Episode 4 Backchat with Jack Whitehall and His Dad

This programme contains some strong language

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening and welcome to Backchat,

the show that always seems to descend into a big posh family argument.

Imagine Downton Abbey meets the Jeremy Kyle Show.

We have got an eclectic guest list for you tonight.

Joining me this evening,

we have Bear Grylls, Born Survivor,

Rylan Clark and Louie Spence, Born Fabulous,

and my father, born some time before the Industrial Revolution.

Bear Grylls is the country's best loved adventurer.

He has had to survive in some of the most inhospitable

places on Earth, from the Arctic tundra to the Siberian wilderness.

He even - get this -

spent an entire night at a Premier Inn in Barnsley.

At one point, it got so cold, he had to hollow out Lenny Henry

and use him as shelter.

Our other guest is Rylan Clark. Since hitting the big time,

Rylan's splashed the cash on a new set of porcelain veneers.

Apparently, his new teeth are so bright, this Christmas, last year's

X Factor runner-up, Jahmene Douglas, has been booked to switch them on.

I wouldn't make remarks about people's teeth.

Remember what your teeth were like. Your teeth were so bad.

They were enormous.

Can you remember when you were 14?

I nearly entered you into the Grand National one year!

We should be honoured to have Bear on the show.

One of the things Bear is, he is the head of the Scouts Association.

-Did you ever do any scouting for boys?

-I did, yes.

I was a very, very good Scout. I had loads of badges.

I had badges for knots

and then I remember getting a special badge for keeping secrets...

OK. Um...

-..which was given to me by the Scout Master.

-Don't want to hear that!

Our first guest tonight is Bear Grylls.

If you're not quite sure what he does, let's take a look at him

in action.

Here you go. Look, bring the camera over here.

And look inside.

You can see everything that's been eaten.

And that's just...partially digested...

And the fluid in this, again, is drinkable.

Drinkable...

but truly...disgusting!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Bear Grylls.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

SPEECH DROWNED OUT BY APPLAUSE

What were you doing?

That was one of the rumen of the camel and obviously,

they hold a lot of liquid that can hydrate you,

if you're in the desert, but it's not going to ever taste very nice.

But it is drinkable. It will hydrate you. It could save your life.

But there have been a lot of sort of bad experiences that have had

to go down my throat over the um...

I was expecting this from Louie Spence.

What is the worst thing you've eaten on the show, do you think?

Probably raw goat's testicles was a low point. Frozen yak eyeballs.

Elephant dung. Bear poo was especially bad.

-I remember coming across a huge steaming...

-Sorry. A bear, or...?

-Not your shit?

-No, not mine.

There was a big steaming pile of this stuff in the woods

and again, their digestion's very fast

and they're eating a lot of berries

and you can actually pick bits of apple that have only half digested

and just blow the faecal matter off it and then throw that down.

But you're not like that at home, in your day-to-day life?

I'd so love to be able to say I get home from an expedition

and have a bag of nails for breakfast, ice bath and...

-Shit in the laundry basket.

-Exactly.

No, I've got three young boys, a lovely wife. There's nothing better than getting back,

a hot bath and they all jump in and they tend to make me

a nice big cake, a carrot cake, whatever, heaven!

-I love all of that.

-And then throw it in shit.

But in a survival situation,

sometimes you just have to eat the most disgusting stuff.

Yeah, survival food's never going to be pretty

and you've got to put your prejudices aside.

You've got to go for it.

I saw one episode where you tether a reindeer to a tree

and then you slit its throat and you start drinking the blood from it.

-It's a very nutritious part of the beast.

-Obviously.

Minerals, everything.

It's not, for me, an idea of a fun Saturday night out,

drinking the raw blood of an animal, but you've got no choice, do it!

You've got to do it. Is there any animal that's too cute to kill and eat the heart of?

What about this?

AUDIENCE: Aw!

You really wouldn't want to be in a situation where you've got to do that, but having said that...

You're out in the wilderness, that is the only animal that you have around. What do you do?

Look at the Shackleton story.

All they had to live off was seals and penguins

and stuff for however many years they were stuck down there.

Again, it's the unimaginable.

It's the worst part of survival and I don't take it ever lightly.

Sorry for taking it lightly. I'm not taking it lightly. What about this?

AUDIENCE: Aw!

Well, my kids now... I've got three boys and they're getting to the age where they all want pets.

That would be so funny.

"Mummy, I've lost my hamster." "Bear!"

"Sorry, what? No."

There's quite a lot of gags around our household of - where's the cat?

"Papa!"

"I've not done anything to the cat!"

We wanted to see... Two slices of bread.

What about this, Bear?

AUDIENCE: Aw!

Two slices of bread, little Cecil? No! Don't eat it!

Do you know, we've got two very lovely dogs.

One of which is very like that and they are ridiculously cute.

-I thought you were going to say tasty.

-I'm not making a sandwich!

What if we brought out the right condiments?

-Firmly off the menu.

-I get what the problem is here.

It's the slices of bread. You're a well brought up chap like me.

I also brought ciabatta.

Who wants to look after the dog for the rest of the show?

I don't trust you, ladies over there!

Jack, why don't we keep the dog on here? It'd be quite sweet.

-Are we not allowed to?

-There's a lot of that going on!

They literally don't trust you near any kind of animal!

You look like you have warm, kind eyes, madam. You take that.

AUDIENCE: Aw!

-Jack, there's some sort of wee down your front.

-It's weed down my front?!

-Very funny.

-Joking.

You did, actually! You genuinely got me!

APPLAUSE

Now, Bear, I want to move away from eating disgusting stuff cos

obviously, you're more than just that.

You're never far away from a glass of urine on the show.

Talk to me about the drinking of the wee wee.

I do want to make clear, this again isn't a Friday night hobby of mine.

-Yeah.

-The worst one I had to do was I'd killed a snake

and I'd eaten the snake, but I'd kept the skin

and I thought I'd use the skin as an improvised water bottle for pee.

So I'd peed in the snake skin and tied it off, had it round my neck.

I'd been in the Salt Pan, this desert, it was boiling hot.

-Oh, my God!

-And it came to the point at the end of the day

when I was drinking the pee and it had been festering in this

-cocktail of snake innards for a day, so that was a bad one.

-Oh!

That sounds like the worst Frube ever.

I couldn't pee on camera. I'd get stage fright.

I do get stage fright, but they just...

In the edit, it's like, shorten that bit...

-Not that bit!

-No!

Lengthen that bit! Shorten this bit!

They do a lot of pixelating and I'm just going,

"Can't you just elongate the pixelation?

"Even if there's nothing there, just imagine!"

Did I tell you about someone who drank their own urine?

-He used to do it socially, which was completely different.

-Socially?!

This was an actress called Sarah Miles.

And she drank her own urine, as sort of part of her lifestyle.

And I remember her asking me, cos I was quite friendly with her very

briefly, to a party and somebody rang up and said, "It's a bottle party.

"You have to take a bottle with you."

When I arrived there, there were bottles all over the place

and I thought I'd better stick to the red, to be on the safe side.

And at the end, she offered me a dessert wine, very dark,

yellow, heavy.

I said, "Sarah, I think actually, if you don't mind, I'll leave that."

She wasn't doing it for survival. She was just fucking mental.

No, she lived in Notting Hill Gate.

There was nothing there to survive from.

My kids have actually started with the whole urine gag as well now.

I was training the other day at home, doing my press-ups,

I had the water bottle and Jesse came in,

who is aged nine...ten, and I said, "Would you just go

"and fill up the water bottle, from the tap?" He went, "Sure."

Ran out the room and he came back 30 seconds later, like this,

gave it to me, I went, "Great."

-He'd peed in the bottle.

-Oh, my God!

Such a good idea. Let me just...

Next time you're working out in the gym(!)

-You'll have a long wait.

-Do you train quite a lot, Jack?

-Do you keep fit?

-Yeah.

I get down the gym every once or twice a...year.

-Michael, were you ever into...?

-No.

It's a generational thing. My dad would never have.

He would have thought it was terribly kind of common to train.

Absolutely. And sort of gyms and things like that,

very peculiar places to go in those days.

What are you talking about?

There was a place in German Street, Turkish baths,

where they had a similar sort of arrangement.

There's no way that your father would have gone to a Turkish bath.

Everyone watching this show now thinks that you went to

a Turkish bath in the 1960s.

You got up to some weird shit!

Drinking old women's piss, going to kind of weird spas and stuff.

I didn't introduce the question of urine. You did.

You said you found it very difficult to have a wee.

I thought that was quite weird.

You do get very shy, particularly in stand-ups.

Why are you telling everyone that I get nervous in stand-up urinals?

-Not everyone.

-This is a fucking national television show!

-It's BBC Three!

-That is national television!

-I don't think Bear wants to sit here...

-I love it.

It's such a nice dynamic.

I wish my dad was around to have this sort of... It's genius.

