Christmas Special John Bishop's Britain

This programme contains some strong language

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one

wearing my Christmas clothes in here today.

Welcome to the show.

This is a Christmas edition of John Bishop's Britain

and it's lovely to be back.

I have to be honest - next year, I'm thinking of changing Christmas,

cos we're in the middle of winter, all that horrible weather.

I'm thinking what I want to do is have a sunny Christmas.

Go to warmer climes, you know.

Obviously, I'll miss the Christmas tree, I'll miss the mince pies,

I'll miss the wife and kids but I just fancy a change.

The other thing that you'll miss as well,

if you ever spend time out of England,

is that this is one of those shows that's now a Christmas special.

Every year, there's a Christmas special of every show.

You get the Wipeout Christmas special.

The Watchdog Christmas special.

The Embarrassing Bodies Christmas special.

"David's got a cock that looks like a reindeer."

The way the show works is I've been all over Britain,

asking people about Christmas and getting their views.

These are some of the people I've spoken to.

Some you'll recognise. Some you won't.

But if they're at the end of your bed on Christmas Eve,

you'd probably run a mile.

And this is a taster of what they had to say.

# It's Christmas! #

-Shake it over a nice bit of stuff.

-I love you, mwah!

-It doesn't get better than that.

-Urgh.

-Bah, humbug.

-Oh.

-Angry.

-All hell used to break loose.

-Smash up the Santa Clauses.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

We'll be hearing more from them later and, also,

there'll be the odd sketch or two to help us along the way.

Now, Christmas, as we know, is a very, very stressful time.

Mainly because you've got to buy presents for people.

And what happens in my house is we play a little game.

Where my wife buys something, gives it to me, and I open it

and realise it was what she wanted.

Every year, we've been doing this.

I've had CDs of Duffy.

I got curling tongs one year.

Last year, I got a pair of UGGs. I thought, "Well, sod you."

I put them on and went to the pub.

It's amazing how many offers you get

when you're a grown man wearing UGGs.

And Christmas has changed, as well, for kids.

When I was a kid, we didn't get the presents that kids get now.

I remember one Christmas, just getting an orange

and a magnifying glass.

That's all I got. I just looked at my dad and said, "What's that?"

An orange and a magnifying glass. I said, "That's not a present."

He said, "Just go like that, son, you've got a space hopper."

When I was a kid, one of the things

that we did every day at Christmas is we used to go to Mass.

And, obviously, there were some kids who got better presents than me.

And you could see them showing off.

Riding to Mass on their brand new bicycle,

showing off, and then walking home crying cos they'd never got a lock.

And every time we were there, we used to say to the priest,

"What do you want for Christmas?"

He used to say, "All I want for Christmas is peace on earth."

And I'd go, "What did you get?"

He'd say, "Oh, I got some bath salts."

That's slightly disappointing, isn't it? It's not peace on earth.

But, then again, YOU can relax.

Not all of these jokes are going to work, I can tell you that now.

Some of these jokes are just for the people down South.

Down South, they were pissing themselves at that.

Up North, everyone's going, "Bath salts?! Fuck off!"

But the reality is, Christmas wouldn't be the same

if it wasn't for the presents.

I think the worst person in the family to buy for, for any man,

is the wife.

I think the hardest person to buy for is...me.

Men are difficult to buy for.

I mean, what do you buy for a chap for Christmas?

Oh, thank you, yes, another pair of socks. I really needed them.

You can't disguise a present you don't like.

It's like, "Urgh, what's that?"

Ooh, no, not really me.

About four or five years ago, to my horror,

I discover that my Christmas present is a sackful of chickens

that had been given to a third-world village.

Who wants a lot of old aftershave and soap-on-a-rope?

It's not what I consider festive or appropriate.

Women don't want nasty red nylon

frilly knickers that you think are sexy.

-Have I ever, have I EVER bought you anything like that?

-Sadly not.

No, obviously, someone else in your life has and scarred you.

(Might have done.)

Women are much easier to buy for. Much, much easier.

I soon learnt that you don't buy a wife any kitchen appliances.

Perfume, or jewellery, or gloves.

The look of disappointment on her face when she opened this blender.

