Being British John Bishop's Britain

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

Thank you! Thank you.

Good evening and welcome to John Bishop's Britain. Tonight's show is about being British.

Now, Britain used to be the major power in the world.

At one point, we actually controlled 25% of the known world.

Now we take our victories whenever we can.

The biggest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, in-your-face!

Stick that up your arse, Germany!

Those people familiar with the show know that the way we do it,

we go and interview hundreds of people for their views.

These are the people in the show.

You'd never get an empire with them, would you?

This is a taster of what they had to say.

-Doom and gloom.

-I want a wee vodka.

-You put that there!

-Garlic-munching surrender monkeys.

-Bangers and mash.

-Off-putting.

Slightly more highbrow. HE SPEAKS NONSENSE WELSH

SHE SPEAKS WELSH. HE SPEAKS GOBBLEDEGOOK.

How are you?

How be, my boy?

I would cut it off about there.

There'll be more of them later. Now for me, one of the things that stands out about being British

is the fact we're obsessed with things that aren't really that important.

The main thing that dominates British culture is the weather.

We're continually obsessed with the weather.

And the reality is, our weather's crap.

Our weather is either damp-wet or damp-sunny. It's just damp.

In America, when they have bad weather, people die.

They have proper hurricanes and people die.

They have tornadoes that rip whole towns up and people are never seen again.

We had an earthquake in Birmingham.

Birmingham!

It measured four on the Richter scale,

which basically means four fat blokes jumped at the same time.

But the reality is we all have a view about what it is to be British.

What defines Britain is fish and chips.

-Fish and chips.

-Fish and chips or a curry.

-Vindaloos.

-Meat stew with dumplings.

-Bangers and mash.

-A Sunday roast on a Sunday.

Traditional roast beef dinner. Can't go far wrong with that.

The British are famous for getting drunk.

They love a lot of alcohol.

-Gin and tonic.

-A pint of beer.

-Sambuca!

-SHE LAUGHS

And whisky, of course.

British people love orange juice and apple juice.

Sometimes they don't even drink it but they say,

"Oh, can I have orange or apple juice?"

You can't get a cup of tea like you can get in Great Britain.

It's always tea for England.

They don't boil the water abroad. How often do I say, "This tea's stone-cold?"

I don't care. I don't drink tea.

Britain as a whole is very good

at celebrating a good loser.

The fear of winning is definitely part of British mentality.

Second's great for us, it's like our new first.

"Gold? Couldn't take that. Far too... No, I'll take silver. I'm fine with silver."

We have this reputation of standing up for the underdog.

That's got us into two world wars, hasn't it?

Queuing is very British.

Eating lots of Marmite.

Deep-fried Mars bars.

Spending a lot of time in red phone boxes.

We've got more tattoos than people and more bald men.

Foot and mouth.

We're far nicer than anybody else.

There is something so quintessentially British about that.

A husband and wife sat there with him thinking, "Just shut up, love!"

The first time that I recognised Britishness

when it came to show business was just over a year ago.

I got a phone call, and it was to go on the Jonathan Ross show.

And at that point, it was the biggest show on British telly.

And obviously, being a British person,

I didn't think I had been invited on it

because I deserved to go on it,

I thought they must have invited me because there has been a plane crash of celebrities.

And it is now a toss-up between me and the man off the Cillit Bang advert.

But my agent said,

"No, they definitely want you to go on this show."

So I went to go down to go on the show, and the only problem

with going on the show is that I was on tour at the time.

So it meant another three days away from home.

So what I did was what most British dads do when you are working away from home,

I phoned home a lot to compensate for not being there.

That is what you do when you are working away.

You always phone home to compensate for not being there.

The problem is you end up overcompensating,

because you phone home too often.

Which inevitably means you phone home at just the wrong time.

Someone somewhere needs to invent a device

whereby if you phone home at the wrong time,

there's a voice that the other end that says, "Look, mate, if I was you...

LAUGHTER

"..I'd leave it for ten minutes.

""There's murder in your kitchen right now."

I am about to go into the Jonathan Ross show,

the biggest show on telly, and obviously I'm a bit nervous.

I thought I'd phone home, I'll share the moment. I said, "Hi, love. How's it going?"

She said "How's it going?! I'll tell you!

"You're down there with your Jonathan Ross and your fancy pants.

