WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1194 - Andy Zaltzman

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

When Marc first met Andy Zaltzman, Andy was in his element at the Edinburgh Fringe. They talk about why the festival circuit was important for Andy and other comics working their way up in the UK. They also talk about Andy's podcast The Bugle, which he started with John Oliver, his new career paths as a cricket statistician and a quiz show host, and the strange confluence of Covid and Brexit. Plus Marc and Andy consider what the world will be like when they can return to standup. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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so choked up about it but i do anyways the ceremony the pomp and circumstance, the orderly transition of power in the middle of 30,000 National Guardsmen. But look, it's done. New management is here. The conspiracy theories were wrong. Not only wrong, but it seems like some of the creators of some of the bigger conspiracies were basically like, nah, we were just pretty funny right we used your gullibility to break the world you get it right hilarious right the internet's amazing it's awesome all right good luck it's still going to fascinate me for the rest of time how so many people just couldn't wrap their brain around how one of the biggest assholes that's ever lived publicly or privately was unpopular enough to lose the presidential election that a majority of people wanted new management wanted stability wanted the government to function again wanted to be able to look at their neighbors again, to feel like they could believe in people again.

I'll tell you, one of the dark gifts of this last four years is we know who we all are. I know who I am. I know who my neighbors are. I know who my parents are and friends of the family. We know who everybody, everything's on the table. who my parents are and friends of the family. We know who everybody, everything's on the table. All the garbage is floated to the top and some of the cream. But what a celebration it was yesterday in terms of embracing diversity, embracing people of all types and just bringing back some sort of stability, man. It's really stability and the belief that something will be taken care of in a reasonable way, in a righteous way, in a respectful way.

And that the person at the helm is a guy who understands how to do the job, how to do the work, how it works. And he's a humble dude, that Biden. I'll tell you that that speech was one of the best inaugural speeches I've heard. And I felt like he held the weight of the world on his shoulders in a respectable and decent way. He's a guy with some real humility, some real wisdom. He's got age on his side, but he's a humble guy with a deep heart and understands grief. And this fucking country is soaking in it, soaking in fucking grief. He happens to be the right guy for the job at this time. Kamala was great. Everybody was great. I even got nostalgic

and in an angry way, seeing like W waddle down those stairs, that recognizable waddle. It's interesting how well you get to know the people that you have the most resentment towards, especially public figures. When you're given the opportunity to hate somebody deeply every day, you really understand them. They really make a fucking scar in your brain. They're really up there forever. So are the people you love but it's interesting the type of energy that is sort of uh re-grooved and uh relit when you see somebody you haven't seen in a while who you resent deeply maybe even righteously

but i i i thought the inauguration went great. I really do. The peaceful transition of power behind a wall of tens of thousands of National Guardsmen. Before I get too far into whatever I'm going to be doing, my guest today is Andy Zaltzman. I first met him in the UK back in 2007. He's a comedian. He just started up the podcast, A Bugle with John Oliver, which he still hosts, along with the News Quiz on BBC Radio 4. He was a good guy. I was out of my mind with sadness and fucking chaos because I'd been left by my second wife and I went to Scotland. Not a great time. But that's coming up. but that's coming up. Man, so it's relieving that we're not going to be kind of brutalized and terrorized on a daily basis

by a autocratic pig of a person, by a mean sociopathic leader, that we're not going to have to deal with that every morning waking up. Look, people love that guy. Assholes, a lot of them, or just people who are so rich they don't give a fuck about people. But the truth of the matter is he was an abusive piece of shit. And he was throwing that shit at us every day and those of us who who felt that deeply and those of us who he terrorized daily feel relieved because a majority

of people are us a big majority of people are the people that saw that guy for the asshole that he was all the way through and could not understand or believe why he was president and then had to deal with that fear every day from day fucking one. Just being abused and terrorized by a guy who enjoyed it. He enjoyed being hated by people. He enjoyed any kind of attention he got but he loved fucking making people hate him and making the people that didn't like him angry and scared he created a tome for this country that was just horrible the neediness of that evil fuck that we had to deal with for four years was debilitating, draining, dangerous, deadly. The lack of responsibility, debilitating,

draining, deadly. And now that's over. We get a little relief. Look, man, I'm not saying that everything's okay or that the monsters are going to go away or that even things are resolved. Got big fucking problems. All I know is that one plague down. Now we got to get rid of this other plague. So now we move on and it's no less scary. I want to get vaccinated. I want to get through this.

I want people to bounce back. I'm not optimistic. I'm not even that hopeful necessarily i'm just relieved and i feel a little a little safer on a country level in terms of the possibility for stability and that we're all not just reacting to or becoming symbiotic with a malignant narcissistic autocrat who was able through charisma and propaganda and repetition to really brain fuck a lot of people into following him but also into being terrified on a day to day basis of him and what he represented. So now with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, president and vice president, maybe maybe we can stabilize this fucking undertaking. Get everybody vaccinated and try to rebuild a little bit.

I just. i don't know i'm relieved today i really am so andy zaltzman he's in the uk or he was a couple weeks ago. This happened before the inauguration. As I said earlier, I met him back in 2007. He's got the podcast, The Bugle, and he's also on the News Quiz on BBC Radio 4. And this is a nice conversation I had with Andy Zaltzman. It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats.

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Well, we did stuff together in Edinburgh that... Right, it was a terrible time. 2006, was it? It was a long time ago. Pre-podcasts. It was a terrible time for me, as I recall. Yeah, it's not entirely my fault. No, it had nothing to do with you. You were very nice. You gave me a spot on your

show. You were pleasant. But it was my first time at the festival, and I vowed never to go back there again. And I haven't. You've kept that vow. There's very few vows in this world that people keep these days, Mark. So I'm having the courage to stick with that. I just didn't understand the whole system. It's a system that you guys live with over there and that you guys understand. For me, it was just embarrassing and horrendous. And it was desperate and sad. And I'd just gotten separated from my wife and I was heartbroken and I was on a double bill and I didn't realize that was a shitty idea.

a shitty idea well yeah i mean there's a certain sort of factors involved and probably you know immediately post breakup is not the ideal time to do it at edinburgh festival people make award-winning shows out of breakups these days it's something i've never quite managed to to uh to uh create in my personal life but are you still married i'm still married yeah yeah which has really held back my creative side in a massive amount, sadly. So the breakup show can still happen. There's always time. Sometimes, yeah. Maybe wait until the kids are left home, you know, just for the—

There you go. Then it's got an extra added edge. It's like, I can't believe I put up with it this long. But the whole Edinburgh process, I i mean you go back there every year right um most years obviously uh 2020 was not a great year for edinburgh uh for obvious for everybody yeah it was so you're one of my most profitable edinburgh's financially i think um but the year you didn't go i was actually able to make money at home. But yes,

