about to.

Yeah, it's big time. But so far as, so far as missing part of your child growing massive negative doing a tour is there's a guilt thing in your gut and you know you do cry a bit after face time and that particularly when it's a baby so that's the biggest negative i can think of but once you're with a woman or a man that gets it there's no negative in your relationship i was with a couple of girls before who would make me feel bad about being away whereas lindsey's kicking me out the. She's focused on the business. We're a team that's well-paid

fuck off. See you later. Don't call home. If you're stressed, I'm cool with it. That's what you need, man. You need somebody who gets it. I do shit myself though. Still. Yes. Do you know, when, do you know the, the, um, a modium scale goes up depending on how much of my show it is. So if you'd booked a show for me today where you're going to introduce me and i'm going to do 20 minutes stand up and you've got 2 000 people in the room there would be nerves there fair bit of nerves but mostly i'm ready to knock the gig the fuck out with my first punch if you've put an event on and michael mcintyre's closing and you're hosting it and you're to me at the last minute said, Russ, I've decided to do two halves.

Can you do 20 minutes at the top? I'd shit myself because they're not there for me. They're there for you and him. And I've got a conversion job to do. Right. And the risk is massive. The Michaels fans are your fans. And that's when the nerves kick in when I'm doing Royal Variety Show or live at the Apollo where people have responded to a TV ticket.

Not me. That's when the nerves go back to old school style nerves. How do you, what's the battle you have with those nerves in terms of your cognition? And before you go on stage, what are the tips you can give people? There's two ways to work on that. The first thing is the actual practical thing on the night, I would say, just work with breathing and mindfulness and all the stuff you probably read a thousand times. The other thing to do is if you can find a way to do it, it depends which stage of your career you're at. If you're at the stage of the career like me and you, a lot of, I'm not trying to be offensive, a lot of people are sucking our dicks a lot of the time. So we're constantly walking into the rooms where people think we're legends.

It's never going to be a difficult gig. Now and again, something comes up where you're the tadpole and you you don't have the hardware in place and fucking bill gates is speaking before you oprah's hosting it and all of a sudden you're who's this guy you're having a day of who's this guy we're all we can all have a who's this guy day and the only way to practice that is to put yourself in more who's this guy moments regularly so how i do that as soon as my tour finishes i book the smallest hardest weirdest they might have bad lighting they might have no microphone they might be half sold and i'm unlisted unlisted unannounced unexpected and i'll walk on to tiny clubs full of drunk men 50 year old ukip

dads all of those places i put myself in those all the time because the risk is high the nerves are the same but the consequence is zero so i'm constantly training the muscle of convert the people who don't know who i am keeping it it sharp the whole time. So whatever business you're in, you'll be able to think of an equivalent way of doing that. So set up smaller situations where you're having to keep that muscle because the danger is the more successful you get, you lose the muscle of walking into a room full of skeptics. And if you lose that muscle, that's the money-making muscle. So practice it. I keep mine tight at all times. I constantly put myself in unbuilt, unlisted, unideal situations. When you walk onto a stage, when you're at my level, which I would call myself quite recognizable, you can't say I'm like Michael McIntyre or Chris Rock or someone,

but I'm sort of known as a standup. So what that means is when I walk on stage at the comedy store, late show, 400 people, drunk off their tits, work dues, hen dues, and I'm unbilled, unexpected, unlisted, the room splits into three straight away. It splits into, oh, my God, it's him. Fucking what a treat. We've got him for 20 quid. To the middle, who's that?

Am I supposed to know who that is? Is he good? I don't know. I think I've seen him. And the final group, can't stand this cunt. That's the only group I'm playing to. We're in a little bit in the middle group. They're the only people I'm interested in.

Because that's where the muscle building exercises. And then when you go on stage to your audience, they get you like that. Yeah. But if you come with that conversion energy to your own audience, you must be... You don't need it.

That's the problem. All you got to do is put your foot out and they're like, it's his foot, he's amazing. That's the problem. Yeah. That's the problem. You get flabby easy in all businesses.

So you talked about your relationships there and your current partner. I heard you got married for nine months. Oh yes. You'd for nine months. Oh, yes. You'd forgotten. Yeah. Sorry, I realise what you mean. Yeah, no, I did.

I was married before. I was married. So I'm currently, I'm trying to enjoy my middle marriage. That's what I say to people. Middle marriage. Okay. No, I was, so we were just, we realised we were just mates. There was a romance there.

We had a lot in common. We were both into this same world and we were sort of living together and we got married and we were like, that was a mistake. And then we just weren't married. And it was totally amicable. No fighting, no problems at all.

