Friends John Bishop's Britain

Thank you, thank you.

Good evening, and welcome to John Bishop's Britain.

On tonight's show, I'll be talking about friends.

Now we all know, in our life,

they're an important factor, friends.

But everyone knows that, when you've got friends,

one of your friends is basically a dickhead.

LAUGHTER

If you're watching this and suddenly thought, "None of my mates are a dickhead..."

The difficulty is when you're trying to decide who's your best friend.

I was talking to one of my mates. I said, "Who's your best friend?"

He said, "I've got to be honest. It's me wife."

I thought, "Isn't that lovely?"

I said, "How long's she been your best friend?"

He said, "Since the dog died."

The way the show works is I've spoken to hundreds of people about the subject.

This is what they look like. You wouldn't want them as your mate, would you?

And here's a taster of what they've got to say.

-Honk-honk.

-Sheep shagger.

-Sex trout.

-I think it's a pervert's paradise.

-Look at her, she's all right, in't she?

-Mmm, bedtime.

-They'll bend it out and that's it.

-Yeah yeah-rrr.

-Oi, Stiffy!

-I have not got a hard-on!

-That's my Jamaican accent!

-I think Sugar Puff suits me.

-It is a gift.

-I don't need to know.

There you go. There'll be more from them later

and the odd sketch to help us along the way.

One of the main things about having mates is that you know,

particularly as a boy,

that one of the happiest times is when you get a new best friend.

Particularly at school - school friends are always important.

It's always great when you get a new best friend,

and then it's always brilliant

when that best friend gets the ball in the bollocks playing football.

That's when you know they're a proper friend.

When they're on the floor crying, and you're going,

"That's brilliant, that is!"

Cos really, school friends are always going to be

the important people in your life.

The chums I had at school were all people who were prince of men.

All people who led.

Four of us went everywhere together - the four musketeers.

All people who were absolutely fearless.

They were really academic, but I was the real arty-farty one.

And it was actually our strength. We got on brilliantly well.

I think in school days there's those very clear divisions of groups -

the cool, the geeks, the dweebies.

I was very much in the cool group.

The pretty girls would all hang around together

with their long hair and long legs.

At school, I straddled, in a non-sexual way,

the jocks and the nerds. I was in between the two.

The geeky kids would always hang around together,

the kids in the chess club.

I used to be part of the role-playing games club.

So I used to play with Magic: The Gathering cards, Star Trek cards.

The No Body Fat group was the group I was in at school.

For want of a better term, I was a floater.

But those days are over.

We had our own troop of...outcasts.

At school, I was in the naughty gang of children.

And we used to smoke, from the age of 10.

-I wanted to hang out in graveyards, and smoke, and...

-Who did that?

We would smoke in the school toilets.

We would smoke in the bike sheds.

I didn't go behind the bike sheds for a quick fag, no way.

I wasn't a teacher's pet, that's for sure.

I was in the tough group.

There was a group of us all liked cars,

so we used to play a game called 'Yen'.

Honk honk - I'm a lorry - ye-e-e-en!

It usually ended up me as the lorry, as I was slower than everybody else!

Ye-e-e-e-en! Ye-e-e-e-en! And that was my playgroup game.

There's nothing nicer than seeing a grown man being a little boy

but still wearing a Babygro, is there?

And when you're a child as well,

your friendships are different.

Cos being a friend with someone is a prize.

It's something you offer them. Like when you say,

"Let me play with your ball or I won't be your friend."

And they end up letting you play with the ball.

It changes when you become an adult.

You can't say, "Give us a go with your wife,

"or I won't be your friend."

The reason why you become friends with someone changes as well.

When you're a kid, you'll be friends with someone cos they pooed in the Plasticine.

When they grow up, that's not going to attract you to somebody, is it?!

Also, when you're a kid, you will die for your friends,

fight for your friends.

You're the only one who will look after your friends.

There'll always be those situations in a playground

where someone'll say, "Come on, let's go and get them!

"They're calling Fatty Johnston a fat bastard!"

Cos you're the only one who can insult your mates.

And all of those insults end up being something else.

Often, they'll end up being the nicknames

you carry with you for the rest of your life.

My nickname at school was Sheepy,

which was actually short for sheep shagger.

