"ALAN DAVIES AS YET UNTITLED CTO M725W/82 BF000000" "Looking forward to lots of chat and listening," "I'm very good at nodding sagely." "I don't know if you can tell from my outfit but my favourite colour's blue." "Hello, thank you." "This is me, this is my room." "Where's my chocolate?" "I know you've eaten it." "I don't know where it is." "Oh, it's here." "Hello, I'm Alan Davies and this is As Yet Untitled." "We will be having a conversation, I don't know what we're talking about," "I don't have any prepared questions, no-one's here to plug anything, they're just going to come on and have a chat and then at some point during the conversation, we will stumble upon the title for tonight's show." "So, without further ado, please will you welcome my guests?" "Here they are." "They're a hand-picked crew." "Now, I have Elis James who has been heckled by hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash." "Yeah." "Worth hearing about that." "Roisin Conaty, who has a stressful relationship with creamed spinach and belted out an Elton John medley in a meditation retreat and that's a true story." "Rob Delaney is here which is fantastic." "Rob Delaney, who once went to Slovakia by mistake and has been serenaded by Lionel Richie." "Nice to have you here." "And Ardal O'Hanlon, who took part in a bank robbery." "It says here." "I didn't do a bank robbery, I was in a bank when a robbery took place." "Were you really?" "Yes, I was." "A proper, an actual..." "Yes, yes." "With clown masks and sawn-off..." "No, one fellow had a motorbike helmet and the other guy had a balaclava and the fellow with the balaclava has a sawn-off shotgun and..." "Is this in Dublin?" "This is in Dublin, it was a long time ago, about..." "It was probably the first time I was ever in a bank." "I was lodging a very rare cheque in those days but it was actually a cheque for my first-ever acting job which was a crime reconstruction." "That is a fact." "That's a fact." "We're in the bank and it's kind of buzzing, it's Friday afternoon, people are lodging their cheques, looking forward to the weekend, there's a really good atmosphere in the bank and it's crowded." "# Money, money, money. #" "Yeah, and so these two guys burst in and you could see the guy in the motorbike helmet, he's really nervous and he has a wrench or something in his hand, he's a really crap bank robber" "and the other guy is doing all the shouting and he's really pumped up, the other guy, and he shouts for everyone to lie down on the floor and like, he calls us all scumbags." "You know, I felt like pointing out the irony of that, but it's like..." "So, he goes, "Lie down, you scumbags", so everyone lies down and like, you know, you really are terrified in that situation and you don't know how you're going to react until it happens," "so you kind of..." "like, I did let a little bit of wee out." "But I was quite proud of myself, it was just a little bit." "So, I'm lying down and there's two guys lying down beside me and, they're strangers and strangers to each other and I heard one guy saying to the other guy, he said," ""Did anyone ever tell you you've got lovely eyes?"" "He said to the other guy!" "And I'm going, like, incred..." "They were laughing and I started kind of laughing in that kind of nervous, uncontrollable way on the floor and we're all kind of laughing and thinking," ""This is a terrible thing to do, to undermine robbers,"" "they don't like being undermined in that way and I admired them for doing it in the moment, I mean, you don't want anything to do with a person like that." "You don't want that person in your life, you don't want to be married to that person." "Were you wriggling away from them a bit?" "But it was amazing." "You're so familiar with it from movies and stuff." "And did they get away with loads of money?" "Yeah, they did." "It was a big robbery, it was on the news and there was like, people talked about it for a few days." "Have you been in a robbery, Rob?" "I haven't, but my mom was in a robbery." "I was about ten years old and it was a sawn-off shotgun situation." "It was like in a woman's handbag store in rural Massachusetts," "I don't know why they chose to rob this place, but anyway, the police came with, you know, pictures of criminals that they wanted to show my mom and I'm ten years old and I'm thinking," ""You know what?" "They say they're the cops but probably" ""they're the robbers who've come to finish the job and kill my mom"." "So, I put..." "At ten years old," "I just stood sentinel throughout the whole time while they showed..." "And I had weapons all over my body, like, that a ten-year-old would find, like a pair of scissors, like a little hammer from my own little boy's tool kit and I was like, "If those guys who say they're cops try anything," ""I will cut their hair."" "Is it true that you've been happy-slapped?" "Yes." "I was in Tesco..." "You've made me look bad now and I'm actually a really cool guy." "Do you have happy slapping in America?" "Don't know what it is." "Well, when people started getting camera phones, with little... you know, you could record video, kids would go up to strangers and knock 'em - I don't know why I'm