Episode 343 - Dylan Moran
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck Nick's?
Marc:What the fuck Adelphians?
Marc:Thank you, Philadelphia.
Marc:Had a live one on Monday and I didn't get a chance to reach out to the people that came out to the five sold out shows I did at Helium Comedy Club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Marc:Man, that was fucking great.
Marc:uh oh by the way i am mark maron this is wtf thank you for listening to my show i appreciate it uh what the fuck adelphians yeah we did it man those were great shows i'm glad you guys came out thank you for all the uh cookies and chocolates and brownies and cakes and whatever the hell those oreo things were could somebody who was in charge of that could that woman please write me an email and tell me what the hell those oreo things were
Marc:They were like a dense Oreo cake.
Marc:It felt like crushed some sort of hybrid between Oreos and a Rice Krispie treat.
Marc:I don't even know what they were, but I took one bite of one.
Marc:I was like, it had the consistency of dense hashish.
Marc:And I actually smoked some of it and it was fucking mind blowing.
Marc:No, but it had this texture and it was completely different.
Marc:It had the familiar taste of Oreo.
Marc:Am I just going to go on about some sort of cookie brownie?
Marc:God damn, it was good.
Marc:And I don't know who gave it to me.
Marc:But that aside, talk about Philly in a minute.
Marc:Let me get some business out of the way here today.
Marc:Dylan Morin is here, the Irish comedian from Ireland.
Marc:He is here.
Marc:He is here in the garage.
Marc:And we had a lovely chat.
Marc:You know, I've got my things about Ireland and he's got his things about here.
Marc:And we had our thing about things.
Marc:We had a lot in common.
Marc:It was a good talk.
Marc:If you're a fan of Dylan Morin or you don't know him and you live in the Bay Area, he'll be at the Marines Memorial Theater this Friday and Saturday, the 14th and 15th.
Marc:If you want to go to Ticketmaster for those things, because these guys that come over here, not everybody knows who they are, but this guy's the real deal.
Marc:Great comic.
Marc:Great raconteur, philosopher.
Marc:Nice chat coming your way in just a few minutes.
Marc:But Philadelphia, come on.
Marc:Can we speak openly?
Marc:Can we speak frankly?
Marc:What a great fucking city that is.
Marc:Look, I haven't been back there in like two years because, frankly, it frightens me.
Marc:But I heard the calling.
Marc:I don't know what the calling was, but I think I might have been sitting on my deck and somewhere off in the clouds, I heard, what are you, a pussy?
Marc:Come on.
Marc:What the fuck's wrong with you?
Marc:What are you?
Marc:What are you a pussy?
Marc:Come back.
Marc:That's how Philadelphia talks in my mind.
Marc:So I ended up there.
Marc:And as you know, leading up to this, I spoke fondly and longingly for some of these sandwich action that they have in Philly.
Marc:So I had to go chase that down, like right out of the gate.
Marc:I got in that cab.
Marc:I had like an hour before Danix closed.
Marc:And I literally was in that cab for that car service.
Marc:And I'm like, step on it, dude.
Marc:I got to shove some sandwich in my face.
Marc:I need a mouthful of meat right now.
Marc:That sounded a little gross.
Marc:But I needed that pork sandwich, that Italian pulled pork with sharp provolone cheese and broccoli rabe on it.
Marc:And we made it, man.
Marc:We made it to Reading Terminal.
Marc:And I was staying right across the street.
Marc:And I got there and they were out of pork.
Marc:They were out of fucking everything.
Marc:I didn't lose my cool.
Marc:I'm a grown man.
Marc:I'm not going to lose my shit and say things like, that's all you fucking have is this sandwich.
Marc:Why don't you have this sandwich?
Marc:I said, all right, you know what?
Marc:I'm cool.
Marc:I can wait till tomorrow.
Marc:But that was just one of the sandwiches I ate.
Marc:Man, I bet you're riveted.
Marc:You're like, is Mark going to tell us about every fucking sandwich he ate?
Marc:I might.
Marc:So, all right, let's go sandwich by sandwich, experience by experience if we could.
Marc:The Philadelphia experience.
Marc:So, hung up.
Marc:I, you know, I was, I was obsessed on the Denix sandwich.
Marc:So the following day I went to Denix.
Marc:I ate the pulled Italian pulled pork, sharp provolone, broccoli Rob with a little bit of vinegar and oil on it.
Marc:Fucking awesome.
Marc:Then someone told me I got to go to Paisans.
Marc:So I made my way down to Paisans, Paisans in the Italian section of Philly.
Marc:And I had a, I think it was a, a brisket sandwich with a provolone cheese, some sauce,
Marc:A fried egg.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:That was good.
Marc:Not as good as the Knicks.
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:If I start a war in Philly, so be it.
Marc:If I start a war with Philly people against me, so be it.
Marc:Then went to John's Roast Pork.
Marc:Got another lift to John's Roast Pork.
Marc:Had the roast pork, sharp provolone, hot peppers, and spinach.
Marc:And that was good.
Marc:But the Knicks wins.
Marc:All right?
Marc:The Knicks wins.
Marc:I was so full of fucking meat by the time I left Philadelphia.
Marc:I didn't know what to do with myself.
Marc:Now here...
Marc:is the interesting thing about philadelphia it's one of the great american cities it's one of the original american cities a lot of things went down they have buildings from the 1700s there nothing looks like that by the way boston similar thing where you walk around certain parts of boston or philadelphia and you're like holy shit these are the real deal
Marc:And, you know, honestly, there's some history in Philly.
Marc:Yeah, I was there for, what, four days.
Marc:And you'd think, hey, why not go down to the old city, take in some of the roots of America?
Marc:Where is your national pride, man?
Marc:Go down there.
Marc:Go down there and speculate about history.
Marc:I've never been a good student.
Marc:I don't know what I should know about the history of my own country.
Marc:So I would just go down there.
Marc:I'd wander around.
Marc:I'd go to the visitor center.
Marc:I'd get a brochure.
Marc:I'd read half of it and be like, oh, homework.
Marc:And I just walk around going, I think that's a that's the place where they they talked about the thing.
Marc:And that's all they signed the thing in there.
Marc:And oh, my God, I had he had a printing shop, too.
Marc:Is there anything Ben Franklin didn't do?
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:I'm surprised he didn't have a podcast in the 1700s.
Marc:That Ben Franklin fella.
Marc:Oh, who broke that bell?
Marc:The communists do that.
Marc:Who's in charge of the bell?
Marc:Why did it get broken?
Marc:What is happening here?
Marc:Is there a sandwich nearby?
Marc:I need a sandwich.
Marc:So, you know, that was my experience.
Marc:Didn't see much history.
Marc:Drove by some of it.
Marc:But towards the end of the trip, not unlike just just who I am.
Marc:You know, I just panicked and I'm like, dude, you got to go have you got to go put something in your head, put something new in your head, learn something, have an experience that isn't that doesn't involve a sandwich.
Marc:OK, can you do that?
Marc:And I went to the art museum and they had an exhibit there called I think was called Cage Cunningham, Johns Rauschenberg and Duchamp.
Marc:And it was a theme show around the work of Mears Cunningham, John Cage.
Marc:uh robert roushenberg and jasper johns and how duchamp duchamps in you know influenced their work uh ideologically and uh aesthetically and you know they had some john cage music which was i walked in and yeah i've got a soft spot in my heart for this obviously they're all great artists yeah i don't know a lot about a lot of things but i i know some things about a few things
Marc:But you walk in, there was a couple player pianos that were playing John Cage music, which is always sort of interesting, atonal, some of it dissonant, some of it sparse, some of it including noises, some of it including gravelly sounds.
Marc:But they had a live performance going on.
Marc:There was basically a guy with a computer of some kind with a lot of plugs coming out of it, plugging into another box that came out speakers.
Marc:And there was another guy on the ground with a guitar that was laid down that he was
Marc:playing with a tuning fork he was hitting the tuning fork and putting the end of the tuning fork on the body of the guitar to vibrate the pickups and the strings that way and then there was a saxophone player who was just blasting out random notes here and there making some noises with his reed some blowing noises and it's I've said this about this type of art before it's easy to condescend this but man if you lock in and you realize you're in the hands of professionals that shit can take you out there
Marc:And it was also one of those things where I had a moment like, why am I not doing more of this with my comedy?
Marc:Where are the risks?
Marc:Where are my dance moves?
Marc:Where where can I just use sounds as texture and environment building as an environment building method or aesthetic?
Marc:Where's just random blurts of poetry of non sequiturs?
Marc:Where is that stuff?
Marc:I'll tell you where it was.
Marc:It was at the Museum of Art in Philadelphia.
Marc:I could do it on stage, but I think I'd be misunderstood.
Marc:Perhaps I'll integrate some of that into it, and maybe I'll get somewhere with that.
Marc:And then I needed a sandwich.
Marc:That's how everything ends on this monologue.
Marc:Then I ate a sandwich.
Marc:Don't underestimate the power of a fucking awesome sandwich.
Marc:Philly is a fucking awesome sandwich.
Marc:Lovely time.
Marc:Had a good hamburger too.
Marc:I was so filled with meat.
Marc:I had to go on a strict kale only cleansing diet.
Marc:wait oh my god i forgot my own gigs i'll be in fort lauderdale at the improv in the hard rock january 4th 5th and 6th i'll be at good nights in raleigh north carolina the 10th 11th and 12th of january so go do those things guy need a sandwich let's talk to dylan morin are you a comic book guy
Guest:in Ireland, which is not easy to do.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:When I was 12, you know, you get, as a Catholic, you get confirmed.
