Episode 4 Room 101

Hello, I'm Frank Skinner, and welcome to Room 101,

the show where three guests compete

to cast their biggest gripes deep into the gloomy vault.

They'll have to argue their case well,

because in each round only one item can be chosen.

The final decision is mine.

Let's meet this week's guests.

Joining me tonight are I predict a riot, Joe Lycett.

Oh, my God, I can't believe it's Zoe Lyons,

and every day I love you less and less, Ricky Wilson.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Let's get ready to grumble!

Oh, lovely.

OK. So, what's upsetting Ricky?

It's new towels, Frank.

New towels, why?

Well, in my line of work I use a lot of new towels.

I don't know why.

I think people try and impress you with new towels.

And there's nothing that impresses me less than a new towel, Frank.

The thing about new towels is,

you have to wash a towel before it's usable.

Now, who makes something and then the person who's purchased it

has to put it through a process,

a manufacturing process, if you will,

in order for it to do the use it's supposed to do?

Cos a new towel, Frank, doesn't absorb anything.

Have you experienced this, or is it just me?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

-No, you're absolutely right.

-And a new towel, Frank, leaves fluff everywhere,

all over your body, and you have to have another shower

while you're washing a towel,

to then get the fluff off you.

Hang on, though. If you put new towels into Room 101,

then that means all towels go in,

cos you can't have an old towel without it having been new

at one stage.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Well...

That's an interesting thought process there you've got.

I think the current old towels will still remain,

-cos I won't put them in.

-No.

Oh, I see. So we've got to use the towels

that reside in the world presently?

Yes. We've got to use them forever.

And necessity is the mother of invention.

And by the time all those towels have worn out

they'll be a new way of drying.

-Global warming?

-Yes!

Have you ever stayed...? You must stay in some lovely hotels,

I guess you all do. Have you ever stayed in those places

where they fold the towels into a...

-Yes!

-..shape for you?

-Yeah.

I checked into a hotel in Cardiff

and this was on my bed when I got in.

I've had an elephant.

Someone had gone to the trouble...

Are we sure it's an elephant?

No, that's my pants.

We have another one. This is a squid.

-I don't think you should be allowed to add eyes.

-No.

Is it a squid or the leader of the Ku Klux Klan?

Maybe it's just his hat.

He just arrived and thought,

"I'll put me hat there, go and have a quick shower."

I mean, he could have made a hole in the bed

and it's actually him just ready to pop out.

Well, that's obviously his jacket underneath.

The head of the Ku Klux Klan after he's been run over!

There aren't many people on earth you can laugh about being run over,

but the Ku Klux Klan, fine.

This one I am particularly interested in.

Now, I don't want to alarm anyone,

but if I was doing a gig and I got back to my hotel,

say, 1.30 in the morning, and that was on the bed,

I don't know if I'd be responsible for my actions.

By the way, why do tea towels,

why are they made out of different stuff from human being towels?

Because we're made of different stuff than plates.

APPLAUSE

Oh, yeah. You're right.

Do you do...? Women don't do this, I guess,

but you know that thing when you sort of wear a towel as a sarong,

you sort of tie it round your waist.

-Women have it up here, don't they, for obvious reasons.

-Yeah.

It depends how old you are, Frank!

It can drop quite considerably.

-Interesting point!

-That'll do, just tuck them in.

-In the end, one small tea towel would cover the whole thing.

-Yeah.

A couple of oven gloves.

Quite happily open the door to the postman like that.

Oh, is that for me?

Just put the letters under there.

I'll read those later.

What about...? Have you seen these?

ZOE GASPS

These are towel gloves.

And so you get... You come out of the shower, and then...

And Frank's there!

And then you just do...

It's great, it's like being frisked by a Muppet.

It's a good idea, though, don't you think?

Really?

Please host the rest of the show with those on.

If people put it on, though, and don't know what's going on,

they'll be startled.

Let me show you...

This is a towel which is the cover of Playboy.

And so the idea is you can have it on the beach,

and you can lie on it and it makes it

like you're on the cover of Playboy.

