"A lot of people complained there's no jokes in the first series, just me going on about stuff." "So, for the first episode I've made a special effort to put in as many jokes as I can." "All right, so how many's that?" "I think there's four, it might be three, but there's four, which is four more than in the first series." "Is it worth trying to come up with some more jokes now to put in?" "Well..." "The thing is, giving a joke to me... you know, I struggle with them, as you know." "What's wobbly and flies around?" "I don't know." "A jellycopter." "That's really good." "I mean, if there's some way of getting that in, I'd do it, but it's not..." "What's brown and sticky?" "Oh, I don't know." "A stick." "Oh, right." "My granddad, he always says charity begins at home." "But then he would say that, my granddad, cos my granddad is a Chelsea Pensioner who lives in a nest which he's woven himself entirely from the stalks of discarded Remembrance Day poppies." "LAUGHTER" "Quite a good uptake for that joke in the room." "How's it been received out there in TV land?" "It's not a good opening joke, that." "It's a bit of a weird joke, innit?" "Bit of a hard joke to have near the top of the show." "A lot of information at the beginning of the sentence in that joke." "And you have to remember it, don't you, all the way to the end." "Why's it there?" "Why's it at the top of the show, that joke, when it's such a problematic, strange joke?" "It's not there for big laughs." "The reason it's at the top of the show is because the granddad and the nest will keep coming back." "In about 25-30 minutes' time, there's going to be one joke that ties in both the granddad and the nest with all sorts of other things that I'll talk about over the rest of the show." "And it's very satisfying." "LAUGHTER" "I guarantee, you may not be laughing now at home, by the end of the show, you'll turn it off and go, "Oh, I see now, it was good."" "So, hey, don't go changing." "Um..." "Try and do stuff to keep the viewers watching, Stew." "Please keep watching." "I'm the sort of broadsheet, thinking person's comedian." "That's the perception of me, and I need to work that market." "I think "What's brown and sticky?" "A stick." It's a funny joke... but I don't know if it's going to land with my audience." "So the thing to do is, can I hold on to them at the same time as branching out?" "So take a sort of conventional joke, then just subverting it..." "Like what?" "Well..." "Doctor, Doctor, I keep thinking I'm a pair of curtains." "That seems to me more a mental health problem and I deal with physical ailments." "Well, I wish I'd thought of that because that's better than anything in this series." "I do as much as I can for charity." "If you look at my website, you'll see I do more unpaid charity benefit concerts than any other comedian working in Britain today." "I do 45-50 a year." "Again, not out of altruism, I do it because it gives me a sense of self-worth." "Very often there's people at those big charity events that can help you professionally, er, get seen, and also you can get free crisps." "Yeah?" "Free crisps." "For those of you who don't know about showbiz, what normally happens at big charity benefits in big theatres, there's normally a room backstage." "We call that the green room." "And in the green room for the acts, there'll be bottles of water and packets of crisps." "And I can normally get about 35-40 bags of crisps... at the charity benefits." "The most bags of crisps I've ever got... from a charity benefit was at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, May 2003," "Help A London Child, I got 41 bags of crisps." "You need a system." "You can't just walk in and steal all the crisps." "Normally in these big charity benefits, I'm on in the first half." "The first half is normally Ed Byrne, a woman and me." "Um... ..and then, er..." "After the interval, there'll be, er... a comedian from a panel show who's better known than me, but not as good." "Then someone who used to be a stand-up in the '90s, like Simon Pegg or someone like that, who's in films now, who's famous, and they'll come on and do their old act from the '90s." "Talking about Britpop and stuff like that." "D'you remember when Jarvis Cocker went on stage at the Brits?" "With Michael Jackson, went like that?" "Oh." "So what I do is, I do my bit in the first half, then I go upstairs and I