Guest:You want those?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:You get confirmed in Ireland, you know, I mean, I wasn't a practicing Catholic, we weren't, but that's what you do.
Guest:So for my, you know, you get a bunch of money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like a bar mitzvah or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They give you money and you have to renounce the devil.
Guest:Yeah, that's the payoff.
Guest:Yeah, but I didn't.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:I remember when it came to the bit of renouncing the devil of just keeping my lips closed.
Guest:It's just I refused to do that.
Marc:You weren't ready to break that up yet?
Guest:I didn't know what he was offering.
Guest:You know, I hadn't seen the whole deal.
Marc:He seemed like an interesting guy from all the books you'd read.
Guest:Yeah, he must have, you know, maybe he had something to offer.
Guest:So I hedged my bets there, but I took the money.
Guest:And then, you know, you're 12 years old and you've got £100 or £200 or whatever it is.
Guest:You know, they say, what do you want?
Guest:This is your day.
Guest:What do you want to do?
Guest:So I wanted to go to Dublin, which is 30 miles away.
Guest:I grew up in the country.
Guest:And there was a shop called The Alchemist's Head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was like, I don't know what you would call it here, a head shop, but they sold underground comics.
Marc:It was one of those caves.
Marc:If you have a certain type of mind as a child, it's a place that you have to be part of.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:You know from the outside that all the answers are in there.
Guest:All the cool stuff is in there, yeah.
Guest:So they had Robert Crumb comics and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, I had the same experience in a head shop.
Guest:And I loved that stuff when I was 12.
Guest:And then my friends would borrow it and their mothers would rip it up.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they knew what the devil was.
Guest:Yeah, they had done the deal.
Guest:They were contractually... Obligated.
Marc:The parents were definitely actively renouncing the devil at every turn.
Marc:Well, yeah, it's interesting.
Marc:I had the same sort of education.
Marc:There was a head shop and the Robert Crumb stuff.
Marc:I don't know that I would have known what sex looked like or how hippies handled things or what drugs were about if it weren't for comics.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was, well, certainly in Ireland, you needed all the counterculture you could get.
Marc:Well, what does that mean, like, in terms of, was it actually hard to get that stuff?
Guest:Well, for sure.
Guest:I mean, you know, the women's magazines, for instance, in Ireland, you know, Cosmopolitan, all the famous ones, the Irish ones couldn't carry ads for abortion.
Guest:I didn't know that they carried ads for abortion.
Guest:Well, they did in Britain, you know, like clinics and so on.
Guest:Oh, right, right, right.
Guest:All kinds of women's health issues, all kinds of stuff.
Guest:But they couldn't carry those in Ireland.
Marc:Right, because you were under the rule.
Guest:Well, because it was a theocracy in all but name.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:So the church, which has recently collapsed in Ireland, effectively, when I was a kid, there was 90%, 95% of the population went to mass every Sunday when I was a kid.
Guest:How old are you now?
Guest:I'm 41.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now 10% of the population goes.
Guest:That's pretty incredible in the space of 30 years.
Marc:What do you think happened?
Marc:Was it the pedophilia thing?
Guest:Yeah, completely.
Guest:Do you know what it was most like, I think?
Guest:It was most like the Soviet model because what happened was that it just was unsustainable.
Guest:The schizophrenic mindset required to prop up the whole show
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was unsustainable.
Marc:Which means that, you know, we're really a business and we got to keep the minds of the followers fucked.
Guest:Well, when you have nothing, when you have nothing, you know, poor people pray more than rich people.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because rich people have got a ton of shit all around them.
Guest:Yeah, how do they accept being poor if they don't pray?
Guest:And they're busy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So to put up with your lot, you pray.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's...
Guest:That's what they did.
Guest:That's what they had.
Guest:They had nothing.
Guest:They didn't have enough.
Guest:And I don't mean material stuff.
Guest:I mean a life.
Guest:I mean self-respect and, you know, a complex, fulfilling existence around them with things to do and people to know and places to go.
Guest:They didn't have that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they had God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:To take care of business.
Guest:And then the organization that was hawking God in Ireland, the Catholic Church, while they were doing that, were also destroying the lives of the children of the country.
Guest:So there's no way to do it.
Guest:So that was built-in corruption, built-in degradation.
Guest:It was going to collapse sometime.
Marc:But it was like the ultimate corruption.
Marc:It wasn't just some sort of bad land deal.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It doesn't get any worse than that.
Guest:I mean, that's it.
Guest:That's the end.
Marc:That is.
Marc:There's no next on that list.
Guest:No, there isn't.
Guest:There isn't what could be worse.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:It's Armageddon.
Guest:And it was happening every day, you know, under wraps, really.
Guest:And it was this conspiracy of silence.
Marc:But like hardcore.
Marc:Like it was pure politics.
Marc:They all knew it was like a boys club.
Marc:They knew, all of them knew.
Guest:It's not like people were getting together to have minutes and meetings saying, okay, let's abuse children in this county and then move on to that one.
Guest:But at the same time, the whole system of acceptance and denial and looking away was institutionalized.
Guest:Did you have any experience of that firsthand?
Guest:I didn't directly, no, but I know lots of people who did.
Guest:That you went to school with?
Guest:Yeah, people that I grew up with, yeah.
Guest:And then it would come out later, you know, in life.
Guest:People would say, oh yeah, this happened to me, this sort of incident.
Guest:I was a loud, brash person.
Guest:you know, rebellious kind of teenager.
Marc:You weren't hot to the priest.
Guest:No, I used to make a pretty terrible joke about that, but I think the point is I was loudmouthed, so I was troubled, and I think that they would tend to stay away from those kids.
Guest:They'd just beat you guys up.
Guest:Well, yeah, they would just get rid of you or, you know, put you away, but I think what happens, you know, and this is a really tragic subject, but what happens is that
Guest:They they they tended to target vulnerable kids.
Guest:So you're talking about kids and in orphanages and, you know, care homes of all kinds.
Guest:This is what this is what went on.
Marc:Now, your folks.
Marc:I mean, were you is there was there a you could definitely see that there was no way in the majority of the Catholics.
Marc:There was no way for them to accommodate or forgive the epidemic of this thing.
Marc:It's unforgivable completely.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because I always wondered about that.
Marc:I'm not Catholic, though our names are only... If you switch two letters, we have the same last name.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:You're Morin?
Marc:Is that how you say it?
Marc:That's right, yeah.
Marc:And I'm Marin.
Marc:For years, when I lived in Boston, people insisted I was of your tribe.
Marc:But they knew after a few minutes of talking to me that that couldn't possibly be.
Marc:But you went to Catholic school?
Guest:Yeah, well, everybody did.
Guest:I mean, unless you, you know, unless you were born into a Protestant family or you, I think there might have been one or two.
Guest:I don't even know if there was a secular school in Dublin at the time.
Guest:There must have been something.
Guest:But no, that was the church were riven into every facet of society, especially education, you know, because that's what promotes it and keeps it going.
Guest:So some schools were entirely staffed by clergy.
Guest:Mine wasn't.
Guest:There were some.
Guest:But I grew up in this tiny house.
Guest:How many family?
Guest:Me and my parents.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And we were secular.
Guest:We didn't go to church.
Guest:We were the only people on our street.
Marc:You were clearly secular.
Marc:There was only one kid in the family?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So we didn't go to church, but everybody else did.
Guest:Quite literally everybody I knew went to church.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Except me.
Guest:You got off easy.
Guest:I did, really.
Guest:I didn't have to buy into the bullshit.
Guest:I used to go to friends' houses, you know, to play and have what we would call tea, where you eat about five or six o'clock.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And and this thing called the Angelus would come on.
Guest:OK, so this so on your television screen, it would be on the radio and the television simultaneously.
Guest:You'd get a picture of some, you know, Giotto or some Christian iconography.
Guest:OK, the Madonna and child would come up and and you'd hear this bong, bong, bong for a minute.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it may be more than a minute.
Guest:What are you supposed to be doing?
Guest:You're supposed to be on your knees saying the Angelus, which is where you have the rosary beads, and there's a prayer cycle you're supposed to go through.
Guest:And of course, I didn't know the words.
Guest:Is that when you move the beads?
Guest:You move the beads.
Guest:You click-clack the beads, and everybody's on their knees, and it's really rapid, okay?
Guest:And I didn't know any of the words.
Guest:So I would be on my knees with my friends because I was having tea in their house, and I would have to go, let's go surfing now, everybody.
Guest:Let's go surfing with me.
Guest:Not audibly, obviously.
Marc:No, but just to be mumbling something.
Marc:You needed to pass, and you used the Beach Boys as your ticket to not seeming like a freak.
Marc:Well, what did your old man do?
Marc:I mean, what was the business that enabled him to do?
Guest:He's a carpenter.
Marc:A secular carpenter?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Like houses, or did he build cabinetry?
Guest:He made kitchens.
Guest:He made all kinds of furniture, stores and takes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how did he have the courage to be secular in such an environment?
Marc:It was just not his bag?
Guest:No, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, it was just not his bag.
Guest:He just made up his own mind.
Guest:You know, he just wasn't taking it.
Marc:So lucky.
Guest:Yeah, I feel in retrospect, I do feel very lucky about that.
Guest:Yeah, you know, that I didn't have to go through the motions of all the...
Guest:I mean, you did in school because the class got taken to.