looking at you" "because I feel you might have done it to someone." "I am not a happy slapper." "And they would..." "LAUGHTER" "..assault people and film it." "LAUGHTER" "APPLAUSE" "Why was that wrong(?" ")" "It took a while for the penny to drop for me on that one." "Anyway, he'll tell you what happy slapping is." "Well, yeah, I was in Tesco, I'd done some really great shopping and I was on the phone to my flatmate and I was like," ""Have we got enough margarine?"" "And then, suddenly, I got whacked across my face, it knocked the phone out of my hand, and I couldn't understand what had happened," "I thought someone had started on me." "So, I sort of looked up and then there were four 14-year-old girls running away going, "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!", and I almost never lose my temper - I'm a very placid person - but I lost my rag, so I started chasing them, but I'd been shopping" "for like an hour, so I had loads of stuff, so I couldn't get up a decent amount of speed." "But then as I was chasing them, which was more for show, really," "I was thinking to myself, "I don't know what my options are," ""cos if I catch them, what am I..." "I give them a talking-to?" ""That made me feel very...very unsettled"." "So I was running round with all this shopping, thinking," ""What am I actually going to say?"" "And then I heard a lot of laughing from behind me and this girl's going, "What are you going to do, what are you going to do?"" "and I turned round - and this shows how slowly I was running - cos she was actually in a wheelchair..." "..and she was going, "I know them, what are you going to do when you catch up with them?"" "And I was like, "Well, I haven't decided yet but I'm going to tell them I was very unsettled by their prank"." "So then I chased them round the big Tesco in Cardiff for about what felt like half an hour." "It was like a sort of Benny Hill but, you know, meets 999." "And then they left and then I got on with my shopping and then I went to the counter, I felt very...still a bit troubled and the lady behind the counter said, "Do you know them?"" "And I said, "Who?"" "And she pointed, and they were all by the window going, "Ha-ha-ha!"." "So, yeah, that's happy slapping, it's a really fun game." "Did you ever see the little video they made of you?" "No, I didn't, Alan, not that I looked for it every day for about two years." "But I turned like a sort of 1970s West Walian head teacher." "I was saying things like, "Just you wait!" ""Just you wait!" ""I'm going to give you such a stern talking-to," ""And I hope you're proud of yourself," ""you've brought shame on yourself, your school, your family!"," "I was doing all of that, I was 23." "You sound like Fireman Sam." ""Great fires of London."" ""Naughty Norman Price."" "The nurse took one look at it, it was quite swollen and very, very shiny." "You're going to have them until you die." "Can you tell me about creamed spinach?" "What's your relationship with creamed spinach?" "I told a ridiculous lie for no reason." "Most lies benefit someone... and it's one of those things, my ex-boyfriend's parents came round for dinner" " I'm still very good friends with him, and I was very honest and I said, "Oh, no, I've just bought all this" ""from Marks', I'm going to put it all in the oven"." "I'm not a liar, normally!" "And they were like, "Oh, all right"." "And then as I served it up, everything I served up, my ex-boyfriend's mum said, "Oh, did you make this yourself?"" "And I said, "No, no, I didn't"." "And then I served another thing up, she said, "Did you make the carrots?" "This is lovely", and I went, "No, it's still Marks'." ""Everything is still..." "It's all from Marks'"." "And the last thing I served up was creamed spinach and she went," ""This is delicious, did you make this?"" "And it wound me up so much and I don't know why I said, "No," ""my flatmate made it", which doesn't benefit me, doesn't make me look better, it's just sort of saying, "I know someone who cooks"." "And she was like, "Oh, that's lovely"." "My flatmate wasn't in and she was my best friend." "So we have this dinner, all the while I'm going to the kitchen, texting my best friend and my flatmate going, "Please call me," ""don't come back yet, you need to know how to cook creamed spinach"." ""Go learn how to cook it"." "And then she doesn't text back, she doesn't call me, and then I hear the keys in the door and genuinely, I get like perve-lip, you know when you sweat so much..." "I was terrified, she came in and was like, "Hey"." "I was like, "Hey, how you doing?" and she didn't even make eye contact with me, and she was like, "Hello, hello."" "And it was about five minutes, all of, like, talking like this and then my ex-boyfriend's mum went," ""How did you make the creamed spinach?"" "And I was just like, "Oh, my God!" "This is..."" "And then without looking at me, she went, "Cream, black pepper..."" "And she'd done it, she'd googled it and wanted me to sweat it out and answered it, yeah, so she'd saved me." "She really made me..." "It was one of those things that afterwards, she was like, "I can't understand why this happened!" ""I can't understand..." "You