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The life and career of Frank Skinner can be summarised in angles of the body. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
His twenties were the fall down years. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
An alcoholic who was, by his own confession, throwing his life away, | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
he stopped drinking at the age of 30. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
This decision led to the stand up years, | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
winning the Perrier Award for comedy at Edinburgh in 1991 | 0:00:41 | 0:00:44 | |
and, subsequently, a sit down career | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
as, first, chat show host and then panel game chair. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
There's also been a fair amount of lying down. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
His autobiographical books describe hundreds of one-night stands in his single days, | 0:00:53 | 0:00:58 | |
but also kneeling - he's a church going Roman Catholic. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:02 | |
More than decade ago in a book, you described yourself as a nondescript bloke | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
from a working class family in West Bromwich who got lucky. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
Do you stick by that? | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
Erm, I stick by the fact that I got lucky in order to get my foot in the door, | 0:01:15 | 0:01:20 | |
but I have worked very hard to keep it there. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
For a long time, the biggest gap I'm aware of | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
between your comedy persona and your real life, | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
there were whole sides... people saw you as this football-supporting lad | 0:01:30 | 0:01:35 | |
and yet you were, in reality, non-drinking, church-going, interested in culture. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:40 | |
I don't think I did keep it out. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:42 | |
I used to talk about it in interviews and then it never appeared | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
so I think people liked the idea of a nice, neat edit | 0:01:45 | 0:01:50 | |
of a...sort of, a working-class Jack the lad comedian, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:56 | |
but I didn't really attempt to keep it quiet. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:00 | |
In fact, I used to get resentful when it didn't make the interview | 0:02:00 | 0:02:04 | |
because I used to think, in my chippy, working-class days, when I first left Birmingham, | 0:02:04 | 0:02:10 | |
that people didn't like the university element | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
because it didn't fit in with working-classness, | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
which I was a bit resentful about, but I've mellowed on that one. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
And the question of luck, it also involves bad luck. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
Your loss of some of your millions, if not all of your millions, erm, at one point, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:28 | |
in interviews I've seen, print interviews, you were quite calm about that | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
but that must have been pretty devastating. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:35 | |
I read in the paper that AIG was in trouble during that big crash thing | 0:02:35 | 0:02:40 | |
and I knew that that's where, erm, my personal banker had advised me to put all my money. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:47 | |
I thought, perhaps I'll phone him about this. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
No calls were being returned, no e-mails were being answered | 0:02:50 | 0:02:55 | |
and, eventually, I got through and said, "I think I should take some of my money out of AIG." | 0:02:55 | 0:03:00 | |
He said, "Yeah, a lot of people think that." | 0:03:00 | 0:03:03 | |
I thought, "That's not very good." | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
We had this very difficult meeting with him looking like a broken man, | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
whereas that should have been my role. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
And him saying that the whole thing had been frozen | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
and I might have lost my life savings or... | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
..the good news is, I might just have lost 50% of it. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
-And we're talking millions here. -Erm...just about, yeah. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:30 | |
Yeah. So it was, I mean, when I first heard about it, I thought all that work I did has gone. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:38 | |
I'd had a meeting with him about a year before when he said, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
"If you never work again, you're financially secure", | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
which was a brilliant, exciting, exhilarating thing to hear. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
So that had gone | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
but I think that might have been a good thing. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
I think it reinvigorated me. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
Also, it was nice to hear my girlfriend say, "We can always move to a smaller place", | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
rather than, "Goodbye." | 0:04:01 | 0:04:02 | |
So, erm, I think everybody should lose an enormous amount of money at some time in their lives, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:09 | |
just to...as a reality check. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
Some people in those circumstances, there are cases, they get suicidal, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
-they get despairing, but did you ever? -No. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
I just thought, I'll earn some more money and I used to have no money. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:25 | |
I was...looking back now, I was surprised by how well I took it | 0:04:25 | 0:04:30 | |
because if you'd asked me to speculate on how that would be, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
I'd have thought, it'll destroy me, but it was fine. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:38 | |
Although, when I heard it had happened, I thought of something you'd written in the autobiography. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:43 | |
You say, "I was a loser for the first 30 years of my life and I still think like a loser." | 0:04:43 | 0:04:47 | |
But does that remain the case? | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
I think I still have a slight hesitation when I walk into a smart restaurant. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:56 | |
And if I'm with someone, I'll often let them go in first. | 0:04:56 | 0:05:01 | |
Yeah, I just... | 0:05:01 | 0:05:02 | |
I said also that I move like a loser. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
I think all that is inbuilt. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
I was used to being a ghost figure who got ignored a lot, I think, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:15 | |
except when I was turning on the comedy with my mates. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
I struggled terribly to get girlfriends in my pre-celebrity days. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:25 | |
And I was a nondescript bloke from the West Midlands and quite happy being so, really. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:31 | |
But, erm... | 0:05:31 | 0:05:32 | |
..I suppose...I don't know. I guess I'd had a long time being... | 0:05:35 | 0:05:40 | |
just a man in the street, but I didn't think I was gonna go back to the man in the street. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:45 | |
I was still working so I just thought I'd start again, basically. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
But that fear, there are people when we were growing up watching TV, | 0:05:48 | 0:05:52 | |
huge TV stars who now can't get a role in panto at Christmas, it does happen. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:58 | |
Have you thought about that? | 0:05:58 | 0:06:00 | |
Erm, yeah, I've thought about it, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
but this year will be the 25th anniversary of my first gig | 0:06:03 | 0:06:09 | |
and if someone had said to me, "You can have 25 years as a professional comic", | 0:06:09 | 0:06:15 | |
I would have snatched their hand off, so I think I've done all right. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
I think I'm already well into stoppage time. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:23 | |
I wondered, reading On The Road, your book about the stand up tour | 0:06:23 | 0:06:28 | |
where, at a certain point, there's a different girl after every gig. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
Is it possible...do you believe in sex addiction? Is that possible. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:37 | |
I don't believe in sex addiction. I think that's men with opportunities. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
I...no, erm... | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
I think I was just making up for lost time, really. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:48 | |
I suddenly, erm, my attractive light came on | 0:06:48 | 0:06:53 | |
and I didn't have to work very hard to get female company. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:58 | |
So, erm, I just, I got it and I went for it, | 0:06:58 | 0:07:02 | |
which, I'd imagine, most average to ugly blokes do when they first find celebrity. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:08 | |
Erm, I tried to be decent and honourable about it, | 0:07:08 | 0:07:12 | |
and honest. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:14 | |
I used to give this little speech about, | 0:07:14 | 0:07:16 | |
"You do realise this is a one-night stand? This is not going anywhere." | 0:07:16 | 0:07:20 | |