Marc:But you never had the fear of God instilled in you.
Guest:No, never.
Guest:I never.
Guest:I never.
Guest:Well, you know, the thing is, I don't want to exaggerate the freedom from that because once it's a once it's it was wraparound, you know, so the fear.
Guest:Everywhere, you mean.
Guest:or the trepidation of whatever you want to call it, or just that... I'll tell you what you do get as a Catholic.
Guest:I have this gag on the show about Twitter.
Guest:It's not even a joke.
Guest:It's just true.
Guest:I grew up in a Catholic country.
Guest:If you're Jewish or Catholic, you don't need Twitter because you get internal updates all the time.
Guest:You're fatter than you were 30 seconds ago.
Guest:Everybody hates you.
Guest:You're a piece of shit.
Guest:Ping.
Marc:That goes on all the time.
Marc:Well, now you get to share it with the world.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:exactly yeah you take that narcissism and push it out into the ether and that's all it is you know all those all those digitech platforms are right there it's like uh it's it's a type of it's a type of crack you know depending on how many followers you have that you can get immediate validation for all of your bullshit it's extraordinary i i i am constantly amazed the number of quite sensible you're not on bright people i know no i'm not
Guest:Yet.
Guest:No, never, never.
Guest:I've met plenty of never people.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:I don't have the returning calls and all that stuff.
Guest:That's enough?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But once you get locked into Twitter, man, you could pull in quite a few followers right out of the gate and be in direct contact with your people.
Guest:I don't want followers.
Guest:This is sinister stuff to me.
Guest:Like I'm saying about the church.
Guest:You're not ready to lead, Dylan?
Guest:No, I'm really not.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:It's...
Guest:The world is waiting.
Guest:No, no, the world is not waiting.
Guest:The world is crazy with leaders and followers.
Guest:They don't need any more.
Marc:Well, you can be like me.
Marc:Be sort of, you know, not a leader, but just a guy that needs a bit of attention every few minutes.
Guest:Listen, everybody loves attention, but it's about the quality of attention you're going to get.
Guest:You know, if you're prepared to sit down and...
Guest:work on something you sit down you try and make something good right you try and make something that you would want to see or hear right and and that's what you share right don't share that you know the i'm fat today and you know guess what i ate here's a picture of it yeah what's this thing on my foot yeah i had a really good bowel movement you know all that stuff who needs it please it makes you a human it
Guest:You're already human.
Guest:You're already human.
Guest:Be a better human.
Guest:Keep that stuff to yourself.
Guest:It's like all the stuff that's worth not sharing.
Guest:You know, what are you?
Guest:You're in your 40s like me, right?
Guest:49.
Guest:Okay, so you get older, and you start collapsing in different zones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:And I was thinking recently, what happens to you when you get older?
Guest:People start...
Guest:have this extraordinary romance with their own interior like you know they'll say you'll say to someone you're going to come to the to the saying come out drinking or talking or whatever come to dinner and say i would i'd love to but my liver it won't let me or you know my my pancreas wants to stay in and watch a box out of dvds are you that aware of your of those particular organs are you feeling your liver because that's a sign of something else that's where it's going though you know that's what happens with age whatever
Guest:everybody there's always something that's all you talk about is is is your shit or or if you're still having sex or what you ate your biology because everything well yeah because that's i mean your world gets that small eventually that's right and i don't want that i don't want that i think i think that's the stuff you got to keep to yourself if you're if you're bleeding if you've been shot three times don't mention it to people it's boring is it boring
Marc:You think that your speculation about the world at large and your effect on it is more interesting than what's going on in your bowels?
Guest:Just because one of your major organs has exploded, that's no reason to interrupt the flow of conversation about something nice.
Marc:No, I think that might be something specific.
Marc:Because I performed in Ireland.
Marc:And I distinctly got the feeling I've only been there a couple of times.
Marc:I think it's a beautiful country and I do a story about it, you know, in my stage show about being there.
Marc:But I definitely felt that I was giving too much information about me to an Irish audience.
Marc:I really got the feeling that they were like, why is he telling us this?
Guest:Yeah, there's an American confessional urge, I think.
Guest:In general?
Guest:Yeah, generally, yeah.
Guest:Because look at all the talk shows where people are... I mean, you've had these things for decades now where people are saying, you know, I found out I was an alcoholic.
Guest:A sex addict.
Guest:All of these things.
Guest:I mean, everything.
Guest:I mean, who isn't an addict?
Guest:To be alive is to be an addict of one kind or another, you know?
Marc:So you're saying that the more Irish disposition is, you know, just shut up.
Marc:We know...
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You're a human being.
Guest:You're a mess.
Guest:You know, let's do something else.
Guest:Stop talking about it.
Guest:What do you want?
Marc:Let's do our best to avoid that.
Guest:Well, not avoid it.
Guest:Just accept it.
Guest:You're a hot mess and that's it.
Marc:So that does exist.
Marc:I wasn't making that up in my mind.
Guest:Oh, no, I think, yeah, you're onto something there.
Guest:Definitely, yeah.
Marc:The nature of tabloids, I don't know about Ireland, but certainly in the UK is much more predatory.
Marc:And it seems that here it sort of drives now.
Marc:We've given reality shows and everything else that, you know, it's really it's really the momentum of it is confessional and sort of an exploration of broken personality on all levels.
Guest:I sometimes wonder, you know, if you look at the, like, yeah, you said the British press is notoriously vicious.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you have your confessional stuff on the reality shows and so on.
Guest:I sometimes wonder, is that a way for people to deal with the kind of guilt they feel about privilege?
Guest:You know, the fact that we, you know, in Anglosphere countries, we're all relatively privileged and comfortable.
Guest:I would say relatively.
Guest:There's lots of poverty and crime and all the rest.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But you're not, you know, dodging bombs most of the time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you're not really thinking about that either.
Guest:No, you're not.
Guest:But I think maybe at some deeper level you are.
Guest:That's why people have this, they see the rest of the world having a much harder time.
Guest:So they have this urge to sort of, they want to abase themselves because they can't deal with their own freedom and privilege.
Guest:So they say, I'm terrible.
Guest:I'm a terrible person.
Guest:I have mushrooms growing underneath my parts.
Marc:A cafe just blew up in my mind.
Guest:Yes, my whole frontal cortex fell away because out of disgust with the rest of me.
Marc:An interior terrorist that's destroying me from the inside.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I think that might be true.
Marc:But Ireland has a history of tension.
Marc:Did you miss that?
Guest:What are you trying to say?
Marc:I'm saying that there's problems there.
Guest:Yes, of course.
Marc:But they seem better now.
Marc:But was that something that you have in your memory as a person in a real way?
Guest:Sure, that's what I grew up with.
Guest:That was the daily news.
Guest:So-and-so was shot.
Guest:They're dead.
Marc:Was that further north from where you were?
Guest:Yes, that's the north of the country.
Guest:Yeah, and that was a daily fact of life growing up and people were murdering each other.
Marc:And how did your family sort of school you through that?
Guest:It's very depressing, you know, because that's in the air as well.
Guest:And that was parallel with all the church noise.
Marc:Well, because you had somebody actually on some level, and I'm not going to claim to know anything about it on some level, but they were representing a Catholic element.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, the issue was, you know, get Britain, get the Protestants out.
Guest:Yeah, but it really comes down to nationalism.
Guest:Right, of course.
Guest:And then finally, in the end, it comes down to gangsterism.
Guest:It becomes a turf war, more than anything.
Guest:And the original, you know, this connection to the past and to heritage and to history and to identity...
Guest:is evident, you know, in the streets of Belfast, we see graffiti that says, remember, 1680, whatever.
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:This is, you're alive now.
Guest:Your children are alive now.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:1680.
Guest:Yeah, that kind of thing.
Guest:You do see that sort of stuff or, you know, ancient historical battles.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Look at what's happening to you and your kids.
Guest:I lived in Belfast for a year.
Guest:You know, I knew people.
Guest:I was there for a time.
Guest:I was in Northern Ireland for a couple of years.
Guest:I mean, I knew people who had been in buildings where somebody came in and sprayed the place with an automatic.
Guest:Yeah, wearing balaclavas.
Marc:Because somebody was living there that they didn't want to live there.
Guest:Because they weren't paying extortion money from that business or whatever it was, that kind of thing.
Guest:And in the end, it comes down to a decision.
Guest:What's more important?
Guest:What happened to your grandfather or what's going to happen to your kid?
Marc:Or your grandfather or some way down the line part of your lineage.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I mean, that's one thing that I don't think Americans can really identify with is that you go to Ireland and there's fucking history there that goes back to just...
Guest:Well, hundreds and hundreds of years.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable.
Marc:There are walls that are standing that have outlived many of our structures here.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But Americans, you know, when I was a kid, had a very romantic idea of what organizations like the IRA were doing.
Guest:You know, so you had NORAID, the American sponsors of those organizations, you know, because the people are not there.
Guest:They're not seeing the daily reality of what people are enduring.
Marc:I think it comes from the same place that you were just talking about our confessional narcissism comes from, is that there's a guilt of detachment from their roots or, you know, like American Irish people.
Marc:You get this sort of like, I don't even know those people, but, you know, they're us.
Guest:Oh, there's lots of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So let's fund, you know, let's help out.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, Americans have a big, because America is this amazing mosaic of identities and cultures that has a lot of the people here have a big pull towards anchoring themselves in whatever, you know, their original heritage was.
Guest:So you'll get American people who in Ireland for the first time will say, hi, my grandmother was North Shaughnessy, you know, and all that stuff.
Guest:And you get a lot of that, you know?
Guest:So I was thinking of when I'm here of saying, hello, it's great to be back in the old country.
Marc:My grandfather was a wolf of it, you know, because... But you've experienced that yourself, people who go Moran or come up to you with the same last name and want to sit there and...
Marc:And compare shields.
Guest:An Irish name.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they talk about it in a very, very romantic way.
Guest:It's not, it's not, it's about, they don't understand it.
Guest:They know, but it's theirs.
Guest:It belongs to them, but they don't know what it is.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So they want to participate in it.
Guest:It's understandable.
Marc:They want to know where they came from.
Guest:But of course, when you're looking at them and talking to them, what you're seeing is an American.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And nothing but.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know.
Marc:But you seem like, I mean, I've watched some of your material and stuff, not just with American, but in general, your mind seems to say, like, you know, fuck that noise.
Marc:I mean, we're here now.
Marc:You don't pay much heed to, you're not fascinated in any way by the legacy or...
Guest:I don't have any romance about nationalism because, look, what is it?
Guest:It's a piece of ground that you happen to be on, you were born on, other people were born on.
Guest:You've got neighbors.
Guest:Get on with them, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And try and find out something interesting together instead of saying that the ground underneath your feet belongs to you more than the other person.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you've never, like, just out of curiosity, traced your family tree back?
Guest:Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:I mean, that would just be bad news anyway.
Guest:Just arsonists on one side, murderers on the other probably, you know?
Marc:And when did you start to do the comedy?
Marc:What compelled you to do that?
Marc:It seems like, I mean, I'm just assuming that your parents seemed like they might be relatively supportive.
Guest:They were.
Guest:They were great.
Guest:And they just said, you know, look, if you can do anything that makes any money, whatever it is, you know, tell us about it.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:How do you do that?
Guest:What are you dancing for money?
Guest:Can we come?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Because there was nothing doing when I was, you know, when you're around that age, when you might start 18, 19, when you get interested in this stuff.
Guest:I had no qualifications.
Guest:Does anybody?
Guest:No, but I had no qualifications for anything.
Guest:You know, I wouldn't have been allowed to plant beans.
Guest:And I couldn't do anything at all.
Guest:I went to a club.
Guest:I saw some people do it.
Guest:I couldn't believe how good they were.
Guest:Who were they?
Guest:Ardell O'Hanlon was one.
Guest:He's well known.
Guest:He was in Father Ted.
Guest:He's a terrific, terrific stand up.
Guest:And Barry Murphy, who's an old friend of mine, was another and is again a wonderful comedian.
Guest:And Kevin Gildee was another.
Guest:But they were just so good.
Guest:I thought it would be some terrible substandard student review.
Guest:And these people were wonderful, really wonderful.
Guest:I mean, you know, you folded like a hinge laughing.
Guest:They were just great.
Marc:Yeah, see, it's weird.
Marc:It's almost as difficult.
Marc:I mean, obviously, if I put more effort into it, but it was almost as difficult for you to get Marvel Comics where you were for us to get stand-up, international stand-up in any way.
Guest:Yeah, sure, sure.
Marc:So I always feel a little at odds or a little at a loss.
Marc:When I was in London, I interviewed Stuart Lee.
Marc:And I was basically demanding a history of modern English stand-up from him.
Guest:Well, the one in Ireland came from, you know, it was a mix of stand-up, the form that everybody knows is an American, entirely American form.
Guest:It's as American as jazz, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But what fed the Irish tradition, the little tributaries running into that were big tradition of Irish storytelling.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:We still see it.
Guest:Yeah, it's still there.
Guest:It's still in the way people do.
Marc:I mean, I know Tommy Tiernan.
Marc:I watch your stuff.
Marc:I mean, you're definitely long-form guys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's not a guy in a shiny suit flipping out zingers.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So it was a mix of that and then what was going on in what was called the alternative comedy scene.
Guest:Stuart would have talked about that in London, which was politicized because of the Thatcher years and all that stuff.
Guest:And then, you know, whatever else we could steal from Americans in terms of how you do it.
Marc:Well, it's funny what's happening now is that, you know, I went to Kilkenny probably the second year they did the festival.
Marc:And, you know, they were really showcasing a lot of Americans because that's who did stand up.
Marc:But now it's sort of shifted.
Marc:There's such a healthy and vibrant, you know, scene everywhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, they're definitely like year one.
Marc:There are definitely a lot of Irish stars.
Marc:There's a lot of English stars.
Marc:And, you know, the Americans are just, you know, sort of there now.
Marc:They're not, you know, they're not there.
Guest:It's leveled out a lot more.
Guest:You know, I did gigs earlier in the year in Russia and Eastern Europe, you know, Kiev and Latvia and so on.
Guest:And people are crazy for us.
Guest:They can't get enough.
Guest:They really want to go.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the world's opened up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the guys I was there with, the two Russian guys, Anton and Igor, are fantastic people.
Guest:They're really smart.
Guest:Do English?
Guest:Are they speaking in English?
Guest:Both of them speak English.
Guest:Do they do stand-up in English?
Guest:No, they do it in Russian, but they can do some stuff in English.
Guest:And they're going to come to Edinburgh.
Guest:I'm going to help them out when they're over there and look after them.
Marc:That's fascinating to me because we're so insulated here on some level.
Marc:And I'm obviously not speaking for all Americans, but when you live in Europe,
Marc:You know, part of your tour is just to go.
Marc:I mean, the other country is just right over there.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And you go there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's part of a tour.
Marc:You know, here, you know, we go to, you know, wherever, North Carolina.
Guest:Nebraska.
Marc:And that's a little, you know, that's nerve wracking in its own way.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But it's not, it's just different to us, but it's not really that different.
Marc:But you're going to places where they don't really have a complete handle on the language necessarily.
Guest:Oh, no, absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:But the thing is, you know, you can, America is so endless.
Guest:It's so diverse.
Guest:Yeah, I'm actually culturally sure one country to the other you it's like its own its own planet, you know, so that in part explains why Americans probably don't travel as much as other nations because you can travel so much within your own country and experience such variety.
Marc:I'd like to think that, but I think for me it's sort of like, you know, I don't know, we've got to fly there.
Marc:Do they use the same plug?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:But that's the same for everybody.
Guest:That's not just Americans, you know.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, obviously it's great when anybody's curious about the world and they go.
Guest:But yeah, Europe does feel less other.
Guest:The eastern side of it is less other than it was, certainly.
Marc:And when you, because I watched some of your earlier stuff, and the one thing that was striking to me, and just because I deal with it myself, is that there was a time when you do short form sets.
Marc:It looked like when you were starting out.
Marc:That's how you learn, yeah.
Marc:Right, that you were doing bits and you were building your personality.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But then you started doing these three or four big pieces and themed shows and storytelling shows.
Marc:But there's clearly...
Marc:Have you found yourself looking back at your old stuff and seeing that you've grown up around certain things?
Guest:What do you mean, grown up around certain things?
Marc:Your opinions have either evolved or changed completely.
Guest:Well, when you're starting out doing 20-minute sets, you're just trying to survive on stage.
Guest:You're just trying to get the laughs.
Guest:Can I do this?
Guest:You're establishing that when you're a young performer.
Guest:And then once you've established that, it loosens you up to just talk.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And the more you talk, I think you might be like me in the sense that you're kind of adding to conversations that you have ongoing.
Guest:It's an ongoing conversation.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But I definitely noticed the tone on the first big special.
Marc:You're a little more angry.
Marc:You're a little more championing things that a younger man would champion.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, you survive all those things.
Marc:And now you're older and you have your own kids.
Guest:Well, I think, yeah, you get more doubtful and modest.
Marc:Right, because you realize it's not easy for anybody and we're all going to be humbled.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And you're mid-humbling, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's ongoing.
Guest:There's always something, some part of you that's been taken away or that's broken or doesn't work anymore.
Guest:You just watch your pride get shattered over a couple of decades.
Guest:And you learn to detach from pride.
Guest:Who needs pride?
Guest:That's a young man's game.
Guest:It sure is, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because that thing can take you for a fucking ride, man.
Guest:Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You see a lot of people who haven't learned that.
Guest:It's rough, dude.
Guest:It's very rough for them, I think.
Guest:They keep on not learning that.
Marc:It just turns into this weird, bitter... They have no idea that everyone's like, oh, he's still at it.
Guest:Yeah, you're pointing a finger at a mountain and shouting at it.
Guest:It's not going to work out for you, you know?
Marc:It's very strange in this business that you see that so often.
Marc:I don't think you're... Because there's such a difference between people who make the break whenever, who transcend and continue to grow in this game, and then there's the people that are just shouting at that mountain, and there's nothing you can do.
Marc:No.
Marc:Because you realize that if you take that... Whatever they're shouting at that mountain, if you take that away from them, you don't know... They won't have anything.
Yeah.
Guest:There's nothing left, yeah.
Guest:If the mountain suddenly said, you know what, I agree with you, they'd have nothing to say.
Guest:It'd be over.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So where did it start?
Marc:When did you, like at what point did you say, fuck it, I'm going to do this?
Marc:I mean, how old were you?
Guest:Oh, I think I was 19 or 20 because I literally had no other option at the time in terms of, you know, it was the first paid work I'd ever had.
Guest:I got five pounds for performing for five minutes.