"I am running around all over the place.

"I've got three kids that need to be in three different places.

"Two of them had detention tonight. One of them hasn't done their homework.

"Do you know why? Because you haven't done their homework.

"One of them is watching the football."

I know, by the way, when I am doing this,

a lot of blokes in here think I have been phoning their wife. I haven't.

It is just the same phone call we all have everyday.

It needs to be one central phone number that we can all ring at seven o'clock.

And just get shouted at.

Because I am away so often, we've developed a system in our house,

whereby I can still tell the kids off even though I am 200 miles away.

"Right?! Get them on the phone now. Get them on the phone now.

"Get them there. Get them all there. Are they all there?

"Get them all there. Are they all there? Right. Right.

"Give it to the first one." She gives them the phone.

"You! Stop what you are doing. Look sad. Pass it on."

I'm screaming at the kids.

The producer of the Jonathan Ross show says, "You've got to come in!

"You've got to come into the Jonathan Ross..." This is it.

I am going to walk in to the Jonathan Ross show

and that Britishness takes over.

You think, I'm going to walk in and everyone is going to think, "I'm a knob."

Because British people never feel that they belong unless we've invaded the place.

I am stood there thinking, "Everyone thinks that I'm a knob,

and I thought, "No, relax. Just relax.

"You've been invited on. You haven't gate-crashed.

"You've been invited on. Be cool. Just be cool. Walk in and be cool."

I thought, "I'll just be cool." Which is hard for a British person to do,

but I thought, "I'll be cool.

"I'm going to be cool."

I walked into the Jonathan Ross green room. As I walked in, Westlife were sat there.

And I went,

"That's Westlife!

"My missus loves your stuff! Loves your stuff!"

Westlife sat there.

Courtney Love was sat there!

So I am just there, doing what you do when you are British and you are somewhere where you don't belong,

I'm eating all the crisps.

I thought, "They're free. I'm having all the crisps because they're free."

I am saying to Westlife, "Have a Twiglet!"

I am sat there, when all of a sudden, Jonathan Ross arrives with the A-lister.

When you arrive, you do not know who the A-lister is going to be.

The A-lister on the show that I was on was Jeff Bridges.

The Hollywood actor Jeff Bridges.

I'm like that.

I just looked at Jeff Bridges.

All of the crisps fell out my mouth.

I could see Jeff Bridges looking at me. In his eyes,

I could see that he thought I was Westlife's dad.

And Jonathan Ross is dead gracious.

He brings him in and introduces him to everyone.

He says, "Jeff, these are the other guests on the show.

"This is Courtney love."

Jeff Bridges is dead cool. Like Americans are.

Just dead cool. He said "Yeah, we've met before. Hi, Courtney."

She went...

"Hi, Jeff!"

and then he comes along to Westlife, and they are Irish,

so they're cool. They're friendly with everyone, the Irish.

And Jonathan Ross says, "Jeff, this is the boy band Westlife."

And Jeff Bridges just looks at them and went...

"I love your stuff, guys. I love your stuff."

I'm just sat there going, "It's Jeff Bridges!

"What am I going to say to Jeff Bridges?!"

He comes along, and Jonathan Ross says, "Jeff, this is John Bishop.

"He is a comedian from Liverpool."

And I just went, "All right, Jeff."

And then Jeff Bridges just sat next to me, lowered himself next to me...

I was thinking, "He's sat next to me!" He just sat down.

All of a sudden, as a British person, you just think, "I don't know what to do."

But Jeff Bridges, being American, who is dead cool, he went, "So, you're from Liverpool, huh?"

And I went, "Er...

"Yeah, Jeff, yeah, yeah, Liverpool, yeah."

He said, "You know, my granddaddy was from Liverpool."

I went, "Oh...

"So was mine, Jeff!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

And you know when you feel a whole room full of people look at you

and think, "Who's the knob?"

That is the good thing about being British. We have a degree of modesty about ourselves.

But one thing that we are all proud of is where we're from.

It's our home towns.

-Bolton...

-Is our home town.

-And it's incredible.

-I love Bolton.

I grew up in Wimbledon.

Belfast, born and bred.

Leafy suburbia in London.

The people are so friendly...

And it is really nice and safe...

-And appealing...

-And boring.

I grew up in Slough.

-Peckham. Deepest, darkest southeast London.

