"Good evening." "I've walked all the way here from Guildford." "I'm quite tired." "Keep out the riffraff." "They offered to send me a car but I didn't want to, just, erm...the environment, cos I'm a really caring person." "If you thought the Titanic was a disaster, wait till you see this." "I'm not coming." "APPLAUSE" "Hello, I'm Alan Davies and this is As Yet Untitled, the show where I sit and have a nice conversation with four interesting/funny people." "We don't have any questions or agenda or topics." "You might think, "Why bother, then?"" "But, no." "They're really good." "At the end of it, we'll come up with a title for the show." "So, please, will you welcome my guests?" "APPLAUSE" "Hello." "Hello." "Welcome." "Welcome, all of you." "I'll introduce you, if I may." "Please do." "Jo Brand is here." "Jo Brand." "APPLAUSE" "Jo Brand was a teenage fire risk and will never again tell a German man about her sore feet." "Jo Brand." "James Acaster." "James Acaster is available to play any woodland gigs and hasn't been back to Basingstoke since 2009." "APPLAUSE" "Delighted, delighted to welcome Ricky Tomlinson for whom private members clubs are not his natural habitat and his ship has never sailed." "APPLAUSE" "And Sara Pascoe." "Welcome to Sara." "Sara was always going to marry a pop star." "APPLAUSE" "You're all very welcome." "Thank you for coming." "I'm pleased we got the drink numbers organised." "Yes, good." "A pair of drinks." "Pair." "Wonderful." "Now I'm going to worry there's a secret signal going on." "Like, if they're enjoying themselves they drink the dark drink, if they're having a terrible time, they drink the white drink." "That's brilliant." "They're signalling to each other." "They're plotting something." "SHE GASPS" "I couldn't help myself." "LAUGHTER" "That's epically paranoid." "Good work!" "Always look for a code." "That is a very good motto." "In fact, that's a very good title for the show." "I never have a pen with me." "I'll have to try and remember that." "What have you got, Alan?" "What are you drinking?" "That's fizzy water." "With a lime in it, to make me instantly jealous." "Did you ask for a lime or did they just give it to you?" "No, they gave me a lime, but not James." "One day, you'll get a lime." "Message received." "When it's your show, James, in the future..." "I'd have nothing but limes." "I'd have a cup of limes and a shot of water on the side if I want to put it in there." "There used to be a TV show years ago called that, wasn't it?" "What's My Lime?" "Heeeey!" "Sorry about that." "See?" "You see why we invited him?" "THEY LAUGH" "Well, good night, everyone." "I want to meet the first comedian who wasn't yet born when I started doing stand up, and you're getting close." "1985." "No." "You'd started by then, had you?" "'86, I started." "So you were one." "I remember your first gig, it was good." "Did your mum stick you in front of the telly," ""Watch that scary old dolly"?" ""It's important."" "The first time I met Jo, I was telling her that me and my sister Cheryl had your Through The Cakehole video." "And so we must have been...probably eight and we could not wait to start our periods so we could ruin people's furniture." "We were the only kids at school not worried." "We were like, "Come on, adolescence!"" "Cos I used to do a line about when you've got a very heavy period, go round someone's house you don't like and sit on their new sofa." "Sorry." "And we thought this was the best thing." "I'm not like that any more, honestly." ""Got the painters and decorators in," you used to say." ""Got the painters and decorators in."" ""Arsenal are playing at home." And "I've got a vast amount of blood" ""squirting out of my cunt, Vicar." LAUGHTER" "That's the one I know." "Now I know what you're talking about." "I did that on Jackanory." "Didn't go down very well." "Jo and I went on Celebrity Millionaire and we got to 64,000 and we were playing for the local hospital in Liverpool." "And the next question, and I've never forgiven myself, you knew the answer and I said, "Don't take a chance."" "So I done the kids out of another 60 grand, didn't I?" "Yeah." "She knew the answer." "Do you remember what it was?" "The question was, "What's her husbands name?"" "Wasn't it a political question?" "Where was vanilla from?" "Oh, where's vanilla from?" "Where's vanilla from, yeah." "Madagascar." "Oh." "Yeah." "You've seen the show." "No, everyone knows that." "It's on the top of custard from Waitrose." "Oh, is it?" "Showing your true colours." "Yeah." "My kids are learning the alphabet at the moment, and they think W is for Waitrose." "Bless." "So tell me why you would never tell a German man about your sore feet." "What's gone on there?" "Well, my brother lives in Germany." "He married a German woman and we used to go and visit quite a lot." "I did German A level, so I rather fancied myself quite good at German." "And her dad, a very interesting guy." "He was, erm, a Nazi soldier, lovely, nice guy." "We went out for a walk one day and I was thinking," ""What shall I say to him about..."" "I immediately thought he was goose-stepping." "Interestingly, we did show him the episode of Fawlty Towers." "And my sister-in-law did simultaneous translation and actually he loved it, he thought it was hilarious." "It is funny." "So I got back from this walk and I wanted to say to him," ""My feet are hurting."" "And feet is Fusse and I should have said," ""Meine Fusse tut mir weh," which means "My feet are hurting."" "But I said, "Meine Fotze tut mir weh,"" "which means, "My cunt is hurting."" "There's the title for the show." "Is that why we went to war?" "Yeah, I was doing my best." "But, do you know how tall Hitler was and where he lived?" "He was that tall and he lived over there." "I think, in foreign languages, they shouldn't make things sound the same." "I had a very similar thing in Italy, where I thought..." "There's a pasta dish called Penne Arrabbiata." "It's a very common dish, and the Penne is spelt P-E-N-N-E." "Now, the word for penis in Italian is P-E-N-E." "It's too similar!" "So I asked for an angry penis in a restaurant." "And very similarly..." "Why haven't they changed the word?" "But I think you know there is endless entertainment with mistranslations." "I once said to a lovely French bloke that I got off with," ""I have been bitten by a swarm of handkerchiefs."" "I wanted to say mosquitoes, but obviously," "I'd only done O levels so I didn't know mosquito, so I knew flies, pretty close, "mouche," but just said "mouchoir" by mistake." "I had a thing in France." "I went with a friend and she spoke fluent French and I didn't and she went into a shop and I waited outside." "It was me and a big dog had been tied up outside, like, it looked like a human being in a dog costume." "Like, just tied up, like he was wearing this for a laugh outside this shop and people would go past and because the dog was so funny-looking, they would stroke it and comment on it but they'd always comment to me because they thought it was my dog." "Cos I don't speak French, I'd just say "Oui,"" "and then they'd move on and one guy came along, he really made fun - said loads of stuff about the dog - and I went..." "I agreed with him." "And then a lady stopped and did a double take and then bollocked both of us for whatever I just agreed to about that dog." "Every time she was telling us off, he was looking at me like," ""She does not get us, man." ""We know its fine to do what we just agreed to do to that dog." ""But, er..." "She doesn't get us at all."" "What the fuck do you think you're going to do now then, you fucker?" "Tell me why you haven't been to Basingstoke since 2009." "What's happened there?" "I, erm..." "I was an open spot." "Just started doing comedy." "I had a gig in Basingstoke." "Someone was supposed to be driving me back to London and he changed his mind and went," ""I'm not driving back to London any more."" "After he'd seen your act?" "Yeah, he went," ""You don't deserve a lift, mate."" "And he went to his girlfriend's house, somewhere nearby, and just sent me to the train station where I was guaranteed by the staff of the venue, there was a train at midnight." "Not only was there not a train, the train station was locked." "And I had no money in my wallet and no credit on my phone so I slept in a bush in front of the train station." "That's not the logical progression." "I know." "I panicked." "So many stages, from having no money to ending up in the bush, there should be other things that happen." "I know and I'm not sure why..." "I decided so quickly." "What about reversing the charges?" "What?" "I...?" "What's that?" "You really don't know?" "Can you do that?" "You go to a pay phone, and you call the operator and you say "Can you ring this number" ""and tell them I need to reverse the charges?"" "How do you phone the operator if you haven't got any money?" "Is that free?" "Wow!" "LAUGHTER" "How old are you?" "29." "I should probably know all this, right?" "SARA:" "You should know this." "It's a privileged upbringing." "Yeah." "All this technology and the young people end up in a bush at the slightest problem." "He's missed his train." "He's in a bush." "So had you had a drink or were you sober?" "Sober." "You're sober..." "Sober, as well, you're in a bush?" "!" "You're sober and you went and got into a bush?" "Yeah." "No need to be in a bush in this situation." "A police station." "I couldn't contact anyone." "Police station I only thought of on the way home the next day." "Hospital." "Just go to AE, say, "I'm fine." ""I need somewhere to sit down for five minutes." Can you...?" "They'll be much too busy to worry about you, yeah." "I had, like, six hours to kill." "Yeah, well, that would probably cover you in AE, most times." "They're very busy places." "What sort of bush?" "It was quite a roomy bush." "Quite nice, little bit to crawl in." "I sat down and I had some brioche." "What time of year?" "Huh?" "What time of year?" "It's like November and, yeah, I had some brioche." "I bought some brioche." "Did you?" "Yeah." "That's what you did with your last pennies." "Eating a wheel of brioche." "Like Marie Antoinette." "Yeah, yeah." "I bought brioche with the last of my money." "That slab of brioche." "Let ME eat cake." "I was eating brioche." "And it was very cold, but in the day it had been sunny, weirdly." "And I hadn't brought a coat out with me but in the day in Basingstoke," "I had to do some shopping for a short film that I was helping out on," "I had to buy some wardrobe for an actress, so I had a red dress." "Oh." "Oh, yeah." "Fair enough." "He's picked up the drink." "Oh, yeah." "I don't know what that means now." "So, yeah." "I just sat there in the bush, wearing the red dress, eating the brioche." "You put it on?" "Yeah, it's my only option and I'm not too proud." "You still got it?" "No, I had to give it to the..." "Never mind." "She's got it now." "But I could put it on for you, one day." "The scariest moment of my life was when two drunk guys were walking past my bush." "And it was my bush." "I've had that." "Two drunk guys walking past my bush." "Carrying on." "When you were in a red dress and eating a cake?" "Did they notice you?" "Did they say, "Oi, oi, oi, that's where we sleep!"" "No, they didn't notice me, but they would have liked it if they did because they stopped in front of the bush and they had a debate about where they should go to find someone just to kick the shit out of." "Cos they said, "We haven't done it in a while."" "There's literally a conversation going," ""You know what we haven't done in a while?" ""Kicked the shit out of someone."" "And when you're in a red dress in a bush... ..just sitting at their feet eating the last of your brioche." "You start to think, "If they looked down," ""it would be like Christmas for them."" "So I got the plastic bag that the dress came in and I just put it over my head to disguise myself as a bag in a bush." "Bag lady." "I don't know if it worked or not, but they went away." "I don't know if they did look down." "They saw you and thought, sod that." "Too easy." "Don't fancy her." "We thought we were mad." "James, you're lucky they didn't do a wee." "I thought that's what you were going to say." "Yeah." "Me, too." "Drunk men walked up to the bush and then..." "I would have cried, so bad." "You hadn't cried before that." "No." "I was holding off the tears." "I was sitting there going..." "I'd just started stand up and when you just start stand up and something like that happens, you're sitting in a bush going," ""This will be good material." "This'll be great." Yeah." "Yeah, that's true." "When you've been in it for a while you go, "I've got enough stuff, I don't need this."" "I had to sleep outside once when my girlfriend at the time locked me out of a hotel room." "Why did she lock you out?" "She'd had enough of me." "You had to sleep outside in the corridor or outside?" "Outside." "Well, I went outside..." "In the garden?" "I'll tell you where we were, we were near Ayers Rock in the Australian outback." "And I was locked out and I went down to reception and said," ""Haven't got any other rooms, have you?"" "And they said, "Nah, mate." "We're booked."" "So I went out for a bit of a walk." "And it's quite a sight, Uluru, when the sun's coming up and I really needed to go to the loo." "And I went in a bush." "Isn't that ironic?" "Not ironic." "Coincidental." "I think in your shoes, I'd have hitched." "In my shoes?" "They were high heels." "I wasn't going to hitch." "I wasn't going to risk that." "I was too scared of hitchhiking." "Have you ever hitchhiked?" "I have." "Have you?" "Yeah." "I got a lift from a squaddie once and I was about 16 at the time." "Shouldn't have been hitching." "Up in Cheshire, doing a voluntary holiday with adults with learning disability and he drove down the road and I went, "That's where I'm staying."" "He went, "I know" and carried on driving." "I was like, oh!" "Oh, my God." "Suddenly I'm in a Hammer Horror film." "And he drove down this little lane and just stopped the car at the end of the lane." "And you kind of think, "What do I do now?"" "And I thought, the only thing to do was to go on the attack rather than go, "Please, don't hurt me", cos that makes them do it, doesn't it?" "And so I went, "What the fuck do you think you're going to do now then," ""you fucker?" Like that." "And, erm..." "It's quite scary, isn't it?" "Yeah, yeah." "And he started crying." "CHEERING" "He really did." "He really did." "Of course!" "Well done!" "SARA:" "She stopped him in his tracks!" "He gave you a lift and you bullied him into tears." "No, but a friend of mine said..." "When I was telling a friend of mine this story he said to me," ""Had he just put his glasses on?"" "Which I thought was a little bit out of place." "But, what actually happened, it turned out that he was engaged." "He'd been away from his fiancee for months." "He was missing her." "He said, "I don't know what came over me."" "And apologised and drove me back to where I was staying again." "Wow." "Yeah." "Happy ending." "Yeah, thank God." "Hopefully that stopped him ever doing it again, your reaction." "Yes, let's hope so." "I've picked up hitchhikers, as well." "That's not an excuse, is it?" ""I miss my fiance so I was about to commit a sex crime."" "I'd like to say..." ""I really miss her!"" "Let's face it, it's more than some of them offer, isn't it, really?" "If there's a big jump between me not having much money and a phone to sleep in a bush, there's a bigger jump from," ""I'm missing my fiancee" to that." "I mean, you know." "You could easily have been picked up in that dress by someone who was missing their fiancee." "Perfect." "Would you have had the courage to do what Jo did?" "That's why I should have been hitchhiking." "By the side of the road with a sign saying, "Missing your fiancee?"" "It's a good job that soldier wasn't driving past then." "I think the rule of thumb, if you're a woman, and you pick a hitchhiker up is if you had to, could you take them out with one punch?" "So I only pick up, like, really weedy blokes." "Whilst driving?" "Yeah." "Now, Ricky, I want you to tell me why private..." "I don't know why I'm even asking you but why private members clubs are not your natural habitat." "Well, I'm from the North, so I'm used to working men's clubs." "I'm a building worker by trade." "I'm a City and Guilds plasterer." "But when I was 30-odd I got released from prison and got into the acting game and I'd done a movie for a fellow called Roland Joffe." "And he invited me down to his 40th birthday party in the Groucho Club." "So I thought we was going, like, to the Wigan Labour club or something like that, and when I got there, it was a different world for me." "Everyone in show business, everyone who was anything in show business was there and there's this fellow from the North who's done one little job." "All the waiters are dressed as Groucho and the piano players are dressed as Groucho." "They're all drinking white champagne and I don't drink short of..." "But the lads behind the bar were from Liverpool and they were going out to the pub across the road and getting me pints of mild." "So I mean, honestly, everyone in the world was there and there was one little fellow - I'm only 5'8=" - there was a little fellow on his own in the corner and I felt sorry for him" "and I thought, "He must be with someone." "I'll try and..."" "So I said, "You all right?" He went..." "I said, "Have you got a drink?" And he went..." "And as I said, "Are you in the game?"" "Just as I said that, David Putnam and Jeremy Irons and two others carried this stretcher past with a cake on." "Put the cake on the floor, then Marilyn Monroe jumped out the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Roland Joffe, when that was over," "Roland Joffe said to me, "I want you to meet someone."" "And he took me over to this little fellow and I've just said to him, "Are you in the game?"" "And he said, "Rick, I would like you to meet" ""Robert De Niro."" "Oh, guys, come on." "I live not far from here." "I'll make you some beans on toast." "Now, Sara Pascoe, you were always going to marry a pop star." "Yes." "Is it a childhood ambition?" "The trouble is, right, you know how you're formed by your childhood?" "Your parents?" "So how my parents met, so my dad was in a pop band in the '70s and my mum was a fan of that band." "She saw him on TV when she was 13." "She absolutely knew she was going to marry him, she knew it." "She then stalked him for four years." "She went to..." "All of our house was always full of these scrapbooks of these photos with my mum with my dad." "She used to sleep outside of his house in Dagenham and basically..." "Why didn't he let her in?" "She was wearing a red dress and eating a brioche." "Cos she's a stylish woman, Alan." "Didn't realise this was so common." "It's pretty normal." "Thank you." "And so I think then they had a very rocky beginning." "Well, I think, because she was stalking him." "He wasn't in the band any more, and they went out on a date, they got pregnant with me." "Unlucky!" "And..." "But then essentially, they then were together for a couple of years." "How old was your mum when they had you?" "18." "Wow!" "That's young, isn't it?" "Yeah." "She had my sister 18 months later and then a few years later had another sister and then they broke up." "But that was the only story me and my sisters knew of how people met each other romantically." "So the only story we knew was," ""And that's when Mummy was standing outside Daddy's house." ""And this is Mummy meeting Daddy's Mummy." "He wasn't in that day!"" "That kind of stuff." "And so, me and Cheryl, she's 18 months younger than me, we just assumed that's what happens." "So we used to watch Top Of The Pops, expectantly." ""I'm marrying him, I'm marrying him."" "Yeah, waiting." "And then I picked Mark Owen." "She chose Robbie Williams." "Cos I don't like strong men either" "I like little weedy ones that I can punch." "I know exactly where you're coming from." "You'll never be able to pin me down, my friend..." "Hello!" "And then Cheryl and I tried to marry Robbie Williams." "After he left Take That, everyone else was crying and we were like," ""Brilliant." "One's split off from the pack." "He's weaker."" "He's vulnerable, a straggler." "And he came to London..." "Like an antelope!" "Yeah." "So he came to London to present the Big Breakfast so we went there." "There were lots of other girls camping out by the canal to meet him, and every day Robbie Williams came out and I was like, "This is it!"" "I think you have such delusion as a teenager." "No shit." "But I used to stand there in the crowd of maybe 100 people and think..." ""He likes me." "I can tell he's looking at me."" "I used to have these fantasies, when I used to walk home and I could almost feel it happening, like Take That's limo was going to break down, just next to me." "And I'd be like, "Oh, guys." "Come on." ""I live not far from here." "I'll make you some beans on toast."" "And then they would come out, and they'd be like" ""Sara, you've made us feel like normal human beings again." ""Our job makes us feel so weird." "Can we go out with you?"" "And I was so sure." "And then now I'm 33 and everyone's married to other people and I think, "Guys?" "When's this going to happen?" ""Howard?" "Anyone?"" "I don't know if this is true or not, but a friend told me this story." "She went to see Tom Jones, she's in the crowd and he kind of noticed her and, like, picked her out, right?" "So, she went backstage and she said to him," ""Do you want to come back to my place?"" "and he went..." "AS JONES: .."Ooh, I'd love to."" "So, they ended up back there and she said, "Sit here a minute."" "and she ran upstairs, and she went," ""Mum, you'll never guess who's downstairs."" "So, her mum's in bed, you know, in her curlers with a scarf round them, comes downstairs..." ""Bloody hell, it's Tom Jones!"" "He sees the mum and she says looking back on it now, he went, "Oh, fuck."" "cos he thought he'd scored." "And so the mum goes," ""Let me make you a pot of tea and some sandwiches,"" "So, she went in the kitchen, made some tea and some cheese sandwiches and sat there chatting with poor Tom, who obviously wasted an evening and I just thought that was such a lovely image." "Give him a little hand job or something?" "No, not even a little hand job." "Her mum should have come in and gone," ""What are you going to do now, then?" "What are you going to do now?"" "and he cries, just bursts into tears, "I'm missing my fiancee." "Get out of here, Tom."" "Ricky, tell me why your ship has never sailed." "What does that mean?" "Cos I lived in Liverpool on the Mersey, most of my mates went away to sea, going all over the world and stuff like that, but anyway, when I was into my 20s, there was a famous hotel in Liverpool called The Adelphi," "which is shaped like a ship and the guy was on the door there, the commissioner, was called Harry Haycock and he was the commissioner with the coat on with the epaulettes on the shoulders and all like that." "And I don't know how it come about but it turned out he was the commodore of the local boat yard and he had a flat-bottomed army pontoon for sale for 200 quid." "And I thought, "I never had a chance to go to sea, I'll get this."" "So, I got one of my brothers, or two of my brothers and two lads who played football for Everton " "Davy Jonson and Stevie Sargeant." "We threw in a few bob and we bought the boat, you see." "It was in the board yard and we bought it, all the gear, and I was in charge - we want this and we want that and my eldest brothers are very, very handy, and we put bunk beds in it" "and the girls came up and we put curtains in it." "We're good at curtains." "They done the curtains..." "Aren't we?" "..and they done all that and one lad came and fixed the engine." "It was going great." "And we were all very patriotic and whenever England played we'd stop and watch the match." "So, we decided to paint the boat red, white and blue and we were going to call it The British Heart." "So, Billy Wish, who was a mate of ours," "I said, "Are you working tomorrow, Billy?"" "He said, "No." I said, "Well, look, there's the money, get the paint," ""get it started." Billy Wish?" "Billy Wish, Billy Wishman." "Billy Wish." "So, we come the next day and I tell you what, it was fantastic, it was beautiful." "He painted it overnight?" "Finished." "And I went, "That's amazing."" "Until I looked at the cans, it was fucking emulsion." "LAUGHTER" "Oh." "So, you can't go in the water?" "Can't go in the water like that." "If that would have went in the water like that, we'd have been the Rainbow Warrior, wouldn't we?" "Anyway, we get over that, so, Billy Wish and Sissy, his wife, they wanted to go sailing at the weekend." "So, we got all the tea bags in and all that." "It looked tremendous, like." "So, it comes to Saturday morning, putting the boat into the canal." "It goes in backwards, obviously, you know, and there's only three of us, me, Billy Wish and a lad called Colin Walker." "So, I'm on the winch, Colin's on the rope and Billy sat next to us." "What could possibly go wrong?" "Exactly." "So, the boat's going in, lovely." "I'm on the deck." "The next thing is, it spun out my hand," "I went fuck off right to the bottom of the river." "No way." "Right to the bottom of the river." "You couldn't get a cigarette paper past it, it was like that, cos it was only a canal, the Leeds Liverpool Canal." "So, I thought, knackered, like, all the tea bags were floating everywhere..." "Fucking hell." "And I had to go and see my brother, I had to go and see Albert because he was the eldest..." "KNOCKS ON DESK" "I knocked on his door, he opened the door and could see there was