go, "Bye, Frankie!" or whatever." "I don't go..." "I go round the back of the theatre in the alley." "I get in a wheelie bin or something like that and I wait there until the charity benefit is over, then I go back in and I get all the crisps." "I don't eat them all myself, in case you're thinking, "Oh, that explains it."" "I give all the crisps to my granddad, who you'll remember, won't you, from the..." "Remembrance Day poppy nest joke... earlier." "Remember it, at the beginning?" "I said it would come back, didn't I?" "All the bits of it are coming back now." "I give them all to my granddad." "He loves crisps, my granddad, obsessed with crisps, he's mad about crisps." "He eats about 15-20 bags of crisps a day, um... loves crisps, he loves all the different flavours of crisps, all the different flavours of crisps." "Plain..." "LAUGHTER" "He loves all the flavours of crisps." "You're not going to go on for the whole fucking show talking about crisps, are you?" "Well, I didn't intend to, but it's sort of come out like that and it's quite hard to..." "Yeah, I am." "He loves crisps, my granddad." "He loves crisps so much he doesn't just like crisps, he likes anything that's got "crisp" in its name cos it reminds him of crisps, yeah?" "See what I mean?" "For example, if you were to say to him," ""Who's your favourite actor, Granddad, in the films that they have now?"" "Er...he wouldn't say, um... he wouldn't say, you know, Richard Griffiths or Mark Lester, like you would." "Er... he..." "Or Karl Howman, he wouldn't say that." "He would say..." "He would say, er, Crispin Glover, yeah?" "Because he has "crisp" in his name." "And he loves crisps." "And he loves Crispin Glover and all the films of Crispin Glover." "He loves all the Crispin Glover films." "Back To The Future... ..all the Crispin Glover films he loves." "He loves anything with "crisp" in its name, do you understand, yeah?" "Yeah?" "If you were to say to him," ""Who's your favourite English homosexual wit and raconteur?"... ..he wouldn't say Kenneth Williams, like you would, you know." "He wouldn't even say Stephen Fry, even though the verb "fry"" "is an important part of the crisp-making process." "He would say Quentin Crisp... because he loves crisps and he loves Quentin Crisp cos he has "crisp" in his name." "In fact, when I was a kid in the '70s, my granddad loved Quentin Crisp so much he drove us all the way down to "that London", yeah, to see a play about Quentin Crisp, An Englishman In New York." "I don't know how it ended, though, cos my granddad was thrown out for eating crisps loudly during the performance." "He said to the usher," ""It's what Quentin Crisp would have wanted."" "And he said to him, "He's not dead, sir, Quentin Crisp."" "Even I am annoyed by the sound of me saying the word "crisps"" "and I say it over and over again, and I expect anyone at home who notices that, the slight sibilance on the two S's in "crisps", once they've noticed how I say "crisps", watching the programme" "is going to be as unbearable for them as it is for me to perform it." "So he loves crisps, he absolutely loves crisps, he's obsessed with crisps." "He'd do anything to do with crisps." "He likes crisps so much, my granddad, that about three years ago, he flew all the way over to "that America that they have now"." "You've seen it, er...in the atlases, and he, um..." "Yeah, he went and when he was there, in the America, he went to the South Central Los Angeles, you've seen it on the films," "South Central Los Angeles, cos he loves crisps, and while he was there, in South Central, because he loves crisps, he carried out a string of brutal slayings... of various high-profile pimps and whores," "hustlers in particular, he had it in for people that were hustling." "And, um...he slew all these people and he did it with a view towards raising his street profile to the point where he would be invited to join the Afro-American crime gang...the Crips." "LAUGHTER" "And then he realised..." "..that he had misread... ..the Wikipedia entry." "The police said to him, "Why have you done this?"" "He said, "I misread the Wikipedia entry."" ""On your way, easy mistake."" "He loves crisps, though." "He's absolutely obsessed with crisps." "And, er...more than is normal, I think." "I said to him once, "Why do you like crisps so much?"" "He said it was because in the Second World War, he was in the Army, he was in the