Oh!

I bought one, and...

see what you think of this.

Just bear with me. Talk amongst yourselves, it's fine.

I'm just glad you're here.

It'll all be revealed in a minute.

This is like someone's dad trying to make them have a good time.

It's almost exactly that.

Oh, great.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That's looks pretty good.

I genuinely think this is a great idea.

I'm getting one of those. Do they do them in Horse And Hound?

Puzzler.

OK, so what is upsetting Joe Lycett?

People that show me YouTube videos.

Like, people showing me any video, ever.

It doesn't have to be YouTube.

Just somebody showing me a video that they think is funny.

And 99,000 times

out of 99,000, it's not.

I have a friend who does this in the pub a lot,

and will insist that I put headphones in

in order to watch the video.

And will do the face of expectation, that,

"Oh, you're going to find this so funny."

Which is...

And then it's a video of a cat walking.

It's a cat, that's how they walk, they've got legs.

So what I've started doing with her,

because if it's over 30 seconds, my heart sinks as well.

What I've started doing now is I will show her videos,

but I'll just get, like, the Lord Of The Rings up on Netflix.

Just like, "Enjoy that."

Can I say, first of all, I generally agree with you.

But occasionally I will have something on my phone

that I am so desperate to share,

even though I think it's wrong.

"Room 101, look, I was so good on it," like that.

I'll give you an example.

I met Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut.

Oh, you didn't show him a cat video?

No, I didn't. And he's in his 80s now,

and he's had quite a full-on face-lift.

And I had my picture took,

as you would with Buzz Aldrin,

but because of the face-lift I thought it looks like

a picture of me on tour doing a ventriloquist act

with a Buzz Aldrin puppet.

Here it is.

LAUGHER AND APPLAUSE

So, where have you been, Buzz?

I've been to the moon.

You can see why, if you're in a pub, you really want to show people that.

But that's fine. That's a picture and a lovely story.

If you had a three-minute video of you meeting Buzz Aldrin,

I'm not interested.

But people used to do other stuff in pubs before this.

You know, by that stage in the evening we'd be congaing.

We congaed, like, most nights.

I've been on congas where we had to get the bus back

to where we started.

People used to do pub games and stuff like that.

Do you remember that thing with the beer mats

where you used to put them on the side of the...?

Can he do it? Can he still do it?

-Come on!

-Oh!

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

What about the coins?

The coins. Do you remember the coins on the elbow?

I'm finding you so hot right now.

Now, if you miss this, you can blind people.

I'm going to stand for this, OK?

So you put a pile of coins...

Oh, God.

Oh, my goodness.

-Oh!

-Come on! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I mean, I know it's an old cliche,

but I think we did make our own entertainment in them days

rather than just saying, "Look at that."

Yeah. I mean, phones have been around pretty much all of

my drinking, pub years,

so it's been a growing thing.

And I may as well just get drunk in the bath

with my phone on YouTube and not have to deal with other people.

Maybe I want to put people in Room 101, actually.

I hate if you're on a train, though, or something,

and somebody's clearly watching a video on their phone on a train

or a public space, and it's got full volume on it.

And they seem to be completely oblivious to the amount of

irritant that it's causing to people around them.

This happened to me the other day,

and somebody was playing music really loudly on their phone

on a train and I just did that beautifully British thing

of just going, "That's really annoying.

"I'm going to say something."

And then I didn't, I just meerkated them.

And then I just sat back down again,

and that was all I did.

You should've filmed it, put it online,

and then gone over and said, "Have you seen this?"

OK, so what's upsetting Zoe Lyons?

It's escalators, Frank.

-What? Why?

-I don't like them.

They frighten me. They really frighten me.

They're basically like, very, very aggressive stairs.

If you've ever stopped to look at an escalator,

it's basically stairs with teeth.

Good point.

And I have never mounted,

nor dismounted an escalator confidently.

