Episode 2 Live at the Apollo

This programme contains some strong language

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host for tonight,

Nish Kumar!

CHEERING

Yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Live at the Apollo.

How are you? Are you all right? CHEERING

Great to see you.

Nice to be here.

My name is Nish Kumar.

I'm about to do some comedy for you and I'm a comedian,

so that's very convenient, right?

So let's start with a question.

Is anyone here on their own?

No-one ever says yes to that question.

I asked that at a gig and there was a man sat with five empty seats

around him and I said, "Is anybody here on their own?"

And he just went, "No.

"You don't know, maybe they're on their way.

"Maybe you can't see them, right?"

Now, the reason I ask is - I go and watch comedy on my own all the time.

Now, what I have found is that I can't go

and watch music on my own because it turns out people enjoy music

in a variety of different ways and I enjoy it in a way no-one likes.

Right? When I was 18, I went to see a couple of gigs on my own.

The reason for this is that when I was at school, I liked old bands.

I still like old bands now, but when I was at school, I only liked old bands.

But it was fine, because at school, I had two friends, Ollie and

Andy, they liked old bands as well

so we would go to gigs together, we would go back to Andy's house

and listen to original Neil Young vinyls.

Occasionally somebody would say, "Should we talk to girls?"

And the other two would be like, "No, no, no."

These Nina Simone reissues are not going to listen to themselves.

It was great, because we were a little gang.

Then I left school and I went to university in a different

part of the country to Ollie and Andy.

And I wound up at university with a group of friends who I still

continue to love dearly to this day,

but who had a very different taste in music to me.

So I experimented with the idea of going and watching a gig on my own.

Now, the first one I went to see was David Bowie.

Dearly departed David Bowie. CHEERING

Absolutely. And I was so excited.

I had got there early and there was a guy who was also on his own,

sat two rows in front of me. This man was wearing a Lou Reed T-shirt.

It was the album cover from Lou Reed's Transformer album

which was his second solo album after he left The Velvet Underground

and was co-produced by Mick Ronson and David Bowie.

What's that? Yes, I was a 19-year-old virgin, right?

And I saw this guy and I thought,

"This guy likes David Bowie, Lou Reed and no friends.

"So clearly, he and I are destined to be together."

Right? And the gig starts and we get

about an hour in and Bowie was amazing. He was so great.

His voice was impeccable.

He played a bunch of songs that I

loved and hadn't expected to hear live.

And the other thing you need to know about me is,

I love David Bowie but I also come from the same terrible

South London-Kent border shithole that he comes from.

Look, I was having a great time, OK?

I need you to know that before I tell you what happened.

LAUGHTER

I was excited, my blood was up. So Bowie finishes his song.

He goes to the front of the stage to introduce his next song.

He says, "This next song is not actually one of mine.

"This next song is a cover of a song by one of my favourite groups

"of all time, The Velvet Underground.

"This song was written by my very good friend, Mr Lou Reed."

And when David Bowie said that, I stood up and went, "Whoo!"

And 5,000 people turned around to stare at me.

Including this guy in the Lou Reed T-shirt.

I was like, how are you not excited by that?

You clearly like David Bowie, you've made me look like an arsehole, mate.

And what I wanted to say to him was,

"Why don't you allow yourself to be happy?"

This is an objectively wonderful moment for you.

The guy you have paid to see

is about to do a song by the guy on your T-shirt.

I felt like taking him aside and saying,

"Look, sir, if you can't be happy now, then you'll never be happy."

LAUGHTER

Now, if I had said that, it would have been fine.

Because what I did say was this...

"Hey! Fuck you, Lou Reed!"

LAUGHTER

Which was unfair,

cos it was not Lou Reed's fault.

He was not even tangentially to blame, if I'm honest.

It's great to be at the Apollo.

Especially for me, because I'm a David Bowie fan.

David Bowie did a lot of amazing gigs in this venue,

it's very exciting for me.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was David Bowie.

I was obsessed with him, like, I really loved him so much.

And now I'm 32 years old and I still love Bowie's music,

but I think it was really hard to be David Bowie.

I think there was a lot of scrutiny on someone like him.

People like Bowie and Dylan and Hendrix, all these people that

I grew up loving, there was a lot of pressure on them.

I don't think I want to live under that kind of pressure or scrutiny.

I have realised that the musician I want to be is

the drummer from Coldplay.

LAUGHTER

I want to be the drummer from Coldplay so badly because that

dude is rich as shit and no-one knows who the fuck he is.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

No-one knows who the drummer from Coldplay is.

He could be here and no-one would know.

It could be you, it could be you, it could be you.

I'm not sure it's an Indian woman, but it could be.

We don't know.

I'm obsessed with the idea that this guy has the best life in the world.

And I was telling my friend about this and she tried to tell me

something that she was trying to portray as a bad thing.

Apparently, he loves Game Of Thrones so he said to HBO,

"Can I be in Game Of Thrones?" and they were, like, "Yeah, man,

"you are, like, the drummer from Coldplay.

"You can do literally anything you want.

"We'll restart the Sopranos

"if that is something that will make you happy, right?"

Now, he is in Game Of Thrones.

Confession time, I don't watch Game Of Thrones.

But even I know The Red Wedding is an important

episode of Game Of Thrones, right?

He is in The Red Wedding.

Guess what he is doing in The Red Wedding?

He is the drummer in the wedding band.

That is the extent to which this guy's anonymity is

a borderline superpower.

He is in the most famous episode of one of the most popular television

shows in the world doing the thing he is famous for and no-one noticed.

That is Keyser Soze shit.

And my friend was telling me that she

read a supposedly embarrassing story that one of the actors told.

One of the actors said that when they were shooting The Red Wedding,

he was making small talk with the extras and he got round

to the drummer from Coldplay and said, "Are you a full-time extra?"

And the guy was like, "No, I'm a musician. "

So he said, to the drummer from Coldplay,

"Played on anything I might have heard of?"

LAUGHTER

To which the drummer from Coldplay was presumably like,

"Have you heard of all music?"

Because I'm basically the drummer on all music.

And my friend tried to tell me this like this was a sad thing.

She was like, oh, this guy is in Coldplay,

but no-one knows that he's in Coldplay.

Isn't that sad? No.

Because the problem with being in Coldplay

is that people hate Coldplay.

People hate Coldplay so much and the people who hate Coldplay

don't say things like, "Oh, it's not to my taste."

They say things like this, "I hate Coldplay!"

But what you mean when you say that is, "I hate Chris Martin."

No-one is angry with the drummer from Coldplay.

No-one has ever been like, "Oh, the drummer from Coldplay!

"He ruined my life!"

And I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, "Nish,

"why are you so obsessed with the drummer from Coldplay?"

"There's two other people in that band.

We don't know anything about them, either.

And you know what? You're right.

There is a guitar player and a bassist in Coldplay.

I wouldn't know them even if they were here.

I assume it's you two, but only because you're sat next to her and I spoke to her already.

That's all I've got to go on at this point.

They have the exact same life as the drummer.

Because I did a bit of research into this.

Turns out Coldplay are one of those bands where they split the royalties equally.

So they have the exact same life as the drummer apart from one detail.

They have the exact same life as the drummer, they have the same level

of wealth, access and anonymity but, crucially,

the drummer is sat down.

LAUGHTER

And that is the dream.

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

It's really great to be here because it's an amazing venue.

It's also very close to my house. Oh, my God! I live...

I'm from West London, I live in Shepherd's Bush.

I've not lived there for very long and I really like it.

It's really nice.

And when I first moved there, the estate agent I rent a flat from

said, "Hey, this is a great time for you to be moving to Shepherd's Bush." And I said, "Why?"

And he said, "Well, the area has been recently gentrified."

Now, listen, fair play. I did not know what that meant.

So I looked it up.

It turns out what it means is, it is now safe for white people.

LAUGHTER

So come on down to Shepherd's Bush, whiteys,

we'll have a great old time!

We've got all the stuff you like, tea...

Yeah, all the stuff!

Of course that's not what gentrification means.

I know what it means, I'm a very clever boy.

Gentrification is when people are priced out of an area by a rising

costs of living so they move to an adjacent area but in doing

so, raise the cost of living for people who already live there.

It's a phenomenon that in the last few years has occasionally

been referred to as white flight, because the people moving tend

to be white and the areas they are moving into tend to be non-white.

And as such, it's a double-edged sword for your friend Nish Kumar.

Because my parents are Indian and middle-class.

So gentrification is essentially the replacement of people I'm related to

by people I went to university with. So it's like...

Bye-bye uncle and auntie, but hello, Geoffrey!

See you down the pub for some craft beer!

Probably got a lot of Indian pale ales, just no Indians.

LAUGHTER

Gentrification is a subject that arouses very strong,

serious emotions all over the world.

There have been massive anti-gentrification protests

over the last couple of years.

You might remember that a couple of years ago there was

one in east London in Bethnal Green conducted by a group called Class War.

A lot of the focus turned out to be

a shop called the Cereal Killer Cafe.

Which is a cafe where people sell bowls of cereal in milk for £6 to...

..morons, presumably.

It's an exclusively moron clientele.

Now, a lot of these protests claim to be protesting against

something that they either call the gentrification

or the hipsterification of certain cities.

Hipsterification is used as a synonym for gentrification

and hipsters get the blame for gentrification.

Now, I don't think that's fair and, ultimately, I think it's counter-productive.

Firstly, what is a hipster?

It's just the collective noun we have given to people

who conform to what is currently trendy. Every generation has them.

In the '60s they were hippies, in the '70s they were punks,

in the '80s they were New Romantics.

Hipsters are just our version of that thing.

And we all know what I mean when I say what is currently trendy.

It's restaurants where the menu is on a board

and there is no currency printed so you have to be like,

"Oh, I'll have poached eggs for eight...

"..money, I guess."

In clothing terms,

it's the juxtaposition of the mundane with the ostentatious.

So you wear a plaid shirt but you have a face tattoo of a dog

high-fiving a unicorn or some nonsense.

Earlier this year,

I went to the most hipster shop I've ever been in in my entire life.

All it sold was notebooks with old maps on them.

Who needs that?! No-one!

Anyway, I was in there buying five,

because I'm very much part of the problem.

It's also the trend for men to have very ornately crafted facial hair.

Have you seen these guys with the twirly moustaches?

Have you seen them? Yeah?

Fine, as long as they are not white men.

Because those moustaches make white men

look like Victorian Englishmen which is not ideal.

I cannot tell you the number of times

I have had to order a coffee from a man whose facial hair

looks like it colonised my ancestors.

LAUGHTER

The guy's like, "Do you want something with your coffee?"

And I'm like, "Yeah, a piece of banana bread and something else, what is it?

"Oh, I know, an apology for the Amritsar massacre, thank you!"

LAUGHTER

Now, taken in isolation, it's fine

to think that all of these things are ridiculous.

Because, clearly, they are.

But what I would say about hipster culture

is that it is silly but it is not malicious.

I would say that what was trendy

when I was growing up was much more inherently malicious.

Because I grew up in England in the 1990s

and what was trendy then was, lads! Lads! Lads, lads, lads! Lads, mate!

I mean, we went to Eton and Oxford,

but we are a bunch of absolute lads.

Now, lad culture was everywhere in the '90s.

In our books, our movies, our music. And a lot of it was harmless.

But by its very nature, lad culture celebrated the male over the female.

So it came with an inherent portion of misogyny.

Now, some of that misogyny was ironic,

but we all know what ironic misogyny is.

It's just misogyny and then at the end, someone goes..."hmm?"

Like that. It's just... LAUGHTER

..bourgeois misogyny, right?

And lad culture did so much weird stuff.

Like the prevalence of lads mags,

loudly proclaiming that women's only value was as sex objects.

Right? It's insane.

And if you want any evidence of the extent to which women were

second-class citizens in lad culture,

what was the name we gave to women who participated in it?

-AUDIENCE:

-Ladettes.

Ladettes! That's right. They didn't even get their own name.

That's messed up.

That's as messed up as the fact that Nigel Lawson

named his daughter Nigella.

A fact which we do not talk about often enough.

How truly weird it is that Nigel Lawson had a baby girl

and thought, "I shall name her Nigella.

"Oh, she's like a little me."

Go to jail, you weird man.

Now, the caveat I always have to put on this

piece of material is that the 1990s has passed and as such,

we have had a decade and a half to make a considered value judgment

over the events of the 1990s and think about what was good and bad.

Maybe in 15, 16 years' time, it'll turn out that hipster culture

was really awful and was responsible for gentrification.

We don't have that kind of perspective.

That's the caveat I have to put on it.

Because there is lots of stuff that happened in the

'90s that we now have a completely different opinion on.

Like, the North American Free Trade Agreement,

that turned out to be a geopolitical disaster.

Tracksuits, very flammable.

LAUGHTER

And we now know that the Spice Girls

were an incredibly malicious influence on our culture.

Did a huge amount of damage to the way we see...

BOOING Whoa.

That's turned the atmosphere. LAUGHTER

The Spice Girls were awful.

BOOING AND WHOOPING

What? Wait, did you have different Spice Girls?

Ziggy-zig-ah, the Spice Girls?

WHOOPING The Spice...

CHEERING Are you kidding me?

They had one black member and she was called Scary!

LAUGHTER

And then they used to dress her

in leopard-print robes like Kunta Kinte.

And make her stand next to Geri Halliwell in a Union flag

minidress like an English Defence League wet dream.

And they used to make her do raps, even though

she had no talent at rapping whatsoever.

They just assumed she could do it.

That's like somebody coming up to me

and assuming I can prescribe penicillin.

Someone came up to me after one of the shows and said,

"As an intersexualist feminist of African descent,

"I have very mixed feelings about your Spice Girls joke."

And you know what that means? It means I have found my audience.

There are...not many of them,

but the ones that are turning out are high-value indeed.

And here is what I feel.

I feel if you blame hipsters for gentrification,

you are letting the real culprits off the hook.

Because gentrification is a really serious social problem.

It is changing the nature of our cities

and driving people out of homes they have lived in for 35, 40 years.

But it is the result of decades of bad housing policy.

So why not be angry with the people responsible for that policy?

Don't be angry with hipsters, be angry with property developers

that fail to meet their targets for affordable housing.

Be angry with politicians that fail to hold them to account.

Be angry with the local authority less than two miles

away from where we are right now who ignored repeated

warnings about fire safety in their tower blocks until it was too late.

CHEERING Be angry with those people.

Not the concept of smashed avocado or some arsehole riding

a penny-farthing as a substitute for having a personality.

I'm very clever.

LAUGHTER

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for my first guest of this evening?

CHEERING

I know two things about him.

One, I absolutely love him.

And number two, he is one of the greatest comedians in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, please raise the roof of the Hammersmith Apollo

and welcome to the stage David O'Doherty!

CHEERING

MUSIC: Orinoco Flow by Enya

CHEERING

All right! Thank you, Enya.

Let's do this shit.

My name is David. Some of you will know me from my comedy.

You all know my graffiti. You'll know my tag.

I do two parallel yellow lines beside the path.

And the great thing is that motorists really respect my work.

OK, we're in.

Shout-out to my sponsors this evening for this gig.

My sponsors are lasagne, or as I call it, meat Viennetta...

LAUGHTER

And the French soft drink Orangina.

It would sell a lot less if it was pronounced orange-eye-na.

# It would sell virtually none. #

Big gig, you guys.

Big... I've made the supreme commitment to this gig.

Check it out. Fresh batteries!

CHEERING Argos. Went to Argos.

And if you don't go to Argos very often, you forget.

Argos is sort of like a shop but much more like a bookies.

That must have been the original concept.

You go in and you study the form and you're like, I'm going

to take a punt on that and you fill in the little docket with

the tiny pencil, you go up to the counter and go,

"Can I have a tenner on that, please?"

And he's like, "Best of luck, go up to the big screen."

And you're like, "Come on, 362!"

LAUGHTER

Take it home to Papa!

# If Findus, the frozen food brand, had a Facebook page

# They can legitimately say, Findus on Facebook. #

# Serena Williams' nickname should be Tennessee Williams. #

That's the best joke I never come up with. # I mean, it's fine.#

LAUGHTER

# How do you contact dead single ladies?

# You have a se-YONCE. #

OK... Look, all I want from this...

I just want to be a one-name entertainer.

I want you to be able to say, "Oh, we saw David last night,"

and everyone will know who you're talking about, you know?

There's no doubt with Beyonce.

Your mother's never like, "Who? Beyonce O'Laughlin?"

The problem is all the other Davids who are more famous than me,

there's billions of them.

So I'm dedicating the next six months of my life...

# I'm going to murder all of the Davids who are more famous than me. #

Name a David who's more famous than me,

I'm going to tell you how I'm going to murder them, OK? Go.

AUDIENCE SHOUT NAMES Down at the front, what are you saying?

David Attenborough? David Atten...

# You absolute prick! #

Murder David Attenborough?!

That is the worst shit anyone's ever said!

Twisted mind. It would be quite easy...

# Cos he's about 300. #

I might just make it look like a lion did it, so people will be

like "Oh, he died as he would have wanted..."

# Murdered by a lion. #

David Cameron. There's two options there.

One is a referendum or the other is...

# Crushed to death by a pig. #

We'll take a...

couple more Davids.

AUDIENCE SHOUT NAMES

David Blaine. David Blaine, that's quite an obscure David.

I mean, with a magician, what, do you just, like,

# You lock him in a cupboard for a year,

# Well, that trick didn't work. #

David Beckham.

# Bend him into an unconventional position. #

Craig David is the trickiest. Still technically a David, you know?

With him, it's a medium-term plan.

With Craig David, I think I'd meet him for, like, a drink,

just early in the week.

And then we'd be making love for several days...

# And then kill him on Sunday. #

OK. Let's go. Thank you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Look at that. I look incredible, thank you.

If I can just give you... It's difficult for me to stay in shape,

because my favourite food is...

I like gluten with trans fats on it and... LAUGHTER

I like to eat it like I'm angrily throwing laundry down a flight of stairs,

you know... LAUGHTER

It's about small achievable health goals.

This year I did No Lilt February. Thank you.

I know, it sounds impossible, but you take it one day at a time.

Did I have any today? No. You're a legend.

It gets hard around the middle of the month. You get the cravings.

It's called "Lilt guilt".

You're like, "Oh, I'd bloody love some Lilt."

That's the night, when you go to the shop at midnight, kick the doors, "Where's the Lilt?!"

They're like, "We don't stock it any more." You're like, "Argh!"

So you try and make your own hooch Lilt, you know, you get

a pineapple and a grapefruit and you add in batteries and a horse's head,

and you're like...

"It's good, but it's not totally tropical." LAUGHTER

Did that joke in America recently, turns out...

# They don't have Lilt! Hey! # So...

This is it. This is all I do.

Imagine if this was your actual...

This...I go like, "Blah, blah, blah," and you go, "Ha-ha-ha, money."

LAUGHTER

I can't believe I get away with it. You do actual proper London jobs.

You know, like blacksmith, you know?

Farrier.

Brunch DJ. The big three. LAUGHTER

I tell you who I do not trust, people who work in offices.

I know, right? What are they doing? Nothing takes that long.

They're planning something. They must be. Do you know how you know?

Do you ever call in to visit your friend in an office unexpectedly?

Everyone just shits themselves.

They're like, "What's he doing here?!

"Cover the screen! Lie across the spreadsheets! Get him out!

"Kind regards, warm regards, best, best," that's how they talk.

I've seen the e-mail. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Hey, I know what it's like in the real world.

Look, sometimes I check into your world, "Oh, gross, back to showbiz."

It's... No. LAUGHTER

I'm very self-aware of the level of fame that I have.

I was in a supermarket recently, and an older lady came up to me and she

put her hands on my shoulders and she said,

"You are vaguely familiar." LAUGHTER

And that is it.

I did a gig in Wrexham, and I was at an ATM machine, and a guy cycled by

and he shouted at me, "Surprised to see you at an ATM machine!"

And I've been obsessed with it since then.

What did he mean?!

On the one hand, is he surprised I don't have a butler to go to the ATM

machine for me? No, I think it's the opposite.

"I'm surprised you have any money whatsoever,

"doing this keyboard horseshit." LAUGHTER

Here's my greatest ever showbiz tale.

I did a gig in your Milton Keynes recently. Thank you.

And I was staying in the Milton Keynes Hilton.

And she is the least well-known of all the Hilton sisters. LAUGHTER

And I checked in after the gig, like, 12:30.

Room 303 is where this took place.

Open the door, TV on in the room.

Not that uncommon in the chain hotels.

I guess it's to welcome you. But get this...

on the TV is me,

playing the shitty keyboard on some show! LAUGHTER

Immediate thought is, like,

"Is this a service they provide to all guests? If so..."

No, it's the realisation, "This is it! I've arrived!!

And I waltz into the room, down the little corridor with the loo away to

the left, and as the room opens out, there is a fully naked man

lying on the bed! LAUGHTER

So they've given me the key to someone else's room,

and he is lying there, watching ME...

LAUGHTER

..on the TV! And he looks up...

and he sees ME! LAUGHTER

I wish I'd had the wit to think of something smart.

What I say is like, "Oh, shit, sorry about that."

I could have said anything and I'd be a legend.

I could've been like, "Oh, hey, are you enjoying this? Ah, no boner,"

and just walked out and been... LAUGHTER

I know, there is some money in the room this evening,

so I'll just, before you go on, I'll just pitch you

a few app ideas, if anyone's got a couple of spare mill.

App idea one - Creme Brulapp.

Now that is the world's first creme-brulee-themed app.

It doesn't do anything except

when you touch the screen of your phone, it goes...squish.

OK, so that's app idea one. LAUGHTER

App idea two - Yodelr. Now that is similar to Grindr,

but it tells you about Swiss people in the vicinity. LAUGHTER

What Is App. Now that is similar to the already popular WhatsApp.

What Is App is more formal, do you know what I mean?

No abbreviations allowed.

Fartzam's the big one. Fartzam is similar to Shazam,

do you know the app that can identify whatever song is playing?

It's the same principle with Fartzam.

You walk into a room, there's an unclaimed fart cloud

within the room.

You thrust Fartzam into the mist, that person's face comes up on it.

Now that... LAUGHTER

The technology may not exist yet,

but that's for the nerds to work out. I'm the ideas guy. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

It's a dream to play at the Apollo. So many people here.

Not everyone's here, cos a lot of people are dead. Uh...

LAUGHTER

I'd like to just, for a moment, pay tribute to the dead.

There's too many to mention them all, so I'm just going to

pick a few of my favourite dead.

AA Milne. Creator of Winnie the Pooh. Sorry if you didn't know.

# He is dead. # He died ages ago.

AA Milne. Alphabetically, he is the first of all the dead. OK.

LAUGHTER

Steve Jobs.

Inventor of the iPhone. Dead.

And, for me, the saddest part there was,

remember just after he died, they put his body into a bag of rice,

to see if he'd come back to life?

# But he didn't. # LAUGHTER

The man who set up the North Face clothing company died recently.

How did he die? Of exposure on a camping trip in South America.

That is true!

The boss of Segway died. How did he die?

He reversed his Segway off a cliff. Aaaahh! LAUGHTER

Dyson must be shitting himself, you know?

He's messed with air, and you cannot escape from air.

Wherever he goes, he could be hit by a kite.

I think the irony would be if he was sucked up inside one of his own

Hoovers - just him noiselessly...

# Rotating in the bagless drum

# Screaming but no sound comes out

# Cos sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. #

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I like music a lot.

I like all music, except for one genre, and that is the worst

music of all, which is the whistling and twinkly bells music in 80% of

all TV and radio ads at the moment, which is this music here.

WHISTLING AND UPBEAT MELODY

The more sinister the product, the more adorable the music.

"Go out tonight, have a burger. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

"Cos we know you don't like to

"think about where your food comes from.

"You couldn't give a shit.

"We could abduct homeless dogs and cut their dicks off and sell

"them to you as homeless dogs' dicks, and you'd just be like,

"'Oh, pound saver menu!'" HE WHISTLES

LAUGHTER

"Kalashnikov.

"We're about sorting out localised tribal conflicts."

LAUGHTER

"At your bank, we're more like your mate than your bank. Ah-ha-ha-ha!

"Sure, we don't really have interest rates any more,

"and the charges, the stealth charges are ridiculous in recent

"years, and, yeah, we did cause the last collapse of the economy, yeah.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! And the credit card bill!

"Have you seen the bonuses we give our boss?!

"Ah, you idiots! You keep coming back! You absolute dickheads!"

HE WHISTLES

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you very much.

David O Doherty! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for our final guest tonight?

CHEERING

It is an absolute privilege to be bringing this lady to you.

She and I actually started together, and she is without question one of

the most unique and distinctive voices working in comedy right now.

So, ladies and gentlemen,

please join me in welcoming to the stage the incredible

Luisa Omielan! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

ENERGETIC POP MUSIC PLAYS

Hello! Hello!

I think it's about time to kill that party spirit, don't you?

LAUGHTER Let's talk about mental health.

Yes, sir.

Brace yourselves, bitches, we're about to talk about depression.

It's going to get sexy. Cronk! Cronk! LAUGHTER

I remember having a time when I felt really low, really bad about

myself, and there was no particular reason, right?

Cos nobody had died, everything was going well.

Like, seemingly, on paper, things were good.

Like, my local Chinese buffet

started serving crispy aromatic duck before 6pm.

Things were going all right. LAUGHTER

But for some reason I couldn't shift this feeling of, like, isolation

and sadness, and I thought, "I need to tackle this head-on."

So I went for a walk along the River Thames,

and I thought, "I know what I'll do. I'll jump in."

Facebook status: "Dead. Start a page, bitches, start a page."

But I looked down and I thought, "Oh, water does look a bit dirty."

Instead I wrote a letter to the universe.

Genius idea, right?

So I got out this pen and paper

and I wrote down everything that was going wrong in my life,

everything that upset me, I wrote it all down,

and it felt so good to see it in black and white.

And just, get off my chest, right? And I stood on the end of

that bridge and I ceremoniously threw this letter out.

The wind threw it back in my face.

Twice. LAUGHTER

And I was living with my mother at the time. My mum is amazing.

My mum's Polish. She's not a cleaner, don't be such a racist!

Why would you say that? LAUGHTER

That's so racist! She should be, she's a very good one. LAUGHTER

My mum is amazing, right. She...

My mum came over to England, like, 35 years ago.

We were here first. Don't blame me for the influx. LAUGHTER

She came over a long time ago, and actually I was born here,

and my mum tries to be like, "Oh, you know you're Polish too."

And I was like, I was born here, so, like, "I'm British!

"I'm British! Get out of our country!"

It was adorable. And... LAUGHTER

And my mum has this beautiful accent, right?

Because people expect my mum to talk like this...

POLISH ACCENT: "Hello, I like to clean, nice to meet you."

But she doesn't.

RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION: She talks like this...

And the reason being, because when she first came over, she tried to

really immerse herself into the community, into the British culture, right?

So she was like, "Marks and Spencers, the land of dreams," right? She was really excited.

So she used to listen to a lot of BBC radio news, but this was back

in the day when they have those boring same old accents.

They don't have all the beautiful dialects that you have now.

So my mum learned to speak English, so now instead of speaking like this...

POLISH ACCENT: "Hello..."

RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION: She talks like this, but she always gets her

English completely wrong,

so you can still tell she's a massive immigrant.

LAUGHTER My favourite bit of English she ever got wrong was...

"Luisa, I notice you've been going through lots of toilet roll

"recently. When you go, how many slices do you use, hmm?"

LAUGHTER

"I'm not wiping it with bread! Shut up! Go away! Shut the door!"

"I've seen it all before."

"Not recently you haven't!" It's quite...it's quite adorable.

And she said, "Luisa, I'm worried about you. I think you need to go and see a doctor."

And I was like, "OK, I'll go and see a doctor, but there's no

reason, cos there's nothing wrong with me.

OK, so I'm sad all the time, but I'm fine. Like, I'm fine."

"Hi, Doctor, sorry to bother you. Like, I'm fine, honestly. I'm fine.

"There's nothing wrong with me. No, I had a smear test, thank you, honestly, everything's fine.

"I'm fine. I just, sometimes want to pour boiling hot water all over my face, but I'm fine."

LAUGHTER She was like, "Luisa, I think you might be suffering from depression."

"Oh, my God! Are you Polish? What the fuck is wrong with you?

"I'm not depressed. I don't have depression, OK?

"I don't...I don't have depression."

She was like, "Luisa, it's fine. I'm going to give you some antidepressants."

And... "Yeah, do you want to say that any louder?"

Like, the door was ajar. "Do you want to... Ah-choo! I've just got a common cold!"

WHISPERS: I don't need antidepressants!

Do I look batshit mental? I don't need antidepressants.

Besides of which, you put me on the pill once

and that did send me batshit crazy, so I am not taking anything...

that you prescribe me.

And I went home, and I didn't want to take 'em cos I was so embarrassed.

Right, I didn't want to be on antidepressants.

But I had to do something cos I was crying constantly.

Like, I couldn't stop crying.

Like, I would masturbate, and I'd cry.

Who does that?

You don't get guys having a wank, do you? Being like, "Arrr!"

LAUGHTER

SOBS: I miss... I don't know what you're doing.

I don't understand it any more.

What do I do with myself?

SHE SOBS AND GROANS

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

I can't even cum! Eurgh!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It's...

It's not nice when you do it in the face like that, is it?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

So, I started taking the antidepressants, right?

And the weirdest thing happened - I stopped crying.

I was like, "What?" I was like, "Mum..."

"Mum...

"I'm not crying.

"John Lewis advert is on, and I'm not crying!"

And I hated it. I was like, well, I've got to make myself cry.

Forget this, I've got to make myself cry if it kills me.

So I did everything in my power to make myself cry.

So, what I did, do you want to hear it?

So, what I did, I went home and I put on The Lion King. Mmm!

Oh, we all know what bit, we all know what bit. Don't we?

The bit where Simba comes along, and he's like...

AS SIMBA: "Dad, Dad, come on! You gotta get up!"

SHE GIGGLES

"Dad!

"Dad, come on, you gotta get up, we gotta go home."

"Dad!"

"Dad?"

"Dad, come on."

LAUGHTER

"Dad, we gotta go home."

Nothing, nothing!

I was like, "Oh, these drugs are goo-ood."

It didn't last long.

I just went on Rightmove and looked up property prices in the 1990s,

and it was all like "arrgh"!

This is a bit of a weird gig for me, and I'll tell you why.

I want to talk to you about my mum. My mum's amazing, my mum's a legend.

Right? I told you she's Polish. And I lost my mother recently.

I didn't leave her in Waitrose. "Uh, could the bloody immigrant

"in aisle four come back to the service desk?"

And she went, and she'd got Stage IV stomach and bowel cancer

by the time they found out, right?

And they said, "It's inoperable, we can't do anything.

"But you can't do anything until you see an oncologist,

"and that's going to take four to five weeks, to see somebody,

"by the time we get all your tests."

And they sent her home with Calpol,

because she's clearly four years old and has flu, right?

So, they sent her home with Calpol.

Now, my mum was in so much pain, I was like, "What do I do?"

And they were like, "Well, if you need anything, call 111."

"111? That's who you call when you're drunk and want

"a free lift home. Like, what the fuck? How do I help my mum?"

And so I had to source alternative pain relief for my mum.

And I read loads of things online about cannabis,

about how cannabis has got medicinal properties.

And I don't do drugs, I've never done drugs, right?

I drink two Smirnoff Ice and I'm like, "What!"

I've never really figured it out.

So I started looking at cannabis oil,

but it's not the easiest thing to locate cos you can't really -

I learned - post on Facebook,

"Uh, guys, does anybody know how to get hold of some cannabis oil

"so I can help heal my mum of Stage IV cancer?" "Smiley face".

Nobody really answers, guys.

I actually ended up getting hold of cannabis oil,

and here's the thing about cannabis oil - you only need a tiny bit.

But if you put it in your mouth, you get really high.

And my mum was like, "I don't want to be rocky."

I was like, "Mum, stoned - very different."

LAUGHTER

So I started making suppositories for her, where you have to use

a tiny amount of cannabis oil

and you have to mix it with something that will lend with it.

So I was using coconut oil.

So I'm mixing cannabis oil with coconut oil and I'm putting it in

the freezer, and I'm doing these suppositories in my kitchen.

I feel like Breaking Bad, but I don't know what I'm doing,

and you can't Google it.

And I try to call 111, but they're frigging useless,

and they give me Calpol, so I don't know what to do.

I'm going, "OK, my mum's got cancer. I'll save her,

"I'll help her. I'll make these suppositories."

But the problem with coconut oil

is it gets all over your fingers, right?

You try and put it in, it's all over...

You've lost half the goodness, so it's a waste of time.

Do not use coconut oil.

What you need is cacao butter. Yes, this is very middle class, mate.

You need cacao butter to mix with cannabis oil.

And you freeze it, and I gave it to my mum.

It obviously didn't kill her, but eased her pain, really.

And when we went to the doctors, I was like, "Let's tell them,

"but let's break it in gently

"that I've got you on this class-A illegal substance.

"So, let's just..."

"..wean our way in.

I mean, hopeful they'll be surprised that you've been managing so well

with Stage IV cancer only on Calpol, but you never know.

And we got into the room, and she sat with the oncologist,

and my mum farted.

And I was like, "Oh, my days."

"Are you joking?" And I was like, what do I do? Pretend to be high.

"Just pretend to be high.

"Just pretend to be like, "I do it. Yeah, it's not her - it's me."

"Oh, look at those rabbits. Oh..."

We came out, and I was like, "Mum, why did you do that? So annoying."

She's like, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I couldn't help it."

I was like, "You have just shat out £65 worth of cannabis oil, idiot!"

It was hard, right?

We managed to get her into a hospice,

and we had a beautiful moment where my mum was with me

and my sister, and she said, "Girls, I'm ready to die.

"I've felt too much pain, and I'm ready to go.

"And I want you to remember something -

"that I love you and will always love you.

"You're wonderful, wonderful girls, and I'm so proud of you.

"I want you to look after each other and I want you both to be kind."

And she looked at both of us and she took our hands

and she said, "Don't be upset, girls.

"I'm ready. I'm ready to go.

"I love you."

She held our hands, and she took a deep breath...

..and closed her eyes.

SHE EXHALES DEEPLY

LAUGHTER

Oh, man, it didn't work!

To be honest, I think she just saw Brexit coming,

and was like, "Fuck it, I'm out of here."

So, um, you know, I got the e-mail to do this gig

a few weeks before my mum died.

And I said, "I don't want to do it."

I'd been waiting for years to do the Apollo.

"Don't want to do it."

She said, "Luisa, you have to promise me

"you'll do Live At The Apollo, whatever happens."

I said, "No, I'll be with you. We're going to fix you.

"You're going to have cannabis oil it's going to be amazing,

"you're going to be fine."

And she was like, "Whatever happens, you promise me you do that gig."

And so that's why I came out today, to do the gig.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So thank you for having me. I'm Luisa Omielan. Big love.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Luisa Omielan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much

for watching Live At The Apollo.

Please give a massive round of applause for my guests,

Luisa Omielan and David O'Doherty.

My name's Nish Kumar. Thank you very much. Goodnight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE