The Louis Theroux Podcast - S7 EP4: Stewart Lee on "Netflix comedians”, disastrous gigs, and Elon Musk

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello there, welcome to the Louis Theroux podcast. My guest today is comedian, director, writer and 41st best stand-up ever, Stuart Lee. Stuart is one of the most influential and admired stand-up comedians working today, known for his meticulously constructed routines which rely on repetition, repetition, repetition. That's my joke. An amusing and ironic sense of superiority to his audience and to kind of awry and laid-back delivery. The music of his inflections is one of his most appealing assets as a comedian. A lot of the most famous routines he does are on YouTube. I've seen him live several

Starting point is 00:00:58 times. He's very comfortable on stage. He's sometimes compared with Ricky Jervais. He came to fame before Ricky and he writes openly in his book about the ways in which he feels maybe he influenced Ricky or that Ricky overlaps with what he does. Nevertheless, his voice is wholly his own. Stuart came on the podcast to discuss his current stand-up show, Stuart Lee versus the man-wolf, which involves him in the middle. This is a spoiler, not really. He dresses up as a kind of werewolf in order to take on the persona

Starting point is 00:01:32 of what he describes as a Netflix comedian, someone who is emphatically non-woke, who deals with edgy comedy. So the whole set is an exploration of the politics of comedy and where a liberal, self-confessed, kind of politically correct comedian like Stuart sits in all of that. Stuart made his start in comedy as one half of the duo, Leon Herring, alongside Richard Herring. Notably, he was part of the creative group that birthed Alan Partridge. So some LTP cinematic universe synergy. We kind of need Richard Herring to come on and Armando Ionucci and Patrick Marba and then we'll have completed the set.

Starting point is 00:02:19 That's like the Avengers Assemble of the Partridge Verse. Does the Partridge Verse exist in the same world as the Theru verse? No. How could it? He lives in the Partridge verse. He's fictional. I'm real. What does the Theruverse overlap with?

Starting point is 00:02:36 The Ronson verse? I think it overlaps with the John Ronson. verse. What other verses? The Ronson verse? The Thurro? The Buxton verse? I think the Thru-verse and the Buxton verse are in the same universe and it's perhaps, is it the podcast verse? Okay, from bad to verse. Alongside comedy, he co-wrote and co-directed the West End hit musical Jerry Springer, the opera. The show sparked intense backlash from Christian Wright groups who staged a series of protests against the show. We discussed the the impact of this on his life in the chat. We recorded this conversation in December last year at

Starting point is 00:03:14 Spotify HQ, much to his chagrin. Why? Well, you'll find out. It turns out that the politically engaged woke, I can say that, he embraces wokedom. Stuart Lee, with his conscious choices about where he spends his money and allocates his resources and his content, is not a natural match-up. for the international streaming platform that I like to call home. A quick warning that this conversation contains the strongest of languages, Seabom from me, says Millie. She's disappointed. And adult themes.

Starting point is 00:03:58 I'm trying to think of it like an anodyne word that starts with C. What could a... Cobblers. Did I say cobblers? All that as well as much else besides coming up. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space.

Starting point is 00:04:33 As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Oh, well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back. go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business, because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales. The list goes on and on. So give it a shot, turn those dreams into sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash louis,

Starting point is 00:05:14 L-O-U-I-S. That's Shopify.com slash Louis L-O-U-I-S. You were lost in the bowels of Spotify. It's happened to me before. Is this made by Spotify, though? I wouldn't have done it if I'd know.

Starting point is 00:05:45 Well, this is, we can talk about that. Yeah, fine. We can talk about that. I've had almost stuff taking off Spotify. As I understand it, you took your stuff off. Yeah. Because of the Joe Rogan issue. And also Neil Young had done it

Starting point is 00:05:58 And I thought it would be funny to be the next person And I knew that what would happen Was that loads of American podcaster types Would go, who the hell does this guy think he is? We've never even heard of him But actually, Joni Mitchell got in next So I was the third one Which just wasn't as funny

Starting point is 00:06:15 I thought the idea of it being Neil Young And then someone no one's heard of Would be in? Good company to be in But I think they might have gone back on My things. Yeah, I think they have. What yours? I meant Neil Young has. Neil Young, I think, went back on.

Starting point is 00:06:28 Yeah, yeah. It's not too late for you to leave. That's all right. Maybe I'll meet and get the Joe Rogan audience. Yeah. It'd be great. You've never been to America, is that right? I've been to the country.

Starting point is 00:06:41 Okay, but you haven't worked there. Well, I did the Montreal Festival in Canada, which is a trade fair for the American comedy industry, about three or four times. And they used to make me go to New York to do gigs before. to warm up which is pointless because you do a seven minute set in front of a brick wall

Starting point is 00:07:00 you know kind of I know everyone else on the bill is awful and you go to silence and they're just confused of why you can possibly have been brought there you know so but I had years of weird development deals I had a film on the go for about 15 years

Starting point is 00:07:16 when I went backwards and forwards to Hollywood all the time before I finally just gave up on it really yeah I had lots of adventures What can you say about that? Well, I can say that at one point I had Alan Rickman, Peter Fonda, and Darrell Hanna all lined up to be in it.

Starting point is 00:07:32 That's quite a line-up. Yeah, and Alan Rickman was fantastically helpful, bloke, really nice. He would have been alive at that point. He was alive. It was before he'd. But it's a good question, though, in the modern world. Because presumably he could be regenerated by it. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:07:48 It's still not too late to make it. But we're for him to be helpful as a deep fake. But it's exactly. It's what he was like. It's not impossible. It's a very helpful man. And, yeah, Darrell Hanna was hilarious. And Peter Fonda was, it was also dead now.

Starting point is 00:08:01 It was everything you'd want Peter Fonda to be. I went to meet Peter Fonda. I'd wanted to be on a motorbike. No, he'd read it. And he said, I don't care what do you talk about, but I'm not talking about Easy Rider. I'm sick of it. He said, I've been doing press for a DVD release,

Starting point is 00:08:17 and I'm sick of talking about Easy Rider and the 60s. I'm not doing any of that. And then within five minutes, he couldn't help himself. Because all these great anecdotes were about that time. And it was everything you wanted to know. When he's in the hot tub with the Beatles and the birds, and they're on acid. And Peter Fonda said,

Starting point is 00:08:35 I know what it's like to be dead, right? And Lennon obviously used that in, I know what it's like to be dead. Then you read the other side of that story. And John Lennon says that Peter Fonda was so depressed on acid that it's bringing everyone down or whatever. So what happened to you on? By the way,

Starting point is 00:08:53 people who are listening. We do have listeners. This is a nice preamble. I'm going to do a topic. Is this the start? We've started. Is this on? Going to go out? This is on. Oh, right. Wow. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for not walking off. I've never said that before. I feel like we should have met before. No, I've met loads. I mean, I've met loads of your relatives and people that know you, but I've not met you.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. You're a little older, but not that much. You were born in 68. I'm 70. Not years old. That's my year. My kids are very excited on this They love you Thank you Young people You're really popular with young people

Starting point is 00:09:28 Nice to hear that Is it because you've worked You've a social media phenomenon Not really No How old are they? Oh 18 and 14 But they've liked you since they were

Starting point is 00:09:39 Much younger There's a couple of glosses I could put on that I love this part of the show Why am I so beloved What do they like you What could it possibly be What do they see in you I think there's a couple of theories

Starting point is 00:09:49 I'd advance One would be the younger one was aware of my jiggle-jiggle, which surely you know. No, I don't. I don't. I have a gold record. Oh, right. Yeah, so it's called jiggle-jiggle. It's a rap track that I wrote with two rappers from Mississippi.

Starting point is 00:10:04 And I did it 25 years ago as part of a TV show. It was a gimmick within a TV documentary. A bit like Duncan Dairs. I'm going to try, you know, like a Blue Peter thing. I'm going to try and write my own rap track for weird weekends. and 25 years later, for bizarre Byzantine reasons that aren't worth going into, it got picked up and a producer pair from Manchester

Starting point is 00:10:26 put a track down behind it and it went viral on TikTok but to an extraordinarily strange extent. So kids loved it. I think kids like you because your interviewing technique. Don't you want to hear a bit more about jiggle-jiggle? No. Why they like his words, when you ask questions to people,

Starting point is 00:10:43 you ask them like a child. They seem innocent like you just want to know this thing, right? You're not like you're being a smooth operator. And I think they relate to that, I think. You ask the kind of questions that a child would ask, and I mean that in the best possible way. Like a very simple child. No, because it doesn't, that's why people walk into your traps

Starting point is 00:11:07 because they appear unguarded. I'll take that. I'm happy with that. I don't know if I completely agree. I mean, I can tell, I'll take the part that I know. And I see part of it. What I think is also true is that there's something about documentaries that are somewhat evergreen because people are being real. And so documentaries tend to hold up.

Starting point is 00:11:27 You can watch a film from the 50s. It could be quite funny because the people are behaving in ways that are recognizable, but strange at the same time. And also the themes that I've taken on in my films, my documentaries are very evergreen. Well, in the darkest parts of the human heart. Yeah. All those things are being amplified at speed by people in positions of, power and the kind of people that you would have viewed as

Starting point is 00:11:52 kooky if slightly unpleasant eccentrics 25 years ago are now in the heart of the American government for example and as of yesterday I think we need to face the fact that we're kind of at war with America with the declaration that Trump made yesterday that he intends to protect European civilization by using American power to support in whatever way possible far-right parties across Europe Right, you know. You're referring to a statement that was put out.

Starting point is 00:12:21 I don't think Trump appended his name to it. Okay. It's on the U.S. government website. And it gives a racial, identitarian gloss to the idea of European citizenship. Yeah. And the Kremlin have said, we approve of this statement. It's broadly in line with our motives. Make a documentary about that.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Maybe I will. Yeah. Maybe I have. Well, you sort of have. I've done versions of that. You've mapped the mindsets that led us to this point. You know, and when we try to understand the death throes of human civilization, all the work you've done will be helpful to the irradiated survivors.

Starting point is 00:13:03 You know, I feel like you're interviewing me, and the weird thing is I'm kind of enjoying it. My other line on this is that this kind of disinformation or sort of incendiary and partial kind of take on the world that's explicitly racially charged or in other sick context because it's also to do with a thing with algorithms that are picking up a lot of highly charged sexual content. You know, porn drives the internet to a great extent as well. But when I started in the late 90s, this would arrive in your office if you were doing research or in your home in a brown paper envelope and now, of course, it's being pumped at a rates of,

Starting point is 00:13:40 you know, megabytes per second or gigabytes per second into your phone, which explains, I think, great deal. We're in danger of agreeing too much. Can we talk about Man Wolf? Oh yeah, sure. Have you seen it? No. Well, it's been difficult in it. Well, I have seen quite a bit of your work. Right. I would have seen it if there had been

Starting point is 00:14:00 an option to see it. I would have had to see it live and it just didn't, the timings didn't find out. I did five months at Leicester Square and then a week at the Royal Festival Hall in the last... It sounds like you're saying I didn't try very hard. I think you tried very hard. I had about 70 opportunities.

Starting point is 00:14:16 to have seen it in London alone and it's been on tour kind of five nights a week since January and it's stopped Should we sit in this awkwardness for a second? It is? I'm really easy to see

Starting point is 00:14:29 as a comedian I spread myself extremely thinly over and then it's rocking around until the end of next year but it's funny because it's sort of the world's played into its hands

Starting point is 00:14:42 it's December last year people going well you know I sort of get it and then the world is sharpening it up. I don't have to change it too much as it becomes more relevant because people can see the direction of travel. In fact, at the moment,

Starting point is 00:14:54 I've just laid it off for six weeks over Christmas and pick up again in February and all this stuff's got to go in, this American policy statement, you know, loads of things will need to be addressed. The Man Wolf character is a kind of composite of those kind of American stand-ups like Joe Rogan that are often unwitting tools.

Starting point is 00:15:15 of the far right. And if anything, the character now is not unpleasant enough. It's the things it's saying are not as bad. Well, talk about these... As the things that are being said by these people for real. It's in three parts, right?

Starting point is 00:15:32 The core conceit of the man wolf... Is this a review of it? A brutally forthright werewolf. I'm afraid to tell you where I got this. All right, okay. You can do, where? AI. Really?

Starting point is 00:15:44 An AI is generally. Well, I googled it. And you know, with Google now, it gives you a little AI thing at the top. The next thing is not the AI thing. That's right. So in generating that, you've used ten times. I googled it. I didn't press on the AI bit.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Okay, well, don't then. No, I didn't. Because it uses ten times the water. Ten times in the energy, I know that. But literally I googled it. Yeah, well, just go to the next thing down. Don't go to the AI. I didn't click on it.

Starting point is 00:16:10 Right, right. A brutally forthright, warfright, warholfurted counterpart with a tiny plastic member to mock perceived. alpha male inadequacy is central to the show's humor and social critique. I think this is The Guardian. It's as improbable as show as with any right to expect of a man 35 years into his career. The opening of its second act, which finds Lee in full werewolf costume, screaming unintelligibly, into a microphone to a rock backing track.

Starting point is 00:16:38 Makes one wonder if he's staging his own midlife crisis. Yeah, I am. Are you? Yeah, yeah. It feels like it was, coming at the hour, with the man in this case. Yeah. It's very occurant.

Starting point is 00:16:48 Yeah, it's been, I've been really lucky. Often you live in fear that I had one show and it was all about, you know, the politics of Brexit and whatever. And talking about Boris Johnson was a key element of it. And he was kind of thread that tied it all together. And it ended up touring it for quite a long time.

Starting point is 00:17:08 And I kept thinking he's going to get sacked because he kept doing insane things. I thought he's going to be sacked. And any normal politician would have been sacked or resigned at that point and he was hanging out. I had this weird thing where I didn't want him to go even though I couldn't stand him

Starting point is 00:17:22 because it was the spine of the show and then amazingly about four or five days after I did the last performance that was when he finally went and so you worry that sometimes shows are retreating from you you have to tour them around for about 18 months, two years and sometimes the idea has become less relevant or drift But this, every day, something sharpens it up.

Starting point is 00:17:49 And I'm going to film it at the last possible moment in October next year and then hopefully get it out within a couple of months, wherever it ends up going. But it's horrifying the speed at which it is being focused by events and attitudes. To what extent are you aiming your guns at that comedy style? Yeah. I'm aiming my guns at that comedy style, but also it is fun to do it because it's easy. Because, you know, as someone from the liberal, I mean, I'll talk about this in the show.

Starting point is 00:18:28 As someone from the 1980s liberal alternative comedy tradition, we were encouraged by what you now call wokeness to think about the validity of our targets, whether those people deserved it. They used to call it political correctness. And I am politically correct, you know. I try to be politically correct. But the Netflix comedian doesn't have to think about that. In fact, there's a positive financial value to them not thinking about it. Because if they create a fence, it creates interest. It tends not to lead to cancellation, although they like to think that it does,

Starting point is 00:19:07 tends to lead to an inflation of your market value. So it's really great writing the nasty werewolf set and being able to sort of do anything and also to be, I try not to run the room in a bossy way as myself. I try to absorb any agro, like a soft target. I don't like having to run the room. I can do it.

Starting point is 00:19:35 But the weirwolf can do that and it's great. What do you mean by run the room? Put people down, control heckles, you know. I try to let things play out. And I try to deal with problems like that in a gentle sort of way, if I can. I don't like having to be like a club comic like I was for 10 years in the 90s where you have to run a room. So it's very liberating being a werewolf.

Starting point is 00:19:57 It's really good fun. Is that a performance decision or is that like a moral decision? It's a performance decision. And it's also because a lot of my stuff is about me as a sort of weirdly low status figure who thinks in his mind that he's the greatest comedian of all time and should get more respect. But so I have to kind of keep a lid on the status, if you know what I mean, for the jokes to work.

Starting point is 00:20:20 And so if you're suddenly running a room and bossing people about, it unbalances it a bit. So you have to hand the power back to the heckler or to the person that's joined in. I try to make them get... It's increasingly difficult, actually, to involve the public because there's a certain kind of comedian now, and again, I blame the internet,

Starting point is 00:20:37 who wants to manufacture conflict on stage, ideally film it on a camera phone and then get it on the internet and there'll be a 30 second clip called Steve Norman destroys heckler and then millions of people watch it and thousands of people go and see them live and they haven't got an act and they don't go a second time.

Starting point is 00:20:55 It's a kind of thing now and I think audience members are often quite reluctant to join in with you now because they're worried that they're going to be attacked whereas I try to give them the power and let them get the laughs and I try to feed them stuff that I know will set them up for things

Starting point is 00:21:11 It's one of the reasons I never Like panel shows I realized in retrospect That if you are on a panel show And you think of it The good of the whole And you try to feed people lines Or set them up for things

Starting point is 00:21:25 That's viewed as a weakness Because then they get the laugh Right But you know If you think of these things collectively You know Like an improvisation And again it sounds pretentious

Starting point is 00:21:35 But I watch a lot of improvised music and those people are not stars but they work as a unit you know they make space for each other in a free jazz trio you know laughing because I thought we'd go to free jazz at some point yeah yeah well you can't escape it once you start thinking like that

Starting point is 00:21:51 it's sort of a philosophy for life you know I've got a great bit of paper that Evan Parker gave me in the 90s is he a free jazz yeah he's a free jazz he's one of the great British 60s wave of people And he, um, it was a piece of paper that they used to photocopy and all give to each other. Monk's advice, felonious monk about performance.

Starting point is 00:22:16 What happens in the room is the show. Oh, isn't that great? What happens in the room is the show? And of course, now you can just find that. Well, let's pause on that because some people might be confused. I think I get it. Well, that sometimes, there's no platonic show that you're aspiring to get to. No.

Starting point is 00:22:34 What it means is every night is different. And sometimes you have to bend to that night rather than trying to make it into the platonic ideal of the show. Even though this show has these three phases and it has an argument and beginning, the middle and end and whatever, the same show, two nights, can be a totally different energy

Starting point is 00:22:50 because of stuff that happens and you have to, you know, you have to go to. But the great thing with that piece of paper is I remember when it was a piece of paper, you were privileged to be given it. Of course, now you can find it, you can find a scan of it on the internet like that. But I had it when it was still a photocopy.

Starting point is 00:23:05 monk's advice. And it's a great thing to look at. I have it on the fridge. I admired in, I think it was basically your previous show. Yeah, yeah. That was a lot. Which is on now TV. There's a lot to like about it. But I admired a moment where someone in the audience threatens to punch you. Yeah, in the front row, yeah. And it feels, I'm watching it think like, this feels like it could be awkward. Because he, I don't know if he means it, but he doesn't not mean it. He doesn't not mean it, no. Because he thought you were cheeking his wife or something? Yeah, yeah. But you rode it. Is it? Do you get a little, squirt of panic if something like that happens?

Starting point is 00:23:38 I never feel as safe as I do on stage. The world is the problem. Really? Your world is the problem and the stage is the safest place. Because within certain parameters you feel protected. And this show, even more so. Because at the start of the second half, once I'm in that werewolf costume, it's not even me doing it.

Starting point is 00:24:05 I get to the interval and I think, oh, I'm done now. And then the stuff happens to this puppet that I'm operating. It's not even me. When the kids were little, I would, you know, depending on who was working or whatever, I'd get them from school. I'd do their tea. I'd try and get their homework going. And then I'd get on the bus to Finchby Park station and try to be at the Leicester Square

Starting point is 00:24:25 Theatre for 7.30 or whatever for four months when I was doing my run. And the moment I walked on stage, I would think, ah, some time to myself. You know, it's not a problem. I'm never nervous and I feel a sense of incredible calm, even when things are going wrong. Whereas to come here or to deal with emails about admin and finance or anything like that is much worse. And I think that for me, in retrospect,

Starting point is 00:25:02 becoming a comedian was a means of escape from the world and to live in certain controlled environment and it's not a job I would do today if I was starting out. You have to generate internet content and be a personality and interact with people and I don't want to do that. What's your best joke?

Starting point is 00:25:24 My best joke. Well, the one that I get stopped about in the street every day and I was stopped this morning by a guy about it. is a routine from, I think, 2013 about waves of migration into Britain that was on comedy vehicle. And it never seems to go away. It's been sampled by Asian Dub Foundation, where I think it got to number one in the charts,

Starting point is 00:25:48 although it was not played by any radio stations, obviously. And it just goes round and round and round, partly because endless waves of people on the far right keep restating the same arguments which it counter. and so that's probably the most famous one. You start with the beaker people or does it go backwards? It starts with now and it works back through Neolithic people and Beaker Fend. It works back to...

Starting point is 00:26:16 What's the framing? Well, the people are coming over here from all these different... I can't remember. I can't remember, isn't actually? Huguenots coming over and taking hydrogs. And then it gets back to the idea that it was better when nothing existed, which I was thinking about today. Well, I was talking to Armando Inucci this morning about an idea,

Starting point is 00:26:37 and he was talking about how a lot of the far right is about a nostalgia for an imagined better past. In fact, Anderton, what's he called? Lee Anderson. He was talking about how he thinks disabled people should be given those little blue three-wheeler cars that they used to have. Robin Reliance? Yeah, they used to have a little specially adapted one-seater.

Starting point is 00:26:58 This would be better than them having money to use for their own transport. There's this kind of nostalgia for a simpler past. So what did nail in that routine, and often that bit gets cut off is people being nostalgic about the time before anything existed, when life was at its most simple, when there was no matter or energy or nothing. And I kind of think that that's the reduced to absurdity position

Starting point is 00:27:26 of the far right is this kind of weird nostalgia for an imagined simpler past. Yeah, so that's the bit, that everyone knows, I suppose, and the bit that people are sick of as well. One of the things, obviously, you've become, I don't know, famous for,

Starting point is 00:27:42 but certainly you haven't held back on, is calling out other comedians, right? Yeah, again, it doesn't... Right. And I never know, because another thing you've said is that on stage you're in character, and you play the character of Stuart Lee,

Starting point is 00:27:55 funnily enough. And Stuart Lee... Look, you understand this. You're in character when you're interviewing. You play a faux naive when you're interviewing some of those people. Am I in character now? No.

Starting point is 00:28:07 There's no need for it with me. You play a faux naive and also you play up to an English middle classness in America which disarms those people. There's something in that. But nevertheless, I would say I kind of go in and out of character

Starting point is 00:28:21 and I do believe in, you know, may I say it's got non-binary in a sense like the idea of shifts, you know, tones. Tonal shift. Tonal shifts, register shifts. So it's also

Starting point is 00:28:33 it's a fallacy, the idea like, I'm now in character, I'm going to call you a cunt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm not in character, I don't think you're a cunt, do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Felt weird calling you a cunt,

Starting point is 00:28:43 even though I was in character. Can you do that on Spotify? Can you say that? Yeah. Wow. Wow. The character of Stuart Lee is a jealous, delusional, bitter, arrogant person, anxious to give a good account of himself.

Starting point is 00:28:54 Actually, there was a better one where you talked about him being sort of woke and pious and patronising and a scold. Yeah. It's all the things that I am, which in normal everyday life, you check them.

Starting point is 00:29:10 Yeah. You check them and pull back on them. And they're useful traits to amplify. We were talking about, it's funnier to be more aloof, more arrogant, owning your worst qualities. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:27 But also about the fact that that's involved casting shade at or whatever the phrase would be other comedians like you've sailed quite close to the wind on that famously perhaps this might be one of your most famous jokes where you talk about how you kept hearing that James Corden was a fan and it was starting to get up your nose every time you would say he was trying to be a fan he was just trying to seem intelligent

Starting point is 00:29:52 it was a running gag of yours is that people that come to your comedy to prove that they're intelligent to sort of seem elizabeth because that's what critics would say about it so I thought well I'll own that. You'll own that. That it's sort of six music listening, guardian reading, you know, knit your own yogurt types.

Starting point is 00:30:08 Anyway, and you say like, imagine James Corden watching one of my routines. It's like a dog listening to classical music. Well, the reason I did that about James Corden was because I was kept being told that James Corden was a fan. And James Corden would turn up at little tryout gigs that I was doing. And I had to think, what would the character of Stuart Lee?

Starting point is 00:30:30 I don't mind him. I don't know anything about him. But unfortunately, the character of Stuart Lee would be a snob about him. So I had to say that. I had to ruin that. And sometimes I have to say things that I know will make my life worse

Starting point is 00:30:48 and more difficult. I once sabotaged a gig at the Royal Albert Hall because it's what he would have done. Right? Stuart Lee would have done. Yeah. Be helpful if you had a different name for that person. No.

Starting point is 00:31:04 But I mean, well, I've done the Teenage Cancer Trust comedy night at the Royal Aberhall twice. The first time I did it, Noel Fielding curated all the acts. So I kind of fitted in quite well on that night. Quirky offbeat comedy. It's fine. The second time John Bishop did it. And John Bishop likes me. And I think John Bishop was very good comedian.

Starting point is 00:31:24 But it's very different to me. And all the other acts were of that kind of world. And I came out. and all the other people had been picked up on a big screen at the back right and when I came out the screen went off I went oh I said I've turned that off you know well they're not filming me what's going on now my audience would have immediately started laughing choosing to do that

Starting point is 00:31:47 the rule out of all but they weren't they were thinking who's they didn't know who I was they know who's this bloke so I went the irony is I'm the most critically acclaimed act on I mean a lot of you won't have heard of me but I've got I've been called the world's greatest living stand-up by the times and of course they were getting, they hated it those people,

Starting point is 00:32:02 they didn't know who I was and I was lecturing and I was going can this be sorted out you know and it's such a wrong thing to do at the Royal Abolns can play with that technology

Starting point is 00:32:09 and then I thought I've misjudged this it's not my crowd they don't know who I am they think something's gone wrong they think I'm being arrogant and stagging everyone off so I had to just

Starting point is 00:32:18 dig down on it you kept going kept going and then did you start calling them a bunch of morons probably yeah I expect I can't remember

Starting point is 00:32:26 it was like I was like I was above watching myself in this place. Objectively, it was bad comedy, as it didn't work. But from another position, it was one of the best things I've ever done because that's what would happen to him

Starting point is 00:32:41 if he went there and did that. And then when I came off, Sean Walsh, God bless him, was on his knees. The comedian. Laughing his head off and going like that. Because he understood the decision that I'd made to make something of it. I'm doing it again.

Starting point is 00:32:56 How did that feel, though, for you? majestic, mortifying. Again, when I was on, no problem. Right, what I said about the feeling of utter safety. Yeah. Because he would do that, so he did it. But when I came off, you know, if you nearly have a car accident and you just about get out. Your jittery.

Starting point is 00:33:14 Yeah. I went, whoa, came to pieces afterwards. It was terrible. Really? Yeah, I felt absolutely, I felt like I'd just gone to silence in front of 4,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall, which is what I'd done, or maybe more. So I'm doing it again actually in March with Robert Smith from the Cure has curated it and I'm in much better

Starting point is 00:33:32 I'm in a bill where it all there will be fine I'm really looking forward to that so great But it's interesting that it did affect you Afterwards yeah but not during No but afterwards Yeah afterwards yeah but during Because you were back to normal

Starting point is 00:33:47 Stuart yeah yeah And normal Stuart cares Yeah well which is a good segue into So what did normal Stuart feel about Comedy Stewart being so so rude about James Corden? I feel sorry that he might be upset about it. But if he really liked me as much as he said,

Starting point is 00:34:05 he would have understood why that had to happen. You know, another thing that I did was in between, they were always reluctant to recommission comedy vehicle, even though it was winning BAFTAs. This was your BBC 2 show that you got in 2008? Something like that, yeah, 7, 8. And I mean, in between one series, maybe series 2 or series 3, Somebody said, look, the problem is you're not a personality.

Starting point is 00:34:28 You're not on other things. We need you to do more stuff. Do panel shows. Yeah, they said, well, maybe, I'm not doing panel shows. The bloke goes, well, maybe you could present the culture show. And so I wrote a routine about why I should, not only why I would not present the culture show, but why the culture show should be about me every week because I've done operas and all sorts of things. It should just be a program about how I embody culture.

Starting point is 00:34:50 So I kind of burnt my bridges for that completely. I didn't want to do the culture show. but the Stuart Lee would be offended that he should be and he would also think the culture show was lowbrow shit

Starting point is 00:35:03 he would think it was not even Do you think that? No, it's all right you know it's not on anymore anyway is it but everything all the things that we moaned about

Starting point is 00:35:12 and now everything's so terrible that you look back you think wow it's gone and never coming back no I enjoyed really But you know what else though

Starting point is 00:35:22 I really love comedy and I watch loads of it and I So the people that I admire enormously outweigh the tiny minority that irritate me. And even those people, when push comes to shove, when Farage this week was saying that he's the same as Bernard Manning, he's going, you know, it's just a joke.