I always approach it with a slight air of trepidation,

because I'm not... I've got really bad balance,

so I've never been able to just sort of glide onto one quite happily

and then just ride up the escalator, and then glide off the other end.

There's always a moment of...

And then I'm not relaxed through the whole journey.

And then there's a...

-when I get off at the other end.

-Yes.

And the other thing I hate is when,

cos I do need to hold on to the moving handle as well,

and quite often it moves at a different pace...

LAUGHTER

..to the rest of your torso, so you're...

-Yes.

-It's a constant adjustment.

And I think it...

I'm working in London a lot, and if you're working in London,

the escalators are incredibly territorial in the capital.

They really, really are.

And there's a code of conduct on the escalators in London,

you stand on the left, you walk on the right. And...

You stand on the right.

Oh, God, do you!

BOOING

That's why you've been upsetting people.

-You stand on the... No, what side do you stand on?

-Stand on the right.

Stand on the right, don't you? Yes. Yes!

That's why I've got so many enemies.

I don't mind a travelator.

I love a travelator.

Well, I've got a tweet of yours, actually,

which refers to a travelator.

Yep.

That kind of hard-hitting truth will change the world, my friends.

That tweet was sent at 3am.

-Yeah.

-Everything all right at home?

I do know what you mean,

because when people stop on it

they're actually going slower than a walk,

-which isn't the point of it. The point of it is to speed you up.

-No, it is though.

I so disagree with this.

People have worked in laboratories and engineering...

booths to make these things,

and the idea is that they move us without us doing anything.

So don't get on and start helping it,

let it do its job.

I do not ever, ever walk,

never on an escalator, travelator.

-Never.

-You've got to.

-No!

-Cos just for that moment you feel like a,

I was going to say pedigree horse.

But do you know what I mean? You're like, this is...

Like if you were a minor superhero.

But then you have that moment of coming off

-where it's like running down a hill.

-Yeah.

I like the idea of a minor superhero's power being,

"I can go slightly quicker."

OK. I love escalators.

I don't think you're using them properly.

You stand on them and then you wait.

That's the simple thing.

And I think, because very, very occasionally,

you get an interesting YouTube video.

I mean, one in a million,

but, even so, you never get a good new towel in a million.

They're impossible.

So I am going to put new towels into Room 101.

APPLAUSE

CHEERING

OK. So what's upsetting Ricky Wilson?

-It's bin day.

-Oh!

Now, it might seem innocuous,

but if I get bin day wrong in any capacity

it really throws me out of whack for the rest of the week.

There's different coloured bags,

there's the fact that in your neighbourhood

you can become a social pariah for getting something wrong with that.

It's getting harder and harder to keep up with the changes,

and I'm a relatively young man, Frank.

-I know.

-And the other day I was looking out my window,

and there's a little paparazzi guy that likes to hang around at the end

of my street. And I put the bins out and I went upstairs,

I looked out of the window, and he ran across the road

and he took a bag out and ran away.

AUDIENCE GASPS

And then I told this to a DJ and I said, "This guy..."

-And he goes, "Yeah, they probably just want to find out if you're getting high."

-Wow.

I'm not getting high,

but I was so embarrassed.

I thought he's just going to find out that I don't recycle properly!

-Which, in this day and age...

-Is worse than getting high.

-..is worse.

I live with my parents,

and I don't know anything of what you've just talked about.

It's basically, along with not looking forward to post,

I think it's a mark of adulthood.

Hang on. There's a day, like Christmas Day?

More than one day a year, Joe,

otherwise it would build up quite considerably.

Like the Winter of Discontent all the time.

-Once a week, isn't it?

-OK, so it's the day that it's emptied,

rather than a celebration of the concept of bins.

-It's not like Thanksgiving.

-Right.

It's the day they empty the bins.

Oh, bin day!

In our road they take everything on a Tuesday.

-Everything?

-I mean, they don't always return it.

I get back from work,

the bin men have left my bin so far from my front gate

they've become the responsibility of another local council.

I've seen urban foxes going, "I've completely lost my bearings.

"Where's the bins?"

We don't have a bin day where I am.

-What?

-I know. But we've got communal bins in the street where I live,

because it's a lot of flats.

-Do you live in prison?

-I live in prison.

It all goes down a chute. We get showered on a Monday,

bins get cleaned out on a Tuesday.

No, every so often along the street you'll have a big communal bin,

and that's where you put your rubbish.

Is your bin a big one with, like, a hole in the front?

-A hole in the front.

-I know this because on your Twitter,

you do a series of things left by the bins.

-Oh, I love these.

-Yeah, I'm obsessed with things that people leave by bins.

This is from Zoe's Twitter account.

And I've found that like that. I didn't set it up.

Somebody had put that by a bin.

An entire dining room set.

-It looks like the bin has convened a meeting.

-Yes!

Thank you for coming.

I think we need to talk about the recycling in this area.

Bin day will be changing to Thursday from now on.

And then this one, there's something tragic about this one.

Cos that used to be one of those milk fridges that...

HE IMITATES FRIDGE HUMMING

It lit up, people looked to it for nourishment.

And now it looks like it's being sick.

I took that picture in Scotland, so maybe it was being sick.

Oh, so you do it wherever you are?

You don't just do it in your own...

Yeah. No, all around the country you can find...

It's a weird hobby, but, you know,

it keeps me occupied.

I like it. I think you'll grow into bin day.

Cos I didn't used to like it.

As I've got older,

it's probably one of the main social events of my week.

Whenever I take the bins out, I'm out there 20 minutes talking to neighbours and...

I remember I found myself with an elbow on the wheelie bin

and this hand, sort of, left free for high-fiving.

The only time I wear Crocs is when I put the bins out.

AUDIENCE GROANS

Can you actually physically feel yourself

go down in someone's estimation?

Surely the fact I put my own bins out is recommendation enough?

OK, so what's upsetting Zoe?

It's running out of loo roll.

Do you want to elaborate?

Well, this is a double-fold horror,

or two-ply, if you will.

The first horror of running out of loo roll is in your own home when,

I think running out of loo roll as an adult

just makes you feel like you are failing so badly as a human being.

It is such a basic need.

And whenever I do run out of loo roll at home I always think

there are people who've invented the internet,

they've put people on the moon,

they've developed the Hadron Collider,

and now I can't even wipe my bottom!

I am failing as a human being.

I think, worse than that, though,

is running out of loo roll

or discovering there's no loo roll in a public loo,

if you're out and about.

Because there's that moment of realisation, isn't there?

Just that moment where you're just having a little you time

or whatever, and then the old...

And then you do the most exaggerated Zumba movements

you'll ever do, just in the disbelief.

"It's got to be somewhere. It's got to be on a pipe somewhere.

"It's got to be! It's got to be!"

As a woman, it's a bit easier probably if you're in a cubicle

and there's other women beside you, you can always do that thing,

I'm sure you've all done it.

"Have you got any loo roll? Have you got any loo roll?"

And somebody's going, "Yeah, I've got some loo roll, hun. I'll pass you some through."

And then they pass you one sheet, and you're like,

"What you think I am, a dormouse?"

And then there's the horrible, sort of, moment where you have to go,

-GRUFF VOICE:

-"I'm going to need more than that, love."

Do you remember the tracing paper toilet paper

you used to have at school?

-Oh, yes.

-Like a new towel.

Yes, like a new towel! How did they think that was ever going to work?

-The most popular make was a thing called Izal.

-Yes. Yeah.

Cos my dad was a school caretaker,

so we had about 400 rolls in our house.

But for us it was an improvement.

Honestly, for the first 12, 13 years of my life,

we used newspaper.

That's what we had in our toilet.

So we were low on hygiene, but high on current affairs.

I was in a toilet once

and realised there was no toilet paper,

and I ended up using a KFC lemon-scented wet wipe.

You had to go to KFC?

No, I had one with me.

And... I don't know,

it just made the whole experience a bit more...

zingy.

I had one of the worst experiences of my entire life

as a result of there being toilet paper.

Because I had a cold a couple of years ago

where I was blowing my nose, like, constantly,

it was one of those that was streaming.

And I got used to, basically, excusing myself from whenever I was,

going to the toilet, blowing my nose in the toilet,

and then trying to get back on with my day.

And I was in a restaurant, and I got there,

said hello to everybody,

and then went to blow my nose in the toilet,

and also use the toilet.

And on the toilet seat was urine

from the previous person who had been there,

so I got some toilet roll out to wipe up the urine,

but because I was unwell and not really thinking clearly...

AUDIENCE SHOUTS No!

And I realised as I'd done it

what I'd done...

..and I just left the restaurant.

I couldn't cope with it.

That's really stuck with me.

Well, it would.

Next question.

OK, so what's upsetting Joe?

The bartender at my local pub.

Specifically The Actress and Bishop in Birmingham.

I don't know if you're familiar, Frank,

with the beer pumps that have sort of frosting on them.

I don't go in pubs much now.

The whole thing is...

-The whole pump has got, like, a layer of ice on it.

-OK.

And I've since discovered that it is just for marketing purposes,

-it doesn't actually affect the temperature of the beer.

-OK.

I'm quite hot-blooded.

I get very clammy palms,

and so whenever I go into a pub and I see one of these

I like to put my hand on it to cool my hand down.

I went into the Actress And Bishop,

put my hand on the pump,

and the bartender went, "Get your hands off my pump!"

-Like that, really aggressively.

-As the actress said to the bishop!

APPLAUSE

No, as the knobhead said to Joe.

And I didn't like his tone,

the way he'd said it to me, because it was very aggressive.

So I'd had a few pints by that point,

I cajoled the people in the pub to,

when he wasn't looking,

to go over and just gently rest their hand on the pump

in order to melt it down to the metal core.

Well, you kindly brought photographic evidence of this.

Yes, that's Gerard, with his hand on the pump.

And then Harry had a go. I mean, we got all sorts of people,

like, just people we didn't know.

We actually got one of the other bartenders in there

to have a go at it. And then this is the result.

I mean, that is a success.

-That was about 20 people having a go.

-We contacted him.

No!

No. No, no, no.

-He's not here.

-Oh, God.

He couldn't come, he said...

-He's guarding his pump.

-Yes, exactly.

He sent us a couple of messages.

One was,

"He always puts his hands on my bloody beer tap. Drives me insane.

"Nincompoop.

I'm imagining him in tweeds and a monocle.

Oh, he's used the word nincompoop. That's quite sweet, really, isn't it?

Yeah, I don't know if you'll like this one. He goes on,

"I can confirm it is myself who keeps asking him to get off

"the ice beer tap.

"These famous people think they can get away with murder."

And encloses a picture of OJ Simpson.

He doesn't. He doesn't.

Again, so he's not taking my point in any way there, though.

He's not actually engaging with the issue here,

which is that his tone is unacceptable.

Next time I see him, I'm going to go back with some de-icer.

APPLAUSE

I don't know if you're aware of this,

but a man was stuck for two minutes to one of these pumps by licking it.

This is his release, but it doesn't look like fun to me.

Oh, I miss alcohol(!)

I'd sort of see, no-one likes to be spoken to aggressively,

he could have handled it better, you're quite right.

But what you launched was a vendetta.

-Yeah.

-Yeah!

-Quite right.

-OK.

-I want his life ruined.

I...

I don't think I'm going to put that man in, Joe.

I mean, he's been kind enough to send an abusive comment.

And I respect him for that.

And I say bin day is really the only time I really meet people,

so I'm going to stick with that.

But I think, no matter who you are,

be you a peasant or a king,

there is something so terrifying about running out of loo roll.

And so I'm going to put that into Room 101.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And that brings us to the end of the show.

Well done, Zoe. You were the most persuasive guest,

-so you are this week's winner.

-Thank you very much.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you very much to Joe Lycett, Ricky Wilson and Zoe Lyons.

And thank you, good night.