Episode 3 Live at the Apollo

Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome your host for tonight, Dara O Briain!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you very much! Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Are you in good form? Yes, welcome to our show.

It is a pleasure and delight to have you here. What a show we have for you. It's lovely to do stand-up,

away from behind a desk, just telling jokes, messing around.

I love stand-up. I adore it. It's the greatest art form in the world.

It isn't burdened, like other art forms with snobbery. "You should like this film or like this book."

Or, "You should like this music." Stand-up's just funny, we enjoy it.

You know when people go, "Oh, you like that music? That's the wrong music.

"You should like this music." It's just sound, for Jesus' sake!

"These noises are the wrong noises!"

If people like mainstream pop... I like a bit of mainstream pop.

A bit of Girls Aloud, a bit of Take That. Nothing wrong with that.

But you have to go, "They're my guilty pleasure." LAUGHTER

I hate that phrase. It is an insult to top quality pop.

It is also an insult to guilt.

I might be an atheist now, and I am, but I did my time in the Catholic Church and, frankly...

we did a lot of work on guilt and it takes a lot more than, "Gimme, gimme, gimme, a man after midnight,"

to earn the title Guilty. You have to actually have the man after midnight.

If you have a guilty pleasure, let it be something you genuinely feel guilty about.

You know my guilty pleasure? What my actual guilty pleasure is?

I like to use a crowded Tube train to touch women.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

It feels wrong...but it feels right! That's practically the definition of a guilty pleasure.

Particularly good if you can make it seem like it's their fault. "Ah! Buy me dinner next time, honey(!)

"That's just the way I like to stand, all right, sister?"

I don't do that, by the way! Just in case... I don't actually touch.

I just smell them. There's nothing wrong with that. They don't own the air.

"What are you doing?" "I'm asthmatic...maybe."

Anyway, it's a great honour and we've got all sorts of people.

The punters, hello, hello, hello to the celebs. Zoe Salmon is here from Blue Peter.

Not only of Blue Peter, but also former Miss Northern Ireland.

WHISTLES

Miss Northern Ireland is unique because half the time the winner won't wear the sash.

LAUGHTER

Also James Caan. Good to have you here. One of the Dragons.

Don't judge James. Just because Peter is on a private plane somewhere

and Theo's on an island and James has taken free tickets to a show in Hammersmith...

That doesn't mean he's not welcome.

We've all sorts of types of people. This is the one thing about stand-up.

You get mixed audiences, like tonight. Some people know some things and some don't know other things.

You're kind of working around the fact that different people have experienced different things.

For example, right, I love saying what I'm going to say next,

not just for the people who cheer in support of me, but also those who will silently judge me for this.

It's very simple. I love video games.

CHEERING

I enjoy saying that, as I said, because half the room are going, "Ah, Jesus, you're 38."

You're not supposed to like video games. It's the largest entertainment industry in the world

and we're supposed to not enjoy it. I am a gamer and I'm very proud to be a gamer.

I understand it's embarrassing. If I'm at a dinner party and someone says, "How do you relax after a gig?"

it's less embarrassing to go, "I masturbate to hard-core pornography."

After that, the conversation is exactly the same. "I've not done that since I was a teenager."

"Check it out. It's really moved on."

LAUGHTER

"The graphics alone are unrecognisable. And you use all ten fingers. It's incredible."

I love video games for this reason - they do a thing which no other art form does, right?

You cannot be bad at watching a movie. You cannot be bad at listening to an album,

but you can be bad at playing a video game and the video game will punish you and deny you access to the rest.

No other art form does this. You've never read a book and three chapters in the book has gone,

"What are the major themes of the book so far?"

"I-I-I don't know. I wasn't..." Foom! "Aw, Jesus! Come on!"

You've never listened to an album and after three songs, the album has gone, "Show me your dancing."

"Is this good enough?" And the album's gone, "No!" and stopped.

Games do this all the time. I'll give you an example. A famous game called Grand Theft Auto IV.

CHEERING

A very controversial game. You can drag someone to an alleyway and shoot them in the head.

I never got to that bit. I got stuck where you steal a car and drive to assassinate a guy.

He kept running away.

I had to steal another car and drive back again, but you couldn't drive quickly because of a tollbooth

and you slow up and pay the guy or the police chase you.

Six or seven attempts at this and you're going, "I'm commuting! I'm stuck in my pants in my front room

"on my day off and I'm in traffic! What kind of eejit am I?!"

If I lived in Liberty City, I'd buy a flat near the guy I've to assassinate and I'd walk to work!

Every heard of Rock Band and Guitar Hero? For those who haven't,

you get a giant plastic guitar and you play along to music. "Whoo hoo! I'm a rock star!

"Whoo hoo! Yeah!" Red, blue, blue, red, red, blue, blue, red, red.

"Aaargh!" Red, red... LAUGHTER

And you buy it because the box will name the songs on it. It said Sabotage by the Beastie Boys.

"Oh, God! I really want to play it!" But you can't just play Sabotage by the Beastie Boys

because it's song number 85 in the game. You have to play the preceding 84 songs to unlock Sabotage.

You're round about the mid-40s playing Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and other shite you've never heard of

and you're in the same front room in the same pants, going, "I am wasting my life here!"

And the gamer is going, "No, you must unlock the content."

I'm 38. I unlocked it in a shop with a credit card. That's when I unlocked it.

Give me my content now! And they go, "No, it mimics the music industry.

"You've slowly got work your way up the music industry and, song by song, you will earn the right

"to go to the top and play the song..." Yeah. It's the music industry.

You can always suck a little cock to get to where you want in the music industry.

Why don't they simply put in a level where you take the top off the guitar, pop the shaft in your mouth?

Red, blue, blue, red, red, red, red and blue, red and blue.

There we go! Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, anyone?

Howe many of you have ever played with the Wii? CHEERING

That doesn't count. Right? This is a Wii game. "Oh, I'm stroking a pony!"

That's a Wii game. "Oh, I'm feeding sugar cubes to a unicorn

"and it's going to poo out rainbows to paint onto Mario's house." That's not gaming. This is gaming.

"Oh, my God, I'm in a gun battle! Which of these buttons isn't Crouch?"

Every game involves crouching! You're always crouching behind oil barrels or convenient little walls!

You're always crouching, but the crouch button is in different places on different games!

And you get panicked in a space marine laser battle and you're pressing any button

and suddenly your man is just waddling around the battlefield. LAUGHTER

Just staring up at you going, "Jesus! Press anything!

"Not Toggle Maps!" LAUGHTER

There's a game called Metal Gear Solid where you play Snake. Yes.

And when Snake dies, the camera pulls cinematically up from above him and the man on Snake's comms unit goes,

"Snake? Snake?! SNA-A-A-AKE?!"

Every time he dies.

When I play as Snake, he dies a lot.

But the man's sadness seems undiminished by the regularity with which he has to mourn Snake.

You'd think once or twice he'd go, "Ahh, Snake!"

You'd think at some debriefing session in this espionage organisation

they'd go, "You're very disappointed about Snake."

"He was one of our best agents." "He was not. His behaviour in the field was erratic at best.

"He spent most of the time waddling about the battlefield for no reason. Just waddling around.

"He was toggling Maps, then Items, then Weapons, Items, Maps.

"He didn't know where he was going. He had to get behind that, but couldn't.

"He'd run at it and then try running at it again. He ran at it once and missed.

LAUGHTER "He tried jumping at it. Then he tried touching it,

"then jump and touch, jump, crouch and touch,

"then he looked up, and down, then he picked up a crowbar, then he put it down. Crouch.

"Weapons, Items, Crouch, Weapons, Items.

"A robot attacked him, he gave him his rations! He's the worst agent we've ever had."

Jesus Christ... LAUGHTER

God...

That routine. Most comedy routines have a natural finale, a punchline.

That one just ends when the comedian gets exhausted!

Running at an imaginary piece of video game scenery. This kills me! Look - I have injuries!

Just because of that routine!

And 30% of the room - I'm looking at ya -

30% of the room... Peter Shilton, I love your work,

David Seaman, I love your work more. Thank you very much. 1998, the double. Quality.

But the two of you didn't have a notion of what I've been doing.

You should have seen Shilton's face! He was like a meerkat going, "What the...?

"Crouch? Touch? The man's an idiot!

"Is this what passes for comedy...?! Jesus Christ!"

I'm amazed you're still here, Peter.

We have a fantastic show for you with two genuinely brilliant comics.

We've had them both on Mock The Week and this first guy was in We Are Klang and The Inbetweeners.

Ladies and gentlemen, a fabulously funny man. Please take the roof off for Greg Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!

Are you well?

CHEERING Brilliant to be here. My name's Greg or Mr Gilbert, if it turns you on.

CHEERS

A couple of things you should know about me. First, I'm a very tall man.

-6 foot 8, in case you're interested. Why would you be? It's just a height.

-Oooh!

-Thanks very much.

The second thing you should know about me and it's kind of by way of an apology to the front row

is that I genuinely believed when I left my house for this massively popular BBC1 show

that this shirt still fit me.

LAUGHTER

Oh...

Unbelievable. I just caught myself stretching in the dressing room...

and I'm aware that as I get animated later on, as I surely will,

I'll have no choice but to show the first couple of rows the beast.

I should make it clear what I mean by the beast. My stomach, you'll be relieved to hear. Not my penis.

I don't call my penis the beast.

I call that surprisingly average for a man of my height. LAUGHTER

That's its full title.

Although I do compensate by rather hammering it in, so...

LAUGHTER

I don't. I'm asthmatic. Em...

So I like to bond with my tall friends. We're a minority that's been overlooked.

I come from a place in the Midlands, a small town in the Midlands,

which is largely inhabited by people who find my height hilarious.

I've been going back to visit my parents. For 30 years, I've been this height.

And still when I walk down that street, people go, "Tall! Tall!

"Burn him! Burn him!"

Which is why last year I discovered the greatest city on Earth.

Last year, I did some gigs in the city of Bangkok.

Awesome.

The reason I like it, ladies and gentlemen, is that in Bangkok I'm not a novelty tall man.

In Bangkok I am a genuine fairy-tale giant.

I'm not joking. I was walking through that city like this. "Behold...!

"Hello, my little friends!

"Who will talk to Gulliver?"

It was like working in a model village. I was scooping them up in my arms. "Come on!"

Someone told me you can get a brilliant...

You can go for a brilliant massage in Bangkok because to the Thai people, massage is a day-to-day thing.

So you can go and have a massage and apparently, I was told, they are...one pound!

Forty pounds in this country, one pound in Bangkok.

And I found out... I was walking through the streets, arrogantly.

And quite camply, it would appear.

Throwing pound coins out at groups of strangers. "You will rub me, you will rub me."

Someone said, "No, there's a purpose-built massage centre.

"You pay a pound, you go in and there's a team of them."

So I went in, I paid a pound, a door opened and sure enough, there was a sea of elves,

tiny little Thai women in little pink jackets. They're so lovely, the Thai people, so welcoming.

I went, "Behold!"

They all went like this, "Aaaah!"

Which encouraged me. I went, "Yes! That's right, my little friends.

"Who will touch the flesh of the giant?"

And they all went, "Aah-aah-aah!" I went, "Ha-ha-ha-ha!"

I'm exaggerating a little bit.

When I was at my peak of cockiness, these wonderful, welcoming, smiling women suddenly parted.

As if they had planned it,

they parted to reveal this hobbit.

This evil hobbit.

She clip-clopped out of the pack.

"Clip-clop" doesn't make sense.

She had hooves, little hooves.

She didn't. She was normal.

I looked at her and went, "Hello." She went like this, "Arrgh!"

I went, "Oh!"

She said, "I will rub you."

And I went, "Oooh!"

And then she took me by the hand.

Sorry.

LAUGHTER

I've giving you a chance to see how badly all my clothes fit me at this stage.

She took me into a little room and got me to lie down. She stood over me and she went, "What do you want?"

I went..."Massage?"

She said, "Yes...

"What sort of massage?"

I said, "I don't know what the options are."

She said, "You can have normal...

"..or you can have Thai."

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I made one of the worst decisions of my entire life.

Has anyone been for a Thai massage?

-Yes!

-How would you describe that?

-Ow!

-"Painful" is polite, thank you.

I would describe it as an elf kicking the shit out of me.

She beat the living shit out of me.

If you get offered one for free, turn it down.

She was punching me in the throat. I said, "I've given you a pound, you little bastard!"

She was lying on the floor with her little knees in the air

and she was beckoning for me to lie across her knees.

Now, I am 20 stone in weight.

Hard to believe.

LAUGHTER

I looked down at her little knees and I thought, "I can't put 20 stone on those little knees.

"I can't put all this bulk on those tiny little knees."

Then I remembered the massage she'd given me and I thought, "Bollocks, yes, I can!"

I pine-treed on top of her, expecting to turn her pelvis to dust on contact.

They call me Dusty Pelvis. What? It doesn't make sense. I've had a lot of coffee.

She caught me, took 20 stone on her knees, then she balanced me and let go with her hands.

This is when it gets weird. Once she had me balanced, she looked up at me and she said only these words.

"Do you like that, you fat turd?"

LAUGHTER

Then she started to lower me down an inch at a time towards her face,

insulting me all the time, "You fat pig! You fat, sweaty pig!

"You fat...

"You fat old man!

"You pay me a pound for all this work. I will kill you, you pig, you bitch!"

She called me "a bitch".

We were nose to nose and I was thinking, "This is weird."

Then she took me a step closer and she went, "Do you like this? Do you?"

I thought, "There is..."

Hello.

We were nose to nose and I thought,

"There is no way I am getting out of this with any dignity intact whatsoever."

Then my whole 20 stone hit her little body and just for a second, she made this noise...

"Arrgh!"

Which means I won, I think you'll find.

My point is, don't mess with me, little people. I will destroy you.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, I can't tell you what fun I've had. I hope you've had even 10% of it. Thank you.

CHEERING Thanks very much. Good night.

Ladies and gentlemen, Greg Davies!

The next man I'm going to introduce to you... It's a joy for me when we have him on Mock The Week.

He's one of the finest stand-up comedians working in this country.

Please put your hands together for Stewart Francis!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING GETS LOUDER

SINGS ALONG TO BACKGROUND MUSIC

That's the only bit I know.

What a lovely introduction! You're a fantastic audience. I've got some pretty good gags.

Shall we? SHOUTS OF "Yes!"

All right, this comedy bus is going to Giggle Street.

I had to say something. Last night, I went to a karaoke bar that didn't play any '70s music.

At first, I was afraid.

Oh, I was petrified.

I farted in a full lift today which was wrong on so many levels.

My dad has a weird hobby. He collects empty bottles which sounds so much better than "alcoholic", doesn't it?

I was raised by my father. My mother left before I was born.

I liked being raised by my father. He's schizophrenic, but he's good people.

I remember one summer, I was five and he was Mussolini.

I went to the park that day.

I was standing in the park, wondering why does a Frisbee appear larger the closer it gets?

And then it hit me.

Growing up, I was under the impression that my dad didn't like me very much.

He hardly ever did anything with me. He only took me fishing once.

I remember swimming back to shore, thinking...

"My dad doesn't like me very much."

We only went golfing once and I remember swimming back to shore, thinking...

"Golf's a lot like fishing.

"My dad doesn't like me very much."

My uncle is a hypnotist who has never inappropriately touched me.

So Halloween just passed. Well, it did when I wrote this joke. I hope you like it.

I remember the first time my father took me trick-or-treating. I remember swimming back to shore, thinking...

"Snoopy costumes are heavy when they're wet."

Because of ridiculous stereotypes, people can be so ignorant towards other nationalities.

I'm thin, I don't play the banjo, I don't have sex with my cousin

and still people assume I'm American.

What's that all aboot?

No, I'm Canadian, although I truly do feel British because both my parents are alcoholics.

In school, other kids used to push me and call me lazy.

I loved that wheelchair.

So what if I can't spell "Armageddon"?

It's not the end of the world.

When I was a little boy, I used to sing in the choir. All the other boys teased me. I still don't know why.

But one afternoon when they were teasing me, I stood up and said...

HIGH VOICE: # Que sera, sera Whatever will be, will be

# The future's not ours to see Que sera, sera

# What will be, will be

# Que sera, sera-a-ah

# Ah-aaaaaah... #

They sure beat the shit out of me that afternoon.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

When I was a kid, my daddy used to always hit me with a camera.

I still have flashbacks.

And a really weird photo album.

# Ba-doom, boom, boom Ba-doom, boom, boom

# Boom, boom, boom Ba-doom, ba-doom... #

Excuse me.

# Ba-doom, boom, boom, boom... #

Why are you holding the back of my neck while tickling my genitals?

# Ba-doom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom... #

That's a true story.

My fairy godmother asked me if I wanted a long penis or a long memory.

I forget my response.

Oh, my back is killing me!

Ladies...

I think women who think size doesn't matter are shallow.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

My girlfriend thinks I'm afraid of commitment.

Well, she's not my girlfriend.

My wife hates that joke.

I say "wife"...

My wife and I have decided we don't want children.

If anybody does, we can drop them off tomorrow.

The fat one has asthma.

No, we have a beautiful little girl who we named after my mom.

In fact, Passive-Aggressive Psycho turns five tomorrow.

APPLAUSE

Should lesbians be allowed to use dildos? They made their choice.

I'm happily married. That's why I'm wearing my ring. Oh...

It must've fallen off in that hooker's ass.

What am I like?

Anybody that's married knows what I'm talking about when I say you find out about someone after you marry them.

My wife doesn't have a peanut allergy. It turns out she has a...

penis!

That's it. She has a penis.

My father was a man of few words.

I remember he used to say to me, "Son...

"Get your trunks. We're going to the library."

Receiving oral sex from an ugly person is like rock-climbing.

You should never look down.

Sir?

You guys have been amazing. Thank you very much, everyone.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, did you enjoy the show?

CHEERING

Give it up for all of our acts tonight.

Give it up for Stewart Francis!

And for Greg Davies. My name's Dara O Briain.

Thank you very much. We'll see you again. Good night!

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2010

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