Episode 5 The Blame Game

Hello.

Hello, and welcome to The Blame Game -

the show that's as far-fetched and hilarious as

a party election manifesto.

I'm Tim McGarry, and our regular comedy candidates are, of course,

Colin Murphy, Jake O'Kane and Neil Delamere.

And our special guest tonight is a superb stand-up comedian who's been

on Radio 4, Live At The Apollo, Have I Got News For You,

Mock The Week and much, much more, and he's a very lucky man,

because he actually reached the pinnacle of his career a few years

ago when he appeared on The Blame Game.

Please welcome back, the fabulous, Stephen K Amos!

In 2009, Prince Harry famously told Stephen that, and I quote,

"You didn't sound like a black chap."

Which is exactly why Harry will now be taking over from Prince Philip.

He didn't actually say that, did he?

That's actually a true story, he actually said that.

It's when I did my first Royal Variety Show.

A show I didn't want to do,

I thought my comedy wouldn't land in that environment.

They kept saying, "It's going to work for you, Steve."

You get to meet the royal family and I was like, "Really?"

And they said, "When you meet the Queen especially, don't look her in

"the eye, speak if she speaks to you,

"and above all, you've got to bow."

I was like, "Bow. Me bow? For another living human being? No."

I finish the show, I see the Queen, I'm not joking,

and as soon as she got in front of me, my knees went,

I bowed like a bitch.

-EXAGGERATED NIGERIAN ACCENT:

-"Thank you for everything!"

"Thank you for saving my people!"

But the thing was, he was joking, because when I did that show,

what I used to do back in the day

was come out on stage doing a Nigerian accent.

Remember that, guys?

Just to fool people's perceptions of who I really was,

and he was in the audience and he

got that, that is how the joke happened.

But, you know, I just ran with it.

"How dare you say that to me."

Because when he said it, I said, "Thank you so much, you're right."

Whereas what I should have said was,

"You don't quite look like your father, Prince Charles."

Now on with the show,

the audience asks the questions and our panel provide some very

unreliable answers. So what did you, the audience, ask us tonight?

"Who's to blame for Ireland being

"18th in the European alcohol consumption list,

"UK is 12th, somebody isn't playing their part."

Well, I'm doing my bit!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Wait, who are you doing your bit for, though?

AUDIENCE OOHS

-Answer the question!

-Is this the BBC?

I've genuinely got him there!

I'm doing a Rory McIlroy.

"Who's to blame for Rory McIlroy's bad back since his honeymoon?"

He was in town during the week, he saw him.

I saw him, he walked past me.

Did you think he walked past you and went,

"I think that was Jake O'Kane!"

Wife would be going, "Just keep walking, just keep walking,

"I'm sure he gets it all the time."

He nodded at me!

He nodded at you?

When you see a kind of a fellow, who looks like he might batter you,

who might be psycho, you give him the nod.

You're quite an intimidating man.

-I'm not.

-Yes, you are. "No, I'm not."

Are you sure he wasn't sneezing?

Did he think, did he walk away

going, "That's the feller from the field,

"look how he's dressed."

-Some sort of Amish dude.

-I saw her first.

Didn't really notice him.

He did that, "Awright."

He doesn't talk like that, "Awright."

Possibly the reason he nodded at you was you were looking at his wife

going, "Weergh!"

Just out of interest, not being from here, who is this person?

Jake O'Kane.

What is our first question tonight?

"Who do you blame for misspeaking?"

Yes, in the almost 100 years of the Northern Ireland state,

unionists have committed a number of terrible crimes against the

nationalist people,

sectarianism, discrimination, gerrymandering, internment,

and worst of all, they have called a blonde woman blonde!

Arlene Foster described Michelle O'Neill as blonde,

but said it was a compliment,

the same way when we call Jake a "ging-ger",

it is a term of utmost respect.

Arlene said Michelle was rarely seen without her make-up,

which shows how far we've come, because a lot of years ago,

some Sinn Fein leaders were rarely seen without their balaclavas.

But who do you blame for misspeaking?

It was called disgraceful sexism.

She's been accused of disgraceful sexism for calling Michelle blonde.

It's wrong. And Arlene should know it's wrong.

It should be pointed out,

you're wrong, Arlene.

It's not really blonde, it's out of a bottle.

They're getting so annoyed, I'll tell you why,

they have spent a fortune on Michelle, have you noticed?

Have you seen a party political broadcast,

I didn't even know it was her,

I could understand what she was saying.

She was talking normally.

"And Sinn Fein

"are here for all the people, all..."

You know there's two wee guys

standing behind that camera, with cue cards.

But if they drop those cue cards...

RAPID, HIGH-PITCHED SPEECH

And we finally... This week we found out

what happened with the Nesbitt picture.

Remember, last week we were talking about Nesbitt licking the carpet.

Mick made a fatal mistake,

he misspoke in the most dangerous fashion,

he misspoke to a Belfast granny.

He challenged a Belfast granny to a fight.

Now, he was messing about, he got down on his knees, "Come on, then,

"come on."

Falls Road Granny.

"Take that!"

Eight, nine, ten...

He said, "Look..."

Gerry Kelly got put down by a Land Rover!

He got put down by a granny.

And she says that she didn't even hit him.

The only women harder than a Belfast granny,

women going out to clubs, this new craze, duct tape craze.

Women, stark naked, they go out starkers,

stark naked, no clothes

and they use black duct tape to cover over their delicate bits,

that's all they're wearing is black duct tape.

That is the most effective contraception known to man!

The Catholic Church is all for this,

because I cry when I pull a plaster off!

Can you imagine?! Come here, come on...

SHOUTING

Much left? No, no...!

The girls aren't mad,

they wear black duct tape during the summer and insulating tape during

the winter, so...

Michelle, I saw the same broadcast, and she has slowed down.

Er, someone not from here, Stephen, you may see this woman,

we do have a reputation for speaking quickly.

People find it difficult to understand us.

This woman speaks so fast that we go, "She's speaking too fast,"

that's how fast she speaks. She has been slowed down,

but the difference between a normal speaking speed and what she speaks

in this party political broadcast is toned down...

Genuinely...

HE IMITATES A SLOW TAPE

I think they have slowed down the tape!

I think that's all they've done, in the background,

people walking really slowly behind...

IMITATES SLOWED-DOWN SPEECH AND SPEEDED-UP SPEECH

I want to thank you for the clarification,

I was kind of wondering who this Michelle was,

and as we're talking about misspeaking,

you said two things in your bit which grabbed me, first,

you mentioned licking the carpet...

You may all know what it is but...

a Belfast granny?

Can you explain what that is?

That's actually a Belfast granny, that's not slang.

It should be a euphemism.

That's for the duct tape women.

She has tape all over her Belfast granny!

What you just did there was wonderful.

Look at your Belfast granny.

Follow the logic, follow the logic, he went, "It must be slang,

"because it's so unlikely that a Belfast granny actually knocked out

"a politician," but that's actually what happened.

You don't understand anything that's happening here.

When I came up here first, I remember talking to a guy at the BBC

and he used slang I'd never heard of before.

"I tell you, I was in with the doctor yesterday and he took the

"hand out of me." And I went, "Prostate?"

"Was it prostate?"

He goes, "What's the prostate?"

Why was the hand in you in the first place, then?

And he goes, "I was in for a cough."

And I went, "Only the finger's meant to go there!"

I think you should cut Michelle some slack,

if she normally speaks very quickly and she slowed it down,

give her some slack.

This week, didn't Prince Charles...

Spoke Irish.

Tried to speak Irish...

And people kind of had a go at him for doing that.

No, I think he had a go at himself,

he thought he had done it quite badly.

Well, he would have done it quite badly.

Apart from that not being his first language,

English is also not his first language.

They're Germans, aren't they?

Didn't you know?

Thank you, thank you very much for that.

Yes, indeed, the hot topic in local politics this week was the colour of

a woman's hair. Look, nobody wants them back but, be honest, sometimes,

do you not miss the Troubles?

It is of course always wrong to define a politician by their looks.

Later on in the programme we'll be discussing US president,

the ridiculous comb-over freak and part-time orang-utan impersonator,

Donald Trump.

And on last week's show we may have misspoken when we talked about

Mike Nesbitt and that photo of him on the floor of the Stormont Hotel,

it seems the whole thing was a joke, we apologised to Mike,

and asked him to come to the show tonight, but he couldn't make it,

he's far too busy. He's flat out.

So what is our next question, "Who do you blame for cyber attacks?"

A worldwide cyber attack badly affected the NHS.

Across the UK, phone lines were jammed

by people nervously wanting to

know if appointments would be delayed and operations cancelled.

In Northern Ireland, phone lines were jammed by people nervously

wanting to know if this would affect their DLA.

The loss of NHS records was

particularly troubling for hypochondriacs and

the elderly, so you can imagine how worried Jake has been.

But who can we blame for cyber attacks?

There was this massive cyber attack,

I don't know if you've ever been hacked,

but you find out exactly how your friends relate to it.

My e-mail was hacked once and all my female friends went,

"Your e-mail has been hacked, sad face."

My best male friend, first of all, nobody told me,

and then my best male friend laughed at me.

"That's what happens when you watch porn all the time, I suppose."

Brackets, "Then again, I suppose you have to see your ma somehow."

Genuinely! Yeah!

It's affected mainly versions of Windows,

so Steve Jobs is in heaven pissing himself laughing.

Because there's no Mac devices,

he's working on whatever he's working on with his angel wings and

little black turtleneck.

Probably still working on a cloud computer.

Trying to convince Moses to switch tablets, I should imagine...

CHEERING

So, the reason it didn't spread further,

Russia was the country that was affected worst by it,

by all accounts.

To the extent that if Russia continues to be attacked like this,

they're worried will it affect Russia's ability to run America?

So they are slightly worried about that.

It could be worse, though. Your car could tout on you.

-Did you see that story?

-Yeah, that's brilliant.

-It's an amazing story.

I don't know if you know it. Right, a guy crashes his car.

The car, like a BMW or a Ford or

something, has this technology in it,

it rings the Craigavon PSNI, he turns up, the coppers turn up,

your man was hammered drunk and they arrested him!

It is in, this... It's this technology in cars now.

I love the fact of the PSNI, the PSNI, right,

there's 120 countries affected, thousands of organisations.

PSNI? Rest assured, the PSNI

technology department are on the ball.

All three of them,

in a cupboard somewhere in headquarters.

"Ctrl + alt + delete. Ctrl + alt + delete. Ctrl + alt + delete.

"Sarge, it's still there, Sarge!"

"Well, you know what to do now..."

"Sarge, it's still there!" "Turn it off, turn it on."

"That's it, Sarge, what do you want on your pizza?"

I believe there is a global problem with this.

Firstly, we are all bombarded with all this technology.

We are all at risk of being hacked or things stolen from us.

We live in an age where we've got

ten times more information coming into us,

so you would think it would make us ten times more smarter,

but some of us have just gone...

So I look at my phone, I think, "I'm going to get rid of this."

But I can't, because I am on a two-year contract.

And when that ends, I'll get another two-year contract.

It's the longest relationship I've ever had.

Thank you. Thank you very much for that.

Yes, indeed, Donald Trump had a busy week.

He is now embarking on his first foreign trip, or, as it has been

dubbed, his farewell tour.

Commenting on all the scandals that have enveloped his administration,

Trump said that no politician in history had been treated more

unfairly than him. What an insensitive ignoramus.

Does he just not know that

Michelle O'Neill was called blonde and attractive?!

So, what is our next question tonight?

"Who do you blame for bigotry and intolerance?"

A landlord in Kent is facing legal

action for refusing to let properties

to Indian and Pakistani tenants because of the curry smell.

And we get upset about the icing on a cake?

The landlord also banned single parents and people on zero-hours

contracts. Advocacy group Hope Not Hate say the landlord has set out to

offend every vulnerable group in Britain,

although he does appear to have left out blonde politicians.

But who can we blame for bigotry and intolerance?

I think we can blame...

The notion of tolerate, the whole idea of tolerate,

which in my mind means to put up with...

As a black man, I do not want people to tolerate me.

Do you know what I mean? And I don't want to tolerate people's behaviour

towards me, because we now live in a world where if you are blatantly

racist or you have got some sort of phobia or ism -

sexism or racism or this kind of stuff -

then what you now start to do,

you try and cover it and sugar-coat it,

and we now see this thing that I now term "casual racism".

Casual. Not the kind of stopping me in my sports car because I obviously

stole it, not that kind of stuff.

I'm talking about the stuff that people say from their perspective

that they think it's a fair stereotype or it's OK or harmless.

Or it's even positive, like they're doing you a favour.

Like in my case people say to me that as a 6'2" strapping black guy

that I must be well endowed and good at sprinting.

Well, I've got to tell you people, when it comes to 100 metres,

it's nowhere near that long.

LAUGHTER

Honestly, the problem for me is that

if you don't acknowledge casual racism,

it soon becomes you don't realise you're doing it.

It becomes acceptable.

Like in my genuine case, and this is not even a joke,

a staff member's surprise when I go into a chemist and I buy sun cream,

hair gel and lots of talcum powder.

Or I go into a restaurant

and the waiter automatically puts the chicken dish in front of me.

I don't like chicken!

Or even worse, when I go out late at night and people, get this,

stop me and ask to buy drugs off me.

Yes. That happens quite a lot.

If I had £100 for every time somebody asked to buy drugs from me,

can you imagine the fabulous earrings I could afford?

I know it's a big minefield.

You've got the LGBTQ...

I...XYZ, whatever it's called now.

It is like somebody has dropped a Scrabble board at a swingers party.

Take your pick! Make love with who you want.

Gerry got in trouble last year,

Gerry himself made a tweet and used the N-word when he was describing

a film he was watching, Django Unchained, and he said...

Everybody in Northern Ireland, they went, "Gerry used the N-word.

"You can't use N-word. My God.

"Why did you use the N-word?" And then they found out what the N-word

was and went, "Thank God, I thought he said Northern Ireland.

"Well, that's all right."

Funny you mention Gerry Adams,

because a lot of people in England are still just amazed by his voice,

that he has actually got a voice, because for many,

many years it was like...

-The voice of an actor.

-The voice of an actor going, "Hello!"

Yes, that was always my thing.

Why did they do not use proper actors like Shakespearean actors?

I'm Patrick Stewart and I am doing...

..I'm Gerry Adams...

No, my mission is to boldly go where no-one has gone before.

Tyrone.

But I've got to say, Tim, as we're talking about tolerance and bigotry,

I can't be here and not mention the fact that you still haven't got

same sex marriage.

No, they don't. They. They.

Don't be blaming me.

They don't, but I'll take their money.

I'm quite interested to know what public opinion is.

So can we just ask the audience by round of applause,

if you would support same sex marriage?

CHEERING

And if you wouldn't?

SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE

This is Northern Ireland, you didn't expect that, did you?

See, in England people would go, "Oh, I'd better not do anything.

"It'll draw attention to myself."

But here, people are going...

That bloody threw me!

Just look at the facts, you know,

even South Africa has got gay marriage, yeah?

And they were marginally more racist than you were!

And, finally, when we had our debate in England about same-sex marriages

in 2014, one of our far right councillors genuinely said,

"If we legalise gay marriage,

"England will be beset by storms and floods."

And guess what? Last year, we had the worst flood in history.

So maybe he had a point.

As we all know, it is written that

after the flood there comes a rainbow!

And the gays will inherit the earth.

And let's be honest, guys,

you've got some of the best looking men on the planet in Ireland.

Come on!

You have!

-Jamie...

-Dornan?

Oh!

Yeah! And Colin?

-Farrell?

-Oh!

I mean, what a sandwich!

To me, do you, to me, to you.

Stephen, we don't have that many

good looking people if you can name them.

And if we all know who you're talking about, we're mingers.

Yes, thank you very much for that.

Thank you. Onto our next question tonight.

"Who do you blame for good old-fashioned entertainment?"

Yes, a huge TV in Derry is to be sold off.

The TV costs £20,000 a year to run.

Of course, in Belfast it would have cost £20,147,

as we would have been paid the TV licence.

And a good old-fashioned fist fight broke out at the Balmoral show.

Apparently it started when a farmer said to another man,

"Are you looking at my heifer?"

But who can we blame for good old-fashioned entertainment?

It is, the old days is happening.

It is the olden days.

The computer virus and everything, that's just ruined everything,

people don't need computers to enjoy themselves.

The children are going mad for the fudget spinners,

or the footer wheels as I call them.

And you cannot get one for love nor money in Derry.

Apparently they are sold out everywhere.

Have you seen them? They are little plastic yolks and you just...

That is what you do. You just do that with them and all the kids want

them because one kid had them and went, "I want one of them."

It always happens, there has always been a craze.

In the '80s, when I was a kid, there was the spinners.

They renamed yo-yos spinners.

And we all went, "That is completely different to a yo-yo, I want one!"

So all of a sudden, there has always been this sort of thing.

Back in your day it was a cup with a ball.

You know? It is always something.

You know, the latest craze.

Do you remember that? Do you remember?

I do remember! Loads of fun I got with that.

That screen is...

-Something like 270 square feet.

-What?

-That screen.

Will you give over about the screen?

-LAUGHTER

-It's 270 square feet!

The remote control must be massive.

It must have, like, Irish dancers to change the station.

I reckon that's why they're getting rid of it.

Anybody see a picture of the...

Some parts of Belfast, entertainment is still robbing tourists.

Did you see the picture, like, the guy got caught?

There was a guy tried to rob, on a bike,

and he tried to rob this French tourist.

-They it was like something from the '50s.

-It was.

So, I know the two guys who jumped in and saved the French tourist.

You could not make this up.

Ta and Baldy. Two of the ugliest...

It gets better!

Ta, you'd run. If Ta gets out, you'd run.

But Baldy? What's Baldy?

Ex-Foreign Legion.

He was a French legionnaire.

He went over, right, didn't only save the French tourist,

he stole the bike off the robber!

Your man had to run for his life!

-And there he turned round...

-Is he from here?

He's from here but he was in the French Foreign Legion.

He sort of pacified the French tourist in perfect French.

Imagine that French guy back in Paris going,

"It is the safest place I have ever been.

"You would not believe. They have legionnaires

"working on the streets!"

Excusez-moi, big man, here's your bicycle back.

There was a slightly weird one

in East Belfast as well during the week.

There was a guy, approached a couple of kids, right?

And, you know, when we were growing up you were always told,

"Never take sweets from strangers,"

and, you know, everybody took that on board.

I don't know if people do that any more.

But this guy thought people probably know that one so he went up

to the kids and he said, "Do you want to see a £1 million note?"

Now, these kids were smart enough to go...

You know what I mean? Because they thought,

"If he has £1 million note, why is he in Connswater?"

Thank you for that. Just time for a quickfire round now. I will read

newspaper headlines and I want you

to be faster than Donald Trump into a hall of mirrors.

Just hold it firmly over your husband's face.

Someone just went yes!

Put in a claim.

Was also a surprise for Peter Andre.

Oh, did you say election or erection?

That's it, ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of the show.

Please show your appreciation to our panel -

Colin Murphy, Stephen K Amos, Jake O'Kane and Neil Delamere.

APPLAUSE

I'm Tim McGarry.

Until next time, don't blame yourselves, blame each other.

Goodbye!