WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1354 - James Acaster

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Comedian James Acaster caught Marc’s attention when he released four hour-long Netflix standup specials simultaneously. But in watching the specials, Marc quickly recognized a likeminded comic with a compulsion to express himself. James and Marc sit down in a Montreal hotel room as the Just For Laughs Festival churns around them and try to figure out why they get so down on themselves while doing an art form that they supposedly love. They also compare notes on the tribal divisions in comedy both in the States and in the UK. 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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Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck nicks what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it first of all i'll be at largo in los angeles that i just want want to make sure we know that. You know, it's going to get to a point where everyone in Los Angeles between Largo and Dynasty Typewriter will have seen me somewhat. I think at Dynasty on the 14th, I'm actually going to do some sort of improvisational crowd work show and record it for that august 14th is that when it is do i even know my own dates what's my own calendar yeah 14th same day apparently my window cleaner comes so look today i talked to uh james a caster a comedian who i watched for a minute and stopped watching

one time when his four netflix specials came out i thought the audacity the uh the swagger the confidence of someone to drop four fucking hours on netflix at the same time this british kid in his corduroy jacket i'm not having it i watched 10 minutes and i'm like i'm out i'm out how can this go on for another three hours and 15 minutes? I thought to myself, but then like, I kept hearing about him and then he was up in Montreal. And then I thought like, let me get, get a load of this dude. And that watched more of it. I didn't watch all four, but I definitely watched a couple and I was taken with his microphone and the mic cord material was pretty great too. Interesting weaving of sort of expanding reality into nonsense and then coming back around to real stuff. And the newest one was pretty good.

There was some power hitting there. He's a very smart guy, very clever guy, and courageous guy, really, in terms of material. I was happy to talk to him. But before we get into that, something happened yesterday. Many of you know that I have Sammy and Buster. Buster being the black cat, sweet cat, smart cat, knows what's up. I think there's a human inside that head. He might have kidney problems. It's unclear. Don't know how much kidney juice he has he went into renal failure when he was very young doesn't matter for the story i also have sammy the very uh sweet sammy little sweet sammy the orange and white tabby he's a little little tough guy uh uh sammy is he's he's a he's a squat cat buster's a lanky cat sammy's a stout little guy. He's a very nice guy, kind of dumb. Buster's a little nervous, very smart. Anyway, doesn't matter.

What happened was, got back to the house the other day, day before yesterday, and I heard something out back. And Kit and I go out back, and I'm like, what's that noise? And she goes, oh my God. And there was a cat underneath the stairway.

This cat runs out from underneath the backyard staircase. And I'm like, what the hell is this? And she goes, oh no, there's more. There's kittens. So there's like three kittens in there. And they weren't there. I would have noticed this. I noticed this cat a couple of days ago

running across the street. I'm like, whose fucking cat is that? Well, I don't know whose it is, but now there's three kittens under my staircase with this cat freaking out. So Kit feeds it. And then this morning I wake up and there's only just one kitten by itself under there. She had fucking split and moved them. So I took the one kitten out, tiny little thing thing put it in a box with a nice blankie and kit took it over to the humane society to feed it and get it on its way to uh being

domesticated living the life got out but where's the other thing i thought well she must have went somewhere else took the other two probably planning on getting that other guy i feel bad but there's the right thing to do and turns out she i looked at the first place i looked i found her under the deck down the at the end of the deck i stuck my head under there it's only about a half a foot of space where you can look under there into the dark and there she was just glaring at me and i could see a kitten so i fed her she ate it and then uh she split and i went out there with kit and we looked under there. We could at least make out one kitten. There was a gray one, a black one, and then the one I got, gray and white. But we didn't know what to do.

And apparently, because I can't get at those kittens now, we can't trap her and get the kittens because it's not that easy. Now we've got to wait a couple weeks feeding her. But then I run into the lady from next door who I just met. And she's carrying her dog and she's like oh yeah i gotta tell you something there was a cat with four kittens on in my carport and i saw her movie i'm like yeah she's under my deck and she said there were four kittens i'm like four when i saw them yes the next day there was three how'd she lose a kitten i don't know i didn't maybe the count is weird maybe she got three under there. All I know is I got one out.

And now I know there's at least two kittens under my deck and a mother that I'm feeding and need to feed for a couple weeks. Why me? Why me? Do I have to take that cat? Is that, I feel an almost immediate attachment to these cats. This little guy that I took out of there,

little gray and white guy. You don't even know what they are. They're just like, their eyes are blue. Their ears are weird. None of them are going to be heinous. They're all going to be cute. But do I just have an emotional attachment

to the spectrum of kitten-ness starting at week two week three i mean i can't assume that i have a particular attraction to this particular me think you do like sammy i was a little nervous about because sammy had this perpetually worried face and it was not it was not comforting and it was not cute. It was always like sort of, what's the matter, man? What? It's not that bad. He looked worried all the time when he was like four weeks old, five weeks old, six weeks old, just total worry face constantly, blue eyes, worried face. And then it went away. I don't know if I'm going to end up with this cat,

but I believe we did the right thing. I believe we did the right thing. up with this cat. But I believe we did the right thing. I believe we did the right thing. James Acaster has a book coming out later this year, James Acaster's Guide to Quitting Social Media. He's also announcing tour dates today. So you can go to his website, jamesacaster.com for details on tickets. And we did this in a hotel room and it got good. I never know what's going to happen. This is the one thing about what I do. I do not know how it's going to go because I'm relying on a conversation unfolding. And it did. Here is me and James Acaster unfolding, unpacking, and stacking. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.

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Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. You ask me how often I do this. Not as often as I used to because exactly the type of panic I'm in right now. The fury and the panic of having no control over what's about to happen outside within minutes. Was that always there at the beginning? Were you also quite excited about the podcast and it growing?

And so it was overriding all of that. But it was more of an urgency that we have to deliver a new episode every monday and thursday no matter what and that time that i did it at an airport i didn't know if i was going to make it home because there was a problem with the flights and i was supposed to record that day for the next day but i had equipment so i thought like well fuck it and i went to one of the lounges and i said i need a conference room i paid like a couple hundred dollars just to sit there and do a fucking intro because I didn't want, you know, there was an urgency to it.

And I'm starting to realize as I get older, I don't know where you're at, that I'm probably totally irrelevant in the big picture. What? In general. In life? Yeah.

Yeah, podcasters, yeah. But I don't, like, that's the new struggle. Yeah. It's like, does it fucking matter what I'm doing? Yeah. Also, just how quickly I'm very, I just discovered how just fragile I am mentally with that, how quickly I go to that thought.

Yeah. I pulled my back for the first time ever this week. Doing what? I bent down i was putting some uh rubbish in a bin yeah skip yeah drop some of it bent down to pick it up yeah absolutely just killed my back yeah and uh you know over the last few days having to deal with it the amount of times i thought do i even matter in my head, I'm like, oh, it's over now. It's over now. You've pulled your back.

You're not going to live forever. That's it. Well, that, okay, so that's the I'm not going to live forever thing. The thing that I think is fucking my head up is like I'm 58, so you're 20 years younger than me, whatever. It's just like, you know, I've done a lot of work. I've put a lot out there, but there's a never-ending appetite for the work.

There's no pause where anyone's going to sort of look back at the great work you know like that that era seems to be over yeah like there were guys that you grew up with that I grew up with any kind look at the great work they did but now it's just sort of like we just need more just yeah just need more shit and and I'm there's some part of my brain that's exhausted but you seem to be able to generate plenty of shit. Yeah, kind of. But also, you know, just doing things that I'm very... If I'm enthusiastic about it, yeah, it's great.

Any time I've said yes to something that, you know, I just saw pound signs or whatever, then that's when it's bad. And I realize I shouldn't have said yes to this and I'm making then that's when it's bad and i and i realize i'm i'm i shouldn't have said yes to this and i'm making something that's bad or or making something that's not going to get anywhere i've been in the situation of waiting to see if something gets the green light and gets commissioned and i'm hoping it doesn't because i know that if i have to do this the dread it'll be bad it'll be bad and i'll be making the bad thing and uh for however long yeah for as long as it and what as long as the bad thing goes on for yeah yeah a couple questions like i had

because like i remember when you're how many would you do 12 specials for netflix four yeah i just remember like you know because there's a whole generation of comics yeah i don't know i don't know where they come from and i don't know a lot of the the british guys but um but like i just remember when it came out it's like this guy just did four he dropped four and i'm like what the fuck is that who does that right so i immediately resentful and uh i'm like who's who's this young dude she's gonna drop four specials so i remember i started to watch one and I was like, I'm just not going to do it. Yeah. Out of spite. Out of spite, I'm not going to do it. And so, but then like I realized that you'd done all this other stuff.