something." "He went, "What's the matter?"" "I said, "The boat's sunk." He said, "Who was in charge?"" "I said, "I was."" "He said, "Well why didn't you fucking go down with it?"" "But, you know, this sounds impossible " "I wouldn't tell you the word of a lie, we got all the lads together," "I can't swim, see, so I couldn't." "We got a load of sandbags, we hired a pump from a firm called Sykes Pump Firm, which was just round the corner." "It's completely under the water, about that much under the water." "They sandbagged it and they put the pump in - the boat was up in 30 seconds." "It was up in 30 seconds." "But when we were telling the story in the pub of a night, one fellow said, "Oh, yeah." "I was lucky there, like." ""I got my foot trapped in this iron thing, but I got away."" "But we had to stop the story when one fellow reckons he saw a white shark." "But we just abandoned it, I'd lost my stripes and all that and we went off to our next adventure." "But a few years ago, I was going round with my book round the various parts of the country and this fellow come up to me and said, "Did you have a boat on the Leeds Liverpool Canal?"" "I went, "Yeah." He said, "You abandoned it, didn't you?"" "I said, "Yeah, we left it there." He went, "I hope you don't mind," he said." ""but I've got it and it's sailing the canals now." And I was made up." "I was made up, yeah." "Did he re-use all the tea bags as well?" "LAUGHTER" ""It's disgusting, but waste not, want not."" "But my thing is, I can't swim, see." "I can't swim at all." "So, they had to go in the water and do all the things." "Why have you never learnt to swim?" "Cos I had asthma as a child." "Well, I had asthma all my life." "Then they wouldn't let you swim." "Now they tell you to go and swim." "I wanted to box, I was pretty handy boxing." "They stopped me when they knew I had asthma." "Boxers can't work the inhalers with the gloves on." "That's it." "It's really embarrassing to watch them trying it." "It's like that when you're throwing." "You say, "Hang on..." Fuck off!" "You know, they used to have cigarettes for asthmatics." "Yeah?" "But we heard through someone that if you make tea out of them, you go fucking mental." "And so me and my mate Helen, we went and bought some in Boots and we made a pot of tea and we had about three cups each and she went, "It's useless, isn't it?" ""It's not working, is it?" "No, let's just go home."" "So, we were at her house." "So, I went home and about half an hour later the phone rang and it was her mum, right, and she went, "Josephine!" ""Let me talk to your mother." and I went, "She's not in."" "She was, but I could tell by the sound of her voice it wasn't going to be good." "I went, "What's the problem?"" "She said, "Helen's just tried to jump out of the second floor window."" "Oh, they work, then." "I just kept putting the phone down and she kept ringing again and eventually my mum sussed it." "So, that was grounded for three months." "So, it didn't affect you?" "So, it just affected her, not you?" "I laughed a lot, but I think I would have done anyway at the thought of her trying to jump out of the window." "A funny situation." "She jumped and clotheslined Rybo, just took him out mid wank." "James, you're available to play any woodland gigs?" "Yeah, I got asked to sort out the comedy at a music festival, which was in the Fell Foot Wood in North Yorkshire and they said that the comedy would be round a campfire." "Sounds good." "Sounds really good, doesn't it, already?" "So, I sorted out three of my mates and we're on our way to the festival and kind of thought, "It would be really nice, everyone around a campfire."" "We stopped off and bought loads of bags of marshmallows." "We thought, we'll share these out, it'll be really whimsical and really nice." "And then we got there and the promoter went," ""We've had a problem, the council has put a curfew on the gig tonight" ""and we've got to stop the music at ten o'clock." ""So, instead of having the comedy somewhere else while the music's on," ""you guys could just close the festival."" "And we said, "Does everyone else know that's going to happen?"" "They went, "No, but they'll be all right." "They're pretty cool."" "OK." "So, then we're waiting and then the last band played and then an old man went on, whose name was Barry, and Barry owned the woods." "And Barry had closed the last two days by doing a poem and everyone loved Barry." "So, Barry walked on and they all erupted and applauded and they're saying, "Do a poem!" "Do a poem!"" "And Barry went, "I can't do a poem because I've got to introduce some comedy."" "And they went, "Tell them to fuck off!" ""Don't want any fucking comedy."" "Really...angry about there being comedy on." ""Do a poem, Barry, they can get fucked!"" "So, Barry went, "Oh, I'll do one poem, then."" "He did a poem called Into the Woods and Into the Woods was the worst poem I'd ever heard in my life." "That it had, "Into the Woods, up to no good,"" "was the only line that I can remember, but that was over and over, and at the end it went, "Into the Woods, up to no good."" "And then they applauded again, even louder and like a guy..." "I remember a guy jumped on stage next to Barry and was just pointing at him like that, while everyone was applauding, like really going crazy." "And then he went, "Now the comedy."" "The stage was at the bottom of a hill, so everyone just sat on this hill looking down at us." "Oh!" "Also, a little detail - they'd all spent the last three days doing mushrooms." "Flying everywhere." "Yeah." "So I was the first comic on." "I walked on to boos, I got booed on stage, where it hasn't happened to me before." "It's happened since, but it hadn't happened before." "And I was so scared walking on," "I just walked on with an arm full of all the marshmallows, just throwing them into the audience, trying..." "Good idea." "Just, like, doing that." "And all of us went on to the same treatment." "Did any of them come back?" "None of them came back to me." "Some of them came back to another act." "There was another act that went on and his opening line was," ""Is it me or all women lying whores?"" "and that man got everything thrown at him and I remember seeing a bag of the marshmallows hitting him squared in the face, just like that." "And we were all supposed to go on twice and he walked off and went, "I'm not doing it,"" "didn't stop walking and got to his car and went." "Everyone was booing, but there was a guy in the front row, proper hippy-ish-looking guy who was heckling us in a really clever way cos, like..." "If you shout out, everyone can hear it - he was talking to us, so no-one else could hear it and only you as the comic can hear it and you couldn't address it." "He would say the say thing to all of us, he sat there and went," ""You can suck my dick, mate."" "Through the whole thing he went," ""Oi, mate, you can suck my dick if you want," and you'd hear and go," ""I don't want to..."" "and then you'd carry on and he just kept on doing it." "And while the last act was on, he walked round and said to me," ""You all right, mate?" I said," ""Look, I'm not, for the last time...'" "LAUGHTER" ""It's not going to happen."" "He went, "No, no, I'm pretty funny," ""I wonder if I can get up and do some stand up," and I was like," ""Have you done it before?" "No." "Yeah, you can definitely do it..." "LAUGHTER" ""..because I hate you." I said, "What's your name?"" "He went, "Rybo." "Course it is."" "So I went on and said, "The comedy's not over yet." ""There's one more act, one of your very own, please welcome Rybo,"" "and he walked onstage and he got the kind of applause that Barry got earlier and all of us in our heads started thinking," ""Oh, no, he's going to storm this." ""He's going to be the best act on the bill and he's not even a comic," ""it's going to be really embarrassing."" "I apologise for this next bit because this is Rybo's joke..." "Not mine." "Rybo went on and he went, "How's it going?" and they cheered." "He said, "Big round of applause for Barry,"" "and he went, "Last night I was in my tent, I heard a couple" ""in the tent next to me going at it and I heard the man shouting..."" "I don't want to say this..." "..but it will go down as well here as it went down on the day." "The man was shouting, "I'm going to come in your pussy."" "That's about right, yeah." "He said that, everybody was silent and shocked, apart from one guy that was proud of himself." ""It was me!" Yeah." "I walked on, he was standing there," "I said, "Rybo, I think that's it now."" "He didn't have another line after that?" "Well, he did, he said to me, "Look, I've got..." ""Please let me..."" "He kind of got quite human." "He looked at me and went," ""Please let me do just one more joke."" "I was like, "All right, mate..." ""OK, you can do one more."" "He went, "Thanks, man."" "It was like, "It's all right, suck my dick, it's OK."" "I stepped back from him and before I could even..." "He didn't even give me time to get offstage, he turned to the audience and he dropped his trousers then he turned all the way round again and then dropped his pants and then turned around again and - bearing in mind how" "long he's been doing mushrooms for, so it didn't look good, like...." "That's why they call it a mushroom." "Yeah." "A button mushroom." "And he could see it didn't look good so he tried to improve it." "How do you do that?" "Well..." "LAUGHTER" "In a traditional manner, really." "I'm from Liverpool, you educated fellows will have to tell me." "I will tell you but not show you, how's that?" "Go on, spoil sport." "So he is trying to arouse himself into a state of biggerness - is that a word?" "Also at this point I would like to point out at this point" "I was out of my depth." "I think I'd quite enjoy this." "He is filling the O2 now and has an ITV2 series." "I should have pointed out, Rybo did go on to become Michael McIntyre." "Did I not point that out?" "I should have said." "But it was, he was..." "You still keep in touch with him?" "Yeah, big time, he's my agent." "But a girl..." "she'd been dressed as a dog all day." "Not another one." "She had a onesie outfit, dressed as a dog and she stood up at the top of the hill and she just started running really fast..." "Woof!" "Really...not running on all fours." "Running at him with her ears flapping." "She got to the edge of the stage and she jumped and clotheslined Rybo, just took him out mid-wank." "A woman in a dog suit took him out?" "A woman in a dog suit took him out, he landed on his back..." "Sorry, who had been doing mushrooms, James?" "LAUGHTER" "APPLAUSE" "She must have been a retriever." "She'd pinned him to the floor with her legs and started slapping him round the face like that." "It's turning into one of YOUR stories, isn't it?" "He was continuing to masturbate and yell his catch phrase from earlier on as well, which was horrible." "She was slapping him like that and then they turned off all the lights and that was the end of the festival." "That was that." "What a shame(!" ")" "Does this go on every year?" "Yeah, yeah." "Can you get us four tickets?" "It was nearly the Olympic closing ceremony, actually." "It would have been a marked improvement." "It would have been good, the Spice Girls and then that." "Did you get home OK?" "Oh!" "Something I worry about with you is you haven't thought forward." "I had so many options in those woods to sleep." "Yeah, no bushes." "So, Jo, you were a teenage fire risk?" "Yeah, I was quite a badly behaved teenager." "My parents were really, really strict and they wouldn't let me do anything, so I just had to lie." "Give me an example of strictness, cos it may just have been you thinking they were strict." "We weren't allowed to watch ITV." "That's not strict..." "Because of the advertising?" "Because of the advertising." "I wasn't allowed to watch ITV." "And the programmes were shit." "LAUGHTER" "It's still the same today." "Wasn't allowed to watch Top Of The Pops because of the paedophiles." "And, erm..." "I was about 14, I think, or 15, and I used to go hop picking every weekend to make a bit of money and I had a brilliant time hop picking, it was a real laugh and we used to take loads of drugs and get drunk at seven o'clock" "in the in the morning." "And one night I said to my mum and dad that I was going to do homework down the road with this friend of mine from school, but instead I went to the pictures with seven blokes from hop picking to watch Emmanuel," "which was a really rude film for those days, right?" "OK." "And so we got stoned and we got quite pissed because we brought some cider in with us and unfortunately, the missing piece of the jigsaw was that" "I'd forgotten to prime my friend that I needed an alibi and so she rang me up at home and my mum said," ""Isn't she with you doing homework?" and this friend went," ""No, I think she's gone to the pictures with seven blokes from hop picking."" "Thanks, Jane(!" ")" "So I came out the cinema and my mum and dad were sitting in the car right outside." "Oh, God!" "So my dad punched one of the hop pickers." "Oh!" "You'd just come out of the cinema, "Hey."" "LAUGHTER" "I know." "Only one crime committed all night." "Do you know, what I love is every story you tell is thwarting a sex predator." "You're right, actually." "In some way or form, accidentally." "Anyway, he went to me, "Right, get in the car,"" "and I thought, "Oh, something really bad's going to happen."" "I was a hippy in those days" " I used to wear long skirts, no shoes, you know, smell of patchouli, da-di-dah..." "Anyway, we got home and my dad just went mental and he said to me," ""I'm absolutely sick of the way that you look," ""the way you behave, I'm sick of how you dress, what you smell of..."" "And he went up to my room and he gathered all my clothes, took them downstairs in the garden, poured petrol on them, set the whole bloody lot on fire." "Yeah." "Yeah?" "That story escalated at the end there." "A bit." "At the beginning of the story I was saying," ""Were they really strict, Jo," ""or do you think you might be overreacting?"" "It's so hard, isn't it?" "You've got daughters, haven't you?" "I can't imagine." "I've got one daughter, I haven't burnt her clothes yet." "I couldn't imagine being in a position where your heart is in somebody else and all you want to do is protect them and you know how scary the world is." "I mean, not that that's right, to burn somebody's clothes but you can see that it comes from a place of love." "Especially if they're in them." "We have to think of a title for the show." "Something about you in the bushes and the red dress." "Oh, The Lady In Red." "No, I like Jo thwarting sexual offences before they happen." "Thwarting Sex Pests." "It's funny, you can do a bit of swearing in the programme and they don't mind that, they might do a bit of bleeping or judicious editing." "Titles are sort of sacred still, they have the 1940s ethical standards applied." "You can't say, "You have been watching Fucking Great."" "LAUGHTER" "But you would watch that." "That would be good." "If there was a show called It's Fucking Great," "I would watch it every time it was on." ""And Fucking Great got 14 million viewers this week."" "No, I think I've settled on it." "So anyway, let's..." "Let me thank my guests." "Thank you to Jo Brand, James Acaster," "Ricky Tomlinson, Sara Pascoe." "You have been watching Thwarted Sex Pests." "APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"