Episode 5 Live at the Apollo

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host for tonight, Rich Hall!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Yeah!

Hello. Oh, look at it! I can already see it on your faces.

"Oh, great an American hosting the show.

"Is there no end to what these assholes will try to pull off next?!

"Is he capable? Can he pull it off?"

You're damn right I can!

Welcome to Live At The Apollo.

Comedy is important, ladies and gentlemen. Americans are always,

"Hey, Rich, I hear those Londoners have a dry sense of humour."

Well, they're pretty wet right now, what do you mean dry sense of humour? What they have is a sense of humour!

You understand? Americans love to laugh.

There's a difference between a sense of humour

and the ability to laugh, that's why I'm in London, ladies and gentlemen.

Where you put up with shit every day of your life. Is there not a day you

don't wake up in London and go what shit is going to befall me today?

What's going to happen that I didn't see coming in a million years?

Oh, look, there's a homeless guy urinating into a spray bottle

and cleaning a wind screen with a head of lettuce.

Well, I didn't see that coming. That's London, 13 million people.

You know London has a mayor, did you know that?

Two of them. You got two mayors?

Some people get heckles I get footnotes.

You're telling me London has two mayors?

One, a big, pudgy, pasty-faced, bicycle-riding slug

named Boris who shows up at the riots, "I urge you to stop." Urge?

When did that become a political tactic?

Urge! Fellas, Operation Urge isn't working, we're going to swap

to plan B, Operation Pretty Pretty Please With A Cherry On Top.

PC Johnson, go around back

and distract them with some good natured ribbing,

that'll stop them!

Then the Met Police say, "Don't incite these looters!"

They're already looting!

If you want to incite them, offer them

a warranty on the TV they're stealing, that's how you incite them.

This litany of abuse and what caused the riot? What caused the riot?

"I blame the prisons. I blame education, I blame the broken society."

Do you know who I blame? Sony!

Most of them were stealing flat-screen TVs. Sony should be

cranking out flat screen TVs to every poor bastard on the planet.

Give them a flat-screen TV, I'll take a flat-screen TV.

If I offered you a flat-screen TV wouldn't you take it ma'am?

Everyone wants a flat-screen TV.

Don't build council houses, just build four solid walls of HD TV

with a satellite dish for a roof like a HD wigwam.

You went up to a poor person and said, "Sir if I gave you

"the choice, here I could give you a room full of books so you can read.

"Give you night classes to educate yourself

"and get a job so you can have dignity.

"Or you can have a flat-screen TV?"

"I'll take the flat-screen TV, thank you very much."

"Does it get the Disney Channel?" "Yes, it does."

"Well then good, cos if I had a job I'd save up the money

"and get a flat-screen TV."

"So there I've just eliminated the middle man.

"Who's the smart guy now, pig face?"

I love London for that very reason, ladies and gentlemen.

I love doing comedy in Britain, it's that simple, cos Americans,

you'll be doing great in America, then all of a sudden in the middle

of nowhere you bring up some topic that pisses some... "Tractors? Did he just say tractors?

"Hey, pal, don't you be making fun of tractors,

"you're treading on my beliefs now."

I said tractors!

Cos Americans don't really have opinions,

what they have is bumper stickers.

Once you've committed to a bumper sticker there is no

changing your mind then.

"You want to know what I think about that?

"Just look at the back of my car and that will much sum up everything you need to know about me!"

Walking round the car park looking at backs of cars,

I didn't even know what this guy's car looks like, Jesus.

It must be this one, "Jesus is my airbag."

Yeah, that's right, Jesus is my airbag,

have you got any more questions?

What is Moses your meat thermometer? "Yeah, he is. That's not funny."

I've seen a bumper sticker in America, I've seen about six times

and it says, "I'm proud of my gay son."

That raises more questions than it answers!

You're thinking, did he win a contest or something?

What if you're gay? Yes, well be proud of it. Tell the world, whatever you want,

but when your dad is driving round with a bumper sticker,

"I'm proud of my gay son," looks like he's taking credit for the whole thing.

Taught that son of a bitch everything he needed to know about being gay!

