"ALAN DAVIES:" "AS YET UNTITLED CTO M726P/82 BF000000" "Thanks, Patrick, all the best." "Good to see you." "Bye." "Is there gin?" "I was told there's going to be gin." "Don't know why I agreed to this." "Journey to the centre of the Earth." "APPLAUSE" "Hello, I'm Alan Davies and this is As Yet Untitled." "It's just a conversation with some guests." "We don't have any prepared questions or agendas or things to plug or anything." "At the end of it, we're intending to come up with a title for the show and that's our sole agenda." "We'll get straight on with it." "Please will you welcome my guests, thank you very much." "APPLAUSE" "Hello, hello." "Hello." "Hello." "Hello." "Hiya." "OK, so let me introduce my four guests to you." "We've got Lizzie Roper here who used to employ a vibrator to liven up afternoons with Christian Slater." "APPLAUSE" "Ben Miller, who once received a threatening phone call from Peter Purves and is often mistaken for Ben Stiller, of course." "It happens." "Patrick Kielty is here." "He nearly died in a helicopter with Neil Armstrong." "We'll come to that." "APPLAUSE" "It's true." "And Felicity Ward is here, who has only recently learned how to use a skirt." "Congratulations." "Thank you." "These are our facts." "Welcome, everyone..." "LIZZIE GIGGLES" "..to the round table." "Come on, Roper." "Keep it together." "Oh, good, I'm really looking forward to this." "Is Christian Slater a kind of rhyming slang for vibrator?" "I think it should be, shouldn't it?" "It is now!" "Bring it on." "My batteries have run out on my Christian Slater." "I'm very dedicated." "I should explain, I know Lizzie quite well." "Lizzie was in a play with Christian Slater in London's fabulous, glittering West End." "Cuckoo's Nest." "Yeah." "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." "What was your role in that?" "Prostitute, wasn't it?" "Yeah!" "Yes, prostitute/girlfriend." "But, yes, she was...whoargh, she was a fun girl." "She wasn't stingy." "She let it all hang out." "But still it was dull enough on an afternoon with Christian that you needed a Christian Slater." "Well, the thing was, we were in a hit show, it was a sell-out smash hit, standing ovations every night..." "Was it the vibrators that made it sell out?" "No!" "There was a free one with every ticket." "But come a Thursday matinee, all you could smell was piss and biscuits, it was..." "Old people." ""Do you want to go to the theatre?"" ""Yes." "Crow's Nest." "Can you eat it?"" ""Yes." So... they would turn up on a Thursday afternoon and we were normally loved and then we would just be stared at like naughty children, all the laugh lines went for nothing and all the crying went for nothing." "An altogether more discerning audience." "Yes!" "We were in the heart of Soho, so between matinees, most days," "I would be grabbed by a member of the cast and frogmarched round the local sex shop." "One day..." "Was that Dave Johns?" "Yes." "Dave Johns is a Geordie comedian, half Geordie bricklayer, half monkey." "And..." "So he discovered there was such a thing as a remote-controlled vibrator." "Yes, there is." "IS there?" "!" "No, there's not." "LAUGHTER" "No, no." "No, there's not!" "Somebody once told me..." "Take this wedding ring off!" "There we go..." "Even now..." "Even now, I'm pleasuring somebody!" "You think they're all laughing, but they're all on remote." ""Stop it now!"" "That's it, the thing is that it was decided that we would play this brilliant game that I would have to put the thing down my pants..." "You'd HAVE to." "HAVE to." "On pain of death." "And then I would have to go on stage and guess..." "On STAGE?" "Yes!" "And guess which member of the cast had the button that was setting it off." "And I thought it was a brilliant idea until I was waiting in the wings and suddenly this..." "Oh, GOD!" "Ohhhh!" "It was REALLY..." "Waaaay!" "It was far too strong." "I went on stage and I discovered it's actually quite easy to wear a remote-controlled vibrator if you've got a line, because you can put tha-a-a-at in the middle of it." "But if you haven't got a line and you're supposed to be quiet, you will find yourself going, "Uhhhhh!"" "Which..." "Which really doesn't work in a mental hospital when you're a goodtime girl." "So who was it?" "Who had the button?" "Yeah." "Fucking Dave Johns." "David Johns." "What range did it work from?" "When he was at home." "LAUGHTER" "So, Ben, look - I want you to tell me what happens when people think you're Ben Stiller." "Well, I have to say, more than Ben Stiller, most often I get confused for Rob Brydon." "Oh, of course." "A lot for Rob Brydon." "The chin." "I can't see it, myself." "You have seen yourself before though, yes?" "And Anton du Beke is the other one..." "What?" "!" "Yes!" "You could make big money being a looky-likey!" "I'd have a go." "LAUGHTER" "Get off!" "Another one of these!" "It's great to know you'd have a go..." "But, um..." "I think in a way it's kind of a sort of poetic justice." "If you put yourself in the public eye, to some extent," "I mean I obviously want recognition for being myself." "It's an attempt to make your mark in some way and to be continually confused for another person..." "..albeit a very talented man like Rob Brydon, is galling." "God, yes - the last person to confuse me was Stephen Fry at the BAFTAs, who I love so much and who I've been on QI with!" "Yeah, we sat you next to Rob Brydon!" "Yeah!" "And they kissed, they actually kissed!" "It was very..." ""Darling, how wonderful to see you." "How is The Italian Trip?"" "No!" "I said, "It was great!" "Um..." I lied!" "To Stephen Fry!" "I pretended to be Rob Brydon!" "It's absurd!" "But sometimes that's the better thing to do, just pretend." "Stephen would have absolutely felt mortified." "That's the thing, I couldn't possibly let him know," "I knew he'd feel awful." "So I pretended to be Rob for the rest of the evening." "I accepted an award, and..." "No." "On this particular occasion, I was in a film called The Prince and Me and the idea was we were going to go to Cannes, it was my big break in the movie world and we were going to announce the film." "There was going to be almost like an auction where all the people who were in the film were going to meet the potential distributors and there was going to be a big party." "Very exciting, so I flew into Cannes..." "On the way in, there was an article in Screen International on about page 7, down in tiny writing, "Miller Flies Into Cannes"." "I was thinking, "Hello!" "Here we go!"" "I landed in Cannes and there's a limo to meet me at the airport and we swooshed straight through all those amazing windy streets and I arrived at the Carlton hotel, which is THE hotel on the front in Cannes." "They meet me..." "The manager of the hotel meets me out of my car, he leads me up the red carpet, he says," "IN FRENCH ACCENT: "Would you like a tour of the hotel," ""would you like to see the other rooms?" Yes, that would be great." "Leads me round the hotel, this is how it works, this is such-and-such a suite and here is YOUR room, monsieur." "He pushes open the doors of the penthouse at the top of the Carlton hotel." "It looks across the whole of Cannes." "On the table is a kind of mountain of champagne bottles and bowls of fruit and women holding bunches of grapes." "I mean, it's just extraordinary - this massive four-poster bed and they said, "Thank you very much, Sir, we are honoured to have you here." "Please enjoy." ""Nothing is too much trouble."" "Closed the door and I was like..." ""All right." "All RIGHT." ""Eat that, Rob Brydon."" "I go over to the table and there's a beautiful gilt-edged envelope and I'm pouring my champagne, holding my champagne saucer in one hand and I casually open this envelope and it says, "Welcome to the Carlton hotel, Mr Ben Stiller"." "Oh!" "INTAKES OF BREATH AND LAUGHTER" "So I was..." "Of course, in that moment, I think..." ""How long have I got?"" "Yeah!" "How long have I got?" "I'm on the clock, clearly." "That's the tour of the hotel, 15 minutes, he's downstairs." "I would like a jet, a private jet..." "You ought to do a poo somewhere." "So I get the festival programme, go through it, is there anyone I know?" "I'm phoning them, phone everyone I know that is in Cannes." "I say, "You've got to get round here, now, because I'm in" ""Ben Stiller's suite at the Carlton hotel." ""I've got all his champagne and if you get here now, we can drink it!"" "In 20 minutes, the room is full of practically everyone in the British film industry." "LAUGHTER" "..Knocking it back!" "It was just absolutely brilliant fun." "So how were you rumbled?" "Did Ben Stiller walk in and scream?" "I detected a sort of chill in the air over the coming days." "They obviously knew..." "Over the coming DAYS?" "Yes, I was there for two more days." "You stayed in the room?" "I stayed in the room!" "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "I thought this was going to be minutes!" "I thought he had about half an hour!" "When it ended, were you frogmarched out of there and your wallet taken off you?" "No, I was treated with casual indifference." "He was in France, after all." "He's not Ben Stiller, we can't chuck him out of the hotel, it's too embarrassing." "We'll just ignore him." "That's basically what happened." "Which is sort of worse." "If I'd been thrown out, at least there would have been some kind of closure, but as it was, I was just left to slink around!" "LAUGHTER" "..in a slightly disappointed manner." "FRENCH ACCENT: "Yes, he's a nobody who we thought was Ben Stiller." ""Ignore him." ""He is not worth it."" "I just love that idea of Ben Stiller turning up with 12 of an entourage at the Holiday Inn in Cannes!" "Going, "Guys, what's going on?"" "Or he turns up later and says "I'm Ben Stiller, I'd like to check in"" "and they say, "Ha-ha, impostor!"" "I have a JOB!" "I can pay RENT!" "I mean, not ALL the time." "There's nothing you can broadcast here." "I'm going to tell you a story about Lizzie Roper." "We were rehearsing a play about ten years ago - that's when we met, actually, wasn't it?" "And the rehearsal room overlooked a railway line..." "So we had a hot summer, so we opened the windows and Lizzie leaned out of the window and Dave went behind her and dressed up as a member of the Taliban..." "SNORTS OF LAUGHTER" "..And Lizzie pretended she was being sexually assaulted by a member of the Taliban..." "..quite loudly, while all these guys were working on the railway line, pointing!" ""Help, help me!" "Help!"" ""Be quiet."" "Did any of them working on the rail go, I think that's Lizzie Roper?" "The weird thing was..." "When they nudged and pointed and just dropped out of sight, it was really very amusing." "Had they found Bin Laden at that point?" "No!" "He wasn't hiding in MY cave!" "There's nothing you can broadcast here." "I remember whenever we got married and it was a couple of years ago and we got married..." "Did you get married a couple of times?" "!" "I did, actually..." "No, just the once!" "And, um..." "I got married in Rome and there was a little tiny church and it had a courtyard and we said to everyone just take whatever pictures you have and we'll just put them together and do an album like that." "So these set of pictures come back and in the courtyard there was a picture of me and the missus and the bridesmaids and there was a window up at the back and there was this woman had woken up at 11 o'clock" "and she must have been about 60 and she just came to the window like this and her nipples and her belly button were just at the one level." "She was just looking out of the window like this and everything was kind of going a bit like that." "That's the picture that we have..." "from our wedding." "The best shot." "That's the one we have in the house." "The Italian woman with her tits out!" "She wanders around Rome getting in the back of wedding shots." "She's a hired professional!" ""They love it here." "They just love it."" "Now, can you tell me, Felicity Ward, about how to use a skirt?" "Yes." "Actually, it was a couple of years ago." "I was 17." "Right!" "LAUGHTER" "I'm 23 now, so...hahaha!" "Anyway, I..." "SHE SOBS" "Um..." "I'm delirious." "I went to a performing arts school and when you go to a performing arts school you go to the toilet with other girlfriends and leave the door open because you're liberal and you might be a lesbian, you don't know." "That'll just happen at one point and you'll probably kiss your friends." "So we're going to the toilet, or..." "I'm going to the toilet." "God, my Australian is coming back." ""I went to the tor-let."" "Um, I went to the tor-let and the door was open and I'd always pulled my skirt down, and my undies down to go to the toilet." "And my friend was looking at me and I'm like..." ""Pervert." "What's going on?"" "She said, "Why did you pull your skirt down?"" "I said, "What do you mean?" "I'm going to the toilet." She's like..." "Why don't you just lift up the sides?" "I'm like, "Shut the door!" "I'd like some privacy, please."" "And it never occurred to me." "Never occurred to me before that - that you can just go..." "Weird." "I know!" "I got to this age." "I have a JOB!" "I can pay RENT." "I mean, not ALL the time, but..." "I can see how that works, because if you pull..." "Look at men, going..." ""Wait, wait, wait."" "You don't..." "This was exactly the expression I had." "I mean, I have a bit of trouble, when I sit on the loo, cos the tip of my cock goes into the water..." "Hello!" "And I really hated it, you know, the Bloo Loo phase, I hated that." "I was a bit Blue Man Group." "Just wearing a blue hat..." "Blue helmet, the old UN penis." "I come in peace!" "You're not coming anywhere with that blue thing!" "APPLAUSE" "Anyway, listen." "Patrick, can you tell me about Neil Armstrong?" "Yeah!" "You nearly died in a helicopter with Neil Armstrong." "Yes." "This is the actual Neil Armstrong of the moon?" "Off the moon(!" ") Yes." ""Are you the man in the moon?" Yes." "You weren't on the moon and he appeared and said, "This is meant to be me?"" "It was weirder than that." "I think for two days in around 2004 when Ireland had money..." "And..." "No, we're much better off without it." "Irish people got money, we thought we were Americans, we became obnoxious, we tried to take over the world..." "We are much better poorer, with an empty pint, going, "Those bastards have money"." "We're very bad with it." "So for a couple of days, we had money and a telephone company booked me for this corporate in Kerry, in County Kerry." "I thought I got quite a decent fee and turned up and then I found out that Neil Armstrong had been flown in from Cincinnati and was being paid 100,000 Euros to spend 24 hours in County Kerry." "This was just in the middle of nowhere, the lakes of Killarney." "I thought to myself, the one thing you mustn't do, you know, is just mention the moon." "I kind of thought, the guy has done this 40 odd years ago and I thought he'd only done it for a few minutes and it's that great Eddie Bannon joke where Eddie says," ""I was standing in a bar one night and this woman with huge breasts came up to me" ""and I'm standing looking at her going," ""'Don't look at her tits, don't look at her tits, don't look at her tits, don't look at her tits' and she says, "Don't look at WHOSE tits?"" "And it's my favourite joke, right?" "And it's Eddie's joke and it's a brilliant joke and I was just, "Don't talk about the moon," ""don't mention the moon, don't mention the moon."" "And because I didn't mention the moon and everybody else did, he was kind of the person who I ended up hanging out with." "I remember we were shown the suites at the hotel and they were identical suites and the manager in the hotel was very lazy and brought us into the room and said, "Mr Armstrong, Mr Kielty, I'm just going to show you" ""one room, they are identical, they mirror each other." ""Here's the minibar and these are the towels."" "And he showed us..." "Neil Armstrong is looking at me, "Is this actually happening?"" "Yes, this is actually happening." "He said, "And breakfast is in the morning at 9.00," ""but Mr Armstrong, Mr Kielty if you'd like a lie-in," ""I'm sure we can deliver something up to the room."" "His piece de la resistance, what he always did whenever he showed any American tourists the room, he got to the double doors and opened up the curtains and they looked out onto the mountains and lakes of Killarney." "He used the exact same line, he went into automatic pilot." "He said, "Mr Armstrong, these are the beautiful lakes of Killarney," ""have you ever seen anything as beautiful in your whole life?"" "LAUGHTER" "Neil Armstrong..." "I could see Neil Armstrong going..." "I think the Earth from the moon, maybe." "And we, er..." "And so the next day, there was a helicopter going back to Shannon Airport." "Neil Armstrong then invited me on the chopper for a lift and I thought, this is great." "So a huge storm had come in overnight and the pilots were trying to be brave and they really shouldn't have been taking off, and they felt, it was Neil Armstrong..." "If he can go up to space, surely we can get through a storm." "Right." "So up we go and it's terrible and halfway through," "Neil Armstrong just stops talking." "His knuckles are just like this." "Former test pilot." "Sat on the tip of a rocket." "The guy from the phone company starts crying." "Can't get a signal!" "Can't get a signal!" ""I said we had coverage everywhere!"" "I was sitting there, thinking, I've eaten a wheel of cheese and fallen asleep." "Neil Armstrong has stopped beside me, this guy is crying and the chopper takes this lurch to the side and drops about 40 feet and the only thing going through my mind was, I'm going to be "also on board"." "That's what I thought." "I thought we're definitely going to die..." "And on the news tomorrow, it's going to be, "Neil Armstrong," ""the first man on the moon, has died in a helicopter crash." ""Also on board..."" "LAUGHTER" "And we got to Shannon Airport." "You got there." "Yes, we just got there." "It was dropping him off and the helicopter was meant to take us to Dublin and he pulled me aside and just said," ""That's as bad as it gets." ""Do not get into this helicopter."" "Neil said that?" "Yes." "He said, "Just take a car home."" "He's the only person I've ever asked to have a photograph with and I went and got a disposable camera and I have a picture of him in the house." "Nobody recognises him, people just think he's an uncle." "You have to put a goldfish bowl on his head." "You need an old lady in the background with her tits out." "That's exactly what it is." "No, no, he can only have it in his eyeball now." "He's got no veins." "I cannot imagine..." "TV's Peter Purves threatening anyone, never mind making a call." "Mm." "But this happened to you, Ben." "And it's with some awkwardness that I tell this story." "Because I don't know how he's going to feel today." "It was a very angry phone call." "Do you think I should say, for people who are under 40, maybe, he was a Blue Peter presenter." "This is in the days of Blue Peter in the '70s when it was Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Peter Purves." "It was a time when this was virtually the only programme that a child could watch." "Millions watched it." "They were much-loved." "Much-loved and they were very, very special presenters." "They were impeccable." "Never caused offence, trustworthy." "They were like your big brother and sister." "To be fair, they have said that about children's presenters before and been wrong." "But they never slipped up." "And none of them have in any way... drawn the attention of any investigations..." "Spotless." "The copybook is unblemished." "So..." "When I was starting out as a comedian, I really wanted to find some way of having a voice in comedy and I struck on this idea, what I'd do was a show about John Noakes, because at that time " "this was in the very early '90s - after being the biggest show on TV, we hadn't heard anything about them for about 10 or 15 years." "John Noakes had done a show after Blue Peter called Gone with Noakes." "Go with Noakes." "Sorry, yeah." "With a little Morris Minor and the dog." "Yeah." "They used to drive around." "Yeah." "It was..." "It was GORGEOUS stuff." "Did he still have Shep?" "He had Shep." "I loved Shep." "John's dog was called Shep, that's right." "John kept Shep after Blue Peter." "And you had the feeling that John didn't really have any friends or family, just Shep." "LAUGHTER" "I'd have been his friend." "Did you?" "I did, watching him." "You were a cynical child!" "John and Shep." "And, um..." "But he was a tremendous presenter, John Noakes." "Very friendly, very warm, very funny." "Go With Noakes was a grown-up show..." "I saw you do that show." "It was such a fun show to do, but anyway," "I'd written half of it and hadn't got an ending for the show." "I was on holiday with some friends and we were in Ibiza and I showed this friend of mine a cutting from the newspaper which said that John Noakes lived in Majorca." "My friend said, "If he lives in Majorca," ""why don't you get in a plane and go and find him?" I said, "I don't know where he lives."" "Was this suggestion made at four in the morning?" "It was!" "After Pacha. "What if you can't find him?" IMITATES BASSLINE" ""Why don't you go in the morning?" ""Great idea!"" "Yeah, great idea!" "Bring some dog biscuits with you!" "Big box, little box, big box, little box." "So I got on the plane the next morning and flew to Majorca." "I landed in Palma, I didn't know where John lived." "I had this photograph and I showed it to people in Palma," ""Do you recognise this place in Majorca?"" "Someone said, "That's Puerto Andratx, that's in the north of the island."" "So I got on a bus, went to Puerto Andratx, got out and thought," "I don't know how I was going to find him." "That's a long way." "A long, long way." "I'd flown there and didn't know..." "I mean, it really was..." "The most stupid thing I've ever done in my life." "Stalker-ish." "Almost, yeah." "At what point did the E wear off?" "Last Tuesday." "Just as you find him?" ""I'm coming down!"" ""I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here!"" "Can I have a Coca-Cola and a hug, please?" ""I'm SO hungry!"" "But if I eat, I'll be sick!" "I have never taken ecstasy." "OK." "LAUGHTER" "I love that you could have said, "I've never taken drugs"." "Or drugs, stop it!" "Stop it!" "Entrapment!" "So I went to use the phone box, leafed through the directory and sure enough, John Noakes was in the directory." "So I called the number and this voice answered and I said, "Hello," ""I'm Ben, I've come from England, I really want to talk to John." ""It said, he's not here, he might see you." ""OK, yeah..." "He's going to..." "You will?" ""He'll see you in the port in an hour."" "So I go to the port, the mist descends." "Was he talking to Shep?" "LAUGHTER" "It was Shep who took the call." "Woof, woof!" "Just with his little paw!" "Woof, woof!" "Woof, woof, woof, woof!" "He'll see me in an hour?" "Woof!" "I speak fluent dog." "He'll be on the boat?" "OK." "So I'm standing on this pontoon and the mist comes in and in the distance, I hear, "Ahoy, there," ""ahoy, there" and John Noakes comes out of the mist on a boat..." "..and pulls up to the pontoon." "He said, "You're Ben Miller, you've come to meet me." And he takes me..." "Because he was Frank Sidebottom?" "That was a terrible impression." "I'm still enjoying it." "The drugs still hadn't worn off." "I got on this boat, and he said, "Do you want to see me climb the mast?"" "He was a bit of a daredevil." "Oh, that is a euphemism." "Pull your skirt down..." "Anyway, it was fabulous." "He climbed the mast, I took photos and it was all in the show and it was fantastic." "Went at Edinburgh, there was this great climax to the show where I did a little drip feed with photos so you weren't really sure if it was him to begin with and then there was just one photo at the end where you thought," ""Oh, my God, that's him" and that was the end of the show." "Anyway, some friends were..." "Well, I'll cut this bit out, hang on." "Anyway, cut two." "Is that another druggie bit?" "!" "We're doing heroin, and..." "So I'm tying one on..." "No!" "I've just found a vein in Shep!" "Shep's got a spoon..." "Shep's got the lighter in his mouth..." "No, no, he can only have it in his eyeball now." "He's got no veins!" "No, no..." "So..." "So we're back..." "I was back home and I live with my friends and somebody came in one morning at about 11 o'clock, I was fast asleep." "KNOCKS Ben?" "KNOCKS Ben, Ben?" "Um..." "Peter Purves is on the phone for you." "I said, "What?" He said," ""Um, Peter Purves is on the phone." ""He's quite cross."" "Why?" "!" "I went in to the phone and said, "Hello?" He said, "Yes, Peter Purves here." ""I'm bloody furious with you!"" "He said, "You've been doing this show in Edinburgh, haven't you?"" "I said, "Y-Yes"." "He said, "You're making me out to be the villain of the piece." "He said, "You're destroying my career." ""You're undermining everything we did..." ""John and I got on VERY well, thank you very much!"" "I thought, what's he talking about?" "Oh, in the show," "I'd done this thing where I'd made a few jokes..." "Because you need a villain." "I'd made a few jokes about Peter Purves was the bad guy." "I thought, oh, yeah," "I said that thing about how he got John's job lost and..." "Yes, he was secretly jealous of John." "And like, I handled it really well, I said..." ""Peter, I've always been your biggest fan." ""And you were my favourite, in fact." Totally caved." "I said, "I'm really, really sorry." ""It's a comedy show." "It's a joke, I'm playing characters." ""I LOVED you in Blue Peter." "I thought you were fantastic."" "He said, "Well, yeah." "You need to think very carefully before you do a show like this" ""because you are ruining my career."" "So I thought, my God, I've just" "I can never set foot in Crufts again." "What I wanted to do was pay homage to a show and my heroes and all I'd done was make them hate me." "He had no sense of humour whatsoever." "Well, here's the thing." "I'm telling the story now and my flesh is still crawling now and I feel so guilty about the whole thing." "He's not here, is he?" "I feel like, look..." "If there's a moment and I can just get myself..." "Peter, if you're watching..." "Hi, Peter, if you're watching." "I hated you." "LAUGHTER" "HE MOUTHS" "SHE SQUEALS LIKE A PIG" "..Patrick Kielty." "Yes, Alan." "Why would you gate-crash the Pope's funeral?" "OK, so..." "I mean, I'm assuming that part of the funeral is attended by a lot of people." "We didn't gate-crash the funeral, we gate-crashed the wake." "Right, so...there's a friend of mine," "Ben Walsh, and Ben calls everybody John and Mary." "He calls me John and I call him John and he won seven grand on a horse and he rang me up and the Pope had just died and there was drink taken," "I'm not going to lie, there was definitely alcohol taken." "And..." "He said "John..." I said, "Yes, John." He said, "The Pope's dead now, very sad."" "I said, "It's very sad"." "He said, "You know the way you got us those tickets for U2..."" "LAUGHTER" "And I said, "Yeah?"" "He said, "Now, it would be quite good craic now" ""if we had a couple of scoops and we maybe went to Rome." ""For the wake."" "And I said, "The queue for the Pope is..."" "They queued for like, 12, 13, 14 hours." "He said, "No, you know the way you work for the BBC..." ""Is there no...?"" "I said, "You're asking me for backstage at the Pope's funeral."" "And I don't know whether anyone's had this, where your old university brings you back and gives you a doctorate." "Yeah, done that." "You've done that, yeah?" "It's a weird thing, isn't it?" "And whenever you're on flights, people say, "Is there a doctor on board?" And..." "Yeah!" "And you go, "off-duty"." "So I remember, there was a guy that nominated me for my doctorate and he was the head of theology at the university." "I rang him and as soon as I answered, he said, "Dr Kielty...", I said, "Yes", he said, "I'm assuming you would like to attend the Pope's" ""funeral to represent the university?"" "At that point, I went... "Yes"." "I think the phrase..." "I said, "Two tickets"." "Two tickets!" "So I ring back, I said, "John, it's boxed off," ""we're going to the Pope's funeral"." "So we met in the pub and drank for most of the night and got a redeye flight and we landed in Rome and he'd won seven grand on a horse and the only place he could stay was the Excelsior hotel and we had a suite." "We were meant to be met by a bishop who was going to bring us into the Sistine Chapel..." "..for a private viewing of the Pope before he was brought into St Peter's Cathedral." "At this point, we had a couple more drinks and we waited in reception and the room had been booked under his name and this bishop had come and gone and asked for MY name and so we were stuck in Rome with these two" "black suits and shirts and ties and I realised I had a BBC pass on me." "Hang on, I'll try this." "I'm official, I'm official!" "Oh, my fly's undone..." "So we walked up a side street in St Peter's Square." "I remember him at the front of the queue, going, "John, BBC John." ""One o'clock News John."" ""John, this man here, presenter oro, one o clock-o, newso."" "And at that point, just behind the rope, I saw a guy from Ulster" "Television with a camera and he ended up getting us into the square." "We were now wandering around in this media place and we were..." "Sunglasses on, suits on..." "I said, "This isn't going to work."" "There was a walkway across and you had a 13-hour queue for the Pope this way and the steps of St Peter's there." "He said, "Follow me, John"." "And he said..." "and starts talking into his sleeve." "And we start walking up the steps into the church." "I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "John, take a look up top, John." ""They're all in suits with the guns." "They think we're Secret Service." "Come with me."" "And we walked straight into St Peter's, right." "I'm on a phone, hoping that it's not going to ring..." "He's doing this." "Two minutes later, we're at the top of the queue, directing traffic past the Pope's coffin." "Wow." "And so his slippers are just there." "His slippers are just at our heads." "Please don't try them on." "Please don't try them on." "And so we do this and we end up taking a few photographs." "Selfies?" "We end up taking a couple of pictures and..." "And if you want, I've got a picture of myself right at the top of St Peter's just with the Pope in the background, beside the picture with Neil Armstrong and the one with the woman's tits out." "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "And I don't feel as guilty about that as you do about Peter Purves!" "Lovely." "Lizzie, why are you a failed pig jockey?" "Oh!" "I..." "It's like, a long time ago." "I was a penniless actor, I go for an audition and then on the very last recall, the last thing they say to me is," ""Would you ride a wild boar?"" "So I said yes." "Cos you're an actor and if they say ride a horse, ride a mo..." "You just say yes, yes, yes." "And obviously, they're not going to risk an actor's life, so I go, "Yeah"." "And then I get the job on a Thursday, we're filming on the Saturday, so the Friday I'm stuck in a Mini and driven up to the Cotswolds to Mrs McGinty's showbiz animals farm." "We're met by a man with just two teeth in his head and he's going" ""Yes, the pig, the pig - oh, the pig's over here, the pig, the pig."" "I thought, well, he's calling it a pig, this is fine." "ALAN SQUEALS" "As we approach, this thing, I can hear..." "SHE SQUEALS WILDLY" "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "And..." "And there's a fence doing this..." "I was like, "Aaahhhh!"" "And then..." "I can remember this door opened and this...fucking beast..." "Just covered in hair and fangs, like, like, 28st of angry bacon... running towards me and it's all right, because it's got a rope on it and there's a very fat man who's sort of being dragged behind him..." "So the man with two teeth is just going," ""All you've got to remember is both hands, both hands, both hands."" "Um..." "And the thing is screaming, really not happy." "Really, really upset to see me." "SHE SQUEALS" "So I hurled myself onto this pig, put both hands under the rope and I lean back as far as I can and then this Polish guy comes running out of the stables..." "Hang on, was that accent you were doing Polish?" "No!" "He came running out of the stables with a bucket of apples and waves it under the angry pig's face and then runs across the field..." ""Whoa!"" "So I'm..." "I'm riding..." "I'm now riding a wild boar." "Little legs, little legs." "My feet don't touch the ground, you know." "Now the director thinks, "The actress can ride wild boar," ""let's shoot tomorrow"." "So the next day, I turn up and they've squeezed the two-day shoot into a one-day shoot, they've driven the pig cross-country for five hours, it's a boiling hot sunny..." "Smells delicious." "Because the guy has said two hands, I've said to the director," ""You know how I've got to hold the jug?" "Well, I'll need a harness" ""for that and I'll have to adjust my costume"" "and he said, "That'll be fine"." "Which I thought he meant that'll be fine." "HE meant, "Shut up, little girl"." "So the stuntman came to meet me and he was very pale." "And slightly nervous." "All of a sudden, he's got all these pads for me, kneepads, elbow pads, kidney pads." "I'm like the Michelin man, I can't move at all." "So now I go out and this pig has been in a crate, he's not in familiar surroundings, I can hear him..." "SHE SQUEALS WILDLY" "The whole thing is shaking, there's a vet there, the vet's looking worried." "I'm beginning to think this isn't a great idea." "The director's got a ponytail " "THAT'S never a good sign." "And then..." "And then they bring the wild boar out, who is furious, absolutely furious." "He's been kept waiting in his trailer for hours." "Yeah, and he didn't have his own loo." "Where are my pads?" "And then they pull me out and the prop man comes up with this massive jug and I went, "No, no, no." ""I couldn't possibly." "I have to use both hands."" "And the director says, "HOLD THE JUG!"" "Was that the Polish one?" "So I've thrown my leg over and then they hand me a jug and the pig takes about two steps and then just goes, "Well," ""sod for this for a game of soldiers," and bucks me." "I go flying through the air, heavily land on this side of my body," "I'm an absolute mess." "Now I'm thinking, oh, you're an idiot." "This was a really stupid thing to do!" "The stuntman comes running over going, you know, "You're very brave"." ""I don't think I'd let my stunt women do this." ""It's absolutely ridiculous, you shouldn't be doing this."" "The director runs over and says," ""The pig knows you're frightened!" ""You have to hide your fear."" "So I tried again, exactly the same thing happens." "You're a trooper." "He throws me up in the air, I land, I can barely breathe." "That's when the stuntman goes "No, this isn't happening"." "I was taken off and then I had to run... "Run!" through a fence." "Effortlessly." "They said, "it's all right, it'll be balsa wood." "Don't worry."" "So then I'm already smashed up down this side of my body, walking like John Wayne..." "Now I've got to run down a field and just effortlessly run through a fence." "When I get that location, they say, "We haven't got any balsa wood," ""but it's OK, we've done some sawing..."" "Yeah, that'll go(!" ")" ""So when you run into it..." ""When you actually..." "It'll just open up."" ""OK"." "And I go running down with my stupid costume and my big jug and I go running up to it and there's a plank that goes across my boobs, a plank that goes across my fanny and I just go running into it, full pelt," "nothing gives." "They put the saws on my side, so when I ran into it, the wood just closed on itself." "So I just smashed my genitals and my bosoms up, which was fine, cos now it all matched this side of my body." "Was this a Japanese game show?" "LAUGHTER" "And, um, that shoot ended with me in hysterical tears, being walked off by the client and I was body doubled for a lot of it and I've never worked with that director again." "But, pleasingly, there is footage available." "There's the rehearsal footage." "Is it on YouTube?" "It's on YouTube, yes." "What do people have to search?" "Oh, wild boar riding." "God, if I had my phone in my pocket..." "I am horrified by what you had to go through." "We have to think of a title for this untitled programme, drawn from our stories and conversations..." "What did the director say to you?" ""The pig knows you're scared?"" "The pig knows you're frightened." "The pig knows you're frightened!" "I quite like, "His slippers were just here"." "LAUGHTER" "They were!" "That is really creepy." "I want it to be something about this pig." "I think we're going to have to call this show..." "The Pig Knows You're Frightened!" "Please will you thank my guests, Felicity Ward," "Lizzie Roper, Ben Miller, Patrick Kielty - thank you so much." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "My name is Alan Davies and you have been watching The Pig Knows You're Frightened." "Thank you and good night." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"