My name at secondary school was Stiffy.

The worst one, I think, was Sex Trout...

You'd be walking across the playground and someone'd go, "Oi, Stiffy!"

And I go, "Hello".

..Maybe the lips being a little fish-like

and the fact that I was obviously some kind of sex god.

It is a gift to be given a nickname.

Some cheeky buggers used to call me Speccy Four-eyes!

When I wore the jam-jar glasses that were National Health.

My nickname was Bat.

I was called Tits...

I think it was the fact my ears stuck out slightly and plastic surgery put that right.

..Because I was a little porky kid.

My nickname's Baps cos of the whole...boobage issue.

I think Sugar Puff suits me and my friends gave me that name.

It's probably because I'm big, cuddly,

I sometimes act like a monster and I also can be sweet.

My nickname's Chip but I don't really know why I'm called Chip.

I was always called Chip.

I love the nickname. It's quite nice, man. I love it. It's a loving name.

-They used to call me Sherlock.

-Why's that?

I've had Noddy since I was seven years old.

He calls me The Witch, though. That's my nickname.

-That's not a nickname, darling...

-That's not kind, is it?

-That's just a fact.

Has anyone in here got an odd nickname?

Ski Slope.

-Ski Slope?

-Yeah.

I would...like to think...

it's for loads of good reasons.

Don't tell me it's cos you're good at going down,

-cos that would be...

-LAUGHTER

-Why are you called Ski Slope?

-Me nose.

-Your nose?

They said it looked like a ski slope.

Let's have a look at your nose.

It looks like a nose!

LAUGHTER

The lady next to you who looks embarrassed, is that your wife?

-No.

-No.

Oh...

LAUGHTER

Do you know him?

Is this a cheap date or something?

Are you friends, colleagues...?

-Friends.

-Friends.

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

I think your nickname's going to be changing very, very soon...

..to Divorcee!

-Can anyone come up with a nickname that beats Ski Slope?

-Bomb Scare.

Your nickname's Bomb Scare?

No, not mine. Somebody I know is called Bomb Scare.

Someone you know?

He doesn't walk around with a rucksack a lot, does he?

How does he get a name like Bomb Scare?

When he walks into a room, everyone disappears.

That's good, that. I'm liking that.

APPLAUSE

Everyone who knows you now thinks that they're Bomb Scare.

So, for the sake of Bomb Scare, to put him out of his misery, what does he look like?

LAUGHTER

You don't have to name him! I mean, you don't have to name him.

He's got a bit of a slope on his nose.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Never ever make friends with someone who's got a dodgy nickname.

If someone ever says to you, "Look, this is my mate, Firestarter," run away.

But do you know what I've thought as well?

The best thing is to move and make up your own nickname. Yeah.

Cos it says something about you. When I moved to Manchester, everyone said, "What's your name?"

I said, "Just call me Chopper."

LAUGHTER

Oh, all right.

But what happens is as well is you'll have these nicknames

and it's OK cos you're amongst your friends, your group, your peer group.

And then you grow up, and you end up with a girlfriend

or you end up with a husband or...

basically, you end up with a partner,

someone that you've got to introduce your friends to.

And that is an absolute nightmare,

introducing your friends to your partner.

What happened with me and my wife,

we got married a lot earlier than most of my mates.

We had kids earlier than most of my mates.

One of my mates, called Serge,

wanted to come up to Manchester for a weekend.

We were living in Manchester. We had a baby, 12 weeks old.

Everyone in this room knows that if you've got a baby,

12...weeks...old,

you are probably that far away from killing each other.

Let alone having someone coming up to your house.

My mate said, "I'm just coming up for a weekend.

"Can I stay?" I said, "Well, you can stay, but we've got a baby.

"Remember, we've got a baby."

"Do not stay out."

I said, "I'll come for a drink with you, then we'll go back at half 10."

We went to the pub, we had a drink.

At half 10, I said, "Come on, we'd better go back." He said, "No."

He said, "I'm only up for a bit. I'll just go on."

I said, "Do not come back to my house. We've got a baby."

He said, "I won't come back to you. Don't worry about it."

At two o'clock in the morning,

-DOG BARKS

-the dog started barking.

The baby woke up.

I heard the doorbell ring.