Started him out when he was a kid, I said son go out there and make me proud.

I'm talking distance, volume, accuracy - get out there and be gay.

Son of a bitch took to it like a duck to water.

Duck of course being the son and water being cock!

Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it, just thinking about it! God bless him!

I never thought I'd be standing on the stage

and telling you that our president, our wonderful President, who the world loves,

but Americans are like, "Hey what's going on?"

"Don't know if it's going to happen for him or not."

It turns out the audacity of hope wasn't what we were looking for.

You can't run the whole four years of presidency on the audacity of hope.

Cos hope is a bit desperate, isn't it?

That's not an economic policy, it's just hope.

Hope is right below wishful thinking and just above performing

a rain dance, that's where hope is on the scale of activity.

Hope is what you want the weather to be tomorrow.

So consequently we have what you have

obviously heard of before, ladies and gentlemen, it's the Tea Party.

A bunch of bible bashing, tub-thumping, foot-marching, fundamentalist freaks.

If Satan were to hold a Tupperware party, the Tea Party candidates

would be demonstrating the products, that's what they are.

Last month, in the course of 24 hours, two Tea Party candidates

both announced God had told them to run for president.

God!

Who in 2,000 years has appointed one saviour of mankind,

within one week appointed two different dip wits

to run for President of the United States!

Anyway, Sarah Palin probably gets the most press,

because she's the best marksman.

All the Tea Party candidates like to claim

that they speak for the average Joe in America,

just the normal guy the average, struggling Joe.

First of all, Sarah, you live in Alaska, There's no-one normal in Alaska.

Alaska is full of people running from the Drug Enforcement Agency

and people that hate humans so much, they thought

Montana was too crowded and moved to Alaska to touch moose.

That's who's in Alaska. Oh, we're perfectly... You're not normal!

Sarah Palin says on a TV show, she's being interviewed -

she says, "It is perfectly normal in Alaska to

"open up your front door and see a grizzly bear."

No, it's not!

Oh, it's perfectly normal to look out the front door and see

a 12ft carnivore chowing down on the family dog like the last leg

in a bucket of KFC, nah, see that every day, these are average...

It's not normal to build your house

where the carnivore roam, for crying out loud.

And she was asked, "Well what did you do when you saw a grizzly bear?

"Oh, he was too cute, I couldn't shoot him." Wrong!

If you think that grizzly bears are cute,

wait until you meet terrorists, they'll be adorable.

Don't screw with the bears, that's my message.

Bears want to eat you, even the little ones.

Don't give your child a teddy bear, it's sending them the wrong message.

"Well Yogi and Boo Boo are cute." No! Have you ever looked at Yogi, you know what he's wearing?

A hat, a tie and a shirt, where did he get that from? I'll tell you where, a victim, that's where!

He's parading it like a serial killer trophy, reliving every

moment when he ripped them to shreds, it's not right.

So after two years, she decided she doesn't want to be

Governor of Alaska any more. "I'm tired of this."

And she goes off on a whirlwind trip around the world to study foreign policy.

She goes to Israel. As if the Jews haven't suffered enough!

Touches the Wailing Wall and then runs away.

Then she goes to New York, where they're building a mosque

and she looks at it and says that,

"Muslims need to re-fudiate this Mosque."

Even the Muslims are looking at her saying "I don't think that's

"a word in anyone's language - did you just say re-fudiate?"

"Yeah, re-fudiate, refude..." "What do you mean re-fute?"

"No refudiate the Mosque, I said it." It's not a word!

Then she said, "Well, Shakespeare made up words, why can't I?"

"Cos Shakespeare was a Renaissance genius

"and you're a dip-shit from Alaska!

"All right? You can't just make up words."

I read your biography, I want to be refundiated.

So that's the thing about comedy, you know.

I could stand here and talk about America and everyone gets it.

You go to America and everyone is like, "Britain?

"What's going on over there? I heard they have a commulicious government?

"What? Is it commulicious? It's commulicious.

"It's a commulicious... "Coalition? What is that?"

And I can't explain, cos I wasn't here during the elections.

