Episode 98 - Stewart Lee

Episode 98 • Released August 10, 2010 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:07Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:08Guest:Really?

00:00:08Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:09Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:10Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:12Guest:Pow!

00:00:12Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:14Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?

00:00:16Guest:What's wrong with me?

00:00:17Marc:It's time for WTF!

00:00:19Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:20Guest:With Mark Maron.

00:00:24Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you?

00:00:25Marc:What the fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:28Marc:What the fuck Nicks?

00:00:30Marc:How are you?

00:00:31Marc:It's me, Mark Maron.

00:00:32Marc:I am in London, England.

00:00:34Marc:I've not done any podcasting from London, England until today, the day before I leave London, England.

00:00:41Marc:And I've got to be honest with you.

00:00:43Marc:I've had a pretty great time here.

00:00:44Marc:Well, I knew I would, but you know, I've been a little awkward, a little adverse to traveling to the UK, to traveling to Ireland.

00:00:51Marc:I make myself a little crazy, but that's not really the issue.

00:00:54Marc:The issue is that I spent two weeks here and I didn't do a lot.

00:01:00Marc:Big Ben.

00:01:22Marc:I did the monument.

00:01:24Marc:I went to the East End, and I walked down around there.

00:01:27Marc:I saw the Tower of London.

00:01:29Marc:I did a lot of stuff.

00:01:30Marc:I crammed it in.

00:01:31Marc:I didn't get to a couple places.

00:01:32Marc:I didn't get to the British Museum.

00:01:33Marc:I literally went...

00:01:35Marc:Stood in front of the British Museum, knowing what was in the British Museum, having been there once when I was just out of high school.

00:01:41Marc:And I just, I don't know if I was depressed.

00:01:43Marc:I don't know what happened, but I got out of bed.

00:01:46Marc:I've been sleeping really late here.

00:01:47Marc:I don't know why.

00:01:48Marc:I got out of bed.

00:01:49Marc:I'm like, I got to go to the British Museum.

00:01:51Marc:Fuck it.

00:01:51Marc:You know, I need to see, you know, the Rosetta Stone.

00:01:55Marc:I need to see that crystal skull.

00:01:58Marc:I need to see some mummies.

00:01:59Marc:I need to see all the stuff that the British Empire has stolen from other people over the years.

00:02:03Marc:And, and, and, and.

00:02:05Marc:stocked up into that British museum.

00:02:08Marc:And I just stood there in front of that place.

00:02:09Marc:It was so big and so daunting.

00:02:11Marc:And I got exhausted and resentful and I couldn't fucking deal.

00:02:15Marc:And I thought to myself, wait, do I have to see the Rosetta Stone?

00:02:17Marc:I mean, it was essential in figuring out how to interpret hieroglyphics.

00:02:21Marc:Just the fact that I remembered that means that the British Museum had done what it needed to do.

00:02:27Marc:It unearthed a memory of something I learned in a history class probably in ninth grade, and I felt satisfied, and I went and got a shave by a Cypriot instead.

00:02:37Marc:I got a shave down the street from the British Museum, and the guy smacked me in the face afterwards.

00:02:42Marc:It was like hostile.

00:02:43Marc:Like he was jamming the brush into my face.

00:02:45Marc:It was not a good thing.

00:02:47Marc:And I didn't know why.

00:02:48Marc:He did a very good job, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

00:02:51Marc:Who hits a guy after a shave?

00:02:52Marc:And I didn't know if I should tip him, tip him more for that.

00:02:55Marc:But it was like a couple of smacks on my face.

00:02:59Marc:I got past it.

00:03:01Marc:The only weird thing that really happened here, to be honest with you, was I'd done a pretty good show.

00:03:05Marc:I've been putting my heart out there and doing some pretty good work, about an hour 15 minutes a night, just me.

00:03:13Marc:And I'd done a pretty good show, and I was leaving backstage, and I was walking down the stairs, and the audience was still letting itself out.

00:03:22Marc:I mean, they were all walking down the stairs.

00:03:24Marc:And there's that moment where you're performing, you walk out, you lock eyes with someone who was in the audience.

00:03:28Marc:I see this woman looking at me.

00:03:30Marc:I'm looking at her.

00:03:31Marc:She's with a guy.

00:03:32Marc:She was actually with a friend of mine, Jerry Sadowitz.

00:03:35Marc:And she locks eyes at me, and there's that moment where you're anticipating something.

00:03:38Marc:You know, you're always sort of fishing for a compliment in your heart.

00:03:42Marc:You'd like some kudos.

00:03:46Marc:You'd like something nice to be said about what they just saw, if they're going to lock eyes with you.

00:03:51Marc:And I don't know if this was British or what, but she just said, you all right.

00:03:57Marc:Are you all right?

00:03:58Marc:Are you all right?

00:03:59Marc:Are you all right?

00:04:01Marc:That's about the worst thing you can say to me after a show.

00:04:03Marc:Am I all right?

00:04:05Marc:Yeah, I'm fine.

00:04:06Marc:I'm fine.

00:04:06Marc:Why didn't you just not say anything?

00:04:09Marc:How would that have been?

00:04:10Marc:Why not just give me a dirty look?

00:04:11Marc:Was that being polite?

00:04:14Marc:Didn't matter.

00:04:15Marc:They also say, like grown-ups say, they've got to take a wee, like publicly, when they have to pee.

00:04:20Marc:They literally say, I'm going to have a wee.

00:04:23Marc:It's so cute.

00:04:24Marc:It's like there's seven.

00:04:26Marc:Here they are in just what's left of centuries of empire.

00:04:31Marc:Just people saying, I've got to take a wee.

00:04:33Marc:I'm going to have a wee.

00:04:36Marc:Really cute.

00:04:38Marc:I was in the same space as a small opera production of La Boheme, an updated, very small version of that opera.

00:04:46Marc:So the set I was working with, it looked to be an apartment.

00:04:49Marc:It was sort of an updated, modern version of La Boheme, and it literally looked like the apartment of a few of the girlfriends I had in college.

00:04:57Marc:There were paintings strewn about, a guitar, a shitty couch.

00:05:00Marc:It looked like it folded out to a bed.

00:05:02Marc:There were pictures on the wall.

00:05:05Marc:It looked like a shitty artist's apartment.

00:05:08Marc:And throughout the run, I improvised in that space about having dated women who lived in those kind of places.

00:05:15Marc:And then I sort of condescended to painting, to saying, like, we all had this friend or this girlfriend, the painter.

00:05:23Marc:Who the fuck dedicates her life to painting?

00:05:25Marc:What a ridiculous...

00:05:27Marc:dream that is and I had some spite in my voice and I'm actually feeling guilty about it today and I'll tell you why because I went to the Tate Modern Museum which is spectacular it is one of the best museums I've ever been in in my life and I think I needed to go

00:05:43Marc:And I was actually not going to go to the Tate Museum because I'm like, how much modern art can I see in one lifetime?

00:05:48Marc:I've got this angry detachment from art because I had an experience where I'm like, I don't know how to integrate this shit anymore.

00:05:55Marc:I don't know if I'm going to learn where it belongs in the history of art or in the context of how it was created.

00:06:02Marc:A lot of that stuff is starting to dissolve in my brain.

00:06:05Marc:It's starting to dissipate.

00:06:06Marc:I no longer have a context anymore because I'm getting older and I don't give a shit as much.

00:06:10Marc:So I started to detach, and then I realized I started to sound stupid and angry about what?

00:06:14Marc:Painting?

00:06:15Marc:Painting is supposed to be great.

00:06:17Marc:It's supposed to take you to another place.

00:06:19Marc:It's supposed to bring everything together in that moment on that canvas for you to take in and for it to sort of drop into the empty slots in your brain and blossom something.

00:06:29Marc:Art is supposed to punch you in the brain, and it's supposed to stay punched.

00:06:34Marc:That's what a good piece of art does.

00:06:36Marc:It doesn't matter whether you understand it or not.

00:06:39Marc:You need to be punched in the brain.

00:06:41Marc:So I went in there and it was breathtaking.

00:06:44Marc:And I don't have that experience very often.

00:06:46Marc:This museum is breathtaking.

00:06:48Marc:It used to be some sort of power plant.

00:06:50Marc:And the bottom floor is where they kept the turbines.

00:06:53Marc:So it's this amazingly huge space.

00:06:56Marc:And I just, I mean, just the structure itself blew me away.

00:06:59Marc:And here I was walking through exhibits of artists that I've seen before, but having a completely different experience because of the way they were presented at this museum.

00:07:08Marc:Like whole rooms of Gerhard Richter.

00:07:10Marc:I mean, Gerhard Richter is probably one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

00:07:13Marc:And you're just standing in a room with these massive, almost 10 foot tall abstracts, like six of them punching in the brain from all angles.

00:07:21Marc:A whole room of Cy Twombly.

00:07:22Marc:Just beautiful big red-pink brushstrokes just smacking your face around.

00:07:26Marc:Just smacking your brain around.

00:07:28Marc:Wake up, man.

00:07:29Marc:Look at this.

00:07:30Marc:This is fucking poetry.

00:07:31Marc:This only happens here on this canvas.

00:07:33Marc:This will never happen again anywhere else.

00:07:36Marc:You are standing in front of the final piece, and it is done, and it is here.

00:07:40Marc:Wrecking with it, fuckface.

00:07:43Marc:That's what that was saying to me.

00:07:44Marc:And I'm like a guy that wanted to be an artist.

00:07:47Marc:I wrote poems.

00:07:48Marc:I did photography.

00:07:49Marc:I took a lot of pictures.

00:07:50Marc:I thought about it.

00:07:52Marc:I didn't do it.

00:07:53Marc:There's no reason for me to resent it.

00:07:55Marc:It's such an enriching thing.

00:07:56Marc:And even if I don't understand where anything goes or what anything does, I was in an Andy Warhol room.

00:08:01Marc:And even Warhol, as tired as that guy may get, I love some of his shit.

00:08:06Marc:And they displayed it beautifully.

00:08:09Marc:Then I started thinking like, what the fuck did I do?

00:08:12Marc:What did I do?

00:08:12Marc:What did I do with my life?

00:08:15Marc:Oh, by the way, I also had a pork belly and applesauce sandwich at Borough Market that was spectacular.

00:08:21Marc:Do I use that word too much?

00:08:22Marc:It was awesome.

00:08:24Marc:I haven't eaten that much meat, been trying to be good, but today was the day.

00:08:27Marc:Today was the day for paintings and pork belly.

00:08:31Marc:Today was the day.

00:08:33Marc:But what did I do with my life?

00:08:35Marc:Am I an artist?

00:08:37Marc:I mean, I have a hard time calling myself that.

00:08:39Marc:I don't know if comics or artists.

00:08:41Marc:I know that sometimes everything is happening in a very immediate sense.

00:08:46Marc:That what's going on on stage will never happen again.

00:08:48Marc:That that experience between me and the audience will never happen again.

00:08:51Marc:It's not on tape either.

00:08:53Marc:It is in a moment.

00:08:54Marc:It will never happen again.

00:08:55Marc:A woman stood up in a show at the Soho Theater here after I did three Jesus jokes and said, that's it.

00:09:02Marc:I've had enough.

00:09:03Marc:I'm a Jehovah's Witness.

00:09:05Marc:I'm leaving.

00:09:06Marc:Why the advertisement?

00:09:07Marc:Why do we have to billboard the faith?

00:09:10Marc:Do you think someone else is going to get up and go, oh, if she's going, I'm going too because I'd like to be a Jehovah's Witness?

00:09:15Marc:But there are moments that happen on stage.

00:09:18Marc:I don't know if what I do is art.

00:09:20Marc:Because I don't know how consistent I really am with it.

00:09:22Marc:Is a well-crafted joke art?

00:09:24Marc:Is comedy really art?

00:09:26Marc:It doesn't seem to really hold up for the long haul.

00:09:29Marc:It doesn't seem to hold up historically.

00:09:31Marc:Maybe some plays do.

00:09:32Marc:But does stand-up hold up?

00:09:34Marc:Do people really go back and look at Pryor as something timeless?

00:09:38Marc:Do we do timeless?

00:09:39Marc:Is that what we do?

00:09:40Marc:I don't think we do timeless.

00:09:41Marc:I think we do timely.

00:09:44Marc:On this show, we're going to talk to a British comedian, Stuart Lee, who I had to be introduced to.

00:09:48Marc:This is the weird thing about British comedy and American comedy.

00:09:52Marc:This guy is a great comic.

00:09:54Marc:He's an inspired comic.

00:09:55Marc:He's a truly unique comic.

00:09:58Marc:And if anybody that I've seen lately...

00:10:01Marc:that I think might be someone I would call an artist.

00:10:06Marc:It would be this guy, and I'm not even sure why.

00:10:09Marc:He's been doing it as long as I have, if not longer.

00:10:11Marc:And the business here is so much different than the businesses in America.

00:10:14Marc:And I had no idea who he was, so I had to do sort of a cram course on him and then have an interview with him.

00:10:21Marc:But he's a very unique comedian.

00:10:23Marc:There's very rarely that you see people who are truly unique, and Stuart Lee is truly unique.

00:10:28Marc:And I felt like an idiot because I don't know much about British comedy.

00:10:32Marc:I'm embarrassed about that.

00:10:35Marc:But I don't know much about American comedy either.

00:10:37Marc:I don't know much about comedy beyond my garage, to be honest with you.

00:10:54Marc:In my temporary housing here in London, Stuart Lee, I don't want to say a living legend because I don't like being called that, but certainly a great unique comedian is here.

00:11:06Marc:How are you, Stuart?

00:11:06Marc:Fine.

00:11:07Marc:Thanks for having us.

00:11:08Marc:I saw you in Edinburgh in 2007.

00:11:10Marc:Oh, in 2007.

00:11:12Marc:Yeah, right.

00:11:14Marc:because people took me to see you they said you got to see this guy i was a miserable wreck of a person when i was there i had a miserable time but i was so stuck in my own shit and you know and i'd never been to the festival but yeah but your pacing and your uh and your delivery had a profound effect but then it just sort of i didn't i didn't look you up again fine i went to the united states well no no this is the thing though and then people you know were telling me like this you know you got to see this guy you guys have things in common yeah

00:11:43Marc:And I got to say, I was nervous when you were coming up here, because I spent a lot of time watching your stuff, and you're a singular voice.

00:11:49Marc:No one is like you.

00:11:51Guest:Well, it's just I've copied people that you don't know about.

00:11:53Marc:Is that what happened?

00:11:54Marc:Okay, well, now that it's explained.

00:11:56Marc:But what seems to me that your stand-up, when I watch it, has a very, not only is it deliberate, but there's a timing to the sound that you have a very specific pace that you're willing to wait.

00:12:06Guest:Yeah, well, I do like that.

00:12:08Guest:But, you know, when I was a teenager, I was lucky or unfortunate, depending on, you know, which way you view it, in that of the first 10 stand-ups I saw, by just statistical probability, it turned out that six or seven of them were those kind of slow-paced, deadpacks.

00:12:27Guest:Like who?

00:12:28Guest:Yeah.

00:12:28Guest:Well, the first stand-up I ever saw, apart from when I was a little kid and would see things with my mum, like the two Ronnies and stuff, like old vaudeville sort of stuff, was in the immediate sort of post-punk era in Britain.

00:12:41Guest:We had this alternative comedy boom.

00:12:43Guest:I don't think you really had the same thing in the States.

00:12:45Guest:There was no need for it because there'd always been a wide variety of stand-up.

00:12:48Guest:You had a Lenny Bruce, but you also had mainstream guys as well.

00:12:51Marc:But no one knew him.

00:12:52Marc:I didn't know him.

00:12:53Marc:And as much as he gets bandied about in terms of – you really – as someone our age – I think I'm a little older than you.

00:13:00Marc:You've got to put him into context.

00:13:01Guest:It's meaningless.

00:13:02Guest:To me, it looks like there was –

00:13:05Guest:a tradition of stand-up in the States.

00:13:06Guest:What really wasn't that, yeah.

00:13:08Guest:There was guys in, like, working men's clubs all doing the same gags as each other.

00:13:11Guest:Oh, okay, right, right, like vaudeville almost.

00:13:13Guest:Yeah, and then you had, like, odd little things like raconteurs or sort of folk singers like Billy Connolly who did bits between the songs and eventually the bits between the songs became...

00:13:22Guest:Oh, so you had no real stand-up.

00:13:23Guest:You didn't really have it in the same way.

00:13:24Guest:You had occasional blips, like Dave Allen from Ireland, who's very, like, you know, an American stand-up in lots of ways.

00:13:33Guest:So in about 79, 80, it sort of started here, stand-up, in a way that you'd recognize.

00:13:38Guest:And outside of London, where there was about three clubs, the places you used to see these people was opening for bands.

00:13:45Guest:And I saw this guy, Peter Richardson, who went into the comic strip opening for Dex's Midnight Runners in 1982 in Birmingham, doing a character of a Mexican bandit who just spoke in a really slow, threatening way.

00:13:58Guest:Then I saw Phil Jupiter, so he's very different.

00:14:00Guest:I saw him opening for Billy Bragg.

00:14:02Guest:He's a much livelier band.

00:14:03Guest:I've met him, yeah.

00:14:03Guest:Yeah.

00:14:04Guest:But the one that really got me was a guy called Ted Chippington, opening for The Fall.

00:14:09Guest:They were the best band in Britain and are still going.

00:14:12Guest:And Ted Chippington, I don't know where he'd really come from.

00:14:16Guest:He wore like a tight sort of teddy boy 50s rock and roll suit.

00:14:22Guest:I'd shaved all his hair off.

00:14:23Guest:He looked very menacing.

00:14:25Guest:And he basically told the same joke over and over again for about half an hour with a noun changed each time whilst drinking from a bottle in a really slow way and he seemed to care whether the audience liked it or not.

00:14:39Guest:And I've subsequently found out he preferred going down badly to well, but...

00:14:42Guest:i thought that was absolutely just it was fantastic that was my sort of moment where people older than me who are in bands when i saw the sex pistols and there's only 12 people there and i realized you didn't have to be able to play you didn't have to write a song when i saw ted it doesn't have to be funny you don't have to talk about anything you don't have to look as if you're enjoying it you don't even have to go quickly

00:15:02Guest:and then when I was a student in 87 three years later in Edinburgh I went out with a student show and I saw a Bill that was Norman Lovett he's very he's about 60 now he's very slow deadpan Arnold Brown he's about 75 now he was a bit like he's an old Scottish guy who again was very slow and dry and deadpan

00:15:25Guest:I can't remember any of his punchlines, but I remember the sort of set-up.

00:15:28Guest:So things like, I walked into a branch of Our Price, the record store, as I have every right so to do.

00:15:37Guest:Things like that.

00:15:37Guest:They'll be full of these unnecessary bits of detail.

00:15:39Guest:So it was them two, and then Arthur Smith and Jerry Sadovitz were on the same bill, who aren't the same.

00:15:44Guest:It was just... A lot of the early people I saw were slow and weird, and I sort of thought...

00:15:51Guest:I thought I could do that.

00:15:54Guest:But if I'd seen all the upbeat, fast, happy guys talking about sports and girls, I probably wouldn't be here now.

00:16:02Guest:I was just lucky that I saw all the odd, monotonous people, and I was quite an odd, monotonous child.

00:16:07Guest:I think it sort of...