It was just terrible.

And just by her eyes, you knew that I'd done wrong.

That is a typical man's thing, isn't it? "There you go, love.

"Go and blend something, eh? I'll go and have a sit down now."

Cos the thing is with presents, as well, they have changed.

I have got a goat.

I got a goat two years ago for Christmas. I've never met the goat.

I'm not even sure the goat exists.

I've got a little sticker saying, "You own this goat."

I think the goat has been sold about 1,000 times.

I think, one day, I'm just going to turn up in this African village

and come and meet my goat, see if it recognises me,

the ungrateful bastard - it's never written once!

And the thing that's changes as well in recent times

is this explosion of Secret Santas.

Secret Santas at work.

That is just the worst idea on the planet.

For those people who don't understand what Secret Santa is,

it's basically you work somewhere...

with a load of people, most of whom you don't talk to.

And then someone says, "Let's put everyone's name in a hat."

And you draw a name out of someone you don't know

and you've got to buy someone you don't know a present.

For five quid!

You can't go beyond five quid, it can only cost five quid,

which means it's shit!

Which means you're buying someone you don't know something shit

that they never wanted in the first place.

That's ridiculous! What's happened now...

I know people who've said, "We're not doing that, cos all you can do is buy crap,

so what I'm going to do is buy lottery tickets."

Lottery tickets. So what happens is you end up buying five lottery tickets.

I can't think of anything worse - imagine doing that.

And that person you don't even know,

who you bought five lottery tickets for..

wins the lottery!

You're stood there with a pair of socks.

You're going, "I didn't even you, you twat!"

Cos the pressure of getting presents, as well, it changes.

It's all right to begin with. You go out with the best intentions.

You think, "No, I'll get Auntie Mary something nice this Christmas.

"It's time I treated her."

You go out and go somewhere with a shopping centre

then two hours later, when you can't find anything,

you think, "Why am I getting this stupid cow a present?!"

It just creates anxiety which means that you end up

with all of these presents that no-one would normally buy,

like these celebrity...perfumes.

Kerry Katona...

..has a perfume now.

I've never, ever looked at my wife and thought,

"I'd love a whiff of Kerry off you, love."

Can you imagine that as a present?

Giving somebody some perfume that makes her smell of fags and a kebab.

Every Christmas, it's the same - it's happened this Christmas -

where there's always a present

that is the must-have present for the kids.

There's always a present that the kids have got to have.

And you've got to climb the wall and find them. You know what?

I don't know who decides what that must-have present is,

but whoever decides it -

makes some frigging more, will you?!

You know what I mean?

They know a million kids will want them so they say,

"All right, we'll knock out 150, to get parents killing each other."

What's happened with us is our kids have changed as well.

Cos our kids aren't kids who want something for Christmas now.

We've got teenage kids, and everyone in here with teenage kids knows

teenagers don't want presents.

They want money.

When they say, "Don't get me presents, just give me money,"

that's really awkward. It's OK if you've only got one child.

If you've only got one child, it's not a problem.

But if you've got three, it's difficult.

Cos when you give them money...

they know how much you love them.

And you can't love them all the same.

So, you end up giving them money and they end up measuring

how much money they've got against the others.

Then one of them realises that...

he was a mistake.

Ah! I'm just laughing cos one of my lads is here and he's just gone...

And the other thing that's never changed, no matter what happens,

it never changes, you still have stocking fillers.

Every Christmas, you still have something at the end of the bed

and you fill the stocking. It's tradition!

Our family's carried that tradition on.

My kids, ever since they were babies, have done the same thing.

Every Christmas, they wake up and at the end of the bed,

they get some fruit, some nuts,

the odd satsuma.

My lads walk downstairs every Christmas

with a satsuma in their hand and go, "What's that?"

I say, "That's a satsuma."

They go, "Well, there's a bowl of them over there."

Why do we give them satsumas?

Did baby Jesus have vitamin C deficiency, or what?

It's a pointless thing to give them.

And when I was a kid, as well, we couldn't afford nuts,

Christmas was the only day you got nuts.

That must have been an absolute nightmare

if you didn't know you had a nut allergy.