When I left, a guy called Gordon Brown was in office

and when I came back and the country is being run by the regional manager

of several Toni & Guy salons...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

..and his rinse boy Nicky.

"Oh, rinse boy, come over here, Oh, rinse boy!"

They look like each other, they can't even argue.

"No, you're Nick Clegg, who's Clegg, did you sell a submarine?"

"Shut the window, you're letting in immigrants. What's going on?"

And you have to explain that no-one got a mandate,

no-one got a majority vote, so they took the guy with the most votes

and tacked on a little party on the side, a little Frankenstein.

And it makes perfect sense to Brits, cos you can walk up

any high street in Britain and you see this shop...

Shoe repair/key cutting.

You don't really question it, do you? What the hell was someone thinking?

What kind of a business plan was that?

That's the stupidest... No, it's perfectly...

People need shoes and they need extra keys.

It's a marriage made in Heaven, it's a coalition.

You probably go in there generally to get your shoes repaired

and you see the key guy stood there with cobwebs growing off him,

"You need any keys?"

No, I don't need keys!

I haven't even thought about keys, Why are you here?!

It's a coalition.

But once a year someone walks on and says

"I need my shoes repaired...oh I need some extra keys as well!"

You're just in the back high-fiving, "It's working! Whoo!"

I figured out the answer, ladies and gentlemen, having travelled

round Britain quite a lot, and the further north you get,

the more chicken people are consuming,

and I mean a shitload of chicken.

I fear for chickens in this country, cos people are eating chicken like nobody's business.

I'm not even sure it's chicken.

I mean, you know, you go round London

and if you don't get a KFC franchise

they get any other state and just stick it up on a sign as if,

"That's close enough, Tennessee, I'll take it."

I walk into Kansas Fried Chicken and all I said was, "Sir, you have

"captured the great plain spirit in this chicken. How have you done it?

"This great mid-west... How do you do it, Ahmed? How do you?

"I can taste Eisenhower in your chicken." Turfed me right out.

No sense of humour, these chicken restaurant owners.

So I was up north doing a show and it was a Sunday night,

nowhere to eat. Nowhere. So the entire crowd leave and then

I run into them all at a place called Kenturkey Fried Chicken.

They haven't even tried there! It just confuses you all even more.

Kenturkey? Is it Kentuckey mis-spelled?

Or is it Turkey made by Ken?! Kluckey, Klurkey?

Kluckey! There was a line around! I don't know what they're putting

in the chicken. Holy shit, a queue around the block

waiting for Kenturkey Fried... Two bouncers in suits.

Bouncers at a chicken takeaway restaurant?!

What kind of people are they turning away?

"Sir, you do not meet the criteria to enter this establishment and eat your dinner out of a bucket.

"Now move along, go down the street where they drop it from the third floor, go on."

So, um, to sum it up, ladies and gentlemen, because people

always ask me, "Rich, is it really better in Britain for comedy?'

and I think it is, yeah, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass,

I'm just telling you it's better. It's a better place, because you do,

you have a sense of humour, that's why you came out tonight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Oh, he's buttering us up for the kill!

No, I'm serious, cos listen, in America, we don't have

this broken society, you know, we don't have that yet.

That came out completely wrong, didn't it? What ya telling us now?

I'm just quoting something in the newspaper.

Broken society, I don't even know what that means.

Is society broken, fella? Is your society broken?

A little bit.

A little bit. Well, that's not broken that's just damaged, isn't it?

-Where you from?

-Twickenham.

Twickenham. Oh, well no more questions, Your Honour.

You get back to your rugby. What do you do in Twickenham?

-I'm a teacher.

-A teacher?

See this is a man who's not interested in broken society.

He's interested in making children's futures better. God bless you. That's so much better than what I do.

I just tell jokes, don't I? What do you learn from that?

Nothing! The world is evil, I can't fix it.

I'm not a faith healer, am I?

The thing I've learnt from watching idiots like Gaddafi,

and I say idiot.

The man is a dictator and he only made himself Colonel, what does that tell you?

In America, you can put chicken in a bucket, and you're a colonel!

-But what I tell you what I've learnt, fella - what's your name?

-Peter.

Peter, I have learnt from watching these tyrants that maybe

the term human shield is not being used to its best advantage.

It's usually used in a negative light.

"Oh, he's going to take human shields". I found as a comedian,

quite often when you hit these situations where people have

been here for a while, you're about to hit a wall, they're hot,

tired, a little restless -

that's when the human shield comes in to play.

You understand what I mean, Peter?

I'm going to tell you what I mean. Get over here. Get over here, Peter.

You don't have a choice, Peter.

CHEERING

You are my human shield, friend, march right up here.

There are some people here who want to hurt me.

I'm going to be right behind you the whole time. Turn this way, so I can...

Broader target. Here you go, Peter. Do you have a sweetheart, Peter?

"Yeah, my girlfriend."

Could you say that with a bit more world weariness?

All right, Peter, you take the mike. I just want you to read what I prepared for you.

Say it right and then no-one gets hurt, you understand what I'm saying?

Pretend your girlfriend's not here and you're having to phone home.

Take the mike, watch the technique.

Hello, honey. No, everything's fine,

it's just that I'm going to be a little late getting home.

Why?

Well, I've run into a little situation here at the Apollo.

Rich Hall? Yes, he is a very funny man.

Well, he is currently using me as a human shield.

Isn't that wild?

Who would ever thought...your name... would find myself here on stage?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You should have prepared it a bit better

-and then it would have said Peter there already!

-All right!

I, Peter, find myself on stage here as Rich Hall's hostage,

leading the audience in a rousing sing-a-long.

Who doesn't love the late John Denver sing-a-long, everyone?

# Almost heaven

CHEERING DROWNS HIM OUT

# West Virginia

# Blue Ridge mountains

# Shenandoah River

# Life is older

# Older than the trees

# Younger than the mountains

# Blowing like the breeze

# Country roads

# Take me home

# Sing, you bastards... #

LAUGHING AND SINGING ALONG

# To the place I belong

# West Virginia

# Mountain momma

# Take me home Country roads. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Goodnight, everybody.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Let's hear it for Peter the hostage, ladies and gentlemen!

Ladies and gentlemen, you're in for a real treat tonight.

We have two, TWO fantastic performers on the show.

Please, ladies and gentlemen, you are about to enjoy yourself like you've never enjoyed yourselves before.

Please welcome Mr Mark Watson!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello.

Yeah. I... Yeeeeah!

CHEERING

It's very generous of you,

but deep down we all know it's impossible to follow Peter.

There are times in your career when you see the person before you

and you think there is nothing I can do here. Singing Country Roads

as movingly and with as little respect for the original as that.

And I'm just backstage, waiting to come on, thinking,

it will be fine, I'll do my best. I'm a comedian, I'm not

the greatest comedian in the world, but by God I will give it a good go.

The only thing I would be worried about

is if I had to follow an avant garde musical genius.

I mean, what can you do?

I'm going to be periodically just drinking water,

very important to hydrate yourself.

I tend to gabble on and you don't allow yourself time to...

The reason that I don't usually have a bottle of water on stage

is cos you get so easily distracted by the unbelievable crap

that they write on these bottles. If you look at one of these labels, it's unbelievable.

The water you are holding has been naturally filtered

through ancient rock for 5,000 years.

Ancient rock as opposed to these modern rocks that you find these days.

This is a stunning rock formation, yeah, they put it up in the '60s.

Then there's always a little bit about how important water is.

You only find these statistics on bottles of water, conveniently.

Did you know that your body is 80% water?

So it's very important to drink as much water as you can.

As much water as you can. If they had their way I would be drinking water solidly, basically.

It improves brain function. I think this is probably bollocks, don't you?

Your body is 80% water, you're four fifths water,

I find that a bit suspect really. Four fifths of you is water!

If that's true we're basically paddling pools with eyes. I find that a bit hard to swallow.

If it's true, if I'm 80% water why am I buying these expensively branded bottles of water?

Why can't I just suck myself?

Anyway! Erm, I'm sorry.

