[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the Hammersmith Apollo.
Please put your hands together
and welcome on stage
Dara O'Briain.
Lovely! How are you? You in good form?
Good evening, good evening...
How are you?
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen,
- to the Hammersmith Apollo! Good form?
- [all] Yeah!
My name is Dara O'Briain,
It is a pleasure to be in front of you,
after a tour all over lreland and the UK,
to be back in London,
It's a delight to be back at home,
in one regard,
It's interesting
to be back in London now,
'cause we left you and when we came back
things had changed in a subtle way,
Like short stories
you read as a teenager,
science-fiction stories,
you'd go into the past
and then you'd sneeze on a pterodactyl
or step on something,
you come back
and the world is changed,
We went to Basingstoke,
Croydon, Aylesbury,
We came back, you elected
fat Andy Warhol as mayor,
[laughter]
Frankly, if I knew that's what you could
get from hosting Have I Got News For You
I wouldn't have settled
for Mock The Week.
[laughter, applause]
It is a pleasure, Hello, people at the front,
We'll come to you in a moment,
[laughter]
But it is a delight be back,
particularly in this part of the world,
I live near here,
Hello, Hammersmith,
Hammersmith, one of the economic engines
that is keeping this country going,
By Hammersmith, I mean
that newsagent on King Street
- where Polish guys get their jobs,
- [laughter]
The most... I'm not slagging
off Poles, I'm lrish, I love Poles,
They've kind of stolen our act
just a little bit, Know what I mean?
They're cheaper then we are,
work harder and they had a Pope,
- They're more Catholic then we ever were,
- [laughter]
But now we find ourselves back here,
We will be talking to you,
people in the front,
Don't feel scared by that,
It's not some corny comedy thing
where I slag you off, I'll make gods of you,
You know that?
I'll render you extraordinary,
You'll be carried out of this building,
You'll be legends by the end of it,
That's what you do,
one of the joys about live comedy
is that you mess with people
and find out about lives,
It's fun and it changes every night,
In Oxford, for example...
A tip for comedians:
always ask another question,
I asked, "What do you do?"
He goes, "I'm a food scientist,"
- The entire room went, "Ooh..."
- [laughter]
"We don't like that,"
I went, "You done anything interesting
as a food scientist?"
He goes, "l invented the Solero,"
- [laughter]
- That's exactly...
Everyone went, "Well..."
I went, "Really? All of them?"
- He went, "No, just tropical,"
- [laughter]
I said to him, "That's incredible,"
We had a long discussion
about the ratio of ice cream to stick
and how you get the frozen-y bit
to keep the ice cream in,
Technical issues were raised,
I was going, "There's so many issues,
Did you do this yourself?"
- He goes, "No, I led the team,"
- [laughter]
Which I thought was a fantastic way
to describe devising an ice cream,
Shackleton led a team,
Edmund Hillary led a team,
- Wolverine, he leads a fucking team,
- [laughter]
But this man invented an ice cream,
and sitting beside him was his wife
who had this look on her face,
this glorious look of, "Here we go again
with the fucking Solero, Jesus,"
- [laughter]
- This is people we've met,
We met in Manchester the man
who put the thin metal strip into notes,
What a weird gig that was, We met a guy
in Halifax who works for the Halifax.
It's that kind of town,
Oh, here's one of my favourites,
We met a guy in Tunbridge Wells
who works in business continuity,
Have you ever heard of it?
A few of you,
Business continuity is brilliant,
It's a new, invented industry,
It's my favourite industry in the world,
These guys go round to large companies
and tell... scare them
by going, "Are you ready for a nuclear
attack or a terror attack or a flood?
We'll look after you,"
That kind of stuff,
Basically, army guys
with a very vivid imagination scaring the shit
- out of corporate types,
- [laughter]
Going, "Are you ready
for a killer bee attack?"
The CEO of Woolworths, "What the fuck
would killer bees want in Woolworths?"
"Pick-n-Mix." "Fuck it, you're right!"
- [laughter]
- It's a brilliant industry,
It's a superb industry,
But it is that kind of stuff,
We talk and hopefully
things occur and it's great,
Things occur tonight that didn't occur
last night and won't occur next week,
Different things occur,
I don't have a title for the show,
There is a show, It isn't just me going,
"Hello, hello," We don't all get a turn,
There is a show, I don't have a title,
I was going to call the show
You Had To Be There.
Half of that was so that in a week's time
people would see the posters
- and go, "Ah, fuck."
- [laughter]
But the other half was that stuff will occur
that won't occur any other night,
You shout things, I'll react,
create fantastic stuff
that won't occur again,
That's the joy of live comedy,
It's different every night,
If you buy Superbad or Anchorman
on DVD, you'll get a funny thing,
but the same one each time,
Here, it's different,
I'm trying to reclaim that phrase,
I know that most of us use "You had
to be there" as a bit of a get-out clause
when an anecdote hasn't quite kicked off
as royally as you thought it would,
You go, "l was in the pub last night,
It was magical,
Mick put a pint glass on his nose
and ran around going, 'Rah, rah, rah,
Rah, rah, rah, rah.'
- You had to be there."
- [laughter]
Random choice,
What's your name?
- [man] Matthew,
- How are you? Are you a local?
- [man] I'm not,
- You're not a local,
There's an air of mystery already
about you, Where are you from?
- I live in Reading,
- You've come here for the gig?
You've come for the gig,
But I did Reading,
That makes no sense at all,
Don't feck with my...
The idea is I tour, I go to you,
That's surely the way it has to work
- [applause]
- If l...
If I thought you were going to come
to me, I wouldn't have left the house,
- [laughter]
- If all I had to do
was go to a hilltop and go...
[imitates horn]
then you just flock towards me...
Jesus, I fucking drove on that M4
for up to 45 minutes
to get down to that town,
- And what do you do in Reading?
- Proposal manager,
You're a proposal manager,
Some guys have fear of commitment,
- [laughter]
- What kind of proposals do you manage?
- Engineering company,
- For an engineering company,
What do you make?
Big things? Tiny things?
- Oil refineries,
- Oil refineries in Reading?
- [laughter]
- Reading is about 400 miles inland,
Surely your first proposal would be
"Move the company to the shore",
[laughter]
That's the first thing you could do,
Here are you wandering around
with a divining rod
in the middle of Wiltshire
or whatever county, I'm not sure,
- Is Reading in Wilshire?
- Berkshire,
It's Berkshire? Oh, Yeah,
Have you heard the accent?
- I'm not from round here,
- [laughter]
I haven't learnt all the counties,
OK, in Y orkshire, where you're from...
Walking with a...
Where's the nearest oil to you?
- Nearest oil?
- The nearest oil,
- Esso,
- In the garage, Thank you very much,
People are queuing up to give out to you
for this ridiculous business plan,
Complete strangers are giving out
to you, Is there any oil near you?
- Not really, no,
- Not really,
It's a rather relaxed job
you've got for yourself,
"What do you do in Tenerife?"
"l look after the polar bears."
- [laughter]
- "Are you kept busy?"
"Nah, I get a lot of time
to do whatever I want,
It's quite relaxing."
Have you done one in Aberdeen?
- No,
- That seems to be the closest
to where you are, Aberdeen,
brilliant town, fabulous place,
Two industries,
which is oil and lap dancing,
- [laughter]
- The two major economies in Aberdeen
are oil and lap dancing,
Half take it out of the ground
and the other half rub it on themselves,
It's just fantastically circular,
It's very ecological as a whole,
No, it's great,
Thank you for taking the journey,
Pick a number between one and ten,
- Four,
- Four?
One, two, three, four,
How are you, sir? Are you well?
It could have been any other number,
and we will judge you on whether or not
this one works out well,
God knows, What's your name, sir?
- Paul,
- Hi, Paul, Where are you from?
- I'm from here,
- Here,
- Fulham,
- Fulham?
- Limerick, originally,
- Originally,
I'm beating you down here, Slowly...
The more questions I ask,
you're driving further away,
"I'm not of this planet."
You'll rip your head off and your antennae
will flap wildly in every direction,
[hissing]
Sorry, Doctor Who. Sorry,
You're from Limerick,
How long are you over here, Paul?
- Three years,
- Three years, What do you do?
- What skills did you bring to London?
- Software engineer,
Software engineer,
How's that working out?
- Good,
- What have you made?
- What have you done? Software for what?
- Um, banking stuff,
Banking? It's getting
more and more excciting, Comedy gold,
- [laughter]
- You could have gone for three, fucker!
Look at him, This guy is gold here,
And this guy has
a perfectly reasonable technical job
that's the bane of a comedian's life,
This kind of lT slices of career stuff,
Just for banking, for God's sake?
Any particular type of banking?
- I work for Visa,
- You work for Visa,
- We're familiar with their work
- [laughter]
We don't have an emotional response,
They didn't turn into panto crowd,
Whereas "l dig for oil in Reading,"
the whole place was going,
"That's fucking nonsensical."
- [laughter]
- The lT thing intrigues me
'cause they're sticking it
into anything,
Here's my favourite current application,
There's a company called Clearblue,
Are you familiar with Clearblue?
- [laughter]
- Come on,
Half of you know
who Clearblue are, right?
Half of you don't want to shout and
the other half, the deeper-voiced half,
are kind of going, "I'm sure
I've seen the box around the bathroom."
- [laughter]
- Paul, do you know what they make?
- No,
- You don't? Want to take a guess?
- Uh, lT stuff?
- lT? They make lT? Well...
In a manner of speaking,
there's information,
and there's technology used
to get the information,
They make pregnancy tests,
A specific form of information
that you're requiring here,
There's a guy in Dublin I asked,
He went, "Are they
an hternet service provider?"
- [laughter]
- Difficult to check pregnancy
over the hternet,
You'd have to scan yourself in,
But Clearblue came up with a new
pregnancy test, a more advanced one,
Judging by the response, it's a product
Women buy pregnancy tests,
It's marketed to them,
They came up with a slogan
which I thought was the worst slogan
for a product aimed at women,
It was, "Clearblue: the most
sophisticated piece of technology
- you will ever urinate on."