Which I figured was my little disclaimer at the beginning. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:25 | |
But, erm, it was...it was part of the experience, I suppose. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:30 | |
I thought it was, you know, as showbiz | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
as going to premieres and being interviewed. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
And the ones you've written, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
the sexual encounters you've written about in that book. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
We can refer to some of them - Banana Girl, Lemon Curd Girl and the others - | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
people will have to read the book to find out the full details, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
but have any of them ever contacted you subsequently and said, "I'm the one in that book"? | 0:07:51 | 0:07:56 | |
Erm... | 0:07:56 | 0:07:57 | |
..there's been...I was doing a book signing at Cheltenham Literature Festival | 0:07:58 | 0:08:04 | |
and there was a queue of people, happily, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:08 | |
and a woman said to me, "I don't know if you remember me. We had a one-night stand in 1997." | 0:08:08 | 0:08:13 | |
I said, "Oh, of course(!) How are you?" | 0:08:13 | 0:08:17 | |
People are very casual about it. She was with her partner as well at the time. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:22 | |
-And did you have any memory of her? -No. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
No, no. But... | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
she seemed very nice. I thought I'd done quite well for myself. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
But I used to also bump into people and say, "My mate had a one-night stand with you. God, what a laugh?" | 0:08:31 | 0:08:39 | |
And I realised that I was using it as material. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:44 | |
That wasn't my motivation but it often ended up in the act. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
It ended up in their act as well, really. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:50 | |
When they were sitting with their friends, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:52 | |
they'd have the 'My One-Night Stand with Frank Skinner' story. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
So I think part of the purpose of casual sex is anecdote production. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:01 | |
In interviews of this kind we tend to talk about childhood quite a lot | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
but it's difficult in your case because your autobiography, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:08 | |
you kept saying, "I hate all that childhood stuff. I read them and I just say, hurry up and get famous." | 0:09:08 | 0:09:13 | |
So you go for minimal childhood reflection. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:17 | |
I think the cool and trendy way to write about childhood in recent years is, | 0:09:17 | 0:09:22 | |
you really need a bit of abuse at home. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:26 | |
You need some terrible childhood that you can cash in on the mis-lit front. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:31 | |
Whereas my childhood was, erm, as far as I can remember, very happy | 0:09:31 | 0:09:37 | |
and very funny. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:40 | |
I remember laughing a lot and having a good time. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
So, erm...it feels commercially the wrong kind of childhood | 0:09:43 | 0:09:49 | |
but it did all right. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
I'm always interested with people who've become famous under a pseudonym | 0:09:51 | 0:09:56 | |
to what extent the original remains. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
So, Christopher Graham Collins, is he still there or are you entirely Frank Skinner now? | 0:09:58 | 0:10:03 | |
I think of myself as Frank Skinner. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:06 | |
When I was Christopher Graham Collins, | 0:10:06 | 0:10:08 | |
at school I was known as Chris and at home I was known as Graham | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
because there's a tradition in our family that kids were known by their second names, | 0:10:11 | 0:10:15 | |
which I've never quite got to the bottom of. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
People would come to my house and say, "Is Chris in?", | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
and my mum would say, "Yeah." "Graham!" | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
So, the name thing, they were interchangeable. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
And I quite like... I chose Frank Skinner. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
It was a friend of my dad's and I just liked the name. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:34 | |
I think there's something quite good about choosing your own name. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
I think it should be quite normal when you get into your teens to pick a new name. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:42 | |
And the choice of the name, it is an amazing story. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:45 | |
-You'd never met Frank Skinner. -No, I'd never met him. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:49 | |
I knew him on a tiny piece of cardboard about that big. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
Erm, my dad had a tobacco tin, which I've still got, | 0:10:53 | 0:10:58 | |
and he took it out and it had all the names of the people in his dominoes team. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:02 | |
He used to...he captained the dominoes team for the George pub in Warley, the West Midlands, | 0:11:02 | 0:11:09 | |
and he used to pick them. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:11 | |
And, I don't know, it just had the right, | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
that kind of...that pleasant feel of consonants on the lips. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:21 | |
And I used to say to him, "Is Frank Skinner playing this week?" | 0:11:21 | 0:11:26 | |
It was a...it became a little character in my universe, even though I never met him. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:32 | |
So, when I joined the showbiz union, Equity, | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
in those days, if there was already someone with your name, you had to come up with a new name. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:41 | |
So that was my... actually, my second choice. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:43 | |
My first choice was Wes Bromwich, | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
which...things could have been very different. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:49 | |
So on gas bills, passports, driving licences, you're Frank Skinner, are you? | 0:11:50 | 0:11:55 | |
No, I'm...I'm usually Chris Collins. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
I've got credit cards in both names. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:02 | |
It can be confusing on planes because often on planes people will recognise me | 0:12:02 | 0:12:08 | |
and then look at the passport and it seems to be another name and they get suspicious. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:13 | |
But you don't get that many celebrity terrorists. It's a minimalist group. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:18 | |
Things that your dad gave you... particular inheritances - | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
West Bromwich FC, performing, to some extent, and drinking. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
He did bits of all of those. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:28 | |
Yeah, my dad was, erm... | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
..I suppose you'd call him a colourful character. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:35 | |
He loved sport. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
I have very happy memories of sitting up with him in the early hours of the morning. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
When I was quite small he'd allow me to listen to Cassius Clay and then Muhammad Ali | 0:12:42 | 0:12:48 | |
boxing on the radio. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
They used to have... the fights used to be live on the radio in those days. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:55 | |
He'd come and knock on my bedroom door and say, "C'mon, let's go down", and we'd listen to the fights. | 0:12:55 | 0:13:00 | |
And my dad threw every punch. He used to, he used to... | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
You couldn't sit too close. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
But I remember that was fabulous. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
So in your break through stand up gig, 1992, | 0:13:09 | 0:13:13 | |
you came out as a boxer. Was that connected with that? | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
I think that was probably... there's a tragic thing that stand up comedians do, erm... | 0:13:17 | 0:13:23 | |
we all like a bit of self dramatising and you'll often hear comedians | 0:13:23 | 0:13:28 | |
comparing themselves to boxers or matadors or something like that. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:33 | |
In fact, it's slightly less dangerous than that, generally speaking. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
But I think that was the analogy. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
So my dad gave me a love of sport. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
He sang all the time. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
He sang in the pub, he sang around the house. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:57 | |
He used to have, erm... | 0:13:57 | 0:13:59 | |
..my mum and dad, basically, their default form of communication was argument. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:07 | |
That was how they really got on. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
And I think they were together for 50-odd years | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