00:16:08Marc:look to me like something i could do well it's interesting to me that that the reason you saw them and the reason they existed was because the comedy business did not exist here yeah and that these guys had to be pioneers or freaks to to just or oddballs i don't mean to say freaks in a negative way to take the position and it seems to me that because britain is is the way it is that there's an intimacy to the business and to the power of somebody making an impact yeah

00:16:30Guest:that like you know you live in a country where where reviews make a difference you know for stand-up shows that's unbelievable yeah well again that's sort of only it's in about the last 10 years right it 20 years ago when i started um in the edinburgh fringe uh when there's loads of comics on all august in scotland you know the the cookery critic would be someone to go can you

00:16:49Guest:go and review some comedy.

00:16:51Guest:Then about ten years ago they started to realise that not all comics were the same and that we do different things and now there is a sort of school of criticism for comedy but it's a symbiotic thing because here, something that's happened here that I'm not sure if it's happened in the States in the same way is

00:17:05Guest:there's loads of comics doing loads of clubs doing 20 minute sets right then there's also this kind of viable mid-range circuit where every year you go back to the art center in the little provincial town with a new hour and 20 minutes and maybe with an opening act and the show's got a different title to last year's and you're kind of expected to to turn it over you know you kind of build up a body of work there's probably a couple of

00:17:27Guest:Probably 100-odd people doing that.

00:17:30Guest:Then there's the really famous people that now can do Wembley Stadium.

00:17:35Guest:But I don't know if there's quite the same.

00:17:38Guest:There's this weird little mini circuit.

00:17:40Marc:Well, that's starting to happen, actually, in the States behind you.

00:17:43Marc:Because what we had was a comedy club boom, which created a lot of monsters.

00:17:49Marc:It created a lot of mediocrity.

00:17:50Marc:It created a lot of hacks who were able to work.

00:17:53Marc:And now what's happening is because of the internet and because of exposure that people have a little more control over, they can build their own audiences.

00:18:00Guest:Well, I mean, the internet's been, the internet in that way changed my life.

00:18:03Guest:And I really, I feel like some old guy going, oh, there's this thing, the internet.

00:18:07Guest:Yeah.

00:18:07Guest:And you can go on it and there's, it's mainly pornography, but there's other stuff.

00:18:12Guest:Occasionally there's funny things.

00:18:13Guest:But I mean, it is, you know, I gave up for four years.

00:18:15Guest:And one of the reasons, when I started again, I realized.

00:18:18Marc:You quit for four years?

00:18:19Guest:Yeah, I quit stand-up, yeah, from 2000 to 2004, yeah.

00:18:21Marc:How the hell do you do that?

00:18:23Guest:What do you do in that time?

00:18:25Guest:Well, I didn't really do anything for a year.

00:18:29Guest:I wrote music reviews.

00:18:30Guest:Why'd you quit?

00:18:30Guest:Because I was getting really bad reviews all the time.

00:18:37Guest:I was with an agency that couldn't seem to sort of work out how to tour me or place me.

00:18:42Guest:I'd keep going to clubs around the country where I'd go down really badly.

00:18:45Marc:Why do you think you went down badly?

00:18:47Marc:Because, I mean, you were a guy who has control of the craft.

00:18:50Guest:And despite the fact that whether they know you or not, you didn't... Well, I think I'd been doing the same... I think it was a mixture of things of like... We had a comedy boom, right?

00:18:59Guest:And that meant...

00:19:01Guest:people started going to clubs for a night out, you know, and to have chicken in a basket and then a disco afterwards.

00:19:06Guest:And I'm not a night out, you know.

00:19:08Guest:Yeah, I know that feeling.

00:19:09Guest:I'm definitely a night out.

00:19:10Guest:And I need people to come because they want to see the comedy rather than as a kind of entree.

00:19:16Marc:I guess we'll go if we can dance later.

00:19:18Guest:Yeah.

00:19:21Marc:But, you know, to know that you're not that guy is a tremendous self-realization.

00:19:24Guest:Yeah, I realized I wasn't that guy.

00:19:25Guest:But I didn't know what to do about it.

00:19:27Guest:And then in the four years I had off,

00:19:29Guest:I realized that there was... It's a long time.

00:19:33Guest:Yeah, I realized there was MySpace and there was... Also, this other thing happened where between about 2000, 2004, between me quitting and coming back, people had started setting up lots of little gigs around London that explicitly weren't a night out.

00:19:49Guest:Not mainstream comedy rooms.

00:19:50Guest:And they'd give them intimidating names like Book Club or whatever.

00:19:54Marc:Smart people's room.

00:19:55Guest:Yeah, almost like designed to not...

00:19:57Guest:To alienate idiots.

00:19:59Guest:To alienate idiots, yeah.

00:20:01Guest:And rather than being tolerated at these, I found that I was welcomed by the people that were booking them, who remembered me from doing weird culty things when they were teenagers, some of them.

00:20:12Guest:And so suddenly the people that had liked me but were in a position of power suddenly booked me or write about me.

00:20:19Guest:And, you know, it just sort of turned around.

00:20:21Guest:Also, in the four years I had off, two other things happened, which is, one, I ended up inadvertently becoming sort of well-known for something else.

00:20:29Guest:I got asked by a composer that I'd worked with to co-write the words for an opera about Jerry Springer.

00:20:35Guest:Yeah, I read about this.

00:20:36Guest:I wish I'd seen it.

00:20:37Guest:And that got a lot of good reviews.

00:20:39Yeah.

00:20:39Guest:And I think what that meant was then when I did stand-up again, people had to kind of go, well, he must be doing this for a reason.

00:20:46Guest:As he's co-written a theatrical hit, so he must be doing this boring stand-up, like, knowingly.

00:20:53Guest:He must be on purpose rather than a mistake.

00:20:55Guest:The other thing that happened was Ricky Gervais became famous.

00:20:58Guest:And Ricky Gervais always cited me and Sean Locke, who's another British stand-up, as his favourite acts.

00:21:06Guest:And he was so famous by the time I started doing stand-up again that I said to him, can you give me a quote for a poster?

00:21:13Guest:And he did.

00:21:14Guest:Said Stuart Lee is the most cliche-free comedian in Britain or something.

00:21:19Guest:And suddenly I sold out an Edinburgh run in five minutes and then a Soho Theatre run off the back of that.

00:21:25Guest:So it was honestly...

00:21:26Guest:I think it was largely down to his patronage and also to having been involved in this opera, which meant that different kinds of people started coming to see me, theatre people or broadsheet newspaper readers, you know what I mean?

00:21:39Guest:Off the back of that.

00:21:40Guest:And then the internet, the internet meant I could headhunt my own audience.

00:21:45Guest:I could sort of contact them.

00:21:49Guest:It totally changed everything.

00:21:51Marc:So most of your TV exposure, I mean, when you were younger, you did a lot of radio and you were in a team for a while.

00:21:57Guest:Yeah, I did a series for BBC Two called Fist of Fun in the mid-90s with a guy called Richard Herring.

00:22:04Guest:I've met him.

00:22:04Guest:I met him in Scotland.

00:22:06Guest:He's the British equivalent of you.

00:22:10Guest:He's the podcast king.

00:22:11Guest:At the time, that got average reviews, pretty good audience figures, was not recommissioned, was never released on video.

00:22:19Guest:When we toured it, no one came.

00:22:21Guest:We used to lose money.

00:22:22Guest:And somehow in the interim, after it being decommissioned, we found probably not unlike David Cross's show.

00:22:32Guest:I saw a pilot of that.

00:22:33Guest:I was at the pilot recording of Mr. Show in LA in like 95 or something.

00:22:38Guest:After we'd done our first series, I thought, wow, this is really interesting.

00:22:42Guest:This is sort of the same, but it's here.

00:22:45Guest:And I think we enjoyed a similar thing where 10 years later, people are going, I used to love that.

00:22:50Guest:But at the time, nothing.

00:22:52Guest:And also a lot of the people that say I used to love it are now other comics or writers or it seemed like it connected with all those people.

00:23:00Marc:Yeah, so you seem to be square one for what would be the equivalent of British new wave English comedy, new wave alternative comedy.

00:23:08Guest:For a lot of these kids, though.

00:23:09Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's really weird to meet people that say it was significant to them then.

00:23:16Guest:Right.

00:23:17Guest:nearly 20 years ago and at the time we didn't really no commercial success no well i think again i think it's that people didn't really know how to tour comedy and it was all new and we used to go out on tours and they go oh yeah it's like rock and roll put them in a van put them in hotels spend loads of money on it and we come back like 1500 quid in debt you know so it was sort of um wasn't time you wasn't ready to do it yeah it wasn't ready you could do that now

00:23:39Marc:so I yeah oh yeah well now because you can get your following and you seem to be like I go online like I feel like a like a stupid American in the sense that I don't have any you know real awareness of the British comedy scene yeah I barely have an awareness of a lot of what's going on in America comedically but I mean you're entrenched here I mean you've been around a while and and you're very respected in both worlds you know the back end of it's happened really quickly I mean like last night I did a game in Bridport in a cinema 450 people

00:24:05Guest:And people are going, I can't believe you've come to Bridport.

00:24:07Guest:And it's exactly the sort of small town that I go and do 400 people in all the time.

00:24:12Guest:I don't know why they... There's this sort of perception now, I think, because I haven't done a teleseries and had lots of good press that I'm... But I mean, four years ago, I wouldn't...

00:24:24Guest:I wasn't getting anyone.

00:24:25Guest:So you'd go there and no one would come.

00:24:28Guest:So you're actually just coming into what you've earned.

00:24:32Guest:I also think it will go away again.

00:24:34Guest:Of course.

00:24:34Guest:I think there's a glass ceiling to being the alternative comedian.

00:24:42Marc:There's a glass ceiling to anything.