I walked downstairs. Serge was stood on the step

with a kebab.

LAUGHTER

I said, "What are you doing?!"

He said, "What's wrong with you? I didn't know you wanted one!"

I said, "What are you doing?"

"Right, get upstairs. Get in the spare room."

So I sent him off to the spare room. She's crying at this point.

She wants a divorce. She wants to stab me in the eye.

The baby's up, kicking its...

I'm trying to soothe the baby. I'm trying to manage the situation.

The following morning, she gets out of bed.

She said, "That's it. I'm taking this baby out for a walk.

"When I get back, I want him GONE!"

I went upstairs to the spare room. I kicked him out of bed.

I said, "Hey. You. Dickhead." I told you not to come back."

I said, "I'm..."

I said, "I'm going to take the dog for a walk.

"I will be 20 minutes. When I get back, I want you GONE!

"Do you hear me? I want you gone. Mate or no mate,

"I want you gone!"

He went, "All right!"

I took the dog for a walk. I came back.

I walked in. The house was quiet.

I went upstairs. I went into the spare room.

He'd left the bed unmade, but it was empty.

Half a kebab was on the side.

I thought, "I'll forgive him. He's gone. At least he's gone."

I walked into the bathroom. He was lying in the bath.

I said, "What are you doing?!"

He said, "I can't go without a bath."

APPLAUSE

But the problem is that when you're meeting your partner's friends,

first impressions count.

One day my boyfriend wanted to introduce me to his mates.

Before I went in, I thought,

"I wouldn't mind going out with the girls,

"having a couple of drinks to get a bit of Dutch courage.

"I'm going to meet six blokes, I'm a bit nervous."

Got to the door of my boyfriend's flat.

Bang. Open the door. In I come, absolutely shit-faced.

Started pinching all their curries off their plates,

going round, realised I felt sick.

Went outside, two doors down into their neighbours' garden,

sat in the garden spewing and crying.

They wouldn't let me in the house,

and I stayed there till five o'clock in the morning.

Don't get pissed before you meet your boyfriends' friends.

That is definitely the moral of the story.

Just be yourself. Drink doesn't help!

APPLAUSE

I don't know if anyone's ever been in that situation

where you've been forced to go out on a double date.

Can you imagine what that was like for me?

Cos I was going out with a girl from Manchester,

which meant that all of her friends were from Manchester,

which meant that all of their boyfriends were Mancs.

Sorry, I forgot that the studio is in Salford.

LAUGHTER

And they were lovely lads. Every single one!

LAUGHTER

When you're at different stages in your life,

different things are important.

Like when we were kids, and making friends when you are kid is easy.

Everybody knows that. We used to go on holiday...

Probably like people in here, we used to go to Wales,

and you go camping in Wales, and your dad will put the tent up,

or your mum'd help with your dad parking the caravan or whatever,

or if you were posh, like some of the people from Chester,

and you were in a chalet...

..they'd just get everything there, get all the food out,

and then they'd look at you and say, "Hey, go and make friends."

LAUGHTER

And as a kid, you'd go, "OK."

And you'd go over to other kids and go, "Can I be your friend?"

And they'd make an instant decision.

They'd either say, "Yes, you can be my friend," or they'd say,

"No, you can't be my friend."

And you'd go, "I didn't want to be your friend anyway, knobhead."

And you'd walk away. It was a very easy thing to do.

You can't do that when you're a grown-up, can you?

You can't go on holiday and walk into a bar and go,

"Will you be my friend?"

LAUGHTER

It just looks odd. And we went on holiday...

We went on holiday to Portugal,

and this would have been about five years ago.

My wife made the fatal mistake of talking to someone.

Cos being British, we don't want to talk to anyone.

We don't want to make friends with anyone. That's not what we do.

And I left her five minutes.

That's all I left her, five minutes on her own, by herself.

When I come back, she was talking to another couple,

Brian from Dudley.

LAUGHTER

I said, "All right?" She said, "Oh, this is Brian and his wife, Janet.

He went, "All right, I'm Brian from Dudley."

First hour, fine, you don't mind having your sunbed next to someone.

For the first hour, that's OK. Doesn't mean that you're friends.

Brian from Dudley assumed we were friends.