I didn't really want to see that thought through,

as I was aware it was obviously going in a coarse direction.

Sometimes you start saying something and that's it, it's all over. I've had quite a nice day today.

There's this business of course, there's the old standing in front

of 3,000 people, but asides from that it's been a relaxing enough day.

I got a little bit of an ego boost on the way here.

I got recognised by a person just outside Hammersmith Station. Doesn't often happen to me.

I'm at the sort stage of my career when people vaguely recognise me,

but they don't really know who I am,

so I get into a lot of awkward conversations with people.

People quite often go, "Well, it's that, oh, erm..."

I had a bloke that shouted at me, real proper shouting as well.

I had never seen him before and he was completely naked this man,

and we were in the gym

and I should have probably started the story with that!

But still, there's no need to be naked.

There are partitions, there are proper cubicles, he didn't have to be naked.

This guy came up to me absolutely naked,

as naked as you like, this guy, in the changing room situation,

more naked than I would have liked, really.

Really hairy, he was one of those people that are

so hairy you think, I'm not sure how that came about.

Shouting across this quite crowded changing room,

"Mate, oi mate, mate", just over again and I was trying to

avoid contact with him cos I didn't feel that we were mates, really.

From my point of view, he was just a naked stranger

and that's not the same as a mate and that's quite an important distinction to be drawn there!

I might go to the pub with a mate - I'd rarely go with a naked stranger.

Not never, never say never, but rarely, I think.

But in the end, the guy shouted, "Mate, mate"

until I couldn't ignore him any more

so I had to sort of look up and acknowledge him. Oh, hello.

The guy said, "Mate!" and I was waiting for a massive revelation, and he said,

"I saw you on Mock The Week," and that was it! What am I meant to say?

Oh, I saw you on awkward conversations with our cocks out, I think.

I don't know if you saw that - it was on Dave.

That happens to me fairly often.

I sort of... I mean, you seem a very nice, easily pleased audience.

I never take an audience's good will for granted, cos you don't know,

you don't know what an audience is going to be like, and this goes across the board, really.

Not just in comedy. I was in the North last year, I was touring.

I had a whole day to kill, and kill was the phrase, really,

and it was fine, a perfectly nice place,

but I had nothing to do, really, and it was a bleak, fading seaside resort,

it was one of those afternoons. So I went to a Punch and Judy show. Most people there had a kid,

I didn't have a kid, didn't let it put me off.

We were waiting for this, this girl was trying to warm up the audience

the way you do in these situations and you've all seen Punch and Judy,

she was saying, "Mr Punch is very nervous - he needs a big cheer,"

so we were all going, "Come on!" Yeah, exactly.

You don't necessarily have to do everything I mention.

So we all got our tits out. Don't do that.

It's a bit of fun, that.

I don't even really want that to happen, I think it would be embarrassing.

So we were cheering Mr Punch, "Come on, come on!"

And then the woman said, "Mr Punch is very nervous,

"he needs a bigger cheer than that," so again, "Come on, come on!"

By now, we were really shouting. A third time she said,

"Mr Punch didn't quite hear you," which had to be bullshit,

he was just in the bag there, there was no way he could not have heard it.

But again, we were all really game, going, "Come on, come on!"

So by now, we were shouting as much as we could,

and that's where she should have brought Mr Punch on,

that's three times, but she pushed her luck this lady,

she went for a fourth one,

"Oh, Mr Punch still isn't sure you want to see him."

At this point, this massive great big bloke next to me

with two small kids went,

"Bloody hell, Punch, I'm freezing me cock off here!"

His six-year-old kid just nodded proudly next to him.

"Well done, Dad, you've said what we were all thinking."

The important lesson to be drawn from that, really,

is you shouldn't take the public's good will for granted.

That's why this is quite a nerve-wracking job.

A lot of people say, "I could never do that,

"stand-up comedy, that would be my worst nightmare."

You hear this quite a lot if you're a comedian,

"Oh, that'd be my worst nightmare."

In a way, it just shows you how limited people's nightmares must be.

This is just talking.

You must have something worse in the bowels of your subconscious.

I had a nightmare,

I was having the shit kicked out of me by Nelson Mandela.