Guest:And then, you know, I thought, well, this is the best economic model I've found, you know, just in terms of to buy time to think about what the hell am I going to do.
Guest:I can talk and get money.
Guest:I can talk and get money.
Guest:And I was writing and drawing.
Guest:That's what I did, you know, forever.
Marc:Were you at some sort of juncture where you were like, you know, your life wasn't going to go well?
Guest:Well, I'm not interested in doing anything except reading, writing, and drawing.
Guest:You know, I hadn't done any acting at that stage.
Guest:I hadn't thought about it.
Guest:And then a couple of years later, somebody asked me to do something.
Guest:I said, sure, it turned up.
Guest:You did all right with it.
Guest:I did okay with it.
Guest:And then other things happened.
Guest:But I just knew.
Guest:The only thing I knew was that if I went to get a job, I would die.
Yeah.
Guest:And I mean that.
Guest:If not literally, metaphorically.
Guest:No, no, literally and metaphorically and every which way.
Guest:You would just show up for work.
Guest:I would reject myself and die.
Guest:Were there any jobs?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, you know, I know I once I would I would even even destroy it as I was asking for the job.
Guest:I would say, can I have this job thing?
Guest:And they would know I didn't want it, you know, so it never happened.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, so you lucked out.
Marc:But I mean, when you started, where did you go?
Marc:You say you grew up in a rural area.
Marc:I mean, what does that mean, really?
Marc:Are you talking cows?
Marc:Were there farms around?
Guest:I knew cows.
Guest:You knew cows.
Guest:I was on first name terms with many cows.
Guest:Were you walked by them?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We understood each other.
Guest:And then it was a mile from the town.
Guest:It wasn't like I was in the Appalachian Mountains.
Guest:And then when you're a young person in Ireland, you want to be in a city.
Guest:So you hang out in Dublin.
Guest:And that's where I did comedy.
Guest:There's only one or two clubs.
Guest:You play them both as often as you can.
Guest:And then you realize I have to go to London, which is a very widespread Irish experience.
Guest:I have to go to London now.
Guest:It's the London time.
Marc:And does that take any sort of like, you know, biting your lip or sucking it up somehow?
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:Because if I was a hick, you know, so London's a great city and, you know, everything's big and noisy and there's a lot of people and you really get a sense of your own infinitesimal smallness and irrelevance.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you're trying to just make a living, be allowed to try to make a living.
Guest:First of all, you know, you go to free spots and all the clubs.
Guest:And then they ask you back if you make them.
Guest:The great thing about comedy is that you always know if it's working or not because the room is shaking.
Guest:And if it's not shaking, you're in the wrong place.
Guest:Go down the street.
Guest:Maybe you should be a sous chef.
Guest:But leave us alone here.
Guest:And it worked out, you know.
Marc:But you had a sort of like a fairly healthy cynicism and slight chip on your shoulder from the beginning, right?
Guest:Well, I think I probably could have had a chip on my shoulder because I was terrified.
Guest:That's the truth.
Guest:I was a young 21-year-old guy.
Guest:I was talking to rooms full of drunk people, drunk Londoners.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it scares me.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I mean, it was midnight, you know, and they were Friday and they come from work and they go to the pub and they tank up on beer and then they go out and they want to be made to laugh.
Guest:So it's a mess.
Guest:It's a mess.
Guest:And it teaches you a lot about not losing your what they say called losing your bottle, losing your courage.
Guest:You know, you've got to hold on to that and just steam through it.
Guest:So I did that for four years.
Guest:And there's 100 clubs in London.
Guest:So it's a fantastic arena, playground to learn your stuff.
Marc:Did you guys all hang out?
Marc:Was there an Irish contingent and an English contingent?
Guest:Well, there was a really good club where everybody went to try new material.
Guest:So all the comics went there.
Guest:The Meccano Club, it was called.
Guest:It was on a Monday night.
Guest:And that was where we would all go and take stock of one another and who had something interesting, who looked like they were... Doing something.
Guest:Yeah, they were going to do something, yeah.
Guest:And that was really great, actually.
Guest:It was a workshop in public, although I'm a bit scared of using that word.
Guest:But it was, you know, you try it out, you're jamming.
Marc:Yeah, sure, no, I get it, yeah.
Marc:And that was great.
Marc:And was there like a dark time?
Marc:Like I got Belfast sitting in my head.
Marc:Was there a time where you were like, oh, fuck...
Marc:It's over.
Guest:Well, oh, God, you know, I mean, just doing gig after gig and thinking, where's this going?
Guest:What am I doing?
Marc:What would that look like as a performer from that part of the world where, you know, these situations, I mean, what were the situations that you walked into?
Marc:Because like here, you know, you got one-nighters, you've got, you know, pub gigs, you've got, but I mean, what was the sort of the learning curve?
Marc:You know, what did you have to go through?
Marc:Where did you have to drive to?
Guest:Well, what you would do is you would get a... Sorry about all the coughing.
Guest:You would get in a... You want water?
Guest:Water would be good, but I don't want to do... Is it easy to stop this and start again?
Marc:I'll just run in and get it.
Guest:The water.
Guest:What will I do?
Guest:Will I hold the fort?
Guest:Do I talk for both of us?
Marc:Sure, why don't you talk to yourself or do the Beach Boys?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thank you very much, Mark.
Guest:So I'm sitting here by myself now in Mark's den, and he's got a lot of...
Guest:He's got a lot of very, very immature literature around.
Guest:There's a lot of... It's very heavy on comic books and little dolls and things.
Guest:Oh, nothing.
Guest:I was just saying nothing.
Guest:Here we go.
Guest:So...
Guest:You know, you just, you were in country environments, you were in cities, you were, you were, you know, you not just do London, you travel up and down the length of Britain with a carload of comics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We do that here, yeah.
Guest:You know, split the petrol money and all that stuff and drive back or, so it,
Guest:You just, you know, you couldn't have you couldn't have anything really to be too attached to because your life was in a bag.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is the anybody's on the road.
Guest:That's their experience.
Guest:So, you know, after a couple of years of that, you know, you're getting people giving you a bundle of cash and you, you know, you've drunk too many beers in some terrible town and you're thinking.
Guest:what is this?
Guest:What's the end point of this?
Guest:Because you're self-employed and because it's all up to you, you think, okay, what's the way out of this?
Guest:I've gotten into this, now how do I get out?
Marc:Right, to the next level at least.
Guest:Yeah, or next level or whatever it is, to be just not doing this stuff all the time.
Guest:And then, you know, my agent, who's a really good friend of mine, said, look, write a television program.
Guest:So I started working on black books and then that was it.
Marc:Yeah, watch some of that.
Marc:It's very funny.
Marc:Well, thank you.
Marc:And I think that's one thing that there is a sort of my belief is that if you're good in Ireland or in the UK and you stand out, that your opportunity to actually get something on television is far better than ours.
Guest:Yeah, I think there's more opportunity for people who want to self-generate their own stuff.
Guest:Whereas here, there's more hoops to go through with committees and channels.
Marc:A lot of hoops.
Marc:And there's more channels.
Guest:It's weird.
Marc:But I think that because the television business there is still sort of indigenous and intimate, that if they can deliver a show by their own creative people, it's great.
Yeah.
Guest:It's just a lot smaller.
Guest:So you've got a small production company.
Guest:I worked with a small production company called Big Talk, who are really great.
Guest:And we were a small team making this show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you are a proprietor, a bookstore owner.
Guest:Yeah, that's the setup.
Marc:And the other guy's name is Bailey, right, Bill?
Marc:Bill Bailey.
Guest:He's a very funny guy.
Guest:He's an amazing comedian and musician.
Guest:He's a terrific person.
Guest:And he's very, very smart and very, very funny.
Guest:And Thames and Greg, who played Fran, who's a great actor.
Marc:And how many shows did you do?
Guest:We only did 18.
Guest:So that was three series for us.
Guest:So the work ethic is not what goes on here because you make 149 shows per season or whatever it is.
Marc:They don't do that there at all, do they?
Guest:No, are you kidding me?
Guest:And we had like two-year gaps between the series as well because it was, I'm tired.
Guest:Yeah, let's go for a walk.
Marc:And the people who watch it and enjoy it.
Guest:They can wait.
Guest:If they liked it, they'll come back.
Guest:Please.
Guest:Give me a break.
Marc:But there's no shows that run like 50 episodes?
Marc:No.
Guest:in general no that sounds even that sounds even for the really for the long running ones that sounds too much you'll get they do series of series of six six eight episodes that kind of thing you know Peep Show is a good British comedy I think they're in their seventh series but even they're doing six or eight episodes at a time and that changed the game for you
Guest:Well, it meant that I could tour.
Marc:And people knew who you were.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was a good showcase for you.
Guest:Yeah, but it was great fun to do as well.
Guest:And you learn a lot.
Guest:And we laughed a lot of the time.
Guest:And it went crazy as well.
Guest:It was stressful being in it and writing it as a live audience and all that stuff.
Guest:And it was a small hit, I suppose you would call it.
Marc:But your personality was represented so well.
Marc:So now when people went out to see you, you were kind of that guy, give or take.
Guest:Well, to a degree.
Guest:I mean, it was a character.
Guest:If I lived like he does, I would have been dead years ago.
Marc:But the sense of humor was there.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now all of a sudden, when that changed everything, where you're not driving to rural areas to perform for 12 people at some sort of hall, but hundreds of people are coming out.
Guest:Yeah, you could do a show.
Guest:You could do a theater and 400, 500, 600, 800, then upwards from there, people came along and you're playing...
Guest:And then you're doing a tour in Europe and down the country.
Guest:And that is different.
Guest:Because that feels like, well, you know, then you've had to write your show over however long it took you.
Guest:And you want to look after it.
Guest:It's yours.
Guest:It's not just, you know, survival.
Guest:You want to do a good show.
Guest:And there are people who came to see that show.
Guest:So you want to do it.
Guest:You want to perform it and...
Marc:And each of those shows, I mean, that's another thing that we don't really do here in the same way.
Marc:I think that there's sort of like the Edinburgh model is that you do an hour, it's got a through line, or at least a title that suggests that.
Guest:Yeah, mine really didn't have a through line, but you're right, a lot of them do.
Marc:uh and that you know you're basically every year you're building a new hour yeah that has a title yeah that implies that is a it's a piece of theater yeah and and that's how it works it does straddle that theater line more right more than the american and when you build your shows i mean do you do it in chunks do you go out do you go do you still workshop in small clubs or do you just write it uh for years i didn't actually i would just sit and write
Guest:And then go out and do it.
Marc:And tweak it as each date went.
Guest:Yeah, but what it meant was, now I do try out little parts here and there.
Guest:I do smaller gigs just to say the thing out loud, as much as anything, just to learn it.
Marc:To learn it and also get the timing right and to see if that beat works.
Guest:Yeah, because I would go out and I wouldn't have said any of it.
Guest:And I would have 90 minutes of material or 70 minutes of material.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was a mess because I would go, wait a minute, this thing is over here.
Guest:I have to stick this wire in.
Guest:And that sort of became part of the show as well.
Guest:And it was handy for me because it meant I never had to.
Guest:I hate doing the same thing in the same order.
Guest:I can't do that.
Marc:It drives me nuts.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:Oh, I don't do it because what happens is if you go on and you can't do that or you don't want to do that and you don't know it all anyway, you don't have to do it.
Guest:You forget bits and then you can go, you can start something and say, oh no, forget about the dog because I have to tell you about my colon or whatever it is.
Guest:You found another thing.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And then you're...
Marc:See, I work like that too, where you've got your framework, you've got your pieces, and then you get tired of doing them in sequence, and you're like, fuck it.
Marc:And then you're cornered on stage to have that moment.
Guest:And that was the fun.
Guest:That was the fun.
Guest:Because I did dry a couple of times.
Guest:There would be times when I would just, there was nothing.
Guest:The cursor was just sliding across the screen.
Guest:There was nothing there.
Guest:It was just Arctic nothing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I go, I look at people and say, so, you know, I don't know what I'm doing.
Guest:And then, you know, something would come.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Something would come.
Marc:That's the fucking best, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you can't know all the time.
Marc:But the best thing is, like, sadly, like, some of the best moments are moments that you know will never happen again because you're not going to be able to find it again.
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:You didn't record it.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:yeah but that's and then years later someone will come up to you and go you know that thing when you were gonna do the dog thing yeah i know that's happened a lot people said that thing when you're like i never you know it was some shit you were making up right bridge something right and then you go like oh maybe i should try to i'm never gonna yeah you can't you can't fake it either you know because then it's it's gone that's when you get the guys going up doing the fake laugh and all that stuff right you know yeah and uh you can't do that
Marc:So do you get most of the charge of what you do from those moments on stage where it's not the performance of the show, but it's those moments where it's like, no.
Guest:Another little door opens.
Marc:Yeah, this is immediate.
Guest:Yeah, that's great fun.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:But the thing is, it's great fun, but you can't do that for a whole show, I would say, either.
Guest:Because you've got to be able to feel like.
Marc:No, the people that do that for a whole show are pretending to do it for a whole show.
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Guest:And some of them are brilliant at it.
Marc:Yeah, at pretending to do that for a whole show.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:So what about the movies?
Marc:Those just started to come?
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:I didn't do a whole lot of knocking on doors because I didn't want to.
Guest:I might do it now because, you know, the great thing about movies is you go in, you do a few days, and then you're out of there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you're not the guy who's shooting everybody.
Marc:Yeah, and then it's months and months in a trailer.
Marc:Yeah, you don't want to go.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So what was your relationship with Simon Pegg?
Marc:He knew you or what?
Guest:Yes, Simon and I were working out of the same office because he was writing his first film.
Guest:He was writing Shaun of the Dead there when I was doing Black Book.
Marc:And you were just down the hall and he was like, I'm going to have that guy down the hall do the part.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Guest:Yeah, you know, it was the same production office, Big Talk.
Marc:Now, what's your relationship with America?
Marc:I mean, are you, because you're here, you're doing shows at Largo, and you're going to San Francisco this weekend?
Guest:Going to the Marines in San Francisco after that.
Marc:I know that place, down on the wharf?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Great theater.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And how do you go over here?
Guest:Good.
Guest:I just did a week in New York.
Guest:It was great fun.
Guest:I was in a small theater in St.
Guest:Mark's Place.
Guest:And, you know, it was full every night.
Guest:People came.
Guest:And I'm more willing to sort of do American now because having done it before...
Guest:I felt like... I always felt America was very, very different.
Guest:I don't feel that so much.
Guest:I think I understand the place a little more.
Guest:Because America just is a sort of... America is a brand, you know, to us.
Guest:It's an idea.
Marc:It's a slightly damaged brand.
Guest:It's all sorts of things.
Guest:But it's the empire, you know.
Guest:It's in 50-foot high letters.
Guest:America coming towards you, you know.
Guest:And you can't...
Guest:You have to just be yourself and communicate.
Guest:You can't pretend to be American.
Guest:You can't do it the American way.
Guest:You just have to... Did you do that the first time?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:But I didn't know if what I was doing was going over, I think.
Marc:So we feel the same way.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:I think it's quite similar, really.
Guest:You begin to think, well, do these people know what I'm talking about at all?
Guest:Not in terms of mentioning, oh, you know...
Marc:Right, not references.
Guest:Not references, but just the tone.
Guest:Just, yeah, the tone, the way you think.
Guest:Well, now I realize America's just a bunch of people, really.
Marc:Yeah, well, I imagine you must be learning that all over.
Marc:I mean, when you come to America now, because of technology, I mean, people who like you are going to find you.
Guest:Yeah, that has changed everything.
Guest:That's one good thing about all this modern tech.
Guest:It has changed everything.
Guest:People, you know, it's out there.
Guest:They'll go and they'll find us.
Marc:I mean, I imagine you have people coming out in New York that like are black book freaks.
Guest:Yeah, people came.
Guest:People came from Buffalo and Pittsburgh and, you know, all over.
Guest:Do you find that you have a lot of Irish people in your audience?
Guest:Not so much, actually.
Guest:I got some.
Guest:I do get some people, but I always wanted to stay away.
Marc:For the nostalgia?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I always wanted to stay away from doing Irish clubs or something with an Irish hook.
Guest:Because I want to talk to everybody.
Guest:I really, really am not in this to...
Guest:Like in London, when I was doing the clubs, there would be an Irish night.
Guest:And I never did that.
Guest:But I did go along to the Jewish one.
Guest:And I went along to the black one.
Guest:Because I wanted to talk to people.
Guest:I don't want to talk to the same village.
Guest:Preach to the choir.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:There's no comfort in that for me.
Marc:Well, what do you learn from, like, I'm curious about this because in your last special, you went to the Baltic countries and you went to Russia and everything else.
Marc:Now, is your experience that what you're talking about thematically, fundamentally the experience of everybody?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, at the base level, it is absolutely, the human condition is the human condition, whether you're in Kazakhstan or Ohio.
Guest:You know, it really is.
Guest:All of the major engines of anxiety and hope and love and want are all the same everywhere.
Guest:There's no question about that.
Guest:It's just the way people deal with them is is differs.
Guest:You know, some people employ religion.
Guest:Some people use materialism.
Guest:Some people use whatever it is that gets them through it.
Marc:But you're very conscious when you're writing material that that's what you're speaking to are those drives.
Guest:Yeah, always, because I think you have to stay close to the, if you don't stay close to the emotion of something, you lose your way.
Guest:I do anyway.
Guest:It becomes trivial and detached.
Guest:Yeah, it becomes, because it becomes, I think you can do it two ways.
Guest:I thought this yesterday, it's completely spurious and shallow and wrong.
Guest:I did think, you know, with comedy, a lot of the time you see there's two big approaches.
Guest:There's there's going into it or there's going away from it.
Guest:And when I say the it is the stuff of life itself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you can you can dive into it or you can spend a lot of time distracting from it.
Guest:And some people are fantastic at that.
Guest:I mean, in some ways, Eddie does that.
Guest:Eddie Izzard does that quite a lot because he does these baroque.
Guest:Dances around it.
Guest:Dances around it.
Guest:Incredible arabesques of thought and situation and absurdity, you know, whatever, the canteen on the death star, whatever it is.
Guest:He does these extraordinary structures, a tiny piece of trivia.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And makes it into something much more interesting than the original.
Marc:But it's a journey away from it.
Guest:It's a journey away from... I mean, it's very funny.
Guest:It's extremely funny.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:I'm sensitive to that too.
Marc:But it's not particularly trying to put grapple hooks into an emotion or a difficult thing or a feeling that's difficult to... Well, isn't that really the sort of weird conundrum of being an entertainer versus being some sort of...
Marc:uh i don't want to say artist but i i find this a lot that you know there are people that like i'm here to entertain and then there there are people that are here to share their experience and provide something that seems a little deeper than entertainment yeah well i don't know how i think i described it as i'm here to talk because i don't really know if we're entertained just means if you're entertaining somebody what it means is that they're not going away right that's all entertainment means to me
Marc:So it's broad.
Marc:It's not like, let me get you away from all that.
Guest:Well, it's just what you're doing is you either want to get them away from something or get them into something.
Guest:But either way, you're going to entertain them because they're not going anywhere.
Guest:That's what entertain means, that you entertain the person is still there.
Guest:Engaged.
Guest:Engaged, entertained.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Paying attention to whatever nonsense you're doing.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So presumably, whatever you're doing, you're entertaining them if they're still there.
Guest:So I think of it as just, I'm here to talk about this stuff.
Guest:It's really, you know, you do want the feeling of having a conversation.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Because you're talking in such a way as to anticipate every disagreement, every offshoot, every tangent that might be flying through the imaginary person you're talking to.
Guest:It might be going through their mind.
Guest:Because if you sit, stand there and think, okay, I'm going to talk to these 400 people and address everything going through their heads, you're fucked.
Guest:But if you if I what I do is I talk into the doc, pretending I'm talking to one person.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also, it's not like, OK, I'm going to take you on a trip now.
Marc:It's sort of like, you know, I have this stuff.
Marc:This is going on in my heart.
Marc:This is going on in my mind.
Marc:I'm struggling and I have to assume that you are, too.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:That's absolutely right.
Guest:That's a very good way to put it.
Guest:That's one of the best descriptions I've heard of it because that's exactly what you're doing.
Guest:You're having this conversation where the other person doesn't speak, but you're trying to work it out for both of you.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And what you are doing is, from their silence, you're responding to, you'll make a statement and then assume that they will be thinking, yeah, but what about the contrary?
Guest:And then you do, then you take that as well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's what a conversation is.
Guest:That's what it means.
Guest:You turn something around together.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's why, you know, when you're a performer like you are, that, you know, these conversations thematically are similar because you are drawing from these elements of what all people experience.
Marc:But as you grow, the dialogue changes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you're hoping that the other person does disagree with you or, you know, they're not just waiting to say, give me the next statement so I can cling to.
Guest:That's why the whole leader follower thing seems a bit sinister to me.
Marc:But they could be clinging to it just because they're finding out in that moment that they're not alone.
Guest:That's a part of it as well.
Marc:So how has it changed for you from younger, more aggravated smoking on stage guy to a guy that has kids?
Marc:What are the things that you look back on in your earlier monologues where you're like, well, that sort of evolved?
Marc:I think I was a little off on that one.
Guest:Well, what I see when I, you know, I think when anybody looks back on their younger selves, the only difference for this kind of thing is that you actually have tapes of you, you know, giving your opinion at length about something.
Guest:And a lot of the time, those opinions weren't real anyway.
Guest:They were joke opinions.
Guest:But when I look back, I think it's the same as when anybody looks back.
Guest:You tend to see, oh God, you know, I was either...
Guest:i was either i was so uh afraid you know and i'm desperately trying to you know cover this by swaggering or whatever it is right uh or uh or really or i'd look but i wince i think oh god that's so thoughtless or you're so callow it's so fucking dumb just going for effect yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah it's oh how shocking
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:The whole idea of shock, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I find that I can't watch that at all when I see guys do that where they're strutting and they're laying it down, you know, going to shock you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'll take your God away.
Marc:It's so boring.
Marc:Well, it is because I had that realization about myself that I used to think I was angry about things and then I realized I was just angry and that anger is all in fear.
Marc:So the best way to sort of like have an effect is to be, you know, provoke.
Marc:Not just provocative, but to say like, huh, what are you going to do with that information?
Guest:See what I just said?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, if you're watching somebody, it tends to be guys.
Guest:It often is guys.
Guest:You get the odd woman who does a bit of as well.
Guest:I suppose Roseanne Barr did that for a bit in a really interesting kind of way for a while.
Guest:But when you see somebody who's doing the angry guy thing, whether it's an angry young man or an angry middle-aged man,
Guest:You know, it's not to say that there's nothing there.
Guest:I saw Brendan Berry, who runs a comedy festival in Dublin on a great venue, told me to look at this guy he'd had over from New York, Eddie Pepitone.
Guest:I love Eddie, yeah.
Guest:And I just laugh so much, that thing where he does, where he says, you don't know how to heckle me.
Guest:I'll show you how to heckle me.
Guest:And he heckles himself.
Guest:And the camera stays on the stage, and he's in the audience saying,
Guest:Hey, Eddie, how come you don't speak to your sister no more?
Guest:I love that.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:I use him a lot on the live shows.
Guest:He's a good friend of mine.
Guest:He's very funny.
Guest:Really funny.
Guest:Because that just brings it right down to, you know, there's no pretense of, you know, I know more than you or I'm the showbiz guy.
Guest:You just picture this guy in a vest in his kitchen, you know, the stuff going through his mind.
Guest:And it's great.
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, it's a difference between, you know, the best you can hope for, I think, as you get older, if you were an angry young man, is that you just become cranky.
Marc:You know, cranky is much more palatable than angry.
Guest:Yeah, you know, anger is exhausting to experience, either when somebody else is angry or when you're really angry.
Guest:It's absolutely exhausting.
Marc:When Bill Hicks came to England, did that have an effect on you?
Guest:Yeah, well, everybody watched him, you know, everybody watched him and was interested in what he was doing because what he had was he would write very contained, sharp pieces about a specific subject that were sometimes quite tricky, particularly like stuff about, you know, politics and so on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were some of them were really, really well done.
Guest:Now, you know, people debate reputations and all that sort of stuff.
Guest:I'm not a critic.
Guest:I don't really care.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just think he had some very good stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He had some good jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had some very good stuff.
Guest:I didn't like all of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But some of it was great.
Marc:But like the way that the myth of Hicks goes is that, you know, England was like... Yeah, that does seem to be the way it goes.
Guest:I mean, he definitely did get... I think he did get an ear there.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:In a way that he hadn't experienced here.
Guest:And he loved that because it allowed him to do that full show and bring it to a new level.
Guest:Because when you know people really have come to see you and they want to hear what you've come up with,
Marc:And also to speak harshly about America as an American to sympathetic ears who don't have the same experience as you was, I think, a big deal.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:It was a big deal.
Guest:And it was good to see an intelligent American talk about what they felt was wrong.
Marc:When you were coming up, who were the comics outside of the people that influenced you originally?
Marc:I mean, who were the guys where you were like, you know, that that is, you know, a good model of what I'd like to be?
Guest:well there was never one person you know and a lot of the time for me it was a lot of the time for me it was writers it wasn't comics that's the truth I mean I don't see that which ones well a lot of American a lot of Americans so you know Don DeLillo is the person I always did you understand his last book Point Omega yeah I didn't think it wasn't my favorite of his books for sure but I just didn't understand the point
Guest:Well, I don't think a lot of his books, I don't think they're not really an argument based.
Guest:Well, no, but yeah, but like that one seemed pretty sparse.
Guest:It was extremely sparse, but some of his other sparse books I think are very successful.
Guest:The Body Artist, which is not a particularly, you know, he's deeply funny in a way that he just, what he's wonderful at is making the familiar strange again.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, even his early stuff, like Great Jones Street, I loved.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:White Noise, I fucking loved.
Marc:Ratner's Star, even like that.
Marc:I mean, I read the fuck out of him.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just imagining, you know.
Marc:I need things from books, man.
Guest:Calvin Trilling's thing.
Guest:I read the fuck out of that guy.
Guest:I love that.
Marc:And like Libra was great.
Marc:And I tried to get through the underworld one, but I didn't quite lock in all the way.
Marc:It was a big thing.
Guest:But man, that last book, I was like, what the... Yeah, well, you know, I think that you have to... I'm willing to let him have it.
Marc:Yeah, if you admire someone, you know, you kind of say, well, I couldn't go with you the whole way there.
Marc:But with someone like DeLillo, though, the assumption is something like I'm at fault here.
Guest:You know, I get clearly, you know, I don't think that it's funny when you like with, you know, we're talking about trying to have a conversation with somebody with books with if there's a writer who really gets you.
Guest:It does feel like a conversation because you're going back to it, you know.
Marc:Oh, hell yeah.
Marc:I mean, like I look at every book as a self-help book.
Marc:I mean, if it's a novel, I don't know.
Guest:I think I think a lot of I think a lot of the time everybody does.
Guest:Who are some of your other guys?
Guest:You're looking for answers.
Guest:Well, just in terms of straight comedy, in fact, talking about that thing of, you know, he's obviously a kind of writer who tries to engage with the essence of what human experience is.
Guest:And then you get a great American master, S.J.
Guest:Perelman, who did the opposite, who's gone a million miles away from it through language.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to extraordinarily successful effect because he remakes the American language.
Guest:And it's hysterically funny.
Guest:It's pure funny.
Guest:When he hits it, my God.
Guest:That used to just floor me.
Marc:Did you go to college or you didn't?
Marc:No.
Marc:Do you have a, like, is there a, you know, a sort of autodidactic chip on your shoulder?
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:I think that's the case.
Guest:What happens is if you don't, you tend to think, okay, I'm way behind, so I have to read everything.
Guest:And, you know, you go through that thing of, you know, I think I certainly did it as a younger man, dropping references.
Guest:Yeah, I know all about that stuff.
Guest:Don't even think about mentioning that.
Guest:You know, I'm way ahead of you there, which is really sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you get over that a bit.
Marc:Well, it's troublesome when you're a bright guy and you know you're a smart guy, but you chose not to go to college for whatever reason you didn't go.
Marc:And then you have to be around these people that were sort of spoon-fed that stuff and fight the fight.
Guest:Well, so often, I mean, you know, this is what happens.
Guest:What's very common is that people go through the whole system and they don't read afterwards.
Guest:And I feel lucky in a way that I still have.
Guest:I'm really hungry for reading.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You got any lately?
Guest:Anybody?
Guest:Very recently, the last thing I read that I thought was really great was the Patrick Melrose series by Edward St.
Guest:Dobin, who's written this quintet of novels, but a really difficult subject.
Guest:It's about abuse in part, and it's just completely magnificent.
Guest:It's a wonderful achievement.
Guest:And some of it's sort of screamingly funny as well.
Marc:Do you speak to that stuff in your act?
Marc:You know, I don't know all your stuff.
Marc:I mean, do you speak about the church and that type of stuff?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I mean, you know, the thing is with faith, I got a bit annoyed at those, if you like, aggressively secular proselytizers that came out in the last couple of years.
Guest:I do, too.
Guest:Because.
Guest:Because, you know, the thing is, if you don't believe, and I don't, it's completely obvious to you.
Guest:So you're looking at these people, and they are pointing a finger at a mountain because you've got a load of people who do believe for a whole host of reasons.
Guest:And you might, you know, say, well...
Guest:Whatever the reason is, it's just terrifically sad and you're all wrong.
Guest:And that may be the case, but you're certainly not going to, you cannot affect change in that through rationality.
Marc:And also like the question becomes, if that's what's getting someone through the day and they're not bothering anybody, why is it your duty to try to take their hope away?
Marc:That becomes a question for me.
Guest:Look, on an intellectual level, there's no argument.
Guest:So, you know, why bother having it?
Marc:Well, there's that, but then also I got just recently, you know, having, you know, because I do a series of bits about how, you know, I don't believe in God, but I just, I'm not an atheist.
Marc:I just don't give a fuck.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:So, but then I got flack from- You can't even be troubled to be a proper signed up atheist.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:I'm just sort of like, whatever you got to do, just don't involve me.
Marc:You know, and try not to hurt people.
Marc:That's the belief system.
Guest:I'm out, okay?
Guest:I'm out to lunch.
Marc:Never a day goes by where I question it or fight it actively, really.
Marc:But I got flack from atheists who were like, we're the victims here.
Marc:You weren't committed enough.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But why deny us a voice when we're obviously the smaller voice?
Marc:But do you think atheists are the smaller voice in America?
Marc:Well, absolutely.
Marc:They're the smaller voice everywhere because I think that innately, people who once had religion or have religion in their family, just by proximity are God apologists.
Marc:It's not that they're not atheists, but they're just sort of like, yeah, let's not, do we have to bring that up?
Guest:The problem with it is, look, is that if this is what I think, if you believe in a God,
Guest:The word belief means to be held dear.
Guest:That's what it means, be belief.
Guest:Okay, that's the two parts of the world.
Guest:So we all want to be held dear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we all hold certain values and hopes very dear to us.
Guest:So the idea of being loved is one that you can't do without it.
Guest:Everybody needs to be loved.
Guest:I fight it.
Guest:Well, you know...
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:Because that's it.
Guest:So this idea of being loved by something greater than yourself is very appealing.
Guest:And if you are going to say, well, I believe in that's it.
Guest:What you're doing is you're saying that you know the outcome of the story you're in.
Guest:And nobody, as far as I'm concerned, can know that.
Guest:So that's the problem.
Guest:I'm going to be wary of it because there's a happy outcome.
Guest:And I don't think things work like that.
Marc:Until we get footage, film footage from heaven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The actual lobby, people being greeted, getting their cars valeted, all that stuff.
Marc:I'm going to stay in the real world where things are disappointing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And obviously, because I think that's, you know, it's very clearly the case for me.
Guest:So I don't understand faith on that level.
Guest:You know, I don't understand it at all.
Guest:But I do understand what I do understand emotionally is the need to have some comfort.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Wherever it comes from.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And that's what it provides.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that's a that's an interesting sort of bookend to the the idea of, you know, the the working poor of Ireland, you know, having or anywhere.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And just because I always wondered about that, that, you know, what effect that that abuse had on on people who did take comfort in these people that were were were the spokespeople.
Guest:Well, if you look at Catholicism, it was a kind of, you know, in retrospect, it was sort of, it was just the most incredibly pernicious engine of abuse.
Guest:Because what you have is you have a religion premised on the idea that if you do wrong, you can wipe the slate clean through confession.
Guest:And that this life is really just a precursor for the life to come, the important one, which is the hereafter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that what happens on this mortal plane is of less consequence.
Guest:So even those crimes are less consequential.
Guest:That is built into what's being sold.
Marc:And that's what they used as a rationalization.
Guest:I don't think they said it out loud, but I think that it underpinned the whole system.
Guest:And also, you know, they were so elevated in society as figures.
Marc:And insulated, completely insulated.
Guest:Yeah, they were.
Guest:They were self-governing.
Guest:There was no regulation.
Guest:They were given pretty much a free hand.
Guest:You know, they had this piety, this air of piety around them from the community who, you know, it was an aspirational...
Guest:a thing for somebody to become a priest in an Irish family for many, many years.
Guest:And I have to say, you know, as much as I'm respectful of people's faiths, I have the idea of it being necessary to them.
Guest:I respect that for them, even though I don't respect any organized religion or disorganized one.
Guest:But when it comes to the Catholic Church as an organization, I don't have one scintilla of compassion, understanding, anything.
Guest:I just think they're the most heinous, corrupt, separatingly vile organization that's ever been on the planet.
Marc:But I imagine a lot of the people that sort of dealt with that in terms of having a very active relationship with the church, I don't imagine that it shattered their faith, but I'm sure it challenged their ability to forgive and certainly destroyed the community on some level.
Guest:You're talking about carnage, emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical carnage across a country.
Guest:They destroyed the lives of people who invested the care of their children to these people.
Guest:It's unspeakable.
Marc:Are you, not that you're a spokesperson for what's happening, but I mean, have they made any concessions?
Marc:Is there any sort of attempt to reinvent anything?
Guest:Well, I mean, they paid it money.
Guest:They tried to address it through money.
Guest:It's just horrible.
Guest:It is disgusting at every level.
Marc:Before we go, just tell me about Russia a little bit and performing for countries that... I mean, is there... Because my nervousness about performing in places, even when I go to Ireland, is that there's going to be that beat or two where you're like, do they get it or do they not get it?
Marc:Okay, there's a laugh.
Guest:Well, what the great thing in Russia, what the great advantage I had, and indeed anybody who would go would have, is that there's this huge level of interest
Guest:The people who came who's English, who are confident enough in their English, are very willing to listen.
Guest:And they're the most extraordinarily generous giving people as an audience.
Guest:You know, I came out, the stage was covered in cakes and vodka.
Guest:And they couldn't have been more up for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a great experience.
Guest:It was a great experience because it felt like, you know, this is why hasn't this happened before?
Guest:just so we can compare notes.
Guest:And I was really nervous about, am I going to get this all wrong?
Guest:And, you know, the very first performance, I did have a moment where I thought, oh, God, I've lost the room just for a minute or so.
Guest:And then it was fine.
Guest:And then afterwards, it was just great.
Guest:So people would, you know, listen, and then they would laugh, and then they would clap.
Guest:So it felt like being a Victorian lecturer.
Guest:you know, a little pace.
Marc:And you learned to pace yourself?
Guest:Yeah, you just kind of deal with that.
Guest:Here we are, it's the thing.
Guest:You're like, ah, clap.
Guest:And then again, again, again.
Guest:So it was just terrific.
Marc:And how old are your kids?
Marc:My kids are 10 and 14.
Marc:And what effect does that have on your humbling?
Marc:Well, it's key, isn't it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't have any.
Guest:Well, it's a major part for anybody who has children.
Guest:You learn so much and you get this, you know, they just throw all your bullshit back at you.
Guest:So it's great.
Guest:There's nowhere to run.
Marc:So you're right.
Marc:So once you get caught on your bullshit, you're like, oh, he's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's right.
Guest:I'm so short.
Guest:How can you be that right and that short?
Guest:Well, it was great talking to you, man.
Guest:Thanks for taking the time.
Guest:Thanks a lot, Mark.
Marc:That was fun.
Marc:I enjoyed talking to him.
Marc:There's so much I don't know about across the pond.
Marc:Look, that's the end of our show for now.
Marc:And please, let me reiterate.
Marc:I'll be at the Fort Lauderdale Improv, January 4th, 5th, and 6th.
Marc:And good nights in Raleigh, North Carolina, the 10th, 11th, and 12th of January.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Buy some presents.
Marc:Go to the merch section.
Marc:Boomer Lives.
Marc:Shirts are available.
Marc:We're printing more.
Marc:You can order them.
Marc:You can get a bag.
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Marc:You can get other T-shirts, all kinds of fun stuff.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Go to the merch.
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Marc:You can, you know, see pictures of me.
Marc:You can see my calendar, all that stuff.
Marc:WTFPod.com.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:It's been a long day, man.
Marc:It's been a long day and I'm still half filled with meat.
Marc:Boomer lives!
you