When we got up the following day,

he'd already reserved sunbeds next to each other.

You're arriving there, he said,

"It's all right, "I've got the sunbeds."

By the third day, we're trying to avoid Brian from Dudley.

By the fifth day, we're thinking of moving frigging hotels to get away

from Brian from Dudley, because what happens when you're an adult,

you come to the point where you're thinking,

"You are getting on my frigging nerves!

"But I don't know how to get rid of you."

You can't get rid of friends, can you?

Obviously, we killed him in the end, but nobody needs to know.

LAUGHTER

And that's the same with work. That's the other thing.

When you're at school, you can make choices,

but when you get to work, you're given the people you work with

and then you have "work friends".

So you've got normal friends,

which is like saying, "These are the people I pick.

"There's my family, I've got no choice there. And then there's you lot.

"The ones that I'm also given, work friends."

And I used to work in an industry where they liked to do team-building exercises.

Just give me a cheer in here if anyone's ever been on a team-building exercise?

AUDIENCE CHEERS

What a pile of shite they are!

We were on a team-building exercise. We actually went paintballing.

The idea was that you would go paintballing

and it would give teamwork and some natural leaders would emerge,

and at the end of it we'd be bonded as a group.

That didn't happen. All we found out was Michael from accounts was a frigging lunatic!

LAUGHTER

He shot a woman in the face when she was... Bang, bang, bang!

"Go on, bitch!"

But the other phase in your life as well is you get your mates that you're given to you from work

and you get the mates that you've carried through with you,

and then you get the other mates that every parent understands - the school-gates mates.

Which are basically other parents. These aren't people you would pick.

They're people that, cos your kids go to the same school as their kids,

cos your kid's in their class,

cos your kid is friends with their kid, they become your friends.

The only thing that you've got in common is that you had sex in the same year!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Cos as an adult, you reach a point in your life where, really,

if you were to look at your phone, you'd probably have five numbers.

You'd probably have five friends.

You would bulk it out, wouldn't you? You'd have curry houses and stuff like that,

just to make yourself look popular. But the reality is, most adults now

can count five people who are important, and then it all changed.

Cos social networking arrived, and people needed to build things up.

Social networking has changed absolutely everything.

And everyone's got a view about internet friends.

I'm very popular. I've got 600 friends on Facebook.

900.

They're not friends, are they?

They're just invisible people you think you know and don't.

But now I've culled them all because I don't know any of them.

Out of 3,000 friends, if I asked any of them to lend me a fiver,

I don't think any of them would.

If you get sick of someone...delete.

I think it's a pervert's paradise.

It's full of lunatics, stalkers, weirdos...

Puerile and empty.

Like communism. It works in theory, but in practice, it doesn't.

The most annoying thing about Facebook is definitely

my mother being on there.

Cos she's always scanning for anything we're up to.

Any mischief we cause, she wants to know all the business.

You can nose at people's lives without them knowing you're looking.

She wants to know who's going out with who, what we've been up to...

Can't ask people in real life,

so do it on Facebook where they can't see you're looking.

She is like a bloomin' spy.

Status updates...

are the most mundane things possible.

People want to tell me they're going to have a certain food to eat...

'Eating cheese.'

'I ate an apple.'

..that they're going to the toilet...

'I just had a shit.'

Really? Do we care? No.

I don't want to know and I'm not interested.

If I needed to know that, I would be your stalker.

I don't. I don't need to know.

APPLAUSE

Now just give me a cheer in here

if you're on a social networking site.

CHEERING

Everyone does it!

Social networking, people do it, and it's gone mental now.

It's actually took over, I think.

It all began probably about 10 years ago with that Friends Reunited.

Remember that? It really took over.

People were looking for schoolfriends,

and then a lot of people got in touch with each other.

The reality is, nobody wants to get in touch with anyone.

If you haven't spoke to someone since you left school,

there's a reason for that.

It's cos we didn't like you in the first place!

But what happened with that Friends Reunited? It took off,

and the reason it took off is because

everybody got on to it for exactly the same reason -

You got on to it because you wanted to look and find out

if that girl who dumped you and that boy who was the star boy at school,

you were just hoping to get on to find out that

she'd become a fat munter and he was a bald bloke.

LAUGHTER

That's what you wanted. You wanted people to have failure.

And that's what all this thing with the status updates is.

It's just about bragging.

You know what I mean? You'll go on and go, "Brian's having a bad day

"cos he's got a flat tyre... on his Porsche."

LAUGHTER

Which is just a way of saying,

"My life's better than yours, knobhead."

And one of my mates has worked that out,

you know when they put all of these pictures up and they say,

"Look, here's my birthday, here's my party,"

and they put all of these photos up,

he's done a photoshop of his 40th birthday party.

He photoshopped his 40th birthday party. If you click on it,

you'll see that at his 40th birthday party, he was having a brilliant time,

having a drink with Kenny Dalglish and Nelson Mandela.

LAUGHTER

There's another thing on these social networking sites that's really took off.

It's advertised more in London than anywhere else,

and that might say a lot about London, where you can actually rent a friend.

The site's called Rent A Friend. You can go on and rent a friend.

And we were looking at it for the purposes of the show, to rent a friend.

So I put in, you know, "I'm a bloke...looking for a bloke...

"Who's into darts and stuff like that." So you can rent a friend.

And this fellow come up, Greg, 56, into darts,

likes talking about cars, £6.50 an hour.

The way it works is you rent Greg, he meets you in the pub and you have a pint.

I'm thinking, "What happens after the hour?" Does Greg go, "We're not friends any more"?

So I started looking for a friend who might be a plumber

cos I thought, "Well, if you're a mate and you come round...

"£6.50's a lot cheaper than an emergency callout, isn't it?"

APPLAUSE

But because of Twitter and these social networking sites,

people now have a view of all the celebrities.

Some follow celebrities. They actually think that they're the friends of celebrities.

And we've all got a celebrity that we want to be friends with.

My celebrity friend, I think given the choice, would be Oscar Wilde.

Natalie Portman.

I'm not gay but I'd have a very good rapport with him.

It'd have to be Freddie Starr.

Good intellectual banter is what life's all about.

I think if I could be friends with any celebrity,

it would be Gillian McKeith. Gillian? Julian? Gillian?

-I'd like Alan Rickman as a celebrity friend.

-Yeah, he'd be cool.

She's obsessed with stools and I like that.

You'd re-enact scenes from Die Hard with him. Brilliant.

I would love to be Gordon Ramsay's friend.

-Jesus.

-Yeah, he'd be good.

Every time my boyfriend cooked, I'd get him to stand behind him and just scream obscene things to him

just to make sure that the cooking gets better.

Gordon Ramsay would be a legend to have as a friend.

My celebrity friend I'd like to meet is Cliff Richard.

Colin Farrell, cos he is sex on legs.

Wouldn't mind having a frothy coffee with Cliff any time.

Really hot. He's hot.

I'd like to be celebrity friends with the Cadbury's Caramel rabbit,

who I've always had a thing about.

With Megan Fox.

Me and Megan could do loads of stuff together.

We could get our bikini lines done, matching nipple piercings.

If she's having a bad day, she's upset, crying, I've got broad shoulders. She can cry on mine.

And if one thing leads to another and she wants a kiss and a cuddle...

You know, who am I to say no?

Then I'd bash her back door in!

What I love about that is, he's talking and he looked down,

looked at his cock and thought,

"Yeah, then I'd bash her back door in."

Cos everyone's got this view of celebrity friends

and of what it'd be like to go out with celebrities.

My life, without any shadow of a doubt,

has changed in the last year or so.

The last 18 months has been mental. And it kicked off...

Round about last February I got asked to do a show,

and on this I'd work with famous people.

They were the first celebrities I'd be with on a regular basis.

So I'm there, I'm doing this show with famous people,

and then you had to do this show over a couple of days. We were staying over.

James Corden comes up and said, "Listen, we've all got to stay over.

"We're going for a drink tonight. Do you want to come?"

I thought, "Well, that's that lad off Gavin and Stacey asking me for a drink."

I said, "I normally play darts with my mates on Tuesday but I'd love to come, Smithy."

BOTH: Oh...

LAUGHTER

He said, "Brilliant, cos tonight it's the Brits."

I'm like every man in this room in his 40s.

I wasn't that sure I knew what the Brits was.

But I didn't want to look like a knobhead in front of my new mate.