Proper stuff. Fingers in my eyes, knee in the balls,

surprisingly athletic for an 80-year-old man.

Pulling my hair, all the dirty tricks.

You want to punch him back - you can't, it's Mandela,

you'd be a racist. That's a nightmare.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

This is the world we live in,

it's an aggressive, bloody world, isn't it?

I find that I'm a relatively simple person,

I don't want much out of life,

but even the simplest things are hard to accomplish.

For example, I went out recently on a shopping expedition

to buy one carrot.

That was all I wanted, a single carrot, my wife was cooking...

She wasn't just cooking that,

she had a recipe of which that was a component.

She wasn't just going to cook the carrot, "There you are," like an ice lolly.

She was being more ambitious and...

she tends to do most of the cooking.

I'm aware that some people are thinking,

"I doubt he's got a wife." I bloody have!

There's no time to prove it,

but just take my word for it. I have a... I own a woman.

She...

You can't say that these days, can you?

Anyway...to get onto more politically-correct ground,

my wife does all the cooking.

Well, it's actually true. I pretty much let my wife cook,

purely because it's a sensible distribution of skills.

My wife is a good cook, and I'm very poor at it,

so my wife tends to do the cooking.

I think it's quite an enlightened attitude. I think, these days,

cooking tends to be quite a testosterone-dominated field.

It's all your Gordon Ramsay,

Marco Pierre... All these people, Jamie Oliver.

It's all men. I think someone should be modern enough to say,

"Let's get women cooking. Let's be 21st century about this,

"they've got the same rights as we have in the kitchen."

So my wife sent me out to... A dangerous gag, that.

No, I wouldn't clap that.

MUTED APPLAUSE

Sort of more clever than funny, really.

So my wife was cooking, and I'm happy with my role

which is basically, you know, foraging.

But I went to buy this one... I say foraging...

Normally, if you go to Tesco, you will lay your hands on a carrot.

There's no real jeopardy there.

Still, I like to pick it up and go, "Got it!"

But, actually, this is my point,

it was surprisingly hard to buy a bloody carrot.

Right, for a start, I took it to the till,

this is all I was buying, one carrot.

First of all, this lady tried to put it in a bag for me,

and I always try to not take a bag if I don't need one,

for environmental reasons.

But they're furious. You'll have tried doing this -

if you say, "I don't need a bag,"

they look at you like, "How dare you?!"

This woman, she said, "What you going to do?"

And I said, "Well, I don't want to appear cocky here,

"but I've got two hands,

"there's only one carrot - I think I will nail this.

"I'm almost certain I'll get this home, by hook or by crook."

Cos what am I going to do - walk around with one carrot in a bag?

"I've got my carrot in a bag."

"How's your day?"

"Yeah, great, just walking with my carrot in its bag.

"I've got a piece of celery at home in a little bit of Tupperware."

I don't want to make out I'm someone with a repertoire of vegetables that I walk... Anyway...

Then there's a receipt -

she insisted in printing out a bloody receipt,

which meant the till roll had to be changed.

Why do you need a receipt for this transaction?!

All I'm buying is a single carrot - why would you ever need a receipt?!

You're not going to bite into it and think, "Hang on, this is a pear."

Right, it's basically, buying a carrot can't go that badly wrong.

So by now, I'm really impatient, I was frothing with impatience,

I wanted to get home, see my wife, whether she exists or not.

Finally, just when I thought I had finally secured this carrot,

as I was walking out, this girl said, "Excuse me, sorry,

"before you go," so now I have to listen to this. I said, "Yes?"

She said, "Did you want to pre-order the Harry Potter DVD?"

Now, what part of my actions so far would give you that impression?

I was trying to be polite. I said, "Sorry?"

She said... By now, SHE'S impatient, like I'm some sort of idiot.

"Did you want to pre-order the Harry Potter DVD?"

I mean, no, not really, my aim was to buy a carrot,

and I would say I've achieved that modest aim.

I mean, if I wanted to buy a Harry Potter DVD,

what I would probably do is go to somewhere like HMV,

I would go to a place where you can buy DVDs, I would pre-order it,

when the time came, I would collect it,

I'd take it home, I'd watch it.

I wouldn't approach this transaction by going to a supermarket,

seizing a carrot from the fruit and veg bit,

and then standing there at the checkout thinking,

"She knows what I really want here.

"She'll gather my true intentions.

"She knows that this carrot is a metaphor for an orange wand."

Is this what supermarket shopping is meant to be,

some sort of guessing game? "I'd like ten Lucky Strikes, please."

"Shrek 2? I'll just see if we've got it in."

But thanks very much. You've been lovely. I'm Mark Watson. See you again! Bye! Thank you!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Mark Watson!

Mark Watson, ladies and gentlemen!

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for one more comedian?

CHEERING

And I mean...absolutely fantastic, one of my favourite performers,

ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome

Andrew...Maxwell!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Heeeeey!

(CHUCKLES)

Good evening, the Apollo!

CHEERING

-How you feeling - OK?

-ALL:

-Yeah.

God, it's hot in this country, isn't it?

It's hot, are you feeling hot?

-ALL:

-Yes.

-Ah, it's hot!

God, it's hot.

Compared to Ireland,

it's very, very hot.

Has anybody here ever experienced an Irish summer?

CHEERING

Oh, my God, what an August we can offer the world, people.

20 degrees, every day!

Granted it's not a great tourism slogan.

"Come to Ireland -

"it's room temperature!"

Do we have any English people here?

CHEERING

Welcome, English people. I want you to know,

on behalf of all the Irish people in the room

and all the Irish people watching this at home,

I want you to know you're totally forgiven.

You're forgiven, English people. We no longer hate you.

It's in the past, it's over,

you're forgiven,

we don't hate you any more.

We can't afford to hate you.

Who knew hatred was a luxury item?

It's a weird place, Ireland, let me tell you.

In Ireland, sometimes you don't even have to write jokes...

it's just in the newspaper.

Last year, an orang-utan escaped from Dublin Zoo,

and in the newspaper - and I quote - his zookeeper said,

"We believe he was planning it for years."

They reverse-engineered his crime

and they found out, over the last 15 years,

he'd been cultivating a tree to grow against the wall of his enclosure.

What kind of monkey Shawshank Redemption is that?

"Bobo wasn't like the other monkeys."

-Any Muslim people here?

-RIPPLE OF CHEERS

I was just wondering, because this is the thing that I've been getting recently,

when I've been asking, "Is there any Muslims in?"

I'm getting pissed-up geezers saying yes.

I did a gig in Bethnal Green about a year ago.

I went, "Is there any Muslims in?"

This dude stands up, shaved head, fat neck,

Ben Sherman, he was the most unlikely Muslim in the world.

This man looked like he was entirely made of sausage.

He stands up in the middle of the audience.

I went, "Is there any Muslims in?"

He stands up, lifts up his pint of Stella and just went, "Yeeeah!"

"What? You're Muslim?!" He went, "Yeah, why not?!"

Fair enough, but I don't think that's how you join.

I thought, there and then, maybe that is the solution

to all this Islamic panic in the British media!

An all-Cockney mosque!

Now, there's a mosque the Daily Mail would find hard to complain about being built.

Oh, you can see it now, can't you?

The call to prayer from the top of the geezer minaret

in the Cockney mosque.

Oi, oiiiiiiiiiiiii...!

Who wants some?!

Every Friday evening at the Cockney mosque,

neat rows of white Reebok Classics down the street.

Have we got any Lebanese women here?

-CHEER

-One?

Welcome.

Beautiful, you see. Beautiful Apollo,

that's just the history of the Lebanon.

It's a small country that's been invaded over and over again,

and everybody's gone in there and had sex with their women.

And that's how you get good-looking women, people.

It's a little bit distasteful, but that's genetics for you.

I don't know whether anybody here

has ever been to the Shetland Islands.

They have not been invaded...

..anywhere near enough!

Vikings must have rode up the beach there and gone,

"Hey-oh, ho-oh. Oh?!"

"OK, gather round, everybody...

"it's just pillage."

I think, probably the most inspiring thing of the year

has definitely been the Arab Spring.

It's been incredible.

I mean, it's gotten better in some places than others.

The worst thing for me is that Tony Blair's back on TV.

Oh, I really don't like that sun-kissed hustler.

Do you know he's brought out an autobiography?

How bad taste is that?

We're still stuck in the two wars that he started,

so that he could curry favour

with the American industrial military complex,

so he could spend the rest of his sunny life

on golf courses in Florida.

Yeah, there we are, he's brought out an autobiography,

"Tony Blair, My Journey, you know, just in case people want to see it

"from Tony's perspective."

APPLAUSE

Not really...not really, Tone.

"What other bad-taste bits of merchandise

"have you got up your sleeve there, Tony?

"A fragrance?!"

"Tony Blair, Denial."

You never know what will offend people.

I hope I haven't offended anybody.

You don't know!

You can talk about whatever you want on stage, nobody gives a toss.

If you talk about cats...

don't talk about cats on TV.

You know, even if it's a funny thing about cats.

Like cat in the bin - remember that?

There was a week of cat in the bin!

A week of a cat going into a bin!

You remember the first time you saw that horrific, horrific footage...

of the cat go into the bin.

I know. Live it with me, brothers and sisters.

Is it just me or was your first reaction,

why...

is Susan Boyle...

putting a cat in a bin?!

What the hell is going on?

Genuinely, my first reaction,

when I first saw the cat go in the bin...

I've turned into such a environmental idiot

as I've got older.

Genuinely, my first reaction when I saw the cat go into the bin was,

"Oh, God, no! Wrong bin!"

"A cat is 100% recyclable!"

You never know, man. I love the news and the tabloids.

I love the tabloids, man, but aren't they creepy?

Oh, you better believe they are.

Here's a classic example. The Middletons, Kate and Pippa...

They must have been raised in pretty much the same upbringing, right?

They've got to be pretty similar women?

Not in the tabloids, they're not. I feel sorry for Pippa, do you?

Cos all the filth is on her, isn't it?

Cos the tabloids can't say anything untoward about Kate,

not the future Queen of England.

"Oh, here she comes. Lovely, lovely Kate.

"Oh, lovely, lovely Kate, here she comes,

"Duchess of Cambridge, future Queen of England.

"Here she is. Awwwww...

"Handing out coins to the immigrant children, awwwwww."

(COCKNEY ACCENT) "Look at filthy Pippa!

"Oh, you filthy cow!

"Who brings an arse to a wedding?!"

"Awwwww...lovely, lovely Kate,

"awwwww... Healing the poor with her eyes, awwwwww."

(COCKNEY ACCENT) "Look at filthy Pippa!

"Down the docks with a bell - ding-ding!

"Come and get it, boys, come on!"

That's all I'm saying, people. I hope I haven't offended anyone.

You just don't know when you're a comedian.

I'll give you an example of this.

I did a gig for the biscuit industry.

That's right, people, I work for the biscuit industry.

It was terrifying, it was 50 biscuit businessmen

and I was dreading it, man.

Not like this, I knew you were going to be good.

It turns out they were great, they were fantastic.

And that's why I said it. I only said it because they were good!

I didn't walk straight on and say it.

At the end of the gig, I said "Listen, you've been fantastic."

They were like, "More!" and I'm like, "No, I can't."

I've got to go and do another gig,

but before I go, can I ask you something?

They were like, "Yeaaah!" Anything? "Yeaaaah!"

It's about biscuits.

"Yeaaaah!"

This is all I managed to say

before the whole crap-house went up in flames.

Wagon Wheels!

THEY'RE THE SAME SIZE

AS THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEEEEEN!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

But remember when we were kids -

YOUR HANDS WERE SMALLER!

People, you've been an absolute delight.

Thank you, Apollo! Good night!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Andrew Maxwell, ladies and gentlemen!

Andrew Maxwell!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming out tonight!

We hope you've had a wonderful night.

One more hand, please for Mr Andrew Maxwell and Mark Watson!

Thanks for coming, good night!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd