Episode 1 Live at the Apollo

This programme contains some strong language

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host for tonight, Alan Carr!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

How are you doing?!

Ah!

Ah!

Welcome to Live At The Apollo.

CHEERING

Tonight's about love.

I want it to be a positive atmosphere tonight, cos, I don't know about you,

but I think people have too much to say for themselves these days.

-Do you agree with me? AUDIENCE:

-Yes!

People have always got a comment.

It does my head in. Can I talk about this?

Let's talk about TripAdvisor, yeah?

LAUGHTER

If you're a dickhead or a moron,

I think you should be not allowed to have an opinion.

-Do you agree with me? AUDIENCE:

-Yes!

I went on TripAdvisor.

Someone gave Stonehenge two stars cos there wasn't a coffee shop!

A woman gave Lake Windermere one star cos she'd lost her handbag there.

That's not the lake's fault!

My favourite thing ever, someone had been to see the tomb of Tutankhamen.

They wrote underneath, "It stank. It was like someone had died there."

LAUGHTER

Do you know this, as well?

People have been giving their hometown on TripAdvisor five stars

to push their house prices up. Did you know this, Hammersmith?

Oh, yeah.

Someone gave my hometown, Northampton, five stars.

Have you been? It's the kind of place, if you wear shoes,

people think you're the Secret Millionaire!

Now, be fair, when you're on these websites, be fair.

Sometimes it's going to piss it down.

Sometimes you're going to be in a bad mood. Listen, be fair.

I'll give you an example.

I got touched inappropriately on a Jack The Ripper walk

by a feral mute.

LAUGHTER

I thought it was part of the tour, I did!

"Jack? Was that you, Jack? Jack?"

Did I slag it off?

No, raved about it, five stars, bring a friend.

Five stars, four fingers. Er...

Don't laugh at that,

it's a shit joke, don't laugh at that.

Don't, don't laugh at it, it's shit.

Has anyone here actually been on a Jack The Ripper walk?

-AUDIENCE:

-Yes!

You're like me. I love 'em.

Soon as I moved down from Manchester, I went on this Jack The Ripper walk.

And they take you round the East End,

these out-of-work actors and actresses.

Hammy? Even people from Hollyoaks were saying,

"Tone it down, love," do you know what I'm saying?

They lie to you, they make out...

Is anyone here from the East End?

WHOOPING AND WHISTLING

They make out, don't they,

it's all Dickensian, Victorian, cobbled streets?

It's not, it's modern now.

I'm following this woman round on this Jack The Ripper tour.

"And the prostitute was slashed from ear to ear!

"Left to die on the floor like a dog!"

And you're in the doorway of a Londis!

LAUGHTER

The electric doors are going zub-zub, zub-zub, zub-zub!

I fell out with TripAdvisor big time. I went to Oman for a week.

I looked on TripAdvisor. "Food is to die for."

"The people are so friendly." "The sea is crystal clear."

Didn't say that homosexuality was illegal, did they?

I had to be butch for a week. A week!

I used muscles in my legs I didn't even know I had.

And it's horrible because, at the resort,

I could hear people saying things like, "Oh, here she is."

"Bet he's one of those." Do you know what I mean?

So I kept throwing them off the scent.

I kept walking into the foyer, shouting loudly,

"Has my wife arrived yet?"

You can't miss her, she's got a cock!

CHEERING

I've been all over this year. I've been really lucky.

My mum had a big birthday last year, so I took her on safari.

How nice is that? WHOOPING

Took her on safari. My other half wanted to go.

It's expensive, though, isn't it? It's expensive.

My other half wanted to come.

I said, "No, just watch it on Skype, it'll be like you're there!"

Dressed my mum up in an animal onesie, "Look how close they are!"

LAUGHTER

No, it's funny, me and my mum, we went to Africa, yeah,

and we went to the resort, went to the hut, opened the hut door,

massive double bed, written in rose petals, "Alan and Christine."

LAUGHTER

HE RETCHES

So we ended up making love.

LAUGHTER No, we did not! No, we did not!

Well, the ranger knocks on the door and says,

"Do you and your mum want to stalk a rhino?"

No, it's not what you're thinking.

"What are you wearing? I'm outside." No.

It's when you follow a rhino on foot through the bushes and shit,

like this, yeah?

I didn't know if I wanted to do this with my mum because me

and my mum have got beef, right?

When I was growing up, I was in the garden

and a bee came in the garden and my mum went,

"Alan! Pretend to be a flower!"

LAUGHTER

"And it will buzz away!"

When you think about it, bees love flowers, don't they?

That's twisted shit!

And I'm going on safari with this woman?!

"Look, Alan, there's a lion. Pretend to be a leg of lamb!"

LAUGHTER

So I'm with the ranger, yeah,

and he starts telling us about stalking a rhino.

"Obviously when you approach the beast, if there's any sudden

"movement or noise, just make small, comfortable steps, like this,

"back to the jeep with no sound, like so."

HE HUMS "SINGLE LADIES"

LAUGHTER

I got all cocky. I went,

"Hello? Of course I'm going to do that, I'm not a moron!

"Of course I'm going to make small, comfortable steps back to the jeep!

"Do you think I'm a dickhead?"

LAUGHTER

Next day, me and my mum are walking up to this rhino,

like this, through the bushes.

All of a sudden, it turns around and goes...

HE GRUNTS LOUDLY

I went...

HIGH-PITCHED: "Aaaaaaargh!"

LAUGHTER

I ran! I ran!

Not only did I run, I pushed my mum in front of it!

I ran in Crocs. That's hard.

Cos that ain't my idea of fun, do you know what I'm saying?

The closest I've come to death is nearly choking on a Berocca.

My idea of brave is to keep my iPod on shuffle at a party. That's brave.

LAUGHTER

Why does everything have to be extreme?

That's what gets me, do you know what I mean?

What's on the telly these days? What do we have?

Extreme Fishing With Robson Green.

What else? Extreme Makeover, what else?

-WOMAN IN AUDIENCE:

-Couponing!

Extreme Couponing!

That show is shit, but it's like crack, ain't it?

Does anyone watch it?

LAUGHTER I know!

You go, "Who watches this shit?"

Cut to four o'clock in the morning -

"Will she ever spend those coupons on bleach?"

Extreme Weather. Weather's extreme, isn't it?

You know who's loving the extreme weather, don't you?

The weather forecasters. They're loving the drama.

Who's that one, BBC weather in the morning? Scottish woman?

Carol!

She's loving it, the extreme weather.

She's dishing out advice now, have you seen her?

HE IMITATES: "It's going to rain today, so I'd wear a coat."

Thanks, Carol.

What about when they start telling you the weather

that's happening at the minute, have you seen that?

HE IMITATES: "It's sunny outside."

Aw, thanks, Carol, I wondered

what that fucking window was for!

Innit!

What about when they tell you the weather that's happening at night?

Who gives a shit?

Who gives a shit?!

HE IMITATES: "It's going to rain at one in the morning."

Who cares?!

What, you ever get a load of prostitutes going,

"I'll be packing my waders."

APPLAUSE

I'm glad people are discussing extreme weather. Are you?

People are saying, "Look after the elderly,

"get water in, get sandbags, get food."

Cos, when I was growing up and we had extreme weather,

we were just told to go out and play!

Remember your mum? "Go out and play!"

A cow blows past the window!

Hail stones, hurricanes, tsunamis, I'd be outside.

If you didn't come back with a wind chime embedded in your face,

you hadn't lived!

I know it was bloody cold back then, you look at my school photos.

1984 to 1990, cold sore, pow!

Every year, cold sore, pow!

Right there in the middle of my big, round, pasty-white face.

If I wore a metallic ruff, I'd look like a Cherry Bakewell.

The thing is, with cold sores,

if I had a hump on my back or a hairy mole, no-one would have mentioned it.

Cold sores, people start sucking their teeth, pointing, don't they?

HE INHALES SHARPLY

"Ooh!

"Is that a cold sore?"

"No, me bindi slipped! What do you think?

"What do you think?"

Then they start dropping the H-bomb, don't they?

"Ooh, that's herpes." Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Why are you mentioning...? Why drag it down to that level?

You wouldn't go up to someone who's got a chipped nail,

"Why, was you wanking off a tramp? Oh, sorry!"

Sorry, just asking, I just thought I'd ask.

Does anyone here actually suffer with cold sores?

CROWD RESPONDS QUIETLY

Woman at the back in a crash helmet, "Yeah."

I mean, if you have got skin disorders...

Can you listen to this?

Hammersmith, will you listen to this, please? My friend...

Well, she's not my friend, she's a friend of a friend.

She drinks her own urine.

AUDIENCE GROANS

Listen, her skin is amazing, her skin is to die for.

Her breath bloody stinks, but...

People throw stones at her in the street and call her a witch.

But her skin - mwah!

I mean, I'm having a laugh about this,

but I've had cold sores all my life.

And it gets me down, it gets me depressed.

I've tried everything, lotions, potions, pills, you name it,

I've done whatever to get rid of it.

This is how desperate I got.

I went to one of those fish pedicure places. And...

AUDIENCE MURMURS

I distracted the woman, and I bobbed.

"Bite it, bite it!"

It came off, I had a verruca.

That would just be my luck, honestly. Athlete's foot. No!

I mentioned school photos before.

You can't explain to this iPhone generation, can you,

about school photos?

That was your one photo.

You take photos now every minute of the day.

That was your one photo.

If that school photo was shit, you had a shit year.

Right? That photo was good, you had a good year, yeah?

It's all right, you with your iPhones now, deleting, rotating,

putting your different filters on. Sepia?

Why anyone would choose sepia? Why choose sepia?

Why do you want to look like you've got jaundice? Why?

"Here's me at Chessington World Of Adventure. With liver failure."

School photos, you could not mess it up.

You'd stand in a line outside the classroom, stand in a line.

Psht! "Next." Psht! "Next." Psht! "Next." Psht! "Next." Psht! "Next."

1987, I sneezed.

I said, "Can I take it again?" "No. Next."

"I can't look like that!"

And every member of your family bought it, didn't it?

Every house you'd go to, I'd be on the mantelpiece...

This was the '80s. What you looked like was what you looked like.

No Photoshopping and all that, airbrushing, shit like that, no.

Plastic surgery? No. What you looked like was what you looked like.

And I think we all owe it to ourselves

to make ourselves look a bit better, don't we?

We can all do little bits to make ourselves look better.

I'm not having a go, girls, I'm not.

But you know the women who have the hairy face?

No. You know the women with the five o'clock shadow? You know?

They go, "Well, if I shave it, it'll only come back twice as thick."

And you're like, "Well, have a go.

"Don't give up hope just yet.

"You look like an Ewok. Shave."

LAUGHTER

I mentioned iPhones there.

And I don't want to drag the night down,

cos we've got some great guests coming on.

But my friend who's a teacher,

she was telling me that some of the kids

in her class have been using their iPhone to take photos of their, um...

HE MUMBLES: ..private parts.

I don't want to be rude cos it's a BBC Two show.

HE MUMBLES: Private parts.

Some of the kids have been taking photos of their private parts

and sending them on the iPhone to all the kids in the class.

I thought, "Isn't that sad?"

Because, in my day,

A, I didn't have the inclination to do that.

And, B, I didn't have a camera on my phone.

So, if I wanted to show the whole class my knob, I'd have to trace it

with some Izal toilet paper and stick it on an overhead projector.

"Thank you - my knob."

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

"Thank you.

"My knob.

"My knob. Thank you."

Oh, my God, I'm on a loop. My knob. Shit, I can't stop. My knob.

HE GIGGLES

Well, Hammersmith, I think you've been warmed up very nicely.

Are you in the mood for some top-notch comedy?

WHOOPING AND CHEERING

Good.

Well, please give a wonderful Hammersmith welcome

to the fantastic Francesca Martinez!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

CHEERING

Wow.

Hello, Apollo!

CHEERING

It's so great to be here.

So, guys, I am wobbly!

LAUGHTER

Don't you love the word "wobbly"?

It's quite cool, isn't it? I love it!

I think that we should have more positive names for conditions.

You know, like, instead of something really horrible

like "schizophrenic," why don't we just say "overly imaginative"?

"Claustrophobic" - nature lover.

"Mentally retarded" - Katie Hopkins.

APPLAUSE

I actually drove here tonight.

It's amazing. I'm wobbly, but I can drive.

You know, when they told me I could drive,

I was like, "Are you sure?!"

But I can. I don't know how I do, but I do.

Anyway, get this, yeah, totally true, a few weeks ago,

I'm getting into my car,

and this taxi driver pulled up right beside me.

And he says, "Don't do it, love."

LAUGHTER

And I'm like, "Do what?"

and he goes, "Don't drink and drive."

Yeah. Can you believe that?

I was going, "Mr Cabbie,

"just cos I'm a bit shaky, and I walk a bit funny,

"and I've got puke down my front..."

Cos it's weird, guys,

when you're wobbly, right, people ask you really crazy stuff.

Like, I've had men asking me, "Are you shaky during sex?"

And I was like, "Well, that depends on how good you are, mate."

LAUGHTER

CHEERING

But, despite that joke, I am a hopeless romantic.

Boys are amazing, aren't they?

And my perfect man has always been a poor Irish poet.

I love the accent.

And the poverty.

This is totally true.

I met my boyfriend nine years ago, in Dublin.

And he opened his mouth and I was like, "Yeah, that'll do."

LAUGHTER

I remember when we first got together,

quite a lot of people said,

"Oh, my God, it's amazing that

"you're going out with someone different. Well done."

I was like, "He's only Irish!"

LAUGHTER

But we're very happy, and we're thinking about having babies...

-MILD CHEERING

-..cos I love... Thank you!

CHEERING INTENSIFIES

Yeah, I love them.

But I'm not quite ready for babies yet because I love my life.

LAUGHTER

Luckily, guys, you'll be pleased to know

I have found a brilliant form of contraception. Oh, yes.

It's when I put a condom on my boyfriend,

because, the amount my hand's shaking,

it's all over before it begins.

APPLAUSE

But, you know what, seriously, I love being wobbly.

I see myself as totally normal, you know?

But it was interesting because apparently when I was a baby,

the doctor told my parents that I would never lead a normal life.

I was like, "Who wants a normal life? I want an amazing life."

ENTHUSIASTIC CHEERING

My family are great.

They've made me feel really loved and very confident.

I really loved school. I was just having so much fun.

By the way, I found out recently that my old junior school

is now sponsored by McDonald's.

It's awful, isn't it?

The kids are learning the alphabet,

like, R is for Ronald McDonald.

I was so shocked.

I thought, "Where will it end?"

Will you have books for dyslexic kids sponsored by FCUK?

LAUGHTER

But school was great, right? And I loved it.

But then I hit the age of 11

and there was a lot of pressure on me to go to a special school.

And I don't mean Eton. Oh, no.

My parents didn't want this,

because they didn't want me being defined by what I couldn't do.

So they fought really hard

and they got me into a mainstream all-girls school.

And then it was shit.

God, the girls in my class hated me.

And it was little things - like, when we were 16, my friends...

I say friends - bitches.

Oh, by the way, they all want to be my friend on Facebook now. Fuck off!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Did I say that out loud?

Calm down! OK.

Where was I?

Yeah, so, they used to say stuff like,

"Francesca, no-one will ever go out with you.

"Well, apart from someone like Jesus."

LAUGHTER

I'd be like, "Hm, who would I prefer?

"Jesus, son of God, or your boyfriend, Barry?

"Son of...no-one knows, really."

So, guys, I hated school, but, luckily,

I got a part on Grange Hill.

And this was amazing, cos they rescued me

from that high school hell, and I made friends,

and there were real boys.

It was great.

And it was so much fun.

They used to film Top Of The Pops there, yeah?

And one day, I came out of my dressing room,

and David Bowie was standing there.

Now, we were always told to act really normal around the celebs,

so I just said to him, "All right, Dave?"

LAUGHTER

And he said, "Oh, my God, it's Rachel from Grange Hill!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I said, "Calm down, Dave. We're all human."

So Rachel kind of gave me that self-confidence.

I just felt better about myself,

although some jobs can be harder to get

if you're wobbly.

Like, this is odd, but some of the panel shows in this country

won't book me because they tell me I'm too scary.

SHE ROARS

Seriously, they say stuff like,

"Francesca, we do think you're funny,

"but we think it might make the audience nervous."

I'm like, "You have Frankie Boyle on!"

APPLAUSE

The thing is, guys, I really don't think happiness comes from being

able-bodied or fitting in.

I think it comes from being loved

and really appreciating what you have.

Cos, let's face it, it took us billions of years

to be here right now, didn't it?

We should just all be so delighted to be alive,

and here's my tip for being happy, right?

Lower your expectations!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Thank you. Good night.

CHEERING

Francesca Martinez!

Fantastic. Absolutely brilliant.

I think we should keep the laughs coming. Do you agree?

CHEERING

Well, give a fantastic Hammersmith welcome

to the amazing Nish Kumar!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. How are you? You all right?

CHEERING

Great to be here. Lovely to see you all. I feel great.

This is going to go very well.

This is a big year for me. Big year.

Cos I turn 30 this year. I'm 30 years old!

CHEERING

And the big year did not get off to a great start.

In February, my mother said, "Nish, there's a problem with your comedy."

I said, "What is the problem with my comedy?"

She said, "Well, you're a left-wing comedian."

I said, "Why is that a problem?"

She said, "Well, all comedians are left-wing. It's boring."

Now, here's the thing. I have no idea if all comedians are left-wing.

I've not done the research. Hold my hands up, right?

But I have a theory.

I think it is hard to write right-wing comedy.

And I know, because I've been trying.

LAUGHTER

This is the best I could come up with for right-wing comedy.

"Hey, don't you hate it when you start earning over £100,000 a year

"and you move up an income tax bracket?"

Doesn't work!

ONE PERSON CLAPS

Here's the thing... One person applauding!

One very rich person being, like, "Yeah.

"Thank you for articulating my pain."

Here's the thing. All I think is going on is stand-up comedy

is an art form wherein it's easier to express left-wing political beliefs.

I think it's just easier.

That's why it feels like all comedians are left-wing.

But if you look over the entire cultural spectrum, it balances itself out,

because I think there's as much stuff that's inherently left-wing

as there is inherently right-wing.

Cos I would argue, as much as no-one wants to see a right-wing comedian these days,

even fewer people want to watch a left-wing action film.

Like, I am left-wing, and I love action films,

but I have no desire to watch a left-wing action film.

I have no desire to watch the Avengers

apply to the UN Security Council

to pass a resolution so that they can fight Ultron.

I don't want to watch Iron Man get bogged down

in a diplomatic quagmire.

Largely because that was the plot of Iron Man 2

and it was a shit film.

APPLAUSE

But I think it's great that culture finds a way of balancing itself out.

Left-wing people have some stuff, right-wing people have some stuff.

Left-wing people have comedy, right-wing people have action movies.

Left-wing people have folk music - of course they do,

cos a right-wing folk song would be harrowing.

A right-wing folk song is basically,

# My dad works in a factory

# The factory closed down

# But it was unprofitable, so GOOD. #

LAUGHTER

That is not something anyone wants to see.

No-one wants to listen to Mumford And His Nazi Sons, right?

LAUGHTER

But I think it's great that culture finds a way of balancing itself out.

Left-wing people have some stuff, right-wing people have some stuff.

Left-wing people have comedy and folk music,

right-wing people have action movies and board games.

Because when I was growing up, the board game I played most often...

I now think it's insane we allow children to play this game.

I'm talking, of course, about Monopoly.

I cannot believe Monopoly is a game.

First of all, it's called Monopoly.

That is a financial crime

we have governmental bodies designed to prevent.

There are no games named other financial crimes.

There's no Embezzlement Ball,

or, "Hey, kids, build your own Lego Ponzi scheme!"

People are worried about Grand Theft Auto -

Monopoly reinforces a right-wing way of running our economy as the right way to do so.

Cos all the public works -

the electric company, the train station -

you can just buy them!

And the more of them you own, the more money you make!

What happens if you go to jail?

Nothing, as long as you can afford to bribe your way out!

CHEERING

And the worst thing that can happen to you

when you go round a Monopoly board is you land on the square

that says, "Pay your tax."

What kind of message are we setting for children?

I was playing Monopoly with my eight-year-old cousin the other day,

and he went, "No!"

And I said, "What?" And he went, "Tax!"

And I was like, "Great, there he goes.

"Future investment banker in our midst, that's absolutely ideal."

And I know that there are a lot of board games that have weird messages

and send kids strange messages.

Battleships is basically telling children

the best way to fight a war is when you can't see where you're shooting.

Snakes And Ladders is basically encouraging animal cruelty,

and chess, if you think about it,

basically just promotes slow, tactical racism. So...

LAUGHTER

I am aware that a lot of board games send out strange messages.

But I believe with Monopoly, it's an easy fix.

I think it would be very easy to bring Monopoly

back into the political centre ground.

All you have to do is add a third deck of cards,

cos at the moment when you get Monopoly, you get two decks.

You get Chance and Community Chest.

I suggest we add a third deck of cards called Consequence.

So we can teach these little turds

something about real-world economics.

And the Consequence cards could be anything - for example,

"Your hotels are vandalised by a group of youths who have had

"their community centre closed down due to governmental cutbacks.

"Pay £50,000."

"You have to employ a private security service

"due to soaring crime rates caused by the underfunding of the police force and

"the long-term social consequence of the economic inequality

"that's fuelled your rise as a property mogul.

"Pay £250,000."

"You fall in a crack in the road

"that has not been fixed due to underinvestment.

"You go to the local hospital, but it has closed down.

"Your foot falls off.

"Please go to collect £100.

"It would have been 200, but we cut disability benefits."

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER

I'm very clever.

LAUGHTER

That's the real message of this act, guys.

My ego has got out of hand.

I know you know, because of this, but you have no idea.

A couple of days ago, I was having a coffee with my friend.

I was talking to him, and, as I was speaking,

I lost my train of thought

and the reason I lost my train of thought is because

as I was speaking, in my head I started thinking,

"Well, I'm being very interesting here."

LAUGHTER

I'm so interesting, I'm intellectually stimulating,

I'm a great laugh.

I'm jealous of people who get to meet me, that's the thing!

LAUGHTER

I'll tell you one more story then I'll leave you.

Two years ago, I was going to do some gigs in Australia

and I was going to do them as part of a massive comedy festival.

Now, sometimes when you're going to do gigs at a big comedy festival,

they don't have time to interview all the comedians individually,

so what they will do is send out Q&As. Now, these are all

the same questions, everyone gets them

and they're all boring questions like, "Where are you from? Who are your favourite comedians?"

Then they'll have wacky questions. I've no idea why journalists do this,

they feel the need to ask comedians wacky questions like, "Oh!"

EXAGGERATED GIGGLE

-MOCK ACCENT:

-"If your comedy show was a dog,

"what kind of dog would it be?"

LAUGHTER

"I'm so wacky!"

"Maybe I should be a comedian! What? Shut up." Now...

LAUGHTER

I was filling one of these things in,

and I'm excited to do it cos I get to go to Australia,

it's very exciting, and I'm filling one of these things in

and I get down to a question that's been personalised for me.

It's in a different font, so I know it's been added to an existing document,

and the question that they had personalised for me was,

"How come Christians are allowed to draw pictures of their prophets and Muslims aren't?"

APPREHENSIVE LAUGHTER

To which the obvious answer is...I have no idea.

LAUGHTER

My parents are Hindus.

APPLAUSE

I mean, either one of two things has happened.

Either they've seen that I've got a foreign name and thought,

"Must be a Muzzer, definite Muzzer.

"Nish Kumar is a classic Muzzer name."

Or they think we have non-white people meetings where we

assemble, set the non-white agenda for the year

and then retire to a screening room

where we watch a DVD of Boyz N The Hood, and...

LAUGHTER

Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen,

I told that joke on stage in a small countryside town in England.

The audience was entirely comprised of nervous,

middle-aged white people, me,

and then one black man who was sat at an angle so the whole audience

could see him, presumably because they were keeping an eye on him...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

..and this guy decided to have a bit of fun,

because when I mentioned non-white people meetings,

he looked at the rest of the sort of assembled, nervous throng to make

sure they were staring at him,

and then in full view, he looked at me and just went...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You have not lived until you've seen a roomful of middle-aged

white people simultaneously shit their pants.

They came out for an evening of entertainment

and ended up at the epicentre of the revolution.

-LAUGHTER

-So, I didn't know what to put.

Obviously this is an inflammatory subject,

so I just put, "Oh, my parents are Hindus. I don't know."

But I felt bad, because I felt that was a cop-out answer.

They don't have the right to ask me those kind of questions.

My Muslim friends wouldn't know the answer to that,

no-one knows the answer to that, right?

But the rest of the questions didn't really leave much room for any sort

of debate, cos the next question was,

"Oh, if your comedy show was grass, would you feed it to a horse?"

And you go, "You can't jump back into whimsy after you just

"asked me a serious theological question!"

But then the last question left some room for improvisation

cos the last question wasn't a question, it was a task.

They had written the first half of a joke and we had to supply

the second-half and everyone was supposed to answer it in a different way.

It gives some flavour of the comedy you do, that sort of thing.

The first half of the joke they had written was,

"A book walks into a bar and sees a bookcase."

And this is how I finished the joke...

A book walks into a bar and sees a bookcase.

The book says, "Hey, bookcase,

"how come Christians are allowed to draw pictures of their prophets and Muslims aren't?"

APPLAUSE

And the bookcase said, "I don't know. I am a bookcase,

"and, as such, have no knowledge of the intricacies of Islamic theology.

"I assume you're asking me because I am a brown bookcase?

"In which case, go to hell."

APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure speaking to you.

My name is Nish. Goodbye.

CHEERING

Nish Kumar, everyone!

Did you enjoy that?

Fantastic stuff. Absolutely fantastic.

Have you had a good time tonight, Hammersmith?

CHEERING

Well, give it up for the acts you've seen tonight.

You've seen the fantastic Francesca Martinez.

CHEERING

And the brilliant Nish Kumar.

CHEERING

Fantastic stuff. And I've been Alan Carr.

Thank you, take care, good night!