So I went, "Oh, yeah, but to be honest, when we're not playing darts, me and the lads, Brits.

"Yeah, we're always there. We're always Britting at our end. I'm well up for Brits."

He said, "Good. If we're going to go to the Brits I'll phone Robbie, we'll go to his party."

I said, "If we're going to go to a party, let's stop at an off-licence on the way."

He said, "What are you on about? It's not going to be in his house. It's going to be in a nightclub."

He said, "Do you KNOW Robbie?"

And I went...

"I know some Robbies."

He said, "Robbie Williams." I went, "Oh, Bob!"

Ten minutes later, I was sat in a car with James Corden and Freddie Flintoff.

I'm trying to act all cool, like I do this all the time,

when really what I want to do is phone my mates up and go, "Guess where I am!"

I couldn't tell you how excited I was.

I'm bound to be excited, I was going to a nightclub.

It'd been a very long time since I'd been to a nightclub.

I was in the car thinking, "Are they going to let me in in jeans?"

The last nightclub I went to, I wore a thin leather tie

with piano fingers on it.

We pull up outside this nightclub, we get out the car.

We're walking to the door of the nightclub,

I notice there's a little bank of photographers.

As we're walking in, they start shouting,

"James! Freddie!"

"James! Freddie!" No-one's shouting my name, no-one's got a frigging clue who I am.

All of a sudden, James Corden and Freddie Flintoff stop to get their photograph taken.

The bulbs start flashing.

My new mates have stopped to be photographed.

So I just thought, "Well, if my mates are getting photographed..."

I could see the photographers go, "Who the bleeding hell's that?"

But they carried on, took the photographs, we went into the party.

I've got to be honest, we went into the nightclub - a bit too loud.

Far too loud, no reason for it to be that loud.

It was ridiculous.

You could hardly hear yourself speak, it was stupid.

I didn't want to be out late anyway, to be honest, cos I was halfway through a really good book.

Also, Robbie Williams wasn't there.

Robbie Williams didn't go to his own Brits aftershow party,

which I was absolutely gutted about cos I'd spent all night

walking round with a bottle of beer in my hand in case I bumped into him

so I could say, "All right, Robbie, do us a favour, mate, take that."

Not the best joke in the world,

but there's only five people on the planet you can try it with.

So he wasn't there, I went home.

I was in my bed the following morning in the hotel.

One of me mates phoned up, me originals.

He phoned up, he said, "I'm just phoning to let you know

"we got battered at darts last night cos we were a player down."

I said, "Look, I'm really sorry, I was working."

He said, "Oh, were you?

"Are you sure you were working?

"Are you sure you weren't at some showbiz bash

"with your new showbiz mates?"

I said, "No, mate, I was working." He said, "Were you?"

He said, "Get out of bed, have a look at the Sky News website.

"Look in the showbiz section.

"Look at the Brits aftershow party."

I said, "Look, I can explain."

He said, "You've changed."

I got out of bed, I had a look at the Sky News website.

I looked in the showbiz section.

I looked at the Brits aftershow party.

There was 42 photographs.

Photograph number 39 was a picture of me, James Corden and Freddie Flintoff

walking into the Robbie Williams Brits aftershow party.

Next to it was a caption that read,

"An unlikely trio, James Corden and Freddie Flintoff

"arrived at the Robbie Williams Brits after-show party

"with Bez from The Happy Mondays."

And you know the worst thing about that is Bez would have woken up and gone,

"Frigging hell, man, I didn't know I went."

That was in February.

Last May, if you remember, people out there might know,

the Manchester 10K was on. I entered the Manchester 10K. I do it every year with my mates.

There are six of us enter every year for a little charity.

We've been doing it for about five or six years.

I'm with my mates, about to run the Manchester 10K.

And as we're stood there,

we've all got our numbers on, we've all got our shorts on.

One of the stewards comes up to me, "Are you that lad off the telly?"

I said, "I might be. Which lad do you mean?"

He said, "You are, aren't you?

"What are you doing here?" I went...

"I was thinking of running the race, to be honest."

He said, "No, what are you doing back here?"

I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Why aren't you at the front in the VIP section?"

The VIP section!

Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?

A VIP section for a 10K race.

I said, "Look, mate, what's the point of that?

"Unless, in the VIP section, they give you a horse to go round on, I can see any point in it."

He said, "No, if you come to the VIP section you get to meet

"the person who's starting the race, the celebrity starter."

I said, "Who's the celebrity starter?"

He said, "It's Bez from The Happy Mondays."

He said, "Do you want to meet Bez from The Happy Mondays?"

I said, "Too right, I'd like to meet Bez from The Happy Mondays."

"Bez has had the best drugs money can buy for the last 20 years.

"I have been married for the last 18 years.

"Apparently the effect is exactly the same."

And the other thing that comes up as you get older

is whether you can have friends of the opposite sex.

And everyone's got a view on platonic relationships.

Yeah, I think men and women can be totally good friends.

No, I don't think a man and a woman can be best friends at all.

Yes, men and women can be friends without a problem.

Very rarely. Very rarely.

Women friends? I've probably got a couple.

But they're normally girls that you don't actually find attractive.

You can't say that!

Sometimes, if the girl is really pretty, like really, really pretty,

like double D and tiny waist,

I get a little bit narked off with that.

If you've got stunningly gorgeous friends,

then it probably can get sexy quite easily.

Especially for the girls on it,

they're going to bang it and that's it.

I don't think it's a bad thing to get sexy with your friends.

You might as well spice things up, surely.

My parents used to always say to me,

"Chantel, you know you and that man can't be friends, you know."

That's my Jamaican accent!

Men and women can't be friends cos of sexual chemistry.

I know lots and lots of girls who I definitely want to go to bed with,

but keep them at arm's length to be friends.

"We're just friends." I fancy the arse off you.

You'll have somebody crying on your shoulder giving you a hug in a nightie.

"My boyfriend's just finished with me."

And I'm going, "Hmm, bedtime!"

Yes, I do think males and females can be friends.

I mean, I think that a married man can have lots of girlfriends

and a married woman can have lots of boyfriends.

Or male friends.

-If you and I weren't married, could we be best friends?

-No.

Cos there's far too much sexual chemistry between us.

But we're not even friends now and we're married!

But I find it difficult, I've got to be honest, to have female friends.

I'm not really comfortable having friends...

who have breasts. That's basically it.

Apart from Big Dave, obviously. Nobody minds that.

And the reason is that men and women are different. We communicate different.

For a start, you talk too much. You've got too much to say.

My missus will phone her friends up as she's getting ready to go out with her friends.

And she'll be talking to her friends in the car while they're in the taxi on the way to the house.

And she'll still be talking to them when they ring the frigging doorbell

to come into the house so they can go out to have a chat together.

That's ridiculous! Men don't do that.

We just look at each other and go, "You're OK."

"You're still alive, still alive. Do you want a pint?" That'll do.

That's all we want. And the thing is,

it's because women, you've got a community about you, a communal sense.

You look after each other and you will go out in packs.

Gaggles, really. That's what you do. That's what it's like.

You get a lot of women going out, that's the sound. Gaggle, gaggle, gaggle.

You are. You are community animals. And you will look after each other.

Men haven't got that opportunity.

Women can just go somewhere and make a party by themselves.

As long as women have got something to dance around, you've got a party.

I've never seen a group of lads say,

"Hey, Ron. Get your coat off, come on, let's give it a go."

But there's always going to be a challenge when you're trying

to understand the difference between men and women.

Men when they go out in the evening chat about

the important things in life - hunting, shooting, fishing...

How they want to get into someone else's knickers...

Tits, bums, arse.

Wine, women and food.

And football. Football. Very important.

When men get together, they basically say things in short, concise terms.

They all ball-cup and back-slap, don't they?

Some people call it grunting.

HE GRUNTS

Look at her. She's all right, isn't she?

-All right, mate?

-Want a drink, John? Yeah. Right. Fine. That's it. Yeah.

You have a pint and you go to the football. That's your friendship.

I try to never be in a situation of just men. I don't like it.

If you've got a massive group of lads

and one girl who's relatively fit comes along...

Everyone attacks each other, trying to impress her.

It really is. You could have David Attenborough narrate it.

'The males are getting backed up because of the attractive...

'well, semi-attractive female.'