-Which was like The Bronx.

No frills, no spills. If it moves, you eat it, if it stays still, you nick it.

The worst thing about it is it smells.

My hometown of Portsmouth is pretty rough in places.

They used to be a nightclub there called Joanna's.

The problem with Jersey is that it is quite small.

It is the only nightclub where I have actually seen someone poo on a dance floor.

So everybody knows everyone else's business.

The guy just dropped his trousers, pooed, pulled them back up and carried on dancing.

My home town's claim to fame?

Probably me!

Whitechapel would be famous for Jack the Ripper.

Peckham is mostly famous for Del Boy.

-We have a statue of Fred Dibnah in our town centre!

-I don't like...

"Who's Fred Dibnah?" you might ask. Exactly. Who is Fred Dibnah?

What is Wolverhampton famous for?

-We used to have statues of...

-Lord Byron.

-Benjamin Disraeli.

But no, they'll rip those down, and put Fred Dibnah up.

I can't think of anything!

We've got this rivalry as well, where we just have a go at each other all the time.

It goes too far at times.

There is a place in the lakes called Whitehaven.

I don't know if anyone knows Whitehaven.

Whitehaven have got a rivalry with another place called Workington.

We were looking at the researches into local rivalries,

and this one just stood out to me,

because if you are from Whitehaven, and you want to insult someone from Workington,

you call them a jam-eater.

But if you are from Workington and you want to insult someone from Whitehaven,

you call them a jam-eater.

And it goes back to the days when they had the mines,

and if you had jam on your butty, you had no money,

so they called each other a jam-eater.

That's their rivalry. Saying, "You're a jam-eater!" "No, you're a jam-eater!"

I'm thinking, "Does no-one up there know the word "twat"?"

One of the reasons that we are so antagonistic towards each other as British people,

and one town has a go at another town is because of football.

And I married a girl from Manchester

because I wanted to spread the Scouse gene as far as I could.

And we were sat in the house watching the football,

and I was trying to explain why Liverpool and Man United

always have this antagonism towards each other, and she said, "What is it?

"It is it because of the players? Is it the players?" I said, yeah.

It is. There is a local rivalry because of their players.

She said, "What do you mean?" I said, our Spanish winger has just gone down the wing.

Their Mexican's come flying in. The Brazilian came up to him.

As he went up to him, the Portuguese had a go,

and the Dutch lad booked for it.

It's bang out of order, because of that Portuguese, Brazilian, Spanish...

SPEECH DROWNED OUT BY LAUGHTER

Just stupid, isn't it?

But we do have rivalries, and they come out sometimes

in the fact that you always think your town is slightly better,

and sometimes, that is the case.

Sometimes there are differences, but I was on tour recently,

and we went to Preston.

I did a gig in a venue in Preston. Couldn't find the venue.

We phoned the fella who was running the gig,

and we couldn't get through to him, couldn't get through to the box office.

We were completely lost.

So we did this thing that I know some people under 25 won't get this.

Because you all understand what I am about to say.

We were in a car, the sat nav was sending us the wrong way,

so we used our initiative.

We did this mad, crazy thing.

We stopped the car,

we wound the window down,

and we spoke to someone we didn't know,

not even a friend on Facebook, never met them before...

..and we asked them the way.

And their answer was brilliant, he said,

"All you have got to do is follow the signs for the Tourist Information Centre."

The Tourist Information Centre in Preston.

That has got to be the most optimistic road sign in the world.

What is that? Preston Tourist Information Centre?

There must be one man sat there in a shed going,

"Aye, lad. Blackpool is that way."

As well as there being rivalry between towns and cities,

the big thing is that always causes arguments in this country

is where is it best to live?

In the town or the country?

People in villages and the country are friendlier.

In the city, you're normal, and you grow up.

What can you do in a village? Cream teas on a Sunday afternoon? Boring.

In the country, you take an old pill,

you turn grey and walk down the street like a zombie.

You walk along the street in the city and get bulldozed out of the way,

unless you're my size and everyone gets out of your way,

generally cos I smell.

In the countryside, people are more open and friendly.

But everyone knows everyone's business.

They always think they're so unique and different,

but they're the same when you look at 'em.

These townies that come to the country think they can drink.

But a couple of pints of scrumpy cider, and they're on their back.

I wouldn't like to live in London because it's crowded.

It's dense, congested.

-Too many people.

-Too fast, too noisy.

There are parts of London that just need a good flush-out.

Quite mucky in places.

It's like constipation.

You can't be in a rush in a village. You have to go with the flow.

Buses in the city have two decks.

We only have little ones, single-decker buses.

I know you think you're lucky living in London,

but I feel sorry for you, really.

After spending a bit more time in the countryside,

if you've always grown up in towns and cities,

it's quite a scary place.

Everyone thinks it's friendly. It's not.

It's scary, cos you're not used to people being friendly.

And the worst people for scaring you are ramblers.

If you've ever had a walk and had those enthusiastic people,

there's always an old bloke and a woman who looks like she spends most of her time

baking cakes or just being a lesbian.

Romping along. I took my kids on a walk in the country, and... "Good morning!"

I went "Bloody hell!"

The kids were going, "They're talking to us!" and I said, "Don't look at them!

"It could be a trap!"

But also, your psychology changes as well.

I did a gig in Sheffield about a year ago.

I was driving past,

and there's a road between Sheffield and the rest of Britain.

It's a road, and it's called the Snake Pass, because it's snaky.

And most of the year,

you can't pass it because you can't overtake anything.

If it snows, you can't get on it. I was driving back from this gig.

It was late at night. I was the only one on the Snake Pass.

Pitch darkness, not a house for miles, not a street light for miles.

EXPLOSION, CAT YOWLS

I looked up.

I could see the stars in the sky, a full sky of stars twinkling down.

Little stars breaking through the blackness.

I thought, "That's wonderful". So I pulled the car over.

I thought "I'm going to enjoy this. I'll savour this moment, one man alone in the blackness.

"Looking at the stars."

I turned the lights off, turned the radio off, turned the engine off.

Got out of the car. I walked four yards away from the car.

I looked around at all the blackness...

and shit myself.

I couldn't wait to get back in the car!

Cos in my head,

I'm thinking, "I know I've parked close to that mad axeman."

You can't help that. In a city, if someone's pissed

and coming at you with a bottle, you think, "I know what's going on here."

But in the countryside, you know they'd do anything out there.

It's also true as well, as a comedian,

you read all the surveys about how tough comedy is in different cities.

You get Liverpool listed as a rough city to do.

Glasgow is a rough city to do comedy in by all accounts,

and so's Manchester.

Everywhere north, and that's because most of the people they ask are Southern comedians.

To be fair, they do sometimes get a rough time.

I was compere-ing a gig at the Comedy Store in Manchester.

Backstage, there's a dressing room, and in the dressing room,

there's a television where you can watch the acts on stage

so that you know when they're about to finish, and you go on.

It was Saturday night.

Instead of watching the acts, I was watching Match Of The Day.

Introduced onto the stage what you would call a posh, Southern act.

This lad went on. Very good act, very good comedian.

I'm watching Match Of The Day. I didn't know what was going on.

All of a sudden, he arrived back in the dressing room.

He said, "I just HATE them."

So I thought "I've got to get back on the stage. What on Earth's gone on?"

I've got to get on the stage.

I ran onto the stage.

As I arrived to see what the problem was, there was a leg on the stage.

A leg. A complete leg, a shoe and a sock and everything. It was a leg.

I mean, you can't ignore it when you find a leg.

I thought, "Someone's dropped something here," so I picked up the leg

and said to the audience, "Has someone lost their leg?"

And there was a bloke about five rows back who said "It's mine!"

I said "What's it doing here?"

He said "I thought he was shit."

How Northern is that?

"You know what, I'm not even going to heckle. Just get the leg off."

The other thing that's unique about Britain

is that you can sound different

to someone who lives less than five miles away.

One thing we're obsessed with in Britain is our accents.

My favourite would be the Welsh accent. I adore that.

I went to Wales with John, and John reckons he picked up Welsh.

Just stick "Innit?"

at the end of every sentence. "I'm ready for dinner, innit?"

That weird lilt.

"Oh! How's it going?"

HE SPEAKS NONSENSE WELSH

SHE SPEAKS WELSH

I'm sorry, beg your pardon?

Weirdly, I like a Brummie accent.

Ob-bo-lob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob.

-BRUMMIE:

-"How ya doing? Yeah, fine."

It's like Mr Blobby.

It sounds so slow and boring.

I cannot understand Scottish people.

I do struggle when they laugh at my accent.

SCOTTISH: "I want a wee vodka."

They can be quite horrible to me.

-I do like our accents.

-It does, like...yeah. Sometimes... yeah.

Our accents are good.

The Geordie are a bit difficult.

-"Hello, man, how are ya?"

-They tend to roll their words into each other.

"Nice to see ya!"

My best friend's Geordie. It is difficult to understand him

when he gets a bit drunk,

combined with a bit aggressive.

HE SPEAKS NONSENSE GEORDIE

The best accent's probably West Country.

"Oo-arr, oo-arr."

"Arr, how be, my boy?"

You can't take them seriously.

My least favourite British accent would be...the Scouse accent.

"You put dat dere and then you put dat dere, and in the middle

"you've got dem dere."

I just find it a little bit grating.

CHEERING

He thought that was funny when he said, "You put dat dere and you put dat dere."

He forgot that he was naked. I cut his bollocks off.

But I know what I sound like,

so I know some people will find the accent slightly irritating.

Some will find it playful. Some people might find it sexy.

All right, some people will find it irritating.

But I know what I sound like,

and the reason I know is because about two-and-a-half years ago,

I'd left my full-time job and I was doing for stand-up comedy,

trying to make a living, and I was properly struggling.

So I went to my agent and said, "Look, you need to get me some work.

"Just get me any work."

I'd had letters saying the mortgage was behind.

We've got three kids, and you know what they're like.

You've got to feed them. You're legally obliged.

So I said, "Just get me some work."

When you're a comedian and you say to your agent, "Get me some work,"

they immediately start sending you for adverts.

Now, as I was saying, I have a slight regional accent.

There are some jobs you're never going to get

when you have a slight regional accent like mine.

I got sent to do the voice-over on an Audi commercial.

What was brilliant about it,

when you do these voice-overs,

they do it in a couple of studios in London,

they're always really posh.

I turned up, and this lady gave me the script.

It said at the top, "To be read in a friendly Northern voice."

I thought "You've never been to Liverpool, have you?"

Then they send you into this thing called a sound booth.

That's what it's called. It's called a sound booth.

I'm just making that clear. If there's any scallies at home,

it's not a booth that's friggin' sound.

It's a sound booth.

But when she said to me, "Would you like to go in that sound booth?"

I said, "What's so good about that?" She went, "I beg your pardon?"

"It's all right, love, I'm a comedian. I'm not even working. You can have that. It's yours. Keep it."

And then we go into this thing where you do the voice-over.

You go into the sound booth and sit there,

and there's a microphone there and a screen that plays the advert.

Then there's a glass partition and on the other side of the glass

there's a man with earphones on in the studio, recording your voice.

As soon as I started reading the script, I could see him go...

But the advert was this Audi car sweeping through the Alps like that,

so I just read what it said on the script. "Audi - what a safe drive.

"Audi - what a memorable drive.

"Audi - what a unique drive.

"Vorsprung dercchhh Technichhhh."

I could see the look.

But the reality is, Britain is a single nation

that's bound together, four separate countries.

And let's be honest, we don't always get on.

Wales is one of the finest little places on our map.

Wales is a place best avoided.

The Welsh are passionate people. We get on with everybody.

Everybody hates the Welsh. I've never met anybody Welsh that I haven't hated.

We've got massive countryside.

We've got valleys, beautiful girls.

The people are strange, the weather's appalling, and on the whole,

apart from looking for choughs off the Cardiff coastline,

I see no reason to go there.

It's just everything you need. It's an amazing place.

Wales is definitely one of those parts of Britain that splits people.

You've got the valleys in Wales, which are beautiful.

You've got the developments going on in south Wales around Cardiff,

which are really impressive.

And then you've got Rhyl.

I went on a stag do to Rhyl. Must have been about ten, 12 years ago.

I went on a stag do to Rhyl. We were staying in a B & B

where we got a lap dancer who also cooked you breakfast.

There was something wonderful about the fact that she could multi-task,

but there's something off-putting

about a lap dancer with bacon-fat burns.

That was being British. We've learnt that Jeff Bridges' granddaddy was from Liverpool,

it's a bit shit on a dance floor in Portsmouth,

and there's definitely a North-South divide,

and we're better.

Thank you, good night and God bless.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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