don't look good, I don't look good," ""it's an insane lie!"" "Don't get me started on creamed spinach, I just love that stuff." "Can you actually make it?" "Yeah." "Don't pretend, there's no pretending on here." "How do you make it?" "Cream, black pepper..." "I mean, I've got very high cholesterol but I have a great life." "I actually..." "I actually do have high cholesterol." "Has anyone else got high cholesterol?" "I've got high cholesterol." "I don't even want to tell you this, this is so embarrassing." "I was diagnosed with gout last week." "Last week?" "Yeah, not last century, last week, which is incredible." "I was..." "I'm in the whole of my health," "I'm active, I'm active in the community." "No, no, no, I mean I go to the wine shop and... ..and I come back, but I woke up in the middle of night with this excruciating pain in my ankle, and I really thought I'd broken" "my ankle but you don't normally break your ankle in bed when you're asleep, so I got up in the morning and it was like excruciating and I know no-one believes you when you talk about your own pain." "Nobody cares, but I think you're nice people." "And so I tried to walk on it next morning and I couldn't so I hobbled a little bit for the day and I had some stuff to do and that evening, I went to a clinic, the nurse took one look at it," "it was quite swollen and very, very shiny and she just kind of looked at me with that kind of like, "Hmmm, is there any gout in your family?"" "And I went... and then it just struck me, "Oh, my God, yeah"." "So, apparently, that's what it is." "What can you do about that?" "Don't know." "They didn't give you any help with it at all?" "They didn't, really, it's just like one of those things they just kind of go, "Sorry, you know, bye-bye."" "Do you have to just change your lifestyle?" "I just have to live with gout." "I mean, you don't eat a lot of red meat, you're not supposed to drink a lot of alcohol, I thought it was wine but it's beer, actually that's worse than wine and you don't..." "You're next." "Even things like mushrooms and asparagus as well, so all the good stuff." "It is a bit 16th century, Henry VIII, isn't it?" "It is a little, yeah." "I know someone else who's got gout, maybe it's coming back." "I think it is, I think it's a first world problem but it's hereditary as well, so it's not my fault." "Any gout, Rob, in the Delaneys?" "Not that I'm aware of, no." "But I had, in my vision recently, I saw some black spots and I went to the opthamologist and I said, "So, I'm sure this is" ""an easy fix, but I now see these black spots in my vision," ""what can we do to knock these out?"" "And he's like, "Nothing, you just..." ""You're going to have them until you die"." "So they're just like, floaters and I see things now that aren't there." "I see them right now." "Do you really?" "Yeah, I don't like 'em but they're here so, you know..." "Are they peripheral?" "What'll happen is if I come over here to look at you they'll be like, "Whoo!" They'll get there a second later." "Shut up." "Yeah, I can still drive cos" "I haven't told the Registry of Motor Vehicles." "Didn't you once fall asleep during a gig or something?" "Is that true?" "Yeah, that is absolutely true." "I might be asleep now." "No, I did." "I genuinely..." "I was in Belfast, you would know the club, the Empire in Belfast." "You know it as well." "Paddy Kielty's place." "Yeah, and it was a fantastic club in its day and really raucous, really, really lively and I remember, I had been up all night the night before and I was exhausted and I was on stage" "in front of a big crowd of people and I sort of drifted off and I remember hearing..." "You drifted off?" "Yes, I did and I heard somebody in what I thought was a distant room... ..doing my material, word for word, doing it really well, better than I could do it." "You were thinking, "That guy's good."" "And I sort of went towards that room and I was going, "Who is this?" ""Why are they doing my stuff?"" "As I got closer, I realised it was actually me and that I was on stage doing it." "It was sort of like an out-of-body experience and I remember just going," "I'd better wake up now and you know, address the situation," "And I kind of woke up then and I didn't know where I was in the set at that stage, I'd completely lost my way but the audience didn't seem to mind that much." "They didn't know really, I didn't tell them either, you know, so then I was going on to Derry the next day, the city of Derry, so you'd do the two gigs together, Belfast and then Derry." "And then Galway and then Cork." "Yes, that's right, it was a little loop of Ireland." "I did that with Barry." "Yeah." "Friend of Ardal's, he's an Irish comedian, he's very funny." "He's funnier than Ardal but he was booked." "So we went to Derry the next day, cos I was so shocked by this happening that I rang ahead - cos you used to stay in this lovely little place..." ""Can I have a bed on stage, please?"" "There's this lovely little BB in Derry we used to stay in and so I rang ahead to see, would the room be ready and could I have a little nap before the next gig so this wouldn't happen again." "So I went along there and when I got