and seemed a very strong unit, but they did argue every day. A lot. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:20 | |
But they had this terribly touching thing that they would say at the end of rows. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:24 | |
First of all, he used to sing to her. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
They'd have a big row and he'd say, "Yes, but what about this... | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
# If I had my life to live... # | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
and he'd sing some old romantic song with her sitting like this. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
But he always used to say to my mum, post row, | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
"There's one thing I want. If you die on the Monday, I want to die on the Tuesday." | 0:14:42 | 0:14:47 | |
That was his post row catchphrase, | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
which is quite a big grenade to throw into an argument. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:57 | |
Arguments can dribble on for days | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
and I wouldn't say my mum and dad ever came out of the argument, | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
it ebbed and it flowed like a mighty ocean, their ongoing argument. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:08 | |
And they'd bring in strands and themes as they went along. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
But, erm... | 0:15:12 | 0:15:14 | |
I don't think there's many men who would throw in something | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
that gives so much of themselves at the point of a row. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:23 | |
Looking back, that was pretty remarkable, I think. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
The argument, that's quite interesting, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
because you've used that, or inherited it, because in a lot of the work, | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
in the stand up, fantasy football, the columns, Frank Skinner's Opinionated, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:38 | |
erm, you often sustain an argument. Often quite a provocative one. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
Well, I wrote, erm, | 0:15:42 | 0:15:45 | |
I wrote four fifteen-minute comedies for Radio 4 called Don't Start. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:52 | |
All it is is me as one of a couple and every show is an argument. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:58 | |
And that's partly, I think, because my dad argued with my mum a lot | 0:15:58 | 0:16:03 | |
but, also, | 0:16:03 | 0:16:05 | |
every relationship I've been in, there's been lots of arguments. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
Erm, me and my current girlfriend, we've been... | 0:16:09 | 0:16:13 | |
Current is probably not the word I'm after. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
-Me and my girlfriend, Kath... -Your final girlfriend. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
Yes. The culmination of my girlfriends, Kath, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:24 | |
me and my girlfriend have been together for eleven years with breaks | 0:16:24 | 0:16:29 | |
and we used to argue every day. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:33 | |
I mean big time, blazing, horrible rows. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:38 | |
And, erm... | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
she can't listen to this Radio 4 thing. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
She said, "I can hear that tone in your voice - that argument tone." | 0:16:42 | 0:16:48 | |
But I suppose most of my work is autobiographical | 0:16:48 | 0:16:54 | |
so I like to chuck it all in. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
I thought, I argue a lot so I might as well use that. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
'If you're saying, do we have an obligation to share the contents of our dreams? | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
'I'd say, definitely not. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
'You're not seriously writing that down? | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
-'It's quite an insight, isn't it? -Into what? -Your disgusting dreams. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
-'You're the one who said you were loathe to share your dream because it might cause friction between us. -Yes. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:19 | |
'Well, I assumed, you know... | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
-'You thought I'd cheated on you? -Only in the dream.' | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
A therapist would make a lot of this. Have you ever been in therapy? | 0:17:27 | 0:17:32 | |
I did couple counselling with my girlfriend. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
-The current girlfriend? -Yes. My girlfriend. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
And...which I loved, actually. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
I'd never really done that kind of thing before. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
But, erm, it's actually quite interesting. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:51 | |
It's like going into a really good seminar, but it's about you. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:56 | |
So it's kind of got everything. But we have, erm... | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
..our couple counsellor is a very intelligent German man, | 0:18:01 | 0:18:07 | |
which is what I want from an analyst, you know what I mean? | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
I want them to be German and intellectual. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
And he quotes lots of papers, psychological papers, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:18 | |
and it's actually fascinating. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
But I also think it was brilliant. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
I think it really did turn our relationship around after years and years of fighting. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:29 | |
We just came up with a few practical ways of defusing it. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
So I certainly wouldn't knock that. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
I've always been worried about therapy | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
because a friend of mine, Denis Leary, who is an American comic and actor, | 0:18:40 | 0:18:46 | |
when he started doing movies, he went to LA | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
and he was talking about how everyone had got a therapist. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
He said, "You must never have anything of that kind | 0:18:52 | 0:18:55 | |
"because the thing about comedians is we're wired a certain odd way | 0:18:55 | 0:19:01 | |
"and that makes us see the world differently from everyone else. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
"If you let someone in there and they correct your wiring, you'll never be funny again." | 0:19:05 | 0:19:10 | |
But I do...it made me think, when I considered this advice, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:16 | |
that if it was a standard choice between being... | 0:19:16 | 0:19:22 | |
happy or funny, | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
I'd probably choose funny. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:27 | |
In that connection, you whizz through your twenties in your autobiography. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:32 | |
They pass in a blur. But that's because they did... | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
Exactly. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:37 | |
..to a large extent. Drink, drink, dole, despair, basically. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
Yes. Well, erm...I don't know if I despaired much. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:46 | |
I've always been very fortunate that I have a, kind of... | 0:19:46 | 0:19:51 | |
a buoyancy about me. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:53 | |
I never... | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
I never stay down for very long. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
It is a cork-like buoyancy. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
But I did drink a lot and I drank for, I suppose it was 13 or 14, | 0:20:02 | 0:20:08 | |
maybe 15 years, I drank a lot. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
-And by the end, you had a bottle of Pernod on the bedside table. -Yeah. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
I always say that I realised, this is true, that I had a drinking problem | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
when I switched from sherry for breakfast to Pernod for breakfast. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:27 | |
And it took me a while telling that to realise that sherry for breakfast | 0:20:27 | 0:20:33 | |
could have been a hint as well. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:36 | |
But that seemed fine. Pernod seemed like I was in trouble. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:42 | |
But I used to drink in order to do things which is apparently one of the bad signs. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
Apparently, I was going to join the library once and I thought, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
I can't just walk into a library stone cold sober and say I want to join. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:55 | |
I'll have to have a few drinks. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
So, I went and had about four or five pints before I could go and do it. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:02 | |
That's not very good really. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:05 | |
There have been hints during the lost decade about where you were going to end up | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
because you went to a teacher's training college | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
and then did an English degree and a bit of performing and writing there. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:17 | |
When I was at Birmingham Polytechnic, I wrote a... | 0:21:17 | 0:21:22 | |
There was a DH Lawrence week | 0:21:22 | 0:21:26 | |
and I wrote a thing called Sadie Chatterley's Lodger. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:30 | |
We'd been studying Lawrence and there was a lot of in jokes about Lawrence. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:36 | |
I started off with the ukulele song, I couldn't even play ukulele then. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:41 | |
I must have worked out three chords. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:43 | |
And here's a song I love to hum about a lad from Nottinghom. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:49 | |
A good boy only loves his mum David Herbert Lawrence. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:54 | |
And, erm, it's funny how I can remember the words to it. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
It went on about nude men wrestling by the fire. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:03 | |
Temperatures get higher and higher, It certainly made me perspire, David Herbert Lawrence. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:08 | |
So, I wrote a whole play in which DH Lawrence | 0:22:08 | 0:22:14 | |
was the lodger of a woman called Sadie Chatterley. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:20 | |
It was pretty crass stuff. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
Approaching 30 is a key moment for you | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
because you take up Catholicism and give up drinking. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:33 | |
In a lot of people, drinking is linked to religion. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
Famously in the 12 steps programme, they are told, | 0:22:37 | 0:22:42 | |
put your faith in a higher power and so on. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:45 | |
Were they linked for you, those two things? | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
There were a few things going on. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
When I became 30, or when I was about to become 30, | 0:22:50 | 0:22:56 | |
I was unemployed, drinking a lot. One of my best friend's girlfriends said to me, | 0:22:56 | 0:23:02 | |
what is it like to be 30 and on the scrapheap? | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
I'd started going to church very much in a sit at the back, not really take part kind of way. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:13 | |
I just had an urge to be there. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
I also I was thinking about doing comedy. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:20 | |
So, all these things were coming around at the same time. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
I didn't think that I could get all these things done if I didn't stop drinking. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:30 | |
But, I'd made a few attempts to stop | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
and it never really happened so I'd kind of given up on it. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:37 | |
In the end, like so many achievements in life, | 0:23:37 | 0:23:40 | |
it just sort of happened accidentally. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:42 | |
I got the flu, I couldn't keep anything down. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
I realised that I'd been ill for three days and I hadn't had a drink. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
I thought, I haven't gone three days without a drink for... | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
I can't remember the last time. I wonder if I can do four? | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
And, I'm still basically doing that. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
I've done 25 years, I wonder if I can do 26 years? | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
It's all about that house of cards. | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
The sobriety house of cards which is why I always think | 0:24:07 | 0:24:10 | |
if I have a drink now, I can't have just one, I'll carry on drinking. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:16 | |
I think the bravest passage in your autobiography, you admit, | 0:24:16 | 0:24:21 | |
vision is not strictly the right word because you were asleep. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
-You had a dream of God. -Yeah. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:29 | |
I don't know if there is anything in this | 0:24:29 | 0:24:31 | |
but I had a dream that I was at the bottom of a quarry. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:38 | |
A figure appeared and I was at a sense of searching for God. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:44 | |
This is when I was thinking about going back to Catholicism. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:48 | |
This figure looked like Abraham Lincoln but he had very bad teeth. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:54 | |
He stood on the edge and he said, "I am already here." | 0:24:54 | 0:25:00 | |
And, of course, that's almost certainly just a dream. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:05 | |
But the "I'm already here" was quite a significant thing | 0:25:05 | 0:25:09 | |
because I felt I was really trying to find some answers. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:14 | |
I'd read all these books about Catholicism | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
thinking I would be very happy to prove it one way or the other. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:22 | |
Because, I left when I was 17 so that would've been 13 years without it. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:28 | |
But I was really trying hard. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:32 | |
This voice seemed to say, "You don't have to. I'm here." | 0:25:32 | 0:25:38 | |
So, I kind of chilled about the whole thing | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
and then I went and saw Father Stibbles at St Mary's. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:46 | |
I remember, he said to me because I'd talked to him about all this, he said, "God, come back, come back." | 0:25:46 | 0:25:52 | |
And I said, "Yeah but I'm not sure." He said, forget that, just come back. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:57 | |
I started talking to him about my life | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
and how I'd been living in the last 10 years or so. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:02 | |
And he goes, "I absolve thee in the name of the father." | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
And I thought, you have tricked me into a confession. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:10 | |
But I thought, oh well, that's it, I am back now. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
So, the next morning the Feast of St Boniface, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
I went to church midweek and there were about five people there. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
I took communion and I was home. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
Your rise to being a stand-up comic | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
happened pretty quickly eventually, the success. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:31 | |
But it seems to be a self confident act. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
You booked a slot at the Edinburgh Festival before you actually had an act. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
Yeah, I booked an hour slot before I had been on stage at all. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:43 | |
I tried to book an hour and a half and the guy said to me "Really, an hour is plenty." | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
And I did toy with the idea that I wouldn't do any gigs before | 0:26:48 | 0:26:53 | |
I'd just write some stuff and turn up and do it on the day. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:58 | |
Was this self-confidence or delusion? I suppose they are the same thing. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:01 | |
It was a mix of the two. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:03 | |
I knew that when I was with my mates in the pub, I could get really big laughs. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:08 | |
I could hold court for an hour easily. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:13 | |
I mean really get people falling about laughing. I thought it would just be like that. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
But, of course, it isn't. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
It is a bit more difficult than that. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:24 | |
I thought I would just be the way I was in the pub. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
And, I got up on the stage and I was incorrect. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:33 | |
You reveal in your book a technical term in comedy, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
-"To die on your arse" is what happened at your first warm-up gig. -Yes. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:41 | |
The first gig I did was awful and I thought it can't get any worse than this | 0:27:41 | 0:27:46 | |
and then the second one did. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:48 | |
The second one was New Year's Eve at the Birmingham Anglers Association Club. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:53 | |
I started off getting booed off and then they discovered | 0:27:53 | 0:27:59 | |
that little goodie bags included these tiny trumpets, | 0:27:59 | 0:28:04 | |
so they started blowing those. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:08 | |
I was still determined that this could still be turned around. | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
I looked into the wings and there was the man who was operating then as my manager, | 0:28:12 | 0:28:18 | |
the DJ and the owner of the club, all going... | 0:28:18 | 0:28:24 | |
At the next one, I'll get them. But I never did crack it. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:31 | |
You used in the book a couple of times, what is actually a very Catholic word, vocation. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
You say that when you got going as a stand up | 0:28:35 | 0:28:39 | |
you felt you found your vocation. Do you think of it in that way? | 0:28:39 | 0:28:45 | |
It was a massive turning point in my life becoming a comic. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:52 | |
I can't tell you. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:54 | |
I had just drifted along, I had no idea what I wanted to do really. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:59 | |
I didn't feel I was naturally gifted at anything. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:04 | |
And I started doing gigs | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
when I started working and I started getting big laughs, God I loved it. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:12 | |
I remember driving back from Birmingham, | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
in the early hours after doing gigs in London | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
and punching the ceiling in elation because I loved it. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:25 | |
I wasn't thinking, I'm going to be on telly, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
I was just thinking that just being able to get up in a club | 0:29:31 | 0:29:36 | |
and doing 20 minutes and leave the stage to massive applause. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:42 | |
To love it and for people to love me and for me to love them, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:48 | |
I am gushing a bit now. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:50 | |
But it was a complete and utter turn in life and is still, you know. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:58 | |
I look back on it now and I don't know what would've happened to me if I hadn't become a comic. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
She said to me, "You can take the piss out of me, Frank." "We've got a machine for that Mum." | 0:30:02 | 0:30:08 | |
She said, "Never mind that, you can take the piss out of me but you'll find that as you get older, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:14 | |
you can judge how good a film is by the amount of tissues you get through while you are watching it." | 0:30:14 | 0:30:19 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
No need for a punchline there I don't think. | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
There's also a particular recognition that there's a certain laugh you get | 0:30:27 | 0:30:33 | |
when you say this happened to you, the comedian, and people respond to that. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:38 | |
You do, because laughter becomes so important to you, | 0:30:38 | 0:30:44 | |
you develop an ear for different kinds of laughs. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:49 | |
When I started to make big, I'd say my signature laugh was, "Oh, ho, ho." | 0:30:49 | 0:30:56 | |
When people can't quite believe you said that but it was funny. | 0:30:56 | 0:31:01 | |
And then you get some laughs when you'd hear it go up and octave | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
and you realise that was the one the women were finding funnier than the blokes. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:10 | |
And then there's the ones that are often a bit footbally rude | 0:31:10 | 0:31:14 | |
where you can hear a chorus of Sid James'. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
I even found that when I toured in Ireland, the difference between Belfast and Dublin. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:25 | |
You could hear in Dublin - | 0:31:25 | 0:31:27 | |
HIGH PITCH LAUGHTER | 0:31:27 | 0:31:29 | |
And in Belfast - | 0:31:29 | 0:31:31 | |
LOW PITCH LAUGHTER | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
So, you do get to hear all that. | 0:31:34 | 0:31:36 | |
But I had a keen sense of what I would call my volume. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:41 | |
So, I know there's a line in my head and it needs to be that loud. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:47 | |
If I do a joke, and it doesn't make that loud, I might do it again. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:51 | |
But if it's not making that loud, it's got to go. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
And after you won the Perrier Award, that 1992 gig, | 0:31:54 | 0:32:01 | |
lots of sex in the act, anal, oral, was that a policy decision? | 0:32:01 | 0:32:08 | |
No, I suppose the truth is that I'd made people laugh | 0:32:08 | 0:32:12 | |
talking about sex, at school, in the factory, in the pub. | 0:32:12 | 0:32:17 | |
So, that was my first port of call. It wasn't a policy. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:22 | |
There were other stuff as well, but whenever I did other stuff, | 0:32:22 | 0:32:27 | |
it never got the big laughs that the sex stuff got. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:31 | |
It's interesting as I've gone on as a comic, | 0:32:31 | 0:32:35 | |
I don't do as much rude stuff as I used to. | 0:32:35 | 0:32:41 | |
I can sense the audience pining for it. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:47 | |
Your comedy changes like everything else in you changes. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:53 | |
I think the stand up I want to be nowadays | 0:32:53 | 0:32:58 | |
is not necessarily the stand-up that the audience want me to be. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:03 | |
On that point, when I talk to comedians, they often talk about the line. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:07 | |
They say "I won't do jokes about disability, I want to do jokes about women." | 0:33:07 | 0:33:14 | |
Do you have a line? | 0:33:14 | 0:33:16 | |
I have a line that I won't do a joke that I feel uncomfortable with. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:23 | |
But I do resent the fact that people | 0:33:23 | 0:33:27 | |
see the topic heading and think, this is going to be offensive. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:31 | |
I think it's about the treatment not the topic. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
I do think it's important that you should be able to talk about difficult subjects. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:41 | |
And what you say should matter, not what you're talking about. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:48 | |
For example, I was in the Birmingham Oratory | 0:33:48 | 0:33:54 | |
and the Birmingham Oratory is a very busy Catholic Church in Birmingham | 0:33:54 | 0:33:59 | |
and there were two Down Syndrome men in the congregation. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:06 | |
And at one point, one was coming back down the aisle | 0:34:06 | 0:34:11 | |
and the other one was going up the aisle and they passed each other. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:15 | |
And I felt really disappointed that there was no acknowledgement between them, no nod. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:22 | |
It reminded me that I used to drive a Volkswagen beetle | 0:34:22 | 0:34:25 | |
and if you passed another Volkswagen Beetle in the street you'd blast your horn and wave. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:30 | |
That was what I was looking for. Some sort of, we know, don't we? | 0:34:30 | 0:34:35 | |
I found that funny, looking back on it. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
I think a lot of people, as soon as you say the word Down's Syndrome... | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
-Have you done that joke? -I have tried it on stage once. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:48 | |
Once I said the Beetle thing, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
they relaxed a bit but they weren't sure. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:56 | |
I think you have to go through that barrier. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:59 | |
You have to reassure them that you are not going to say anything. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
They need to trust me that I'm not going to do | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
an anti-Down syndrome joke, | 0:35:06 | 0:35:08 | |
but I can talk about Down syndrome, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:10 | |
I should be able to talk about paedophiles or terrorism. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:16 | |
And as long as what I'm saying | 0:35:16 | 0:35:21 | |
is not anti-people, | 0:35:21 | 0:35:25 | |
or it's not supporting something bad, | 0:35:25 | 0:35:28 | |
if we don't discuss those things that's a real worry, I think. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:33 | |
Another thing which your position has changed through the career | 0:35:33 | 0:35:38 | |
is swearing, at one point you foreswore swearing, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
if such a thing can be done. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
I was on tour and I was on about show 50, | 0:35:44 | 0:35:50 | |
and by then you've learnt the set | 0:35:50 | 0:35:55 | |
and the set has grown | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
because what happens is you go on tour with a set | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
and one night you'll improvise some stuff on it | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
and you think, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that before", | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
and so it organically grows | 0:36:05 | 0:36:07 | |
but eventually, probably about gig 50, | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
you feel, "I think I have shone my torch into every labyrinth | 0:36:11 | 0:36:17 | |
"that this particular routine can go, | 0:36:17 | 0:36:20 | |
"so now it's it is done, it is complete." | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
And then it becomes an acting job, | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
then it's like doing a play, and I'm not a trained actor | 0:36:26 | 0:36:30 | |
and on nights like that sometimes you can start doing your material | 0:36:30 | 0:36:35 | |
and you can feel it disappearing over the horizon, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:39 | |
and there is a phenomena when you can hear a voice doing your material | 0:36:39 | 0:36:42 | |
and you realise it's you, you've become separated. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
So you need to come up with things keeping it fresh | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
and I just thought, what would happen | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
if I took all the swearing out one night? | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
So I did it as an experiment, just to freshen it up, | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
and it was interesting because in a lot of the places, | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
my delicate ear for the volume of a gag, | 0:37:00 | 0:37:03 | |
it didn't make any difference, | 0:37:03 | 0:37:05 | |
but there was a few places, | 0:37:05 | 0:37:07 | |
there was about four or five places in the act where it did, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:11 | |
the removing of the swear word definitely did. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
So I thought, "OK, well, the next night | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
"I'll just put it back in those key places, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
"those four or five places, and leave the rest out." | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
And what I found then | 0:37:22 | 0:37:24 | |
was those gags had gone bigger than they were before | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
because I hadn't given them any ramp of swearing, | 0:37:28 | 0:37:31 | |
so suddenly out of nowhere there was a big swear word | 0:37:31 | 0:37:35 | |
in exactly where the big swear word should be. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
And so I got myself five extra big laughs | 0:37:39 | 0:37:44 | |
without losing anything from the rest of the set, | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
so it was a purely technical exercise. | 0:37:46 | 0:37:51 | |
But then, I was selling some product like a DVD or something | 0:37:51 | 0:37:57 | |
and my manager said, "What you should do, | 0:37:57 | 0:38:00 | |
"there's been a lot of stuff about swearing on telly, | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
"you should tell that story." | 0:38:03 | 0:38:05 | |
So I wrote it up for the Sunday Times, | 0:38:05 | 0:38:07 | |
just really to publicise the thing, | 0:38:07 | 0:38:09 | |
but then it was like I was on a moral crusade to stop swearing, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
and actually I love swearing, I think swearing is brilliant | 0:38:13 | 0:38:17 | |
and it's completely returned in a casual way into my act. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:22 | |
And I really didn't want to be, you know, I did a Panorama about it, | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
and when you meet the people who are anti-swearing, | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
you think, "Well, this is one club I do not want to be a member of!" | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
Because I think swearing is brilliant, | 0:38:34 | 0:38:36 | |
if it's good enough for Chaucer, etcetera. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:38 | |
'And he's backed by some newspapers | 0:38:38 | 0:38:41 | |
'who feel views which until recently seemed outdated | 0:38:41 | 0:38:44 | |
'are actually held by a great many people. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:48 | |
'These papers feel broadcasters are ignoring those views | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
'and encouraging a decline in standards.' | 0:38:51 | 0:38:54 | |
A lot of old mainstream comedians would have sat and told dirty jokes | 0:38:54 | 0:38:58 | |
and sworn in the dressing room, but not on stage. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
Yes, but that's a decline... | 0:39:00 | 0:39:02 | |
-Isn't it a move towards honesty? -Not at all. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:04 | |
It's a decline of culture because it shows a lack of respect for others. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:08 | |
Ten years of Fantasy Football from 1994, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:10 | |
with David Baddiel, your double act, | 0:39:10 | 0:39:13 | |
complicated things, double acts, | 0:39:13 | 0:39:15 | |
they often end up only communicating through lawyers and so on, | 0:39:15 | 0:39:18 | |
I never saw any obvious signs of tension, but were there? | 0:39:18 | 0:39:22 | |
The only big row I only ever had with David Baddiel | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
was about Trivial Pursuit, I remember, | 0:39:26 | 0:39:30 | |
when it was about which Hollywood film | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
had lost blah blah million pounds, and he said Anthony and Cleopatra, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
I said, "No, it's Cleopatra." And he said, "Well, it's the same thing." | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
And I said, "Well, it's a pie question." | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
And he actually, I mean, physically stormed out. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:47 | |
But apart from that he is, David Baddiel is like a brother to me, | 0:39:47 | 0:39:55 | |
you know, I love him and I think that was great | 0:39:55 | 0:40:00 | |
that we worked together as well, | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
so we shared lots of really special stuff. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
But when I first met David and moved in with him, and stuff, | 0:40:07 | 0:40:13 | |
he was kind of a heroic figure | 0:40:13 | 0:40:15 | |
and really a big influence on me, I think. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:18 | |
When I think about that change of living in Birmingham | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
and then living in London | 0:40:22 | 0:40:24 | |
I think of David as representing that, a sort of a wider universe. | 0:40:24 | 0:40:31 | |
He always used to go on about original thought, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
that was his big thing, you know, people just rattled off cliches, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:39 | |
it's all about having original thinking | 0:40:39 | 0:40:41 | |
and having new stuff to say, which I'd never really... | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
I guess I kind of knew that somewhere but I'd never verbalised it. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
And there was lots of stuff like that which was completely eye-opening | 0:40:48 | 0:40:53 | |
and life changing for me. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:55 | |
And Fantasy Football, it was a fantasy for both of you. | 0:40:55 | 0:40:59 | |
You were never a good footballer, I don't know if David was, | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
and yet you ended up in the heart of the football establishment? | 0:41:02 | 0:41:07 | |
Yeah, it really was, | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
it was like the competition winners' approach to football | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
because we, we used to sit at home on our sofa, | 0:41:13 | 0:41:18 | |
we were living together at the time | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
and we'd watch football on the telly and we'd make jokes about it, | 0:41:21 | 0:41:24 | |
I mean, that was a large chunk of our home life. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:29 | |
And then suddenly someone was paying us to do that on telly | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
and really we only had to sharpen it up a bit, | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
it was just like editing what happens at home. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:38 | |
So, yeah, it was such a dream job, meeting footballers, | 0:41:38 | 0:41:43 | |
who you used to watch when you were a kid | 0:41:43 | 0:41:47 | |
and all that kind of stuff, it was top notch. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:50 | |
Hello! Hello and welcome to Fantasy Football League. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:57 | |
This week we recreate one of the Republic of Ireland's | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
greatest World Cup moments. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:01 | |
And we'll be saying a big hello to Ron Yeats. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:04 | |
Hello, I'm Ron Yeats. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:06 | |
ALL: Hello! | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
Good old Ron! | 0:42:09 | 0:42:11 | |
But first, a few things we noticed from watching football this week. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:14 | |
Eric Cantona got a bit annoyed when he found a till receipt | 0:42:14 | 0:42:17 | |
for Andy Cole's transfer. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:19 | |
And the other thing which is actually quite spooky, | 0:42:21 | 0:42:23 | |
that the first record you bought was Back Home | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
which was the World Cup single | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
and yours wasn't World Cup, it was the European Championship, | 0:42:28 | 0:42:32 | |
but you actually got to do a number one single yourself, which is, | 0:42:32 | 0:42:37 | |
I mean, beyond spooky, really? | 0:42:37 | 0:42:39 | |
Yeah, well, people often, if you sort of get famous, | 0:42:39 | 0:42:44 | |
and achieve something, people often do these, | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
"Who would have thought that kid who blah blah...?" | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
But that's probably the biggest "Who'd have thought?" | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
Who'd have thought that kid who bought Back Home | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
would then bring out an England World Cup single. | 0:42:55 | 0:42:59 | |
Yeah, it was brilliant and that's the thing about when you're a comic | 0:42:59 | 0:43:04 | |
and doing well as a comic, | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
there are peripheries, things start coming up, | 0:43:06 | 0:43:10 | |
and at the time that was still new, | 0:43:10 | 0:43:12 | |
now I've tried to do less periphery | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
and tried to concentrate on being a comic more, | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
but then, that was such a treat, you know, | 0:43:17 | 0:43:19 | |
coming to the England football song! | 0:43:19 | 0:43:22 | |
And just, you know, me and Dave sitting | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
writing the lyrics and all that, and being in the recording studio, | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
being on Top Of The Pops | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
all those, you know I suppose I've got a kind of a showbiz check list | 0:43:32 | 0:43:37 | |
where you, you know, you do Test Match Special | 0:43:37 | 0:43:39 | |
and you do Desert Island Discs | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
and you do Panorama and Question Time | 0:43:41 | 0:43:45 | |
and often I'll say, I'll often say yes to things | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
because I think, "Oh, that'll be good on my checklist." | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
This, for example. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
So doing the official England football song | 0:43:52 | 0:43:57 | |
wouldn't have even made my checklist, | 0:43:57 | 0:43:59 | |
it was so outrageous, and then, | 0:43:59 | 0:44:03 | |
so we'd done the song, | 0:44:03 | 0:44:04 | |
and it got to number one, which they often did. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
I remember I was in San Francisco the week it came out | 0:44:07 | 0:44:11 | |
and I walked into my hotel room with my girlfriend at the time, | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
there were flowers which I thought were from the hotel, | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
but then I saw a card, | 0:44:18 | 0:44:20 | |
this is very much my manager, it said, | 0:44:20 | 0:44:22 | |
"Single straight in at number one, | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
"56,000 units sold." | 0:44:25 | 0:44:30 | |
The least romantic announcement ever. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
But that was it, it was number one. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
But when people say this thing "I bet you never dreamed..." | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
I usually have dreamed, because I am quite a big time daydreamer | 0:44:39 | 0:44:44 | |
and every project I get involved in | 0:44:45 | 0:44:48 | |
I do dream of the awards and all that kind of stuff, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
I always imagine it's going to be an enormous smash, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:56 | |
you know, like world shattering, | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
consequently my life is a series of disappointment! | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
Nevertheless. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:04 | |
I did think it would get to number one and do well | 0:45:04 | 0:45:09 | |
but I didn't think the fans would sing it | 0:45:09 | 0:45:11 | |
because the fans never sing the official single, | 0:45:11 | 0:45:16 | |
they just didn't do that. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:17 | |
The fans never sang "Back Home", it just didn't happen. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
But we played Scotland in Euro '96 | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
and at the end of the game, | 0:45:25 | 0:45:29 | |
the hand shaking and shirt swapping went on | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
and the DJ at Wembley put on this song | 0:45:32 | 0:45:35 | |
and I thought, "Oh, that's great." | 0:45:35 | 0:45:37 | |
And the crowd just started absolutely singing along with it | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
and after that, every game was the crowd singing it, | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
it became a proper terrace chant, and I didn't see that coming. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:48 | |
And as I discuss it now, | 0:45:48 | 0:45:50 | |
I can feel a slight tingling around the face, it's brilliant. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:53 | |
# Three lions on a shirt | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
# Jules Rimet still gleaming | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
# Thirty years of hurt | 0:46:00 | 0:46:05 | |
# Never stopping dreaming... # | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
'England have done it! In the last minute of extra time!' | 0:46:11 | 0:46:15 | |
'What a save! Gordon Banks!' | 0:46:15 | 0:46:19 | |
'Good old England! England have got it in the bag!' | 0:46:19 | 0:46:25 | |
# I know that was then But it could be again... # | 0:46:25 | 0:46:29 | |
You entered what was a fairly standard route which was, | 0:46:29 | 0:46:33 | |
and still is, from comedian to chat show host, | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
it was a television trend, | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
were you happy as a talk show host? | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
Sometimes it was, I mean, I did something like nine series | 0:46:44 | 0:46:49 | |
of that chat show, and there were times when I thought it was great. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:55 | |
There is a problem with a comedian, | 0:46:55 | 0:46:57 | |
and I think no matter how good you are | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
when you first sit down with that person from the TV company | 0:47:00 | 0:47:04 | |
you're both thinking, "How do we put you on telly? | 0:47:04 | 0:47:09 | |
"What's your vehicle? | 0:47:09 | 0:47:10 | |
"What do we do with you to make you as funny on telly as you are live?" | 0:47:10 | 0:47:15 | |
And it's something that people still struggle with, | 0:47:15 | 0:47:18 | |
I see people, they're going to be on telly, | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
and I say to someone, "Oh, I've seen this guy | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
"he's really, really funny", | 0:47:22 | 0:47:24 | |
and they just don't work, | 0:47:24 | 0:47:26 | |
and I think it's why people have given in and said, | 0:47:26 | 0:47:29 | |
"Well, let's just put stand-up on television | 0:47:29 | 0:47:31 | |
"because it's so hard to think of the right vehicle." | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
A chat show, as you say, is sort of an obvious thing, | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
you know, in America, the chat show hosts are often comics. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:45 | |
So I went through a bit of a curve with it, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
the first couple of series I did | 0:47:49 | 0:47:53 | |
I really wanted to be the star of the show, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:57 | |
that's what I thought, and I treated my guests | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
like they were very elaborate hecklers, | 0:48:00 | 0:48:02 | |
but I didn't really want to listen to them, I wanted to listen to me | 0:48:02 | 0:48:09 | |
and I figured that's why people were tuning in. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
And then I realised that one needed a balance, | 0:48:12 | 0:48:15 | |
that it was quite awkward | 0:48:15 | 0:48:17 | |
to watch someone not getting a word in, in the course of an interview, | 0:48:17 | 0:48:22 | |
and then I think I did start to get interested | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
in the art of interviewing | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
and sometimes that worked really well, | 0:48:28 | 0:48:32 | |
but of course, as you know, sometimes you interview people | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
that basically are rubbish, and then you have to start | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
filling in the gaps that they leave. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
But I did... I started to care more about the balance | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
and I don't know if that's good for a comic. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:46 | |
I was talking to a comedian recently who'd been offered a chat show | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
and I said you have to be careful | 0:48:50 | 0:48:52 | |
because you do have to give some of yourself away, | 0:48:52 | 0:48:58 | |
you do have to... | 0:48:58 | 0:49:00 | |
There's this thing that I think John the Baptist says, | 0:49:00 | 0:49:04 | |
"Now I will shrink as he grows." | 0:49:04 | 0:49:06 | |
Speaking of Jesus. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:08 | |
And you have to shrink to let your guests grow | 0:49:08 | 0:49:10 | |
and that doesn't come very naturally for a comedian, | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
I don't know even if it's good for a comedian. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
So I liked it, | 0:49:17 | 0:49:19 | |
I liked it from about series three | 0:49:19 | 0:49:24 | |
to about series seven | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
and then I got a bit bored with it towards the end. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:31 | |
I would love to give you a taste of me playing air guitar to Layla. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:35 | |
-Is that all right? -Yeah! | 0:49:35 | 0:49:37 | |
-I don't want you to be offended! -I'd love to see that. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:39 | |
When I play a guitar, I'm really elaborate. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:41 | |
Cos I do that thing, like, I do the volume and stuff. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
Occasionally, honestly, I'll hit the wah-wah! | 0:49:46 | 0:49:50 | |
And little signals to the roadies. I'll say stuff, like... | 0:49:50 | 0:49:53 | |
Anyway, let's hear it. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:56 | |
MUSIC: "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:02 | |
And there'd been a move from the BBC to ITV which led to you becoming | 0:50:06 | 0:50:10 | |
the greediest man in Britain, you were known as... | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
Well, the world, actually. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:15 | |
The Greediest Person in the World was the official title in the Mirror. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:19 | |
I was... I was at number one and Imelda Marcos was at number four, | 0:50:19 | 0:50:27 | |
so it was... Yeah, all agendas were covered. | 0:50:27 | 0:50:29 | |
The allegation was that your agents, Avalon, had asked for 20 million | 0:50:29 | 0:50:35 | |
for you to stay at the BBC. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
Do you think that demand was actually made? | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
Do you know something? I have never asked my manager directly | 0:50:40 | 0:50:46 | |
whether he asked for 20 million quid or not. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:51 | |
You must want to know, don't you? | 0:50:51 | 0:50:53 | |
In a way, I don't. You know, I think managers are often doing | 0:50:53 | 0:50:58 | |
the stuff I don't want to do. They do my dirty work, you know, | 0:50:58 | 0:51:03 | |
and one uses them... There's a feeling that acts are exploited, | 0:51:03 | 0:51:08 | |
but often, you have a manager so you can be a nice guy | 0:51:08 | 0:51:12 | |
and they can do the stuff you don't want to do. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
I've said to him, "Look I don't... the money is your department." | 0:51:15 | 0:51:21 | |
I, for example, I have... | 0:51:21 | 0:51:26 | |
I've had a couple of shows on telly in recent times. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:32 | |
I don't know what I'm paid for them, I never ask that question. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:37 | |
I just assume he'll get me the best money he can get me. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:42 | |
But it must go into your account, minus his 15% or whatever? | 0:51:42 | 0:51:46 | |
Yeah, but it comes in a lump with other stuff. I don't sit and... | 0:51:46 | 0:51:50 | |
I mean, one could argue, I suppose, | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
that I am ripe for exploitation in that thing. | 0:51:53 | 0:51:57 | |
But if you stop trusting your manager | 0:51:57 | 0:51:59 | |
you have to get rid of him, I think, so at the moment I trust him. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
But I'm not... it's not why I'm doing it, that's his job. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:07 | |
I'll make it as funny as I can make it | 0:52:07 | 0:52:09 | |
and he can make it as rewarding, financially, as he can make it | 0:52:09 | 0:52:14 | |
and that's a good combo. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:16 | |
There's a strange phenomenon recently. A lot of people, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
knowing I was interviewing you, said the same thing - | 0:52:19 | 0:52:21 | |
"Ooh, a few years ago I really hated him | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
"and now I think he's great, I really like him." | 0:52:24 | 0:52:27 | |
So something did happen, didn't it? There was a backlash and a recovery? | 0:52:27 | 0:52:32 | |
Yeah I was... I was at a festival | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
and we asked for questions from the audience and a woman said, | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
"I used to hate you and now I love you, did you change or did I?" | 0:52:39 | 0:52:43 | |
I don't know what happened. I... I... | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
I wasn't aware of doing anything that differently. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
I just... I've always tried to be as much me as I can. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:58 | |
Maybe the me has changed, and I've just got older and stuff like that. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:03 | |
Maybe... I've... | 0:53:03 | 0:53:06 | |
I don't like the idea that I've mellowed, | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
because that almost sounds like a bad thing. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
I suppose what I think is that I was always the person they liked, | 0:53:12 | 0:53:17 | |
they just didn't know it. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:18 | |
I also think maybe I am less laddish. I just got... | 0:53:18 | 0:53:26 | |
I think you always have to be looking for new things to be funny about, | 0:53:26 | 0:53:31 | |
and I just thought, "What about this half of my brain?" | 0:53:31 | 0:53:35 | |
"Why don't I just chuck everything | 0:53:35 | 0:53:37 | |
"and not worry about whether people get it or not?" | 0:53:37 | 0:53:39 | |
Google has been a great liberator for me, | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
because now I can talk about stuff on the radio... | 0:53:42 | 0:53:45 | |
like I did some... We were talking about curtseying, | 0:53:45 | 0:53:49 | |
whether one curtseys in front of the Queen, | 0:53:49 | 0:53:52 | |
and that took me eventually on to JM Coetzee, the South African novelist, and his wife... | 0:53:52 | 0:53:58 | |
I recreated a big argument between him and his wife at home. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:02 | |
And at the end of it I said, "If you know him, Google him." | 0:54:04 | 0:54:07 | |
And I think that is... It's a nice bit of freedom now, for a comic, | 0:54:07 | 0:54:13 | |
that they can go and find out what the hell I was talking about, | 0:54:13 | 0:54:17 | |
and laugh retrospectively. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:19 | |
A life changing event, becoming a father at the age of 55 or so. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:24 | |
Do you have an image of the kind of dad you want to be? | 0:54:24 | 0:54:28 | |
Erm... | 0:54:28 | 0:54:29 | |
Yeah, I'd like to be the kind of dad you could talk to about anything. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:37 | |
That's why I wouldn't mind him reading my books or watching my DVDs, | 0:54:37 | 0:54:42 | |
because I don't know if I... | 0:54:42 | 0:54:44 | |
As much as I love my parents, | 0:54:44 | 0:54:46 | |
I don't know that I really let them into my life. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:50 | |
I don't know that I ever really talked about girlfriends | 0:54:50 | 0:54:53 | |
or what was going on like that, I kept that all quiet. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
I think it's a brilliant thing | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
if your parent can be a bit like your mate as well. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:01 | |
So yeah, I'd like to think that I can be like a mate. | 0:55:01 | 0:55:06 | |
Obviously sometimes, you've got to lay the law down, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:10 | |
but you also want to be able to be close and familiar... | 0:55:10 | 0:55:13 | |
I guess player-manager, that's the role I'm after! | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
And does that... The thought, 15 years on, | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
when you're trying to instil discipline in your child, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
that they'll buy on Amazon - or whatever exists then - | 0:55:25 | 0:55:28 | |
a 1p copy of your memoirs, and say, "Dad, you did all this stuff." | 0:55:28 | 0:55:33 | |
Well, when I wrote the book, part of the reason - the autobiography - | 0:55:33 | 0:55:38 | |
was I thought it would be nice for future generations | 0:55:38 | 0:55:41 | |
to know what I was like. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:43 | |
You actually say that in the book. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
You say, we'll save a lot of time if your kids ask, "What do you do?" | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
And, erm... | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
I've always endeavoured to be, erm... | 0:55:51 | 0:55:55 | |
what Henry Fielding said of Tom Jones, a good natured man. | 0:55:55 | 0:55:59 | |
Even the sleeping around and stuff. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:02 | |
So, erm... I think if he is influenced by that, | 0:56:02 | 0:56:07 | |
I... I don't think I'd be too... distressed. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
I don't know. I don't know what parenthood will be like. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
It might just be wholly terrifying. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:15 | |
Finally, we talked about, | 0:56:15 | 0:56:17 | |
people don't get to choose how their careers pan out in showbiz, | 0:56:17 | 0:56:22 | |
but there's that Bruce Forsyth model | 0:56:22 | 0:56:24 | |
where he's been... He's had ups and downs but there he is, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:28 | |
still at the top in his early 80s. Is that what you would ideally like? | 0:56:28 | 0:56:32 | |
Well, I... | 0:56:34 | 0:56:35 | |
People used to say that it was a very tragic end for Tommy Cooper, for example. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:42 | |
Because he died on TV... Well, live, as it were, on TV? | 0:56:42 | 0:56:46 | |
Yeah, but he is getting laughs as he died | 0:56:46 | 0:56:49 | |
because people thought he was messing about, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:51 | |
so the last thing he heard was people laughing. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:54 | |
I... That doesn't seem so bad to me. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:58 | |
I don't have any intention, at the moment, of ever retiring. | 0:56:58 | 0:57:02 | |
Or indeed dying on TV? | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
Well, no, I've died on TV many times, you get over it! | 0:57:05 | 0:57:09 | |
I mean I love watching... I can't imagine Strictly without Bruce, | 0:57:09 | 0:57:13 | |
it's like a Grand Prix without an accident - | 0:57:13 | 0:57:16 | |
there'd be no point in watching it. | 0:57:16 | 0:57:18 | |
I want to do it forever, is the way I feel at the moment. | 0:57:18 | 0:57:22 | |
it's a brilliant job and it's one of the few jobs | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
where people don't mind you getting old in it. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
Musicians, as unjust as it may be - when you see the Rolling Stones | 0:57:30 | 0:57:37 | |
you kind of think, "Do it at home, just do it at home, that's fine. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:41 | |
"You don't have to come out and do it in public." | 0:57:41 | 0:57:43 | |
I don't think people mind that. | 0:57:43 | 0:57:45 | |
George Burns, Bob Hope, all those old British... Bruce Forsyth. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
People are OK with old comics, | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
so I like the idea of being one of those really old guys doing it. | 0:57:51 | 0:57:56 | |
That would be brilliant. | 0:57:56 | 0:57:58 | |
Frank Skinner, thank you. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:00 | |
Thank you. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:01 |