Starting point is 00:35:42 Well, we should help people out. Okay, Nigel Farage has allegedly made anti-Semitic and racist comments as a teenager at school. At school. And there's an 18-year-old at school. And his justification when somebody from ITV, tried to pick him up on it was that ITV had Bernard Manning on in the 70s

Starting point is 00:36:00 which it did. We should also say it wasn't just one or two people I think it was 20 getting on for 30 people. 30 people who were students, pupils alongside him have recollections of feeling of some pretty full-on stuff and I thought well it's not the same as Bernard Manning

Starting point is 00:36:16 because Bernard Manning didn't go to Jewish people Hitler was right and then make the sound of a gas chamber right and also Bernard Manning whether you like him or not, he operates in the magic circle protected space of the theatre.

Starting point is 00:36:34 People have kind of made a choice to go in there whereas it's not the same as Nigel Farage allegedly saying to a black student what country are your family from, there's the way back. In fact, if Bernard Manning did that on stage, it would be quite funny. You go, where are you from me?

Starting point is 00:36:50 Well, that's the door. You know, you can sort of see how that would work So I obviously don't like Bernard Manning But I'm not going to have a member of the public I'm not going to have a non-comedian Misrepresenting Do you not So you don't really care that much

Starting point is 00:37:08 You're willing to sail close to the wind On putting people out there I don't want to make too much of this But it always strikes me that you're You've got an appetite Is it a thick skin or is it You've got an appetite To

Starting point is 00:37:22 Look I don't I don't know why it's such a big deal. You know, I mean, I saw Russell Howard on telly doing a joke about how that old lady that won Britain's Got Talent, Susan Boyle, was ugly. Yeah. I thought, well, that's not on, really, coming from a man who spends all his life in a gym. I just thought it was kind of, so all those people have a go at people. They have a go at harmless celebrities or people they consider NAF in some way, you know. And I'm not interested in that world.

Starting point is 00:37:54 I'm not interested. I don't even know those people are. I'm interested in politics and comedy mainly. My stand-up is about a stand-up comedian who's trying to do shows. There's no artifice in that way. Whereas someone like Lee Mack, who's very good, comes out and he talks about everyday life. He's like your friend who's somehow on stage.

Starting point is 00:38:15 Whereas I'm not your friend, and I'm not pretending to be... I'm a bloke who's a comedian who feels a bit hard done by and is on tour all the time and talks about putting the shows together and the business of that a lot of the times. That's why the jokes are about those people because that's his world. This episode is brought to you by Moneybox,

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Starting point is 00:40:04 your savings. Now's the time. Open a Moneybox cash-Isa in the app or at Moneybox app.com. ISA and tax rules apply. Market leading based on MoneyFax Compare.compo.com.com. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Oh well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it,

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Starting point is 00:41:08 and start selling today at Shopify.com slash Louis, L-O-U-I-S. That's Shopify.com slash Louis, L-O-U-I-S. I've read your book, which was I thought it really interesting. You're a terrific writer. Which one was that? How I escaped in certain feet. Well, it's very kind of you. I'm very proud of that book.

Starting point is 00:41:41 I liked Dave Allen as a kid and a book came out about Dave Allen and I wanted to read it and it was all about Dave Allen's life and playing golf and whatever and there was nothing about how he developed material and I thought well I want to read a book about a comedian

Starting point is 00:41:57 and it's not about their celebrity but it's about their process so I thought well I'll write that book about me It's very much that and also it's about an eight year climacteric if I can use that word in which you kind of have a crisis based on not doing very well on stage for various reasons

Starting point is 00:42:15 being heckled and then a drunk you handle a heckler by getting the drunk heckler to get on stage and then you're made to be in the wrong and you're like the audiences are dwindling for obscure reasons Well I couldn't make a living either because I was with Avalon and it was difficult because the economics of their touring models were not very good you put Avalon out there you're quite careful not to name them in the book

Starting point is 00:42:36 you make them sound pretty horrendous Christmas parties with dwarves running around carrying drinks on their heads or something. I mean, who does that? What a tasteless thing to do? Although the dwarves like it, you know, because it's seasonal work. That's what they say.

Starting point is 00:42:51 I asked a guy, do you like doing this? He went, we're seasonal workers, he said. And then it follows you through your famous Jerry Springer, award-winning Jerry Springer, the opera. We have to always mention that was the idea of the composer Richard Thomas, who did the majority of the creative work on it. And the concept was already up and running

Starting point is 00:43:10 when I came in. I tried to plot it into something really. It won an Olivier. It was going to transfer to Broadway. It was derailed by an orchestrated, but I think nonetheless sincere campaign by Christian evangelists who found it deeply offensive. But I had an amazing thing on tour,

Starting point is 00:43:28 and I hope she won't mind me talking about this, but his family, the family of Stephen Green, who led the campaign against Joey Springer the Opera. Stephen Green's also actually one of the people that the Tufton Street AstroTurf Pressure Group Restore Trust have tried to put onto the board of the National Trust because they think it's got too woke

Starting point is 00:43:47 and he's a man who believes it's not possible for a man to rape his wife. Anyway, I was doing a gig on this tour and his daughter came up at the end and introduced herself and it was one of the most overwhelming things that has happened to me. Wow, it's making you a bit emotional thinking about it.

Starting point is 00:44:07 Yeah, it was because you know, we put years of work into that show and at the point where it should have settled into a viable thing it was stopped largely by him and it was so great to see her and I was really not for six by it and I thought it was very brave to come and say hello

Starting point is 00:44:33 so yeah it was great you appreciated it The issue for them was that Jesus is depicted in a cheeky way in the... Well, he wasn't really. I remember seeing it. He's wearing a nappy? Well, he wasn't wearing a nappy. He's wearing a lungy. In the first half, okay, basically my contribution to the opera was to copy the plot of the Wizard of Oz,

Starting point is 00:44:55 whereby, if you remember in the Wizard of Oz, all the people that Dorothy meets in her everyday life reemerge as fantasy caricatures of themselves. That's right. In the dream sequence, which is the journey to Oz. That's right. So all the people that Jerry Springer met in the first half reemerge in the second half, in the fever dream that he has in the moment between being shot and dying, they reemerge as analogous religious figures.

Starting point is 00:45:22 That's right. Stories in the first half, that the squabbling couple come back as Adam and Eve. The sort of farther figure, bigamist bloke, comes back as God. The man who in the first half was wearing a nappy because he was a coprophilian. comes back as Jesus in a loincloth like Jesus wears in all the paintings of Jesus. He is specifically not in a nappy. It's like a nappy and that's why he thinks of it because he's in a nappy in the first half. And Jesus, the most famous images are all those like crucifixion paintings where he's in a loincloth.

Starting point is 00:45:57 So that's why that was that. And it wasn't a nappy, it was a loincloth. But the story became, it was a nappy. But also with Stephen Green there was a very specific agenda which is that you wouldn't have done this. have done this about another religion, specifically Islam. And actually, you wouldn't have done. Now, the reason I wouldn't have done it about Islam was that you wanted something that was commonly understood, right? And in the West, whether it's Milton or Nick Cave,

Starting point is 00:46:25 a commonly understood trope is the Christian religion. It's a commonly understood thing where you can use elements of those stories to tell a story. Islam's not commonly understood. Of course, what became immediately clear sometime later is another reason you wouldn't have done it about Islam is because some supporters of that religion would have taken violent retribution on any representation of it. Although I think the South Park depiction of Mohammed is still knocking about somewhere.

Starting point is 00:46:51 But the people surrounding Christian voice had a whole rag bag of things. They were homophobic. That was Stephen Green's outfit? Is he still knocking around? Well, yeah, I mean Tufton Street tried to get him on the border the National Trust three years ago, so he's still knocking around. The Daily Mail always used to read him out for a quote, and they stopped. I think you got a bit too hot for them, you know.

Starting point is 00:47:13 So when it transferred, it showed on BBC, right? Yeah, that was what caused all the trouble, really. It was the most complained about transmission in history? Yeah, but again, it's kind of meaningless because... That's quite a feather in the gap. It's not a meaningless, though, because the internet was starting, so it was easy to mobilize complaints. And most of the people had complained about it wouldn't have seen it.

Starting point is 00:47:33 It was 50,000. I think it was 60,000. It almost felt imitative, like at the time, it was a bit like, well, if radical Islam can go around mixing things up, intimidating people, we're going to show them what we can do. That's what Stephen Green said. He said, the Muslims have stolen a march on us, he said. That was his quote.

Starting point is 00:47:56 He felt that in the economy of offence, they were being outperformed by other religions. Is he used? Yeah, the Muslims have stolen a march. Or not the economy of offence. No, I've just made that. It's like, well, why can't, why can they do cartoons of Jesus? Yeah. Well, I think it's different.

Starting point is 00:48:12 It is slightly different because there's not a tradition of depicting Muhammad, as I understand it. And also, even within the Christian faith, if you think of the mystery plays from the Middle Ages, there were fairly robust depictions of Christian religious figures in those that were used to do social satire about, contemporary issues of the times. I think they've always been quite flexible to us as artists and writers in Christian cultures. We've always

Starting point is 00:48:41 been able to play a little bit fast and loose with them to tell other sorts of stories. But they're not that useful anymore, unfortunately, because most people don't really know anything about the Christian religion anymore.

Starting point is 00:48:56 And there are some good things about that. You can't necessarily use it to win a moral argument in the way it used to be enough to just say, the Bible would say, don't do that. But what it does mean is there isn't a framework for telling stories, which I think is a shame that it's gone in that way. Or for understanding, you can't understand the great of Blake and Milton.

Starting point is 00:49:19 You can't understand that without initially knowing your way around the Christian religion. You have to, so I think other things will start to fade into meaninglessness because we don't really understand that. I also think it means a lot of people are offended by things without really understanding them. I mean, Tommy Robinson is telling the Church of England they need to put the Christ back into Christmas. So it basically means the religion is misunderstood enough to be appropriated by the far right. So they're in it. I hadn't seen that.

Starting point is 00:49:53 Put the Christ back into Christmas, yeah. So is this a sort of thing you talk about? normally. How are you talking about personal stuff? Well, I don't like to do that really because I think personal stuff invariably involves other people and those other people haven't necessarily

Starting point is 00:50:12 consented to be a bit player in your self-indulgent psychodrama. So there's a couple of things bubbling under that I would do a show about at some point. Go on. Well, the one I can't possibly talk about until I've got everything in line.

Starting point is 00:50:32 And then a lot's come up about being adopted lately. But I think I should do a show about that. Dara O'Brien has done two shows about being adopted. So what I might do is a show about Dyer O'Brien being adopted. I thought that would be quite a funny way of doing it. Sounds like you're avoiding something. I remember when I read your book, I was like, this is great, but I also thought there was a reference to you being adopted.

Starting point is 00:50:57 I thought, that's really interesting. Yeah. You also, then later on I read that it was the first two years of your life you were in care. Yeah, right. So we don't know, you know, you don't know anything about that. You don't obviously remember that. You were a doctor. Then, go on, what are you going to say?

Starting point is 00:51:12 Well, you know, why it's sort of come up is when Bridget, my wife was pregnant, which is, you know, 19 years ago now, I thought, oh, it's quite hard being pregnant. I should say ex-wife. Yeah, well, yeah, we are. The paperwork's about to go through, but we're on reasonable terms. But in fact, I'm on the Royal Apple. We're on the same bill. She's a comedian as well.

Starting point is 00:51:38 Yeah, she's very good. She's very good. Christine. Yeah. But I thought, well, it's difficult being pregnant. I expect it was quite a big deal for my mother, you know, which I'd never thought of. So I thought I should find her and tell her that I'm all right. Because I imagine, if you've gone through nine months of a pregnancy, you'd never forget that.

Starting point is 00:51:58 I really hadn't given it much thought. So growing up, you weren't massively preoccupied with who your birth parents. No, not at all. You knew anything about them? I had a form that my mum gave me when I was little, which said some basic facts. You had their names? Not names, no. Did you know what they did? I knew that my mother was a 19-year-old nursing student, and my father was a 21-year-old trainee hotel manager, although that turned out not to be the case.

Starting point is 00:52:26 And they weren't in a relationship, maybe? Not really, no. And I knew what part of the country it was. And I knew a lot more about the mother because the language of the time, 67, it is all the details of the father. The form says details of putative father. So the assumption, there's a moral assumption now.

Starting point is 00:52:47 It's quite interesting that you don't even know who the father is really. So eventually I ended up meeting various people that I'm related to and I have a very good relationship with my two half-sisters now. In fact, I saw them last weekend. Okay. They persisted with me to become a part of my life. I'm not very good at keep it up with people. You know, they were very determined about it, and they're great.

Starting point is 00:53:18 So that was one, that sort of been around. But then a few years ago, around about 18 months ago, went to the GP about something and the GP decided that I should take advantage of a scheme where there was free therapy for people that had been in care

Starting point is 00:53:37 sort of in that time because it was decided I think as a result of a class action by a group of women who thought that being put into the care of a non-regulated religious charity was not necessarily the best outcome for them there was six weeks

Starting point is 00:53:54 of free therapy to discuss what effect coming into the world in that way at that time may have had and you know it's statistically provable that everybody that went through that has a higher parenthesis of normal towards certain states of mind or conditions or dependencies or whatever so it was interesting

Starting point is 00:54:14 so you know eventually I'll write something about that but what I don't want to do is I would like to sort of make it a kind of a parody of those, here's my story, feel my pain kind of shows, you know. But it won't be for a while because the next show, 2008, which I will tour between my daughters, GCSEs and hopefully our A-Levels, is going to be very specifically about nationalism. I've got loads of ideas for it.

Starting point is 00:54:43 And I think I need to land it before Farage gets in in 2020. You think Farage will get in? At the moment, yeah, if there's a vote tomorrow, yeah. How do you like Elon Musk? Well, I think that if he was to disappear from public life, it would be better for the world. I think he's an absolute unmitigated disaster and that he's going to destabilise European democracies.

Starting point is 00:55:06 The speech that he did in Trafalgar Square was insane. What was it? I didn't see that. That was part of the Tommy Robinson march. You know, it is coming and you will have to fight. Oh yeah, he did. He said he's going to have to fight to defend yourself. He also made a – I think it was elsewhere on a podcast maybe where he did the Tolkien bit, did you see that?

Starting point is 00:55:24 Were he talking about the hobbits of... What he's talking about, he's actually his accent's different, isn't it? Because he's South African. He goes, the hobbits of Middle Earth had to defend themselves. They needed strong men to defend it. Although in some Scandinavian countries,

Starting point is 00:55:37 you know, the Lord of the Rings is very popular with the far right. They see it as a kind of, you know, creation myth for white Europe. You know, so it's an amazing thing. You always did. I'm going to sound so crazy, woke. Go on. It always bothered me a bit that,

Starting point is 00:55:51 as a child of the Star Trek generation where they were always careful not to align racial types with ideological types whereas I'm not saying Tolkien was a fascist in fact he's on record as being an anti-Nazi but there's an inescapable there's good races and bad races in Middle Earth

Starting point is 00:56:10 right? And I've said this before on this show like Humanize the Orks I made a joke out of it you know and actually maybe it's ridiculous but you can't help noticing that The orcs go around saying like, you know, meets back on the menu, boys. And you never, you know, if Gene Roddenberry had been in charge of the Tolkien adaptations, he would have, like, Lieutenant Wharf in next generation.

Starting point is 00:56:36 They'd have been a good ork. They'd have been a good ork. Yeah. And I know that probably would have made it maybe less interesting, like, oh, so predictable. Maybe it's interesting, more challenging, certainly. I do love that about Star Trek. And I wonder, look, people like Elon Musk will say, or people like us were woke liberal,

Starting point is 00:56:52 lib tards, whatever. But we grew up in a time where the popular culture was liberal. You know, like the Star Trek, like you say with Gene Roddenberry, you know, first interracial kiss on American television. The empire that was thrusting out into the stars

Starting point is 00:57:05 was very benign. It wasn't exploitative of the people it met. And then, you know, Marvel comics. I always think about it. I love Marvel comics in the 70s, and they were written by working-class Jewish autodidact anti-fascists and LSD taking hippie dropouts.

Starting point is 00:57:20 and their agenda was very progressive and it's really weird to think now that they're owned by those massive corporations that play lip service to Trump. Do you think I think maybe, but well Disney, I think Disney's not quite been that. Not quite.

Starting point is 00:57:36 In fact, they got into a lot of shit with Ronda Santis because they had like a special day for gay people, I think. I don't know, I think. But either way, if the guys that wrote Marvel comics in the 70s were writing them now, Spider-Man would be in Queens fighting the ICE agents to protect the immigrant community.

Starting point is 00:57:54 And Captain America would have hung up his shield like he did when Nixon was in and gone undercover. You know, that's what would be happening if those people were writing them now. And they daren't do that. What would you say to, because I think Elon Musk would say, no, you're the elitist. You're attempting to piously preach to people instill in them these sort of regime values that don't reflect how people really want to live. You know, that populism is called populism because it reflects something about people, right?

Starting point is 00:58:28 I'm pushing back on you. What do you say to that? Like, actually, the sort of quote, quite liberal establishment's been guilty of kind of curating a slightly fake, centrist, woolly... You know... I'd say it's better than the alternative, you know. And also the idea... But that it doesn't reflect how people really are, right?

Starting point is 00:58:49 Right? The idea that there's a liberal establishment, it may have been true in some areas of society. But if we look at the whole of, say, Britain today, the majority of the press is owned by billionaires with offshore accounts who have a particular interest from maintaining a right-leaning status quo. Television stations, but why is GB News even on? If OffCon was doing its job, it wouldn't be on. and it wouldn't have Farage being allowed to present a program on it. And the social media, which is where the majority of people are getting their ideas from, is skewed to the right and owned by people like Elon Musk. So the idea that there's liberal values and liberal establishment are in massive retreat.

Starting point is 00:59:32 And if you take the states as the bellwether, as the canary and the mine, liberal arts establishments are being closed down. Universities are being hassled about what they can and can't teach with the threat of the withdrawal of funding. For them, freedom of speech is not being fact-checked. Now, a broadcaster has to be, you know, the BBC has to be fact-checked. When I do stuff on the BBC, which I don't very often, but all my jokes have to be fact-checked.

Starting point is 00:59:59 I have to tweak them a little bit, just to make sure that there's not a generalisation being made. I can make an exaggeration in the punchline, but the setup has to be factually accurate. None of that applies to Joe Rogan on Spotify. He's not fact-checked and say what he likes. It doesn't apply to anything on Twitter. It doesn't seem to apply to most American news out of them.

Starting point is 01:00:16 No one fact checks Trump about his claims to have ended 50 million wars or whatever. You know, it just goes on. So they need to get rid of facts. So the freedom of speech is about ideas. It's not the same as just being able to say things that aren't true, that are factually not true. There aren't alternative facts. There's alternative theories, but there aren't alternative facts.

Starting point is 01:00:37 So we're in trouble, you know. Did you think Trump didn't deserve that FIFA World Peace Award? I think Trump deserved a FIFA World Peace Award. I think that is the award that he deserves. Were you disappointed that Robbie Williams performed at the event? I'm disappointed in Robbie Williams generally, irrespective of the event. Robbie Williams was brought to see me at the Soho Theatre about 20 years ago by David Williams. What a night out, that must have been.

Starting point is 01:01:06 And he left about 20 minutes in. Which show was that, 90s comedian? Really early. It might have been, yeah, something like that. And then the Usher said, oh, you're leaving? And he went, yeah. He said, that bloke is so boring. should do the voiceover for relaxation tapes. Robbie said that. About you?

Starting point is 01:01:23 To an usher, yeah. How do you know that? Because the usher told me. Really? That's funny. Yeah, what a mad bloke. Elon's apparently a big fan of comedy. He says he is, but he doesn't understand it. He loves Monty Python. Well, he was explaining to Joe Rogan the other day

Starting point is 01:01:39 what comedy is, and comedy's purpose is to disrupt things, apparently. And actually, the gross. rock AI will explain to you why Elon Musk is a better comedian than Seinfeld. And it's because Musk's memes disrupt social norms, whereas Seinfeld is about commonly understood little truisms. And so I think Musk knows on some level that humor's just not in his genes. And you get with a lot of people on the far right. It seems to be just something they can't really do. It's not they're not playful in that way. So I think it becomes a sort of frustration to him that he just isn't that kind of person.

Starting point is 01:02:20 So he tries to talk a lot about how he is. He was explained to Joe Rogan the other day that he's invented an AI, which will do roasts, you know, with the American tradition of the roast. Yes. But this AI will, you will come into a room, and the AI will scan you and work out that you're bold or something. And then it will start doing insults to you.

Starting point is 01:02:39 And you can set it, Musk was explaining, to different levels of vulgarity. So he understands humor as a kind of system. and he thinks its purpose is to cause offence and to disrupt. And they all like this, the tech guys, aren't it's all about disruption and shaking us out of our complacency. So I don't think he really understands it. I think on some level he understands that he doesn't understand it.

Starting point is 01:03:01 And that frustrates him. So it's important for him to want to be seen as funny. Like calling the bloke that was trying to save those kids from the well, from the cave, a pedo. It's just pointless. That's just like their... Pedo guy. Pedo guy.

Starting point is 01:03:15 Yeah, it's just not something there. they're good at. And the problem is with Rogan operating as a kind of gatekeeper for comedy in the States now, the best people are being shut out and the worst people are being brought through by him. Mark Maron's very good on this, actually,

Starting point is 01:03:31 and he's probably made himself quite unpopular by systematically explaining what the problems are creatively of allowing Rogan to have become a kind of gatekeeper for American comedy. In the end, it will go into a death spiral. Would you find Theo Vaughn funny? Don't know him.

Starting point is 01:03:47 What about Shane Gillis? Don't know him. Really? No. I'm not on the internet. So a lot of things that are, if they've got a funny 15-second bit on TikTok, I don't even know how you get on that.

Starting point is 01:04:01 Jimmy Carr says the audience is a genius. I don't know what that means. Well, why he would say it. Did he say that or did someone write it for him? Who knows? Burn noted. Because I've heard you say before, Like if comedians use writers, do you regard that as a dereliction?

Starting point is 01:04:23 Well, look, I'm old enough to remember when alternative comedy started. I was a teenager, you know. And the idea was that the working men's club comics that we saw as stand-ups as kids had this common treasury of material, which they were able to put an individual stamp on due to their regional differences. And George Roper, for example, always mentioned Wellington's in his jokes. So he'd do the same joke as Bernard Manning, but the main character would be in Wellington's.

Starting point is 01:04:51 So they all had their own little... But the great thing about alternative comedy was people were the authors of their own material. And so I suppose why I was able to think I would want to do that is because they were like otters, like writers as well as... And I saw myself much more as a writer than a performer. In fact, I tried to minimise the idea of performance for the first 20 years of doing it.

Starting point is 01:05:14 I tried to not perform, really. So that was a really important part of it So a little part of me is always disappointed When I know people use writers Sometimes you can sort of tell Because I think at one point Frankie Boyle was using so many different writers That he didn't have a consistent tone of voice

Starting point is 01:05:32 You know he would do some stuff that was what we would call Woke or progressive and other stuff that was reactionary And it didn't always all fit together You know So I do think it is an important thing That people are writers but I'm aware that I'm from a different age. I'm from a different age that doesn't exist anymore.

Starting point is 01:05:50 I think that's partly why people like to come and see me. It's a bit like seeing some dying blues guy. All of us of my age, we saw Sean Hughes in 1990 be the first kind of British or Irish comedian to put together an hour-long show that had a through line. May you rest in peace. Yeah, and that was very inspiring. Then Kitson came along writing these things that were like one-man plays

Starting point is 01:06:14 but were still punching in your face like stand up and could. And so we all aspired to make shows that were a finished piece. You know, and that's what I, every show of mine is a finished piece. And it's quite difficult often to take bits out of it and do anything else with them. Whereas now people trying to generate little bits. And then when you see their shows, there are a load of little bits stuck together. They don't often, and in fact, some of the theatre managers have been saying this to me, on this tour.

Starting point is 01:06:44 They go, that was really refreshing to see a finished work because we get these people coming in and it's just lots of bits. There's lots of bits for 50 minutes and then it stops. But that is from the past. It's not going to be the way

Starting point is 01:06:57 that people write comedy in the future is a kind of little blip because people are generating those little bits. People see them in little bits. So I think the idea of the comedian as an otter as the author of their own thing it's probably not as important to people as it used to be. But it was important to me, and it made me feel...

Starting point is 01:07:18 One thing I share with the character of Stuart Lee is I'm a kind of intellectual snob, and I think I wanted to feel that I was working in a valid art form. That's why I ended up going to the southwest of America, to the deserts and trying to see the Native American clowns in Taos or the Hopi Reservation, because I wanted to see comedy that had a purpose and a function and was on some level sacred.

Starting point is 01:07:48 I think it was important to me to feel that I was in some kind of tradition that was worthwhile as I'd become so disillusioned. So that's why the being a writer part of it was important to me, I think. But whatever other people want to do, it's up to them really. I'm not the police. How's your health? A lot better than it was. I've been on high blood pressure medication for about 10 years.

Starting point is 01:08:15 What's that all about? I don't know. Bad diet in the 90s. Bad diet in the 90s. I never sleep before 4 in the morning because I've spent so much time on stage that my adrenaline levels are all wrong. I've lost about three stone in the last couple of years.

Starting point is 01:08:27 Looking good. Well, a lot of it is from doing your werewolf every night because I run around in that costume for an hour. I watch your Robert Lloyd documentary and like a garden gnome. It was me at my absolute worst of health-wise and also... It's not a bad look, by the way. Yeah, yeah. You could be in Middle Earth.

Starting point is 01:08:45 That film was at the Margate Film Festival on Friday and I watched it again. I thought, wow, yeah. A documentary about an obscure... Birmingham punk band. Birmingham punk band leader called Robert Lloyd. He was sort of a less successful, Markey Smith. That's exactly what he was, yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:01 Yeah. But, yeah, he watched that again, and I realised what a low ebb I was at at the point of doing that. I mean, look, another thing that I did, and I'll say this, because, you know, over the sort of 15 years that I was doing comedy vehicle, I mean, I wrote, I wrote about 20 hours of stand-up,

Starting point is 01:09:25 of a high quality, I can see when I watch those shows how tired I am, you know. And I think my life, relationships and health really suffered, during that period of producing all that work while the opportunity was there and being on the road all the time, I'm really proud of it. And no one will probably ever do anything like that ever again.

Starting point is 01:09:49 I don't think the opportunities will exist to develop that kind of work in that way for younger people. Also, they won't have the start in life where you could spend 10 years living in cheap housing and doing temp jobs while you worked out what you were trying to do. That's all, that window has collapsed. Well, they won't do it on my player, They'll do it on YouTube, won't they?

Starting point is 01:10:09 Yeah, but it'll be different. There's something about working things out in rooms. They're not sterile. They're organic. Where Jimmy is right to say the audience are a genius is my audience are my double-act partner. A good audience can intuit where a routine's going. So you don't have to finish it

Starting point is 01:10:29 or you can strip detail out of it and allow them to imagine the detail. And you can see them laughing as they guess what you're describing. or where something's going. My audience have an oppositional relationship with me where they love me because they come to seem but they sort of hate me as one thing. I'm a ridiculous character.

Starting point is 01:10:47 They enjoy my failures and I like to set them up to enjoy them. They control the timing of things. I allow space for them to discover things for themselves and their responses are an important part of moving me on to the next bit. and in fact some routines if you don't get the response you need at the point where you get it

Starting point is 01:11:12 you're a bit fucked with Jimmy it wouldn't really matter if the audience were there or not because it's like a machine he could actually he could film a show in a theatre with no one there and dove it in... That's not quite fair

Starting point is 01:11:26 because he does do crowd work yeah but okay without the crowd work you could kind of do it look a famous comedian was recording a video at the Hammersmith Apollo and there was a transport strike but most of the audience couldn't get there

Starting point is 01:11:41 so they filmed it with no people and I'm not telling you who that was and then they cut the audience responses in from a different show a different night probably and it made no difference I feel like you're riding high at the moment though what kind of spaces are you filling

Starting point is 01:12:03 well I've got hearing aids as you can see And so I could do bigger rooms. The biggest rooms I do are with 3,500-seater, Edinburgh Theatre, the same size in Glasgow. And I do those two or three times each on this tour. 3,500? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:12:24 But I also do 500-seaters. I basically will do between 200,000 and a quarter of a million people on each tour. But I will do it in manageable amounts, which is why I end up being on the road for so long. You wouldn't really want to do the O2, like one of these 12,000 seats? Well, one of my ideas is to do a stadium tour and to double down on all the things that are bad about it. For example, in the early days of spoken word in those kind of venues,

Starting point is 01:12:53 before Sam was digital, you know, it would sometimes take longer to get to the speakers in different parts of the room, so things were out of sync. So I'm wondering about exaggerating that so that different parts of the room are getting the speech later, significantly later. Oh my God, that sounds like a disaster. And then, you know, they have, they filmed them, don't they? The comedians and project them.

Starting point is 01:13:13 So I'd like to have on stage a little, like, grasshopper or something with a mic stand in a glass tank, and you film that and project that, and I do with a voice or something, like to make it. And you wouldn't see you at all? Well, you might do later, or me to be on stage, but in a motion capture suit, what like Gollum has in Lord of the Rings, the actor. So that on the screen is a younger version of me.

Starting point is 01:13:40 That's interesting. And also to have... Or it could be Jimmy Carr. Or it could be Jimmy Carr, yeah. And also, in stadium gigs, arena gigs, people are always wandering in and out on me. They never can concentrate. They go to the bar, they do piss all the time.

Starting point is 01:13:55 To have loads of people just on the move all the time through it. And then to have people selling things. Because another awful thing about, those kind of shows is those kind of acts often have insanely overpriced merchandise and to rip off the working classes that go to those kind of venues, to have really aggressive selling of absolutely

Starting point is 01:14:12 shit things in the aisles all the way through it. So to sort of to take the arena gig and amplify all of its worst aspects and have a horrible night, I think it could be really funny. It sounds like an art piece. Yeah. Well, what's wrong

Starting point is 01:14:28 with that? Yeah. Yeah. Down the line I might do that. What? He's stern face you made at me. No, no. I feel like I've taken a lot of your time. It's all right. I've got loads.

Starting point is 01:14:37 What am I doing today? Nothing. Are you all right? Yeah. I've got a cycle to Bethnal Green. I've never seen Daniel Kitson. Does he still perform? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:46 You've said he's the best stand-up you've ever seen. Yeah, but Kitson really is. Is he still performing? Yes, he is, and he turns over a variety of different types of work. And what's interesting about him? Never does TV? No. He doesn't even like being filmed particularly for anything.

Starting point is 01:15:00 Or documented in any way. which I understand. But he sort of, he did a show in Edinburgh a couple of years ago where everyone that came in was given a script and a number. And he was in a dialogue with the entire audience and everyone had their line.

Starting point is 01:15:20 It was just, it was so fantastic. It was like an act of magic. You know, at the end, everyone was breathless to have been. through this thing. Incredible. See, here you are. You're saying that I, you know, that I don't, that I slag off comedians.

Starting point is 01:15:40 I've at least three times during talking to you I've been almost moved to tears by memory of the brilliance of a thing. So, I mean, it's just a... That one really affected you. Oh, God, yeah. It's such just superb. And the silly sod, you know, he just does it 40 times himself,

Starting point is 01:15:55 doesn't film it, and you never hear of it again. It's a kind of thing, if you gave it, you could give it to Keanu Reeves and he would do it on Broadway. for 10 years and everyone would think he was a, you know, you could give someone that idea, that script and they could do it. Slightly random pot shot at Keanu Reeves. I like Keanu Reeves, I was just saying.

Starting point is 01:16:13 I just thought of him. Hard to imagine him doing a kitchen routine for 10 years on Broadway. I know, yeah, he wouldn't do that. Six months then. Alan Bennett said of you, do you know this one? Yeah. He's fearless. He's fearless.

Starting point is 01:16:29 He's fearless. Undeterred by an audience's failure to respond. Even welcoming, I'm jumping off the impression, even welcoming it so that you can analyse it, tracking down the missing laugh until the audience laughs at itself. It's austere stuff. Yeah, I love the fact that he totally got it, Alan Bennett. And he's the best person that's ever written about me. He's the J.L. This is the continued, last bit of the quote, he's the J.L. Austin of what is now a rather sloppy profession. Yeah. Well, it's great. I had to look up J.L. Austin. Yeah. Do you know who that is? Yeah, I did. In fact, I did a routine.

Starting point is 01:17:02 about exactly that about J.L. Austin and the other linguistic philosophers. He's a linguistic philosopher. Yeah. I looked him out. I couldn't really understand what he was on about. Alan Bennett is, you know, I've been really, really lucky with some of the people that I've met. I'm so glad that I met him and that he liked the work. I'd like to just reflect on the strangeness of the compliment that Alan Bennett gave you, though. It's austere stuff for comedy.

Starting point is 01:17:31 or steer seems a strange well adjective. I mean I get it. I think he means it's theoretically rigorous. Yeah. Right. You know, I occupy a position and I hold onto it and I don't compromise that position

Starting point is 01:17:45 just to get laughs. You know, it's... It's not weird that just to get laughs as though that would be beneath the dignity of a comedian to go for laughs. Well, it's easy to get laughs. Is it? Yeah, once you work it out,

Starting point is 01:17:58 it's just little tricks, little linguistic tricks and attitudes and moves. Sometimes you can't get laughs. You do jokes, but you sort of do them either grudgingly or you do them in order to notice that you're doing them and that they're beneath you. I kind of know how to get laughs now after all this time. I didn't want to start it out.

Starting point is 01:18:17 The trick is every show I like to put something in that people wouldn't normally have seen. Stand up can be a great Trojan horse for smuggling in things from art that a normal person wouldn't want to see or wouldn't think they'd want to see. Like in the Snowflake Tornado show, I basically did 10 minutes of free jazz vocal improvisation

Starting point is 01:18:41 as an impression of Ricky Javez saying the unsayable. So I exposed people to kind of avant-garde technique, but under the cover of it being an impression of someone. And if they said, well, I like the show except that bit was a bit boring. Yeah, they might say that, yeah. And then what would you think about that? Well, for every person that says that, there's someone that would say it's the funniest thing they'd ever seen. That's the thing about the extreme stuff.

Starting point is 01:19:04 It's either the people's favorite bit or they hate it. But I think they kind of come along, expecting there to be a bit they can't stand. And then some of the bits they can't stand suddenly five minutes in, they find it the funniest thing. We've all had that, and you hate something, and then it clicks for you and you think it's great. And I think that's where I've ended up and working in a populist genre. that has rules. And it's supposed to be people's night out. It's supposed to be the fun thing they do.

Starting point is 01:19:37 But it's flexible enough that you can do high art in it. You can do politics and you can do all sorts of things in it. And they don't always notice that they've had that happen to them. And I think that I've not really begun to get where I can get with it. And I think it gets funnier as you get older. because it's unexpected that a person in their 60s or 70s would still be pushing forwards like that. He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

Starting point is 01:20:09 Yeah, Rob Dylan. Quoth Dylan. You reference in basically the possibility of a diagnosis being on the autistic spectrum. Yeah, I mean I kind of regret having mentioned that because it was the doctor... It's a good bit though. Yeah, well, the doctor said it.

Starting point is 01:20:25 he did the spot test, you know, where they do 40 questions. And then he said, you can either go on an NHS waiting list or get it done yourself. And I thought, well, I don't really need to. It doesn't make any difference. It's too late. It's been quite interesting reading about it. But why I regret having said it is it looks like you're trying to jump on that ship. You know, it's a kind of thing now, isn't it?

Starting point is 01:20:48 And I don't really want to get caught up in it. But I was on a helpline to Microsoft the other day. And the man actually suggested, he said, after an hour, he said to me, we do have a special help line for people who with disabilities or who are perhaps neurodiverse, if you would like to call that. That, to me, that's a better diagnosis than the NHS. He was clearly been trained at how to broach this subject very diplomatically. It really made me laugh.

Starting point is 01:21:20 I told my son he was laughing his head off. So you haven't found the idea of you being on the special. spectrum especially helpful. I found it helpful. You have. I found it helpful to understand how I've annoyed lots of people without intending to. Do you feel like you have annoyed a lot of people? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:21:41 In retrospect. Yeah. And also why it's difficult for people to live with me because I have systems, you know. What kind of systems? Well, systems for organising things. that are my sister's around at the weekend and one of them's boyfriend

Starting point is 01:21:59 started talking about the highest pub in Britain in England I went oh that's on the front of the third album by Backdoor the early 70s British Jazz rock band and I went and got it and there's thousands of records in my room and my sister said

Starting point is 01:22:14 how did you find that in five settings I said British Jazz it's in the British Jazz section under B you know I know where I have systems and um That's almost like a cliche of kind of garage man, isn't it? Yeah, but also...

Starting point is 01:22:29 And immediately my man was what, so you alphabetize your CDs, but I wondered if it went further than... Well, it's also this, right? Which is... Michael McIntyre is very good at what he does. And his act, and the act of a lot of comedians, is we all do this, don't we? We do this, I do this, you do this, we all do this thing. And everyone goes, yeah, I do that. Yeah, his famous bit was the messy drawer, wasn't it?

Starting point is 01:22:53 The man drawer. My act is, I do this and you don't. Why are you all like that? You're all wrong. I understand this. Why don't you understand it? Why don't you understand it? That's what it's like. People like that think they don't understand why the world isn't moral. They don't understand why it's not logical. They don't understand why it doesn't make sense. They don't understand people's feelings. Who are you talking about now? Stuart Lee, the character. Yeah. Yeah. And people that are told that they've got these conditions. And it's hard for them. Greta Toonberg. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:23:29 But that's why when she sees Trump, she doesn't see the President of the United States, she sees a man who doesn't understand climate change and is lying. They just call it out. But what about you? Make it about you. Well, I think that if I were to follow this up with a diagnosis properly, it kind of doesn't matter, really, because just reading about those ways of looking at the world, I recognise it, and I think it's actually given me an angle in stand-up.

Starting point is 01:24:02 It's given me a lot of problems in life, but that's probably why I might be on stage most of all, because when I'm on stage, I don't have to be on the phone to Microsoft or talk to people. Yeah, negotiate intimate human relationships. Yeah, or anything. There's a great Australian songwriter Dave Graney. He's got a song,

Starting point is 01:24:28 rock and roll is where I hide. I completely get that, you know. Again, I've talked to you. I've said, oh, I do all these smaller venues because it's about size. Maybe I just like having to work more. I think so. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:41 You're up there hiding. Yeah. Isn't that wild? I think we're good, you know. We've been going along. But, you know, I do want to say one thing, though, which is striking, and you've said this. I wish I'd seen the show, but I will see it.

Starting point is 01:24:53 I guarantee it. There's two weeks at Ali Pally in the theatre at Alexandra Palace in London in February. The weekends have gone a lot, but the weekdays are still there if anyone wants to go. And it'll be great in there because it's an old gothic-y-looking building and it'll really suit the horror aspect of the show. But you've said that actually the funniest part is probably the bit where you do the reactionary Netflix comedy stuff as a werewolf. Well, this was a quote from your interview with Christian Guru Murphy.

Starting point is 01:25:19 Oh, yeah. It's such a surprise that the nasty reactionary Netflix bit is kind of the best bit of the topical stuff. Something is clearly attractive about callousness and cruelty. Yeah. At this point in history, although I think you could take out at this point in history, in general, right? Yeah. The bullies at my school were the funniest people. If we're to believe that nearly 30 people that have described Farage's behaviour at school,

Starting point is 01:25:46 he's occupying two positions simultaneously. First of all he says he doesn't remember it and he denies it happens And then he says it was just banter I don't think there is such a thing as harmless banter Certainly not outside the codifying effects of a theatre space Or of a close group of friends Can sometimes be callous to each other In a way that's enormously liberating actually

Starting point is 01:26:15 And bonding And some comedians can create that atmosphere in a room where the audience feel like they're in on it. Saddivitz can do that. Jerry Saddoz, the Scottish comedian. Not always. And in fact, it's more difficult for him now

Starting point is 01:26:30 because things get decontextualized. He's never filmed. He never has allowed himself to be filmed. And he, in fact, there was an allegation that some of the workers at Edinburgh venue found his material offensive and he was cancelled for him. Yeah, well, I think what happened there.

Starting point is 01:26:48 difficult because I don't really like to talk about shows that I didn't see you know but Sadov it started in the 80s when there was a liberal orthodoxy and he took a position against it for comic effect he took position against everything for comic effect and his famous line was to go out and open with Nelson Mandela what a cunt you lend some people at Fiver and you never see them again but what's different now which is a challenging his other one because he was half Jewish, half Scottish, wasn't he? He says, my Scottish half buys drinks that my Jewish half won't pay for them.

Starting point is 01:27:25 Yeah, he's allowed, isn't he? But I think the difference is now that if he's doing racist material about hating immigrants, he's doing it against a backdrop where that's a mainstream political position now. You know, so it's sort of that material he was doing about Islam, which I didn't see, would probably have read differently to young Muslim men who perhaps come from a, you know, were new into the country and weren't aware of the history of Sadovitz's position as opposed to, in opposition to an 80s liberal consensus, you know. So it's a difficult thing. I've never seen him, but he's got in pictures strange insectile, almost homeless presentation. Yeah, and a perpetually bleeding scab on his nose. For real?

Starting point is 01:28:13 Led since I've known him in the 80s. I used to be his support act, and I was a very... fascinating time then he stopped speaking to me for some reason I don't really know why he wouldn't speak to me if we were in the same venue and he also asked me to stop going to see him

Starting point is 01:28:30 because he said that it's not you he said it's me I'm paranoid if you do something that's similar to something I've done I'll think you've copied it and I'll hate you but if you haven't been in the show then I'll know you haven't copied it I thought fair enough I bought a ticket for him once I was in the queue he walked past he

Starting point is 01:28:48 said, have you got, are you coming in to see this? I said, yeah, I bought a ticket. He said, oh, I don't want you to come in. I went, well, I won't then. And he went, you've bought a ticket, though, and it's all right, it doesn't matter. I'll go. And then the last time I saw him. That's quite, it must have been quite emotional.

Starting point is 01:29:03 Yeah, I hope he's all right. The last time I saw him, my son was about 12, 13, he was going to a party in Finchley. And I said, oh, I used to come here a lot because Sadavits used to live with his mother in a council flat here. But I haven't seen him for, 10 years, he's coming up the escalator. Stop it.

Starting point is 01:29:23 Like you say his name. Wow. Coming up the ice go, I went, when that's him there? Luke goes, that's a guy. I was just talking about. I was coming up the escalator, he was going down it, talking about amazing. Why does it say ear on your hand?

Starting point is 01:29:37 Because this morning, why does it say ear on your hand? Because I had to remember to go to the hearing specialist this morning. Ear on one and ears on the other. Why on both? It gives me twice the chance of being reminded. And you had to do what? Go to a hearing specialist at 9 o'clock this morning. Did you? To get them what, rinsed out?

Starting point is 01:29:57 Well, and to have my hearing aids checked up on because I've got these ones that are calibrated to how bad your hearing's got. It's got worse, then they changed them. What's behind that? I thought it was, I was assumed it would have been noise damage due to having lived a reckless life. But when I finally,

Starting point is 01:30:18 went to the NHS about it, the curve showed that it was just progressive deterioration and there were no spikes of damage. And in fact, the first time I ever met my father, with anyone that's ever heard into, would have heard this. The first thing I noticed about him was that he had hearing aids. Your birth father?

Starting point is 01:30:36 Yeah, yeah. And the first thing I said to him was, oh, look, you've got hearing aids. And the first thing he said to me was, yes, everyone in your family goes deaf and you will as well. Really? So there you are. That was the great,

Starting point is 01:30:48 that I had. All I inherited from him was deafness. I was not hearing as much as I wanted in the rooms. I never thought anything of it, but it always seemed to me that people on the far left were particularly bad at laughing. And actually that's just where there's a problem in the, that side for that.

Starting point is 01:31:07 Cochlear. Yeah. Isn't that funny? So everything, that's a good thing about stand-up, is everyone's problems should be able to become an advantage. You know, everything that's difficult for you, you should be able to weaponise it in some way.

Starting point is 01:31:23 Thanks for coming by, Stu. I think we cover a lot of ground. I mean, I could keep going, but Millie's got to edit this thing and it probably... How are you feeling about it being on Spotify? Fine, no. You're sure? Done it now.

Starting point is 01:31:48 So, what a great chat. I have to say that. But it was. And yes, I went and saw Stuart's show. It was an odd one because I got the day wrong. So I'd been comped for like a Friday and then for whatever there was, I got the wrong, not for the first time, the wrong date and I turned up on a Wednesday, had trouble finding the right door and my name wasn't on the door and then I just sort of, they look, it was like,

Starting point is 01:32:16 there's a very confused elderly Louis Theroux at the door. We better just find him a seat anyway. And what it really was, I totally recommend it. If you're a 55 year old, you're a real relevant, cringe, old man, then you are, you know, who sort of still feels like a bit of a holdover from his student, you know, sort of WOMAD era, granola munching. Why can't we all just get along? Actually, that isn't fully me, but I have part of that in me. And I really loved his willingness to do what, tell funny jokes and entertain the audience. Since taping, I've released my own related piece of work called Louis Theroux inside the

Starting point is 01:33:04 Manosphere, exploring the same thing of what is our responsibility to entertain versus the urge to, I guess, uplift or provide insight to cultivate our good side as well as recognize the darker sides of our personalities. That's on Netflix. Yes, I'm plugging myself. That sounds a bit obscene. There are still tickets available across the UK for Stuart's show throughout the rest of 2026 and check out his website for more info.

Starting point is 01:33:38 Legal note, we spoke about the allegations that Reform Leader Nigel Farage made racist comments to his peers while attending Dulwich College during the late 70s, early 80s. Farage has denied the allegations made against him, but in a BBC documentary with Farage from last month, he said, quote, if teenage boys together in an all-year-boys together in an all-year-old. boys' school haven't been brutal in some ways in the late 1970s, I'd be very, very surprised. No, no, no, no, no. That was me at the end. One of his contemporaries called it a non-pology. No, no, no, that's all I've got on Farage. That's it for this week. Oh, apart from the credits. The producer was Millie Chu, the assistant producer was Hugh Sheehan, the production manager was

Starting point is 01:34:24 Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel Di Olivera. The executive executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse Studios production for Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Oh well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business because Shopify is making it easier than ever.

Starting point is 01:35:16 It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales. The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial. and start selling today at Shopify.com slash Louis, L-O-U-I-S. That's Shopify.com slash Louis, L-O-U-I-S.

The Louis Theroux Podcast - S7 EP4: Stewart Lee on "Netflix comedians”, disastrous gigs, and Elon Musk

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