00:24:44Marc:But what I'm seeing after I look at your stuff, which I think is impressive because outside of it being funny and I don't laugh easily,

00:24:53Marc:is that there's a commitment to something higher than just entertaining people.

00:24:59Marc:And I don't know whether that's conscious or not, but your style is your style.

00:25:03Marc:And whether it's taken a long time for people to know it, there seems to be something that, like, the reason you quit is the reason why you're good.

00:25:11Guest:Well, I couldn't...

00:25:14Guest:I couldn't carry on trying to get what I did to work in those places.

00:25:18Guest:Because it was just killing you, the heartbreak of it?

00:25:20Guest:Yeah.

00:25:22Guest:I remember a guy coming up to me after I died somewhere.

00:25:27Guest:I did all right.

00:25:28Guest:I made a living.

00:25:28Guest:There were enough places where it did work.

00:25:30Guest:And just he couldn't believe that I was a comedian.

00:25:32Guest:He couldn't believe that I could possibly do it for a living.

00:25:35Guest:And I've been doing it 12 years.

00:25:37Guest:And he's going, you must be like a teacher or something mucking around.

00:25:40Guest:And he wasn't angry.

00:25:42Guest:He just was utterly baffled by it.

00:25:44Guest:And I think people thought that I just didn't know how to do it.

00:25:47Guest:Whereas in fact, I'd chosen to do something else, you know.

00:25:49Guest:my mom had never seen me right until this tour the last tour i did she came once never no she saw me 20 years last year yeah doing live stand-up and she came to an early show uh in the tour and she saw the bit where i throw the whole gig and run around for 20 minutes asking people why they don't find it funny and climb up into the balconies and look having a breakdown and she saw the 10 minute bit where nothing seems to be working and

00:26:12Guest:and afterwards she was talking to me she's saying it must be very difficult to do and she didn't really say anything and i thought oh you think that you think that that was a failure right and i couldn't and i'd lost control of the room then she came to see it again on the tour where i stage managed most of the same things yeah and then thought it was really good because she realized it was a performance right right right rather than a man who couldn't do comedy yeah

00:26:34Guest:Doing it wrong.

00:26:35Guest:And I kind of think you get this.

00:26:36Guest:I mean, again, it's pretentious and self-aggrandizing for us, I think, to compare ourselves to jazz musicians.

00:26:43Guest:Not many people do.

00:26:44Guest:I mean, it's impressive that you know about jazz enough.

00:26:50Guest:It's that kind of thing where people go, they can't play, it's rubbish.

00:26:53Guest:But then if they suddenly do play and show that they can, then those people have to then view what sounded like mess and chaos differently because it's a result of a decision rather than an accident.

00:27:03Guest:Do you improvise a lot, though, at all?

00:27:06Guest:Well, I do.

00:27:07Guest:I try and build as much in as I can whilst at the same time hanging on to the story.

00:27:12Guest:But the problem with it is, like, these days, I'll do a month in Edinburgh every year in August, then I'll do two months in London, I'll do three months on the road.

00:27:19Guest:And by about this third month, most of the possibilities that improvisation can throw up

00:27:24Guest:have happened and they're integrated they start to become yeah like codified like you have to kind of force them to happen you know a bit like groundhog day yeah and um so i think there's a sort of a shelf life for a show and actually at the moment i'm obliged due to avarice to tour the shows for longer

00:27:42Guest:and they're still sort of alive you know but do you you mean so you're willing to let an hour's worth of material die with the end of a show yeah I mean every time I draw a line under it and I do so with great relief this year I finished this tour in April I've been doing that show since August on and off I finished it within three days I've forgotten it and then you know I was being offered gigs for this month can you do the Belfast Fest or whatever I have to say I haven't got an act at the moment I'll have one by the end of August

00:28:11Marc:Because you don't want people who have seen you to go that's old bit.

00:28:15Guest:Yeah, but also I can't I can't keep it all in my head I don't know what's happened, but you're not bored with it.

00:28:20Marc:Well, I'm sort of bored of it.

00:28:21Guest:Yeah, I can't like there's only so many times you know does it does reach a point where it's worked through you know and it sort of peaks and then you try and have to maintain it and part of my reaction against that is I

00:28:32Guest:One of the grindingly difficult things about Jerry Springer, the opera, was I'd never worked in commercial theatre.

00:28:38Guest:I'd done fringe comedy and little weird, fringy, performance arty things.

00:28:42Guest:So, you know, this was a national theatre for four months in its finished incarnation.

00:28:48Guest:Then we had to find a way of maintaining this thing for years in the West End and trying to get out on tour.

00:28:53Guest:Why was that your responsibility?

00:28:55Guest:Because I was the director and there was no money to bring anyone else in because it was always running at a loss because of various legal issues.

00:29:03Guest:And so you had to... Then you had to recast it but try and hold on to the same show.

00:29:06Guest:And you were trying to trick 50 people into... And there was lots... We built lots of improvisation into that show.

00:29:12Guest:But a music theatre performer's brain is such that they're looking for certainties, you know, night after night.

00:29:17Guest:And in fact, big... Dance steps.

00:29:18Guest:Dance steps, yeah.

00:29:19Guest:And in fact, big...

00:29:20Guest:all them big broadway shows and the western ones when they tour directors get given a grid of moves you know of like square it's literally like a chess board of exactly what will happen every night and i never had a grid and no one could understand like how had you done it you know and i think i think killing the stand-up after six months each show is partly again if i never want to be in that position again where something's where people are like why don't you use a grid

00:29:45Marc:yeah why don't you use a grid for you know be easier if you use a grid yeah a grid of like hear your jokes hear the boxes yeah when you did the opera it was a it was a fringe thing it was like it was like a cult thing yeah and then it got elevated and you elevated and you couldn't deny the the financial I mean it was a good opportunity

00:30:04Guest:yeah it was i mean you couldn't you couldn't deny it yeah did you resent it though well but in the end i did because it was it was sort of they sucked the love out of it well it became yeah it did and it becomes one of those things where business it becomes a business yeah and and uh in the end it was sort of it was effectively closed down by by the christian right who took against it and kind of made it very difficult how did they get a legal

00:30:28Marc:case against you i mean because until last year there was a blasphemy was a statute on british law until last year until about 18 months ago so you're a guy that obviously has after watching your material your own issues with with dogma and religion yeah and so this and you were actually in a medieval scenario yeah for something that you create helped create yeah i mean it was amazing what happened

00:30:51Guest:Well, the plot of Jerry Springer, the opera, the first half was like an episode of the Jerry Springer show with these strange, like, where he'd interview all these guests and whatever.

00:31:00Guest:Then he gets shot by a Ku Klux Klan bloke at the end of the first half.

00:31:03Guest:And in the second half, he wakes up in hell where he replays the whole thing again.

00:31:09Guest:but all the guests that from the first half come back as these religious figures and he's basically asked to mediate between adam and eve or whatever you know and god and jesus and that's pretty genius and yeah and and and if he doesn't solve it if he doesn't manage to make the devil friends with god again yeah and he's just go to hell now how much of that was your creation well it's me and the composer we were looking for a we we wanted to you know to

00:31:33Guest:so we wanted to say something about everyone's kind of culpability in um in the success of those and also about the fact that everyone sneers at what you know for point of a better word trailer trash right but the kind of emotional problems that um are laughed at on a jerry springer show

00:31:53Guest:are the same as the great plot lines of heavy literature.

00:31:57Guest:And opera.

00:31:58Guest:And opera.

00:31:58Guest:Their incest, their family relationships that are broken down, whose child is that, all those kind of things.

00:32:04Guest:So actually there's a dignity in them as well, if you know them right.

00:32:07Guest:But anyway, the Christians on the far right got hold of it.

00:32:12Guest:Once it was at the National Theater, though.

00:32:13Guest:Yeah, it was fine.

00:32:14Guest:The National Theater was fine, right?

00:32:16Guest:When it got into the West End, they sort of found out about it.

00:32:21Guest:Someone told them and they unleashed their armies on you.

00:32:24Guest:Yeah, they did.

00:32:24Guest:They got 65,000 people.

00:32:26Guest:Who'd never seen it probably.

00:32:27Guest:Who'd never seen it to complain about a proposed TV transmission of it.

00:32:31Guest:And because the blasphemy law was still on the statute books, they were able to, as was another law which was pending, which was eventually scrapped, they were able to at least threaten to use the blasphemy law, which was set up.

00:32:46Guest:It was set up under Henry VIII.

00:32:48Guest:If you get prosecuted, are you burned?

00:32:50Guest:Well, you know, the last time it was used was 1960-something against a magazine called Gay Times, which had a homoerotic poem about Jesus on the cross, which actually, weirdly, has a relationship with a Dark Ages religious poem called The Dream of the Rude, which is a very self-consciously homoerotic depiction of the cross that Jesus was crucified on.

00:33:11Guest:Anyway, blah, blah, blah.

00:33:12Marc:There's a lot of that homoerotic literature in the Bible.

00:33:14Marc:In the Old Testament, Song of Solomon.

00:33:17Guest:Anyway, I don't know what would have happened is the answer.

00:33:20Guest:Clearly, now, they're not going to send you to prison for it.

00:33:24Guest:So it created a difficult thing.

00:33:26Guest:In the end, the case was thrown out of court.

00:33:28Guest:But they were able to give venues and shops, venues that might have taken the show or shops that might have stopped the DVD of it, the impression that it was actionable.

00:33:38Guest:So it kind of finished it off.

00:33:40Guest:Or that they would not shop there.

00:33:42Guest:Yeah, they would not shop there.

00:33:43Guest:That happens in the States.

00:33:44Guest:Yeah, and a lot of the big places dropped it, and then a lot of the venues dropped it as well.

00:33:49Guest:So one of the reasons for going beyond the National Theatre with it was that with these shows, if you have one that was as well-received as ours is,

00:33:59Guest:Normally, you get to do a franchise of it in every capital city around the world with your grid, with whoever the local star is playing.