Worcestershire Regiment, and, er..." "LAUGHTER Hey, come on!" "TITTERING" "The problem with these people, viewers at home, is that they're so enthusiastic they go looking for jokes where there aren't any." "They're sycophants, basically." "I despise them." "It's only you I respect." "Don't turn off, there's loads of jokes." "Look...he was in the Worcestershire Regiment, that's what I'm saying," "It's not..." "I didn't say he was in that because there's Worcester Sauce crisps or something." "That would be absurdly contrived." "It would." "I find it quite offensive that you would think that I..." "But I'm better than that." "If I'd said, "Oh, he's in the Cheese And Onion Regiment," maybe." "Calm down." "Not everything's a joke, that's what you have to realise." "Not in this show." "So he was in the Worcestershire Regiment and he ended up in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp." "You've probably seen these places in the films, the terrible conditions for the men." "And crisps were just one of the many home comforts they couldn't get in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps." "So what used to happen is, my granddad and all the guys from the Worcestershire Regiment used to seek some, er, shelter from the baking Japanese sun and they would talk about all the flavours of crisps that they used to enjoy at home before the war." "They'd talk about all the flavours of crisps, all the different flavours of crisps." "Well, you can imagine your own." "Um..." "And, er...for my granddad, I think crisps became a symbol of freedom, of liberty, and, um...when he got out of that Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, the first thing he did, he went on an insane crisps bender." "And in one day, he had four bags of crisps." "Er, a cheese and onion bag, two plain bags... and a fourth one he's not able to remember... er, what it was." "He loves crisps, as I say, he absolutely loves crisps." "He hates the Japanese, though." "Because of the war, yeah, what they did." "He hates the Japanese." "He won't have anything Japanese in the house." "If you were to come back from a Japanese holiday and you were to offer him a traditional Japanese holiday souvenir, like...a Samurai sword, or a whaling harpoon, or some violent pornography..." "LAUGHTER" "..or, er... a young girl's pants in a bag." "Well, he wouldn't have it in the house." "He won't have anything to do with anything Japanese, even if the Japanese thing could help him, right?" "I'll give you an example of what I mean." "About two years ago, my granddad's house was attacked out of the blue by a moth with a 400ft wingspan." "And a lobster, a giant lobster, as big as a cathedral, came up out of the sea." "And the moth was shooting, like, a blue ray at, er... out of its eyes - vsshhh!" " at the house." "And the lobster was whacking all rocks at it and stuff." "You know, it was awful." "And, um..." "And anyway, after about an hour, the phone rang, and my granddad fought his way through all the fire and he answered it and there was a scientist on the phone, and the scientist said, "I hope you don't mind me calling you out of the blue," ""but I've been watching the News 24s and I couldn't help noticing" ""that your house is being systematically destroyed" ""by a moth with a 400ft wingspan" ""and a lobster the size of a cathedral."" "And my granddad said, "That's right, it's dreadful."" "And the scientist said, "I hope it doesn't seem presumptuous," ""but I know where there's..." ""it's like a dinosaur lizard thing." ""And it's trapped under the Earth's crust, it's under the sea" ""in some ice or lava or something."" "He says, "It's got..." ""It can breathe electricity and, um..." ""it's got...inexplicably, it has a human moral code."" "LAUGHTER And he... ..he said, um..." ".."I reckon if I shot a nuclear missile at it," ""I could free it and send it over to where you are" ""and it would probably fight that moth and lobster and chase them off."" "And my granddad said, "That sounds exactly the sort of thing I need."" "And the scientist said, "Well, I'll send it over then."" "And my granddad said, "Thanks very much."" "Then he said to him, the scientist, he said...he said, um... he said, "There is one thing, though, scientist," ""this dinosaur lizard thing, it's not Japanese, is it?"" "And he said, "Yes, it is." "Is there...?" And he hung up on him." "Well, his house was wrecked." "I say house..." "WOMAN:" "Aww!" "LAUGHTER" "Yes, see?" "Ahead of the curve, that's what we like to see." "Whole areas of people down here..." "House, yes." "What?" "Over there..." "We're coming in...fast." "I've been pushing them along, they're ahead of the curve." "You can't see at home, but there's whole areas here who are just," ""What?" "What about his house?"" "And the problem is, over here, I haven't even got to finish the joke and there's a whole load of people on the balcony going," ""Yeah, his house, remember?" ""It was a nest." ""And it was made from the..."" "This room's unworkable." "It's not possible, is it?" "Look, you can tell, it's not possible... to do here and here, you can't..." "you can't work a mixed-ability room." "I say house... it was... a nest." "A nest that he'd woven... from the stalks of discarded Remembrance Day poppies." "Hey, I tell you, the reconstruction process was time-consuming, but not expensive." "Yeah, it's all right, that, innit?" "Quite a good line, I thought." "It's like a joke, innit?" "The reconstruction process was time-consuming, but not expensive." "It's like a joke." "I put that in." "I put a joke in, cos, er..." "Do you understand it?" "The reconstruction process was time-consuming..." "Cos it was hard, wasn't it, to weave all the Remembrance Day poppies into a nest?" "It wouldn't be expensive, would it, because they're 10p or something." "It was a joke, that was, a proper joke." "You can tell it was a joke because I did it like that, I leant on the..." "They wanted me to put jokes in." "It was a condition of this being recommissioned." "They went, "Please put more jokes in."" "So that was a joke there...for ya." "There'll be three more jokes later." "I've thought of four jokes, but unfortunately I've put them all in week one and there aren't any in the rest of the series." "Beyond these four jokes..." "there really are no further jokes in the series?" "Look, you know, I tried, right?" "You've got to try harder." "At the moment, this is about as funny as A Question Of Sport." "It's like getting blood out of a stone, me, with jokes," "I've done four, I've shown that they're there." "People get the idea of what they'll be like." "If they want jokes so much, they can watch the next programmes and imagine what kind of jokes would be in it and put them back in themselves in their own heads." "As I say, I do..." "I get 35-40 bags of crisps from these charity benefits and I give all the crisps to my granddad." "And he eats a lot of them, which worries me." "There are health reasons." "I said to him, "Granddad, are you aware" ""that a packet of crisps contains your full daily allowance of saturated fats?"" "And he said, "Yes, good value, isn't it?" ""You don't have to source any further saturated fats from any other foodstuff."" "I said, "You've missed the point."" "But he doesn't eat all the crisps himself." "He gets round a lot of the guys that were in that prisoner-of-war camp with him and they, er..." "from the Worcestershire Regiment, and they sit around and talk about the old days, the ones that have survived, and they eat all the crisps, they eat all the different flavours of crisps." "Not soy sauce flavour, though, too many bad memories." "It's the second joke of the..." "of the night." "As I say, I do a lot of these charity benefits." "I'm not really interested in what they're for, I just do them for the crisps." "I don't even write down what the charities are." "In my diary, it just says, "Charity benefit (free crisps)."" "And where it is." "Don't even know what they're for." "Which can cause problems." "I was on my way into a big theatre, the Lyric off The Strand, to do some charity benefit last year, and a journalist outside recognised me and he shouted out," ""What can be done about this?"" "Now I thought... that the benefit was for the Sumatran orang-utans, er, so I said, "Well, they need to be moved into a quiet area of the rainforest" ""that's rich in fresh fruit" ""and to be encouraged to pair off and breed," ""er, with as many different sexual partners as possible."" "Now..." "LAUGHTER" "..it turned out... that it was for sufferers of irritable bowel syndrome." "Um, and unfortunately, due to a communications error, my suggestion has been enforced..." "LAUGHTER" "..with mixed results, to be honest, ladies and gentlemen." "The pleasure derived by the irritable bowel syndrome sufferers from the guilt-free invitation to multiple-partner sex has been more than outweighed by problems caused by the exclusively fruit-based diet." "LAUGHTER" "I tell ya, they were irritable, now they're bloody furious!" "LAUGHTER" "The third joke there, if you saw that." "Loads of jokes, I got." "People saying I haven't got any jokes..." "I've got three just for...this bit." "I've got another one I could have done there." "Irritable bowel syndrome sufferers, remember they had to eat all the fruit." "I tell you, they were irritable, now they're livid!" "LAUGHTER" "It's the same." "It's too the same, isn't it, that one?" "I've got another one, right, and, er...it's a bit weird, you know what I mean?" "People here, they might go for it, but at home there's a broader demographic of people that might not." "It's a bit weird." "It's a bit of a surreal one, you know what I mean?" "It's like, er, something... ..Noel Fielding would do, something like that." "It's coming at you from, er... ..left-field, yeah?" "OK, right." "So there were irritable bowel syndrome people, and they ate all the fruit, right." "Er...that's the set-up for it." "Listen, I tell you..." "Oh, hang on." "Do this different..." "I tell you, the..." "I tell you, what a..." "Hey, I tell you, it used to be... it used to be just their bowels that were irritable..." "..and now... ..you know, they are, themselves." "You know what I mean?" "They're..." "In their outlook." "The way they look at the world." "What I do, it doesn't have a moral agenda." "It's not..." "No, I can see that." "Well, I don't say things to..." "make points about politics or try and reflect society." "When I talk about a man that ate loads of crisps," "I'm not trying to ridicule people that can no longer afford crisps." "If this was a Channel 4 programme it would be very different." "Someone would have said, "Look, there's loads of people that can't afford crisps." ""How shall we wind them up?" "Do loads of stuff about people eating crisps."" "MOBILE PHONE RINGS Sorry, I've got to take this." "Is that your granddad?" "It is my granddad, yeah." "Hello?" "'Oh, hello, Stew!" "'" "CRASHING It's Granddad here." "My nest is being attacked by..." "by a moth with a 400ft wingspan..." "SHRIEKS" "SHRIEKS ...and a giant lobster that's come out of the sea." "SHRIEKS" "PEOPLE SCREAM" "SHRIEKS" "I'll come down and try and sort it out, all right?" "Excuse me, I've got to go." "SHRIEKS" "SHRIEKS" "GONG CRASHES" "SHRIEKS" "CRASHING" "ROARS" "Japs, go home!" "Japs, go home!" "We don't need your sort here!" "It's me, Granddad." "ALL:" "Japs, go home!" "Japs, go home!" "Granddad, it is me!" "Japs, go home!" "Japs, go home!" "SHRIEKS" "Japs, go home!" "LOBSTER ROARS" "Japs, go home!" "Japs, go home!" "Japs, go home!" "LOBSTER ROARS" "SHRIEKS" "Look, he can breathe fire." "ALL:" "Oooh!" "GONG CRASHES" "BELLOWS" "So... this is the last joke now." "This is where all the bits tie in, so, er... try and remember... what's been in the show so far and see how all the bits come together." "So, er, I was, um..." "Multiple call-backs, very impressive." "So I was talking to my granddad the other day, from the...er, yeah?" "And, er..." "I said to him..." "He's..." "Now he's, um..." "He's, er..." "He's 90..." "He's, er..." "Well, he's as old as you'd have to be realistically to have been in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, let's just say." "He's 95, something like that, I don't know." "It doesn't matter, he's not real." "Er..." "I saw my granddad the other day." "I said to him, "Granddad, you are 95 years old." ""What, in your experience, has been the worst thing about growing old?"" "He said to me, "Stew, in my experience, the worst thing about growing old" ""is watching all of your friends from the Worcestershire Regiment" ""that I went through that Japanese prisoner-of-war camp with," ""the survivors, gradually watching them slowly dying off one by one."" "And I said to him, "Well, Granddad," ""you fed them all those crisps." LAUGHTER" "A multiple call-back..." "LAUGHTER" "..joke, there." "Let's end on a joke." "I..." "What's..." "What's your favourite joke?" "I used them up in the actual things." "If I had any more, I'd have put them in." "What's brown and white and runs up and down a clothes line?" "I don't know!" "A seagull with a plate of mince on its head." "Ooh, instant crisp!" "I love crisps!" "CHEERING" "APPLAUSE"