there, there was a hot water bottle in my bed and I tried to go to sleep and the next thing, the man who owns the BB came into my room and he closed the curtains and then he tucked me in." "I'd never experienced anything like that before, anywhere in any hostelry." "And then when you woke up, was he next to you?" "He was very attentive." "Oh, my gosh." "Yeah," "You say that was a lovely BB but that BB was famous for the bloke not wanting...." "First of all, you weren't supposed to come home drunk which is virtually impossible after a gig in Derry." "Yeah." "And he didn't want you to bring anyone back to his BB." "Yeah, that's right." "So he waited up." "He waited up." "You didn't have keys." "No, he had to let you in." "He only wanted to tuck one person in at a time" "That's so charming and lovely, though." "Well, it is a bit strange as well." "And he used to get up in the morning to do your breakfast so he never went to sleep himself, he was....he was a really strange guy." "So did you think, "I was tired and I nodded off"" "or did you think you'd had an out-of-body experience, whatever that is?" "You know, I'm pretty sure I was asleep but my eyes were probably open and my mouth was still talking and it kind of..." "It knew the set that I was doing." "Cos it is like that when you're doing a gig, isn't it?" "Sometimes, you're talking but you're thinking about completely other things." "Or the second gig in a night, you can be saying something and you're like, "Wait, did I say that in the first gig or did I say it earlier in this gig to right now and people are going to think I'm an idiot?"" "You do something that you think is a call-back to something earlier and there's this horrible silence and you realise you said it in the 8 o'clock show. "Oh, if only that crowd were still here!"" "It's like if you get heckled from someone on the front row and the rest of the audience can't hear it." "Have you ever had that?" "That kills." "Cos the audience is like, "Why is she really angry?"" "It's like you're having a breakdown." "I did a tour show, and this guy..." "It wasn't even heckling, he was just being really crude, so he was on the front row and he was like..." "SHE MOUTHS" "..and I'm like, "Sorry?", and he was like, "No, I didn't say anything", and you're getting really angry and it just makes you look mad cos they can't see it." "I was in the Comedy Store when I started out and I wasn't getting any laughs, I can't remember why, and right in the front row, this girl turned to her mate and said, "He's lost it"." "That's horrible." "And I let that hold me below the waterline." "Can you tell me, Rob, about going to Slovakia by mistake?" "Yeah, I was in Poland and I'd climbed a mountain, as you do, and I was up there at the top, just kind of rummaging around and I actually drank my first Red Bull, this was in, like 1999," "and I was just up there and some Polish guy handed me a Red Bull and I drank it and I said, "This is disgusting", and I wanted to throw it off the mountain but I don't litter." "So I put it in my bag and I kept walking and I found this rock in the ground, in the snow with a big S on it and I was just looking at it and some other people came from the other side and I said," ""What's this S about?"" "And they said, "Oh you're in Slovakia now"." "And I said, "Well, how about that?"" "And then I walked down the mountain." "I'm sure it's a fantastic country, I didn't go further than that." "Does it border Poland?" "It doesn't, which is the weird part." "No, it does." "That is odd." "It is right there." "It gives you wings." "It's a shock when you wind up there and you didn't plan to." "My mum nearly ended up in Gdansk once." "Ryanair." "She was on the flight and they were taxiing down the runway in Ireland and then she started speaking to people and they were like, "What?"" "Where did she think she was going?" "London." "It's a holiday in Ireland and then she started speaking to people and she goes, "There's a lot of Polish people in here!"" "She spoke to someone and they said, "we're going to Gdansk,"" "and she was like, "But we're going to London first."" "Luckily they hadn't taken off, but they'd literally taxied..." "I used to work as a check-in person." "Did you?" "A summer job, yeah, and I did that thing" " I probably shouldn't say this but it was a long time ago - where I would send people's bags astray if they were really objectionable." "Shut up, you did not." "I did, once or twice." "You actually put the wrong tag on?" "I actually did." "In those days it wasn't automated so you just had tags for the different cities and if somebody was like a real prick, you would just be, "OK, if that's the way you want to play this."" ""This bag's going to Nam."" "But, if they were nice people, then..." "You'd give them an extra bag." "No." "I went one better." "You had that power." "A matchmaker." "So if you met this lovely lady and a really nice guy came along, you would just go, "OK," I remember, I would take a little note of where I put her and I would match-make." "Oh, my God!" "That's wonderful." "You know this is all going on in your head, you know that, don't you?" "Genuinely happened." "The bag thing, I probably