I went for the first time doing new act competitions in 1999. I did a four handed show in 2000 that was, well, it was pretty catastrophic. And, you know, I learned a lot about, well,

about the, you know, the art of negotiating silence and hostility, which is a key part of stand-up. And then I did my first solo show the following year in 2001. But the other part of it you learn in Edinburgh is that, yeah, the silence and hostility, but no one being there. I mean, the silence, it's not because your jokes aren't going well it's because you had to drag two people in off the street who don't know where they're going to sit there and validate your fucking job choice well it could be both of those things mark it could be two people not laughing so you know you can combine them but the very the first year i did a solo show that ended up going reasonably well within

the context of a show that averaged about 14 people the very first night i had one ticket sale and um it later turned out that the person who bought the ticket was another comedian who i'd done a gig with a few months before so being a good guy isn't helping you out so uh it was uh onwards and very very slowly upwards but but that but the whole process of it there like i i have some questions about britain in general because i always assume that you guys have it uh all together and you're you're ultimately a better culture than us and that uh somehow you you think you're all smarter than we are. But I don't know if that's true or not. But I do. The system there is that ultimately you have to build an audience

at these festivals to make your yearly money, correct? I mean, there's not a huge touring business there, is there? I think that's changed over over the years now and um it was a sort of stand-up boom i guess early to midway through the first decade of this uh this millennium which isn't going great as millenniums go um but no it might be the last one we're not going to make it very far into this one i don't think we're gonna yeah um that's a nice optimistic uh note to kick off with but um i think it did change a bit um so i started out like i said around about sort of 99 2000 and then there would sort of there was a tv boom in stand-up and uh that's a tv boom that i managed

to successfully avoid but it did make sort of good for you good individual solo touring more viable um yeah so so you know a lot of comedians will sort of go around there's not you know not necessarily the the most glamorous it's not it's not all stadium tours no i know i know what the one-nighter thing is but i just i just all it always seemed to me that the the slog of the festivals is you keep going back until somehow or another, you know, the plan is to build enough of an audience that, you know, when you go back there, you're one of the big tickets and you can walk away with, you know,

thousands of dollars. You know, that's the big reward of slogging through that thing every year and going through the embarrassment and the struggle of a month in that tourist town. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, there are positive sides to Edinburgh. And I've always loved doing it for the, you know, just the creative side of it. And I've never been particularly good at the career side of things.

But, you know, it can, you know, it can clearly help you evolve in terms of your sales. But I think creatively, and certainly for the comedians of my generation, it was where we went to sort of learn the art and the craft of stand-up because you could go around the circuit doing your 5-minute, 10-minute, 20-minute spots in some not always particularly helpful environments. But in Edinburgh, you could have your own hour. And I think that's where you sort of work out what you want to be as a comedian. Oh, that's interesting.

So in lieu of headlining, per se, on the road, that you go there for a month and you do the hour. Yes, yeah. So the first year I did it 2001 i was you know struggling to get much paid work on the circuit and you know what was your particular struggle andy why didn't people want the the saltzman well i've made but back to that that silence that we talked about before it was i was i think as a circuit comedian mark i was uh i was hit and miss uh you know i it was an inconsistency to my game uh and i struck out a lot in baseball parlance i got the odd home

run but probably you know the the stats weren't maybe good enough for a you know you want a reliable hitter in those kind of gigs i'm still inconsistent and i pride myself on that i yeah i tried it i've i've i've spun that into a positive it's like that's what makes me an artist is my inconsistency uh yes i guess that's a good way of looking at it but i think i learned fairly early on that you know it probably wasn't going to be my long-term career doing club stan it wasn't something i was particularly good at and that you know the the feeling was entirely mutual between me and the club circuit who uh didn't give me many bookings so going to edinburgh then you have this sort of blank canvas and uh you can be yeah you can sort of set it up how you want you're not following a different comedian who might be a lot better than you or

a lot different to you and it was it's certainly where yeah where i i guess found out the type of comedy that i wanted to do also there's uh the the the idea that it's a it's a theater piece now it's not it's not managing a bunch of drunks at 11 30 at night it's it's a we're all going to sit here for an hour and this thing is going to come together somehow perhaps may not be funny but it'll be thoughtful and i bought myself a little time yes i mean ideally it'll be both funny and and thoughtful but um yeah and i think uh that's yeah it was it was creatively you know inspiring in a lot of ways and you're going to see your peers and see what seeing how they would do were doing you know expanding in the same way who were the guys when you were coming up?

Because, like, I don't know a lot. Like, who is your generation of British comics? I know you worked with John Oliver forever, and, you know, you guys are pals. And I love John a lot, and he's, you know, he's kept me sane lately. Do you guys talk often? Does he keep you sane? Well, we don't talk as often as we used to. We used to talk every week and record it and put it out as a podcast.

But since John stopped doing that, which is four or five years ago now, I see him whenever I go to New York, which, again, the current global situation isn't looking like it's going to be very soon again. And, yeah, we sort of chat every now and then. It isn't looking like it's going to be very soon again. And, yeah, we sort of chat every now and then. He did the Bugle for the first time since he left the show just before Christmas. So that was, yeah, we got the old band back together for one show. How was that?

It was fun, right? It was great, actually. It was, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And it was, yeah, we sort of met doing the live stand-up circuit. And he did little sketches in my first Edinburgh show. I did some stuff in his first Edinburgh show the following year, 2002. We toured on the student union circuit, which is, again, sort of part of my generation of British comedians.

It was quite a thriving student union circuit where you could go and experiment, and it didn't matter so much. But that was better than clubs, right? It was better than clubs uh partly because generally you know you were booked in to do a whole tour so it wasn't like you had to succeed at every gig to get called back so uh so we uh we got to know each other pretty well then we did some radio series together then when john got the daily show job and left me doing an edinburgh show alone instead of a two-hander in front of about 25 people a night. So he went to the biggest comedy show in the world.

How'd that go for you? How did you take that? Well, I'll be honest. It was a bit tricky at the time. He got offered the Daily Show job just before. It was about a month before Edinburgh started. And so it was an exaggeration to say I had to rewrite the show because we hadn't entirely got around to starting writing it

at that point. That must have been a horrible, horrible conversation. Well, not really because, you know, it was clearly a pretty big opportunity. No, yeah, I know, but still, you had to suck it up. I guess so. And we'd also had two BBC radio

series cancelled around about the same time. And I found out my wife was pregnant. So it was a month of considerable upheaval for me. Did you do a show about having a baby? No, I did a routine. My second child I delivered in the bathroom. You did? I did, yes. On purpose?

uh you did i did yes that was on purpose no definitely not on purpose um i think it might have been an early prank by my zero minute old son uh but it no it's uh it just uh things happened a little too fast and i ended up um oh my god a brief but very statistically successful midwifery career did did you know what you were doing uh absolutely not i mean i've managed to avoid picking up practical skills uh throughout my life but that that was i i don't think everyone has that practical skill it's not something you you you plan for it's not in the book of it's like home repair it's a midwifery it's one of those you've either got it or you haven't um but uh yeah it was uh terrified but fortunately it was a fairly straightforward but i was on a phone call to the uh um emergency services oh my god did you have to cut the umbilical cord and everything uh didn't have to cut the cord uh sadly um uh there was an ambulance

on the way so they sort of dealt with the uh they stepped in they stepped in and and uh yeah they did the uh oh my god they closed they closed it out. But I was – it was – Oh, my God. I went to a British private school where they specifically – they're specifically designed to leave you with absolutely no practical life skills. So when I found myself in that situation, there was nothing in my life that had given me what I needed. Yeah, that's something that people take care of for you. Exactly. You go to the place and they do it.

Yeah. Out of the view of others. Exactly, yeah. You grew up in London? called Tunbridge Wells, which is a sort of commuter belt, conservative town that's, you know, sort of perfectly pleasant but not wildly exciting. And then moved to London.

And what kind of, what did your parents do? My father was a sculptor. Really? Yes. Like a successful sculptor? It depends how you define success, Mark. I mean, artistically uh i would say yes and commercially um not not as successful but uh he i guess misunderstood is he misunderstood i don't know he set an example that uh you know in terms of a career role model um that it wasn't

necessary to get what you might call a proper job so when i started thinking about doing stand-up he couldn't turn around to me and say what are you doing with your life because he'd spent the last 25 years in a barn with a lot of wax and plaster um so uh so i'm not you know were they big pieces uh they were real mixture uh of um in fact you can you can see on on the zoot just up behind me there there's oh yeah oh uh he did uh not abstract either those are you know figures that's yeah figurative um he went through all kinds of different different styles but um and so he grew up surrounded by his uh his and you got that in the basement is that where you are i mean i have a sort of

office shed in the garden so that's where you hide the sculpture that's not something you put right in the living room no we've got we've got some in the living room as well well they just moved they just moved house and we had to clear out um his studio and so uh there was rather is he not around anymore no no he's he's around, but he's not really sculpting anymore. But we sort of picked up a consignment of artworks. So now our house has become something of a Zach Zaltzman art gallery. Zach Zaltzman. So you grew up going to openings, looking at new pieces?

There weren't that many openings, but we used to go you know go and see his his studio and you know he would sort of disappear off every every day and every now and again would bring home something um but it you know it's um i guess set a creative example uh did your mother work for a living i mean who was well she uh had been a radiographer, and then... Is that x-ray tech? What's a radiographer? Yes, yeah. Okay. And that's, I guess, generally the way when she had three children,

which she just sort of looked after us, and then subsequently became a teacher in her mid to late 40s and taught for 15, 20 years. So, yeah, so quite different people, really. And you brought up Jewish? Well, sort of. My father was from a Jewish family, grew up in South Africa, and his parents were Lithuanian Jews, essentially.

That ran away to South Africa? Yeah, in the early 20th century. I think my grandfather went to South Africa in about 1920. My dad was born there, then moved to England, married my mother. His Jewish parents were not entirely delighted that he'd married a Gentile. My mother then converted converted and they remarried so they got married twice without getting divorced so then my mother became jewish so that uh their children would be uh would be so i so we weren't really brought up strictly jewish

uh i was um i guess the most jewish i've probably ever felt was uh eight days old um and that's when it happens. I've still got the receipt for that. But we didn't really – we didn't sort of grow up in a Jewish community or anything and we didn't go to Jewish schools. But we were – my brother and I were bar mitzvahed. We used to go and have Hebrew lessons to teach us to read bits of the Torah that we were going to need for our bar mitzvahs. Of course, and not understand them.

Absolutely not. Didn't know what it meant, but we knew how technically to recite it. Yeah, how to sing them. Yeah, how to get the weird rhythm of the Haftorah and get through it. Yeah. So that's interesting because I was get to glean something about British Jewish culture because for some reason I have this weird obsessive fascination with British Jews. And I just wonder, you know, what they eat and, you know, how they communicate with each

other in relation to like, you know, kind of Ashkenazi American middle class Jews. Like, is there a similarity? You know, I don't talk to many British Jews. I can't really help you with that. I know, man. Yeah. Did you have a bar mitzvah party? I did have a bar mitzvah party.

It was the day after one of the largest hurricanes that's ever hit the British Isles. And so we almost couldn't get to the synagogue. We had to drive about 40 miles to the nearest synagogue uh but yeah i'd got uh ended up with a one trumpet up and a big book about cricket that's uh what i remember about it and a few bonds no bonds no i don't think so no it was no cash a little of cash, but not a life-changing amount of cash. You went to a private school? Yes, yes.

And what is that? Did you go to one of the fancy colleges? Well, it was, I guess, it was sort of traditional English private school. Most of the pupils were boarders. It was an all traditional English private school. I didn't – most of the pupils were boarders. It was an all-boys school, but I was a day pupil, so my father would drive me in every morning. Oh, so some of them would sleep there? Yeah.

And you had to wear the blazer? Yes, a nice sort of tweedy jacket. Uh-huh. Very sort of traditional kind of British education. Yeah. And it was good in some ways, but less good in others, I suggested. There were huge gaps in my... Practical stuff.

Never met a girl when I left school. Couldn't rewire a plug. Didn't know how to change a tyre on a car, but I could express all that in grammatically perfect Latin. So there were good points and bad points, I guess. You learned Latin? Yes, yeah. I did Latin and ancient Greek, just in case.

Things always make a comeback. You had to? I think, I can't remember if it was compulsory but i really liked it and i ended up studying it at university as uh and as did my my wife and that's how we met so latin uh basically found me a a life partner so um what was it about latin do you think um i don't know i guess there's a sort of fascination in this way. Civilisation grew and flourished and then faded, and the same with the ancient Greeks. I prefer the ancient Greek side of my studies.

And it was fascinating studying a completed civilisation. When you think of the upheavals that America has been going through of late, there are certain patterns that obviously recur through history as civilizations rise and fall. Is this where you're telling me I've got to leave? I'm not sure exactly what point of the – I don't know if the Visigoths are at the gate yet. Well, close. They're at the capital. They were yesterday. I think the Visigoths are a bit gate yet. Close. They're at the Capitol. They were yesterday.

The physicals are a bit more organized than that. Thank God. The one blessing is they had no idea what they were there. Once they got in, they didn't know what to do other than take pictures and ruin things. Yes. And try and steal a lectern. That guy. ruin things yes and try and steal a lectern that guy so but but so that you had a sort of fascination with the the coming the the fading of empire or that yes yeah which is a as a as a brit growing up in the late 20th century was probably quite a useful thing to have um yeah

and i also i studied ancient greek comedy which was absolutely fascinating like escaluseschylus? Well, he was tragic. It was Aristophanes was the main. Oh, Aristophanes, right. The clouds, right? Yes, yeah. And didn't one of those open with like a farting contest? There's a lot of farting in it. And it's, it was, because it was performed to all layers of society, it operates on a huge number of levels comedically.

There's fart jokes, there's sex jokes, and there's literary parody and political satire all kind of wedged into one. And it was absolutely fascinating. I was with my wife on holiday in Greece about 15 years ago, and there was a production of the hour the aristophanes is uh frogs in uh the ancient roman theater on the side of the acropolis in athens uh in greek uh in modern greek um but we happen to have a translation of it with us on holiday because i was doing a radio show about ancient greece just after that

and i was trying to read up on stuff that i'd forgotten from 15 years ago so we happened to have a translation we could sort of follow along with it and it was really amazing seeing jokes that were almost two and a half thousand years old still making people laugh basically you know a couple of hundred yards away from where they were first performed in about 400 BC it was was one of the most inspirational comedic watching, comedy watching moments that I've had. It felt like time had ceased to exist as a concept. People were still laughing at the same stuff 2,400 years on. It's inspiring to know that if you structure your act correctly,

you never have to change it. Well, there's that as well. It's that if you rely on farts and subliminal sex jokes, you can go for centuries. Centuries. And they were not subliminal, a lot of those sex jokes. They were liminal. But that is sort of fascinating because in this day and age,

you'd be like, well, that's hacky. It's like it's hacky. It's hacky, but there are human truths that have remained embarrassingly funny since the beginning of humans. Yes. And I think it's something that is really missing from sci-fi set in the long distant future. There's not enough people still laughing at flatulence. Well, flatulence is always surprising on a couple of ways. You know, you've got the noise itself.

You've got the duration of the noise. Yeah. But then there's a third one, the smell. So, like, that's three levels right there. Yeah. And I don't know how they operate in deep space. Maybe the human body works differently. right there yeah and i don't know how they operate in you know in deep space maybe there's this this you know the human body works differently but you know i would think that that's something that sci-fi moving forward sure i i don't has i've i've you know and then in the right stuff you

got a guy peeing in a space suit we have i don't know i've not seen uh flatulence explored you know like the inability to get away from your own flatulence in the suit. Yeah. You know? And maybe that causes deaths. Maybe that's an entire ship of guys in suits get some food poisoning and they all die and it's a tremendous mystery

for floating around in space for centuries. Right. I mean, it sounds like we're workshopping a film pitch here, Mark. We are, right. And the punchline is, oh my God, they shit in their suits. There we go. It's high culture. So, okay, you ended up with a degree in ancient Greece and Latin?

Yeah. From what college? Well, I was at University College in Oxford. Is that the Oxford? Yes. Is that Oxford? Yeah. uh well i was at university college in oxford um is that the oxford yes yeah uh so and so i left with this degree but no no real idea what i wanted to do uh in life but the but the education right i see this is like i want to demystify like you know i've you know recently as time goes on you know harvard is completely demystified. They make monsters there. And they don't necessarily, you know, it's careerism.

But there is some good things about it. But there is a type of ambition that is kind of nurtured there that I've seen in show business that is disconcerting. Now, I'm not saying that you can't get a good education at Harvard. I'm just saying that they've created fascists and very popular comedy writers. But I mean, the question about Oxford is, I guess, who did I talk to? Was it Sasha Baron Cohen? Was he an Oxford graduate? I can't remember if he was Oxford or Cambridge. I can't remember either. John Oliver went to Cambridge. Okay. And the difference between the two is what?

They're in different towns? Nothing much. One's light blue. One's dark blue. I don't know if that's the color of people's blood or what. But there's not a great deal of difference. I don't know but and the structure of the education like were you able to like yeah you well-rounded intellectually

i don't know if i'm well-rounded is the right the right description uh i mean it is you know it's good it's a fascinating place but but yeah there's particularly doing this the type of study i did it doesn't it again it's not – got huge applications to the real world. But I had a great time there. Yeah, but what is the real world? I mean, the real world is like – I mean, you like to think. You're a thinker. You're a guy who looks at the world and processes it politically and philosophically and socially, and you comment on it.

I would imagine that the education you got was perfect for that i guess so yes like i said i ended up you know doing comedy which i slightly studied um as part of my my ancient greek side what was the other option i mean how did you arrive at that well that was part of the literature course it was the ancient greek was – well, the tragedies and epic poetry, the Homer. So studying the sort of foundations of European civilization. But how did you decide to do comedy? I think just because it was just – I was just interested by it. And I'd done a little bit of it at school.

And it just struck me as being an interesting thing to study. How did comedy work in a completely different ancient dead civilisation? And I think it shows a lot. A society's comedy tells you a lot about that society in a way that, say, studying the tragedies, which were sort of less topical and more sort of universal, doesn't necessarily give you an idea of what it would have been like to be an ancient athenian whereas right when you the comedy when you think the comedy is aiming at making the people watching it at the time laugh and so you

can then start to understand people's sense of humor and therefore you can almost build up a picture of what what life would have been like what you know how people would talked to each other, how they would have tried to make each other laugh. So I guess there's certain timeless universalities about that that were rather fascinating. But what comic – when did you realize, like, I can do that? Did you see a stand-up? Well, my first ever gig was, well, A, very drunk, and B, it was a comedy night while I was a student at Oxford in and do a couple of bits in between. And so I had to try and fill a bit more time. And the support acted a longer set.

And I had about half an hour's notice of this. And I got very drunk and can't remember anything that I said. But I remember the surge of adrenaline of doing it, which is one of the addictive things about stand-up. You remember for 30 seconds I didn't feel as drunk as I was. Exactly. And I've never been a particular drinker, but it was, you know, I guess the nerves and the tension. So that was, I guess, my first attempt at stand-up.

I then had a few gigs when I left university that went so badly that i gave up uh for about a year and a half um what was the other option for work for you like you know if it wasn't stand-up what were you headed towards teaching i don't know i sort of had a vague idea that i wanted to be a journalist and particularly a sports journalist um and left university applied for about 80 jobs ended up getting a job sub-editing articles about european finance uh which uh was slightly less exciting than it sounds mark riveting i'm surprised lasted about a year then just gave up and and started doing the open mic circuit in London.

And who was around? Who were the guys that you started with that are still around? Well, I mean, John was starting out around about the same time. Russell Howard was starting around then. Jimmy Carr. People have been very successful here. Daniel Kitson was sort of the big, the most successful comedian of my generation creatively uh here and he was i think someone that you know everyone of my generation on the circuit sort of looked up to he was yeah yeah i mean i knew i i heard about kitson for years and i think i saw i saw one big

show of his in london know he's a unique person. Yeah. He doesn't do the podcast or talk or function necessarily in a sociable way. But I've met him a few times, and I know that he's revered. Yes. So he was of your generation or a little ahead of you, yeah? Well, he'd started a bit before me. In terms of gigs that were kind of landmarks in my early stand-up career,

there was one in particular. I went to see Robert Newman, who'd been a huge TV star in the early 90s, various shows. But he'd become a kind of crusading, almost journalistic stand-up. And he went to do an hour and a half in Edinburgh, largely about the perils of capitalism and globalization.

And it was just hugely eye-opening that someone had the courage to do that and the skills to make it interesting the the skills to make it interesting the charisma to to carry off um and that was uh that was while i was up doing my that package show i mentioned edinburgh my first sort of full edinburgh when i was really struggling to get a late night gig and i didn't really have the skills for it i'd only been going 18 months or so on the circuit and you know there's a you know a lot of things that I couldn't do. And I was becoming increasingly, uh,

dissatisfied with the material I was doing and seeing, uh, Robert Newman do such a, you know, fearless, uncompromising show. It made me think, well,

maybe I need to not, not keep worrying about what is going to make the audience laugh and think more. What, you know, what, why am I doing this and what do I want to. And, and that is the moment that we of inconsistent means all have that powerful moment of enlightenment that dictates

our struggle for the rest of our lives exactly i don't need to make them laugh as long as i'm smart and blow their mind. And that's why I'm sitting in a shed in South London as we speak. Yeah, that's it, man. So what about Stuart Lee? Well, that was another important gig for me. That was when I supported him at a charity night. And I'd seen him on television. I'd never seen him doing live stand-up.

And the lineup was Stuart Lee headlining, me as a support act, and after us was DJ Randy Groover, who was a DJ in a Spangly jacket playing some absolutely banging 70s funk. And please tell me most people were there to see him. I think – I can't really remember. Stuart Lee wasn't, I mean, he was quite well known, but he hadn't become the... Was this before he quit and then come back?

I think he was just on the way back at that point. Oh. From memory. And then I did a few gigs supporting him on tour when he was briefly on a diet where he ate nothing but cabbage soup and had uh i remember that diet come on the train fat uh well i think he had been i don't know how much good it did him but he didn't seem to be enjoying it very much but it was uh yeah it was a new stand-up getting to support him on it at a few gigs and you know

travel around was he able to integrate flatulence into the show? He's always had that club in his bag. And also, I did some – the year I did my first solo show in Edinburgh in 2001, I ended up doing three gigs supporting Joan Rivers, which was – that was really eye-opening. I don't know quite how she ended up with me as her support act, but to see someone of, I can't remember how old she was, she must have been about 70 at the time, with just the enthusiasm and energy that she had and sort of just the love for performing,

that was, I mean, she was incredible. How did she do? Well, she had quite a big fan base in... I can't remember. It was a sort of 1,500-seat theatre. And they were very... Me doing seven minutes at the start to 1,500 Joan Rivers fans was not necessarily a recipe for success.

But she was... Yeah, I know that feeling. She was having incredible physical energy and the speed of her mind as well. That was really great to see as a new stand-up, to see someone who'd been doing it since literally before I was born. And were you, like, I don't know how old you are compared to me. How old are you? I'm 46. Oh, you're younger than me.

Right, yeah. six oh you're younger than me right yeah so do you don't remember necessarily or you were not comedically cognizant when uh when bill hicks landed in your country uh no i missed that uh and uh i i yes that's i think like you know if i'd been i think more more into comedy than i was as a student i could have uh seen him nick Nick Doody, who was another comedian. I don't know if you know Nick from the British circuit. I think he ended up supporting Bill Hicks at a gig as a student in Oxford. Well, it seems to me that for some comics, and certainly maybe for somebody like you, his arrival was sort of like Hendrix to the musicians of London when he came over.

Yes. There seemed to be an impact being made. Well, that was a bit before my time, sadly. So I sort of missed out on that. Yeah, but I think there's a legacy of guys we're talking about. I mean, like when I saw Stuart Lee, like I'd been hearing about him for a long time. And I just like I don't know a lot about British comedy. But, you know, when I went to Edinburgh and I saw him, you know, that he's one of those guys that decides the pace.

Yes. You know, I've always admired people that sort of like this is going to be difficult for a lot of you, but there's this is what's going to happen. And this is the speed at which it will happen. And this is the tone of it yes so make your decision are you in or out yes and you know it's a rare thing it's a great thing yes and it's i guess at some point all comedians have to decide if how and where they will or will not compromise. I know, and it's a weird thing. You're gifted if you have no choice in a weird way.

Like if this is all you got, this is me, I got no other gear. There's no like I better do this to make this work better. Yes. that that's a gift it's a painful gift but it's yeah but it's a it's a liberating realization isn't i saw again in one of my first enemies i went to see tim vine who does nothing but puns and you know yeah i remember that guy he has absolutely no plan b and clearly not everyone likes plan a but he just you know he is that's it in his own way totally uncompromising as well and so yeah i i think that's what i got out of most in my first two or three years doing edinburgh was seeing you know other comedians who are sort of further on in the process and how they were choosing to to to do their comedy dug into their character yeah um i'm going to do something i haven't done before but i think it'll make the conversation better i'm

going to you're going to excuse me for a second so i can go to the restroom is that all right don't go away It's very interesting to me because I'm talking to you and you're British that I actually excused myself. I mean, generally, it would be like I got to pee, hang out a minute.

But no, I'd like to be excused for a second. I have to use the restroom the fuck is wrong that's that's the effect you can't you can't you might have jumped ship in 1776 but you can never never fully get rid of us in fact it might be with brexit yeah we're open for business again come back to the mothership america i don't i i yeah i can you uh what's okay get me to speed. So you're in lockdown right now. Yes. Big time, right?

Big time lockdown. Because there's a new exciting strain. Yes. That permeates walls. It permeates everything. It's a British strain, therefore it's easily the best. It's a world-leading virus strain. Once again, we're ahead of the world.

Finally, back, they're back yes so yeah we're uh sitting at home um and uh yes were you able to go out for a little while i mean i don't know what what you guys are going through it's pretty like it's it's it's always it's so scary here do you know people that have gotten it are you i know a few people who've had it um and uh i mean luckily no one close to me has been been severely ill uh with it yeah but um it's been a massive disruption on my children's schooling of uh 14 and 12 and uh it's uh you know it's tough having to sit at home, just basically working off computers, which is a huge scar on a whole generation's childhood. So I'm not sure we know the full repercussions. Luckily, we've got a nice house and a bit of space and parks nearby. And so it's much better for us.

And are you guys going crazy? Are you getting closer? Are you learning things about each other you never wanted to? We've got on pretty well, considering. I've watched a lot of television. Sure. I know, you know, during the summer last year, in my sort of parallel life to comedy, I'm a cricket statistician and I do cricket stats on the radio for the BBC cricket coverage.

So I got to go and spend six weeks watching international sports during the middle of lockdown, which is one of the weirdest, most surreal experiences of my life. But it's nice that you are grateful to be working. Yes. I mean, the one thing about doing what we do and figuring out how to adapt is that, I mean, you do a weekly radio show now, correct? Yeah, I do a radio show for BBC Radio 4 called The News Quiz, which is a sort of topical show.

That's on sort of half, sort of 24 weeks a year, and I still do the Bugle podcast with uh sort of rotating cast of co-hosts since uh since john left so um is that every week uh that's every week um so it's nice to be working imagine if we weren't working be crazy uh so i'm you know for people who you know whose main line of work and income is stand-up this has been completely catastrophic so i've you know i've been very fortunate from from that point the last performance i did in front of live actual physical human beings was i think in end of almost a year ago now it's the end of january and uh you know i think quite a lot about you know what will i will be able to do it? I don't know if you think that, you know, when you would last on stage with a crowd.

Sadly, my thoughts are, do I still want to? I think I'm good. Well, that's another side of it, isn't it? There's been times that I've thought I really miss it. And there's other times I thought, well, do I have the strength to go back to it and almost's other times i thought well do i you know well do i have the strength to to go back to and almost relearn those skills and i think the skills will probably come back and it will probably be exciting you know i just don't i like i have to assume that things will have to be different after all this shit i mean after brexit after we become, you know, an authoritarian country, that how we approach, you know, life again, it has to be different.

I mean, I don't believe that there's some sort of return to something. You know, we don't know what the fuck is ahead on any level. No, which is, I guess, simultaneously exciting and terrifying. Terrifying. It's terrifying some days. Yeah. I mean, I had trouble sleeping last night. But I don't understand Brexit at all because I can barely keep up with the news here.

But I know that people in the UK look to us as like, you know, what the fuck is happening there? But I have that same thing. I'm like, what is really happening there? Well, I think most people in Britain are thinking that probably on both sides of the uh that the uh the brexit divide and it's you know it's been a that the strange thing with with brexit is britain's membership of the european union it's been you know slightly controversial for most of the sort of four and a half decades that we were part of the eu but it was never a yeah it was never a massive political issue and all the sort

of polls you know said it was in the you know it was a major issue for about 5% of the people. And then it, because for essentially party political reasons, David Cameron, then Prime Minister, called this referendum, and it suddenly became the completely defining totemic political issue of our times. And it's created divisions, I think, of a similar type to the divisions that Trump has created. Well, it's a mixture of sort of creating and revealing, I guess. Oh, disenfranchised working class anti-immigration nationalism on one side? Well, there's yes. And there's, know there's sort of various degrees of that but i think it's it's created divisions that are not

obviously uh bridgeable or curable whatever happens so right and so in terms of the you know the long-term prospects obviously with the difference difference with Brexit and Trump is that Trump was only going to be president for four or eight years, whereas Brexit is for the foreseeable future, whether it's forever or not. I don't know. It's impossible to say. forced back into the box in the way that that trump has albeit that there is now debris all around the box and the box may pop open again um right before collapsing like an overstretched metaphor so it's it's become yeah it it's just defined politics and um and now we're we're we're stuck with it and it's it's gonna be one of those things. Philosophically, I was a huge fan of the European Union and Britain being part of it.

And I will always think that. And I always hope that Britain returns to being part of either the European Union or whatever may emerge from it if it collapses or whatever. And in the same way that people who were opposed to it uh remained opposed to it throughout the four decades which were largely successful for both europe and britain that britain was a member so there's no real middle ground and uh covid has almost been a distraction from brexit and right you know the the past year when we might have been sort of really kind of introvertedly examining what brexit meant for britain as a country and for the people

who live in it uh we've been completely distracted so i don't i don't know when we're going to get around to that that reckoning and working out exactly what you know who we are and what we want to be right all this work has been done that the brexit deal is finalized but now no one can go outside yes so yeah that's all put on hold is how yes you know culture and and british society will function under the new game yes um it It's all on, yes. I mean, we've essentially hibernated as a nation. And in fact, I mean, I think there is something to be said, I think, for hibernation.

I think it's something that humans as a species would... Might consider. We should consider it. Taking a three-month to a year break. Yeah. I think, you know, if there is a positive to come out of COVID, I guess lockdown is as close to hibernation as we're generally allowed to get. And it's something that I would like to see formally instituted three months every year.

Sure. I mean, it's sort of like the midday nap in Italy, in Spain. Yeah, exactly. It's just like you'll have a three-month-a-year nap. Yes. That's one of my main reasons for being in favor of Britain staying in the EU is I've always hoped that Britain would adopt the siesta for the proper afternoon nap, which is always something that we've been a bit too hardworking as a society, despite my best efforts to balance that out. But isn't there certain pub rules? I mean, isn't there an instituted – like, don't you, isn't there a midday drink you're supposed to have?

Yes. That was, I mean, yeah, that's always been part. We've drunk through a lot of things in our history as a society. And, I mean, and in fact, with COVID there was so so much of the debate was about what you know when and how the pubs would open that was yeah that but for a while that seemed to be the most important thing that the government had to deal with was managing the reopening of british pubs which had not even shut down during the blitz i think so that was this shows how you know what covid has done that it made made British pubs close.

They are closed, huh? They are currently closed. They were open. They've been sort of intermittently opened. They're now, I think, currently all closed. For a while, you could get takeaway beer from pubs, which slightly defeats the object. I don't know if they're doing takeaway quizzes as well. Are the ICU units busting like here?

I mean, is the death rate spiraling there? It's got very bad quite quickly in the last few weeks, and I think the numbers are up sort of back beyond what they were during the first wave. It's so horrible because we're so insulated here in our own panic that I fail to realize sometimes you guys are really in the same thing. Yes. It's terrifying and people are dying every day. It is. And with the various vaccinations that have been approved,

there's hope, there's a bit of optimism, that there's some sense that it might end in the vaguely foreseeable future. But again, it's something that we... I don't think we'll be able to process exactly what it's done to Britain, exactly the massive failures that have come along with it. the massive failures that have come along with it. It's, yeah, I think it's going to take years to, well, as you talk about, you know, what kind of society is going to emerge from this, you know, from the sort of selfish point of view of a, you know, working comedian, are people going to want to go and sit in crowded rooms again?

I think there's going to be a desire to do stuff that isn't sitting at home, but when will people feel comfortable being crowded into a confined right confined space and also people have become very adept at tuning in to uh these things you know like i'll do a live ig in the morning just to keep my brain sharp yeah and engage with an audience in real time uh which which has helped um but i think like what you're saying if i think about it like you're you know this idea that our brains want to know, it's sort of like, well, how are we going to reflect on this? And that's really the question a comic has to answer in terms of, you know, presenting it. So, I mean, that might give us both a little hope because like in my brain, my biggest fear is that we're all going to see this as some sort of collective trauma.

My biggest fear is that we're all going to see this as some sort of collective trauma. And because of PTSD, we're just going to sort of compartmentalize it into this haze that's like kind of a smear of a memory that's a year, a year and a half and kind of want to move past it. That's my fear is that we move past it and just sort of suppress it as a traumatic time without really contextualizing the impact, you know? Yes, and like I said, I mean, particularly for having children who are at school age, it's the sort of defining, it'll probably be the defining time of their entire lives, really. It's going to shape their outlook, how they interact with life. And comedically, also, I don't know what you think about this, Mark. Are people going to laugh at different things after, you know, when stand-up restarts? How different is it going to be?

The impact that this has had, this huge kind of defining issue. But at the same time, it's probably going to be something that people don't want to think about, don't want to be told about when they go to somewhere for escape. Well, I don't know how it's going to impact on that. Well, I think we've established that we can start with farts no matter what. There's always that. There's the timelessness of flatulence and sex. There's always that. There's the timelessness of flatulence and sex.

Yeah. And, you know, certainly flatulence and sex, reflecting on flatulence and sex during the pandemic will be rich with laughter. Yes. There's going to be family flatulence like never before. Difficulties in having sex, both with families not being able to leave the house and also dating. Yeah. Rich material with both of the timeless classics. Yeah. with families not being able to leave the house and also dating time yeah a lot rich material with both of the the the timeless classics yeah i think that that like that kind of thing will be will be interesting like the honesty around that because i i do think that people are i don't think

that we're going to totally adapt to the intimacy of what you and i are doing here that people are going to become so uh uh symbiotic with, you know, the necessity to congregate will diminish. I don't think that's true. I think that people lose a great deal of themselves when they isolate, even if they're talking to people on screens. So I think that if it ever becomes safe again, people will want to congregate. Yes. Oh, definitely. But I wonder, you know, I guess it'll be a process, isn't it, of almost kind of relaxing back into it. Yeah, I don't know how you relax. I did a movie, dude.

I did a movie for 12 days and everybody's wearing masks with COVID protocol. But I got to be honest with you. Once I surrendered to the idea that, like, this is as safe as it's going to be. honest with you once i surrendered to the idea that like this is as safe as it's going to be you know we're getting tested every other day and everyone's wearing masks all the time except when we have to act and i was fucking thrilled to be you know in a collaborative effort in real time with living people i mean it was like it was like thank god you know i'm sane again for a minute is there gonna be an eruption of uh sort of you know communal activities of you know artistic expression almost like you know kind of post-war booms of people just you know wanting to do anything i would hope so that that that would

be encouraging you i don't want to think that a lot of people especially visual artists and stuff are who generally work in an isolated way anyways like your father might have, are really kind of doing exciting things now. But I think people are so freaked out that most people are just paralyzed and not doing anything but watching television in their sweatpants. I've done a lot. I've got through a lot of pairs of sweatpants in the last year. But I don't know. But like in, you know, given that, you know, you spent your early life studying this sort of arc of civilizations. I mean, and even with Brexit or whatever's happening with COVID, do you, how do you frame this in your head? I mean, do you,

are you like somebody who's like, well, this is going to pass and and the species will probably persist or or how are you don't seem like an existentially fraught person no probably not i mean i think what it clearly is going to pass in the way that you know plagues have passed now you know plagues in the ancient world that were um you know fairly what kind of traumatic and shaping experiences um but yeah i don't know i veer between wild pessimism and wild optimism and yeah um i guess and a lot of it is thinking about the world that my kids are going to going to grow up in and the kind of lives they'll be able to lead the the the what the education will be able to have and you know what kind of jobs are going with all these different impacts on on on life whether you know brexit

covid the the environment just the general changings of the of the world it's it the the sort of picture that i had of the world that they would enter when they depart childhood, it's changed. I can't really imagine, even in 10 years' time, what they will be dealing with. Yeah, I think that's the most difficult thing for anybody. I don't have kids, so mine's in the realm of selfishness. In my head, I'm like, I'm 57. I've done. Okay. All right. Maybe I'm done. So, but like when you have children, as many of my friends do, I think that, you know, is challenging for you as a person, as a father and, you know,

somebody who wants the best for their children, but, but also just no matter who you are, there's, there's no personal status quo anymore. Everything has been sort of blown up. You know, everything has been, you know, shattered. So we're all looking into this darkness without any real footing. And I think that the anxiety of that is overwhelming. But I do think, like you're saying, I think that's the most honest way to look at is is this we just don't know and it's really difficult that you can't even rely on like well i can always go to the place no you can't because it's closed it's gone yeah but are they gonna i don't know you know i don't know oh yeah i think it's i mean this is the the time of greatest human ignorance of my lifetime in terms of people kind of knowing what's going on currently and what is going to emerge.

So it's, as you say, cosmically unsettling. And I guess some things might emerge largely unchanged. Other things will be vastly different. And some things will just end. Yeah. But again, not farting and fucking. Farting and fucking are going to persist. Yeah.

Death, taxes, farting and fucking. Those are the big four. Never go away. Is your wife in politics? She's not. She was a criminal lawyer, a criminal advocate, and is currently – she's got a doctorate studying how young people are dealt with by the judicial system. And is currently writing a book about it. So, yeah, she has a slightly more serious existence than I do, talking nonsense and thinking about cricket.

Yeah, but that's good. That's the other hard thing about, and when I talk to creative people who are in the middle of working on things, they're like, does this even matter? Yes. Does this even matter? Yes.

Are we just animating the death throes of a civilization? Well, possibly. Death throes are always fascinating, aren't they? Yeah. But when I started out in stand-up, we'd been together since university, as I said, and she was starting out around about the same time uh on the the legal circuit and uh yeah you know it's a different type of performing there were certain similarities of being a uh you know criminal advocate in in britain where you're so she was a trial lawyer yeah yeah so um she was uh uh you

know similarly you're sort of self-employed you go from gig to gig and the difference would be that i'd be delighted if i'd written a an amusing pun about fruit and uh she was doing cases involving frankly horrific crimes so it was similar but different yeah yeah yeah i could see your your sort of enthusiasm uh at the end of the day when you're discussing your days kind of fading in light of her achievements. But wait, this punchline, this tag is great. You just got to like. Yes. And, you know, if I had a bad day at work, then I'd be slightly, slightly humiliated and embarrassed.

If she had a bad day at work, someone would go to jail, I guess. You've got to decide whether or not you're going to stick with that bit or if it needs something else. And she's got to live with the fact that somehow or another someone's going to spend their life in prison. Yeah, I mean, these are the lives we've chosen. Yes. Yeah, I don't think I was cut out for real life, to be honest.

But sports, I mean, like, I don't know. I'm not a sports guy, and it seems that people who like sports, at least that gives you – I mean, that is something to live for, you know. Yes, and it's, you know, everyone, you know, finds their escapism in different forms. I've been – I did love sport from when I was about six years old, and it's something that's throughout my life been something where I can just escape from whatever I'm doing,

whether it's playing it at a very low level or watching it. I started writing about cricket via the Bugle, actually. I talked about cricket on the bugle but because we always had quite a big american audience i would you know try and do as much cricket stuff as possible to go to america for not having taken the greatest honor that uh that that uh that original zaltzman manifesto of alienating as many of the audience as possible without getting any real foothold in success. Why change a losing formula? So I

ended up getting to write about cricket for a cricket website and then doing, being part of the BBC's radio coverage and particularly last year it was this incredible escape from everything else.

Thank God they kept playing, I guess, huh? Yeah, yeah. And the players were all in bubbles, staying in hotels on the grounds, and the media were staying in different parts of the... Are they still doing it? Yeah, around the world. There's, you know, cricket bubbles going on. England's just gone out to Sri Lanka.

There's Australia and India are playing it's a sport that the longest form of cricket, the games last up to five days and it becomes almost meditative when you sit and watch an entire five day

match and quite a lot of them end in a draw it almost puts you on a it's quite a lot of them end in a end in a draw and it's it's almost it puts you on a it's almost a sort of spiritual escapism from uh oh that's great from everything i would heartily recommend it mark yeah i i mean i i don't have i don't have many good escapes yeah i'm painfully stuck in you know my imagination is just fueled by uh uh dread and you know occasional uh uh glimmers of hope and fantasy but i don't i think i'm not a science fiction guy i'm not i like music but uh do you do you are you a science fiction guy as well not really my daughter who's who's

just about to turn 14 she's uh she's got really into it. And she's now started writing. So I'll just go up to her bedroom and I'll say, oh, what are you doing? She'll say, oh, I'm just writing this science fiction story. That's great. Yeah, I've started to try and get a bit more into that. What's his son up to? What's his interest?

Well, he's quite into sports um and maths uh so uh yeah they're doing uh they're coping pretty it's very difficult i can't quite imagine how i'd have dealt with this as a i guess children are quite flexible aren't they i mean they do adapt to what is put what is presented to them but yeah they'll take it they'll take it it's yeah and they'll adapt it's yeah they own little people, I guess, after a certain point. Yeah, it's been... My daughter was seven when she turned to me at dinner and said, Daddy, I think I'm getting too old for your jokes now.

And that was a real moment. Those landmarks in parenting when you realize your children are becoming more independent. Seven years old. Seven, huh? Wow. Outside of the bugle, which is topical, and the cricket is sort of up to date, you got to stay on top of that. But you're not really, I mean, I can't even begin to frame a future set at this juncture. But, you know, for somebody who thinks in terms of, you know, hour-long presentations, have you begun to think about that? No, not really.

I do the last four years before, so from 2016 to 2019, I did an end-of-year review show, before, so from 2016 to 2019, I did an end of year review show just sort of my main stand up of the year when I'd try and put the world of that year into an hour of stand up but I didn't do that

this year and so it's been a long time since I really sat down and tried to plan out a stand up show and I was thinking about it a couple of weeks ago because I realised that basically I'd done four gigs in 2020 and they were all in January. And I thought, well, what would I do if I had to do a gig now?

I couldn't remember even how I used to start a stand-up set. I couldn't remember. I've got them all written down, but because I write stuff every week for the Bugle and most of the stuff that I do is topical, it's for the Bugle or radio shows, I'm constantly churning over material but not necessarily honing it into lasting stand-up.

And I just got a slight panic. I thought I've got no idea how I would do a stand-up and i just i i'm a slight panic that i thought i've i've got no idea how i would do a stand-up gig now and you know having been um you know doing it for over 20 years that was that was slightly frightening now it's you know not i talk about i do podcasts and radio and and cricket so stand-up is not what i rely on but as a comedian you can't but you're always got that muscle working. I was doing three sets, four sets a week, no matter what, just to stay frosty. And yeah, I mean, I don't know.

There's definitely going to be, does pre-COVID material matter anymore? And we don't know what post-COVID's going to look like, but we all know what the fuck we're living with. And the one thing about it is there is a certain, this is one of the few times in history where we all have something very specific and very fucking prominent in common. We can all talk about how we handled this, how much cooking we did, how much eating we did, how much jer jerking off we did how much yelling at our kids we did i mean there are going to be diaries of of covid but i sadly you know from day to day i would imagine the patterns reveal itself and it's one long one long day you know yes and also also when doing sort of political topical comedy a lot of what I've done in the last four years has been about Brexit and its impact on British politics and globally on Trump and America and what Trumpism stands for around the world. And those two things are going as well. So I have no idea what I would – if someone said, oh, you've got to do an hour-long stand-up show in a month's time, I think I would really struggle, I think, to know what to do.

And I guess a genuine deadline is always a great motivator, Mark. So I guess I'll have to wait until that does happen. Yeah, I think we'll snap into shape pretty good. I mean, one thing I've been noticing about Trumpism and fascism in general is that, you know, people who can't leave their houses or are unemployed are generally going to fuel that movement. But there's economic desperation and there's a lack of work and a lot of time to, you know, go down whatever rabbit hole your brain is going to go down to make your anger feel better. And sadly, a lot of times that ends with excluding people and possibly genocide. And also, I mean, the Internet is there are infinite rabbit holes on the Internet. The worst.

You can find your people. You can. Or in my case, you can find black and white early footage of sport from the 1920s. But, you know, there's rabbit holes for everyone. There's a universe of rabbit holes. Yes. We're finding that. Yes.

We're finding that. Yeah. Nobody needs to have the same experience ever again. It's, well, I guess we'll find out, Andy. I think, oddly, I think that if we do get a reprieve and we do get the ability to once again enter the world, that we will be so excited. We will find plenty of things to say. Right. And will you come back to Edinburgh?

No. The emotional Marc Maron return to Edinburgh. I will not. If there's one good to come out of COVID, Marc, surely it can be that. Maybe. Come back to the Fringe. I will come back to London. I will never go to the Gilded Balloon again. I just have no idea about that world.

I just have no idea about that world. I did do a couple of dates in London over the last few years and Birmingham. Where else did I go? I did three dates, but I had a nice time. Manchester, I think. London, Birmingham, Manchester. Does that make sense? Yeah, that does make sense.

I remember speaking to you that year in Edinburgh, because I was doing my political animal show that you did in a room in sort of an old kind of underground passageway. Right, it was a long, thin, narrow room with bricks. A lot of bricks. And it was a kind of classic Edinburgh room. It was completely not designed for stand-up, but it had a certain atmosphere.

I think it was damp. Damp. Very damp. Yeah. The humidity in that room was... Yeah. It was the kind of room you felt that someone probably died in it about 200 years ago. Or there was butchering done in it.

Yeah. There was real work on anvils or with knives. Those walls would have stories to tell. Oh, yeah. What year was that? Must have been 2006 maybe. Yeah. So that was the year that John went to do the Daily Show.

So I think I was – then again, we were supposed to be co-hosting that show. Oh, we were both shattered then. We were both struggling. Yeah. All right. Well, I will say this. Maybe I will come and we'll hang out in Edinburgh again. If not,

let's hang out next time I come to London, if that's ever possible. Yeah, that would be great. Good talking to you, man. You too. Okay, that's it. Andy Zaltzman, as I said earlier, he's got the podcast, The Bugle, where you can get wherever you get podcasts. You can hear him on the news quiz on BBC Radio 4.

Enjoy the relief while we can. And I'll try to muster up a little hope. You know, I've been meditating and I've been yoga-ing. And I've been working out and I've been trying to keep my sanity. I've been hiking up COVID hill. But relief and okay, hope. Hope that we stabilize this fucking thing. And hope that we get everybody vaccinated and some structure and organization begins to occur on a federal level. and some structure and organization begins to occur on a federal level.

And also that, yeah, I'd like to be proud of my country. I really would. I'll play some guitar for you now. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey. Lafonda. Cat angels everywhere. Thank God for new management. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes.

Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently,

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