So I went back and then I saw that clip that was going around about the, you know, the Christians and the trans thing, which is like an area where I like to talk about. But so I went back and I watched some of the specials. And like the first thing i got is that where'd you get that mic oh yeah yeah yeah i had to get yeah so that was uh there's one of the shows all four of those shows was shows that i did over quite a big period of time and then filmed them all at once but there was like six years of touring them and then doing the next

one and i think one of them um it just happened that like i had a red stool that the venue had for the month in edinburgh uh so i was using this red stool anyway and then uh the backdrop i wanted a backdrop last minute yeah uh because the stage was too deep and it looked mad so they were like we've got this red curtain and i thought this looks stupid i've got a red curtain and a red stool yeah um and then so i just lent into it and all the red clothes i had in my suitcase i wore for the show as well for the for the one in edinburgh yeah yeah so then when it came to doing that show on tour i think my tour manager just suggested it and just went do you want us to get you a mic that is also the same color as everything else and i just said yes to it and uh managed to and

then just like just you know i don't know if you've had it but you just don't even look for stuff and you find it so i had to buy a new mic cord and then found one that matched um the rest of this you know it's a yellow one that matched the pattern on my tie and then i had to get new shoelaces i walked into a shop and it was like the exact same as my mic cord shoelaces which no one has ever noticed obviously who's watched the specials but uh yeah and then it just when that's them when filming the specials i was like let's have that full for them and try and do the color thing well i i notice it right away because i'm like that this is the only thing we work with i'm very hung up on microphones i only use ones with wires i won't

use one with no wire because it bothers me yeah i feel untethered they're usually too fat they don't fit into a mic stand properly so so when i saw that mic i started looking for colored mics i'm like where the fuck what kind of mic is that where would he get that mic yeah someone had to spray it there's someone guy did it yeah sprayed it for us yeah yeah yeah that's what i realized after i couldn't find one that that you had it was a it was a set deck job yeah somebody from props did it yeah yeah someone had done it and um i've got it still somewhere at home i'm very fond of it obviously did you take it with you when you know for the last tour i just used whatever might i had in the venue and then when we filmed it um i i worked with the same production company who filmed the

netflix ones and uh they are even more meticulous over detail than I am. So they were like, you can't just use a normal mic because you used a spray one for the last one. So they got a mic and sprayed it the colors of that show and gave it to us. But I just used it for the taping. Right. So now you're the guy that they're like, we got to spray a mic. That's it. Now, if I ever do a show, there's a normal mic.

Everyone's going to go, oh, he's slipping in stand. I'm not going to bother watching that based on the photos because he's clearly not caring i'm very specific about mics you get you sort of get attached to things you know i don't bring them i don't i'm not one of those guys that brings a mic to the gig yeah but i if it's a weird mic i'm like where'd you even get this just get a 58 anyway there's one mic why why fuck with that i don't know so but i don't know about a lot about what's going on with the like i had a bad experience at edinburgh okay years ago and i i ran into the woman who put me through it last night the gilded balloon lady what's her name karen karen yeah yeah i i i bumped into her the other day she it wasn't her fault yeah i didn't know the the way it worked yeah like i i would my wife

had just left me it was like 2007 maybe and she brought me over on a double bill with kirk fox which i didn't realize like already out of the gate strike against you double bill means these guys are green they don't have full shows and they're americans who cares yeah yeah so right away i had no idea uh so but it was produced so i didn't need to fly her but no one came i was there for a fucking month yeah and you know i'm maxing out at like 22 people yeah and uh and i'd just been left and the guy i was working with was annoying me and we were living together and during the month i was there his mother died oh god yeah and i thought well this will open up the time for me i can you know he'll go home i'll do it's a first thought is that your first thought yeah yeah straight to that no no i felt bad because i was like what are

you gonna do because i just assume you probably go home he's like no i'm gonna write it out so like now i'm dealing with a slightly sadder guy that i'm living with and i'm i'm in the middle of a separation so it was just and we're doing a show every night for nine people it was fucking devastating awful and then you go i don't know if you have this problem too like it's just not enough about me generally at any festival. Okay. Yeah. Like I go to festivals.

People are like, it's great. You get to see people. All it does is remind me how many fucking comics there are. Yeah. And how, again, how little I truly matter in the big picture. You grew up in festival culture, really? Kind of. Yeah.

When I started stand-up, I wasn't that aware of edinburgh yeah but people said to me straight away like you need to go and all my friends would go in who i got all my new friends uh in comedy and i went and like but yeah the first edinburgh i went to it was it was last minute decision yeah and i lived in ketwin uh in northamptonshire in the middle of england and i didn't live in lond. And I got a 12-hour coach to get there because I couldn't afford to get the trains. So this very long coach journey. And I camped outside of the festival for two weeks.

In the wilderness? Yeah, like in a little campsite that was in a bowl-shaped field that was like, and it was torrential rain for the full two weeks. So on night one, my tent just got washed away and all of my belongings got soaked and flooded and that was like night one of two weeks and i didn't have any gigs booked uh i was just gonna go and try and get on bills and turn up and ask to get on um you know can you do that yeah but like but they have to be like free entry mixed bill gigs that do different lineups every day right i'll just show up asked to be on most of the time in the

first couple of days they'd tell me we can get you on tomorrow and put my name down and it was and by the end of that two weeks i was doing six gigs a day and i've been doing comedy since january and it was august and it was by far the most invaluable two weeks of my entire career still it was like really you know i found my first routine that actually repeatedly would work during that two weeks interesting yeah and uh learned a lot about oh maybe this is who i am as a comic but but it was you know pretty brutal and you definitely felt like um yeah on the grand scale of things with this festival i'm absolutely nothing because I've just started. Sure.

Yeah. I have a gift of feeling that way throughout my career. You can always find ways of feeling like it. Yeah. Yeah. It's always possible. But that's it. So you were doing comedy.

How long when you took that on? So it's like, yes, six, seven months, something like that. And what was the, what was the,

what were you doing before? I was in bands. So I played the drums in a series of bands with my mates uh so are you a drummer i was i i used to teach the drums and like that was like uh what i did after school i really taught the drums i worked in a kitchen part-time and but i wanted to be in a band like i was in a band with some friends i didn't didn't go to university and we just were like we're gonna be this we're gonna change the world with our music and it's gonna be like that you believed it we really believed we were gonna reinvent and everything oh good like it was really lofty ambitions now we were our only fans as well

no one liked us it was very badly at gigs and remodeling yourself after we what was the what was like you know we're gonna do it like who yeah i think we wanted to be like a more kind of uh clean uh like version of frank zapper but with the vocals of the beach boys wow and we were not talented enough mark and there were only two of us so it was very hard to achieve that a clean version of frank zappa yeah vocals like the beach boys yeah and uh yeah what's funny is like you know like those are both you know relatively like i imagine that the beach boys you aspire to were the the kind of brian wilson driven deep yeah you know like the it wasn't just the pop beach boys it was like right it was constantly

every band practice would have a lunch break at some point and every lunch break my friend graham who was also in the band would put on uh the either the pet sounds right uh recording sessions yeah so it was just brian starting the Wrecking Crew, stopping it, telling them, let's turn that up, let's try that again, doing it again. Or it was like listening to a documentary about Smile or something like that. So it was that every day.

So two entirely esoteric American musical talents in a way. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a certain type of people that like just, I can't listen to Brian Wilson. It's too sad for me. You can't at all. Not really.

But so it didn't work out. It didn't work out. But, and when it stopped, I was like, I've been trying to be in bands since I was 13. I learned the drums, I started learning the drums when I was seven. When I was 13 at school, I was trying to make every single one of my friends be in bands since i was 13 i learned the drums that i started learning the drums when i was seven when i was 13 at school yeah i was trying to make every single one of my friends be in bands with me trying to make people care about it by the end of that band i was 22 and i didn't have the energy yeah yeah to try and find more people again try make them care again so i started doing stand-up because i didn't have any qualifications didn't have have any backup plan, but I knew I liked being on stage

and I liked traveling around and doing gigs and seeing different parts of the UK. So what about your folks? Do you have brothers and sisters? Yeah, I've got younger brother, younger sister. And were they supportive of the whole thing? Yeah, they all were. Well, the thing is that I'd done one or two stand-up gigs while being in the band still just to see if I could do it

because I was a big fan of stand-up and just wanted to do it for the fun of it and my sister had been to one of the gigs and kind of came away going i think you should do that uh and my parents are probably one of the only comics whose parents said you know a safer bet might be that you do stand-up because like they were like you know your sister says she saw you at that gig uh so maybe do that because before i cared about stand-up and just did gigs every now and again i just always had a good gig because i didn't i didn't care about it right so i'd go on stage and just mess around i didn't care how good it was or how and so it would go quite well yeah and i thought in my very naive head i was like oh so that means it's easy. So I'll just do that and it'll be easy.

And then as soon as I started trying to do it properly, every gig went badly and was very, very difficult because I was, you know, I was going, well, if I'm going to do this, if I'm going from being in this band that was going to change the world, I need to now do something that has at least some artistic merit. So let's think about the routines you really want to do and what you really want to say on stage and of course i wasn't good enough to do any of those uh yet so it was fully but that was what that was sort of that was the intention i mean because like who like you didn't have any other jobs really though when i was doing stand-up

i was like uh working in kitchens still oh yeah uh washing up and not teaching drums no uh well i think i know i was teaching drums for the first year of maybe doing stand-up and then i moved to london and i was a classroom assistant in the daytime at a school for autistic children what's that what's that mean classroom assistant uh so just like uh not the teacher but the person who's like just helping out the kids who need extra help and how do you get a gig like that uh i had weirdly so casting assistant you don't need any you can just apply but the fact that i taught kids the drums and i've done some respite work with uh a kid who had down syndrome so i'd worked with people with special needs before so it will it like kind of made it that okay you can probably do this job yeah and uh so i did that

for nine months and look and at the end of that and i really enjoyed it like i didn't i was doing it because i was like that gives me my evenings free to do gigs that was the main reason i was moving to london just to do gigs there's no point doing a job that's going to get in the way of that so i'll work and then do gigs in the evening yeah but i really got invested in it and really uh there's so much problem solving in it um working with the autistic kids yeah like you gotta learn what each kid you know what what triggers them what will calm them down what they you know what they're like how they communicate and that would be really fascinating and um enriching each day yeah i mean like there's something that really grounds you about like doing real service work right you know what i mean like

when you're really working with people that have health and it's not just as simple as like you know well my problems aren't that big or whatever but it almost it makes you understand what it what it feels like to what you're supposed to feel like as a good person right yeah well the whole thing is an exercise in empathy if you're working with people with autism that's right because you have to think in any situation right what in this room is potentially going to make them feel uneasy yeah and uh and how am i going to deal with that so you're you know having constantly think how do these seven individuals all feel in this environment yeah and and it would i definitely think for that time when i was working there i was a lot more um kind of forgiving with most people

like just outside of work as well like if they were behaving like a jerk yeah yeah yeah i'll be like yeah but it's probably because of all these factors and right right right not just because they're just a bad person sure yeah and uh although you know work could be quite intense i was working with one kid one-on-one who wasn't autistic he had emotional behavior difficulties he was misdiagnosed and put in the school yeah and it would be quite difficult all day long and i would go and do a gig in the evening and if anyone heckled me i had to not respond because i knew if i respond it's going to be everything that i wanted to say to that kid in the day just unleashed on this one person who was just wanting to join in well that's like that

attitude of like uh this sort of british attitude about hecklers that just want to join in like that so that's not good either no none of it's good yeah i would have probably chosen to unload on the heckler yeah well i've done some gigs where i've done that and really really i i don't know how you feel when you choose to let him have it but more often than not i i go away going i really wish i hadn't done that and i really regret saying the things to that person and i know a lot of the time now comedy good comedians are painted and it's like quite a small minority of comedians but they're very vocal as being like i don't give a shit how the audience feels i'm gonna say whatever and this is and uh i think most comedians but they're very vocal as being like i don't give a shit how the audience feels i'm gonna say whatever and this is and uh i think most comedians just come away going i don't think i

should have said that should i said that thing i think i've heard that person's feelings oh no even even the the real revolutionaries yeah yeah man i think they were yeah i've i've made some very bad choices because not unlike i know that i have a a sort of eternal well of of resentment and emotional weird emotional neediness that underneath i guess most of us are very sensitive so depending on how the set's going like if the whole thing's not going well and somebody you know speaks up it it's's going to go badly for everybody. And you can't win because there's that line where you're dealing with them and you know that you have a very delicate balance to have the rest of the people still with you. But as soon as you cross that, as soon as the audience is going like, oh, for God's sake, leave that guy alone.

And then the whole thing's fucked i did a thing once i saw a documentary once where a group of uh chimps in the jungle yeah chased another chimp down and killed it oh that's that the jane goodall thing maybe it was a jane goodall thing all i remember is that the chimps are kind of walking away at one point and there's the dead body of the yeah yeah yeah and another chimp just it's like the last chimp walking away decides to double back go back and just gives one punch to the corpse and then continues to walk away and there's that image sometimes at gigs yeah you feel that line where you've gone i've just doubled back and punched the corpse in front of everybody and that was and that's too much for everyone like that person's already done and i've gone i've moved on on everyone's thought we're moving on now and then i've gone yeah and by the way you

're a piece of shit and i just gone back again and it's like why i'm trying that is my main i don't know about you but like during lockdown i was really realized uh it's my longest amount of time not doing stand-up since Right, me too, me too. And I really liked it and I didn't miss stand-up at all. I had the same experience. Yeah. During lockdowns, I was very much like, oh, I would happily never do it again. It's a relief.

I don't feel like I need to. I feel like, as you say, I feel healthier. Yeah. I feel like my body is not being put through as much every evening. And the brain, though, because I don't know where you generate, but you seem more able to generate from, you know, to sort of like, your craft is very good, and I think there's something about the way guys in Europe do long form comedy, I think because of Edinburgh,

you see it as a show, and you at least are gonna tie it back around somehow. And I picked that up later in my career, but you can sort of go off on things that, my brain's not gonna think of, it needs to be existentially important to me. Yeah. And I'm not sure entertainment was always my intention.

Uh-huh. But you seem to have found peace with, you know, finding relatively mundane things that you can make into, to heighten. And I wish I had that skill. I don't know that I do. Well, those Netflix shows were that. But then the show I did after, where that clip is from that you mentioned I watch I watch the first half of that yeah so that's more yeah the end of that half is just whimsical jokes but the first half of that is as true stories and then the

second half is all true stories and very personal and I feel that well now I've stepped over into that it feels weird being on stage and not doing that uh being personal yeah well just for the audience it feels weird to be like why are you saying you're an undercover cop again or whatever because like actually we know you now um so that that makes it well i i well well that's interesting so first go back to lockdown like you you felt good you felt comfortable and you felt but also didn't give your brain a rest yeah gave and like just so much less anxiety and um less self-doubt i i get very um i doubt myself so much with this and my confidence gets very low very quickly yeah and it doesn't necessarily matter

what and also people uh very nice people who are correct in their behavior and what they say to me uh saying like yeah we'll try and go like but this is going on and this is going on people like this oh yeah yeah and i know they're right yeah but i also know that how i'm feeling isn't a logical it's not a logical feeling for whatever reason uh i feel like what i'm doing whatever my stand-up is or whatever is very uh throwaway trite um this other thing that i've seen someone else do is high art it's beautiful it's perfect i just watched it i think it's so good that's what i'm doing right now you know yeah i watched a film the other day that just made me go I watched a film the other day that just made me go,

oh, I'm never going to do that. What film? I mean, it's a film I've seen a lot, but I watched Inglourious Bastards. Yeah. And I went, because I just felt like watching it again. I was like, oh, yeah, this will be fun. Yeah, right.

And then it was just putting myself through, I was oh every scene in this it's perfect and the way he shot it and the oh this is a man like oh i just think about actually the concept of it he's you know i take it for granted but he's done this whole yeah yeah fictitious story but based around like the nazis and the the second world war yeah this is actually such a big achievement and uh the final shot is amazing it's perfect and the yeah just down to like bj novak's little smirk at the end and then it cuts and you're like fucking it like so good yeah and then like that pause and going no i'm never gonna never gonna do that and no one no one cares about my fucking netflix specials or like like no one cares about that and uh so many things have been bad that's way layered for me because i have actually a

personal kind of insecure driven resentment of bj novak so my experience with that would have been like there's two reasons why like how the fuck did that kid get so successful and i'm never gonna make a movie you know yeah sure that that that doesn't help but but i but see but i try to deal with that all the time like right now like i'm in that right now and i've been doing this a long time and i don't understand it but you understand and and i think you're right that it's a part of the brain that's sort of this useless appendage it's like this self uh loathing this hammer that we hit ourselves with even though there's given our our experience and and what we've created already why why why even have that anymore you know you've done like nine shows or however many hours but still is there this thing it's

like i don't know how to do this and i'm going to judge myself against somebody who's doing something that i haven't even set out to do yeah yeah it's not even but then i think when it's the useless appendage thing so i'll convince myself sometimes that it's useful so there's that thing of like it's like you're both characters in whiplash so you're both of them so like you're both of them yeah and and the whole thing is like the whole debate of that film of like you know is that person nothing does that help having someone yell at you that you're fucking awful all the time and that you're useless you're a piece of shit then does that drive you to greatness and you can't achieve that unless you got so sometimes

i'm like well the reason i work very hard is because i feel insecure like i'm not good enough right so i'm constantly trying to be good enough all the time yeah um but then but there's no there's there's no cap to that no there's no cap to it right so so you can't win that one you can't win and also like it it's not gonna there are more important things so it's trying to like that last tour i did with uh with that the latest special yeah by the end of it i i just hated being on stage and i hated doing stand-up and it made me feel bad about myself hated the repetition no i just hated um it was the most i'd ever hardest i'd ever worked on a show it was two hours long uh i got way outside of my comfort zone doing personal stuff and talk about my mental health when before i just hid behind this thing of saying

i was doing jury service or something fake and the work in progress shows have gone really well because work in progress you're always in front of very dedicated comedy nerds who like to see the process yeah so even though your material isn't that great yet they don't they give you quite generous with their laughter and then for me every time every time i then tour the show yeah when it's finished yeah there to the people who are more casual comedy fans they've seen you on one or two things right and they would turn up and on the last tour i did all those people turned up and they heckled from the start they heckled if i was talking about especially during the mental health bits that heckle with some pretty weird inappropriate stuff that wasn't very kind yes and um and i just started to get

very bored of it and very like why did i put that much also i was tired i was i didn't give myself any time off that yeah and when i'm tired i get very negative i was like why did i spend you know over a year honing this show yeah to then go out and tour it to people who i may as well have just gone out and roasted everyone in the audience and they would have been happy i could have gone out and been shit and it would have been just as good to them because they don't care and i felt very much like this you know what's the fucking point of this like i don't want to do it anymore um but also though the the thing that you did as well and and i do it as well is you made yourself vulnerable to a room full of fucking monsters sure sure so

like you know there there's something about like if just, if you're not doing well with stuff that the only risk is, you know, making something funny. Yeah. Like, if you've made it a thing where it's like, this is a funny bit. And, you know, my emotional risk is only that I'll feel shitty because it didn't get the laughs. You know, that rejection, that sort of baseline, the job of comedian rejection. Yeah. And however we deal with that. But once you start like putting your heart out there,

which, you know, I do fairly often, you know, you've really got to find a trustworthy bunch or at least that audience. But so, I mean, you have an audience, but you've taken this shift where you're showing more of yourself. And then all of a sudden the audience is sort of like, they get uncomfortable

because they got to hold up their end there's an emotional responsibility to them receiving uh you know your honesty yeah well some of them are like that yeah right but but then there's always one asshole and there's and and they are the people that we've not liked our entire life yeah and that's the problem with that especially going back to being brutal to hecklers, is that you go through, you just come in here to Montreal at the airport, there's a lot of awful people at the airport who are pushing in queues and getting right up to the baggage carousel

so no one else can see their bags because they want theirs so badly. And you hate them all and you can't say anything to them because you're not that kind of person, you don't want the confrontation. But when you're on stage, they might be in the audience and you can say it. and it seems like a great thing to do and then sometimes i realize i've misread that they weren't that person

and now i've said all that stuff to someone and i feel sure always yeah sometimes they're just drunk or they're just have moments it's you i don't imagine that given where you are in your career and and is that you're not you're not getting a lot of those people, the bad guys. Yeah, yeah. Because they know who you are. But I mean, that's the sort of logic of going back to the autistic experience and having a certain amount of empathy for everyone who does asshole things. Like I get livid very quickly and I know it's not correct. I know it's not correct, but I'm also like you've got to find a midway point for yourself in that empathy thing. Because you can't just walk around apologizing for everybody and giving everyone the leeway because that's how fascism happens.

So he's not that bad of a guy. He just believes what he believes. All right. But the satisfaction is limited to – it's very hard when you're doing that kind of material to distance yourself from the show itself because you still have to do it every night and you still got to put yourself out there. Doing it every night and that, there was a new like kind of exhaustion

that I hadn't experienced before of like, especially if I went out in the first half and someone would do a kind of dumb heckle in the first 10 minutes and the whole audience would laugh at the heckle, I would make a decision in my head of, now i'm not doing this routine this routine this routine or that routine and i'm doing none of them and i'm not going to tell them that because that'd be petulant i'm not going to go oh yeah guess what there were four routines that i was going to do but i don't trust you and also not but that idiot yeah yeah fucked it up for

everybody do that so i'm not going to say that to them but i'd make the decision of okay we're going into b material for those bits now that'll be easier on me and they won't even know because i don't want to tell them that i have suicidal thoughts sometimes i don't want to tell them uh that you know that i had a breakdown in 2017 i don't want to talk to them about any of that because I now don't trust them and I don't feel comfortable in that and so or sometimes I would you know plow ahead and do it anyway and then they would behave the way that I feared they would behave and then you're like okay great trust your instincts yeah yeah I should have known that but but there's also but then don't you ever do the argument of like well that's going to make me tougher yeah if i'm if i'm not physically and mentally exhausted

yeah like on tour when i'm that tired yeah i just kind of go i think it's i think it will make all of us collectively weaker if i do this like i'll be so tired and i've seen comics when i started out in stand-up um the reason why I was able to quit that job at the school was because Josie Long asked me to support her on tour, one of my favourite comics ever, and it was a very big deal to me. And she was doing a show that was like an hour and a half long, and the first half was like, at the time,

what she was known for, just like very in-depth and intricately written, whimsical routines, and really delivered in a beautiful way. And then the second half was this first time she she never dove into politics yeah talking about uk politics yeah and had a lot more like righteous uh like anger in it and frustration in it and it was a real gear shift and she would do it every night and and regardless of if the audience like sometimes the audience were quite clearly uh not there for that

or they weren't really like a very comedy audience and they just come to the gig and you'd think, well, I would bail on that second half now because I would be scared. But she'd do it every single time. And I remember watching it as a new comedian and every time being really blown away by the fact she would do it no matter what. And then after that, she did two shows that were just pure political shows and you saw the fruits of that so oh that's why she did that because now she can nail that style she did it in the hardest environments and now she's got two exactly more shows they're not good um but i will end up in those situations now and

go i know i'll just eject and do something else because i have sometimes i will push through and do that you know go down the harder route but yeah yeah i i find that like as i get older though and i think always like you know whatever i'm ejecting to is just a little less yeah uh yeah it's i don't have like you know well i used to have like more cat material so like like there were points in certain acts where because i go through these levels like now i'm talking about you know the the death of my partner yeah you know over covid and like there's a moment where i'm like after i've just talked about my father's dementia i'm like let's do the real stuff you know like so but like but i think the weight of that is, in what you're talking about, is just that it's a true emotional risk.

And the exhaustion you're going to feel and what it does to people who we have a thing in common where whether it's insecurity or depression or whatever, or depression or whatever, that insecurity or feeling that you're not being received for doing that stuff, it'll trigger a shift in the way we see everything for however long that happens. Yeah. And I think ultimately it can stick for longer

and then you have to deconstruct it to get back to just a fucking regular day. Well, it's the thing that, you know,'s only to do stand up again yeah after the pan not after the pandemic after lockdowns yeah but like is i knew that's still going to be there yeah and has especially having to had those two years away from it and really appreciate you needed the break yeah needed the break but going like oh without it i feel better so if i'm gonna go back to it number one on the list of things that i've got to do is combat that and figure that out i've got to figure out how not to end up in that night after night again but do you think

like do you i guess my question is, and not unlike what I felt during the pandemic, which is maybe I'm better, but do you question your intentions of sharing that? I mean, because like what I've grown to believe is that, you know, with my podcast and with what I talk about on stage, that there are people that get an awful lot out of it in the sense that they feel less alone.

When you talk about suicidal thoughts, when you talk about about your breakdown when you talk about like whether it's substance abuse or whatever whether i do or or my suicidal thoughts or my brain because i used to do what was that i used to do a bit about how like you know i think about suicide all the time but not because i want to kill myself i just feel better knowing i can if i have to yeah you know and and i and and that's a way for me to compartmentalize suicide ideation because i have it all the fucking time yeah yeah what's your experience with it uh it's it it was throw away kind of like not very serious stuff quite flippant stuff and then in 2017 when like and i'm still kind of figuring out what

really happened to me at the start of that year because like some you know there was like little things that were like well not little things but like you know on the surface things that were short-term triggers for having a quote-unquote breakdown but like i know that my head just wasn't in a good place over years of years of probably not going to therapy, not ever really doing the work and looking after myself. How'd the breakdown manifest? Just straight into just pure self-hatred at the beginning. Really not liking myself.

Yeah. I remember being in so i went to do some gigs in new york for the first time yeah in at the start of 2017 and that was at peak really not feeling good about myself i remember walking around new york and for the first time thinking like there's this bridge there and there's that place there. And then going, and then really catching myself and being like, okay, fuck, you need to sort this out. So that was coming from a place, for me, my suicidal ideation is usually from massive anxiety.

Yeah. And it's just sort of like, it would be easier. You know, I just want to know that I can do that to get but like i i don't really want to do but it sounds like you were like oh like it was the first time that i was like like that but then but then very quickly it's like right as soon as i get home yeah i'm finding a therapist right immediately right like because like you know and i had it before i had a breakup in like 2013 and after that i was like that was when i started going to the gym so like i had that and i was like right we need to do something you can't sit around feeling sad we have to do so right when i'm

feeling like that it's just that in the past i've always let it get that bad now i don't let it get that bad i try and keep on top of things just in my day-to-day but in those two instances it was like here's something i've never done and now i feel really low so i'm going to start going to the gym all the time and then the second time was like no i'm going to start going to therapy because this has caught up with me um and it's helped massively yeah yeah yeah and you're finding that most of it you know you can you you can most of it is um cognitive and not chemical yeah uh yeah i think so i mean i don't know sometimes it can be one or the other and like you're just trying to work through things on a case by case like i haven't had um those kind of thoughts since 2017 really actually no that's not true i have i have had moments where i've maybe

haven't had as serious a thing that was like my brain i was like idly almost planning stuff in my head and i don't think i would have done it yeah but um it's never been hasn't got to that level before yeah but now you know i'll have like every other week therapy sessions so if i do have a thought that is like that yeah in any way yeah uh then break it down right let's talk about it figure out why it was there what why we were talking about that uh what i was thinking about it um and you know yeah for a lot of it it can be like i think there's a lot of stuff tied up in and maybe sometimes you can look at like why we do stand up and and figure out think there's a lot of stuff tied up in, and maybe sometimes you can look at, like, why we do stand-up and figure out if there's some self-worth things going on there

or there's how much you like yourself. So it wavers, though. Like, you know, it's like you were talking about before. Like, you know, I was working on this material. I've been working on this hour and a half or whatever it is for a long time. And I was thinking, like, this is going rude. Well, it's all coming together.

And then, like, I'll just watch somebody do something much easier. And I'll think, like, what the fuck am i doing yeah i mean like what it could be so easy yeah but like anytime i've even broached that like i i get bored and and i feel like i'm i'm i'm being disingenuous you know yeah but then also like uh you know i'll watch comedians who are doing something that i might think oh that's easier or that's um you know and then anything i bet they just like they just don't seem to care yeah and have the same stresses but then you have a car journey with one of those comics yeah and they're like oh i don't get good reviews because people don't consider what i do to be art and all this and you go oh no

we're all doing that to ourselves a lot of us except for the ones like there are guys in America and I'm sure there are guys that where you just realize

they're just getting away with something and they're making a lot of fucking money and they don't give a fuck they're just going they're not trying to do art

it's shallow shit but they're really good at it. That's the problem. There's a skill set of being an entertainer, especially a comedian, that if you're just a guy that wants to get away with it, which is like if you think about why a lot of people get into these jobs, whether they be a musician or a comic, it's easy to get girls or not work, really. It's a rare thing in or not work, really. Yeah, yeah. That it's a rare thing for, in a way, for a comic.

You know, they'll pay lip service to Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, or whoever, you know, Stuart Lee. You know, but clearly, you know, whatever that influence might have been, they journey far away from that. Sure. You know, but it's about intent and it sounds like the pressure you put on yourself and as i did too because like i'm a cultured guy right like

or i aspire to having an impact you know on on a lasting or at least a deeper level is that there was an art to it like what made you think that way i mean the music it sounds like you were well on your way, that you decided who your heroes were. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, basically, real obsession early on with classic albums and, like, I just loved...

Just, like, there's something about an album that has resonated through generations and means that much to people and you listen to it and feel like you're it's something communal with all those people who ever listened to it and and there's these magical moments that have been caught especially when it's music yeah and this you know i love all the stories about that bit was an accident and that bit was you know they got that sound from doing this and it was so, yeah, it could have been so fleeting and they were lucky to capture it,

all that stuff. And there was just something life affirming and I don't know, just sort of magical about those things. And I wanted, that's what music, yeah, for music. And that's what I wanted.

If I was, you you know in a band i wanted to make sure an album that would be perfect and every track is yeah is uh amazing and the whole thing works as a journey and then i'd you know i would also get that way about films and tv shows yeah and uh you know the the very few books that i've read uh but like you know and then we're doing stand-up at the beginning it was just to to do it and figure it out and let's try and learn this and get better at it but definitely what i wanted to do from the time i started doing stand-up was solo shows and i wanted to do hour-long solo shows and go to the Edinburgh festival and do an hour just me and i wasn't very interested in doing a 20-minute spot yeah at a club right and um and that's not and i understand like when i listen to comics like you've got a comedy store t-shirt on and

when i listen to comics like talk about those kind of venues and the legacy yeah and the stories and the people there and i love it and i think like sure oh yeah you know that those moments are incredibly special and that is a craft in and of itself and there's so much there but i just wasn't naturally naturally all i was thinking was well we're all trying to write an hour right we're all trying to do that's right these other shows right well the difference is that like i think in america you want to do an hour so you can headline in a general sense right that like it was about that think in America, you want to do an hour so you can headline in a general sense. Right.

Like, it was about that first hour. How do you get to the first hour so you can do the job of headliner? Whereas I think the benefit of that sort of Edinburgh sensibility is that, you know, the job is like, I got to get an hour solo show so I can get the attention and then tour the solo show yes right yeah and like but also it's like edinburgh the first day of edinburgh especially if you're a new comic it's so exciting if you've got a solo show on there because the first day suddenly it doesn't matter what has been going on the last year right everyone is at the starting line at the same point and i hate to like illustrate it like it's a race or it's a competition, but it feels like I could have,

I could be the talk of this festival and no one knows who I am right now. But by the end, right, like everyone could be going to see my show. And it is just based on the quality of, if I really work hard and I make this show as good as possible is how I thought in my head. And I know that's not always true. There might be comedians listening to this who are like

i have taken incredibly honed shows to edinburgh and everyone ignored me yeah um so there is there is luck involved and there can be bad luck with venues and times and all that stuff but and also who the hell knows what makes people like people who knows yeah but i definitely i would i would start working on my show in september yeah and then take it to edinburgh in august and the whole year would be working on the show and i do i have a lot of bad club sets and i would do some pieces with bits and pieces and try new material out no matter what the gig was right and um for the sole intention of of putting you'd have to try it piecemeal right you'd have to say like this

chunk and then i'm gonna go yeah this bit's not working at the minute every time i do a work in progress this 20 isn't working you never just get a theater and work it as an hour or improvise yeah but then like when i was you know most of my diary at that point when i was starting out was still 20 minute sets and so i'm quite badly paid 20 minutes sets so i thought i'm not being paid much so i may as well get something out of this that means that i get to go away and like right i've got i've that bit's better i've solved that problem because i don't want there to be a 10 minute lull in the show where the material's not as good right now that didn't mean that there wasn't those moments in the show but in my head that's what i was like i really don't ignore that bit and go ah that's

yeah that's fine that that's not as good as the rest of it the rest of it's good you know and so and then you know i'd have really sometimes i do gigs abroad i'm going to bahrain to do a bunch of gigs with some comics when i was writing the undercover cop show yeah and inexplicably in front of a bunch of British expats in a rugby club choosing to go out and say I was an undercover cop and of course just absolutely eating shit for the whole set yeah and coming off like well they were never gonna that was you were never gonna get anything out of that that was stupid but in my head I was like all i want to do at the minute is crack this undercover cockpit so i'm not going to bother doing anything else right no no i don't necessarily have that attitude now but like definitely back then i was

like what counts is as that month in the year where i can really go and um get people talking a little bit yeah right in that but but in a way it seems that in that model of the the european model it's like that's also how you're going to make your living for the year a good chunk of it and also i don't i i don't enjoy in terms of enjoying it we're talking about you know how much we don't enjoy it sometimes but also equally i love I love it. I love stand-up. I love doing stand-up. I love writing it and developing it. And the only time, the main thing that makes me love it is doing the work. And so, like, if I'm not developing it.

Or making the work work. Yeah, right. And just actually feeling like I've improved. This is going better. And so, that was how i would enjoy gigs as well because i knew that the most enthusiastic i'll ever be after a gig is when i'd solved a problem or got a new bit and it worked and then that was why that was what got me excited about stand-up in the first place right when you do but like when you're doing like your commitment to to the

undercut of a cup it was that you knew that was going to be the framework of the whole hour kind of but in at the start oh yeah like it was just um stick with the it was trying to just follow the thing that you whatever is inside you you want to do that you think that's funny for some reason it's not working now but trust that it's funny so like in those netflix shows that the i think the last routine in it in the fourth show is me with a i've got a wooden duck and i hold it at the audience i've got my back to them i'm doing a very long monologue and um that was actually my second edinburgh show because that show's made of a bunch of little bits from past shows and my first edinburgh show was just like you know often it's just the best of for most new newcomers you just do yeah here's my best material and you kind of hate it by the end because you're very sick of

all the stuff and i want to do something different i remember doing a gig with that duck and uh a 10 minute spot and trying to find what was funny about the duck yeah and all i knew was that i'd stolen this duck from a pub and i wanted to do something with it on stage and i didn't know what it was and i was trying to riff about and talk about it and i did a thing about i feel guilty about stealing it i can't look it in the eyes and i turned my back so i wasn't looking at the duck and only the audience were looking at the duck and it was a silence and no one was laughing yeah but my friend david trent uh he's a comedian was on the bill and i came off and i and it was incredibly helpful he just he kind of said that and then he kind of mimed holding the duck at the audience and looking away

from him. He went, that's funny. And it just really helped. Yeah. So I was like, yeah, that is,

and no one was laughing. Even you weren't laughing, David. Right. But like, but there's something in that and it is funny. Yeah. And it was a very,

very helpful moment of going like okay every show now whatever the thing you have that feeling about just do that so the undercover cop thing was just like there's something funny about telling them i'm an undercover cop yeah and it wasn't going well from the start yeah because it was just gonna be a routine about just i'm an undercover cop and one little routine and then move on to some other stuff because that's all my shows have been before that was bit bitty bits and um eventually it was stumbling along just carry on saying it sure for the whole thing and actually it doesn't have to be a routine right do you write but like do you write on stage do you yeah i mean that's sort of the way i do it but so you don't write it all out no no and like you know

i've considered like recently since like starting up again and going like maybe you should go back to it because i used to write stuff out and my second edinburgh show uh which is mainly what that fourth netflix show is made of yeah i sat down and wrote it all and it was also it was like for whatever reason that year that was the easiest thing for me to do and i just found i'd sit down and get so much done i was like well this is how i work now i'm gonna sit down and write everything and this is great and then my show after that i tried to do that and it was like it was just hellish sitting there and trying to think of stuff and suddenly i couldn't yeah i hated that show and which one uh it wasn't on the it was like some of the routines made it

into the fourth netflix show but uh it was a show where i mainly spent the majority of it defending yoko ono for the whole show and that hasn't ended up anywhere you won't see that oh i see so is this in edinburgh my third my third show in edinburgh okay but but also like i don't know i don't i've never like I'll write out things. I mean, I've got, you know, like, pages and pages of shit. But it looks like that. Yes. And, you know, it's helpful, but I don't abide by it.

There's some part of me that, you know, once I see it on paper, it's sort of dead. Yeah. Or something. Yeah. If it's on paper and I remember it and I say it out loud on stage, it sounds like i'm reciting something yeah yeah yeah and i'm not communicating with them right and so much of it is i have to be actually communicating with the people in the room with the opening for you know something to happen and yeah i imagine it probably you're saying that you wrote out a lot of the stuff that was the heavy the show that you you took the biggest emotional risks no so that one wasn't written out yeah you know that that one was just you don't even know if you

can say it work in progress not wanting to do that show in the first place wanting to do a show that was about the best year of my life instead because i was i just you know i'd had this whole thing yeah so i had this whole thing of well that's the worst year in my life what i've just had and i hated it so then i thought well obviously don't tell them that on stage because that's the worst year of my life what I've just had and I hated it. So then I thought, well, obviously don't tell them that on stage because that's not what you do. You don't do that in your comedy. So let's go out and do a show about the best year of your life and then maybe at the end you can reveal

that you only wrote this show because you've recently had the worst year of your life or whatever. And I would go on work in progress shows and try and talk about the best year of my life and I would start talking about a happy memory and I'd very quickly quickly the jokes i was adding on stage or improvising on stage were about negative stuff about the present yeah and that

was and they just resonated with it more because i could tell that's where i genuinely was and then i started talking about the stuff that had happened and uh and at the early gigs where that went well it was the most i'd ever enjoyed stand-up and i was suddenly like oh this is like a whole new thing and it's really exciting the honesty of it yeah yeah and then you know you then you try and intentionally do that show and then you have the gigs where you do an hour yeah and they're just really upset by it and you go i don't think i should have told them any of that and Who do you think you upset though? Well, I mean,

one guy in the front row, I really, the show genuinely ended with me holding a crying audience member while the audience just filed out in silence. And it was like, Holy shit, this is at the end of that special?

Yeah, I'd said something, I was talking about, I gotta watch, I'm such an idiot. No worries. I was talking about getting gaslit by my agent and this guy had just had a similar experience with a family member

and I was basically not... I was not finding what was funny about the routine that night. So I was just telling them the story. And I was struggling to find a joke and he said he's on the front row and he said it's really hard isn't it and I thought he meant comedy yeah cuz obviously defensive and right what yeah so it's working programs trying to you went no I mean just this such that kind of situation you talk about is really hard

yeah like oh yeah and then he started saying i've been through something similar and then bursting the tears and then like i just instinctively was like give the guy a hug because i don't really know i don't know and then you're like should i be doing this i don't know and then uh we kind of went oh do you know what everyone let's just it's there's another show got to start here in a second and i just think we're best off we're not going to recover i'm not going to find a big closer after this i think we should just all go yeah and i'll stay and talk to this man for a while um but stuff like that made me kind of go okay you you know i don't want to do that to people every night so i have to find a way of talking about don't want to do that to people every night.

So I have to find a way of talking about this that doesn't do that to someone. Right, but that's like interesting because it's not like people were disappointed. It was just that like you didn't know if you could hold your side of the emotional interaction. Yeah, well, yeah, and I'm like... Because like I'm doing, I'm talking about the death of a loved one and i'm talking about stuff and i and i can feel but like for me i guess it is a matter of recovery and i think you probably could recover from it

and that you know the only way to do that is to you sort of you know kind of take them in and then you know kind of ease them out so the overall experience becomes sort of emotionally nuanced with you know like laughing and and some sort of laughing crying and then laughing but you want to make sure that crying is laughing crying sure yeah yeah i mean so much of it is if if they want uh making them want what you're about to do yeah and um i think with that show and working progress is they didn't necessarily come for that sort of stuff and i just suddenly do that i guess yeah how are you gonna know you make a change you can't tell people like you know in the promotion you can't be like this is not what you expect it's much different you might not like it come on down then i had to rewrite it so that it to make them want it to find a middle you give them moments in

it where and you think about that a lot yeah given moments that kind of gives them the option if we could go down that road we could go on that road and then having them go letting them realize that that road is more interesting and then doing that right right so like just building it so you can go weaving it having it in there in the materials not literally offering it up to them the choice but like having having moments in the storytelling that makes them go oh yeah that would be good actually kind of sneaky and like with you like with what you're doing at the minute like you know they're i presume they already know yeah that's right everything before you sure so like they're going to be thinking if you if you try to do a show now

that wasn't about that well that's what i thought you know like i tell them right away like the whole premise of the bit i'm working on is like i thought about other options but i'm a guy who talks about himself and i thought like maybe you know i do this whole bit about like maybe a serious one-person show with a jewish theme you know like mark maron's kaddish a prayer for the dead you know and i build that out and like i know people walk out of that show saying like definitely wasn't funny yeah i'm happy he did it he seemed to work through something and then and then i do a riff on maybe a TED Talk. But ultimately, I talk about it. And as it begins, it's not essentially funny. But it does get funnier once I can establish that I went through this horrible pain.

Everybody's been in grief before. And it's very hard to deal with. And you can't control it. And most people don't really know what to do with it, the people around you. But the revelation is, you know, most people don't have to do anything but witness it, but stand there sometimes. You know, nothing's going to make you feel better.

But I say, you know, basically the premise of that one piece is that I got tired of crying in front of strangers. But, you know, they just stand there and you realize, like, you know, when you're done crying, you're like, enough yeah you know what i mean yeah yeah but but yeah they know that but but i'm also operating on the premise which i i think that i i don't haven't really heard you talk about because i you're very conscious of of taking care of your audience or at least presenting something that they're going to want to see, which I don't think about as much. But I lean more on the premise of that.

These feelings are common, and they're not feelings that many people talk about, whether they are grief or depression or all that, but they're very common. And I imagine there's a layer of resistance just in a British way. Yeah, yeah. Right? I don't know how true that is because I don't live there, but there's this idea that British people

don't access that emotional dialogue. Well, there's different stuff of like, you know, we're definitely more repressed, not like so repressed that it's like crazy. But there are certain things in that show, like, you know, when I in that show like you know when i did that show in america i had a whole bit about my therapist behaving inappropriately with me yeah and everyone in the audience already knew what the lines are with therapy yeah and what

lines you shouldn't cross sure so when i did that routine in america right it would get so many more when I did that routine in America, right. It would get so many more reactions all over the place, line after line, because they were like, they already saw, Oh, she shouldn't have done that.

She shouldn't have said that stuff. And so it was really fun. Yeah. And then I'd do it in the UK and was like, okay, this is a different routine now. Cause a lot of people in this audience don't know what the lines are. They don't want to admit that that person shouldn't have done that right shouldn't have said that so i kind of have to rewrite it and

change it for for this explain it a little more yeah or just like you know i i tried some stuff where i'd make fun of them for the fact that british people never go to therapy but then like if i didn't really suit the show at that point in time and also so much of that show was a tight rope walk deliberately yeah of like you know i i were doing routines where i could be out of order to people and and but then not being and managing to walk that yeah line with it so it seemed a shame to get to the end and just have a jab at the audience for not going to therapy when it's um right there's a lot of problems in the uk of like you know waiting lists for therapy people will not be able to afford it and you don't want to just tell the audience you know you should be all going when that they can't

all go when you've just done this show where you've tried to be as mindful as possible right so there was that as well like you know that's right not hold their hand too much for all of this and just and what about like because like i know in the in the last one there's you know there is politics and we do have a sort of an issue that i think you addressed in i think what you were doing was essentially a character for a minute or some extension of you yeah yeah but a character that lives within somehow yeah but there is sort of a a tribalization of of a way of thinking that's happening both in comedy and in politics that is problematic and fascistic. And I don't think a lot of the comics who are towing that line realize how easily kind of co-opted they are by fascists.

Sure. And it's a real – it's fucking a problem. Yeah. In that, you know, this group of people that thinks they're somehow championing, you know, speech are really sort of, you know, trying to dictate what comedy is. And a lot of the more people of your ilk or people who are doing something that they see

as more creative and sensitive and tolerant or at least empathetic are sort of just being bullied by virtue of the existence of this momentum. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. What's it like in the States at the minute with that? Well, it's just like there is no, like, there's this idea that's sort of like of anti-wokeness.

Yeah. That I don't even know really what that means other than a lack of tolerance, you know, a lack of faith in democracy, a lack of the need to be empathetic or to see that, you know, I get it. There was a time where everybody was sort of on the same page culturally where you could say things like, you know, words are just words. But in a world where everything is fragmented and small bubbles are existing

to nourish and maintain communities, everything is sort of relative to some sort of assault and can be, I think, kind of integrated and talked about. But ultimately, look, man, people don't say, you know, oriental. They don't say, you know,

there's no reason you can't evolve past tranny. And, you know, like, people have been complaining like that since the beginning of entertainment but I think in a in a in a button in an emotional and cultural and an economic bubble economy where everybody lives in their own little worlds and and and there's no that the only approach to creating a common language with any sort of kind of momentum is the bad guys yeah everyone else is just trying to nurture their world and and and find their audience whereas the broader picture is not about like let's all be together it's like you know you fucking babies

yeah yeah so and it's happened i i don't know how noticeable it is to everybody and but i just i realize that whatever resistance there should be to that culturally or even comedically is is fragmented and not not really there yeah it's just people trying to do their work you know in in in the shadow of this shit well i mean anyone who's like anytime i meet someone who doesn't do comedy especially if they're Anyone who's like, anytime I meet someone who doesn't do comedy, especially if they're older than me by however many years, like the first question they ask when they find out I'm a comedian is, are you worried about what you can and can't say anymore? And that's how they think that comedy is now. And the weird thing about it seems so babyish to me, really, that there's the whole the main argument by a lot of people who support this kind of comedy that punches down a lot or whatever, is that they they make out like it's a freedom of speech issue. And people are trying to silence them and stop them from saying no one is saying uh what you what you have said uh that should be against the law and you can't and you should

be thrown in prison if you can't say right exactly but it's like it's such so it's such a weird argument it's like if i went up to a stranger or even a friend and just pulled their hair really hard and hurt them and they went don't do that and i go oh what i'm gonna go to prison now for doing that you know it's such a weird jump clearly what i've done is hurtful to you it hurt you it was malicious it wasn't cool but no one's threatening to throw me in prison or take away my right to pull people's hair but they're allowed to ask me do not do that it hurts and uh it seems so bizarre to me and that's the only reason i wrote a routine about it was uh to be well there was a number of reasons but definitely the initial reason was like this will be an actual comedy routine and not just something

i talk about in interviews or stuff is because it seemed absurd their attitude to it and so therefore you can i can put it in my stand-up show because it's so uh it's just so illogical this argument that keeps on getting put up for it and and seems because you're funny to me but but it really comes down to like who who's really threatened by this like you know like it to me it indicates a peculiar lack of intelligence around what the the sort of it's a right-wing trip man you know it's it's not like lenny bruce you know this like it's not moving the culture forward to sort of um to to try to create more tolerance by by diminishing the power of stereotypes and names. I mean, that was the intention of that was to get everyone on a level playing field.

The intention of this is something very different, but I don't think a lot of the people that engage in it go back that far or think it through that much is what I mean. So like in what you're saying, you can say whatever you want, there just might be consequences and you either have to live with that or, sadly, what's happened because it's not about bringing people together anymore is that or just talk to people that want to talk like that. Yeah, sure. And so that, in and of itself, empowers a sort of anti-democratic sensibility. sensibility but and also it's hard to so if you're a stand-up and you are on either side of this argument yeah whatever say you're on the side that we're both on and how we see things yeah having a conversation with the people who don't agree with you uh on your podcast you know inviting

them on your podcast or going on their podcast because of the way the internet is now and algorithms and you're you're assisting that person's career and giving them a platform and helping them so you're not just having right so so you're kind of stuck between this thing of going well the only people who are going to do podcasts together or interviews together or tv shows together are people who agree with each other and i i talk to comedians i disagree with off stage about stuff and i'll be friends with people who i don't agree with and like have those conversations um but i wouldn't necessarily go come on a podcast with me and i'll give you that platform to say this because then you're you feel that suddenly it's not just that you're having that chat and it'll be because there's a real opportunity there to have an interesting conversation and maybe a useful conversation and

one that could be helpful and could change people's minds um because that's what a lot of us are yearning for now because it seems like you know we're living in this world that doesn't make any sense to us and why are people following this but um but you go as soon as i have that person on what's going to do is boost their career they're not going to change and it's just going to give them more more people these ideas and these are very dangerous yeah you're going to get beat up and and and and and they're you know and they're going to get excited and then not only is it like not giving them a platform but then you're going to have to deal with you know who knows how much shit on social media problems and on platforms and for how long and like you know i don't know how you're built for

that kind of thing i mean like it it you know i've learned how to deal with that shit if i say something and then i get it you know just like a hundred and i don't push my i don't push it too far but then i start to wonder it's sort, and then I start to question my own, and I'll talk about it on my podcast, but there is such a division of audience that it really has come down to this idea, like anti-wokeism and these sort of like, I can say whatever I want.

It's like, sure, I mean, you definitely can, but it's almost hackneyed yeah that there's no risk to it and they think they're and i think that's why a lot of it's become appealing to to sort of like mediocre comics and and mediocre minds is that it gives you an ideology and it also gives you an excuse for why you may not get work yeah yeah yeah that's that's more often than not the root of it a lot of the time sometimes it happens with obviously there's massively successful comedians who have been doing it lately but i think it still comes from you know we've been talking a lot on this episode about

our own insecurities at stage and how we feel with it and not every comic acknowledges that within themselves i think every comic has it yeah but not every comic goes i don't think i'm good enough and so this is how that manifests on stage sometimes when i act out and i think there's a lot of comedians who don't acknowledge that in themselves will constantly convince themselves that the audience of the problem they're the idiots uh the them themselves as a comedian is completely in the right and everyone's against them yeah and they're not reflecting on themselves very much and then uh and then they say those things uh because they're oh i blame this group for i'll blame you know they might do it you know they do a routine without thinking often you know the genesis of it if you trace it back for a lot

of these comedians and you find the thing that started it it's not like a pattern it's not something they were obsessed with they just did it they did a joke that they thought oh that'll be funny but their own right yeah their own life experience and their own meant that they were blinkered to this you know this other group's um you know way of you know how their life experiences made a joke they thought it'd be funny then usually a you know a bunch of people will go here's why that is actually quite harmful to a lot of people and then because they've got the same insecurities we do but they don't go i would go yeah oh shit yeah well thank you for telling me i shouldn't have said that and i see it i'll sort that out yeah and it's more helpful yeah you know I had a routine

in that show where I had the routine about transphobic comedians I also had a routine about periods syncing up if people are living

in the same house and originally I was very gendered with the language about that of like you know women have periods

and men don't and then and I didn't see the thing there and someone came up to me after the show and went hey it's nice you're doing that bit at this start start about transphobic comedians but if you're doing that you should know this bit here where you're saying you're basically saying you know women have periods and that's a definitive thing that's kind of that goes against that and doesn't really make sense and um you know i think there are some there's some people who would go fuck off like like like oh what i can't do anything right i did that bit at the start and now you're giving me shit for that and nitpicking oh fuck this but but you have to kind of go because there's nothing to lose there you got no you know you just have to go okay cool balance it

thanks change the language done yeah still works still works maybe even better yeah doesn't doesn't hurt me in any way um doesn't hurt anyone else it's a sensitivity thing and you have to sort of decide and and you you can make the decision to be like i'm not gonna change that and i definitely do get uh slightly belligerent at times yeah i still possess that idea that my first reaction is like no fuck you i'll get you and then i gotta walk it back it's just it's the same thing as you feel after you shit on a heckler you're like and maybe yeah i'm just gonna have to suck this up and get you know and let it go well the main problem at the minute i think with this kind of stuff is um those of us who thought we were goodies right who thought we were good guys

yeah and then we didn't realize that so much of, because, you know, the world is just geared towards people, privileged people. And we didn't realize it. And then we got told, actually, that behavior that you think is completely normal fucks this entire group of people. And because we see ourselves as the goodies, our first reaction, I definitely had this, is, I'm one of the good guys. Fuck you. This whole thing and then uh i learned into um it's like the whole jk rowling thing is just like if you look back on that timeline of her how she got to where she is now yeah is basically her quite proudly announcing

dumbledore's gay by the way everybody and then people kind of going okay that's a nice gesture but the books are done and no point is dumbledore gay in the book so you talk about him so you know it's nice that you've told us by the way dumbledore's gay but it would have been cool if like the book said he was and uh yeah he could have had a boyfriend at some point and that could have been normalized and cool like we would that would have been better so and then instead of kind of going okay i hear you she went i'm the fucking good guy go fuck yourself and it's just got to be this thing that is slowly over time yeah just escalated to someone who is deliberately antagonizing this

entire community um because she was like because she that she thought she did something good but that's why now in like so many films yeah and very mainstream films as well the villain in the films isn't it used to be a cartoonish just out and out baddie yeah who just wanted to be bad and wanted to upset everyone and wanted to um to cause pain but now especially since like social media and looking at people differently and a lot of the bad guys are they all see themselves as the good guy and that's the important most marvel films like thanos who's like obviously one of the biggest you know movie villains in, you can see it from his point of view and why he thinks that what he's doing is good.

That he's not like, hey, I'm the bad guy. He's thinking... Interesting. Because we're starting to see that a bit more. With these people who are causing a lot of pain, they don't think they're... They think they're the victims. It's even that Elvis movie

that is done from the point of view of colonel parker sure right yeah yeah and it's uh the most exploitive fucking horrendous yeah but it's it's most of it it's really just his point of view his side of the story you know played against you know lerman's you know kind of brilliant depiction of of the talent of a guy yeah yeah so you know those are the two sides you've got to deal with. Yeah. All right, well, we're not going to solve that. Yeah.

This was good talking to you, man. Yeah, you too. James Acaster in a hotel room, talking, getting down to it. He's announcing tour dates today. You can go to jamesacaster.com for tickets and venue info. And hang out for a second. i'll tell you some more stuff it's a night for the whole family be a part of kids night when the toronto rock take on the colorado mammoth at a special 5 p.m start time on saturday march 9th at first ontario center in

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Transform your living space today with Cozy. Visit cozy.ca, that's C-O-Z-E-Y, and start customizing your furniture. So listen, Brendan and I talked for about an hour. We went through my entire filmography, title for title. I didn't even know I did that much. And we'll do this in the future to talk about actors and directors, but this time we went over the marinography which was engaging. Kind of getting that memory working.

Here's a little taste of it. Let me give you a taste. Here's a bump. Have a bump of the marinography. How did this thing happen? You doing the Bob dylan like a rolling stone i don't know you weren't you part of that i was not no it just happened fuck i don't even remember but that was like a big deal like yeah it was like it was this montage of people singing i don't even remember which song right like a rolling stone it was a

it was a it was an interactive video you could go to the website and switch the channels on a tv and every channel you went to was synced up with the person on that channel doing the song lip-syncing the song to whatever moment it was that it was a big deal it was you and like the like the pawn stars and uh uh drew cary on The Price is Right. All right, maybe it wasn't that big a deal. So if you haven't subscribed to the full Marin on WTF Plus to get all our bonus content, plus the full WTF archives, click on the link in the episode description

or go to WTFpod.com and click WTF Plus. This week, I'll be in Columbus, Ohio at the Southern Theater on Thursday, August 4th. Indianapolis, Indiana, I'm at the Old National Center on Friday, August 5th. Louisville, Kentucky at the Baumhart Theater this Saturday, August 6th. I'll be at Largo at the Coronet

in Los Angeles on August 10th. I'll be back at Dynasty Typewriter in LA on August 14th for perhaps a TikTok crowd work show for my introduction into TikTok. Just cut it up, man. Just do quick shots. Get the kids in. Get the kids into the shows.

Hey, do me. Do me. That's what they say. Bust my balls. I'm here for the ball b shows. Hey, do me, do me. That's what they say. Bust my balls. I'm here for the ball busting. Lincoln, Nebraska at the Rococo Theater on August 18th. Des Moines, Iowa at the Hoyt Sherman Place on August 19th. And Iowa City, Iowa at the Englert Theater on August 20th. In September, I'm in Tucson, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, Boulder, Colorado, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

In October, I'm in London, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, Boulder, Colorado, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In October, I'm in London, England, and Dublin, Ireland. Go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info. I think I can take a vacation in Vancouver. So I can look around. Find me a place to settle down in a few years. Can you dig it? Okay, here we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶ Boomer lives. Monkey and Lafonda.

Cat angels everywhere. Cat angels. Cat angels. Cat angels. Cat angels. Cat angels.