did it once." "Where did you send the bags?" "Well, the guy was going to Toronto and I sent it to Melbourne." "Melbourne!" "They're pretty far apart." "What is wrong with you, your ass is stuck to the floor, your boots are made of lead." "I read a book that you wrote, a novel that you wrote, back in the '90s, you wrote it, didn't you?" "And in that, there was a fearsome amount of drinking that went on." "Yeah, there was, yeah." "It was a novel, though, it wasn't an autobiography." "I should point that out." "Was that a big part of your youth?" "I was kind of..." "I was a wuss when it came to hardcore living but I was very good observer and I kind of hung around with a lot of people who lived that kind of life and, you know, I'd sort of be the sensible one there, going, "Oh"." "HE TUTS" "When my friends would be getting into fights, they'd more or less say, goodbye to me now, "We're going to have a fight," or something," ""and you go off and stand over there and we'll collect you later."" "More or less, like." "And so you'd watch them fight and then, "Have you finished, lads?"" "Yeah, it was kind of like that." ""We've had our fight now" ""and we'll go home and we'll stop for chips."" "You're off the drink, aren't you, Rob, completely?" "Yeah, that's true." "How long has it been?" "It's been over 12 years." "Wow!" "Yeah." "Please!" "This show has turned into Oprah all of a sudden." "No, I think drinking is great," "I just know that when I do, there are real problems." "This all titanium in here, where this is rebuilt." "Every limb I have is bionic because a little over 12 years ago" "I drove a car into a building." "A lot of times when I drive a car, it'll be like on a road or a street or, like, a boulevard, but I drove into the interior of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power" "through one of its walls and then I wound up in jail in a wheelchair with my limbs and..." "Drive into the jail?" "I didn't, no, I was driven." "When you do that, you qualify for a particular chauffeur service that brings you there." "Right." "You're escorted!" "Nobody else was involved in the accident, thank God, so I knew at that time it was time to graduate to this stuff right here." "Did you think your friends were thinking," ""That was bound to happen to Rob one day"." "Oh, absolutely, they did, yeah." "I was relieved when it happened because I knew something bad was going to happen and I was like, "Oh, this is so great"." "I remember being in jail in a wheelchair and covered in blood, and thinking, "OK, now everybody knows", and that's what I needed at the time and so that did the trick." "Were you doing stand-up at the time?" "No, in fact, it was only after that." "It was about a year after that that I was like...was able to be like," ""You know what I really want to do" ""now that I'm not in a wheelchair any more is stand-up"." "That was not..." "No pun intended, that would be a terrible joke, I would never...." "This lot loved it." "I feel guilty, I want to, like, suck the laugh back out of you." "What were you doing for a living when you were drinking?" "I had several jobs, I worked in a warehouse and baby-sat, of course." "Worked in a warehouse, baby-sat and catered, and in fact, the thing you said about me, the Lionel Richie thing, I was catering at a tiny party and there were like ten guests at the party," "one of whom was Lionel Richie." "It was like a billionaire who was having the party and they had..." "It was a Moroccan-themed party, even though nobody there was Moroccan, it was, like, old, doddering white ladies in fezzes and Lionel Richie." "And they had a little Moroccan band playing and the host of the party was like, "Lionel, why don't you get up there and play with the band?"" "And Lionel was like, "No"." "And then he was like, "Come on", and Lionel was like, "OK"." "So he sat down with a three-piece Moroccan band - they really were Moroccan - and he sat down at a piano and they Moroccan'd around him." "And he played Hello." "There were ten guests, and, like, me and a couple of other waiters and he beautifully played Hello by Lionel Richie and so just because of how few people were in there, several verses were directed right into my soul" "and it was one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me cos he's amazing." "I once was in Van Morrison's toilet..." "..at exactly the moment he wanted to use it." "Oh, wow!" "Yep." "It was something like that, it was a private thing." "He was being honoured in Dublin." "I remember, Bob Geldof introduced him and Van was quite happy to accept the honour but he's a notoriously difficult person and I was a big fan - that's why I was there - and earlier that day, he had asked for a 25-piece orchestra," "to play with them." "To go to the toilet with?" "No, no, no, no, I'm coming to the toilet bit." "So, I was talking to one of the fellows in the orchestra, a violinist, and he said that Van arrived about ten minutes before the gig, gave them a list of 100 songs - they'd been there since" "midday - he gave them a list of 100 songs and said," ""I'll be playing four of them"." "And so later on, backstage, I was dying to go to the toilet, so I went into a toilet." "The next thing, there's this knock on the door, going, "Who's in my fucking toilet?" "Who's in my toilet?"" "And it's Van and I'm delighted cos now I have a little Van moment to treasure forever." "And I came out and he kind of recognised me or something - which was very flattering - but he started giving me a headbutt, was his was of greeting but it was a friendly headbutt," "I don't know if that happens in Wales or..." "It's kind of like, arrrggghh." "Oh, yeah, yeah, that one, yeah." "I thought you meant, bang!" "I love you!" "No, no, no, it was very friendly." "Wow!" "Yeah." "As you were coming out of the lavatory, he did that?" "Well, I hid in there for as long as possible but he wasn't going anywhere." "He stayed there." "I thought he wanted to go to the toilet." "He wanted to go and..." "Why didn't you come out straight away, what were you doing?" "Well, I was a bit afraid." "I kind of thought he might go somewhere else." "We were talking about heckling earlier." "I want to know what it's like to be heckled by Grandmaster Flash, the hip-hop legend." "Well..." "Yeah." "Did he heckle you in a rhyme?" "No, he was very angry." "Was he?" "Yeah." "I'd gone to see him live and obviously, he's this big rap pioneer, he practically invented early hip-hop with a few other people, so I was really excited." "I was in the front row but I get very self-conscious at gigs, cos I never really know what to, sort of, do." "That'll do." "Yeah." ""Hey, I blooming love hip-hop!"" "But I was front row, centre, I couldn't wait and he came on, and the crowd went absolutely mental and people were going mad and I was," ""This is going to be really brilliant."" "And he took the mic, he went, "I'm a firm believer you got to know" ""where you came from, know where you're going." "I'm going to play some" ""Parliament, some P-Funk," ""some George Clinton, some Bootsy Collins."" "Everyone's like, "Yay!"" "and I was like, "That sounds absolutely great!"" "And then he started playing all these tunes, it was great and everyone was dancing and I was there with my Guinness or real ale or whatever it was, having a really great time and then he kept looking" "into the crowd and looking angry and eventually he picked up the mic and it was sort of, it was electric, cos people are like, "We're not" ""expecting him to rap, he's going to freestyle." ""He's freestyling for the people of Wales, this is amazing," ""no-one expected this."" "So, everyone was really up for it." "He took the mic and went, "There's this white guy down the front, man," ""and this motherfucker ain't dancing for nobody, what is wrong with you?" ""Your ass is stuck to the floor, your boots are made of lead!" ""There must be glue on that dance floor!" "Dance, motherfucker!"" "And I remember thinking..." "I remember thinking, "He's giving this guy short shrift, isn't he?" ""What an idiot."" "And he was like, "I'm talking to you, motherfucker," ""why ain't you dancing?"" "I was thinking, "Yeah, he's really giving this guy both barrels." ""God, I wouldn't want to be in this guy's shoes"." "He's like, "There must be something wrong with you," ""there must be a wheelchair waiting for you cos you ain't dancing."" "And I remember, I glanced behind me and I did this because the entire dance floor had emptied, the people were crying with laughter and pointing at me, and I looked at my friend and he was hugging his knees, he was laughing so much." "And he said, "You either have to leave or start dancing"." "So I left." "Then I walked, I had to walk through the now empty dance floor with everyone going, "Waaaay!", and I was like, "Yeah, very funny, very good"." "So I sat at the back and the manager come up to me and he was like, he put his arm around me and he said, "You don't have to dance" ""if you don't want to"." "Were you 12 or something?" "I was a bit tearful." "He was like, "Don't let him force you do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable", and I was like, "I know, thanks," ""cheers, mate"." "So I was sat there waiting for the gig to end and then, obviously, we had to wait for everyone to leave because it was too embarrassing, cos people were coming up to me and taking the piss." "The manager let us out round the back and as we went out, they were like putting away his decks and stuff and my friend was pissed and he went up to his roadie and went, "Hey, mate, this is the guy, this is" ""the idiot, that guy that Grandmaster Flash was taking the" ""piss out of, look at him, he's there"." "And the bloke went, "Man," ""that's all part of the show, tomorrow night we'll do that to some" ""other white dude in Exeter"." "I like the fact you didn't even ask for a shower." "You wanted a bath." "It had to be a bath." "You needed to properly unwind." "It had to be a bath." "I was in a sitcom, Father Ted, which you know and I remember, we were shooting this episode with a friend of ours called Michael Redmond, you know Michael Redmond." "Wonderful comedian." "Wonderful comedian, he looks great, he played this character called" "Father Stone, and the episode was, the most boring priest of all time comes to stay, so he's the worst house guest you can imagine, so that's the episode." "The priests Father Ted and Father Dougal are trying to entertain him so we teach him to play golf." "For people who don't know the show, it is set in the bleakest, most miserable place in the world and it was always shot at the bleakest most miserable time of the year, so you're talking deep into November," "freezing cold, minus five, lashing out of the heavens, and if that wasn't enough, there was two rain machines as well, for extra rain and extra misery, and it was taking a very long time to get this scene" "and after six hours of this, absolutely freezing cold," "I mean, really freezing, you know, bones were rattling and the rain getting into every fibre of every stitch of clothing." "I was genuinely worried." "I thought I was going to die," "I really, genuinely thought, I'm not going to survive this, hour after hour of this, relentless misery and we're an hour from the nearest town, this is how remote it is." "It's like the moon or somewhere." "And finally, because of bad light, we had to stop, they would have gone on forever and I just said, "I cannot get into a car so wet and so cold."" "I went up to the nearest house and I knocked at the door and I said," ""I'm really, really sorry but can I have a bath?"" "I had no choice, I had no choice." "And granted, I was dressed as a priest and it might have helped but they just kind of looked at me and went, "OK"." "Did they recognise you from Father Ted?" "No." "It was the first series so no-one would have ever seen it, nobody would have even been aware there was filming going on." "It was just this extremely wet, bedraggled priest... came to the door and asked for a bath and that was..." "Yeah, fair enough." "I like the fact you didn't even ask for a shower, you wanted a bath." "It had to be a bath." "You needed to properly unwind." "It had to be a bath." "Out of interest, was there bubble bath?" "No, it was just a plain bath." "A plain bath." "Are you called, Roisin, "Ro-sheen", is that how you say it?" "Yeah." "You grew up in London..." "Yes." "..but with this full-on Irish name." "Were people OK with it or did they get it wrong every time?" "Most people say it "Roy-zin", you know, it's ridiculous." "I respond to anything beginning with R." "When I was at school, we had this teacher called Mr Archer, he was a lovely man, and he just couldn't say my name and my friends just made my name longer for him so that my nickname" "at school was "Royconsangonzales", just to Mr Archer." "He was like, "That's not how you say it", but he wasn't sure." "And they were like, she's got a fada over the O, that turns it into "roik"." "Hang on, there's a what over the O?" "It's a fada, it's like a hyphen." "It's like a little dash like you get in French like a greve or...." "Yeah." "Tell me what the O means?" "The O?" "Yeah." "In O'Hanlon." "Why do so many Irish names have an O in front of them?" "It's just an expression of surprise." "Roisin, I want to know about when you went on a meditation retreat and you sang an Elton John medley, is that correct?" "Yes." "I'm quite an anxious person and I think I'm always at a sort of low level of panic." "Are you really?" "Yeah, just naturally." "Cos I would put you down as a happy-go-lucky, smiley, chatty, nice person." "Come off it." "Are you a proper freaker?" "I think I'm quite an anxious, quite..." "SHE JIBBERS" "I think I'm quite an anxious person at heart, like, overall anxiety, and it's fine, it just makes me smoke quite a lot and eat my way through it." "I went on this retreat, and basically," "I wanted to go to stop smoking." "And on the first day I got there, you sort of get introduced to people and this couple said, "We've been married for ten years" ""and we're here just to salvage our marriage." "That's why we're here"." "And I was like, "Oh, right, I'm smoking 20 a day" ""so it's not all about you."" "I didn't say that." "So I got there and I was worried that everyone was going to be quite pretentious and kind of, you know, "I'm so organic"." "But everyone was really nice." "I really liked everyone and it's a very sort of nice place." "How many people were there?" "There's about 40, you get assigned rooms and I got assigned a room with quite a famous actress." "Can we guess?" "You'll never guess it." "Downton Abbey." "EastEnders." "You'll never guess it." "No?" "But in the first couple of minutes, she went to me, "You're not very good with silence, are you?"" "I was like, "Me?" "Love a bit of silence." "Love it!"" "And I'm not very good with silence either, being an anxious person and so we go for the day of silence, and I thought it'd be fine," ""I'll just read, eat, you know, it's fine,"" "and then they say, "You can't do those things," ""you just have to be alone in your own head with your own thoughts."" "Whoa." "So about ten minutes in, I was ruined, I was like, "What?" "!"" "They didn't say you couldn't walk anywhere, so it was on this lovely grounds and I went walking and there was a big, old tyre swing." "You know those tyre swings on a rope?" "And I got up and thought," ""I'll walk there, they didn't say anything about the tyre." ""They would've mentioned if we couldn't go."" "I got up and there was like 30 other people queuing to get on this tyre." "For three hours, we just got on and off this tyre, just eyeballing each other, like, "You've been on there long enough, mate"." "It was the longest 12 hours." "It was so tiring and so on the final day, they came in and said, "We're having" ""an entertainment evening just, you know, celebrate the weekend," "I was like, "Fine," and people are going to get up and do stuff." "So, this one girl gets up and she reads a poem that she's written about the weekend." "It's boring but it's fine, you know." "And then this guy gets up with a guitar and sings Morrissey songs." "He brought the guitar like he knew that bit was going to happen, it really wound me up, I was like, "It's fine, be positive," ""be positive," and it was all going fine, it was very relaxed until this guy, Geordie Dave, who's a lovely, lovely man, and he'd come on this retreat because he'd gone through" "a bad break-up about a year ago and he'd lost all his confidence and he felt like he couldn't talk to people." "He felt like people didn't like him and he wanted to sort of rebuild his confidence and out of nowhere, he just ran to the front of the room and he was like," "GEORDIE ACCENT: "Hello, my name's not on the list" ""but I've had such an amazing weekend."" "Sorry, excuse the accent, sorry." "No, it's good." "He was like, "I just want to say, when I came," "I thought all of you lot were going to be bellends."" "It was like, "But I feel positive, I feel so great about myself," ""I feel I can make friends again, I'm back to my old self." ""I'm just going to sing a song, I'm just going to sing a song"." "And everyone was like, "Yeah, go Dave"." "And I was like, "This is going to be bad, this is going to be bad."" "You know you can tell a bad gig, that feeling." "And, he just starts, he's got no prep, nothing, and he was like - # It's a little bit funny... #" "Silence, silence." "He's got no instruments." "# .." "This feeling inside. #" "Silence, silence." "And I saw two things, in his face," "I saw the moment he re-engaged with his legs." "I saw him sort of think, "Oh, we did this."" "Like, genuinely, that was just a thought, and then I also saw that he didn't know all the words, he did not know the words to this song and he's about to have a death." "I was like, "He's going to be traumatised," ""he's run to the front of this room and had this amazing song" ""and he's running out of fucking words."" "And my thing to help him here, was to make a joke, like," ""Whoa, someone hasn't got the..." I couldn't shit on it, I couldn't make a joke, he was really in it, everyone in the room's rooting for him to nail this song, and I just thought, "You know what?" ""I've had a thousand bad gigs, I can do this", so I just stood up, no jokes, this is not funny, I'm in the room, straight-faced and I'm like..." "# And you can tell everybody..." "# This is your song... #" "And then the room starts joining in." "# Hope you don't mind!" "#" "The couple..." "So, no-one's laughing, everyone's totally in this and I'm like, "Do not laugh, just be here."" "The couple I met on the first day then burst into tears." ""This is our wedding song."" "It was like an emotional orgy, it was the whole room singing." "ALAN SINGS INAUDIBLY It was insane." "But breakfast the next day, it's like..." "Awkward." "It is like a one-night stand, yeah." "Everyone's like, "How you doing?" "You all right?" ", can I get the eggs?"" ""There was a lot of singing, you're right." ""We should meet up and go on a walking holiday"." ""I never want to see any of you again."" "But, yeah, and whenever anyone says, "What's the worst gig...?", that flashes into my brain." "Nothing is as bad as having to not smile and to not make a joke of it, and hold a note and sing along to this guy who didn't have, like, an awful evening." "You've saved him." "I did." "It was traumatising, it was really traumatising." "Well, I loved that story." "Well, listen, I've loved all your stories but we have to come up with a title for our show." "I quite liked, "I'm not a happy slapper"." "That made me laugh." "There's something about the spots in front of you, are they there now?" "Yeah, cos there's a lot of bright light here, so they're dancing about." "When you go outside will they go away?" "Yeah, in the dark, I probably won't see 'em." "What about the Grandmaster Flash story?" "There must be something in there." "What did he say to you?" "What was the swear bit?" ""Why aren't you dancing, motherfucker?"" ""We're going to do this to another white guy, in Exeter"." "In Exeter." "What about Alan Davies" " Why Aren't You Dancing, Motherfucker?" "Alan Davies Is Now In Slovakia?" "What do you think, Ardal?" "May I take a bath in your home?" "Can you remember how you actually phrased it when you asked for the bath?" "It was just literally, "Hello, can I have a bath?"" "I wouldn't have done that if..." "You could have pointed a gun at my head and I wouldn't have done that." "First of all, thank you to Rob Delaney, Ardal O'Hanlon," "Roisin Conaty and Elis James, thank you very much." "I'm Alan Davies and you have been watching, Hello, Can I Have A Bath?" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"