You're sat at home, playing your Scalextric,

thinking, "I want to treat myself."

And the biggest difference at Christmas, comes from seeing

the way men and women treat presents.

Women, they get a present,

my wife's particularly the same with this. She'll get a present

and she will wrap it up like you're going to send that present

on a journey on the back of a yak, over a desert for three weeks.

She wraps it up and wraps it up and wraps it up

and wraps it up and then tapes. And wraps it up and wraps it up.

Whereas a bloke, wrapping something up, basically means putting it

in a different bag than what you bought it in.

But we all know that there's only one person who brings you presents,

and that's Santa.

Father Christmas definitely exists.

I'm only 12 inside and Father Christmas still exists in my heart.

I used to lie in bed with my eyes tight closed

and I would hear someone coming in, and I just opened just a slit

and would see just a glimpse of red.

Father Christmas was really important to us kids. We used to love him.

And then I'd hear the crackle of all the presents, the paper crackling.

They were all put at the foot of my bed in a big pillowcase.

It was so exciting.

Get a grip. Santa ain't real, mate.

Doesn't exist.

And if he was, he's dead.

Angry that he wasn't real.

Father Christmas isn't real.

I was angry that I'd been lied to for so many years.

Obviously, it was a huge scandal

when you found out Father Christmas didn't exist.

I'll never forget the day when I was trying to figure out

how he was going to get into our flat.

Through the electric heater that was in the lounge.

I developed a coping mechanism that I would inflict that horror

on other people.

"How's this going to work?"

And I was shattering their dreams.

And I was just like giving them a reality check.

I think it's ridiculous.

I'd rather know the truth.

Doesn't exist.

Santa Claus does exist! What are you talking about,

he doesn't exist? Of course he exists!

I've met him.

To be fair, there was a lot of drugs knocking around in the '70s.

Noddy probably did meet him.

And the other thing with Santa as well

is it removes everything that you normally do as a parent.

You would never normally say to your kids, "Listen, listen,

"there's a dark room there and a man you've never met before.

"Go and sit on his lap and ask him for something. Go on."

Cos that's what you do, you change everything. But it's tradition.

And one of the traditions that keeps on going, in fact, even now,

even now that my kids are teenagers.

We still do, leaving a carrot out.

And brandy.

I mean, obviously, it's a long time since we left brandy out.

I mean, they must have been five or six when I actually told them

that Santa preferred Bacardi and Coke.

And maybe if you could leave the porn channel on,

he wouldn't mind some of that.

And letters to Santa have changed,

cos you don't have letters any more now.

Kids don't write letters to anyone.

You don't get letters to Santa, they send an e-mail...

with some links to shopping sites on.

Last year, my kids sat me and my missus down,

did a PowerPoint presentation

and we left with the leave piece. Cos that's what's happened -

everything's now become in a commercial way.

Everything's gone crazy. What you need to do is keep the magic alive.

And we always try and keep the magic alive.

I was... When we were talking about doing this show,

I was speaking to a mate of mine about Christmas memories

and about keeping the magic alive and that point in your life

when you realise Santa isn't there.

And he said what he did, which was probably the cruellest thing

he's ever done in his life, but I thought was the funniest,

he said his little brother didn't know about Santa.

He was 12, he was a big lad, he knew. His little brother was seven.

He said on Christmas Day, his little brother come downstairs.

He said, "Has he been? Has he been?"

He said, "Yeah, he's been, he's been.

"But there's been a little bit of an accident."

He took him outside, he said he put a cherry tomato in the snow.

Tomato sauce around it.

He said, "He came,

"but the dog ate Rudolph."

That's just brilliant!

Poor kid cried for about four years, I think.

But one of things that everybody enjoys at Christmas,

and one of the things that is always going to be a Christmas tradition

is the nativity.

Yeah, I was in the school nativity play and, of course,

because I was born on Christmas Day, I was Jesus.

I actually had quite a major role in the school nativity.

I was a shepherd.

Shepherd number one.

It's always like shepherd number 14.

I was a very important second shepherd.

The pivotal shepherd.

Which included quite a substantial solo.

Shepherd number 14.

My mum was in the audience just...in floods of tears.

You're either one of the main parts or you're what I was.

A cow.

Once, I was a cow.

I was a cow.

I like to do things properly.

Even though I can't act. But I like to be a proper cow.

I hated being a cow.

And I really tried to get this moo out of myself.

And I farted.

I was the little, little Angel Gabriel, I was,

in a Christmas nativity.

I was Mary. And everyone else was like, "Whoa, you're Mary."

And I'm like, "I think I'd rather be a sheep, actually."

The Virgin Mary, she, er, wet her knickers

and her knickers fell down, soaked with wee

cos they couldn't contain the amount of wee.

She was very nervous.

The school production, um, of The Birth Of Jesus, this year,

was the best thing I've ever seen.

It was better than New Order at Reading in 1998.

The audience found it wonderful.

The reality is, the nativity play is something that's special.

I read something, this year, that the average expenditure

on an outfit for the nativity play was £150.

That is ridiculous.

That's ridiculous. When my kids were in nativity plays,

it wasn't that expensive for a tea towel.

That's all it was.

A tea towel, that's it, you're a shepherd. You're in, off you go.

But what happened, cos I had three kids quite close together,

I couldn't get to all the nativities.

The last one had his nativity, I said, "I'll go.

"I'll definitely go to this nativity."

I went. And every parent knows that the nativity play's

a bit of a competition.

You want to know what part your son's going to play,

or your daughter's going to play.

It was a little bit awkward, I took my camcorder.

A teachers said, "You can't just go in with a camcorder.

"You've got to ask the headmistress."

So, I went in to ask the headmistress.

There was me and three other blokes.

She said, "I can't decide.

"Society's changed, we've now got to ask the parents their permission,

"if they mind you videoing the nativity."

So, me and three other fellas had to come out...

This is the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.

..and stand there with camcorders,

in front of all of the parents,

while she says, "These gentlemen would like...

"..to film the nativity. Has anyone got any objections?"

I can't tell you how scary that was, cos I just thought,

"If one of mates is here now, they're going to go, 'It's him!'"

I was stood there thinking, "What are you looking at me for?

"It's the fella at the end sweating you want to worry about."

But we got the opportunity to go in and watch it,

and it was a lovely thing, a lovely thing.

But it was also the fact that I hadn't really asked

what part he was in. So I'd never considered what was going to happen.

I was just there, like every parent, looking forward to the occasion.

If you've been to the nativity, you know what happens.

Mary and Joseph come in first. He was none of them.

I didn't mind the fact he wasn't one of them.

I didn't want him to be Mary, for obvious reasons.

I also, I didn't want him to be Joseph either.

I didn't want him to get used to the idea at a young age

of someone else knocking your bird off.

Then the three wise men came in.

I was videoing them, I counted them. One, two, three.

I thought, "He's not one of them either."

I said to my missus, "He's not one of the three wise men.

"There's three, he's not one of them."

She said, "Well, he's not a wise man."

And then the shepherds came in.

Six shepherds.

He wasn't a shepherd.

I said, "He's not even a shepherd.

"There's no-one else in it except Mary, Joseph, three kings,

"the shepherds. There's no-one in it." The shepherds came in,

six shepherds, three sheep.

What does that teach kids about shepherds?

Six shepherds, three sheep. I was looking.

He wasn't a sheep, he wasn't a sheep.

And then four tigers came in!

Four tigers! I think, "What are the tigers doing in Bethlehem?"

At the end of the tigers...

one...

donkey.

I just looked at that donkey and I went,

"That's the best donkey I've ever seen."

I said, "Go, donkey. Go, donkey."

But at the end, I went up to the teacher and I said,

"How come you had one donkey and four tigers?"

I said, "What are the tigers doing in Bethlehem?"

She said, "Oh, one of the mothers can do face-painting."

But one thing that takes over Christmas

and dominates everything is food.

Christmas day is just ridiculous. You get up and have a full English...

You generally get up,

you haven't brushed your teeth you stuff your face with chocolates.

A perfect Christmas meal for me

is where you stuff everything you've shot during the season.

I do the 20-minute Christmas dinner.

That starts with a woodcock shoved into a partridge

shoved into pheasant...

You can buy a tin of soup, you can buy a cooked turkey.

..shoved into a chicken shoved into cockerel

shoved into a goose...

You can get your frozen sprouts, your tin of potatoes.

..then finally, the whole lot is rammed up the arse of a turkey.

20 minutes and it's on the table.

The food is what I enjoy more than anything. A good feed.

Just eating until you're physically sick...

You get a big Yorkshire pudding,

fill it full of chicken, mash, stuffing.

..and then eating some more.

Until it hurts, then have pudding, cos you have a pudding stomach.

And you're kind of struggling to breathe and you're like...

Bad-man style.

And then having a sandwich.

A friend of mine decided to weigh himself

before and after Christmas dinner on the bathroom scales,

and he'd eaten ten pounds of Christmas dinner,

which is a huge amount.

Then you'd have your cold buffet in the evening.

You'd have, like, your cut meats.

20,000 calories.

In one sitting.

But then when do you stop?

Do you take it to the New Year or keep going?

STOP!

The thing with Christmas is the one thing, the mainstay,

was mince pies, and that was a big treat at Christmas -

you'd get mince pies.

Now, you get mince pies all year round.

We got mince pies last October.

The sell-by date was November!

How can you have Christmas food you can't eat at frigging Christmas?!

And Christmas Day - what's good about Christmas Day

is it's the one time where you can be an alcoholic.

It's expected.

Cos it's the one time you can get up and drink sherry at 10:30.

Anyone else, through the rest of the year,

who drink sherry at 10:30 in the morning

normally spends the rest of the day sat on a bench, shouting at buses.

But Christmas is basically a fat contest.

It's like, get a load of food and see what you can get in.

And one thing that I don't think happens in the same way

it used to when I was a kid is hampers.

Hampers used to come to your house.

People now have these big shops you can go to - we didn't have that.

Your mum used to send a pound off all year

and then a box would arrive and it'd be so exciting,

cos you'd think, "What's in the box?"

You'd open it and at the top of the box, there'd be biscuits

and tins of things you'd want,

and then at the bottom, there'd be stuff, and you think,

"What the frigging hell is all this?"

Now with those people in this room who are under 25,

who've never seen a hamper, the best way of describing it

is it's like somebody went into Aldi and did a pick 'n' mix.

You look at the stuff at the bottom and think,

"What are we going to do with this?"

And then on New Year's Day, when you're starving, you think,

"Yeah, curried mandarin, there's nothing wrong with that.

But it used to come every year and you used to get it

and you used to love it as it was part of your Christmas dinner,

it was part of what would happen.

The tins came - that's how things have changed, as well -

cos the tins would be there, and the little pot

and men used to look at that and go, "That's good, that.

"That's a lovely pot. I'll use that pot for me nails."

You know what I mean? Or, "I'll use that for me screws."

Now, the way blokes are, they'd say, "Oh, that's a lovely pot.

"I can keep some couscous in that when Christmas is over."

And I've also reached the point in my life

where I've turned into my dad.

Last year, the turkey arrived on the table -

and every man does the same - the turkey arrived on the table

and you think, "You know what, love.

"I know you spend 364 days of the year preparing food,

"but this is a turkey.

"There's only one person who can cut that in this house."

Just hacking at it like that.

And then you finish it off with a Christmas cake.

How many people in here...? I don't even know... You know what?

This is true, I don't know if this is a Northern tradition,

I'm saying this as it goes all over,

I don't know if they do this down South.

Put money in the Christmas cake.

Give a cheer if your mum put a coin in the Christmas cake.

-SCATTERED CHEERS

-Yeah.

It's a proper thing to do.

It was a lovely thing to sit there and think,

"Whose tooth is going to get broken this year?"

The other thing that happens, and you've all done it,

looking at your hats, is the cracker.

That Christmas cracker moment. That Christmas cracker...

Cos now they all come all wrapped up

and you think it's a wonderful thing.

Even now, at my age,

I always think there's going to be something good inside.

They've stopped putting jokes in. Have you noticed that?

They've run out of jokes, so you might get one joke.

You might get one joke and then it'll have a fact, a Christmas fact.

That kills Christmas.

We were sat there last year, I read the Christmas fact.

I went, "Oh, this is interesting.

"More domestic violence takes place on Christmas Day...

"..than any other time of the year.

"Oh, right, well, that's good, isn't it?

"So, it's not just us, is it?"

And the other thing, as well, there's a technique...

There's a technique to pulling a cracker.

People will know this technique.

Anyone in here who's got brothers and sisters

learned the technique early in life.

My wife's a single child -

she's never once won a cracker pull with me.

Cos she doesn't know the technique, which is get down the shaft...

No, she doesn't, all right.

APPLAUSE

That actually wasn't the joke, but...

as I was halfway through, I thought, "I'll dive out of this one."

Another tradition that took over this country

over recent years as well is German markets.

Particularly here, in the city of Manchester.

The city of Manchester really embraces Christmas.

Every year, for those people at home who don't know, the city council in Manchester

pay for a big 60-foot inflatable Santa Claus

to hang off the town hall.

Every year, there must be a council meeting where they sit

and they say, "Look, lads, you know, Christmas is coming up

"and, obviously, there's been a lot of cuts this year.

"We could invest some of this money into education,

"the health service, or helping the elderly.

"Or let's have a big Santa hanging off t'tower, eh?"

It's there every year.

And then what's come in, the last couple of years,

is this idea of German markets.

And I don't know where they've come from, German markets.

I don't know if Churchill said to the Germans

at the end of the Second World War, "Let's call it a day

"and then in 60 years' time, you can come over at Christmas."

You know? I don't know what's going on.

Cos I don't know if you've been to a German market.

There's no Germans there.

There's just some fella from Bolton trying to sell you sausages.

I think if there's German markets,

and there's been one coming to Manchester for at least ten years,

cos I've been to it a lot.

I think if there's a German market in Manchester,

that MUST mean there's a Manc market in Germany.

I absolutely love the idea of Germans buying

ten pairs of towelling socks and some tea towel.

Or some Manc in a tracky going, "Ah, lad. Happy Christmas."

And German markets aren't the only thing that arrive at Christmas.

One thing that you don't get at any other time of the year

is specific music.

And everyone knows it wouldn't be the same without Christmas music.

I can't stand the classical,

"Oh, everyone's happy at Christmas" type of songs.

I love any Christmas record. I'm a big Christmas fan.

I don't really play Christmas records at Christmas.

I think it's quite cheesy.

Christmas album on, Christmas morning.

Doesn't get better than that.

There's been some brilliant Christmas records.

"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart." That one.

# Christmas time Mistletoe and wine. #

Shut up, Cliff. We don't want it.

It makes me want to throw myself off one. Stop.

I quite like Christmas records. I like, # It's Christmas! #

Merry Christmas, everybody!

# I wish it could be... #

I wish you would shut your mouth, cos I hate that song.

The best thing about it is you make a lot of money from it. Over the years.

# It's Christmas! # My throat's going now.

Anyone that works in retail hates Christmas music.

People'll point. "That's him. What did you make that record for?

"We're sick of it." People love to come up

and say they don't like your Christmas record.

The reason for this is,

because they'll start playing it in October and finish in January

and you only have three Christmas CDs in the store.

I think they think that we go round

all the shops in October telling them to put our Christmas record on.

And that it's our fault.

It's like torture.

It's like somebody putting their nails down a blackboard.

# All I want for Christmas... (is you)

# Ooh... #

One Christmas song that I will never forget.

It will live with me forever. It came out in 1976.

It was Johnny Mathis. # When a child is born. #

Give me a cheer if you remember the song.

AUDIENCE CHEERS

A brilliant, brilliant song.

On New Year's Day, my dad took me to go and see Liverpool,

and this is where I saw the contrast between the culture of football

and the harmony of a Christmas song.

It came out in 1976.

And in 1976, I was ten years of age. My dad took me to the match.

He took me to go and watch Liverpool on New Year's Day.

I'll never forget this. We were playing Sunderland.

Liverpool were a good side then.

We were playing Sunderland, and what happened, they played that song.