00:34:07Guest:The French bloke, who's a bit like Jerry Springer, would play Jerry Springer in Paris.

00:34:12Guest:Harvey Keitel was supposed to do it in New York.

00:34:14Guest:He did it for two nights, like a workshop of it.

00:34:17Guest:And obviously that is an income for life, you know.

00:34:22Guest:But actually what happened was it wasn't really, you just couldn't, they just sort of finished it off really by complaining about it.

00:34:27Guest:And, you know, people had to go into hiding because the police told them there were threats against them and stuff like that.

00:34:31Guest:Actors?

00:34:32Guest:Yeah, the producers and the BBC people that said they'd put it on telly.

00:34:36Guest:Yeah, we have these religious wackos in the United States as well.

00:34:39Marc:So it killed the chances for the show.

00:34:41Guest:It did really, yeah.

00:34:42Guest:But you know what, it was also, actually when I look back on it now, the bizarre thing is,

00:34:47Guest:I sort of don't really mind because I think it saved me from having to live my life in the world of commercial theatre.

00:34:59Guest:And I think it threw me back on the rocks and meant that I had to come up with something else.

00:35:05Guest:This is the second time you were on The Rocks.

00:35:06Guest:The first time it was self-exile.

00:35:08Guest:Yeah.

00:35:08Guest:And it meant I had to.

00:35:11Guest:I've just written a book about doing stand-up.

00:35:12Guest:And one of the points that I make is when I went back to stand-up in 2004, it's not like that little film about Seinfeld when he goes, I wonder what it would be like to go and be a comedian again.

00:35:24Guest:And goes around and doesn't need to because he's got a house in the Hollywood Hills and Seinfeld's on rotation forever.

00:35:30Sure.

00:35:30Guest:Yet you're at the end of your rope anyway, right?

00:35:32Guest:I was 36 nothing.

00:35:34Guest:I'd done it worked out and You know I was getting to that age where it's very difficult to start and he broke Well, it wasn't broke, but there was nothing Coming in you run this show that worked on for five years We hadn't got a royalty for the last couple of years because of all the legal stuff and it wasn't gonna go anywhere you know and and it and it couldn't be put on anywhere and I was not you know match fit to do stand-up again and I

00:35:59Guest:I didn't really know what I was going to do.

00:36:00Guest:But also, suddenly, I realised... When I quit stand-up, I was thinking, I can't get this to work.

00:36:09Guest:Why won't these people that want to be entertained listen to me?

00:36:13Guest:And it seemed so flexible, stand-up.

00:36:15Guest:I thought, you have to go and do this.

00:36:16Guest:You have to open with five minutes of strong gags.

00:36:19Guest:You've got to do something that works on a Friday night in Liverpool.

00:36:22Guest:But then when I went back to it, I thought, you know what?

00:36:25Guest:Compared to trying to organise 50 people in a piece of music theatre...

00:36:28Guest:Yeah.

00:36:29Guest:It's easy.

00:36:30Guest:You can do whatever you want.

00:36:31Guest:Right.

00:36:31Guest:Anything you want.

00:36:32Guest:You can do anything you want.

00:36:32Guest:Yeah.

00:36:33Guest:Right.

00:36:34Guest:You can tell a 20-minute story.

00:36:35Guest:You can not say anything for half an hour.

00:36:38Guest:You can turn your back on them.

00:36:40Guest:Say things over and over.

00:36:41Guest:You can say the same thing.

00:36:42Guest:You can leave the stage and do it from the back of the room.

00:36:44Guest:Yeah.

00:36:44Guest:And you don't even have to clear it with anyone, because it's just you.

00:36:48Guest:You can write something at 12 o'clock after a long lie-in at midday, and you can be doing it on stage eight hours later.

00:36:54Guest:And it suddenly seemed, more than all these other things that I dallied around in, it seemed like the absolute greatest form of performance.

00:37:03Guest:so you're sort of born again stand-up yeah i was born again because of this other and also going to a pub on a wednesday night and getting a door split of 50 quid was 50 quid a night more than i was making from a thing playing to 500 people in a in a theater and also and you can walk away from it walk away from and and feel happy with yourself yeah yeah you know if it goes well but even if it doesn't i had a similar realization where it's sort of like i'm doing exactly what i want to do and i can do whatever the i want who the hell gets to say that

00:37:30Marc:Granted, maybe we don't make as much money as you want, but you really can do whatever the hell you want.

00:37:34Guest:You can really do whatever you want.

00:37:36Guest:I'm sure you get this in American festivals as well, but in Edinburgh, someone will put on a night and they'll go, hey, we're having a special night of comedy and it's called Outrageous Night and you can say whatever you want tonight.

00:37:47Guest:And I go, well, can't you just do that anyway?

00:37:50Guest:Have you got some other set that you hold back that's the thing you actually want to do?

00:37:54Guest:Because you're not being stopped.

00:37:55Guest:The not funny set, that's what it is usually.

00:37:57Guest:The idea of like...

00:37:58Guest:You know, where are these people that aren't?

00:38:02Guest:There's nothing else in it for us.

00:38:04Marc:I imagine when I watch you and I see stuff in myself, which is the only way I can identify with anything, is that you are defying the audience.

00:38:13Guest:yeah up to a point yeah but to over a point to some degree and that's your gamble and I you know I understand it as a comic that like you're going to push them until they might break and then your card your reveal has got to be pretty fucking good yeah well you know it isn't I mean I do like that I mean that is the weird thing in the last few years of I mean I like I like I'm really happy now that I do get to play to rooms where the majority of the people have come by choice to see me yeah

00:38:43Guest:But I also like the fact that there'll be an element where it's not going to work for them and you have to persuade them.

00:38:50Guest:And it becomes increasingly hard to contrive as more people know I am and more people that like me come to see me.

00:38:57Guest:So you'd be in Nottingham or somewhere and 60% of the people have come to see you.

00:39:02Guest:The other 40% have come to see some comedy.

00:39:05Guest:Just comedy.

00:39:05Guest:And half of that 40% don't like you.

00:39:07Guest:Yeah.

00:39:08Guest:And on the last tour I had a whole bit about this kind of comedy of cruelty about how there's this kind of thing where everyone can make fun of the handicapped and the blind now and is that right?

00:39:20Guest:And people that are into that kind of thing would be really irritated that I was taking the piss out of it.

00:39:25Guest:And then you'd have to kind of win them round.

00:39:27Guest:But then when I... And so every night on that tour, I'd have a battle against 20% of the room at least.

00:39:33Guest:There's a bit they wouldn't like.

00:39:35Guest:But then when I did... At the end of a tour, I did the National Theatre in London.

00:39:38Guest:And I played to an absolute textbook audience of London Guardian-reading middle-class liberals.

00:39:44Guest:And as soon as I started on this bit, everyone got it immediately and applauded and went, well done.

00:39:49Guest:How refreshing to hear someone say that.

00:39:50Guest:And there was not a single pocket of dissent in the room.

00:39:53Guest:So consequently...

00:39:55Guest:How did that feel?

00:39:56Guest:Well, it was not much fun.

00:39:58Guest:Because it just sort of went smooth and there was nothing at stake.

00:40:03Guest:So I sort of like... And you resented them for liking you, didn't you?

00:40:07Guest:Sort of, yeah.

00:40:08Guest:And I missed... I was thinking, what a shame there aren't some skinheads in.

00:40:13Guest:But on the other hand, I really hate wasting people's time.

00:40:16Guest:Because I've got a three-year-old boy now and for me and my wife to go out, it's a military operation and we need to get babysitters and...

00:40:23Guest:And I feel really bad for people that have come in good faith to see some comedy and have got a babysitter if they're middle-aged and got kids and have gone out and then get me and it wasn't what they wanted.

00:40:35Guest:And that's one of the reasons.

00:40:36Guest:When you saw me in Edinburgh and I was doing that tent, I shouldn't have been in that venue in that tent because...

00:40:41Guest:That was like where people went for a night out.

00:40:45Marc:But let me but let me ask you something in relation to that, because, you know, you bring up your child, you bring up where you've been as a person.

00:40:51Marc:And that do you not see?

00:40:53Marc:I have to assume that even watching some of the TV vehicle, your most recent TV show, you know that you like sticking it to him a little bit as I do.

00:41:01Marc:to challenging people now but you have a big heart about it so you actually are empathetic with people that are not going to understand you and but do you find that there was a time where you used to say like you don't understand me go fuck yourself and i'm really embarrassed about it you know and i and when in my 20s

00:41:18Guest:Well, you know, longer than that.

00:41:20Guest:And as recently, you know, until sort of when I quit, I would I would I get a sort of stupid pleasure in the fact that half the room weren't getting it.

00:41:29Guest:You know, I'd be pleased and I'd be thinking, ah, you squares, you know, now I just think.

00:41:33Guest:Did you walk rooms?

00:41:34Marc:Were you the person that was like, go ahead, leave, leave?

00:41:37Guest:Yeah, that's the kind of thing.

00:41:39Guest:Or you'd enjoy putting them down if they started on you.

00:41:45Guest:Whereas now, I try to absorb heckles like a soft target.

00:41:49Marc:Engage in conversation, perhaps?

00:41:51Guest:Yeah, and go, look, last night in Bridport, I was in Bridport, and a guy was hating it.

00:41:55Guest:And I was...

00:41:56Guest:What did he say?

00:41:57Guest:He was going, ah, boring.

00:41:58Guest:And then he was going, get on with it.

00:42:00Guest:Get on with it.

00:42:00Guest:Oh, no.

00:42:01Guest:And I went, look, this is it.

00:42:02Guest:I said, this is how I speak.

00:42:03Guest:It goes at this pace.

00:42:04Guest:There's nothing I can do about it.

00:42:05Guest:This is my act.

00:42:06Guest:And he was going, get on with it.

00:42:07Guest:And I went, what you want?

00:42:09Guest:You want more of what you don't like.

00:42:12Guest:But I never picked on him.

00:42:14Guest:I tried to keep it soft.

00:42:18Guest:Right.

00:42:18Guest:Because I don't feel it's their fault.

00:42:22Guest:And actually, having made the television program,

00:42:24Guest:And sat and edited three hours of myself with the editors on this street, actually, further up the street, for four weeks.

00:42:32Guest:I can understand how infuriating it would be to watch me if you didn't like me.

00:42:35Guest:Because there's nothing to get hold of.

00:42:36Guest:The bloke was going, there's no jokes.

00:42:39Guest:You know, I thought, yeah, he's right, there aren't.

00:42:40Marc:he's come out in this little town in Dorset for a night out and he's he's stuck in this thing he hates it and all the people around him are really laughing it must be infuriating because in order to fight the fact that he's stupid I'm not necessarily stupid but doesn't understand like now it's infuriating on two levels I don't understand why they're laughing at him and why am I not laughing with these everybody else yeah

00:43:03Marc:It's a lonely, angry place, Stuart.

00:43:06Guest:But you're absolutely right.

00:43:07Guest:I did go through that thing when I was young of like, I think, ah, they didn't like it, yeah.

00:43:11Guest:And now I try to, when I put quotes on a poster, I put three quotes on a poster and one of them will always be,

00:43:18Guest:I've got many quotes from many papers that say, I've got, I'll put on the worst comedian in Britain, as funny as bubonic plague, the sun.

00:43:28Guest:I'll put that on a poster.

00:43:29Guest:I'll put, his whole tone is one of smug patronizing contempt, the Birmingham Mercury.

00:43:35Guest:I'll put that on so that people, it's like a warning.

00:43:39Guest:It's like, look, you might not like this.

00:43:41Guest:So if you want an absolute dead cert fun night out,

00:43:44Marc:don't come but yeah i've done my best to stop them coming but you are like a real stand-up comic like and i've always felt that that you know there's a difference between a comedian and a stand-up comedian yeah that when i watch you you know i don't think alternative i don't think anything i just think you know great comedian like you know bob newhart or anybody that has you know a tone that that owns their own space up there

00:44:09Guest:Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be an actor or, you know, I'm not in this as a means to an end.

00:44:14Guest:Right, this is what we do.

00:44:15Guest:Because a lot of the comics I like, I love these guys that can write these brilliant one-liners.

00:44:21Guest:And even someone who was like off-beam or had a weird style like Mitch Hedberg, in the core of that there was loads of good jokes, right?

00:44:29Guest:Yeah.

00:44:29Guest:But I also really like people where it's all about who they are and where they're coming from.

00:44:33Guest:And you couldn't take that line and give it to someone else.

00:44:35Guest:Couldn't take anything from it.

00:44:36Guest:And you couldn't take that story and give it to someone else.

00:44:38Guest:And that's one of the things I thought was great about Paul Provenza's film, The Aristocrats, where Paul Provenza and Pendulet are in the screen.

00:44:44Guest:Let's see 100 people do the same joke and then we learn what is the essence of them and their delivery and their style and who they are.

00:44:52Guest:George Carlin does that joke with a world weariness as if he's been crushed by the responsibility of telling it, which is sort of how he imparts truths to us in his act.

00:45:02Guest:Whereas there's other people in it that do it as if it's really great fun.

00:45:05Guest:And I kind of think...

00:45:07Guest:There's, I'm, it's quite hard to plagiarize me because the things are too long and they're about style as well as the words, you know.

00:45:18Marc:Yeah, no, it would be impossible because so much of it is about rhythm.

00:45:20Guest:Yeah.

00:45:21Marc:And so much of it about timing.

00:45:22Marc:Yeah.

00:45:22Marc:And so much of it, yeah, it would be impossible.

00:45:25Guest:And, you know, and that also makes me think that maybe the sort of artistic end point of stand-up is it's really great, people can write all these jokes, but really...

00:45:33Guest:A joke can be written down and retold.

00:45:35Guest:And maybe we should be thinking in sort of three dimensions about what we do.

00:45:38Guest:It's not just about words.

00:45:40Guest:It's about sound, how they're delivered, rhythm, and who are you as well.

00:45:44Guest:And who's saying this joke and what point of view is informing it.

00:45:46Marc:That's right.

00:45:47Marc:That is the art.

00:45:47Marc:That's where it comes into it.

00:45:49Guest:And that's why all these discussions about taste are sort of spurious.

00:45:52Guest:Because a bad taste joke or a supposedly bad taste joke doesn't exist in isolation from who's told it.

00:45:58Guest:And Chris Rock was very good on this.

00:45:59Guest:He said it's fine if you're applying pressure upwards.

00:46:03Guest:And where he's up depends on where you are.

00:46:06Guest:If you're a successful white guy in a smart suit that looks like it costs a lot of money, I would say your targets are limited because you're the man.

00:46:21Guest:Most of the pressure you apply is downward.

00:46:23Guest:I think it does make a difference.

00:46:26Marc:But in talking about stand-up as art and also by pointing out jokes, that's almost demeaning to that model.

00:46:32Marc:Yeah.

00:46:32Marc:That by saying that, like, you know, that joke, you know, as this detached floating thing.

00:46:37Marc:Yeah.

00:46:37Marc:It doesn't matter.

00:46:38Marc:It's demeaning to being a real stand-up.

00:46:39Marc:When people, you know, they say that we're just joke tellers.

00:46:42Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:46:43Marc:They're demeaning us in a way.

00:46:44Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:46:45Guest:I mean...

00:46:46Guest:A lot of money is spent in publicly funded theatre workshops where highly educated theatre practitioners sit around working out how to engage directly with ordinary people in an audience, how to break the fourth wall, how to take theatre into unusual spaces.

00:47:03Guest:And all those things are things that the worst hat comic does every night.

00:47:07Guest:He has to walk into a room and recalibrate everything around the space, who's there, what time of night it is.

00:47:14Guest:He has to make in-the-moment choices that people in theater win awards for doing.

00:47:19Guest:If they do it the slightest bit, people go, it was amazing.

00:47:23Guest:He turned slightly to the left instead of walking straight forward because something had happened in the room.

00:47:27Guest:Yeah, it was a choice.

00:47:28Guest:Improvisational choice in the moment.

00:47:29Guest:Yeah.

00:47:30Guest:What a genius.

00:47:31Guest:What a genius.

00:47:31Guest:And we live that.

00:47:32Guest:A comic is making improvisation choices from the moment they enter the room.

00:47:35Guest:Yeah.

00:47:35Guest:They know they go, you can't do, that's not going to work here.

00:47:38Guest:They won't be able to see me there.

00:47:40Guest:The bar's open.

00:47:41Guest:The last place she did, it was closed.

00:47:42Guest:It's like every single thing is different.

00:47:45Marc:You talk a lot about that, about courage.

00:47:47Marc:Right.

00:47:47Marc:You know, in that, you know, how people misuse that word.

00:47:50Marc:Yeah.

00:47:51Marc:Perhaps.

00:47:51Marc:Yeah.

00:47:52Marc:But I guess there's just different levels.

00:47:53Guest:Yeah.

00:47:53Marc:Yeah.

00:47:54Marc:But I like that the idea of art in that way, because I don't I don't always wrap my head around it.

00:47:59Marc:And I know that it's not so much that we have a higher purpose.

00:48:02Marc:But, you know, what we do has got to be defined by the same standards as any other art.

00:48:07Marc:And certain people take it to that point.

00:48:08Marc:Certain people don't.

00:48:09Marc:So now that you've established this freedom, you know, your ability to talk about.

00:48:13Marc:Religion, political correctness.

00:48:17Marc:There's a couple bits.

00:48:18Marc:I want to tell this to people because I had not watched you, and people in America don't know who you are, but if you look up Stuart Lee on YouTube, there's plenty of stuff there.

00:48:26Marc:You have a novel out.

00:48:27Marc:You have a book out.

00:48:28Marc:There are several DVDs out.

00:48:30Marc:But the stuff that, like, you actually, when I watched, there were two bits, the Weight Watchers bit and, you know, dealing with the Muslim issue and the political correctness that, you know, if you weighed it out, even the E.T.

00:48:43Marc:bit about ladies' death is that...

00:48:46Marc:In the time that you take to humanize the people that you're talking about and then either use them to skewer what you're talking about.

00:48:54Marc:You still respect the people that you are creating up there.

00:48:58Marc:Yeah.

00:48:58Marc:Even if they're ridiculous.

00:49:00Marc:Yeah.

00:49:00Marc:And there's a lot of heart in that.

00:49:01Marc:And that's what makes it different.

00:49:03Marc:That even if you're saying something that's going to, you know.

00:49:06Marc:Make people feel stupid or the point you're making is to call someone stupid the amount of heart you invest in Characterizing it it was is what makes a good comedy.

00:49:14Guest:That's very interesting I mean, I've not thought of it like that, but I do suppose it's again It's I'm doing I'm trying to do a bit about the new government where we got a new conservative government here We haven't had one for 17 years, you know, and they tend to be on the right They tend to be from very privileged backgrounds and when I started stand-up

00:49:30Guest:In the 80s, every comedian and every audience hated the conservatives.

00:49:35Guest:That was basically what the comedy circuit was, just loads were hating the conservatives.

00:49:40Guest:And it wouldn't be like a bill you get now.

00:49:41Guest:So I was on a bill in Aspen where one woman, her shtick was that she was a black Republican.

00:49:47Guest:Another guy was that he was a white liberal.

00:49:49Guest:You wouldn't get that in the 80s.

00:49:50Guest:Everyone was left of center and hated the government, right?

00:49:53Guest:And when the Tories came back... You know black Republicans are gimmicks.

00:49:58Guest:Yeah, I know, yeah.

00:49:58Guest:I know it's a gimmick, but even so, you wouldn't have got some of it.

00:50:02Guest:So, when the Tories got back in, I sort of thought, I wonder what it'd be like now to do that, like, really straight down the line, hating the Tories stuff we used to do in the 80s.

00:50:12Guest:It doesn't wash now, because society's so much more diverse, you know.

00:50:15Guest:And confused.

00:50:16Guest:And confused, yeah.

00:50:17Guest:And I thought, okay, how do you undermine them?

00:50:19Guest:Well, what you have to do is you have to be sympathetic to them, as if their privilege and the fact that they've moved through society without ever meeting any ordinary people and that they're

00:50:27Guest:that they're cowed by a notion of duty towards having to support the old financial institutions is actually a terrible tragedy for them.

00:50:36Guest:It's a burden.

00:50:36Guest:The burden.

00:50:37Guest:Yeah.

00:50:37Guest:Make them sympathetic.

00:50:38Guest:And actually they become ridiculous.

00:50:41Guest:Yeah.

00:50:41Guest:That's a genius thing.

00:50:42Guest:To fight them.

00:50:43Guest:Yeah.

00:50:43Guest:And say they're scum.

00:50:44Guest:It's sort of, you've lost it already.

00:50:46Guest:Yeah.

00:50:46Guest:And it's a bit, and you know, that's what I would have done 10 years ago.

00:50:48Guest:It's a bit like dealing with hecklers, you know, it's sort of funny to, to sympathize with their inability to enjoy the show.

00:50:55Guest:That's right.

00:50:56Guest:To humanize them.

00:50:56Guest:Yeah.

00:50:57Yeah.

00:50:57Guest:Right, right.

00:50:58Guest:And to apologize.

00:50:59Guest:It must be very difficult for you.

00:51:01Guest:It's so sad.

00:51:04Guest:I do apologize.

00:51:05Guest:This is what I do and it's not possible for me to change it.

00:51:08Guest:Yeah.

00:51:09Marc:But that's really more in line with your style.

00:51:12Marc:Yeah.

00:51:13Marc:I think that there was a time when you were younger where your style was your style and your anger about it not being received was that.

00:51:19Guest:Yeah.

00:51:20Marc:And now because of your confidence and the humility that you acquire just from living.

00:51:25Marc:Yeah.

00:51:26Marc:You start to be able to empathize.

00:51:28Guest:Yeah.

00:51:29Guest:Well, you do start to be able to empathize.

00:51:30Guest:Yeah.

00:51:30Guest:And I think, you know, I mean, it's...

00:51:34Guest:But I also think giving up and then starting again and realising how grateful you are to be able to be a comic was really important.

00:51:40Guest:The other thing is, actually, in the 90s, this phrase got bandied around here by one particular journalist, Janet Street Porter, comedy is the new rock and roll.

00:51:51Guest:And what had happened, basically, was there was a couple of stand-ups in the early 90s who were good-looking enough to be photographed for...

00:51:59Guest:But magazines.

00:52:00Guest:In general?

00:52:00Guest:In general.

00:52:00Guest:Fixed in general.

00:52:02Guest:And looked like they could have been in an indie rock band, you know.

00:52:04Guest:And you were one of them?

00:52:05Guest:No, but I was the second wave of that.

00:52:07Guest:And like, and, you know, I was part, there was a whole bunch of us that, you know, we would have been in a feature about these new comics in a magazine.

00:52:18Guest:I was in one of those in the States, yeah.

00:52:20Guest:You know what I mean?

00:52:21Guest:And you'd be photographed in the way that someone would be in a band would normally.

00:52:24Marc:Yeah, kind of like with the stance.

00:52:26Guest:Yeah.

00:52:27Marc:With the cigarette or something.

00:52:28Marc:Yeah, I think there was one in New York Magazine with me, Louis C.K., Sarah Silverman, and Dave Attell.

00:52:32Guest:That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.

00:52:33Guest:Yeah.

00:52:34Marc:They give you an outfit to wear.

00:52:35Guest:Yeah.

00:52:36Guest:And anyway, I was from that generation.

00:52:37Guest:And then by the time when I gave up, I was 31 or something, 32.

00:52:42Guest:And it was sort of like...

00:52:43Guest:I was getting these reviews going, oh, he used to look like Morrissey, and now he's a bit puffy around the face, and it doesn't really wash, and his quiff's wilted, and he's still dressed like an indie rock student from 1989.

00:52:53Guest:In the four years I had off, I put on about two stone, I don't know what that is in pounds, a lot, and I went grey.

00:53:01Guest:And when I came back, I was allowed to be...

00:53:05Guest:I was allowed to be miserable and clever.

00:53:09Guest:Whereas in your 20s, when you're thin and can get away with a pair of leather trousers, it looks like an affectation.

00:53:15Guest:You know what I mean?

00:53:15Guest:I actually think some people in all areas of the arts and in life, they grow into the shape that suits who they are.

00:53:24Guest:Finally.

00:53:25Guest:Hopefully.

00:53:26Guest:Hopefully.

00:53:27Guest:Or they leave it.

00:53:28Guest:You know, it happens to, like, you know, maybe it doesn't work anymore what you're saying because you don't look right for it.

00:53:35Guest:Or suddenly what you were saying that never worked works because you're heavier and older and greyer.

00:53:42Marc:And I think with me... Look what life has done to him.

00:53:44Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:53:45Guest:We like him now.

00:53:46Guest:We like him now.

00:53:46Guest:You know, he's entitled to look...

00:53:49Guest:Frank Skinner said to me, your act will never work in your 20s because you don't look bedraggled.

00:53:56Guest:You look too healthy and young to feel like that.

00:54:01Guest:And it was.

00:54:01Guest:It was like an affectation.

00:54:02Guest:It was like an affectation, a cynical affectation, a cynical affected look at the world.

00:54:08Marc:But also, we're just dressing the way we want to dress.

00:54:11Marc:I imagine that if you look at yourself when you were younger, you're probably saying, like, that's a ridiculous jacket.

00:54:18Marc:It was just at the time you thought it was a good decision.

00:54:20Marc:Can I ask you a couple of specific comedy questions?

00:54:23Marc:In watching the TV vehicle that I saw, there's a sketch piece about a fictional comic called Dill Spinks.

00:54:32Marc:Yeah.

00:54:33Marc:Now, you know, I know the level of which Hicks is revered here.

00:54:38Marc:You know, I knew Bill a bit back in the day.

00:54:41Marc:I certainly know about him and his material.

00:54:45Marc:Now, that was clearly based on him.

00:54:47Marc:Yeah, partly I can, but go on.

00:54:48Marc:But, you know, my first reaction was like, he's taking the piss out of Bill and the Bill legacy.

00:54:54Marc:No, but then I started to realize that, you know, if I'm not...

00:54:58Guest:misunderstanding it what you're taking the piss out of is the myth of bill yeah and the and the perception of um someone like when they die they can become they can be made to support this weight of uh mythologizing and i don't think i think it's something he would have seen through immediately himself right well it took me a second but i did see it and he also becomes one of these people that

00:55:18Guest:People who don't know anything about stand-up go, I don't really like stand-up.

00:55:22Guest:I like Bill Hickstar.

00:55:22Guest:He's fantastic.

00:55:23Guest:And you go, well, there's loads of people.

00:55:26Guest:Just because he's on the sleeve of a Tool album doesn't mean he's the only one.

00:55:30Guest:But the other thing, very specifically, that that was about was in 1995, I, Kevin Eldon, who's a comedy actor, and Ben Moore, who's like...

00:55:41Guest:someone like david serraris one of these kind of blokes is that the guy's name david serraris yeah we went on a road trip in the states for a month and we went to san francisco where we knew um uh harman leon you know yeah and he was writing might then that became um mcsweeney's after he left and um the guy who's in flight of the concords uh

00:56:06Guest:Arge, Arge.

00:56:07Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:56:08Guest:And anyway, we hung around with a lot of comics in San Francisco for about a week.

00:56:13Guest:And there was this guy, I forget his name, and he was always talking to Harmon and Arge.

00:56:19Guest:He was saying, I'm doing the Chuckle Hut tonight.

00:56:21Guest:Do you think I should do my mouse bit?

00:56:24Guest:And they were going, I don't know how it would work there.

00:56:26Guest:Then we'd see him the next day, and he'd go, how did the mouse bit go?

00:56:28Guest:And he'd go, it went all right, but I'm doing so-and-so tonight.

00:56:30Guest:Do you think the mouse bit will work at the Laugh Factory?

00:56:33Guest:And they were going, I don't know if it would work there.

00:56:36Guest:We never saw the mouse bit.

00:56:38Guest:What we used to do for the rest of the trip was we would improvise in the car various different takes on different American stand-up styles doing the mouse bit.

00:56:48Guest:With the mouse bit you're making up.

00:56:49Guest:Yeah.

00:56:50Guest:And the one we had the most fun with was the Bill Hicks type

00:56:53Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:56:54Guest:Sort of guy hating Mike.

00:56:58Guest:And Kevin was particularly good at it.

00:56:59Guest:And so years later, that's sort of where that's from.

00:57:02Guest:And the other thing is also about those cheap documentaries where they've got no footage and they have to keep going back to the same little bit over and over again and like vision mixing it differently or whatever.

00:57:12Guest:Sure.

00:57:12Guest:It was sort of about that, but it was also kind of... It was really about this... How the dead comedian becomes a sort of symbol for things that they probably would have found ridiculous in their own life.

00:57:27Guest:And how many times... He wasn't a comic.

00:57:32Guest:He was a preacher.

00:57:33Guest:He was a prophet.

00:57:33Guest:A poet.

00:57:34Guest:No, he wasn't.

00:57:34Guest:He was a comic.

00:57:35Guest:And actually, you should be proud to be a comic.

00:57:38Guest:Rather than thinking that it's dignified by comparing yourself to a poet or a preacher...

00:57:42Guest:There's bad preachers.

00:57:43Guest:There's bad poets.

00:57:44Guest:There's some pretty bad prophets, right?

00:57:46Guest:Yeah, most of them.

00:57:47Guest:Most of them, right?

00:57:48Guest:So it's sort of... Actually, they should be flattered by the comparison to... Yeah.

00:57:53Guest:You don't justify Bill Hicks by saying he's like something else.

00:57:55Guest:Right.

00:57:56Guest:You say, actually, he's a...

00:57:57Guest:top of the game of being stand-up yeah you know he's not yeah he's not and Simon Munnery's got a really funny line you must see Simon you know he got a review saying Simon Munnery's act is the closest comedy comes to art right and then he drew a Venn diagram on a board like it can never be art yeah there's a gap yeah

00:58:16Guest:There's a gap between comedy and art.

00:58:19Guest:And he said he's decided to give up doing comedy and instead try and be shit art.

00:58:25Guest:Which is really funny.

00:58:25Guest:A good comedy will never be art.

00:58:28Guest:It's going to be right at the bottom of it.

00:58:29Guest:It's really funny.

00:58:30Guest:Do you believe that?

00:58:31Guest:No, I don't.

00:58:32Guest:Like I said, I think the worst hacky comic that we would all sneer about behind closed doors is making choices and doing things.

00:58:42Guest:in the moment that are beyond... Beyond theater.

00:58:47Guest:Beyond most practitioners of other areas of the arts who largely play it safe.

00:58:54Guest:A rock band is protected by volume.

00:58:56Guest:And other guys.

00:58:58Guest:And other guys, yeah.

00:58:59Guest:And a theater show is protected by the decorum of the theater.

00:59:03Guest:Sure.

00:59:04Guest:We're exposed.

00:59:05Guest:Acts, yeah.

00:59:06Guest:And we're made to... We're commandos.

00:59:09Guest:Yeah.

00:59:09Guest:We're art commandos.

00:59:10Guest:We are.

00:59:11Guest:He's more than a comedian.

00:59:14Marc:You're like an assassin.

00:59:15Marc:We're going in.

00:59:17Marc:We're undercover of a facade that's hiding our pain and fear.

00:59:22Marc:And we're here to do some damage.

00:59:25Marc:This is all good stuff.

00:59:25Marc:And I hope people go watch the Stuart Lee stuff.

00:59:30Marc:Two things seem to happen to you in the last...

00:59:32Marc:five or so years, that must have changed your heart significantly.

00:59:35Marc:Because there is definitely a difference between your tone as a young man.

00:59:39Marc:You had a child and you also realized, you also found out who your real father was.

00:59:44Guest:The bit you're talking about is I found, you know, I looked at the paperwork and then I was able to... You were adopted.

00:59:48Guest:Yeah, I was able, but I haven't found out.

00:59:51Guest:But I...

00:59:53Marc:You were just able to decipher that you were Scottish.

00:59:55Guest:Yeah, I mean, well, I thought I was, but I don't know now.

00:59:58Guest:It was because it was Church of Scotland on the thing, you know, so I wrote a load of stuff about that.

01:00:02Guest:But I think actually, I think it probably is something that chips away at you, the back of your mind.

01:00:06Guest:I think an interesting thing about being adopted in the 60s in Britain was there was a degree of social engineering in it.

01:00:13Guest:And if you were adopted in the 60s in Britain, and there weren't many adoptions after April 68 because the abortion law was loosened up, so there's a kind of glut of people my age who couldn't be gotten rid of.

01:00:29Guest:And I'm allowed to make that joke.

01:00:34Guest:You can't be offended by that because I'm affected by it.

01:00:36Guest:But it was a degree of social engineering where you were placed at the exact centre of society because the charities or whatever that were doing it, they didn't want to make you poor and they didn't want to make you a spoiled rich kid.

01:00:48Guest:So you were placed at the exact centre of society.

01:00:50Guest:And I sort of think there's an anonymity about it.

01:00:54Guest:I can't do what a lot of comics do where they go,

01:00:57Guest:Oh, I've got an Irish background, therefore I'm like this.

01:01:01Guest:And I'm not working class and I'm not privileged.

01:01:05Guest:I'm statistically from the exact centre of society and I don't know what my racial or ancestral heritage is.

01:01:12Guest:And I like the neutrality of it.

01:01:14Guest:And when I first came to London in 1989 to do stand-up, one of the things that comics coming to London do is they make an act that's about where they're from in Britain.

01:01:23Guest:If you're from Liverpool, you could talk like that and talk about stealing cars.

01:01:26Guest:And if you were from Newcastle, you'd talk about how no one wears a shirt and it's really cold.

01:01:30Guest:And there were all sorts of different things.

01:01:31Guest:And I fought off the Midlands accent that I had and tried to become like nothing.

01:01:36Guest:And I think that's partly to do with being adopted and partly to do with the social experiment of knowing that you are exact statistical norm.

01:01:45Guest:And trying to look at things from that and to not fall back on...

01:01:52Guest:Being informed by anything.

01:01:53Guest:Yeah.

01:01:54Guest:Yeah.

01:01:54Guest:That blank slate.

01:01:56Guest:Yeah.

01:01:56Guest:And that worked for you.

01:01:58Guest:I think so.

01:01:59Guest:Yeah.

01:01:59Guest:And I mean, it's sort of what's weird now.

01:02:01Guest:My wife's just pointed this out is that is that some of the stuff that I do has started to.

01:02:09Guest:I have to be a bit more careful with it.

01:02:11Guest:Because if I'm complaining about a particular thing, I used to be just a nobody complaining about it.

01:02:17Guest:But now I'm a guy who's had a TV series.

01:02:20Guest:And the perception of you is, are you ungrateful?

01:02:24Guest:Are you jealous?

01:02:24Guest:What are you?

01:02:25Guest:You know what I mean?

01:02:26Guest:Temper it with your humility.

01:02:27Guest:Temper it with your humility, yeah.

01:02:28Guest:So it's weird.

01:02:29Guest:That's a weird thing.

01:02:30Guest:You sort of...

01:02:30Guest:Finally, there's something that is attached to you, which is that, oh, he's off the telly.

01:02:36Guest:And though it does change it.

01:02:37Marc:You're elevated now.

01:02:39Guest:Yeah, you're elevated.

01:02:40Guest:And you're in success.

01:02:41Guest:Yeah, which means... You don't have the same freedom to be pissed off.

01:02:45Marc:You don't have the same freedom to be pissed off.

01:02:46Marc:Yeah, because...

01:02:47Marc:You're one of those guys Chris Rock was talking about.

01:02:49Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:02:50Guest:Does it bother you?

01:02:52Guest:It does a bit, yeah.

01:02:53Guest:You just have to find a way around it.

01:02:55Guest:You have to make yourself seem arguably more unreasonable and absurd, I think.

01:03:00Guest:And they kind of accept it.

01:03:01Guest:And weirdly, that problem...

01:03:04Guest:is solved when you have a child because I couldn't having had a kid I couldn't I couldn't carry on with the same degree of cynicism about the world because you have to hope on some level that it will improve because you're made to be a stakeholder in it

01:03:22Marc:But also isn't there, like, because there are comics now, there's a popular trend to go the other way with children.

01:03:30Marc:Oh, yeah, and hates it and moan about it.

01:03:33Marc:To moan about it and also to continue to be bleak.

01:03:36Marc:Yeah.

01:03:37Marc:Now, you know, it seems to me that the real humanity of having a kid is that somehow or another you are forced as a selfish person, certainly as a comic, to be selfless and also, you know, to take that final step of maturity in taking that responsibility and also feeling your heart

01:03:52Guest:open to that experience yeah where as opposed to some people it's like yeah what a fucking chore yeah well i i don't i wouldn't recommend that any comics listening with writer's block you know have a child as an attempt to solve it but i do think that it's you know in as much as you don't you don't have the time to write and whatever it does mean that you've

01:04:13Guest:I'm not going to go on and do an hour about changing nappies.

01:04:18Guest:You'll figure out a way to approach it.

01:04:20Guest:It does change the way you look at things.

01:04:23Marc:Well, I mean, it's to coincide with this empathy that you have now for people that don't understand you or resent you.

01:04:32Marc:Well, I've got to tell you, Stuart, it's been a pleasure getting to know you.

01:04:35Marc:And I appreciate you doing this.

01:04:38Marc:It's really great.

01:04:38Marc:Thanks a lot.

01:04:41Bye.

01:04:45Marc:That's it.

01:04:45Marc:I'd like to thank Stuart Lee and the country of Great Britain for having me.

01:04:50Marc:As always, go to WTFPod.com.

01:04:53Marc:Get all your WTFPod needs.

01:04:55Marc:Order a t-shirt.

01:04:56Marc:Donate some money.

01:04:57Marc:Buy some of those episodes at WTFPodShop, the live ones from comics that we've put up.

01:05:04Marc:And also, what else can I tell you?

01:05:05Marc:Get on that mailing list.

01:05:07Marc:Go to PunchlineMagazine.com.

01:05:08Marc:Go to StandUpRecords.com.

01:05:10Marc:Go to JustCoffee.coop.

01:05:12Marc:Or you'll get it all if you get on my mailing list.

01:05:15Marc:It'll all be in there.

01:05:16Marc:Updates, all kinds of things.

01:05:18Marc:Pictures of people.

01:05:19Marc:All right.

01:05:20Marc:Got to go.

01:05:21Marc:Pip, pip.

01:05:23Marc:It's been grand.

01:05:24Marc:You're all brilliant.

01:05:39you