- [laughter]
No woman finds that appealing
as a marketing strategy,
whereas to men, that's the Holy Grail,
We've been urinating on things
our entire lives
and we have never thought
to grade them technologically,
Already we have a winner,
But women go into Boots
and you go into a wall
of pregnancy tests, You don't go,
"l want the one with the liquid crystal
display that'll download MP3s,
That's the pregnancy test for me,"
You want the one that gives you
discretion and accuracy,
The major things
you want in a pregnancy test,
You don't go, "l want the one
that will play It's R..aining Men
- by the Weather Girls."
- [laughter]
That's how you sell shit to men, It is
embarrassing how you advertise to men,
Men are still advertised to
as if we were autistic 1 2-year-old boys,
We're up to five blades on our razors,
[laughter]
What in the name of Christ can the blades
four and five possibly contribute
that blades one, two and three
didn't pretty much cover already?
Does blade four remove a layer
of epidermis entirely
before blade five instantaneously
cauterises the wound so that no hair
- will ever grow there again?
- [laughter]
Do you have to unlock blade five
by defeating a boss on blade four?
[laughter]
And even the name of the five-blade razor
is depressingly patronising,
They just took every boy word
and rammed them together in a line,
It's called the Gillette
Fusion Power Stealth,
- [laughter]
- It was tragic enough
that it used to be called Fusion Power,
It's a razor blade!
"This razor blade harnesses
the power of the atom,
But now with new stealth mode,
click, vroom, it's gone!"
"Where has my razor blade gone?
Who knows where my razor blade is now?"
"You'll not track it down,
It's gone deep cover,
No radar can find it,
We'll have to listen to the dull hum
of the reactor core."
I made that comment in a gig in Manchester
and somebody sent me a link
to a new Kenwood kettle called
the Kenwood Stealth, It's a kettle!
What the fuck does it do,
hide in the garden behind the grass,
just looking at you and waiting
till you look thirsty?
And then it suddenly jumps out
at you and gives you a cup of tea,
- You go, "Where did that come from?"
- [laughter]
The kettle looks and goes, "You'll not
see me again," and disappears,
- Who needs stealth mode in a kettle?
- [applause]
That's how you sell shit...
That's how you sell shit to men,
By the way, on the pregnancy test point,
just on the pregnancy test,
men envy women the pregnancy test
'cause there's no parallel technology,
Nothing we use is the same,
We would love to use pregnancy tests,
Don't get me wrong,
We've all had a go,
Fuck it, They sell them
in twos and threes,
Once the result is in,
why let the others go to waste?
- [laughter]
- "Let's find out if I'm pregnant,
Oh! Turns out I'm not,
I'm going for a pint."
Men would love if the major junctions
in their lives were illustrated to them
by peeing onto a stick
We'd kill for that,
To be able as a man
to walk out of a bathroom
to a wife or partner or girlfriend
and wave a stick in the air,
as a man, and turn to her and go,
"Guess who's regional lT manager
for the mid-west area,
- [laughter]
- Two blue lines, Yeah!"
Quality, absolutely quality,
We never got to you
because you could have been
two or three, What's your name?
- [man] Michael,
- Hi, Are you local?
- Harrow,
- Grand, You've come down, Thank you,
Another person from Harrow, Something
to talk about on the train home,
- Great, What do you do in Harrow?
- I'm a lorry driver,
You're a lorry driver? Fantastic, You
drive a big lorry? How many wheels?
- Six.
- Six?, There's room for inflation,
Does it work that way?
Do you look at the 1 8-wheels and go,
"Some day I'll have that."
What's in the back of the lorry now?
- Food,
- Food? How long can it stay there?
- [laughter]
- About an hour,
We won't have you for long, will we?
You're looking very fidgety already,
Jesus Christ, that yogurt's
not gonna keep itself warm,
- What kind of food's in the back?,
- Sorry?
- What kind of food?
- Eurostar,
Eurostar food, For the train?
The little compact meals? How many?
- Hundreds,
- Hundreds!
How many people can we feed tonight?
What a gig that would be!
If we got you to back the van up
to the door and we fed everyone
during the interval
and you got some fake croissant
and something slightly French,
slightly English for the Eurostar,
Do ever eat? Do you ever tuck in?
Ever open the back?,
- No, you don't,
- [laughter]
I'm with you,
I bet you're stuffed with vol-au-vents,
I bet you've got nothing
but the little cartons of orange juice,
Is that what it is? How do you know
if you don't fucking open them?
You've given yourself away,
I've foiled you, I put a trap
and, vroom, I took it away
and you fell onto spiky ground,
Is it mainly food that you have
at the back of the truck?,
- Yeah, food,
- Food,
Do you dream of something else,
of something less perishable?
Something you could drive for miles,
It's a short journey but food goes off,
It's an hour window,
You can't get far from Harrow,
You can't get close to King's Cross
from Harrow in an hour,
If the traffic is bad does it start
to smell? Can you hear it coming in?
The smell coming in, "Fuck it, it's off."
Tip it onto the side of the road,
Do you go to a residential area
and see if anyone's building something
and tip it into a skip?
Middle of the night, you're shovelling
Eurostar meals into a local skip,
Eurostar meals, old Christmas trees,
anything just goes into the skip,
Then you go, "lt was robbed!"
Who would rob it?
It's a ridiculous story,
I don't know why you said it,
You didn't say it, I'm doing
most of the talking in this relationship,
It's kind of the way it works,
Who should I talk to next?
Lads at the end,
should I talk to them?
- Which one should I talk to?
- Two,
Number two,
He picked you out exactly,
- What's your name?
- Alex.
- How are you? What do you do?
- I'm a student,
- Student of? Of what?
- [indistinct]
- Say that entirely again,
- [indistinct]
I like the way you're saying it
quieter and quieter the closer I get,
It's like trying to lure a badger
out of a set,
The nearer I get,
the quieter I have to go,
- What is it? What do you do?
- [laughter]
- [indistinct]
- [whispering]
This is gonna be a weird bit in the DVD,
People will be leaning
into their television, turning it up and up,
going, "Something wrong,
Technical fault."
We'll have to run a little subtitle,
"Quiet man." It's a school you're in,
- Yeah,
- OK, cool, I'm still not getting it,
but I'm liking the way that it's
a discreet school, I'm liking that,
- So you're doing A-levels?
- No, GCSEs,
You're even younger, Good to have you
here, What are you gonna do after?
I'm going to college
to be an electrician,
Very good, It's excciting,
What made you want to do that?
- My dad's an electrician,
- That's very imaginative of you,
It gives you a bit of start, anyway,
Jeez, the lack of drive there,
What's your favourite type
of light bulb, plug-in or bayonet?
These are the questions
people are gonna ask you,
- Haven't a clue,
- You haven't?
You're like just putty at this stage,
You haven't decided your favourite,
Your dad had, Five or 1 3 amp?
Which one is the best?
Fuck's sakes, man!
Do you not know anything at all?
Did he not sit you down
on his lap and go,
"lf you want to get involved in this,
you're gonna have to know"?
Do you have those screwdrivers
- that light up?
- No,
You don't? What kind
of fucking electrician is he?
Does he just guess?
Does he just lick his finger and go,
"OK, if I die,
you won't owe me a penny,
Ah... I'm still here,
The current is off, Fantastic, Hoo!
That's not gonna work
every time I do it like that."
What's your favourite,
alternating or direct current?
[laughter]
- "What's that?"
- [laughter]
You're gonna be the blankest canvas
they've ever had in electrician school,
They'll be thrilled, They can tell you
anything, Fairies carry the charge
from deep inside the earth
and they mine it
and then they bring it up in lifts
and then they present the light
to other little elves who run up the wall,
Then they just wave their arses
until they light up and then light has spread
all over the place, Any fucking
fairy tale at all, they're gonna tell you,
[applause]
Don't clap because
I'm taking the piss out of the fact
that you don't know anything about...
You don't know the different
types of light bulb,
It's gonna be brilliant, amazing,
- The shit they're gonna teach you,
- [laughter]
They do do that, Some of the sciencey
nonsense that's taught to people,
It's fantastic, We were talking
about marketing a minute ago,
the selling of these things
technically,
Here's my absolute favourite
piece of marketing nonsense,
I'll do it as melodramatically
as I can,
"When? When will we ever
win the war on bacteria?"
- [laughter]
- We're up to 99,9 per cent,
Surely it's only one final push
and we can eradicate
that last, 1 per cent of bacteria
which is clogging up
our kitchen work surfaces at the moment,
And I mean the bad bacteria,
not the good bacteria,
No, there was some sort of propaganda war
where we lured L casei immunitas
- onto our team,
- [laughter]
What happens if you pour
Dettol into a Y akult?
[laughter]
Is there a massive explosion
of bad bacteria,
and then there's just one good bacteria
at the bottom of the pot going,
- "Thank you for saving me"?
- [laughter]
There's so much bullshit
we read about that stuff,
Particularly if you've got kids,
Here's a tip: if there's bacteria
in your house and you have kids,
rub their faces in the bacteria,
They're supposed to get sick,
You're not supposed to spray
every single surface near your children
and wipe out everything,
It's not good for their immune systems,
There's so much fear
about these things,
Parents in this country
must be going bananas with it,
"Oh, my kids!
Don't come into the kitchen!
There's bacteria all over here!
Don't go outside, there are murderers
out there, Just stay in the hall."
- [laughter]
- "How long do I have to stay?"
"Until you're 1 8,
Then you can do whatever you want,
OK, you can go to the shops,
but be careful nobody follows you,
I shouldn't have let him go,
I'll follow him."
There's a general lack of knowledge
about science,
Not just specifically you, who thinks
that fucking pixies bring electricity
from one side of the room to the other,
You've got to stop believing that,
With their little flapping of wings
and fucking wiggling of tails,
That's not the way it works,
You think there's an elf in the bulb
who dies, and then you take the elf down
and replace him with a new one?
No, of course not,
There's a general...
In the media,
there's a lot of stuff
people don't know about, numbers,
I'm a numbers guy, I'm a dweeb,
I apologise,
I'm a bit of a nerd about these kind
of things, I get really pissed off
when people give out about crime
going up and say the numbers
are definitely going down, If you go,
"The numbers are going down,"
they go, "The fear of crime is rising."
So fucking what? Know what I mean?
Zombies are at an all-time low level,
but the fear of zombies could be high,
It doesn't mean we have to have
government policies to deal
with the fear of zombies,
It's ridiculous,
The NHS, there was a survey
in the NHS about dentistry,
where they found that some people
are removing their own teeth,
They brought on some senior dentist
onto Sky News and gave out to him
and said, "This is terrible,
People are removing their teeth!"
This guy stood there and went, "Systems
should be put in place to deal with it."
Which is stupid, He should be going,
"These people are fucking morons!"
- [laughter]
- "Who removes their own teeth?
I'm a dentist,
I don't remove my own teeth."
But there's a notion that
everyone's opinion is valid, My arse!
Bloke who's a professor of dentistry
for 40 years does not have a debate
with some eejit who removes
his teeth with string and a door,
It's nonsense, They'll have this
all the time with medical stuff on TV,
They'll talk to the doctor,
"Doctor this and Doctor that,
what happened? lsn't it awful?"
The doctor will be talking about something
with the benefit of research
and medical evidence,
and they'll turn away from the doctor
in the name of balance,
And turn to some quack, witch doctor,
Inomeopath, horse-shit peddler
on the other side of the studio,
I'm sorry if you're into homeopathy,
It's water!
How often does it need to be said?
It's just water, You're healing yourself,
Give yourself the credit,
Homeopaths get on my nerves
with the whole,
"Science doesn't know everything."
Science knows it doesn't know everything,
Otherwise it'd stop,
- [laughter]
- But as well as that...
Why would they bother?
Just because science doesn't
know everything doesn't mean you fill in
the gaps with whatever fairy tale
most appeals to you,
"The great thing about homeopathy
is you can't overdose on it."
- You can fucking drown,
- [laughter]
I'm sorry, it seems harsh,
and I used to be much more generous,
Right now, I would take homeopaths
and I'd put them in a big sack
with psychics, astrologers and priests
and I'd close the top of the sack
and I'd hit them all with sticks!
I wouldn't worry who got the worst
of the belt of the stick
Anyone, in answer
to the difficult questions in life,
the "l don't know
what happens after I die"
or "What happens if my loved ones die?"
or "How can I stop myself dying?"
The big questions
give you an easy bullshit answer,
You go, "Do you have evidence for that?"
They go, "There's more to life
than evidence." Get in the fucking sack!,
[laughter]
I'm sorry, herbal medicine has been
around for thousands of years,
It has and then we tested it all and
the stuff that worked became medicine,
[laughter]
The rest of it is just
a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri,
Knock yourselves out,
Chinese medicine,
"There are billions of Chinese,
Chinese medicine must be working."
The skinny on Chinese medicine:
the life expectancy in China was 30,
The life expectancy at the moment is 73,
and it's not fecking tiger penis
that turned it around for the Chinese,
Didn't do much for the tiger either,
if you don't mind me pointing out,
"But they're so wise,
one word for crisis and opportunity."
Yes, but they also have one word
for China and Tibet,
- And it's China, so fuck them,
- [laughter, applause]
Yeah, like we're
gonna take them on, come on,
I do love it when I get a round of applause,
as if we're gonna go,
"We'll take on the Chinese!
The Hammersmith Apollo,
We'll go bananas and go over there,
lt'll be fantastic."
You can supply the food
out of the back of the truck
You can find the oil for the car,
I don't know what you'll do at that stage,
You'll do some lT and you can
light it up with your fairy bulbs,
- [laughter]
- It's one of these ridiculous things,
You never see that balancing
with science,
You never see it with physics, a guy
from NASA talking about a space station,
"Mr NASA guy,
you've built a new space station."
They go, "That's very interesting,
But for the sake of balance,
we must now turn to Barry who believes
the sky is a carpet painted by God,
What do you think
of this space station plan?"
"It's clearly ridiculous, They're
gonna hook it onto the carpet?"
"You're absolutely right, Barry,
you really are."
Ridiculous, By the way, I love psychics,
- Do you know Watchdog?
- [all] Yeah!
Of course you do, Thank heavens,
The comedian feeds off the energy
of his audience,
and right there I slipped into a coma,
[laughter]
Watchdog. I'm not sure why
you'd whoop that particular sentence,
That seems an unusual thing to want
in a performer: "Go to the coma again."
- It's excciting theatre,
- [woman] Energy!
Energy? OK, if you want,
I'll do more jumping around,
It seems an unusual request,
OK, I'll do it more!
- [laughter]
- Sorry, that was you giving me energy,
Thank you, I'm charged!
See the way it works,
Somebody at the back of the room goes,
"Energy!" Bulbs kick off in a huge way,
- It's magic,
- [applause]
You know, you're right,
It is just magic,
- And maybe there is oil in Reading,
- [laughter]
Why can't we just dream?
Anyway, that'd be great
if you went home after the gig
and you're in the bathroom
and suddenly up out of the toilet...
And you go, "Mary, Mary,
This couldn't be...
That'd be too lucky, wouldn't it?"
Just started shooting up out of the thing,
Where was l? Oh, Yeah,
I was talking about the whole...
psychics, Ah! That was it,
There was a thing on, I got thrown
by a woman shouting "Energy!"
as if we were in the middle of a 1 970s
glam disco review, Yeah! Sorry!
Fusion, exccitement, energy, power!
[laughter]
Any other buzz words you'd like me
to give a physical expression to?
- Stealth!
- [laughter, applause]
That was fairly shit, wasn't it?
Let's face it, that was
a pretty poor expression of stealth,
You'd be a really bad ninja
if all you did was like that,
[laughter]
- Don't mind me,
- [laughter]
- [woman shouts]
- What did you say?
- Sexy!
- Sexy? Please! With every move,
Now... this has taken a weird turn,
hasn't it?
The gig was going as it normally goes,
nice and bit fucking preachy
about the whole medical thing,
All of a sudden, people shout buzz words
and I do mime, This sudden weird
direction I have taken in my career,
"When did you change, Dara?
When did you stop being a stand-up
and get trapped in a glass box?"
"lt was in the middle of a gig,
I'm sorry, I'd love to talk longer
but there's a giant gale coming
and I've got to walk against it."
Sorry, that's just weird,
Anyway, that was a crap stealth,
Good stealth would be if I did
the rest of the gig over here,
That would be very good,
quality stealth,
- That's fucking great stealth,
- [laughter]
You know I'm here, but you've no idea,
For all you know, I'm gonna walk...
Round the back, Oh, Yeah, Right,
OK, Then we're behind the big board,
We're behind the big board,
No, I haven't gone anywhere!
- [laughter]
- Jesus, this is weird,
People at home will be going,
"What the fuck is going on here?"
That's the problem with "You had to
be there" moments, You really had to,
I think we've had ours,
the woman shouting out "Energy!" So...
- [woman] psychics,
- Psychics,
How did you know
I was going to say that?
- [laughter]
- It's incredible!
Some people just have a gift,
a remarkable talent
for being able to draw
that information out,
On Watchdog, which is
what I was going to talk about,
there was a really good item
about two months ago about a woman
who would look at you, just look,
and tell you if your aura was cracked,
[laughter]
Then she'd charge you $$680
to repair your aura,
Now, that's not a "consumer" issue,
That's a "fucking eejit" issue,
[laughter]
If you're getting fooled by that,
you don't deserve the $$680,
My favourite thing about it
was the item had a headline,
The item was titled
"Bogus psychic scam",
As if there's any other kind of psychic,
As if you could have finished it
with a real psychic going,
"On behalf of genuine psychics,
we'd just like to say we're very angry
about this
- and so are the dead."
- [laughter]
I did a TV show a few years ago
in lreland called The Kelly Show.
On The Kelly Show that night
was a woman called Sharon Neill,
Sharon Neill sells herself
as the blind psychic,
The host turned to her and said, "Would
you do a reading for the audience?"
Sharon turned to the audience and says,
"Has anyone here lost a Mary?"
In lreland!
A forest of hands shoot up,
People are always
losing Marys in lreland,
Some had lost a couple
on the way to the studio that night,
If you sit down too quickly in lreland,
Marys will roll out of your pocket
into the gap in the couch,
Even then, she kept getting stuff wrong,
and the host said a brilliant thing,
something nobody ever says to psychics,
"You got a lot of that wrong."
Sharon said an amazing thing
on national television,
"Sometimes there are so many voices,
it's difficult to know which is which."
Basically, she went on the telly
and went, "I'm so psychic,
I'm shit at being a psychic,
I'm too psychic for my own good."
- [laughs] That's not her laugh,
- [laughter]
I love that kind of stuff, but all that
nonsense of the fairy tales, homeopathy,
chiropractor, all of this kind of stuff,
ridiculous,
and they make billions every year
in the welhess industry,
If you're not sick, you've got welhess,
Sure, we all like
to talk to somebody and have a rub,
but that doesn't mean you're any better
or worse after, Ridiculous stuff,
Nutrition, I was talking about this,
Here's my favourite fact,
If anyone describes themself to you
as a nutritionist, be slightly wary,
What they're saying may be true,
but nutritionist isn't a protected term,
Anyone can call themselves nutritionist,
Dietician is the legally protected term,
Dietician is like dentist
and nutritionist is like toothyologist,
- [laughter]
- I could call myself a nutritionist
and I'd be a popular nutritionist,
People would come from miles around,
"You look fantastic,
Let's have a pint,
Come on, come on, come on,
You fat bastard, I'll wrestle you."
It's ridiculous, Though there's
lots of evidence for this kind of stuff,
we still would sooner
believe the story our mother tells us
about the woman who had a headache
and rubbed a cat on the side of her head
and the headache was gone the next day,
We take things for granted
about our health,
There's a thing on the cover
of the London Evening Standard,
this thing which said,
"Ten symptoms you should not ignore."
You think,
"There's gonna be something
which I've had for a while but it's been
low level and I've never done anything about it,
I should get that checked out."
That's what you presume it is,
"That pain in my arm is still there,
I can't seem to clear that chesty cough."
The first three symptoms
you should not ignore
- were rectal bleeding...
- [laughter]
-,, loss of height...
- [laughter]
-,,and sudden blindness,
- [laughter]
- Who ignores sudden blindness?
- [laughter]
Who sits in the office at lunchtime
going, "Who turned out the lights?
I can't see a thing, It's awful,
I'm no use to anyone today,
I'll answer phones, That's all I can do,
That's all I'm good for today,
Don't make a fuss, don't make a fuss,"
[laughter]
I wouldn't dream of lecturing you
on how to live your lives, about health,
That would be arrogant,
like these people,
Look at me, I'm a big guy, I'm no model
for anyone when it comes to health,
I winter well,
as we say euphemistically,
And this gets reflected to me
in weird ways,
We went to buy a car,
myself and the wife,
We're sitting in the garage, and
on the forecourt is a two-seater sports car,
I said, "l know we're not gonna buy it,
Can I just sit in it?
I've always wanted one,
Can I just sit in it?"
"You can." I sat in the little two-seater,
and I just went,
"How do I look?"
She goes, "You look like Noddy."
[laughter]
I went into Harvey Nicks, like a fool,
I went into Harvey Nicks,
I was sitting in Harvey Nicks and I saw
in the menswear department this jacket,
I went to the guy
at the counter and said,
"Sorry, would you have this in my...?"
Which is as far as I got,
for a hand shot up to my mouth,
He went, "Don't say another word,
Just get out, Just get out now,
We've nothing for you here,
Just leave now, Shrek,
before I light a torch and chase you
out of the building, What? For you, that?
I'd have to sell you seven of them
and stitch them together
into some sort of pelt that you could
wrap around yourself in your cave
for the winter, Get out, Get out,
You're blocking the light to the shop."
[laughter]
And I've tried the gym,
Jesus, I've tried the gym,
I just couldn't take the amount of holding,
They're obsessed with holding,
In the real world, I pick up a heavy thing,
I know where it's going,
I bring it there immediately,
I don't stand around counting to ten
with the thing in my hand,
I don't want to be a removals man
for an indecisive client going,
"Ooh, piano there, piano there,
I can't decide."
I'd go, "That's OK,
I trained for just such a situation."
And the Day Two pain of the gym,
when you go back to the gym
and you're in agony
and every bit of you is in pain,
and the gym guy you go up to, and go,
"Why am I in so much pain?"
He goes, "That's because you're using
muscles you haven't used in years."
You look at him and go, "Why the fuck
are we wasting our time with those?"
- [laughter]
- "Clearly I don't need them,
Market forces
have driven them to waste away."
[cheering]
"Let them die,
Just give me one big one on each leg
and a couple in the arms,
That's all I need."
But no, I spend hours skiing,
That's all they make me do, ski like
I'm moving to the Arctic at some stage,
You're on that machine praying for snow,
dreaming of snow, going,
"Someday the snow will come
and then they'll need me,
I'll be the one who's trained
to get help on that day,
I'll be the one they need
to rescue everyone else in the gym,
Not you, rowing machine man,
you're feck all use to us that day."
[laughter]
I'm sorry, I got very angry
towards the end of that bit,
Listen, you're a really good crowd,
There's some crowds you have to work
and meld them together,
but you're there already,
- [cheering]
- No, hey, hey, Please,
Please, I don't want you to take that...
That's not meant to be
some shitty show-bizzy,
"You're a great crowd",
I indicate that I judge you as much
as you judge me, so we're equal,
No, no, 'cause there are gigs you do...
I did a nightmare gig in London,
terrible gig, on the day that England
won the rugby World Cup,
about four and a half years ago,
All right, all right,
Let's not kick it off,
It was fucking ages ago,
Besides, it's rugby,
I couldn't give a fuck about rugby,
There's a lot of people like that,
In lreland, it's played by well-off guys
from well-off schools, Frankly, if they lose,
it's like, "Boo hoo, rich kid."
- [laughter]
- It's difficult to get the emotion,
"Oh, no, you'll have to go to your job
in the city and cry now."
But it is... Besides that,
here's my major problem with rugby,
Why is the ball pointy, exactly?
Is that to introduce
a fun random element into it all?
"The ball's gonna bounce!
Where's it gonna bounce? It's gone mad!"
[laughter]
It's just like a muscular form
of crazy golf,
[laughter]
I did a gig when England won the rugby
World Cup four and half years ago,
five years ago, and it was in a pub
called The Bedford in Balham,
There's a very good comedy club there,
Great pub, great club,
This wasn't its finest hour,
before we get too exccited,
I arrived at ten to do the gig,
not knowing that the room was filled
with people who had been watching
the rugby match since nine that morning,
There's a bit of a myth that a bit of booze
helps the comedy crowd along,
A bit of booze is a window of opportunity
of one to five drinks,
These people had been drinking
for 1 3 hours by the time I arrived,
They were so drunk they couldn't
remember the beginning of a joke
- when you got to the end,
- [laughter]
Which is unhelpful
in what I'm trying to do,
I'd hit them with a punch line
and they'd go, "Hm, sorry, what?"
And you'd go, "Do you not remember
a minute ago when I said I was allergic
to rabbits? Do you not remember that?"
They'd go, "l didn't hear that,
Y eah, that would have made it funny."
So I'm standing in front of this crowd
trying to do a gig, and it was tough,
and I can mess around with people
and I can have a bit of fun,
If worst comes to worst,
I'll do my series of award-winning mimes,
[laughter]
But this was not working,
This was tough and I got out of there
and stood at the end of the room,
cold sweat, "That was horrible."
Normally, if it goes badly you don't
hang around, You get out of there,
There's no way you want to hover
and be in the venue
of where you just
may have almost died,
But I made an exception that night,
I said, "No, I want to watch
the rest of this show,
I want to see how the guy
who comes on after me does."
Because the guy who's coming on
after me is a magician,
- [laughter]
- And comedians hate magicians,
You may not know this,
but we can't stand magicians
'cause they practise and practise
and practise and then they pretend
that it's magic,
That gets on my tits in a huge way,
"Where's the card gone? It's magic."
No, you were lonely as a teenager
and practised for hours,
That's where the fucking card has gone,
Concert pianists also practise for hours,
but they don't go out on stage
and go, "Where is the music coming from?
This is incredible,
It's like it's flowing out of my hands,
It's amazing."
So the magician goes to somebody
in the front row with a pack of cards,
fans out the cards like that
and goes, "Pick a card."
And the guy picks a card
and he shows the crowd
and it's the ten of clubs or something,
The magician takes the card
and makes it disappear,
and then he makes the pack disappear,
and then he launches into
a standard-issue magician horseshit bit
about, "Where have they gone?
Are they here? In another realm?
Maybe they are taken apart particle
by particle in a separate dimension,
Shall we ever see them again?"
All this kind of guff,
this really irritating bit
where they pad out the middle,
During which time the audience... pfoom!
,, have completely forgotten
not only that it was the ten of clubs,
but really that they were shown
anything at all,
So when the magician
eventually goes round to his finale,
where he gets a melon, a fresh melon,
and he opens the melon up
and from within the fleshy pulp of the melon
Ine withdraws this thing which he unfurls
and, "Oh, my God, it's the ten of clubs,"
the entire room just goes, "Ooh, melon!"
[laughter]
They haven't eaten in 1 3 hours,
They're staring at this food
just going, "Ah,,." Drooling,
Some of them are dying of scurvy
at this stage
and now there's a source of vitamin C
open on the stage in front of them,
They're just looking, going,
"Jeez, melon, this is fantastic,
Is this what he does? Is this a buffet?
Is this what he's going to do?
He's going to bring out more food,
I wonder what's next, I hope it's chips,
A little bit of chips now, Chips, chips,
chips, chips, chips, chips!"
You have not lived until you've been
at a gig where a magician's trying
to show off a soggy ten of clubs
that smells of melon to a crowd going,
"Chips, chips, chips, chips,
chips, chips, chips, chips, chips!"
And I was at the back going...
[laughs] Sorry,
Listen, let's expand our realm
even more, What's your name?
- [man] Danny,
- How are you? You local?
- Yeah, not too far,
- It's cool, What do you do?
- I owe my own shoe repairing company,
- Shoe repairing company?
- [crowd hooting]
- Bizarrely,
you turned the crowd
into a panto crowd,
- [laughter]
- Ooh!
But it is quite a panto thing, Like
an elf, We're back to fucking elves again,
Do you have a team of elves
or little cobblers like that?
Quite a Brothers Grimm
kind of situation,
Do you repair for princesses
who dance the entire night through?
Do you go, "l fix these shoes
every day." And the princesses go,
"But we dance." What's the biggest
shoe you've ever repaired?
[laughter]
- Maybe a size 1 3,
- Maybe a size 1 3,
But this is a size 1 3,
Is this is big as it gets?
Are you scared or are you looking
at that in a lustful way?
Are you looking at that shoe thinking,
"This is incredible, If I could just
get my hands on this man's
leather needs!" Is it leather?
- What's the sole made of?
- That is leather,
Thank you very much, That's grand,
Do you have enough? Is there a cow
large enough or do you have to graft cows?
Do you have to genetically modify a cow
to make some sort of super-cow
with more leather
than has ever been seen on a cow before?
Is that what you do, you monster,
are you breeding some freaky super-cow
at the back of the thing
where your elves kill the cow
and then skin the cow
and make shoes for angry princesses?
Is that what you do, Danny?
Is that what you do?
Just say Yeah, Danny, just say Yeah,
just say Yeah, you monster!
Do you have a little hammer?
Do you have a guy in the window,
one of those things in the window,
do you have one of them?
- No, not any more,
- Not any more?
Did he expose himself to some children?
- [laughter]
- Did the man behave inappropriately?
- Scaring children,
- [laughter]
They've always freaked me out,
those things, Wrong,
Just this old man going, "You fucker,
you think I like doing this every day?
Just one nail hammering."
Did you have one for a while?
- Yeah, It broke,
- It broke? Ah! And where is he now?
You haven't thrown him out?
You've kept him?
- Back of the garage,
- The garage,
where a child will discover it,
What a wonder it'll be for an eight-year-old,
He moves a box and there's
this old man there with his little moustache,
They have moustaches, don't they?
The world's least cheery
Christmas decoration, "Ah, fucker."
[laughter]
And he never quite hit the nail either,
He was the worst cobbler I'd seen,
He'd get close to the nail,
and then he'd pull away,
like he was teasing the shoe,
"l might repair you, I might not
this time, I might repair you,
Fuck you, you're not
getting repaired this time."
Danny, it's good to have you here,
Very good to have you here,
Danny, for God's sake,
stand up straight,
Anyway, where were we?
Ah, we were in London,
One of the joys, by the way, of this
as opposed to...
Danny, are you with me?
One of the joys of being in London is that,
hey, this is where I live,
That's nice, although, actually,
when you tour,
you get to hang out in places
and that's kind of cool,
Weird stuff happens
when you're hanging out,
In Manchester, we went into the hotel,
my wife came with me,
We walked into the hotel
and she stops and goes,
"This is very familiar." I said,
"Have you been here?"
She goes, "No, this
is where Leanne Battersby came
-when she was a prostitute."
- [laughter]
The weirdest things happen
when you go away, Where were we?
Liverpool, we were talking
to the guy in the hotel after the gig,
We said, "What should we do
in Liverpool?"
And the man goes,
"You want to go for a drink?,
Down the corner there's VlPs."
We said, "What's VlPs?"
He said, "It's a lap dancing club
open till six in the morning."
He said it like that, And I went, "Ugh,
That's like the most depressing thing
I've ever heard in my life." Who needs
to be lap-danced at six in the morning
with sunlight streaming in through
the window and some Eastern European girl
pressed up against the bar
trying to sleep... [snores]
,,with her arse going in auto pilot,
trying to get any kip at all,
"Jesus, any cash? It's quarter to six,
can I please sleep?"
Some of those places are so depressing,
There's one in Birmingham called Medusa,
A lap dancing club called Medusa,
Google it,
Would it kill you
to look up who Medusa was
before you name the business
and you print the napkins and the menus?
Possibly the worse choice of icon
for a fucking lap dancing club,
"Our dancers are sexy, They've got
snakes for hair and turn you to stone,
You have to look at your lap dancer
in your shield."
- "The tits on her are fantastic,"
- [laughter]
Ridiculous idea,
There was one, the best name
I've ever seen for a lap dancing club,
which I didn't go into, was one
in New Y ork called Mixed Emotions,
[laughter]
No name better sums up the journey
you go on visiting a lap dancing club,
Mixed Emotions, You're in there going,
"You're so hot but I love my wife, No!"
In Newcastle we were staying
in a hotel called The Malmaison,
and it was the hotel in which Gazza
had a moment a couple of months earlier,
I've had a weird time in that hotel,
A weird thing happened on the last tour,
I was in the hotel after the gig,
half twelve at night,
I'd managed to lock the DVD player,
I'd managed to shut the machine down,
I don't know what I was doing,
I was trying to fast-forward
past the anti-DVD piracy ad at the start,
You know that horrible compulsory thing,
where you've spent $$1 4,99 on a film,
and the first thing it does is go...
[imitates music]
- "You wouldn't steal a car!"
- [laughter]
You're looking at it going,
"l didn't fecking steal you,
I don't know how
I'm going to steal a car."
"You wouldn't kill a man!"
It's a ridiculous warning,
If they even vaguely
kept it in proportion...
[imitates music] "You wouldn't
steal some Post-it notes."
[laughter]
And you sit there going,
"Feck it, I might,
If I'm in the cupboard and they're
shiny and yellow, I might have them,
I might have some biros while I'm there,
Who are you to judge, Mr DVD?"
The best thing
about buying illegal DVDs is
you don't have to sit through
the warning not to buy illegal DVDs,
- [applause]
- You're straight into the film,
I locked the machine
trying to get past this,
I found some mode and shut
the thing down and I ring down to the guy
at the desk who's just some guy
who works at a desk in a hotel,
He's not Newcastle's
leading audio-visual expert,
He just comes up
and does the same four things I'd do,
He does in-out, on-off,
takes the back off, rubs the batteries,
push, push and then turns
and goes, "You fucked the DVD."
- [laughter]
- "What am I supposed to do now?"
He goes, "l don't know,
Read a book or something."
So I went to bed
and I'm reading a book in bed,
About half an hour later,
there's a knock on the door,
So I walk over to the door
and I just go... [squeaks]
Lift up the little thing and I look out,
and all you can see...
There was nobody there,
It was a fish-eye view of the door
on the other side of the corridor,
I go, "That's really weird,"
and then vroom!
- A naked man runs past the door,
- [laughter]
You start tilting and squinting your head
thinking, "There must be some angle
I can look down here that will make
light bend down the corridor
and I can see who that was."
But of course there isn't,
As I'm doing this, looking
at the fish-eye view, vroom,
the naked man runs past again,
I open the door and I go, "Hey,"
The guy turns around
and I looked at him and I knew him,
I worked with him on the gig that night,
I'm going,
"What are you doing in the corridor?
Come in."
I said, "What are you doing
out there in the nip?"
The man goes, "l was asleep,
I went to the bathroom,
I closed the door, I went, 'There's
a lot of doors in this bathroom."'
[laughter]
So now he's naked in the corridor
and the only useful
piece of information he has
is that I am somewhere on that floor,
So he hatches a brilliant plan
to knock on every door and run away
until eventually he finds me,
He basically just cups and knocks
and runs down the corridor like that,
So I give him a towel
and he wraps it around himself,
And I ring down to the desk and I say,
"Hello, my friend is here,
He's locked himself out of his room,
Could you bring a key?"
The guy goes, "No problem at all,
I'll be up in a minute."
That's a long minute, by the way,
when you're with a guy you kind of know
- trying not to look at his nipples,
- [laughter]
But eventually the guys turns up
with some little magnetic key
and opens the door and comes in
and sees me and goes,
"How are you?" And then sees my friend
and just goes,
"There you go, sir, get you
back into your room, Night, now, Night."
And he just looks at me,
gives me a look, a look which says,
- "So you broke the DVD player?"
- [laughter]
"This is how you decided
to kill the time?
You haven't even got the decency
to hold him for the night,
Come on, I'll take you away,
Let's bring you back to your room now."
Which isn't the weirdest thing
to happen to me in a hotel,
I was once in a hotel doing a gig
and I arrived an hour early,
and the gig was running an hour late,
The woman who was my liaison met me,
and she goes, "We've got a two-hour gap."
She gives me her room key,
She goes, "Go to my room
and you can watch television."
I went up to the room and I watched
Shaun of the Dead for a couple of hours,
Then there's a knock at the door
and they bring me down to do the gig,
After I finish the gig,
the woman comes and goes,
"l have a spare key, Take that,
go up to the room and get your stuff and go,
You don't have to come down."
I went, "Thank you."
I left and I went back to the room,
In the time I had been gone,
the turn-down team had been into the room,
Are you familiar with the work
of the turn-down team?
A few of you are, Grand,
For those of you who are less familiar,
the young men here, you probably
haven't done much hotel stuff,
the turn-down team...
You know about chambermaids?
Chambermaids around 1 1
in the morning will come into hotel
and they clean the bathroom
and they make the bed
and get the duvet and the sheet
and tuck them underneath the mattress
and they'll go round and they'll do it
at the back and the other side,
Then you come back to the hotel
about nine, ten, midnight,
after the wedding or the dinner,
and you try to get into the bed,
[laughter]
But there is no way this mattress
is going to yield the duvet,
You're tugging furiously at the thing,
"l can't get into this thing!"
Twang! Vroom! Twang! Vroom!
You're lying on top of the bed going,
"What kind of envelope have I rented?
This is ridiculous, I can't get into
the damn thing, This is a nightmare."
You slide the one arm in just to feel
the good of the cotton against your skin,
"That feels fantastic, Jesus,
if I could just get into the bed,
I'd be the happiest man in the world,"
You can't, You've the one arm in,
you're on top of the bed trying to sleep,
but then you go that way
and it goes wrong,
The next morning, the manager goes,
"How did you sleep?"
You go, "My arm slept fantastically,
The best night's sleep my arm's had,
The rest of me's
in fecking spasm at this stage."
So they invented the turn-down team
who are like nice chambermaids
who come round to the room
at nine at night and loosen up the duvet,
and loosen the sheet
and get the whole ball rolling
and the going-to-bed process,
They fluff up the pillows and they're the ones
who put a mint on each pillow
because that's what you want
just as you're going to sleep,
Just a little injection of sugar
into your bloodstream
to kick the whole journey
to the Land of Nod off,
In really good hotels, lads,
they rack up a line of cocaine
on the table beside the bed,
You go, "Time for bed now?"
I had the misfortune of being in a hotel
room at about eight or nine at night once,
and there's a knock,
I open and there's a woman
in a chambermaid's outfit
with a trolley,
She looks at me and goes,
"Turn-down team?"
I'd heard all those words,
but never in that context or in that order,
I genuinely didn't know...
Part of me thought
I was supposed to go, "Turn-down team!"
Then we'd link up
like a crime-fighting unit and we'd travel
across the hotel
turning down crime, Y eah!
But I couldn't be entirely sure
that that's what she meant,
So to play it safe I just went, "Y eah."
The woman walked into the room,
and now I'm on the back foot,
There's a woman walking into the room,
she turns and she walks into the room,
I'm walking beside her going,
"What's going on here?
What have I said yes to?
What exactly are we doing here?"
As we walk along, we seem to be walking
directly towards the bed,
I'm going, "What service have
I agreed to? This is weird, now."
And we're walking across the room
and then she bends over the bed,
which doesn't make me feel
any more comfortable,
and pulls down the duvet
and turns to me and goes, "Good night,"
- and then walks out again,
- [laughter]
I'm left bereft
in the middle of the bedroom going,
"What in the name of Christ
just happened?"
I was puzzling over it and I thought,
"My God, that's her job,
How did I look?
I must have looked like the worst kind
of rich middle-class prick."
She arrives at this door to do this
stupid job and she knocks at the door
and I open and she goes, "Turn-down
team", and I essentially went, "Y es!
Get in here now,
I am too powerful and lazy
to take my own duvet cover down,
You shall do it for me,
and not only will I make you do this,
I shall walk with you to the bed,
I shall accompany you on the long
commute from the door over to the bed,
And I shall judge your work, Hmm,
Do not take the duvet down too far,
I do not wish the bed to be naked,
Get out, get out."
So when I got back to the room that time,
the turn-down team had been in,
They'd done all their bits and bobs
and the whole thing,
They'd taken the duvet down and
done the sheet and fluffed up the pillows
and out were the mints,
and they were gone,
So I'm looking around the transformed
room going, "They've been in."
Then I noticed they'd done a thing
which I've never seen in any hotel
in the world ever, They had gone
through this woman's stuff,
They had found the most
intimate items she had, pyjamas,
a little cami pyjama top
and her cotton pyjama bottom,
and they had built something, a shape,
They had made them into a thing on the bed,
You're looking at this going,
"What the hell is that?"
I mean a three-dimensional thing,
I don't mean they'd laid them out
Iike a crime scene flat on the bed,
"This is where the woman was murdered,"
They had built
an origami thing with them,
and you're circling around going,
"What? It's a bird!"
They have made a bird out of
her underwear and put it on the bed,
It was the single creepiest thing
I'd ever seen in my life,
It looked like the kind of thing
a serial killer called the Pheasant
- might leave,
- [laughter]
"l am the Pheasant,
I can get into wherever you are,
I can find you and I will leave
the Pheasant to prove that I was there,
I am the Pheasant,"
I'm looking at the thing going,
"That's wrong, that's just...
I hate that, that's a bit intrusive,
I'm out of here,"
I picked up my stuff to leave
and the thought struck me,
I've never seen that done
in any hotel room,
so there's a pretty good chance
that the woman whose room this is
Inas also never seen that done
in any hotel in the world ever,
And she is naturally going to presume...
[laughter]
,,that in the two hours I had to kill
before the gig,
the only thing I could think to do
to make the time go faster
was go through her stuff,
find the frilliest, delicate,
most intimate items of clothing she had
and then make a fucking duck
with them on the bed,
"This is what I made for you,
Do you like this?
See how I made a beak out of the gusset,
Do you like that?"
[laughter]
[squawks]
I'm looking at this thing going,
"This is going to finish my career,
This bird here is a vulture
for my comedy career,
That is going to end it,
If word gets out that this is what I like to do
if I'm left alone in somebody's room,,."
People will ring her and go,
"Did you use Dara for that gig?"
She goes, "Yeah." They go, "Funny?"
"Not important,
Let me tell you what he's really like."
And that's it, I don't work again,
I'm looking at this thing going,
"I've got to do something."
Obviously your initial reaction is
take the bird apart, rip the bird apart,
flatten it, put it away somewhere,
But then I thought
A, don't touch the thing,
and B,
I don't know where she took it from,
I don't know if it was in a drawer,
a cupboard in the kitchen,
What if I put it in the wrong place?
What if I take her stuff
and end up hiding it on her?
Surely that's even worse,
that she comes back and I've created
an underwear treasure hunt,
She's tearing the room apart
trying to find her stuff and the phone rings
and it's me going, "Getting warmer."
[laughter]
So I do the only thing I can do,
I walk down to tell her I didn't do that,
I pick up my bags and I walk
through the hotel, through the crowd
going, "Hiya, hiya, hiya, hiya."
Trying to find this woman
who's at the far corner of the room
surrounded by senior people
from her company,
grey-haired
middle-management men going,
"Well done, Mary, That was
an exccellent event, Congratulations."
She's going, "Thank you."
Enjoying this significant moment in her
corporate career that I burst into, thinking,
"I'll be quick." I just burst
into the circle, "Exccuse me... Hiya."
She goes, "Hi." I go, "Listen, I just
wanted you to know I didn't make a swan
- out of your knickers."
- [laughter]
And then walked off going,
"That'll settle that, That's good."
You've seen comedians before,
we have stories about hotels
'cause that's our life,
But even in real life I've moved 1 2 times
in the last ten years, Ridiculous
amount of house moves I've done,
which is depressing, To young men here,
you may have heard about how it's
the most stressful thing to move,
and it is and it isn't,
But there's some upside,
and this may bore you
because you haven't done it,
but there is an upside,
You get to look around
other people's houses,
We all like looking
around other people's houses,
You can tell by the amount
of property shows, whether it's
Location, Location, Location
or Grand Designs.
Property Ladder is my favourite,
not just because there's property there
but also because uniquely there's an expert
that nobody pays any attention to,
Very few television shows
employ somebody to go in and go,
"Magnolia", and be completely
ignored by the people there who go,
"No, not magnolia, We're going to
paint it black, tarmac the floor
and then create hooks
that people have to drag themselves up,
And we're still
going to make 70 grand profit."
Sarah Beeny's getting furious,
going, "It's not real profit!"
She's pregnant, she's not pregnant,
she's pregnant again,
She's like a one-woman
continuity disaster area,
You watch Property Ladder going,
"Sarah, how long does it take
to paint this house?
You've had three kids in the time
that they've been doing up that outside toilet."
But it is just nice to look
into other people's houses,
- How many of you live in a house?
- [cheering]
The majority, How many of you
live in a house that has a ground floor?
- [cheering]
- The majority of you,
Here's a little hint, a little request:
put up some curtains or some blinds
or Venetians or something,
and if you're not going to do that,
don't have a miserable puss
on your face staring out when I stare in,
[laughter]
I can't understand people who look miserably
at you when you look into their house,
Put up some curtains
or I'm looking into your fecking house,
Don't get me wrong, I don't vault over
the garden wall and run up to the window
and squeak my face across the glass,
[squeaks]
"l like what you've done
with the place."
If you're walking past a house,
it has no curtains, you look in,
People are always sitting there going,
"What the fuck are you doing?"
I'm sorry, I'm going to look in,
Just 'cause you're sitting there
reading like a slut,
You knew I was going to look in,
didn't you? Put up some curtains,
Otherwise, it's like cleavage
on the front of your house,
I'm going to look in,
Here's the most extreme example of that,
- Has anyone been in Miami?
- [scattered cheers]
A few of you have, Did you do
that boat trip where you see
famous people's houses? You did,
For those of you who haven't seen it,
Miami is a collection of archipelagos
and islands and bits of land
and loads of water,
And there is one part
that's just houses owned,
incredibly expensive houses owned by
American celebrities like Gloria Estefan
and Shaquille O'Neal
and all these people who live on this island,
It's incredibly private, You can
never drive up to it or walk up to it
'cause there's men with guns
and shutters and all sorts of protection,
But all the houses back onto the water,
So every hour, four times an hour,
boats pull up to the bottom of the garden
and a guy goes,
"That's Gloria Estefan's house."
Everyone in the boat goes, "Ooh!"
Click, click, click, click, click,
And they play a bit of Gloria Estefan,
[laughter]
You're going, "What manner of idiot
is Gloria Estefan to spend
so that every 1 5 minutes
she's doing the drying-up in the kitchen
and a fucking boat pulls up
to the bottom of the garden
and a voice goes, 'Gloria Estefan'?"
And 400 people go, "Ooh!"
Click, click, click,
- R.hythm is gonna get you
- [laughter]
It does, It's very addictive,
And if it's bad for her, two doors up from her
lives this guy, Not a celebrity,
just a rich guy,
Johnny Vanfoogle Moogle
of the Vanfoogle Moogle Finance Corporation,
The boat pulls up to his garden,
"This house is owned by Johnny Vanfoogle
Moogle of Vanfoogle Moogle Finance."
And the entire boat goes,
"Oh, I've never heard his singles,
I've never seen his movies,
An idiot, I don't like him at all."
How quickly would you go insane
if you spent 20 million dollars on a house
and you're sitting on a deck chair
in your garden just looking out
and a fucking boat pulls up to the
bottom of the garden and 400 people
- look at you and go, "You're shit."
- [laughter]
You'd go mad, You'd be at the end of
the garden flinging your own poo at the boat
by the end of the first week,
You'd be going, "l know I'm not famous,
I know I'm not Gloria Estefan,
but I know Gloria Estefan,
See that strimmer?
That's Gloria Estefan's,
I'm not giving it back to her."
[imitating strimmer]
The people there,
you were on that boat,
Did you see any famous people?
You didn't,
Oh, it's a rare treat,
We saw Gloria Estefan, Mm,
- She swam with the boat,
- [laughter]
It was magical,
She suddenly shot out of the water,
and everyone went, "There's Gloria."
The boat sped up
and Gloria was shooting in front of
the water and she went under the boat,
We ran to the other side, she popped up
and you could reach down and stroke her,
Her skin was like tarpaulin,
like leather, It was smooth but hard,
A kid in the boat
was a bit simple in the head,
They lowered him into the water
and she swan with him for a while,
It seemed to calm him down,
At the end, she shot out of the water
and the rest of the Miami Sound Machine
shot out of the water behind her,
I may be mixing it up
with a different holiday,
[laughter]
But you want to look around these houses
if you're moving,
There are things
you don't want in a house,
When you're moving, whether you bought
it or not, there's things you don't want,
What's the one thing you don't
want to have happened in a house
before you move in? Murder,
Always murder, Every night, murder,
You don't want an estate agent going,
"This is bedroom number one
and this is bedroom number two,"
and he opens the door and there's plates
spinning in every direction and
a voice going, "Avenge me, avenge me."
- [laughter]
- The estate agent goes,
"Mainly storage," and then walks out,
[laughter]
What else do you not want to have happened
in a house before you move in?
- [man mutters]
- Skid marks in the toilet,
[laughter]
I'm not saying you're mad to say it,
I'm just saying it wouldn't take a lot
of cleaning for them or the seller,
It doesn't turn up on a HlPs report,
Is the house sufficiently insulated
and have you given the toilet
a bit of a wipe, for Christ's sake?
Don't judge me,
He said skid marks in the toilet,
I didn't say it, I think it's revolting,
I'm with you on that one,
Other than skid marks on the toilet
and murder,
- what do you not want to have happened?
- [crowd shouts]
Fire, Y es, of course,
Who wants to view a house on fire?
You're walking around going,
"It's a bit hot, It's a bit warm."
They're going,
"lt won't be warm for long,
God, Do you mind
if we do the rest of it from outside?"
Murder, fire, skid marks in the toilet,
What else?
- [shouting]
- What did you say? Floods,
- What did you say? Ghosts,
- [woman] Ghosts,
Like they're going to fucking tell you,
Like they're ever going to go,
"It's a south-facing garden,
- but boo in the middle of the night!"
- [laughter]
Ghosts, for fuck's sake! The estate
agent goes, "We have one house,,."
- And lightning goes off behind him,
- [laughter]
"But I don't know if you want
to stay in the murder house,
[cackles, coughs]
Sorry, I'll get the keys, Sorry."
Other than ghosts, flood, fire,
skid marks in the toilet, murder, what else?
- [woman shouts]
- What did you say? Germans?
[laughter, applause]
Whoa! I can fucking top that,
What did you just say?
- [man] No lrish,
- No lrish?
[laughter, booing]
Thanks for splitting the fucking crowd,
- Sorry, What were you gonna say?
- [man] I'm an lrishman as well,
You're from lreland?
I love that, a self-hating lrishman,
- [laughter]
- What did you do to your last house?
Skid marks, you filthy devil?
Skid marks and ghosts,
You released bees into the bedroom,
What the hell did you do to the house?
You burnt it down, Great,
'Cause the skid marks couldn't be cleaned,
"Fuck it, Let's burn the thing down."
Paraffin everywhere,
"Get rid of the thing,
I can't be arsed selling this thing."
[laughter]
We went to the estate agent
and said, "We're looking for a house,
We'd sooner it didn't have
any Germans, any lrish, bizarrely,
any lrish, any skid marks in the toilet,
any ghosts,
fire, flood or murder."
We eventually did get a house,
You're the first audience
not to say brothel, Congratulations,
We moved into our house,
when we found a house that fulfilled
all those very picky requirements
that you just mentioned,
We moved into the place,
Here's the weirdest thing,
As a 36-year-old man, first time
I've ever known my neighbours,
This will happen, In your 20s,
when you move house year after year,
particularly 'cause you do dodgy wiring
and you keep having to move on
in case people find you, you don't bother
to get to know your neighbours,
You don't bother 'cause you think you're
gonna be there for a year, Who cares?
I moved into this place,
suddenly neighbours came round
in a "Here's a potted plant,
here's a bottle of wine, let it die,
drink it, knock yourself out,
Welcome to the area."
In a way that I found
just disorientatingly friendly,
I go, "What? Oh, Yeah, Thanks, Hi."
I've never had that before,
Luckily for me and my cynical nature,
there was one nice weird thing about it,
We know these people and these people
and these people and these people,
We know nobody
from the other side of the road,
None of them
have come over and said hello,
I live in a residential area,
It's not like they're gonna go,
"We'd love to go over and say hello
but we might get hit by the monorail."
We went out with these people, There
were drinks, We met up with everyone
and I got tipsy and mischievous
and said, "Does anyone know anyone
on the other side?"
They go, "l don't know anyone."
No one knew anyone
on the other side of the road,
I wanted to get a posse together where
we'd march across to one house randomly
and ring a doorbell
until they came out,
"Are we not good enough for you?
Are we not good enough for you? Stuck-up
even-numbered pricks." And walk away,
But now that I know the neighbours,
you kind of feel, "First time,
Should I get involved at a local level?
Should I get involved in the community?"
I'm of a generation that doesn't really
do community, We do communities in a
MySpace, BiBo, that kind of community,
Facebook, perfect example,
For those who don't have it,
it's like having a butler,
Previously my friends would email me,
Now they email Facebook
and Facebook emails me,
It's like he walks in with a tray,
"John sent you a letter."
I go, "Not now, Facebook,
I do not wish to hear from John."
But actual community?
I don't know how that works,
My parents did it for years in lreland,
Nothing happened in my town
that my parents didn't know about,
That was all parish stuff,
and I can't do parish stuff
because I'm an atheist,
We're not popular on parish committees,
We have a tendency to produce
short but very popular nativity plays,
where a child walks out and goes,
"There is no God,"
- and then walks in again,
- [laughter]
They get tense about that
on the parish committee,
But, generally,
I don't know what parish I'm in,
Who knows what parish you're in?
Unless you catch the priest marking out
Inis territory by spraying onto a wall,
Then other priests smell it and go,
"Jesus, no O'Connells," and back away,
That's a joke I don't do in lreland,
by the way,
I tried it a few times
in lreland but they did not...
We're not as into priests as we used to be
but there was a reaction
to me saying priests
use their smell glands to mark out
the parameters of a parish,
They thought that was a bit much,
They do, In my area, they're feral,
Ridiculous, You can't get them out,
I caught one at the bins the other
night, I pulled my car into the driveway
and in the headlights, the priest
was there and he went... [hisses]
And then he hopped through the garden
and it was amazing,
But actual community stuff,
I don't know how that works,
I don't know how that works,
I don't know what the organisations are,
What is the big one in the area? What
is the big neighbourhood organisation?
- [crowd shouts]
- Neighbourhood Watch,
Neighbourhood Watch has been around
as long as I've been alive,
What in the name of Christ
is Neighbourhood Watch?
Is it just a sticker? Is that all?
Do you put up the sticker
and, like vampires, burglars are repelled
magically by the sight of the sticker,
or do you get a gun or a stick
or a Taser or some sort of walkie-talkie
where you go,
"Jesus, Mick,
there's someone in your garden,
- Relax. It's only a priest, It's OK."
- [laughter]
"What do you do?"
"This time of year it's terrible,
Spray them with a hose,
it's the only language they understand,
apart from Latin,
They also understand that."
Is it just watching? That seems like
more of an insult then anything else,
Come back after holidays
and your neighbour goes,
"l wouldn't go in there."
And you go, "Why?"
"They took everything,
There's nothing left in there."
"How do you know?" "We watched,
They pulled a van up
and they took it, hcredible to watch,
They couldn't get into the attic,
I lent them a ladder,
I'll not see that again."
Or are you supposed to get involved,
pitch in, whatever?
I ask this question at every gig,
I'll ask it again,
Has anyone ever interrupted a crime?
You did?
Hang on, Mr Fucking I Hate The lrishman,
What was the crime?
A jeweller's two doors from me,
the fella stole a ring,
- The guy stole a ring?
- Yes, and I chased him up the street,
You chased him up the street?
Whoa, Let's rewind here for a second,
You can put the hand down,
It's not a classroom situation,
It's good to have you here...
Now we're both doing it,
You've started me doing it,
For a second, down, No! Fucking stop!
Fuck, down, right, Both of us,
There's a guy two doors up from you
stole a ring?
I presume he doesn't live two doors up,
He went into the house?
There's a jeweller's
two doors up from me,
He'd have rings,
That would be harsh if you went,
"What are you doing with all the rings?"
"I'm a jeweller."
There was a fella that wasn't a jeweller,
He went into the jeweller's,
- He took a ring that wasn't his,
- That wasn't his?
That is almost a dictionary definition
of ring theft,
It couldn't be better expressed, A man
went into a jeweller's who wasn't himself
a jeweller, therefore had no right
to take that, Wasn't buying it,
Inadn't excchanged money for it,
took a ring that wasn't his,
Where were you, in the jeweller's?
- No, I was in my shop,
- In your shop, What kind of shop?
- [woman laughs, man laughs]
- It's a laughing shop!
You sell waves,
Is that what you do? It's grand,
You're not going to tell me
what your shop is?
- I fix shoes as well,
- You fix shoes as well?
- Nothing to do with him,
- You're like a little posse? Yeah!
[man] Nothing to do with him,
So you see a guy, you hear the commotion
of somebody stealing a ring?
My friend who owns a jeweller's, he...
"Ah!" Like that,
Ahhhh! Did he want to call forth
the animals of the world?
Ahh! And off in the African plains
elephants go, "Mm?"
Then they head off,
"Tarzan the jeweller has been robbed,
We shall go there." Ah!
So the cobbler ran after the thief
going, "My shoes are better then his,
His shoes will give out at some stage,
But the exccellent leather uppers of mine
will keep me running for many hours."
- How long did you keep running for?
- It wasn't that long,
It wasn't that long? OK,
Is that from here to here?
- Or is it... ?
- Not as far as that,
Were you there for this?
Why the fuck didn't you run after him?
- You're younger than he is,
- I ran after him!
You ran after him? That makes no fucking
sense, What, with a spare pair of shoes?
"Here, try these, these are faster!"
"Thank you!"
So now there's a jewellery thief
being followed by two cobblers,
You should have brought the guy out
with a hammer, That would have scared
the jewellery thief, Advancing
like Pac-Man down the road,
- Did you catch him?
- Y es,
You did? What did you do to him?
Don't laugh at that bit,
That sounds fucking sinister,
"What did we do to him?"
I actually brought him
back to the jeweller's,
Did you make him give back the ring?
- No, he ran away again,
- He ran away again?
You weren't going to tell me
that bit of the story,
- The guy ran away, got away,
- We caught him again,
You ran after him again?
Like a cat with a mouse?
"We'll give you a head start,
now we're after you again."
"Stop fucking running after me!"
"We've got you again!"
- How often did you catch him and run?
- Twice,
- Only twice, Did he get done for it?
- Yeah,
Well done to the cobblers,
The cobblers,
protecting the city against crime,
There's a crime-fighting outfit,
"With these magical shoes, we can chase
anyone down any number of times."
Every night I ask that question
'cause there's always brilliant stories,
Like the stories in every audience,
In lreland,
there's a tendency
to be a tiny bit more whimsical,
There was a woman in Dublin who said,
"Somebody was stealing my tomatoes."
I said, "How did you know?"
She said, "The alarm went off."
"Fuck, you take
those tomatoes seriously."
You have a matrix of lasers
that you have to get like Ocean 's Eleven.
You have to somersault
your way through,
Can't do it in these, They're too tight,
And then I came to England thinking,
"Will this bit work as well?"
It does, Everyone
has great stories about this,
I was slightly nervous 'cause the lrish
will yab-yab-yab, We're grand for talking,
My first gig was in Coventry
in the Warwick Arts Centre,
"Anyone interrupted a crime?
A guy goes, "l have."
I said, "Here we go, What was it?"
He said he walked into his house,
up his drive,
and there was a man stealing
his wife's car, I said, "What did you do?"
He said, "l shouted,"
The car thief climbs into the car,
The thief is in the car with
the car door locked and the guy is outside,
I said, "Quite the standoff,
How did it resolve itself?"
The man goes, "l punched in the window,
pulled your man out of the car,
dragged him into the house
and tied him to a chair."
[laughter]
Now, I'm looking at your man going,
"Fucker, let's keep it light,
It's a comedy show,
Did anything amusing happen about this?"
And your man goes, "Yes, I asked
my wife to fetch me a meat cleaver,
And she brought me a carving knife!"
And he said it in an
"Oh, the little featherhead" kind of way,
as if he'd spent ten minutes
cutting at your man's ear,
Iooking at his wife going, "Am I cleaving?
Does this look like cleaving?
No, I am carving the ear off."
And the way it resolved itself,
this hideous situation,
was that the guy robbing the car
wasn't on his own, He had a mate with him,
His accomplice ran to the police going,
"I'm a car thief
but my mate is being tortured
in that house over there."
The police knocked and said,
"ls there a thief?"
Your man opened the door and said,
"Oh, hello... Y es,
It's only a carving knife."
I don't know if I'd do that
for my community,
I don't know them well enough
to risk everything,
I kind of also... Even though I've been
here six, seven years at this stage,
I kind of also feel
I don't fully feel like I'm at home here,
I apologise if this seems distant,
I do on some very subconscious level
that I've just recognised
regard you as a foreign country,
And I've only just noticed that,
and I don't mean to push you away,
I just mean a thing happened,
I noticed a thing that I still do,
I live here, I'm married
to an English woman, I speak the language,
we converse all the time,
it's the same language, I understand that,
But yet, for some reason,
every time I send a letter home...
Other lrish people
might still do this as well,
- Are there any lrish people here?
- [cheering]
I don't know how long you've been here,
but do you do this?
When you send a letter,
do you still write, "Mammy's house,
Mammy's street, Mammy's town"
in your normal handwriting,
and then write lreland
in massive capital letters at the bottom?
As if I walk into British post offices
and slam the envelope up against the glass
and then reach my hand in and go,
"Hey, hey, hey, you, Hey, you,
See this bit here?
You don't have to worry about that bit at all,
That's not for you,
Just get it to lreland,
They'll know what to do with it there."
Which is just stupid, ridiculous,
But we're very aware
of retaining our identity
and not losing that, I mean,
I can't change my accent,
I can't let my accent change
'cause I live over here,
People in lreland would kill me,
Sometimes there's nothing I can do,
Certain things you just say differently,
You don't have the letter "oar",
You use the letter R,
which performs many of the same duties,
but I really don't know
how you can survive,
I've got two letter "oars" in my name,
I spell it out on the phone over here
and I go, "D-A-Oar", People go "Oar?
Like an oar? I draw a picture of an oar?
What kind of hieroglyphic,
pictographic shite is this?"
There's an oar and then a man
walking like that and then a moon
and then a cat,
And I go, "R", and they go, "Good!"
It's like when you book train tickets
and you use those character codes
you read out with the confirmation,
with different letters and numbers,
When there's an accent or a bad
phone line a lot of letters sound the same,
B sounds like D
sounds like E sounds like G,
So you've got to use that A for Alpha,
B for Bravo, C for Charlie thing,
which is fine, We all know A for Alpha,
B for Bravo, C for Charlie,
We kind of improvise the others
as the situation demands it,
- P for Pneumonia,
- [laughter]
I'm on the phone to BMl,
I'm on the phone to BMl,
I have one of these codes in front of me
and the woman says,
"What's the first character?"
"It's a G."
She goes, "B? D?"
And I go, "No, G, G, G for,,."
Blank!, I suddenly can't remember
a single word in the English language
that begins with a G,
There must be some,
It's not like a dictionary
with a really good F like filibuster
and fenestration, and then you
turn the page and it's blank,
You turn it again
and the Hs start with "hardvark'",
There has to be something
beginning with a G,
So I'm looking at this thing going,
"G for,,."
I have a moment of inspiration
and I go, "G for G-string."
[laughter]
And the woman on the other end
of the phone gets really tense,
You can hear her hand over a big red
button marked "Record for training",
And she goes, "Golf",
and I went, "Let's move on."
She said, "What's the next character?"
It's a B,
It's the middle of the World Cup,
so I went, "B for Brazilian."
Now she's slamming the button down,
She's going, "Bravo."
I went, "Thank you very much."
"No, B for Bravo." I said, "What did I say?
Oh, my God, I just said G-string,
Brazilian to this woman,"
She goes, "What's next?"
I don't want to tell her
'cause I can see the next letter
and it's a V,
Suddenly there is no dictionary,
There are no choices of words
beginning with V, There's just a giant
neon sign flashing inside my head
going, "Vagina, vagina, vagina!"
And I'm going, "l cannot say
G-string, Brazilian, Vagina,
There must be another word in
the English language that begins with a V,
Sure, vulva, No fecking help at all."
I'm going, "l can't say G-string."
She's going, "V for Bravo?"
I go, "l fucking wish it were!
What I wouldn't give for it."
"Give me their tickets
just to get out of this conversation,
I don't care where or what holiday,
I'll go there,
Just give me their tickets!"
"V for what?"
I'm going, "Don't say vagina."
She goes, "What?"
- I panic and go, "Fanny,"
- [laughter]
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a joy,
Thank you very much, good night!
[cheering]
Listen,
Can I just quickly say one thing?
Oi! Not so fucking fast,
putting on a coat just there,
I saw you, Technically speaking,
it's not an encore,
Nobody said the word, On every row
there's people going, "What the fuck?,
Are we finished?"
Just very, very quickly,
very, very quickly,
I just want to say thank you,
I know you're thinking,
"Who the fuck are we thanking?
It's not a big show, It was just you,
We've thanked you already,
Who the fuck are we thanking now?"
I know you're thinking,
"Was there a choreographer?
There was a choreographer at the bit
where you walked? Fantastic."
No, There are people that you need
to get a show like this done,
people you need to get the whole thing
working, Who do you need?
I won't do a show, I cannot do a show
unless I know that if a situation
goes hideously wrong and we get trapped
in the theatre for days on end,
there is somebody who can get at
a large amount of food ready to eat,
It's vital to me that there is
some sort of croissant, maybe some meat,
some cheeses,
something exccitingly fresh,
maybe 1 6 minutes of freshness
left in it that he can get,
from Harrow, drive down and open
the back of the doors and we'll be fed!
Luckily, such a man exists,
and he was in the room tonight,
A man with a van,
he has food for the Eurostar,
- give it up for my friend in the front row!
- [cheering]
People say to me,
"That's all very well, man having a van,
but how the fuck is he gonna power
the van? Is it just on goodwill alone?
Where the fuck are we gonna get petrol
to bring the van from Harrow?"
There's one place in this country
where we can find enough petrol to bring a van,
one place, if we're brave,
if we're brave and there will be blood,
If we're brave enough to dig right here,
right here in the Berkshire countryside,
then I guarantee
that black gold will come spouting forth,
That's my proposal
and I put it to the proposal manager here,
- the oil man from Reading!
- [cheering]
People say, "That's all very well,
We've got the van, we've got the oil,
But who's going to do the programming
for the lT for the finance?"
All the way from Limerick,
give it up for the lT finance man!
[cheering]
People say to me, "It's a big show,
Look at the size of the theatre,
- It's enormous, How is it illuminated?"
- [laughter]
- It's a magical story,
- [laughter]
In the beginning, far underground,
there are vast pools of light
tended by unicorns
and griffins who fly across them,
and then occasionally a foraging band
of imps will climb down
and will stick them into sacks,
Then they'll climb into magical elevators
and they'll throw them out to the world,
I know one man who manages
an army of those imps,
He is the most magical
electrician-ologist
that the nation has ever produced,
And it's going to be beautiful
to watch his career, He's only 1 5,
Maybe he'll find out that this is not
the way it works or maybe he won't,
Why would we shatter his illusions?
Give it up for the kid from school!
[cheering]
People say to me...
People say to me,
"You're a long time standing up on stage,
You must have
some tremendously comfortable shoes."
I do and they're large,
You cannot get normal shoes,
I'm size 1 3, ladies and gentlemen,
For that we need a special type of cow,
a super-cow, a cow grown
only under the watchful eye
of a man who knocks a hammer on a nail
repeatedly just looking at the cow,
just waiting for the cow
to make a mistake,
The notion of two cobblers running
down the street after a jewel thief,
then catching the jewel thief,
then releasing him,
taunting him and then running again,
That will stay with me
for a long, long time,
Our streets are safer
than they've ever been
'cause some men with a tiny hammer
and a lot of keys...
You can probably cut them as well,
I'm guessing you can do key cutting,
Ironic if you're a crime-fighter
that this is your front, that you cut keys,
The guy who robbed the jeweller's goes,
"Could you cut that?
Lovely, don't ask questions."
And then went into the jeweller's
and you mop up your own mess,
Where would we be without
the crime-fighting cobblers? Give it up!
- [cheering]
- It's been a pleasure to talk to you,
You've been a fantastic audience,
Thank you very much!
Good night, See you again,
Thank you very much, thank you very
much, We'll see you again, good night,
Good night, folks, see you again.