And everybody started to sway. # A ray of hope

# Flickers across the land. #

The scarves went up.

# Huh huh, huh-huh. #

I didn't know the words when I was ten.

# Huh huh, huh huh. #

And there was a lovely harmony, as, in union, everybody was swaying.

And then, all of a sudden, one of the Sunderland defenders

came flying in at the back of Steve Heighway.

And as everybody swayed, the fellow next to me went,

"You dirty bastard!"

One of the big traditions every year is a panto. Who loves a panto?

AUDIENCE: Yeah!

Oh, no, you don't.

AUDIENCE: Oh, yes, we do.

Oh, no, you don't.

Oh, yes, we do!

Leave it out.

The panto, no, the panto's a lovely tradition. It's a lovely thing.

But it's also, from a showbiz point of view,

it's one of those things that you do at some time.

I've done two pantos.

The first panto I ever did was in Liverpool.

It was at the Royal Court in Liverpool.

It wasn't what you would call a high production value panto,

it was Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.

We couldn't afford dwarfs.

Dwarfs are quite expensive, particularly at Christmas,

they're very, very busy.

Aah!

So, what we did is we had kids with false heads on.

So, we had a load of kids with false heads on.

I was playing Herman the Henchman.

Scary part.

I was going to take Snow White into the woods

and kill her at some point.

SHE SCREAMS

I walked on to the stage. The room's full of mums and kids.

So, I walked on, I went, "The Evil Queen wants Snow White."

And then I was supposed to say something else. But I forgot.

So, as a comedian, I just went,

"All right, love, what's your name, where are you from?"

I did 15 minutes with this woman going,

"G'way, g'way with you."

Everyone's going, "What the friggin' hell are you doing?"

And then what happened is, throughout the panto,

my character, at one stage, had to chase one of the dwarfs.

It was one of those things that happens in pantos,

someone chases somebody. The problem was, the dwarf I was chasing

wasn't really very quick on their feet.

I was chasing them. There was a load of kids in the front row.

I caught the heel. As I caught the heel, he fell over.

The head fell off.

There was kids in the front row being sick.

They'd come out for some Christmas cheer,

they had Grumpy's head in their lap. Nobody was expecting that.

And the thing is, panto's something that everyone enjoys

cos it's a family thing.

Christmas is supposed to be a family time.

The reality is, it always ends up in an argument.

Every Christmas, there's always the same

family arguments.

I think it's the pressure of having a good time.

You know, you HAVE to spend time with your family.

We get up together, have breakfast together,

open our presents together, have a meal together,

watch TV together. Phew...

Most families argue on Christmas Day through drink.

It's booze. Full stop.

My gran'd hit the whisky,

and I don't know what my mum and my aunt were hitting.

By half four, five o'clock, all hell broke loose.

What should be a lovely holiday, a celebration and a relaxation...

has turned in, for me, to be the most stressful time of the year.

Off the Richter scale.

Arguments between Mum and Dad would always be,

"You don't do anything at Christmas." "I always do all the work."

I wasn't aware you had any stress, because I thought it was me,

while you're getting cosy, that's charging round the supermarket,

fighting my way around the shops,

getting and wrapping the kids' presents,

The ironing, the cooking, the tree decoration.

..sorting out the cards,

buying something for your mum, something for my mum.

You mother is just like right on the edge of completely smashing

the whole kitchen up and losing it.

And there, playing my amiable host,

pouring the drinks YOU'VE gone scouring round the supermarket for.

-No, could I just say?

-Eating the lovely food, the mince pies...

-The mistake is...

-..that we've made.

..you treat men like adults. Christmas is for kids. Men are kids.

Hate it. Can't stand Christmas. Bah, humbug.

Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Christmas.

You have turned me off Christmas.

Oh, you know when the cameras went, it kicked off in that house, don't you?

But it's true. It's just stress over Christmas. And that's honest.

At least that's honest. There is stress at Christmas. When I was kid,

they had this fella on TV called Val Doonican.

Remember Val Doonican?

Every Christmas, Val Doonican would be there with the Doonican family.

Val Doonican would come on with a lovely fine jumper.

He'd sit on a rocking chair in front of an open fire

with all Christmas decorations.

He'd look at the camera and go...

"Hope you're having a fine Christmas, like me."

I'd sit there, I'd look back at the three-bar fire

and think, "Not a friggin' chance."

What happens at Christmas is you end up doing stuff

as a family you wouldn't normally do.

Like games. You end up having to play games together.

And that's OK if the games are fair.

I was speaking to a mate of mine

and his father-in-law, every year,

insists that they play Trivial Pursuit.

But his father-in-law has got Trivial Pursuit from 1982.

So, every time, he says, "Right, who's the England manager?"

"Fabio Capello."

"No, Bobby Robson!"

And now, things have changed as well,

cos you get all of these other things.

These Wiis and stuff like that. And you get these Kinect.

You get these games. I don't know if you've seen this Xbox Kinect.

What happens with Xbox Kinect now

is that you don't actually control anything.

You don't do anything. My kids got one this year. I was like them.

What happens is you stand there, like that. And then you play your stuff.

So, I was playing it. I was like that. I was playing it.

I was doing it, I was giving it a go. I was like that.

One of my mates phoned up. He says, "Is Bez in your living room?"

And the thing is, there's always arguments,

and everyone seems to be surprised why there's arguments.

You get relatives in a small room, full of booze,

what on earth can go wrong?

There's bound to be arguments

because there's always a little bit, isn't it? There's always that tension.

It always starts early in the morning.

It's like, "Who got up first?"

It's like, "I've been peeling potatoes since six o'clock."

"I bought all the presents yesterday."

"I was thinking about the presents in September."

It just goes on and on and on.

And you sit there and you get all tense and tense and tense.

Then, at some point in the day, you're looking at the television and

the television's going, underneath, where it's scrolling those words,

"Think of those people who are alone this Christmas."

And you think, "Yeah, you lucky bastards."

And then you get the other people, who try to go on holiday.

And did you see it last year, when the snow came thick last year,

where they couldn't get out of the airport

and they interviewed them at Heathrow.

You could see that they'd all stayed in Heathrow

for like a week, all sleeping at Heathrow.

They interview them and they go, "Where were you going?"

They go, "We were going to the Caribbean but we've been here for a week."

And everyone they worked with went,

"Yes!

"You've been bragging about it for months! Bollocks to you!"

But after Christmas, you've then got to face that biggest ordeal,

New Year's Eve.

I'm not mad on New Year's Eve.

I love New Year's Eve. I love all the things about it.

It's never quite as good as you want it to be.

You either have an amazing time or you put too much on to it

and you have the worst time ever.

And you have spend loads of money on really expensive taxis

and really expensive tickets to go to really expensive parties.

And then I end up going home, not drinking and just sitting

and just being miserable and going to bed early.

I get very into the countdown. It's a competition to be the loudest.

Ten, nine...

..eight, seven...

..SIX, FIVE...

..four, two...

..OOOOONE!

Happy birthday, darling.

Oh, shit.

I'd...

SHE LAUGHS

Happy New Year.

Let's get drunk! That's it, absolutely! Yeah!

Happy New Year! I love you! Mwah!

Everybody on the street and hugging each other

and everybody loves each other.

Kiss a few people you don't know very well, isn't it?

"Aah. Eeeh. Weh. Mm."

And you can kiss everybody on the street,

especially when they are good looking.

And they can't say no. Ah, beautiful.

Drunken people trying to put their tongue down your throat...

don't appeal to me!

I would have New Year's Eve every day.

APPLAUSE

New Year's Eve is something that the Scottish people

think belongs to them.

They always pretend, "We're having a fantastic New Year's Eve."

That New Year - it's Hogmanay in Scotland - is fantastic.

In fact, it's even a Scottish song we all sing -

that Auld Lang Syne that none of us know the words of

but we all sing it and we all do that

and you know why the Scottish made that dance?

It's because when they're singing,

and they've got their hands like that,

they know no-one's nicking their drinks.

So, that was Christmas.

Tonight, Britain has taught me that Noddy knows Santa,

the best cows fart

and you should never buy a blender as a present.

Thank you. Goodnight and God bless.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]