But you talked about the understanding that your current partner has, current wife. Yeah. So my former partner, the one I was married to for nine months, had that as well, which is why we thought we should probably probably get married but we realized marriage needs more than that um so yeah so lindsey is more lindsey doesn't get jealous unless i do something dickhead

like follow a glamour model and instant and like a bikini pic which i get my ass kicked but still do because i'm neanderthal. And I'm a man. The monkey press button can't help it. So unless I do something stupid like that, which I rightly get in trouble for, or like change my flight in Ibiza and go to a boat party, which I also tried to do and got my ass kicked for. So,

but if I'm on the road and doing autographs afterwards, and there's all girls in the picture or something i've never ever like lindsey's just not even a flicker she gets it that's the job is every you're everyone's friend if the girls fancy you in the audience even better that means another maldives holiday type thing that's the way she's in business mode she isn't on a bit of an entrepreneur lindsey she's got two businesses and she sees my business as a business um and she never ever guilts me over being I might be away for four nights I won't some days I've gone shit I didn't phone home I didn't text I didn't even now and again all I have to do is do a good night and she knows that my head might be full there's never any fallout never and that just makes the

trust and the bonds it's just of course i then do call home it just works because of that you're someone that will get a lot of attention because it's i mean it's your job right it's like to keep holding literally to seek attention is my job and women they love funny guys right so god you know probably i don't know if it's going to get in, but you know that you could have a lot of different partners if you wanted to. I could be harvesting 24-7. That's what I mean.

I probably would have fractured pelvis by now if I hadn't got married. People are going to hate this question because they think I'm encouraging it, but I'm here to play devil's advocate, okay? Why aren't you? Well, I fell deeply in love and got married and I'm just, again, back to the childhood, undivorced parents.

It's just what I modeled on. I've never had a problem with saying to a girl, the relationship's done. My head's starting to be turned. Let's move on. And as much as it breaks my heart, if I ever felt that way, I would, obviously with a marriage and a child, I would sit down to Lindsay and say, there's an issue here. I've started to have these thoughts.

How can we work on it? And we'd, we'd work something out. So that's just my way. I'll parade. Hardly any men do. Sorry, girls.

My sex. If only men did, I mean, but they don't. So I'm trying to, a man should go. I haven't done anything, but I'm having these thoughts.

What does it mean? Does it mean we're not in love? Does mean sexually our relationship's not exciting is this something we can do that some games we can play to mimic that i don't know whatever a couple's need to just have that conversation because if you pretend men and women aren't having those thoughts you're naive so you need to keep the relationship alive that's the way to do to do it why why am i married well a 45 remember and b i i'd been i'm more serial monogamist so i've gone from age 16 to 30 odd be with a girl for three years break up get straight with another girl literally the next week break up on anywhere between nine months to three year relationships never had a one-night stand i'd

never been single i'd never been on a lad's holiday so when i split up split weird but my mum was like you are not going to find a sustainable relationship because of all these reasons you said you're going to get a lot of female attention you're always going to wonder what it's like she went i was you i'd have a year on your own so i set the clock and i was like panani master in action and we're not cynically not cynically shagging that's gonna be the promo clip but not cynically shagging but being seen it's more to more to it than just shagging it was like just being in a living in a flat on your own but that's banging flat in london i've still got i use it as my london

residence and i just thought you've still got it yeah there's your wife now well we stay there all the time and uh she's and i'm like i can i can come i'm living i've never lived on my own before i'd always live with a woman always live with a girl and uh it was just nice i just be in my pajamas have a curry and then i could i could or i would i would just think i'm gonna go out on the pool after the gig and that gets boring quick unless you've got some sort of um issue like sex addiction issue and you're addicted to lots of different women i'm not that type of like dominant guy that needs to fuck a thousand women to prove i've walked the earth um i more without getting too personal i do enjoy i'm a highly sexed individual very unfortunately for lindy incredibly high sex drive like a 19 year old lad but it's sex i enjoy not conquering

women so i can quench that thirst with one woman over and over again but i did want to know what it was like to you know to be single to be free and part of that I'm sure it's the same for a woman for a man is to go what's it like to have a one-night stand or to be to be a have this rock star lifestyle and sleep with loads of women the difference I did it was if I was going out after a gig or if a girl would dm'd me and we were going out or whatever just missed tinder um I would say this is where I'm at this is what i do for a living i'm single i i do love making love and i love going out but there is no relationship here i would never went to bed with a woman dangling any fake carrots ever i think it's a form of i don't want to use

language too strongly there's a sort of a consent tweak in there if you're lying if you're in a power position like me and saying let's see where it goes but you just want to fuck her i think that's wrong i think it's morally wrong i think you should say this is what it is i want to party with you can you handle it and newsflash most women are looking for that too so i had a wicked time for for a year and then one of those girls was lindsay and it's just something different happened and we saw we saw each other again and again and again and then boom married i i asked this question because i was i was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night who's an entrepreneur and he's continually failed in marriage and we were going back and forward

about whether about the importance of meaningful relationships and i was making the case that they're incredibly important i sent him a ted talk about which shows that they did a study on men over i think about 100 years and showed that the men that were in committed relationships lived longer had way better health were way happier they studied men for 100 years i think it's the only 100 year study they've done of this type and he was basically saying well you know women that you know they they just don't understand that i'm ambitious and stuff well is he wrong is he right how is he statistically true and also people that believe in god live longer i'm not a god i'm totally atheist for you i mean that would be the curveball you weren't expecting about jesus now uh it's people that believe in god live longer

and so i think it's not the case that um faith keeps you alive or that a relationship keeps you alive. As far as I understand the science, there's a neuroprotective and cardiovascular benefit of doing what we're doing today, just hanging out basically. And the most reliable way to hang out and check in with someone on a regular basis is to have someone you're married to. Are you okay? Take your stress levels down or even better, together every sunday with a bunch of people who actually give a shit about whether your skin whether you got cancer whether your wife's left you who are going to look out for you and sadly in our society religion is the only thing that forces people on a friday saturday or sunday to get together if you're going mosque every friday is it if you go mosque if you go

mosque once a week and you're praying next to that man next year he's probably going to notice if you're down it's as simple as that there's nothing magic about marriage but the homo sapiens i believe that our cortisol levels drop and our dopamine levels rise when someone gives a shit about us it would make sense on an evolutionary level if you look at the way chimps are that when one of them gets excluded from the group because they have a fight and they're going you know you see them on the documentary yeah they never live long because why would you where is the evolutionary drive of your genes to pass seeds and eggs on if you're the type of person who can't bring the pack

forward so there would be a strong evolutionary argument for single people to die before attached people for non-religious people to die before atheists so atheists like us have to make sure we really have strong friendship groups and i wish wish wish we could get humanism off the ground every sunday there's readings there's your local richard dawkins is doing a science reading we all have a bit of tea and cake our kids all play together and then we all go home wouldn't that be amazing and why doesn't it exist it's so true solve a lot of problems because we pick up if you were depressed i would pick up on it if i was seeing you every week everything you've said is backed by everything i've studied and i've wrote a chapter in my book called the journey back to

human which describes this it was inspired a lot by Yohanna Hari, who wrote Lost Connections. Yes, I know. And about getting back to our tribes. And when you look at the way we're living our lives today, it's just the antithesis of human. And religion and relationship is the only way you can keep those human elements in. So far as your friends who keep having failed marriages, marriages fail for lots of different reasons

so you so for for men who keep getting into three-year relationships and splitting up if if it's the same reason every time if the eye is roving and he just wants to fuck other women i mean we need to speak about this in real language that men use sorry if you find it offensive switch off but a lot of the time a man gets two three years in the novelty wears off and he's like i just what's it going to be like i want to fuck a different woman the so the cost as well the resistance or the uncomfortable parts of the relationship remain yeah but the upside decreases if it's sex a lot for a lot of men so i feel so sorry for girls that but why did why did my man, what was it I wasn't doing? It's hard to face the fact that some men, maybe 60, 70% of men who split up with you just want to shag someone else. It's hard. Let's just put it on. So I'm sure many women,

but I don't speak for women. I'm not being sexist. I'm just not speaking for women. Get a woman on here. Ask her why she splits up with someone every three years so you need to if you're a man that has those urges you need to find a woman that you can work with that can keep you sexually excited and do whatever you need to do just you've got to do it and and you've you need a woman you can talk about those things with and a lot of it can be role playing verb dirty talk verbal fantasies whatever these. These are practical tips. A lot of couples never cross these boundaries because they're too shy. You split up with someone because you wanted to get dressed up as a policeman and pretend she was someone

else and you were too cringe to tell her, but that could have been the thing that converted it. It could be as simple as going to a club separately, dancing with other people, then going home together at the end of the night? Have you tried? Until you have that conversation as a couple and admit you're having those thoughts, you will split up or worse, cheat and ruin that woman's life and ruin her faith in men. I'm sure it's exactly the same if you're a gay man as well. You'll ruin that boy you've split up if you're ruining his life. So far as why women split up with men, who knows?

And that's not for me to say, but i do think a lot of the times we're reluctant to admit it's such a basic sexual reason i bet i i suspect it is the case and we'll make any old i just felt bored we've grown apart yeah it wasn't it will say any old shit just to not admit i like looking at girls on instagram i want to go on holiday on my own. Tough conversation to have, right? Because it feels like an attack on... But you build it in as fun. Yeah.

You'd be like, it's three years in, I'm going to be straight with you. I really, really love you. As long as you love, if you don't love a girl, just tell her. You definitely need to split up. But if you love her, but have a sexual urge,

that is resolvable. Guys, I think, quite often, and this is a presumption, I don't know the truth, they will take the path of least resistance. So they look over at their Guys, I think, quite often, and this is a presumption, I don't know the truth, they will take the path of least resistance. So they look over at their partner and they think, if I have this conversation, this is going to blow up

and she's going to scream in my face. I think I can just go and grab that apple without resistance. So they just reach out for the apple because that conversation feels like more psychological discomfort. Don't go shagging other people to end your your relationship we all do that they literally cheat to end the relationship we've all had moments i have in past relationships where i've found myself in a bar contemplating it talking to a girl and as soon as that happens i know either i don't love this girl or something's going wrong in the bedroom

it's normally one of those things can you love someone and cheat? is the type of question you'd ask me probably yes yeah you think so probably in the same way I can adore my daughter

and would die for her but would I go and work on a project for a month with no phone contact at a pivotal, development point of her life? Yes, I could, because I can compartmentalise. I imagine women are exactly the same. In fact, I suspect a woman can be profoundly in love with a man

who's not giving her attention or making her feel special or sexually exciting her, and she can have sex with someone else, feel awful, and still profoundly love her husband. One of the things you said is you said you uh you're 45 46 when in august oh yeah of course you're an august baby august baby not long you look about 31 like if you told me you were 31 32 i'd probably believe you yeah um how have you done that so first of all it's got me into trouble um because what happened was when i started doing all this biohacking and stuff like that what's biohacking it's where your work you're using

the current science available to try and hack your own biology to survive on less sleep in a way that doesn't damage your health for example i've not cracked that one, to not lose your hair, working on that one, or to slow down the aging process. So not so that you can live to 120, not that, it's a common misconception, but that so you can have the bit of your life between 30 and 70 in a more sustained younger state. That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to have better middle age years, not be 120 year old. What you'd like to be is 120 year old. That's like an 80 year old. Now, what you're trying to do is stretch. Particularly I did my first gig at 28. So I quickly realized I need to find some solutions here because I'm high energy Lee Evans act. I talk about my mom, my dad, I'm a late bloomer.

I've got a wife. I would end up having a wife much younger than me I need to have the body of a 30 year old man quick so I started studying I mean I was 30 at the time you know I mean I need to keep it here um so the trouble it got me into is when this stuff started to work dramatically work I would sit down in interviews like this with journalists and people will guess how old are you russell and i would they'll guess trying to get a compliment and they would they started to guess four years younger five years younger than 10 years younger than 15 years younger like you have today and i thought this is showbiz fuck that i'm gonna knock a few years off because

the one prejudice people are still allowed to have not book you because you're old can't wait till old life matters starts because i'm going to be fucking behind. No, but seriously, why is it okay to make redundant and underpay and exclude people based on their chronological age? But that prejudice alive and well. So I thought I lied. I lied my ass off. And of course I was really unsophisticated about it. I was like celebrating my real birthday with comedians and friends and then lying to the observer or the mirror how much did you lie by

five years oh not bad i forgive you um but so that was a story that was a tabloid story in two newspapers and and a lot of jokes were made on tv a comedy award ceremony so i was quite mocked for it so as a comedian eminem style i took that wrote a show about it called right man wrong age took it on tour owned it no one said a word since and now i talk about it all the time i think it's quite funny really it's quite human i mean what the fuck if so if i don't know what whatever the thing is in your profession maybe it's age as well been age for me when i was 18 everyone wrote about me because I would like I'd made a hundred pounds when I was 18 and I realized that in my industry your age and the achievement are the most important thing so when if I was 18 I'd have made a hundred quid they had me on BBC this 18 year old's made a

hundred quid right and I realized that by when I get to 25 I actually need to have made about 100 million for them to consider me the same way yeah so i'm like super slow to change my birthday every i'm like oh 27 i'm like i need to be a billionaire right so but from a business sense it might be exaggerating turnover to seek investment then revealing real turnover afterwards but say okay we were all millionaires anyway that type thing so i was exaggerating turnover to attract investment um but I didn't realize it was a massive issue because people come to stand-up comedians for authenticity and realness particularly my type of stand-up so anyway I owned that chucked it back that's all good how I've done it is just there's loads of places you can go to I started with Dave Asprey and

Bulletproof and all of those things although I do think drinking butter is way over the top but it's sort of moving towards a lower carb not keto nothing extreme I don't believe in anything extreme that's hard to stick to but certainly I don't believe we're supposed to eat white bread and cereal and shit like that working with what we built to do would be the most basic way without spending money. Anyone that's watching this can start. We woke up in the Savannah this morning, you and I, it's time to go hunting. There ain't going to be food there. We probably would have eaten at 2 p.m.

No doubt about it. Human beings are built to have anywhere between 16 hour to two day fasting gaps. No doubt about it. And sure enough, now we look at this on a cellular level, we can see what happens. So I ate at, last night I worked very late, so I didn't eat till nearly 11pm. By now, as I'm speaking to you, not only do I have an intense fucking focused high from only having had coffee and water, which has got to be a good thing. There's autophagy going on in my cells so the cells are eating up their own bits of dead protein and shit just out

of sheer desperation for something to eat that's the first thing that happens apoptosis is the proper name for it the cells that the shit ones just die and burn off like the crust at the edge if you pour food on the edge of that situation as far as i understand the science i'm sure people will refine what i'm saying i'm trying to distill what i've learned for the layman you you keep all that crap in so unfortunately we're pro fasting is brilliant i don't buy into many fads but the science here you can see under a microscope so intermittent fasting and eating lower carb is something anyone can do. Someone on 10 grand a year can do that tomorrow. So eat more leafy green vegetables.

I think if you're on 10 grand a year, you are probably. Exactly. But eat more leafy green vegetables. Breakfast is, I think, the easiest one to skip because you produce a hormone in the night that suppresses appetite anyway. Otherwise, you'd wake up hungry all night. If you are waking up hungry, your diet's fucked, change it. So you don't, I won't wake up hungry. So we're brought up to wake up not hungry and eat a bowl of cocoa pops and then boom the insulin goes up insulin you don't want your insulin high and the only way to do that is sugar and carbohydrate so lower your carbohydrate 100 120 gram net a day anyone can do that still rice if you like bread eat bread but eat wholemeal bread that's the two most basic things you can do now so far as the more intense chemicals i can tell you what i'm on

i would take phytacin in the morning which is a synolytic activator something that's that stops cell um decrease and senescence like aging in cells once a week i will probably also take another senolytic activator a chloroquine is called i take pqq every morning that's the little pink one i do take nmn which is really expensive but the the life force in the cells that keep us going is called nads nad and that's what causes aging. Aging is not inevitable. It's your cells. We're a combination of digital and analog information. So every time you rewrite a cell, it gets rewritten a little bit less well, and then you get wrinkles and gray hair and you start forgetting and you die. So if you can help the cells be more accurate in writing, you can stay

younger, not just in how you look, but generally. So I do take NMN every day. That's the big one. And that is a precursor to creating NAD in the body. And I mean, I have no Botox. I have no filler in my face. I do use stuff from boots and moisturiser, and I do go for like a posh facial now and again, but there's nothing artificial in my skin.

This is a great point moment to cut to my podcast sponsor nmn well elements the drug loads of people make it okay um if you're looking for a good one in the uk go on amazon i think it's double wood is good it's expensive though man you're looking at six pounds a day oh for a sub expensive yeah like six pounds a day but if you think if you're spending if you're lucky enough to be spending that on on a coffee take a flask buy an mn instead i bought i bought my own coffee today so what i will do is the my pet hate is watching a video like this listen to podcasts and people not listing grams and brands afterwards and all the top guys david

sinclair's the guy you want to read, by the way. If you read one book that will change your life, it's Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To, David Sinclair. He does all the science, but he always refuses to give like geeky levels of endorsement and what I take because his inbox always crashes. So what I will do is I will send you exactly what I take on a daily basis. You need to check with your physician and you need to make sure everything's right for you, obviously. But NMN is definitely the one that encourages NAD production

and helps the cells copy themselves and slow down aging. Resveratrol, very, very, very important. So I take 750 milligrams of NMN and I take a gram of resveratrol every morning. Don't go on Amazon and buy resveratrol the brown stuff you need trans resveratrol the ultra refined stuff you need a gram of it a day vita fair is a good brand what about hair hair they've still not starting to get grays yeah

they've still not solved why we go gray or because baldness is a genetic program that's running, like your height, it's harder to hack. It's to do with the testosterone hormone DHT that kicks in. So your body, after a while, and the way it synthesizes testosterone in the scalp causes the follicles to die and fall off. The only way to do that is to block DHT. But if you're a man it's a two it's a double-edged sword because if you start messing with your testosterone you can

lower your sex drive lower your aggression i need lots of aggression in what i do when i go on stage and for exercise and things so i don't take things like um finisteride which we know works because i'd rather be jason stam, like bald and horny than have loads of hair and a eunuch. That said, I am losing my hair at the crown. I have been for about two years. The reason you can't see it today as much as you could two years ago, I am using a derma roller. You can buy these cheaply on amazon make sure you buy one with individual titanium spikes if it's boasting hundreds of titanium spikes it's a shite one it means they've got a rolled out bit of titanium you want one if it's plastic it'll be about 190 200 spikes

titanium and you'll be able to see each individual spike, 0.5 millimeter once a day, roll, roll, roll. It's a little bit painful, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll at the temples here. And then you would put on minoxidil, 15% ideally. Duogen is a good one. Again, very expensive. You're looking at 30, 40 quid a month, but it works. What does it do?

You start to get, first of all, little puby gray hairs and it just holds the wolf so you're not bald you don't have like 17 year old hair as you can see i am no i am not bald and that's all i do the roller is the rollers about oh no the rollers about a tenor the monoxidil is expensive but you can get like a get it down to about 30 pounds a month but don't go below 15 and if you really want to do belt and braces how you shampoo is important get a really good caffeine shampoo like alpacin and you want um a brush like it's like a round really cheap round plastic brush with the plastic bristles like boys would have gelled their

hair with back in the day one of those and when the shower really scrub that shampoo in and leave it for five minutes so if you shave or you brush your teeth go and have your toothbrush and you shave while the foam's there and then shower it out how did you get into all of this was it that book no no that's i've just researched myself the optimal methods for hair regrowth but But for biohacking, I've used David Perlmutter, the doctor, cardiovascular doctor about heart health and cholesterol and trying to learn the safety of going higher fat. I use Dave Asprey for a lot of the supplements, your PQQ and things like that, on all the knowledge about high fat and biohacking and sleep and all that. And I use David Sinclair for the real, real hardcore science on life

extension it's a brilliant book it's just about accessible for the main reader but if you get into it you love it there's loads of stuff in there i don't do like the cold showers and things like that cold showers tell me about that i've uh i've heard about this but i just don't have the guts every day it just feels like it'll ruin my day i mean the most controversial thing about what i've said is i'm not recommending people go low carb i'm just saying it's what i do you might come from australasia and you might have different genetics that mean you if you eat a high fat diet it's incredibly dangerous check what your doctor recommends go and do your own research go to atlas biomed where you can get your own biome sequence by sending a bit of poo through the post. It's fascinating. And they send

back your whole internal microbiome. Get your cholesterol tested three months in, six months in, see what it's doing. My cholesterol, of course, is off the fucking charts, but so is my HDL cholesterol, meaning my cholesterol ratio is good. Do I have plaques in my arteries? Yes I do. I've run a CT scan so you could need to take your own call on that. I mean if you're a student and you get hit by a car and you're 18 years old and we do an autopsy you will have plaque in your arteries. Babies have plaque in their arteries. We all have plaque in our arteries. I remain to be convinced that the fact I have cholesterol running around my blood actually is the thing that makes the plaque cholesterol. I'm in a minority. I'm not

medically trained. I could be talking shit and I could be in a coffin when I'm 60, but I'm fascinated by it. I'm aman I'm on a journey you do your own reading the NHS recommendation certainly isn't to eat high fat but I just don't buy the science it stinks to me so and plus I just I'm going on how I feel sure yeah it's probably the most important way um your podcast you have a podcast which um talks a lot about cancel culture yes what's um what's going on in our society at the moment in terms of cancel culture it seems to be getting much more uh maybe because of algorithms and we're we're separate you know we're creating these echo

chambers and we're defining you know this side is you know left and this is right and there's nothing in the middle but what's going on within society and uh i guess the question i'm going to come to eventually is how do we fix it and can we fix it? Or are we fucked? I think we're probably a little bit fucked for the time being because after loads of historic injustice and inequality and I hate the word woke. I almost don't want to be woke because it's such a cunty word. I just think waking up to things you've not seen before. The word woke's become politicised, so I reject it as a term. But we need to swing the barometer a little bit this way until everyone's being represented properly.

Then it will settle, probably in our children's generation, it will settle. So stop panicking, Gary, Dave, Lee, and everyone with a Union Jack profile. It will settle. What I find frustrating and toxic is we're living in a culture where you can be cancelled overnight Ant Middleton cancelled overnight Sharon Osbourne cancelled overnight it doesn't matter who you are

what your background is what colour what gender you are you are at risk no one is safe trust me especially white men well anyone really I remember um I don't even know if i want to put it back out there but i'm no reggie yates of it and he he said something about jewish music producers yeah yeah i remember yeah just about survived that so i i don't think anyone i think any in fact i think it's probably worse if you're of color because the right will be ready they'll be fucking ready see fucking see so i would actually say no i would, I think everyone's at risk from this. It's a rabid, oh, we got one of them, particularly a lefty, and cancelled him.

How can we live in a culture of instant, pardon, black, I shouldn't say black and white after what I just said, but instant black and white cancelling, where you can wake up in the morning and be gone, that at the same time exists alongside how dare you use a label nothing has meaning we're in a post-modern world of amorphous fog where we don't even have pronouns nothing's real history is not real the things you've learned

aren't real literature isn't literature nothing has a label no you're cancelled and i'm sure what well which is it oh are we in a postmodern, nothing means anything, everything's up for grabs, shifting meaning, diverse culture, which sounds quite exciting to me as a comedian, or are we in a Nazi Germany executed the next morning? Both of those two together, head fuck. I have this tweet saved in my drafts on Twitter

and it says, and I didn't tweet it because I didn't have the nuts, right? Because I was being, I was like low-key being cancelled for something i said at the time so i thought i'll just stagger this one out but it says the left will allow you to be non-binary in everything but your opinion right and it's kind of what you're saying there it's like we've got to the point where we understand things aren't binary right in sexuality and other points but my opinion has to be like if my if the stance i take on black lives matter doesn't perfectly i don't look like

i'm wearing like as i said in the last podcast with them the football kit shoes socks shirt then i am definitely of the right and i should be treated as such yeah and i i had it quite recently with the um the uh sarah everett everett tragedy because i made the point that the narrative and this is this key sentence that i just social media just didn't allow me to express then which narrative is most helpful and productive in creating the shift we need to see in male behavior which narrative is it the narrative that um which which i saw a lot of which is it's it all men all men are the are the the problem is that the narrative which is most helpful and productive and so the the conversation i was trying to have is a real politic what works in the real world i'm not

saying there's not a fucking problem with men or they're not pigs or there's not like the patriarchy or there's not massage the stats say that i'm not the stats the stats say 97 of young women have experienced some form of sexual abuse or harassment my my point is about the which narrative is most productive and helpful you're a businessman you're like which model can we employ to get the best profit yeah because i i reflect i said when tommy when tommy robertson ran around saying okay it's not all muslims but it's always muslims that are blowing up buildings, whatever. We would run him out of town because that's a deeply toxic way to think, right?

And it's the same with black people. We get locked up more. So asserting that it's not all black people, but it's some black people. Therefore, the fear is all black people. The way that I got to my logic, I was like, I have two nieces who are going to go into the world,

who I love dearly. What would I say to them? They're four years old and three years old dearly what would i say to them they're four years old and three years old what advice would i say to them to help them a guard against predatory male behavior but also to help them in their life be productive and to work with 50% of the population it definitely wouldn't be alessi right sit down you're gonna have to fear all men that some of them the threat alessi is my niece is all men. Some of them, the threat, Alessi, is my niece,

is all men. That's not for me, wouldn't be a, imagine the damage I would do to my niece. I mean, I don't want to say you put it brilliantly. I got finished off. I got finished so badly on Instagram.

I was fucking, they finished me. It's because part of the problem is having a discussion like this when a girl has just died if you and i have this at a university in two years time it's quite an interesting it's a very interesting conversation that needs to be had so i did do a stand-up response to it i did a one minute thing but i waited 10 days smart i waited 10 days and then i did a rant about um

why do we teach sex education so late? Why do we teach consent so late? And I just made fun of the British education system, not speaking to teenagers about sex enough, because I think that's what the issue is. We don't teach all boys, whether they're predatory boys or not, men aren't taught about sex early enough. From angels to sex offenders, they should be taught in primary school not from

porn no exactly that's where the problem is um but yeah so i think sometimes having trying to have a i do actually disagree slightly with one thing she said right at the top which was when you said oh um i need to have a binary opinion, but not have a binary sexuality. Because I do think, no, you can have a non-binary opinion. We could be talking about Jane Austen and literature, and we can say, yeah, but I can't think of a subject you and I can have a conversation on where fashionable postmodernism, nothing means anything, doesn't apply.

On a major issue, Black Lives Matter. Yeah, we could talk about... Now, we're not going to say whether black lives matter or not but we could have a discussion about rate does race exist on a genetic level we've proved that it doesn't so what is race does we could we could chat and everyone could leave the lecture going i don't know what to think in a lecture or face to face or we could we could broadcast it now talk about talk about race 100 talk about does race exist and this is why i love podcasts because you get context and nuance 180 characters in the middle of the black lives matter you russell why haven't you posted the black tile you can't go well does race exist people go racist silence is violence but you could still but what i mean is

we can be post-modern fluffy and not say anything almost about anything but we still be cancelled at the same time now those two things are both quite extreme yeah i mean they're opposites and that's making class cloak and close down debate and hamstrung people i like my um offensive people where i can hear them i don't like them on whatsapp groups hidden i was never against um nick griffin of the bmp going on question time i don't mind putting that out there a lot of people say you put him on there you legitimize his views what actually happened he looked like a total cock and now he's disappeared have the courage to know i do think there is good and bad i don't think right-wing people are bad and. Left wing people are good.

In fact, I think it's just as many cocks across the spectrum. I do think violence and hatred is bad. Full stop. Sorry. I do. It's a moral, absolute moral category.

I would rather see the people who think it have their arguments exposed. The biggest experiment we've ever seen of that is Donald Trump. Where the, you know, it's fucking just fell apart because most people saw he was a cop regardless of what he'll tell you and then you probably won't see someone like him for a long while now but he was right and that sort of right-wing sentiment rose around the world at the same time like bolsonaro yeah even here in europe all at the same time and it almost feels like now it's falling a little bit away i don't like chastity belts and and

gagging and things and that the when they were like donald trump's coming but we won't give him a state visit nonsense i want red carpet i want streets lined and let him hear what we think let him see the way british people show they're unhappy don't sort of all mutter into your tea cozies and send memes like in shoreditch fucking let's go out there let's let's let's let's where's our pranksters? Where's Simon Brodkin doing a stunt on him? Have the courage of your arguments. The good is always winning films and they will win on the earth.

I believe that. I'm an optimist. Should anybody be cancelled? Deplatformed, chucked off, immediately thrown out? Not in haste. That's why I make Evil Genius. It's a slow weighing up over the hour we take

the good and the bad and we have an intellectual discussion and it's very tongue-in-cheek and funny but it's a long discussion about the people's merits it's interesting as well the elitism of it as well why are picasso's paintings still hanging? The guy was grade A nonce and misogynist. Why are his paintings still up? Because it's so lofty and important. We can't quite bring ourselves to cancel it. I mean, I don't know if, do we go here? I mean, I don't know what I think

of that Michael Jackson documentary anyway, but it's almost like Michael Jackson's so powerful and musically important that we dare not go there. So there comes to a stage where we're not willing, you know, someone sort of cancel proof. I mean, if you want to be really controversial,

look at the old Testament. It did some vile fucking things, stoning people, like flooding people with fire, burning gays. How has he not been cancelled old school god too powerful that's interesting i've never actually considered that some people are too michael jackson's a very good example because i don't want to give it my

my spotify's gonna be empty i've only just got over bump and grind being deleted all right you know it's funny because i was actually thinking about michael jackson this week because i just absolutely adore the art yeah and have it the thought of having to separate mike the the artist from the art and that the artist could have been such a horrible predator it really is something that helps you know the useful rule of thumb i've found is the closer the art is to the predation and the nature of the predation, the more problematic it is. So I find Picasso very problematic because everything I'm looking at in the studio is in a gallery is possibly a teenage girl's body. I find Michael Jackson problematic because when he's talking about love and I want to be close to you and I want to touch this and that, what's he singing about?

What am I dancing to? Yeah. be close to you and i want to touch this and that what's he singing about what am i dancing to yeah if someone writes beautiful romantic novels but they like harming animals in private less problematic because when i'm reading the novel i'm not absorbing animal harm sure am i absorbing paedophilia if the song is who's r kelly singing about bumblegrind with whom an underage do you see what i mean yeah so what's what's next for you what are you working on what's um what's the next chapter of your life all about as far as you're concerned well uh as well as just doing tv all the time whoring it up on any show that will have me which i've been doing since i started it's about the theater's reopening um for now outdoor socially distanced performance so i'll

be finding as many spaces where i can put a marquee over vented at the side just to get back out there and stay sharp I am working on a novel I always am I'm working on a sitcom I always am and I'm developing formats I always am I'm always hustling always trying I'm yet to get that format away where I own it and it's my IP I have with Evil Genius I haven't I have made a TV pilot of that with BBC Studios I would love to sell that because I think that would work globally as a format very timely as well I have got my eye on of that with BBC Studios. I would love to sell that because I think that would work globally as a format. Very timely as well. I have got my eye on things like that as well, but mostly it's how can I get in front of people

and make them laugh? Because that's what I want to do. Well, you certainly are very good at that. It's a talent that you have that I'm like positively jealous of, like just your natural ability to make people feel comfortable and to laugh. It's a real bizarre challenge. I feel the same with you starting multi-million pound businesses

no but i wish i had that i feel like i would have been more successful if i had that i trained you for one year and we both keep revenue no no no deal thank you for coming today no thank you so much it's been a real pleasure and i don't think people realize how much of a fucking intellectual you are my first clue was all those books you had behind you on your Zoom background when I did your podcast. I dug my way out of the ghetto with books like that. You're so fucking smart and I don't think people realise that.

I think they think you're a comedian. You're much more than a comedian. You're a fucking genius at the same time. It doesn't pay to look too smart when you're a comic. True. I love Radio 4

but I want to be on ITV1 as well. No disrespect. Listen, thank you so much for your time today and people know where they can find you but your podcast Evil Geniuses is immense and it's very timely you one as well no disrespect listen thank you so much for your time today and um people people know where they can find you but your podcast evil geniuses is immense and it's very timely and needed in our society so thank you for doing that and i am trying to squeeze out stand up on channel four during the day so if you're ever at home or you've got a day off steph's packed lunch

twice a week i'm on there doing that i never thought i'd do days i'm telling you i fucking i love it and i do stand up at 1 p.m the world needs that too right now yeah thank you so much russell thank you Bye.