There's nothing more horrible than big groups of men,

apart from big groups of women.

Women can't sort out a problem

until they first of all find out whose fault it is.

I suspect that when girls are together -

correct me if I'm wrong -

but they talk about kittens...

Who's got the best bonzer...

..spools of wool...

..the best hair extensions...

..flowers, maybe...

Does my bum look big in this?

..and probably cock.

That's just my theory.

Having a little wrestle, see what happens.

And the reason for that is because you are so together.

Girls are together. You have friends...

You go out with women, you synchronise your weeing.

You will go to the toilet together,

you will sit there and go, "Jane, do you want to go to the toilet?"

"OK, yeah, let's go to the toilet together."

I've never said to one of my mates,

"All right, Gary, do you want a shit? I want a shit."

How does that happen?

It's because you spend time together.

You go shopping together.

You're interested in each other.

You'll go shopping together, talk about the clothes,

you'll even shop together and then share clothes.

You will share your clothes.

My wife has her friends phone up saying, "Can I borrow that dress?,

or she phones them going, "Can I borrow that dress?"

I've never phoned one of my mates and said,

"Gary, lovely shirt, can I wear it next week?"

The time that I start doing that is the time I know

I've been spending too much time in London.

APPLAUSE

The reality is men and women will always be different,

and the truth is, if we are being honest, boys will always be boys.

One of my mates has got a video of me.

The behaviour of my mates is boisterous.

These lads persuaded me to climb into a bath with a dress on,

and eat a Cadbury's Flake as seductively as I possibly could.

At my wedding my mate Lee, there was like a staircase and a chandelier,

and I had to talk him down from swinging across.

They told me they were doing a project on advertising or something,

but I was never quite sure whether that was true or not.

That's what being mates is about,

doing stupid things in front of each other,

and using it for evil at a later date.

Men can have jokey relationships, they play pranks on each other,

cos it's just how they bond.

My mate Ed, we call him Ed the Duck,

we give him a drink, but there might have been a Viagra in there,

we're not quite sure how it got in there.

They have a different sense of humour to women.

He drunk it and we all took the mick out of him saying,

"Ha, ha, you had Viagra!" "No I haven't, I'll prove it.

"I have not got a hard-on." So he stands up, like that,

whips his Thunderbirds outfit off,

gets his tool out and goes,

"There you are, proved it, I've not had Viagra."

If there's any way of proving the difference between men and women,

it is the fact men are quite happy to sit with other men and point at their genitals.

I've never known any women

stand up and go, "Hey, look at my fanny! Look at my fanny!

"Look at that, hey, it's massive!"

But the thing is that as well, if you always invest

something in your mates,

and I had a situation about 10 years ago.

One of my mates went off to the Australia.

I invested part of my life in him, I thought he was going to go off to Australia,

have an adventure, and by, sort of, osmosis, I'm going to learn from his adventure.

He was going to a Australia to have some time off, to have a year out travelling.

I thought he was going to come back all bronzed and tanned. He came back,

I was full of anticipation going to the pub

to see my mate who I hadn't seen for 12 months.

I was expecting to see a surf dude.

He came back, his eyes looked black, hollow, it's like he'd been in a war zone.

I said, "what's wrong?"

He said, "I am never going to Australia again."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "I've just seen Australian culture for what it is."

He said, "I'm never going back."

I said, "What happened?"

He said, "I spent the last five months travelling in the Northern Territories.

"I got a job as a sheep shearer.

"At the end of the sheep-shearing season all the sheep shearers get together,

"700 miles north of Alice Springs,

"and they all get drunk.

"They have a big sheep shearers' piss-up.

"They have a stage, and on that stage they have

"The Most Disgusting Thing You Can Do On A Stage Competition."

He said, "I was there with 400 sheep shearers when a man walked in,

"naked, with a sheep.

"And proceeded to have sex with the sheep

"on the stage.

"And came third."

How disappointed would you be?

You'd be walking off the stage

looking at that sheep going,

"We could have won this if you'd have put some effort in."

So, ladies and gentlemen, that was friends,

and tonight I've learned that there's no greater fun than going,

"Yee-ee-en."

Husbands and wives can't be friends,

and you should never go to a party with a sheep shearer.

Thank you, goodnight and God bless.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd