Episode 6 Live at the Apollo

Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome your host for tonight - Lenny Henry!

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Yeah, yeah!

Good evening, Live at the Apollo!

CHEERING

Fantastic!

I love this show because it's the only one on TV with no vampires in it.

Everything's got vampires now.

If my daughter and me were vampires, it'd be exactly the same.

I'd be texting her at 5am - "Where RU? Sun about 2 come up.

"U will explode!" She'd be like,

"Am in field with pals, drinking dead sheep.

"Leave me alone!"

So I'm like, "Have you seen the state of your coffin, young lady?

"There's a half-dead bloke twitching in the corner.

"I've told you not to play with your food!" "Stay out of my coffin!

"I hate you!" She's just mad at me cos I ate her boyfriend.

Black people in the house say "Ho!"

-AUDIENCE:

-Ho!

It's like a Tupac convention.

Brixton's empty.

I said that in Winchester once - absolute silence!

Not one black guy in the entire place.

All right, there was one.

He was in the second row going, "Please don't talk to me."

Imagine being the only black guy in Winchester.

Wouldn't that be fantastic?

You'd have a licence to go up to every black woman you see and go, "Excuse me, we have to breed."

Listen, I've got to tell you this.

The BNP had a Christmas disco - this is absolutely true -

the BNP had a Christmas disco and when the DJ arrived,

they all walked out because the DJ was black.

The BNP hired a black DJ!

Their spokesman said, "He sounded white on the phone!"

What? The DJ's got to sound extra black on the phone?

EXAGGERATED ACCENT: Hello, I am the DJ for your Christmas party.

My name is King Bobatoondy Zaniadema Mandela. Heh-heh!

APPLAUSE

My fee is £100, but you can pay me in buffalo.

I think we've come a long way, though. When I first watched television,

there were no black people on it at all.

If somebody black did come on, people thought there was something wrong with the set.

They'd be on the phone to the TV repair man.

"There's a dark bloke on my telly - can you come and get him off?"

The only black people on TV were the Black and White Minstrels.

They had black shoe polish on their faces

and these huge white lips.

Accurate.

AUDIENCE LAUGH

My mum would be this close to the screen,

"Well, it's nice to see some black people on television for a change.

"But look at them lips.

"They must be from one of the small islands."

I love being a comedian - this is all I can do.

In my heart I'm a 16-year-old boy, which is great for a comedian

but not if you're a gynaecologist.

God, can you imagine me coming into the room?

Your feet are in stirrups, "All right, Mrs Makin...

"Bloody hell, I can see everything!

"Do you want some cider?"

I couldn't be an airline pilot, on your own in the cockpit.

I'd have to be a steward, out there with the passengers.

Put on a bit of a show.

RAPS: People, if we're in a crash

Please do not despair

Grab a mask from above your head and suck in lots of air

Whip on your life jacket and tie it very tight

Then stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodnight!

WHISTLES AND APPLAUSE

Actually, do you know what?

I wouldn't mind being a pilot, cos everyone's life depends on you.

You can get away with anything, can't you?

Who's going to argue with that voice they do?

FORMAL VOICE: This is your captain speaking.

My name is Brian.

How much do YOU earn?

Hope you have an enjoyable flight.

Our stewardesses are there to help you

and our stewards are there to show we employ gays.

Right, we are cleared for take-off.

Let me take the chewing gum out of my mouth

and stick it in my co-pilot Nigel's ear. He loves it.

Take that, you bitch.

Weather in Miami is superb - 26C with a light breeze.

Shame we're going to Glasgow, where the weather's shit.

If you'd like to visit the cockpit you're very welcome.

You don't have to give me a blow job.

Maybe you think I fly better when I'm tense.

Want to risk it? Go ahead.

If there are any drug mules with us today, I have one word for you.

Share.

Hello, hello, how are you? Nice to see you. Hello. Right on, James Caan!

You're not THE James Caan, you're the other James Caan. All right, James?

I'm a big guy, too, it's all right. Everybody in my family's big. My mum, brothers and sisters, we love it.

I've got a cousin who weighs 17-and-a-half stone.

We call her The Anorexic.

"Give The Anorexic one and two dumpling and some pig foot,

"she looking a bit peaky!"

Jamaican guys love big women.

I was at a karaoke bar in Kingston, this big woman got up on stage,

massive woman, skin-tight dress.

Microphone in one hand, half a chicken in the other. Singing away.

# I want to know what love i-i-is!

# I want you to show me-e-e-e! #

Dozens of yardies pushing each other out the way - "I will show you!

"Move over there! I will show you!

"Come here, darling, let me sweep you off your feet. Jesus Christ!"

Not all Jamaican people are out of shape.

Just look at Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter in the world.

CHEERING Yeah, yeah!

When he broke the Olympic world record, he was so far ahead, he had time to call his mum.

"Mama, I'm breakin' de world record right now. See it dere? It broke.

"I have to do me lap of honour now. See it dere? It done."

"Put on some rice an' peas, I'll be back in 19.3 seconds."

Everybody knows you are what you eat.

The French eat 500 million snails a year.

Think about it - when did you last see a French sprinter?

They're all at the back, strolling, smoking a Gauloise.

"What is the point? Life is meaningless.

"Sarkozy gets Carla Bruni, I am alone."

Check out the haircut. This is a number one.

CHEERING

Big guy, small hair.

Back in the day, every black guy had a huge afro.

Every one of us, right? Remember the Jackson 5?

They had one big afro and they were all underneath going -

HIGH PITCHED VOICE: Move over, Tito.

Black women can't leave their hair alone. Sisters, where are you?

You can't leave your hair alone. I blame the black beauty magazines.

I love their names, though.

They're called things like Ebony Sister.

Nubian Warrior Woman.

Martin Luther Queen.

Barack O-Mama!

I've got one of them young black stylists from the hood.

He's cool.

He shaves patterns.

I hear Usain Bolt's going to have the Puma logo shaved into his head.

Yeah, man.

Soon my head's going to say, "Everything's premier but the price."

All over there, down here.

I live in the country now.

-AUDIENCE:

-Oooh!

I'm the only black guy within 100 miles.

Anything to do with blackness, I'm the expert.

I get geezers knocking on my door,

"Lenny, my daughter's going to Senegal for her gap year.

"Do you know anybody she can stay with?"

Come this way. I'll teach you to play basketball, as well.

"Can you introduce me to Jay-Z?" I think he's here somewhere.

All the famous black people live with me.

Ainsley will take your coat.

APPLAUSE

I've got a white West Highland terrier.

He's like a loaf of bread with ears.

Looks a bit like Robert De Niro, as well.

He's got that downturned mouth.

Hates walking, this dog. You get 100 yards from the house and he stops dead.

"Are you walking with me?

"Are you walking with me?

"Is this a marathon?

"Are we doing this for charity?

"Do I look like Bob freakin' Geldof to you?

"Pick me up, wipe my ass and call me a cab. We're going home.

"You freakin' two-legged mook."

I love Robert De Niro.

You know why? He's not scared to be ugly.

I wouldn't say that to his face, for Christ's sake.

Have you noticed you can be an ugly actor

but it's hard to be an ugly singer, isn't it?

Unless you're a backing singer, in which case nobody's looking at you.

I went to see George Michael. Hey, George, if you're watching this...

I went to see George Michael at Wembley Stadium

with brilliant backing singers.

They were these big women, no make-up, leggings,

gravy down here.

Six kids by seven different men.

I don't know how that works, but it does.

These women never missed a note.

And they knew no-one was looking at them.

They were knitting,

doing the crossword, on the phone to their kids.

# Do the jitterbug... # Tyrone, bed now.

# Do the jitterbug... # I mean it, mister.

# Ooh-ooh! #

If you want to be a frontman, you've got to have energy.

Look at Dizzee Rascal. He's so excited, isn't he, all the time.

RAPS: Some people think I'm bonkers but I just think I'm free.

Bonkers.

He'd be excited if he was in a car crash.

RAPS: My nose and mouth and arse are full of bits of glass

My left leg has been mangled, it sticks out at an angle.

Bonkers!

I tell you who else is excited, that baldy bloke from The Prodigy.

I love that guy. He's still got it.

# I'm a fire starter, twisted fire starter. #

Mind you, he's older now, the new tune's called...

# I think I've left the gas on. #

That's from the album...

# My son's an accountant

# My daughter lives in New Zealand

# I'd like a cup of tea now and a lie down.

# This used to be all fields around here. #

Duffy's exciting, do you like Duffy?

# You got me begging you for mercy! #

She's tiny, Duffy.

We did a show together and people said, "Do you want to meet Duffy?"

I said, "Yeah." They said, "Here she is." I was like, "Awww!

"Hello, Duffy!" I had to speak softly

so I wouldn't blow her away. She said...

WELSH ACCENT: "Lenny, I've got a tiny voice, see?

"But when I hit the microphone, look you, it gets proper huge, isn't it?"

It's true, man, when she's onstage, she's so tiny she has to stand behind a magnifying glass.

That's why she can't play Glastonbury, cos if the sun came out, she'd be like, "I'm on fire!

"I'm burning! I'm like a kebab in stilettos!"

Festivals aren't really a black people thing.

We see thousands of people living in a field, we go, "Plantation."

They're so cramped together, all the people.

The DJ sets are amazing,

100,000 people with their hands up in the air.

Cos there's no space to get them down.

Praying for a helicopter to fly by with a rope ladder. Thank God!

Fly me to the toilet, now!

It's amazing when the DJs come on at Glastonbury, at the festivals.

They're treated like gods. People go nuts. Why?!

DJs don't make music, they just deliver it!

If musicians are chefs, DJs are waiters.

The waiter doesn't get a standing ovation

when he brings the plates out.

The waiter doesn't fanny around with your food when it gets to the table.

He's not there going...

RAPS: Yeeah! Yeeah!

Put your knives and forks in the air

And wave them like you just don't care

This is the restaurant remix, now listen to me

Table number seven, swap with table three

You freakin' vegetarians are driving me mental

I'll stick the chicken tikka on your cabbage and lentils

Gazpacho, everybody say gazpacho!

Yo, skinny model with your celery stick

Legging it to the ladies to make yourself sick

You've got to get some flesh on them tiny little hips

So here's my solution, burger, egg and chips

Everybody say gazpacho!

It's cold soup

Gazpacho!

Raise your champagne glass to your lip

And then give me an oversized tip.

Dancehall style!

RAPS: Don't follow me!

Don't follow me!

You wanted the monkfish, you're having the lamb

You wanted the rabbit, you're getting the lamb

Pepper on your ice cream, salt on your jelly

Yo, Rabbi Cohen, have the pork belly!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

I love music. It's my big thing, music.

I can't do without it. I buy a lot of music online.

This is what I love about buying music online.

"If you like Beyonce, you might like Pink."

How cool is that?

They should do that everywhere with everything.

You go down the pub, have ten pints of lager, the barmaid says,

"If you like ten pints of lager, you might like a kebab."

Go to the kebab place, the bloke's there going,

"If you like ten pints of lager and a kebab, you might like a fight."

Go outside, beat the crap out of some innocent bystander, a copper comes up and says,

"If you like beating the crap out of innocent bystanders,

"you might like to join the police."

You've been lovely, thank you very much. Yeah, yeah!

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

WHISTLES AND CHEERS

I'm sweating like Christopher Biggins at a free buffet.

My first guest tonight is a very funny man.

Will you please put your hands together for Mr Mike Wilmot! Come on!

No-one told me there'd be smoke. That scared the shit out of me.

What a fancy place, man.

It is truly great to be here.

I know a lot of comedians start their show with,

"It's great to be here, it's nice to be here."

Many of them are lying.

But it is really good to be here.

My wife, girl-friendy person...

..she just turned 50 and she's pre-menopausal.

So, it's very, very nice to be here.

Thousands of miles away.

I have never done this so much in my life within the last year.

Every time I hear a door open now it's...

She hit me recently in the back of the head with car keys

from a distance.

I had it coming, I called her a whore, but y'know...

..in a funny way.

You know, like, "Oh, ya whore!"

LAUGHTER

Turns out there's really no funny way.

It's odd to be hit in the back of the head with car keys

because you can hear them jingle on the way over.

It's almost magical, really. # Jingling, jingle-ling-ingle. #

Santa?

BOOF! LAUGHTER

Laying on your ass with a key in your eye.

It's also good to be here because I enjoy drinking.

Er, that's how I got this lovely voice.

But I do enjoy drinking and it's beautiful here for that.

You know, like in LA, I'm an alcoholic. In Canada, I'm a drinker.

Here, fine. I'm absolutely fine!

I have nothing to worry about. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Everything's wonderful. In fact, I could be fit.

And in Ireland, I'm a pussy. So it depends, really,

on where you go.

Years ago, the first time I got really smashed was in Dublin.

-AUDIENCE MEMBER:

-Whoo!

-Bless, one person.

And I got smashed.

I'd never been that smashed, I fell off the back of a bar stool.

I've never done that before.

It wasn't because I was, you know, this kind of drunk.

It's just for a brief moment,

I thought there was a back on the bar stool.

I was, like, winding up a story,

some bullshit story that I thought was clever.

"And then, we all decided to..."

And just completely disappeared from view.

But God bless the Irish, they don't make fun of you,

they just pick you up, dust you off and put you back on that bar stool.

Then they all line up and tell you the story about when they fell off the bar stool.

And fiddles come out of nowhere

and they sing a song about what just happened.

I don't like organised drinking.

I'm not big on stag parties or any of that bullshit.

At my age, most of my friends are getting re-married.

The stags are a bit calmer when you're getting re-married.

We just got smashed and watched Iron Man 2.

Dumbest movie I've ever seen. If you think it's good, shoot yourself.

There's really no point.

I got smashed and mad at a movie. That's never a good sign.

Walking home drunk with a suit.

Nothing sadder than drunk men in suits.

Way too many pockets.

I'm walking, getting closer to my house.

I was wearing a necktie. The wind grabbed the front part,

the fat part of my tie, and threw it over my shoulder,

leaving me with that little tie.

LAUGHTER

I was so drunk I looked down and thought,

"Oh, my God, I'm huge!"

LAUGHTER

SLURRED: "How will I fit in my little house?

"I'm going to have to live outside, now."

There's really, truly, nothing sadder than a man

coming home drunk, and there's the old lady in the house,

and when I say old lady, women, don't get all pissy. I'm an old man.

Please don't form a giant woman and come up here and attack me.

I've always had that fear of women -

if you piss off more than five, they morph into a big one and come at you.

Men all over the world, we stand outside of our homes, drunk,

auditioning to get in.

LAUGHTER

There's nothing sadder than standing outside of your house at three in the morning

practising the word "hello".

LAUGHTER

'Allo!

LAUGHTER

'Ello! Howdy!

Don't say howdy, you stupid bastard! Only drunk people say howdy!

Might as well jump through a window and kick her in the crotch if you're going to say howdy!

LAUGHTER

I've been coming out here for years now, so now when I get drunk,

I just get this bullshit Englishy sounding accent.

To me, it sounds more theatrical than pissed.

POSH ENGLISH ACCENT: Hello. Hello, my love, I'm home. Hello.

LAUGHTER

It's like Richard Burton coming home.

AS RICHARD BURTON: Martha, come running at me,

your melons bobbling, your kimono flying.

Then I do her voice.

Na-na-na-na-nah!

LAUGHTER

That's how men impersonate women, by the way.

All women. Mums, sisters, girlfriends, wives, doesn't matter.

Na-na-na-na-nah!

LAUGHTER

Which is fair because when women impersonate men,

they always use that idiot voice.

Then he said, "Oogh, oogh, blah, blah!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You're not different! You're the same! You're the same!

All of you vagina people!

LAUGHTER

Or "women", as you prefer to be called.

LAUGHTER

Evee-ink-ink-ee!

POSH ENGLISH ACCENT: No. Ha, ha, ha!

LAUGHTER

POSH ENGLISH ACCENT: Your beauty alone intoxicates me.

LAUGHTER

Then I sleep in a bush!

LAUGHTER

I've been with her now... 24 years now.

And I'll tell you one thing, man - it's not love.

LAUGHTER

Love is fleeting. But spite?

That stays!

LAUGHTER

I'm not leaving her. That would make her happy!

LAUGHTER

I'm in it for the long haul, man.

LAUGHTER

24 years with the same woman and I'll be honest with you,

I wake up every morning of my life and I walk down the stairs,

and I think, you know, "I'm going to kill her today."

LAUGHTER

"I'm going to sneak up behind her and hit her in the head with a shovel. She won't see it coming."

And I know she's, er, walking down the stairs behind me.

Every day... "I'm going to push him."

"I'm going to push this fat bastard down the stairs.

"He never picks up his shit. I'm going to put a screwdriver in his eye.

"I'm going to let him rot." Then we circle each other...

in the kitchen,

spitting fire and hate.

And then we have tea and toast, and everything's better.

And that's why breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Man!

24 years... 24 years.

I love her tits, though, just...

LAUGHTER

That's the wonderful thing about tits...

for me...

..is the first time I squeezed one...

y-yay.

LAUGHTER

And the last time I squeezed it... y-yay.

They never get less fun,

titties.

And I suck 'em. I'm a big, tit-sucking man.

I suck her tits so much,

that I know I'm not the boss in the relationship.

LAUGHTER

"You can't look at a woman while you're..."

"I run everything, this is all mine, mwah-mwah-mwah..."

"You're a monkey!

"You're not a human, you're a nipple-sucking monkey man!"

Are you like me, when you suck...

When you suck one tit, do you look at the other, like...?

"Stay right there, lefty."

"I'm just practising on this one."

I don't know how women can look at men suck their tit

without just laughing at him.

I really don't!

I don't know how women can look down at their man...

sucking a tit with his eyes rolled back like a feeding shark...

LAUGHTER

..and have any thought in their head other than, "How can you keep a job?"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"I can't figure you out.

"How do you bring money home?"

Squeezing one, that's the fun part. I love squeezing tits too.

If you're like me, if you're out there, and you're lucky enough

to be with a woman that lets you grab her titty, willy-nilly,

24/7,

without doing this shit...

..then you, my friend, are living in paradise.

Screw the recession, screw government,

screw the war - just suck her tits till things are better.

LAUGHTER

That's what they're there for.

I love the morning tit, that's my favourite tit.

We wake up at different times -

she gets up before me and then starts rummaging through the fridge.

I can hear food being moved, so I wake up.

I come down the stairs

and she's bent over...

and her head's in the fridge, and the light from the fridge door is going through her nightie,

and I see them just do this...

LAUGHTER

My God...

Men are looking at this right now and thinking,

"Yeah, that's...yeah".

There's something about that kinetic weirdness.

Men have toys on their desks that basically do the same thing.

There she is, I sneak up behind her...

grab a dangler,

you know what I mean?

The nipple's hard cos the fridge door's open so you don't even have to work for it.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You've been wonderful. Thank you very, very much.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Mike Wilmot!

From Canada.

OK, we have one more act for you tonight.

Please give a huge welcome to the very funny,

the very excellent, Mr Tommy Tiernan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello. Hello, hello. How are you?

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for that. I've come a long way

to be with you here this evening.

SCATTERED CHEERING

-Yeah.

-WHISTLING

From over there. I've come all the way from the west coast of Ireland.

CHEERING

I've left my wife,

my family and my kids behind me...

..to come here...

to make you...

laugh.

LAUGHTER

There's a...

an empty chair...beside the fire tonight.

I hope.

Unless Other Daddy calls round again. Er...

I'm not a very ambitious person.

Er... I don't like ambition, I don't like what it does to people.

My ambition in life is to have no ambition.

It's probably a bit ambitious, er...

My hope for when I'm finished talking to you this evening

in the short time we have together,

My hope is that when I'm done,

both of us will know less than we did when I started talking.

I come from Ireland and I'm very, very proud to be Irish!

Half my life I spent travelling around rural Ireland

and it's... Ireland is an amazing country.

We're going through a recession now but we're not bothered by it.

We're used to recession.

I myself spent five years on the dole.

FIVE YEARS!

It was the best eight years of my life!

-LAUGHTER

-I did nothing!

Absolutely nothing!

Any time I had to do something, I got stressed.

The bins had to be left out once a week, and if it was my turn,

"Argh...

"You can't be springing that shit on me, man!

I spent an entire summer teaching a cat how to play Snap.

I had a white cat called Shaun.

He was called Shaun was claiming disability for him.

Bringing him down to the dole office every Wednesday, saying to the lady,

"Go on, tell him, tell him to his face you don't think he's a real boy.

Irish people were used to hard times -

going all the way back to the great potato recession of the 1840s,

when two million Irish people died.

Two million!

Because of no potatoes!

The thickest, stubbornest people on the planet!

Dying there in the ditches beside fields full of cabbages and sweetcorn.

LAUGHTER

Cos we were there,

"No. No,

"I'd rather die in a ditch."

I don't like cabbage.

I don't like the smell of it.

"It's like the inside of a psychiatric hospital.

Do not talk to me about sweetcorn!

All sweetcorn does is hit your lip from your mouth to your arse

before it heads off for the next person.

I travel around rural Ireland and you go to hotels and stuff.

I was in a fancy hotel in a place called Waterford recently.

I went downstairs to the restaurant in the morning and asked the waitress,

"Can I have the vegetarian breakfast?"

She goes, "What - corn flakes?"

The rest of the time, I spend travelling around the world.

To be honest with you, it's a fierce disappointment.

I go to all these cities all over, like Melbourne, Montreal,

Toronto and Sydney and New York.

It's the same shit everywhere.

White people shopping - that's all it is!

I want to go where there's no white people.

I don't care what colour they are. I don't even want them to have legs.

Sit in the muck, throwing chickens at each other.

I've been to Australia.

D'you know, white people have been in charge of Australia for 400 years.

Before that, the Aboriginal people were in charge...

for 50,000 years.

Now, they didn't do much with the place.

They just covered each other in finger paint...

..and stood around pointing.

IMITATES DRONE OF DIDGERIDOO

Woof, woof!

"Oh, God! There's a Jack Russell in my didgeridoo."

Lots of people are going to Australia now, because they think it's a safe place to live.

Maybe they're right, you know. Australia will never be invaded.

Never. Why not? Jet lag.

You'd have the opposing army on the beach.

"CHARGE!"

HE PANTS HEAVILY

"Oh, for God's sake!

"What time is it where we come from?

"Two o'clock in the morning? I'm starving.

"I haven't had a shit in a week."

"How big is this beach, for God's sake?"

So, lots of people are going to Australia.

Off the coast of Australia right now, in boats,

hoping to get in,

are people from Sri Lanka, and people from Afghanistan.

And I'm going to tell you something.

I'm going to tell you something,

educated, clever England.

I'm going to tell you something to your face,

and I don't care what you think of me when you find out.

I know nothing.

Nothing...

about Sri Lanka.

I don't even know where it is.

If you took me in a helicopter - a big helicopter -

and you dropped me from a reasonable height -

about two snooker tables -

onto Sri Lanka, I wouldn't know which way to be walking.

I know nothing - nothing -

about the people of Sri Lanka.

If you gave me a Sri Lankan baby...

If you said, "Tommy Tiernan.

"Tommy Tiernan, there's a Sri Lankan baby,

"Bring him up in the ways of his own people,"

I wouldn't know what to be doing with the child.

Making the plastic bits that go on top of laces or something. I don't know.

So I can't be saying if they should be let into Australia or not.

But the people of Afghanistan, I think they should.

Why? Because they've gone all the way from Afghanistan

to Australia by boat.

From Afghanistan. It doesn't even have a coastline.

Can you imagine how difficult that must have been?

Escaping that Taliban hellhole

with a boat on your back.

The wife and kids complaining.

"Shut up. Shut up. Does it look like we're there yet? Does it?"

I've no time for facts,

or rationality. If all you want to do in your life is give out facts,

you might as well be a signpost by the side of the road.

In school, I used to hate mathematics. I hated it.

You'd be there in school and the teacher at the top of the room with the big "king of numbers"...

And he's there. "Tiernan,

"what is the cosine logarithm of X-Y,"

with the really small 25 written up in the corner,

"brackets - smiley face, Nazi symbol,

"Nike symbol, close brackets, forward slash, bbc.co.uk?"

If a woman in a train travelling at 27 miles an hour

passes a man holding five apples in one hand and a banana in the other,

"what time is it?"

I've no time for that at all.

The happiest fella that I knew in my life was also the thickest.

I went to a religious boarding school,

and his name was Richie and he was from Dublin.

And he was so stupid, he was a pleasure to be with.

Your thought processes just slowed down in his company. He was like,

"All right, Tommy, no problem.

"No problem, Tommy, all reet.

"All reet. All right, Tommy, no problem."

Heroin would have sharpened him up.

Once a term, we used to have these...

Because the dormitories we were in were so old,

we had to have these fire drills - they were old and wooden.

So once a term, about three o'clock in the morning,

the fire alarm would go off

and the priests would chase us out of the building in our underpants.

Jesus!

The naivety of it now, when I think about it...

And there was always a few priests trying to chase you into the woods for safety.

"Go on, into the woods. Into the woods for safety."

Anyway...

So one morning, the fire drill goes off

and everybody's up in their knickers and we run out of the school,

across the yard into the study hall - except for Richie,

who thinks it's the morning bell.

So he goes downstairs, has a shower and gets dressed.

The priest is counting us up in the study hall and there's one fella missing.

This is not good. In a real emergency, this is a disaster.

So Richie is hauled up in front of this midnight court,

and he's never seen a scene like it in his life -

all his friends there, naked under fluorescent lights.

And the priest is there. "Where were you?

"Richie, where were you?"

And before Richie has time to answer, the priest goes,

"I'll tell you where you were, will I? I'll tell you.

"You were burning to death in the school fire."

Richie's looking round - "hat, what?!"

"That's right - you're dead!

"You're dead now.

"Am I supposed to phone your mother

"and tell her you've died in the school fire?"

It all gets to him. He goes, "No-o-o-o!

"I'LL tell her!

"It's better coming from me.

"She thinks you're a prick anyway!"

I turned 40 recently.

A few things you realise when you turn 40,

one of them is that 17-year-old girls no longer want to have sex with you.

They might have to, but they don't want to.

I couldn't be having sex with a 17-year-old, anyway - they're too excitable.

Two 17-year-old girls haven't seen each other for a few days, it's like...

-HE SCREECHES

-.."Oh, my God!

"Oh, my God, I haven't seen you for so looooooong!"

LAUGHTER

I couldn't be having sex with that.

I wouldn't have the hand-eye coordination.

LAUGHTER

I'd put my back out. It'd be like trying to have sex with a salmon - "Where are ya?!"

I got married recently.

Yeah, I don't know...

I don't know if the lights are...

..picking up...

SCATTERED LAUGHTER

..my ring.

This ring...

protects me...

..from crazy ladies.

-WHISPERING:

-Stay away!

We got...

marriage advice...

..from a priest.

What was that about?

You wouldn't take driving lessons off a blind fellow, would you?

"OK, just keep going till you hit the bumpy stuff, ha, ha, ha!

"Oh, there you are, sorry, I can't see a thing!"

I stood up...

in front of all my friends...

..to love...

honour...

and obey...

..in sickness...

and in health.

For better...

..for worse...

for richer,

for poorer...

..till...

..death...

do...us...part...

LAUGHTER

I'll give it a go!

It's a pleasure talking to you, Apollo. Thank you very much and good night.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Cheers, Lenny. Thank you.

Let's hear it for Tommy Tiernan...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..and Mike Wilmot...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Live At The Apollo.

You've been a brilliant audience. Good night. Peace!

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