We have a similar thing,

in terms of fathers cos you were brought up by a proper Tory.

Your father was a Tory MP.

Those were the days when your father was MP when men were men.

Harold Macmillan, Anthony Eden, they were the real men.

Margaret Thatcher, she was as good a man as anyone.

Did you ever meet Maggie Thatcher?

No, I think I spotted her once across a room aged eight

and was quite intimidated.

You're not trying to get me to tell that story?

He's trying to get me to tell the story

because I went out a few times with Carol, their daughter.

-Don't start making rude remarks about her. She's a very nice girl.

-Girl!

-Well, she was when I went out with her.

-Yeah.

-This was "went out" in the Biblical sense?

-It was sort of not quite.

-But I went out with her...

-We don't need any more detail.

-I wasn't going to give you any more detail.

-This is a question that's really hard for you to ask your dad, but maybe I'm a bit freer.

-Oh, fine.

-Did you ever French kiss Carol Thatcher?

-I don't want to hear that!

-Yes, I did.

-Shut up!

-I have to say, I did.

-Oh, brilliant.

-I went from between French kissing and heavy petting.

But I never went further than that with her.

She asked me back to Number 10 Downing Street to meet the parents

and it was sort of midnight-ish and I was beginning to get a little...

-I wasn't drunk.

-You were pissed.

-I was not.

Anyway, I went out into the hall to order a cab and I rang up the

cab company and Carol was standing next to me and I said, "Hello.

"I'd like a cab please to Number 10 Downing Street." The chap

at the other end said, "Oh, yes, sir. 10 Downing Street, right.

"And what would your name be?" And I said, "Whitehall."

And he said, "Oh, right." She then grabbed the phone off me

cos she could see I wasn't coping very well with it.

She said, "Hello!" And the guy at the other end said, "Yes, hello?"

And she said, "Have you got all those details?"

And he said, "Yes, I've got Mr Whitehall from 10 Downing Street.

"Who would you be?" She said, "My name is Thatcher!"

At which point the man put the phone down and I didn't get a cab.

That is the worst excuse I've ever heard for sleeping with

Carol Thatcher.

This is so much more fun as a chat show.

Most of the time, chat shows,

you go on and it's kind of like...tell the stories.

It's so nice just sitting and having a conversation. I love these sort of stories. They're amazing.

-Thank you very much, Bear.

-You're the first person that's said that.

We've had several guests, all of them

-have left feeling that it was a very weird experience.

-Yes.

It's much nicer talking about other people than talking about yourself.

It's great.

I suspect when Louie Spence and Rylan Clark come out,

it may be less laid back.

Now, when my mum and sister want to treat themselves,

they go off for one of those health spas for a bit of pampering

and some special girly time.

Well, what's good enough for the ladies is good enough for the gentlemen.

Right, Dad?

Here's what happened when I took my father to an all-male Russian spa.

I'd heard a lot about these kind of places,

particularly the foreign ones.

-I mean, they are all sort of gay people.

-What?

A sort of cover. Camouflage. It is!

I know to what you refer but this is not one of those...

If you think you are going to get me in one of these places

-and they start grabbing me...

-They are not going to be grabbing you!

And even if it was one of those places,

I imagine you would be pretty down the hit list of people to grab.

Why don't you just look at the treatments and decide what you want?

What is this "smoked sausage with stewed cabbage"?

I'm not having that all over my face! That is gross!

That is the food menu.

Yeah. There you are. Just what I told you.

"Wanka - £12." That's what happens. You get a wank for £12.

It doesn't mean that. That's Russian for something else.

That's quite cheap, £12.

I mean, it's actually less than some of these sandwiches

over here on the left. The crayfish sandwich is £25.

That's the equivalent of two wanks.

My father has issues with opening up to me so I thought something like

a sauna is a good environment to get the conversation flowing a bit.

'Didn't happen like that.'

That was absolutely ludicrous!

Sitting in a boiling hot room

-with that man's genitalia waving all over me.

-Sorry.

-What the hell was going on?

-I didn't know he was coming in.

-You told me it was a private session.

-I didn't know.

Please will you do the next treatment? It's called venik.

It's really good. It's the most expensive treatment they have.

-I think you're going to really like it. Please do it.

-OK.

No. We do it one by one, this treatment.

-Someone will come and get you.

-I'll sit here and read my book.

Mr Whitehall, if you'd like to come through.

SLAPPING

You must be joking!

-HE SIGHS

-I don't know why my dad walked out.

It's a Russian tradition. It's like their version of croquet.

Come on, Daddy. You've got to admit this is nice.

It's better than what else we've been having done to us.

HE SIGHS

-I have to say, my chap is a bit on the rough side.

-Ask him to be softer.

Could you be a little less rough, Sergei, do you think?

HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN

They are Russian, Daddy, they don't speak English.

Oh, yeah. Right.

If you want,

I could Google Translate, "Could he be a bit more gentle" for you?

-Yeah, OK. Good idea.

-Carry on.

-Read that.

-All right. Thank you.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Big thank you to all the people from the Russian spa,

especially Sergei, for going the extra mile!

LAUGHTER

For those of you tuning in expecting to see

David Walliams, I'm afraid I have some bad news.

David was supposed to be here tonight but he actually

hurt his back and so he can't be with us.

-Hasn't he just taken on a young wife?

-A, You don't take on a young wife...

-No?

-I don't know.

-He has.

Yes, he does have a younger wife.

I mean, I've got a younger wife, as you know, Jack. Your mother.

-My mother, yes.

-LAUGHTER

Voracious appetite, your mother.

Get well soon, David Walliams.

Still, we weren't to be denied our dose of high campery.

We wanted this episode to be our big camp extravaganza.

Unfortunately, one man alone couldn't fit David's shoes

so would you please welcome to the show Rylan Clark and Louie Spence!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Nice to see you. How are you?

How do you do? Lovely to see you.

I'm in the middle!

Pop you down in the middle, there.

-I'm next to a bear!

-LAUGHTER

-Do you reckon you'd be good on one of Bear's Wild Weekends?

-No.

-You wouldn't do it?

-No, I'd die.

-You must have been asked on I'm A Celeb?

-I'd die.

-That's why I can't do things like that.

-None of it?

The thing about I'm A Celeb that frightens me most

is walking over the bridge!

That bridge don't look safe, I'm sorry. It's like that.

Bit of a wobble on it, isn't it, darling? We like things firm.

That's why I'd go out with Bear wherever he wants to go,

cos I'm sure he would be very firm and strong and to the point.

-It could be you, Bear and Michael.

-That would be nice, Michael.

Yes, wouldn't it? Lovely.

What's the worst thing you've ever...eaten?

The worst thing I've ever eaten, tried to, was a vagina.

I was just like, I'm sorry!

It's just not for me. So I tried it. I did try it.

What happened was I went down the ditch after school with this girl

and we went to the lollipop man first and I got a Fab.

We ate the Fab and with the lollipop stick,

I had a little poke around and then I decided it wasn't for me.

What about camping? How are you with camping?

-Did you go on camping holidays growing up?

-No.

-What about a bit of glamping?

-No.

That's just camping with a glass instead of a plastic cup.

-That's bollocks.

-What do you think of glamping?

Like they do at the festivals with the bivouac and you've got a...

-A tipi.

-That's not proper camping.

Actually, Shara, my wife, would love it.

Now she goes, "You go and do your stuff

"and I'll have it all nice at home."

Do you know, I've got to say... I am so sorry for butting in.

Bear, you don't half look well for all that shit you do!

Do you know, I expected to come on here... I've never met you before.

I thought, "He's going to look like shit."

He's been through the wars, do you know what I mean?

Like, underneath an ice polar bear and all that.

-You don't half look well.

-Thank you. That's kind.

-You really do.

I think you would be good in the wild situation,

-Louie, because obviously you trained as a dancer.

-Yeah.

But in terms of blending in with your surroundings,

one of your first ever jobs was...

I know what you are trying to get to.

-You mean when I was, like, a pussy?

-Tell us about that.

-What happened?

-Well...

What happened was I got a job in the West End in Cats...

-I love Cats! What were you in Cats?

-Get your spit guard up!

-I was magical Mr Mistoffelees.

-LAUGHTER

When you go to pussy school, what they do is they

make you improvise so you have to sort of crawl around on the floor.

-I've done this so many times.

-Show them!

-Rylan!

-LAUGHTER

-I want to see it!

So, anyway... I start on the mat.

When you go to pussy school, after three days you have to improvise

and you have to be a cat so you have to crawl around,

sniffing everyone's arse. I was like, "I'm fine with that.

"I've done that without being paid."

-So anyway, you have to, like...

-HE HISSES

LAUGHTER

He's so good!

Oh, no! HE HISSES

-Louie!

-Really!

I should just warn you, I think my dad is more of a dog person.

LAUGHTER

-Could you teach anyone to be a pussy?

-I mean, yeah.

-There's limitations. If Bear wants to get down...

-No way!

-Don't even think about it!

-Could you teach anyone to dance, Louie?

Cos you're the best dance teacher in the world.

Yeah, thanks for that. Well, I think... You know, people...

If they haven't got absolutely no rhythm, it's quite hard.

You know that phrase "two left feet"?

What if those two left feet also had gout?

LAUGHTER

When I hear the word gout, I think of, like, cheese.

LAUGHTER

-Have you got gout, Michael?

-No, I haven't.

-I don't know why he's mentioned it.

-You do!

This show has gone very down-market in the last ten minutes.

Have you noticed?

I want to talk about the crying on X Factor

cos that was a very big part of it.

You were always very emotional. Are you always very emotional?

I do like a little cry but I want to defend this, like, right now.

LAUGHTER

Michael, you don't watch it but basically, during the show,

you have to get through certain rounds to earn money,

practically, let's be fair.

I got through the last round where it was,

"You'll earn a couple of grand, well done to you."

So I was in Dubai and I, genuinely,

along with the rest of the country, thought, "He's fucking off home".

So on the last night before the result,

we were all having a bit of a piss up in the pool.

We didn't end up going to bed until eight in the morning

and the results...filming, started at ten in the morning.

I had had one hour's sleep.

It was 50 degree heat and I was hung-over.

Scherzi's sitting there and I'm like...I've got the shakes.

Not because I'm nervous but because I'm still pissed.

And she is like, "You know, blah, blah, blah.

"You are going through." And I was like, "What?"

And it was the shock. It was like someone picked up a few fish

and slapped me around the face and I sobered up and it was 50 degrees.

I was sweating, my make-up was on my top, I'm on the floor

and then at some point I'm underneath the chaise longue.

-I don't know what the fuck happened.

-LAUGHTER

Obviously, quite a lot of effort goes into Rylan, the look.

-A little bit, yeah.

-Talk me through your beauty regime.

Well, basically I was just a fat ginger kid

-so I just try and hide it as much as I can.

-Are you ginger?

-Is that your natural colour?

-It's sort of died down.

How does the beard work?

The beard is quite ginger so that's a mascara job.

Oh, really?

But never use it from the mascara

because it gets too clumpy so get another mascara wand.

Michael, don't worry. I'll write this down for you.

You get another mascara wand and rub it on there and fill that in.

-And the eyebrows?

-The eyebrows are dark naturally.

Beauty regime, Bear? Is there much time for a beauty regime

when you are in the wilderness?

No, is the straight answer. I use a lot of kind of natural things.

-Crack open an aloe vera.

-Exactly.

Even at home, I use olive oil as moisturiser.

I do that because I had eczema, you know.

-Sometimes a bit of avocado in the hair.

-The olive oil is very good.

You've got to rinse the bath after with washing up liquid.

It's the only thing that will get rid of it,

otherwise you'll slip around like nobody's business.

But very good, the olive oil, isn't it? For everywhere?

-This is all going in, Jack.

-What do you think my father should do?

I think he needs to look a little bit more camera friendly?

I don't really know if he does need anything. I think it works.

He's sitting in that beautiful leather chair,

he's looking quite regal.

He's a sophisticated older man who is well-educated

and really doesn't know what he's doing sitting here with these

two homosexuals and this explorer but I think he looks fine as he is.

I think I could give you a few tips. I get toxed.

I'll have a bit of Botox but I had mine last week

-so I'm not quite fully frozen yet.

-Where is that?

I have a love heart round here and I have three around the eyes.

Haven't kicked in. Only had it done on Sunday. Next week will be fine.

You know it's super dangerous, that stuff?

So is what you do, Bear, but we have to do it.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I haven't quite gone as far as anal bleaching because they do say...

Listen, it's only what I've read. I'm well read, like...

Can I just say, Michael, I really hope you haven't had anal bleaching

-cos that would destroy...

-It gives you a more youthful look.

You'd be surprised. Frodo here takes care of the ring.

When Father bends over, it's like opening up a fridge door,

-it lights up the room.

-LAUGHTER

That's lowered the tone, Michael.

It has lowered the tone, you're right, Rylan.

-Let's bring the tone back up. Daddy, would you like a drink?

-A drink?

-Yeah, do you fancy a martini?

-Yes. What time is it? Oh, yes.

A dry martini would be very nice.

-LAUGHTER

-For fuck's sake!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Where's the olive? LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, that's all we have time for this week.

Thank you to my guests Bear Grylls, Rylan Clark and Louie Spence.