"(ORGAN PLAYING)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "ANNOUNCER:" "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome on stage Dara O Briain." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "Thank you very much." "Thank you very much." "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen." "hello, hello, hello." "How are you?" "Good to have you here, folks." "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hammersmith apollo." "Are you in good form?" "AUDIENCE:" "Yes!" "There you go!" "This is our big show tonight." "This is our big set, which is supposed to look like the hollywood bowl, but in fact looks like the opening titles to Rainbow." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "That didn't work out quite as we planned it 'cause that makes me look like BungIe." "So, it is a delight to be here." "Good to have you people arriving in." "Sorry." "hello, hello." "Good to have you here." "I know, it's mortifying, isn't it?" "'Cause everyone can see you." "Sorry, but you know..." "You tried to do it as subtly as possible, which I think is impressive." "They're not even looking at me." "I couId be talking about anyone." "How rude is that?" "And his wife is now hitting him." "Me, I was talking to you for the entire..." "And you knew that!" "Good to have you here, my friend." "Sorry we had to start the show "on time"." "(LAUGHING)" "Listen, it is a pleasure and a delight to be here." "This Is The Show." "There will be some messing around, some stories, some chat." "There will be chat." "There will be chat." "Don't fear the chat." "Some comics are really rude and mean and they go, "Look at you."" "And they pick on you." "I don't do that shit, 'cause, you know..." "A, because I'm not that kind of comic and, B, you have to be nice." "You have to be nice." "Comedy, generally, these days has to be nice." "It didn't always have to be nice." "But then Frankie BoyIe and Jonathan Ross fucked it up." "(LAUGHING)" "And now it has to be fucking nice all the time, right." "(MUMBLING ANGRILY)" "And it's gone Iudicrous." "It has gone Iudicrous." "'Cause, really, all the television shows are really nervous about offending anyone." ""Oh, God, I hope we don't offend anyone." ""Hope the Daily Mail don't get really angry about stuff that's said on the show."" "And it's gotten to a stupid extent." "For exampIe, I was on a show which you'd never think of in this kind of context." "This Morning." "Do you know This Morning on ITV?" "(AUDIENCE MUMBLING)" "Four of you have heard of This Morning, which has been running on ITV for like 25 years." "phillip schofield and holly..." "You know that one, don't you?" "AUDIENCE:" "Yes!" "Ah, there you go." "More honestly, rather than people going, "No, Dara, I work." ""I'm contributing to the nation's GDP." ""I don't sit around all day wanking and watching SchofieId."" "You know the show, right?" "I was on it and I was plugging Mock the Week." "It's one of these things where they'd sent them a clip." "One of these clips of the show, there was a bit of banter in it." "It went, joke, joke, joke, joke." "Right?" "And I thought, "Oh, that'II be good."" "And they showed it on the show and when they showed it, it went joke, joke, joke, stop." "And I went, "Where the fuck is the Iast joke?" ""That's a bit weird, not to include the Iast joke."" "But I didn't say anything during the interview." "But afterwards I'm in the hot tub with SchofieId and we were just talking." "And he's doing my back, so I'm relaxed, so I feel I can share." "Afterwards I say, either to phillip schofield or to the producers, I said," ""What happened to the Iast joke?" "Why did you leave out that last joke?"" "And they genuinely went, "well, the Iast joke was about the Potato Famine..."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" ""And the lawyers here felt it was probably better" ""if we didn't include that joke."" "This is the Irish Potato Famine of 1845 to 1849." "And I Iooked at them and went," ""That's probably wise, 'cause I know a Iot of those cases" ""are still working their way through the courts at the moment."" ""You know, they did predict that FIaherty vs The blight" ""will be a landmark ruling."" "equally, I wrote a newspaper article during the year and I was writing about something having become very popular in sport." "And I chose a simile, a metaphor for something suddenly to be very popular." "And I said, "It has spread like..." Hmm..." "And the one I came up with, "It has spread like swine flu."" "Which is what I wrote." "This is back when swine flu was hot." "AII right?" "And I was fucked off when I opened the paper and in the paper they had changed it to "It has spread like wildfire."" "That is a cliche, my friends, and I don't use cliches." "And I rang up and said, "What did you do with swine flu?"" "And your man said, "Dara, people die of swine flu."" "(LAUGHING)" "And I went, "people die in wildfires." ""people die in wildfires all the time." ""I'm not sure why they're getting less sympathy" ""than the fucker with the heavy cold." ""That seems a bit relative, if you don't mind me saying."" "Mind you, I do..." "I occasionally seIf-censor." "Tonight's show, for example, features no jokes about religion." "(AUDIENCE GROANING)" "I know." "I know." "And this in a year where any sentence involving the word "paedo" and "Nazi"" "automatically is a topical joke about religion." "And an easy one." "But don't think we haven't gone into that well enough on Mock the Week." "Anyway, sorry, no jokes on religion, and there are a number of reasons for that." "firstly, as a topic, it bores the hole off me." "I couldn't give a shite about religion, right." "I am an atheist, although not an angry atheist." "If you're into God, good luck to you." "With the hoping." "Bosh." "No, no, no, I'm only teasing." "I'm only teasing." "should we have a bet?" "You can pay me money on the other side." "What was that shout?" "What did you shout?" "(CHEERING)" "What did you shout?" "What did you say?" "What did you say?" "MAN: "Fuck PC." "Let's go for it."" "O BRIAIN: "Fuck PC." "Let's go for it."" "Yeah, Iet's fuck the PC brigade." "Okay, uh..." "Yeah, you're right." "blow those bastards, with their manners and good courtesy." "(LAUGHING)" "Not grabbing their secretary's arse or calling me "Paddy"." "actually, I'm all right with PC, large parts of it, thank you very much." "I don't have a problem with it." ""Oi, Mick, you fucking slag."" "Good to have you here, my friend." "Nice to know that you're ready to get involved at a moment's notice with any easy political rant that you'd Iike to throw out." "You tell me how I'm doing on your fucking barometer." "You wave your hand for the entire gig." "And you go, "Oh, you're going well." "No, you've gone too far this way, Dara." ""Oh, but now you're going the right..."" "Like that." "will you do that for me?" "But would you do it on the inside?" "Okay, so... (AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "No." "The other reason I don't do jokes about religion..." "And this might be specific for right now and in this country." "If you do the routines I used to do, Iike the catholic and Protestant routine, or the..." "What's the other one?" "Oh, yeah, the Lord's Prayer routine." "Those ones are lovely routines, right." "But if you do them now you genuinely get members of the Christian right coming up to you after gigs or online and going, "Oh, yeah..."" "They love saying this, by the way." "They love saying this." ""You'II make jokes about the catholics, you'II make jokes about the Protestants," ""but you won't make jokes about the muslims, will you?" ""No, you're not that brave to make jokes about the muslims, are you?" ""Oh, no, not that brave, Mr Comedian Man, to make jokes about the muslims." ""The Christians, they're an easy target," ""but you won't make jokes about the muslims."" "They fucking love that." "To which I always say," ""There are two reasons I don't do jokes about muslims." ""A, I don't know a fucking thing about muslims." ""And, B, neither do you." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" ""frankly, it'd be pointless."" "I couId research and write the greatest MusIim-based material you've ever heard." ""Hey, what's up with the big golden horse that comes over the hill once a year" ""and hands out cake to the kids?" "What's that all about?"" "And you'd all be there going," ""Is that a thing?" "I've never heard of that there thing."" ""Jeez, you've really nailed the muslims there, Dara." "well done, congratulations."" "By the way, apologies to any muslims in the room who are now sitting there going," ""What golden horse?" "What the fuck is the man talking about?" ""The man's a fucking idiot." "I've never heard of that at all." ""I've read the book cover to cover, I've never heard of that at all."" "So there will be chat, there will be bits of random banter and I will just occasionally just bing, bing, bing." "And go for it, for God's sake." "please don't be worried about..." "In any way." "For exampIe, bing!" "Just 'cause you're right there A1, in the middle." "What's your name, champ?" "Simon." "How are you, Simon?" "Good to have you here." "Are you a local, Simon?" "I am a local." "You're a London man yourself, Simon?" "What do you do for a living?" "Before you answer the question, here's an important point." "If a comedian ever asks you, "What do you do for a living?", don't worry about telling the truth." "We don't give a fuck what you actually do for a living." "These aren't the baby steps of a relationship." "It's just a joke." "I'm not going to wake up beside any of you tomorrow morning and go," ""You said you're a pilot!"" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "That, by the way, is me after a one-night stand with an audience member." "You know, vulnerable but satisfied." "You'd be tender with me, Simon, wouldn't you?" "Be tender with me?" "Yes." "Simon, what do you do?" "builder." "You're a builder?" "You're a builder, Simon?" "Like my father before me and my father before me." "No." "It's kind of an Irish thing." "Do you do..." "Look at your soft hands." "Do you have soft hands, Simon?" "Or do you have hard, callused hands from the placing of bricks?" "CaIIused." "CaIIused hands?" "I'm looking at them." "You're more of a man who manages builders, aren't you, rather than a man who does the building himself?" "Is that safe to say from the nodding from everyone who knows you in the front, going," ""This fucker wouldn't know a spirit level if it came up and bit him in the arse."" "(LAUGHING)" "Simon, have you ever put a brick on top of another brick?" "No, your wife says no." "Your wife says you've never done any of this stuff." "Where do you do most of your building?" "Is it houses or..." "What is it you deal with?" "A variety." "A variety?" "Oh, you build theatres?" "What the fuck is a "variety"?" "What is this variety you do?" "people book you to build one thing." "They don't want to arrive and go, "What's that?"" ""well, it's a giant rubber slide."" ""I asked you to build a house, for Christ's sake!"" "A variety." "What's the weirdest thing you've ever had to build, Simon?" "Oh, that's a tough one, isn't it?" "It is a tough one." "But the questions will get tougher as it goes along, Simon." "(LAUGHING)" "At some point you'II be reaching for receipts, your accountant will be in, you'II have your lawyer coming in for that stage." "This is all a set-up, Simon." "We've been waiting to trap you for years." "We've finally flushed you out." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "You've been employing cheap Irish labour for generations at this stage." "How do you think you got seat A8 as easily as you did?" "AII of you now in the front row are going," ""Does he know about the thing that I did that time with that thing?"" "Oh, this is taking on a whole other area, this gig." "Now it's a really victimising gig." "No, Simon, we don't." "We do wonderful work." "What's the weirdest thing you've ever built?" "generally." "I don't know if it's weird, but I've done satellite stations for the United States Navy." "You've done satellite installation stations for the United States Navy?" "Boy, you got that sentence out really well, didn't you?" ""satellite installation stations for the..." I can't even say it twice." "That's amazing." "That should be on a syllabus for small children." ""Oh, she sells sea shells at the satellite installation stations for the..."" "How good are you at tongue-twisters, my friend?" "That's fantastic." "We didn't expect that." "Is that how you entertain the boys around the brazier when they're ready to do a bit of work?" ""Lads, now try this one." ""satellite installation stations for the United Nations."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Anyway, Simon, no, good to have you here." "There may be brick-reIated questions I want to ask you." "In which case I will come to you and you will probably ring a guy who knows about them, right?" "This is the way we work." "Good to have you here." "settle into the gig." "(VOCALISING) What's your name, champ?" "Dave." "Dave, how are you?" "Are you a Londoner?" "No, I'm from South London." "O BRIAIN:" "originally from South London?" "But that somehow disqualifies you from the question "Are you a Londoner?"" "You're from London, for fuck's sakes." "How else does one achieve Londoner status if not originally from London?" "Dave, you are really picky." "How South London was it?" "Kent." "Kent." "Okay, not London." "AII right." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "That's way, way outside of London." "Outside the pail, my friend." "And what do you do, Dave?" "I'm a brain surgeon." "You're a brain surgeon!" "No." "I know you're not." "I know you're not." "I know you're not." "You're playing the game, aren't you?" "You're going for something crazy and unbelievable." "really." "What's the biggest brain you've ever surgeoned on?" "No, seriously, go on." "Let's see how far you can take this." "You're the one who chose brain surgeon." "If you're gonna play the bullshit game, don't come to me with brain surgeon as your first answer." "Go plumber, for fuck's sake." "Don't go brain surgeon." "really!" "What's the worst thing you've found when you've opened it up?" "You ever found something strange in there?" "Spanners." "Spanners?" "There were spanners in a man's head!" "Jesus." "What is the Latin term for finding spanners inside a man's head?" "They must have taught you this in medical school all those years ago." "(SPEAKING GIBBERISH) II spanneur." "II spanneur." "(ALL LAUGHING)" ""II spanner", right." "How many spanners were in the head?" "A fair few." "A fair few." "Yeah, you want to narrow it down at this stage." "Was there any brain in there at all?" "Is the brain like a soup when you open it up?" "Yes." "Yes." "Yes, it is." "In what other ways is it like a soup?" "Which soup is it most like?" "Minestrone." "Minestrone." "Oh, we're back to the italian again." "really?" "Are there chunks?" "Is that what you're saying?" "essentially there's..." "AIphabets." "AIphabetti Spaghetti." "The brain is like a Iarge tub of AIphabetti Spaghetti." "You pop the top off and you can spell out your name in it like this." "Is that the way it works?" "My God." "The insights we're getting into the human brain is fantastic." "It's a pleasure to have you here, my friend." "A genuine brain surgeon." "If anyone has any brain pain in the middle of the gig, he's here to deal with it." "Yes, seriously." "Somebody with a headache come to him and watch him go," ""No, no, no, I'm not." "I'm not." "I'm not a brain surgeon at all."" "One last person to talk to before we go is the man who came in late." "How are you, sir?" "Are you well?" "Fine, how are you?" "What's your name, sir?" "Des." "How are you, Des?" "Des, where are you from?" "Sudbury." "You're from Sudbury." "Okay, what do you do, my friend?" "Handyman." "You're a handyman?" "really?" "Are you looking for a bit of work?" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "'Cause I know a guy who has a building site, and he'd be delighted to have you there." "thrilled to have you there, 'cause he couldn't do anything, right?" "He couldn't wire a plug..." "Can you wire a plug?" "Can you?" "Yeah, now and again." "Now and again." "Okay, grand." "Hang on." "Why?" "Do you have lapses or something?" "Did you used to know how to wire a plug and then your head thing comes back?" "Because I know a guy who's a brain surgeon and he can deal with that as well." "If you have... (BLOWING RASPBERRY)" "There's a guy here called Dave..." "By the way, hang on." "Are you missing any spanners?" "That's a major question to ask at this stage." "'Cause if you are, Dave is a genius at "iI spanero", which is the operation to remove spanners from..." "I don't forget anything, you fucker." "I don't forget a single thing you say." "Sharp as a tack." "Sharp as a tack." "What I actually wanted to talk to you about..." "We will be back..." "There will be bits where I want you to tell stories, so please get involved with that and it will make a memorable gig." "However, what did I want to talk to you about?" "I, during the year, had an unusual experience because I ended up at a student party one night, right." "(AUDIENCE HOOTING)" "I know, yeah." "Tragic, isn't it?" "I'd not been to a student party in a decade, but I did a gig in Cambridge and some lad came up to me and said, "will you come back to the house?" ""We're having a meeting of the Cambridge Whisky Drinking Association."" "And I went, "Oh, that sounds fancy." And he goes, "No, it's not."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "And all it was, was this group of lads and they all pitch in four quid each and buy a bottle of single malt whisky, right." "Like really stupid, Iow-rent..." "But lovely guys, real comedy nerds." "I went back and I was chatting to the lads and during the conversation..." "I know there were three girls there, mates of theirs." "AII first year in college, about 18, 19 years old." "And I'm chatting to the three girls about college life and this and that and then I made an observation I hadn't actually formerly made, which was that nothing was passing between me and the girls." "There was no electricity, no vibe, no chemistry, no potential, nothing was passing." "The three women were looking at me in a kind of," ""This is very nice." "I wonder who he's here to collect."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Now, that is shattering." "But I know it had to happen at some..." "honestly, nothing, blank." "It was as if I'd forgotten to turn on the bluetooth in me cock." "Nothing was coming off the girls." "I wasn't looking for it." "I'm married with a kid." "I wasn't hunting it down, but nonetheless it's slightly disappointing." "You know, they weren't even registering a sexual device in the room." "Nothing was coming off them, right." "And similarly, about a few weeks later I went to a doctor's appointment." "I was checking with the doctor about stuff and I was chatting to him and I said, "will you do an MOT on me?" ""I'm in me late 30s now, Iet's see how I'm doing."" "So your man does a big test on me, runs a load of things and then comes back with a big, serious face on." "I said, "What's wrong?" And he goes, "well, your cholesterol." ""Your cholesterol is very high."" "Now, my cholesterol was ludicrous." "Pick a number and double it type high." "But I didn't know what it meant and I went, "What does it mean?" "What does it mean?"" "I Iooked at him and went, "Does that mean I've got butter for blood?" ""That's what it means, I've got butter for blood, doesn't it?"" "And your man looked at me and goes, "Not quite."" "I said, "Not quite?" "That was chosen as a ridiculous example." ""I expected you to say, 'No!" "'" ""That wasn't the opening negotiation here." ""What is not quite butter?" "SpreadabIe?" "Margarine?" ""What have I got in my veins at the moment?"" "And your man looks at me and goes, "I can't believe..."" "And I said, "What?" "It's not butter?"" "(LAUGHING)" "And he goes, "No, I can't believe you're not dead yet." ""I've had a look at the figures." "You should be dead now." ""Besides which, stop going on about butter." ""We've had this conversation for 10 minutes and you've mentioned butter nine times." ""And every time you do, your eyes light up and you start to salivate." ""That could be the problem right there."" "But there is..." "firstly, this is an important thing." "The 19-year-oId girls, by the way..." "If you've ever had a conversation that involved the word "cholesterol", you don't get to wonder why the 19-year-oId girls don't seem to be in any way interested in you, right." "That's a good rule for life, lads." "Let's just put it this way." "If you're using a special margarine, boys, no more 19-year-oIds for you, right." "Here's a rhyme next time you open the fridge:" "If your flora is blue, no 19-year-oIds for you." "But the other issue I went was..." "I'm saying, "What am I gonna do?"" "And he says, "well, I'm afraid there are two things you can do."" ""plan A is a drug called statins."" "Now, we'II have all heard of statins by the time we die." "They'II be one of these drugs like Disprin that we'II have heard about." "And you'II say, "Statins this, statins that." We'II have all heard of statins." "But your man goes, "You take these drugs and you take them every day until you die."" "And I went. "No fucking way, man!" "No fucking way." ""I'm a young man." ""I'm not eating myself into this situation where I need drugs for life." ""What's plan B?"" "And he said, "A harsh regime of exercise."" "And I said, "Let us urgently reconsider plan A."" "(LAUGHING)" ""And in fact I'm angry at the way you hid plan B behind plan A," ""knowing full well I would reject plan A out of hand" ""and then you'd spring me with the genuinely prickish plan B."" "No one wants to do the exercise." "No one wants to be back in the gym on the machines that do this or do this or do something while some prick from the gym in the little blue T-shirt with the little logo sewn onto it goes," ""Are you having a good workout?", and you go... (HUFFING)" "And he goes, "Are you having a balanced workout?"" "And you go, "well, I haven't fallen off the machine yet." "(LAUGHING)" ""frankly, that's as much balance as I intended to achieve" ""over the course of this workout."" "What do you mean, balanced?" "They love this bullshit in the health industry." "Fuckers like you, Dave." "Doctors like you, pounding this shit down our throats all the time." "They love this bullshit." ""Oh, you've gotta have a balanced workout." "There are three types of fitness."" "There aren't three types of fitness." "It's only a type of fitness if you can't bluff it." "There are two types of fitness." "One, strength for the lifting of heavy things, and stamina, for the holding of heavy things when the place you're going to put the heavy thing isn't quite ready for the heavy thing, so you've gotta hold the heavy thing." "The third one, suppleness, flexibility, ask my arse." ""Can you touch your toes?"" ""Yes, I can touch my toes." "I've got knees."" "(LAUGHING)" "remarkably easy to touch your toes." "I have semi-coIIapsibIe limbs." "That makes the job almost facile when it comes to touching my toes." "Look, there's one set." "There's the other." "Job done." "nonetheless, I had to pick an exercise, which is a chore, right." "And I went through all the different options and I eventually fixed on cycling." "I thought, "This will be the one I do." "I'II go cycling."" "This is kind of because, when I was 15 in ireland, we had this guy called Stephen Roche who won the Tour de France, right." "And as a teenage boy I went, "Oh, wow." He's a hero to me, and I always wanted that bike." "That skinny bike with the drop handlebars, and here we go." "So I thought, "Fine, I can do this."" "Does anyone here ride a bike?" "AUDIENCE:" "Yes." "Okay." "Maybe I'II broaden that out a bit." "Does anyone here own a bike?" "AUDIENCE:" "Yes." "In fact, no, Iet me narrow it down now." "Is there anyone here married to or living with somebody who spent a Iot of money on that bike and that hasn't been out of the garage in at Ieast a year?" "Yes, there's a few there." "You're my people." "You're my people right there." "Did he buy the shorts as well?" "I bet he bought the shorts too, didn't he?" "And walked around the house going," ""Look at that, Mary." "Isn't that fantastic?" "Look at this." ""Look at the way it lifts." "Lifts and holds." ""Mary, you're a lucky woman." "I've still got it."" "You always buy the shorts and you go out and think you're an athlete." "I went out the first day on the bike, out to Richmond Park, cycling around the park, and then I got thirsty." "You know, when you get thirsty as a punter, you drink." "But when you're an athlete, when you've got the bike and the shorts, you rehydrate." "So, I'm on the bike, I put my hands on the handlebar," "I reach into the frame of the bike, pull the bottle out and, while cycling, pump it!" "Pump it to push the fluids into my system fast!" "Then I released, forgetting to disengage the bottle from the corner of my mouth." "So when I did this, it popped out, creating a vacuum which instantly sucked the fluid back up my throat, out of my mouth, into the bottle again." "I, effectively, rinsed myself out." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "When I took the bottle away, it was as heavy as it had been when I initially introduced it into the situation." "But I didn't fall." "I wobbled, I wobbled ferociousIy." "I was all over the road, but I didn't fall!" "You don't fall when you're at speed." "You faII when you're static." "You faII when you're in traffic." "You faII when you're at the lights." "You faII when there are others around to see you faII." "(LAUGHING)" "That's when you faII off a menopausaIIy-purchased expensive bike that you don't really know how to use." "And you faII slowly." "'Cause if you're at speed, you can go down to here and the momentum will carry you around." "But if you're static, if you go to here, that's enough for gravity to go," ""I'm having you."" "And you go down slowly." "Enough time for people to go, "Whoa!" "Timber." "He's going down." "He's going down."" ""Hey, John, look at this." "This is hilarious."" ""Here, Mary, Mary, come here." "No, park the car." "You've loads of time." ""Come on."" "The most important thing to do when you're falling off a bike is, make the face!" "Make the face!" "This is vital." "This is the face, "Ugh."" "That's the face." "If you do, "Ugh", people have a reflex, they have to go, "Ugh" back at you." "And you're going, "Ugh" and they're going, "Ugh"." "You're going, "I'm falling", they're going, "I'm falling meseIf."" ""Oh, here we go." "Happens to the best of us."" "That makes it okay." "If you go, "Ugh", people look at you and they go, "Ugh" as well." ""Oh, well, you know." And in their head it goes, "Wah, wah, wah."" "And that makes it all okay." "You could try to stop yourself falling, but that's impossible." "Because the man who sold you the bike and the shorts also sold you the shoes." "The special, magical cycling shoes that clip onto the pedals for the official, efficient transferraI of energy from thighs to bike." "But you can't get them off the pedals 'cause you keep forgetting the 30-degree, Fred Astaire, uncIippy angle that you have to do." "And you're falling off a bike, you can't remember that." "Because half your brain is going, "Oh, Jesus!" "You're falling!" "You're falling!"" "And the other half is going, "Make the face!" "Make the face!"" "So you kick." "You kick furiously!" "But you're strapped to the pedals." "So the energy goes down one pedal and then up the other pedal and now you're shaking." "You're making the face!" "You're making the face!" "But people are looking at you and going, "Jeez, he's having a fit!"" "You're shaking all over the place and they're going," ""Who gave the epileptic a bike?"" "(LAUGHING)" ""It must have been the traffic lights that set him off."" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "And, Mummy, it hurts!" "It hurts when you hit the ground!" "I've had back injuries..." "How many people here have ever had back pain?" "(AUDIENCE AGREEING)" "Loads of people." "Oh, it's a chore, 'cause you don't know what to do." "(GROANING)" "I can't handle this, right." "It's a fucking nightmare of a thing, back pain." "I was whining about one back injury for a while to a mate of mine for so long, he eventually went, "Jesus!" ""There's a chiropractor near me, go get yourself checked out."" "I said, "Is he good?" He said, "I don't know." ""You go check yourself out."" "well, I'm here with my review." "It's voodoo." "That's my review of chiropracty." "It's voodoo with percussion built in." "They lie you down and they do cIickety-pop, click click pop, cIickity-poppity, click pop cIick-cIock pop on your back." "Then the guy stood me up." "Stood me in the room, looking away, he went behind me, reached over my shoulders, grabbed my head and went, "Crack."" "So, literally, you're there going, "I wonder what's happening..." "Fucking hell!" ""I wasn't expecting that."" "No doctor does that!" "I've never seen any trained medical professional do that." "I've seen Jason Bourne do it." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "I've seen Bruce willis do it in a Die Hard movie." "I've never seen a Die Hard movie where he sneaked up behind somebody and gone, "Crack!", and they've gone, "Jesus, that's fantastic." "Thanks very much." ""Oh, God, you've really loosened that up." "I'd a knot of tension there for years." ""That's all gone now." "Oh, sure, that was the only reason I got into terrorism," ""was the dull, nagging pain in my neck." ""Thank you, John McCIane, for releasing me from that."" "And my fears were confirmed by a mate of mine, Simon Singh, who wrote an article for The Guardian a couple of years ago pointing out that some chiropractors claim to cure infant colic," "and asthma and ear infections in young children, right." "And he said there's no evidence for this, this is bogus." "And the entire organisation of chiropractors sued him for libel, right." "The case dragged on for two years and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and they eventually backed down because they had no case." "And it was a waste of time, a ludicrous kind of nonsense thing to do, right." "And a Iot of people got very angry because of the medical implications, or because of the legal implications." "Me, my reaction was much more of a gut feeling of "what manner of eejit brings an infant to a chiropractor?"" "Have you ever met an infant and gone, "How are you feeling?"" "And the kid's gone, "I'm fucking knotted." "Stop it." "Jeez." "I'm in bits." ""I got out of the cot this morning, twang, I can't move." ""Oh, stop it!" "I bent over to pick up a Peppa Pig, I couldn't get down." ""Oh, sure, I'm a martyr to me back, a martyr." ""I've got a playgroup in an hour." "I don't know how the fuck I'm gonna get through that."" "I am aware, by the way, at this stage, it sounds like everything I talk about is either back pains or becoming old, or having cholesterol, or needing to ride a bike at last." "I'm not decrepit, by the way." "I will see it to the end of the gig, right." "I'm not gonna die." "In fact, not to boast, but in the Iast year I have saved lives." "(CROWD CHEERING)" "Took your time about that." "It's okay." "I couldn't have offered you as obvious a panto moment if I'd flagged it up with a dame and somebody dancing behind you, right." "It's not that easy a claim to make." "How many people here can do it?" "Has anyone here ever saved a life?" "AUDIENCE:" "Yes." "Oh, I see loads of hands go up." "You have, you have, you have." "What do you do for a living?" "MAN:" "Fireman." "You're a fireman?" "well, that's your job." "So..." "I can't compete." "Sitting at the front, in removable trousers, ready to shimmy down a pole..." "Go on, slide down that, you prick." "Uh, it's okay." "Of course - you probably saved three on the way here today." "You were probably juggling orphans." ""Oh, here, get them out of the fire." ""It's the only way to carry three babies at a time when the orphanage is burning down..."" "(VOCALISING CIRCUS MUSIC)" "I can't compete with you." "You'II always win this game." "I'm looking for punters." "Who, as a punter, has ever saved a life?" "Okay, that woman there." "What did you do?" "WOMAN:" "I saved a child." "You saved a child." "But from what?" "From a swimming pool?" "Oh, was it one of those mean swimming pools that creeps up on children and jumps on them?" "Was the child in the pool at the time?" "She fell into the pool?" "Were you in the pool?" "No, I was sunbathing." "You were sunbathing near the pool when the child went in?" "Is it your child, by the way?" "No." "Okay, grand." "And what did you do?" "I dived in." "You dived in after the child?" "That's the correct answer rather than," ""I Iooked going, 'Jesus, there must be a parent around here somewhere." ""'Isn't it disgraceful the way some people raise their children today?" ""'AII right, I'II get up."' Right?" "So, you crossed over to the child." "How deep was the water?" "Very." "Very deep?" "Yeah, give me a fucking number." ""Very deep"!" "Where was this pool by the way?" "Was it a hotel somewhere..." "Ibiza." "It was in Ibiza, right." "Okay." "How deep was the water?" "10 foot?" "A 10-foot hotel swimming pool?" "No one is believing that for a second, pet, that you were staying at a hotel exclusively built for OIympic-cIass diving facilities, and a child..." "Four foot, wasn't it?" "It was fucking four foot." "And you just did this: "Get out of there, lad."" "That's the level of Iife-saving you've achieved, right, isn't it?" "Was it the kiddie pool?" "It was the kiddie pool, wasn't it?" "It was the..." "It was!" "It was the fucking..." "Okay, fine." "Anyway, well done." "Give her a round of applause." "She saved a child from drowning in a swimming pool." "In that much of water." "She risked her own life." "She fought a torrent of water up to three and a half foot deep to save that child." "You're a legend, my friend." "Who has ever saved somebody?" "Who has ever saved a life?" "Come on." "You, man down there." "What did you do?" "MAN:" "I gave blood." "You gave blood?" "Okay." "I may have given you the impression that that woman had achieved nothing." "But I'm recaIibrating that after your shitty contribution to this debate, right." "Gave blood?" "You lay there and then they give you a biscuit." "She's got wet for her story, right?" "And you got a cup of tea out of it as well, didn't you?" "Yeah, but it was baby blood." "Baby blood?" "It was baby blood?" "Hang on." "But did you, as an adult, give baby blood?" "How did you do that?" "What crazy time paradox did you achieve..." "How?" "Is your blood special blood?" "Yes." "What is it?" "Rhesus negative or something, is it?" "It's 'O' negative." "It's 'O' negative, is it?" "Oh, so you can give it to babies and everything." "Do they bring you into hospitals when there are baby emergencies and you go, "Don't worry, I shall save you."" ""And all I shall ask to save you is one biscuit and a cup of tea." ""That's all I need."" "nonetheless, you did the right thing." "Good for you." "Baby blood." "Have you ever met any of the babies who've received your blood?" "No, you don't." "They don't keep in touch." "would you feel a sense of ownership, would you, when you see those?" "would you be like, "Hey, bastard, I own you." "You're mine." "You're mine now."" "Looking at you with a toy in his hand..." "AII right." "A more action-packed story." "Anybody here ever..." "You, what did you do?" "(MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)" "Your friend broke a leg?" "His own leg, one of his two legs, or broke somebody else's leg?" "Whose legs did you break?" "She broke her leg." "She broke her leg." "Yeah." "How?" "You were cycling and she fell off the bike and she broke her leg?" "And she almost died of broken leg, did she?" "What else happened?" "'Cause broken leg is broken leg, and it's a serious thing, but very rarely do people go," ""Oh, she broke her leg and we just had to put her down." ""'Cause she was worth nothing to anyone any more." ""We put screens around her and just shot her in the head." ""And that was the most humane thing to do at that stage."" "Is your friend a horse in this particular story?" "Um, no." "What did you have to do?" "You rang the doctor?" "You rang a hospital?" "Oh, you're a fucking legend, you are!" "That's even worse than "I gave blood" as a story." "No, what..." "Did you physically have to do anything?" "(INDISTINCT)" "The ambulance was taking too long, so you did what?" "You carried her?" "When you say friend, special friend?" "Not a special friend now?" "Not even after that?" "What does a bloke have to do these days to nail one of his mates?" "You pushed her off the bike to create the accident, then you quickly rang the hospital, bIuffed about:" ""Oh, they can't get her, I shall carry you."" "How far did you carry her?" "A mile?" "Yeah, it's okay." "You know, I'm not sure to what extent you actually saved her, but nonetheless give him a round of applause." "He carried her back, right." "Here's a proper..." "Has anyone here done CPR?" "You've done CPR?" "Are you trained to do it?" "Are you a nurse or a doctor, or..." "The ambulance corps." "You work for the ambulance corps?" "When they trained you at CPR..." "This is a question I always ask people about CPR..." "It's a very simple question." "What song did they use to train you?" "(INDISTINCT)" "Nellie the Elephant." "I..." "This is a fact I only learnt on this tour." "They use Nellie the Elephant to train people in CPR." "I cannot think of anything that would lower your authority more in a Iife-saving situation than pushing through a crowd going, "please back away." ""I'm trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation." ""If you'd just give me some space." "Thank you very much."" "# Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk" "# And said goodbye to the circus Offshe went with a clipetty... #" "I can't think of anything..." "Can you imagine the family of the person, going," ""What the fuck are you doing to me dad?"" "I asked a woman in Margate who said, "I've done CPR."" "I said, "What song did they use to train you?"" "And she goes, "Oh, you know, the one from Dumbo. "" "No, you can't just substitute any eIephant-based song into that gap." "What's exciting, though, is it's no Ionger Nellie the Elephant." "It has moved on." "There is now a new song for the training of CPR." "What is the new song for the training of CPR?" "CROWD:" "Stayin' Alive." "Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees." "And I'm not making that up." "You're now supposed to push into the crowd and go, "Back away," ""back away, back away."" "# Ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive #" "It only works if you take the patient's arms, move one of them down to his hip, and move the other one pointing straight up." "Don't get the wrong Bee Gees song." "You don't want to be leaning over somebody, going," "# Tragedy #" ""What the fuck are you doing to me dad?"" "Here's my story." "Two people." "I saved two people's lives at the same time." "genuinely true story, right." "Don't be impressed." "That's fair enough." "Two people in piccadilly Circus tube station in London last summer." "This is a completely true story." "I'm on the escalator, the down escalator." "I'm on my way down to the bottom." "A woman at the bottom does a thing which no one has done in about 120 years, where she falls to successfully navigate that awkward transition" "between the escalator and planet Earth." "You know, that little steppy, that little kind of, that little raised..." "She catches herself on that." "click." "(EXCLAIMING)" "And goes down, right." "She hurts herself, bangs her knee." "The bloke behind her doesn't have time to react." "He cIatters across her, injuring her more." "The woman behind him has just enough time to step to one side and land beside her and go, "Oh, my God, are you okay?"" "And she goes, "No, I've hurt my knee quite badly actually."" "And the two of them turn, look up and go, "No!"" "'Cause now I am being fired towards them at an incredible speed." "Oh, they're fucked, they're gone, they're dead." "There's no getting out of this situation." "They're in awful state." "I'm gonna be like a bowling ball and they're skittIes." "I'm gonna send them, fragments of them, all over the tube station." "There's gonna be blood and guts." "No amount of baby blood is gonna save these two women when I cut through them with my bulk." "The two of them are looking up at me going, "Ahhh!"" "Try to imagine the boulder at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark." "That's what I must've looked like to them as I'm Iooming over them, blocking out light, my shadow falling onto their faces." ""Ahhh, you're gonna die."" "Which didn't help the mood in any way whatsoever at that stage." ""You're gonna die, ahhh!"" "And then I did a thing." "I did an incredible thing." "A thing that you know the time you saw the child in the pool and you had to save him." "You know the time that your friend twisted her ankle that time when you were cycling and you decided bravely to piggy-back her all the way to the hospital, right." "Anyway, I did a thing, an incredible thing." "A once-in-a-Iife..." "To save these women's lives," "I did an amazing thing." "I'm not saying you couldn't have done it." "I'm not saying you wouldn't have the quickness of thought or you wouldn't have the physical dexterity to do the thing that I did in that moment to save these women's lives." "I did an incredible thing." "I turned around and started to walk back up the escalator." "Saving these women's lives." "And startling the bloke who's now coming towards me at the same speed." ""What the fuck are you doing?" And I went, "No!"" "He went, "What are you doing?" I said, "There's a woman injured."" "So he turned around and now the two of us are walking side by side." "Just striding along." "And we had to tell everyone." ""Turn around, yeah, if you could turn around."" ""Oh, for fuck sake!" Everyone on the escalator had to turn around." "They're all just hovering in space." "The entire escalator up to the top is just floating, going," ""For how long?" "How long are we fucking doing this?"" "I can only dream of how it looked to the other escalator." "The genuine up escalator, which was rammed with commuters, just going past, going, "What the..." "This is the one." ""This is the one, lads." "What the fuck are you doing over there?" ""This is the one that goes all the way up." ""Are you lot salmon or something?" "What are you?"" "And we were there, going, "Saving lives, people, saving lives." ""This is what saving lives looks like."" "It's an incredible story, I accept that." "An inspirational story, an amazing story." "However, sometimes they're not that inspiring at all." "First time I ever asked the question, a bloke, in a gig here in London, raised his arm and went, "I've saved a life." I said, "What happened?"" "He told an amazing story." "told the story of a time he was on a jetty in a harbour and there was somebody stepping off a boat." "And as they stepped off the boat, the water surged and pushed the boat out, so it was like taut, right." "And the guy stepped off into nothing." "Where the jetty had been was now back there and now he stepped into the water, and he was gonna die, 'cause what happens is when the surge goes down, the boat's gonna come crashing back in again" "and it's gonna crush the guy up against the jetty." "The man wasn't having any of this." "He ran over and grabbed the guy's arm and pulled him out of the water and plonked him down on the jetty beside him." "Massive round of applause." "Huge, spontaneous round of applause." "I went, "Oh, my God, it's amazing." I Iooked at him, "That is incredible."" "And the guy went, "Nah, it was all right, I suppose."" "And I said, "Why is that not incredible?"" "And he went, "well, he was a prick."" "What're you gonna do?" "Where were we, ladies and gentlemen?" "Oh, yes, the 19-year-oId girls." "That's where I started." "No, no, no, here's a different situation, and a situation that's very common in my Iife, where I now find myself often in the company of women." "Just me and loads of women." "AII right?" "(CROWD WHOOPING)" "please, it's not what you think." "What's wrong with you people, with your dirty minds?" "Right." "No, it's me and mothers, right, and by which I mean, literally, mothers, rather than, "You fucking mother." Anyway, so..." "Okay, I'm sorry." "I've stumbled across a Iot of people who are into milfs in a huge way." "I'm sorry." "I spend, these days, every..." "I spend a load of my time, about 1 1 :00 in the morning, it's me and mother, mother, mother, mother, mother at these classes called Drum-a-rama or Jimma-Iimma ding-dong, all right." "These classes you got to with a toddler in order to tire the fucker out." "What's that?" "Didn't I mean to increase their coordination and social skills?" "No, tire the fucker out, so they'II sleep and you can drink some wine." "And when I go, it is literally me as the only grown-up male there and mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, and they look at you..." "Mothers look at you when you're the only man in a kind of, "What are you doing here" ""in our sacred mothering space with your penis?"" "obviously, implicitly with your penis, rather than, "What the fuck are you doing with your penis?" ""Put it away, for Christ's sake!" ""It's Drum-a-rama, they supply the drumsticks," ""there's no need to take that out."" "collectively, I have to say this, mummies are bitches." "They really are." "Oh, I'm sorry, I had a mother walk up to me once in a swimming lesson and go," ""You may not change with your daughter."" "I went, "How dare you?"" ""It's the most natural, normal thing for a father and a child to change together." ""Of course I'II change with my daughter." "There's nothing weird about it or wrong..." ""How dare you even imply that there's something wrong with that?"" "And the woman looked at me and went, "It's the woman's changing room."" "So I Iooked at her and went, "Who are you to place such structures" ""in a child's mind?" ""Why don't you and the other mummies just go back to the showers" ""and I'II just sit here and finish my cigar?"" "So I don't go to swimming lessons any more." "No, I now go to soft-pIay areas, which are these arenas which are specially built and all padded so the kids can run into things and not hurt themselves." "And then they run into each other." "And you're outside with some stranger parent and you have to do this real, "Ooh, ooh, ooh, are they okay?" ""Are they grand, are they okay, are they fine?" ""Are they all right?" "Oh, are they all right?"" "You know, "Oh, bit of rough and tumble doesn't do them any harm in the Iong run," ""a few tears now, it'II be fine." "It'II be grand, it'II be fine." ""It'II be grand."" "That's what you say, but on the inside, you're going," ""Boom!" "My kid's poned your kids."" "You turn into Don King of the bouncy castle." ""Get that loser out of here, who's next with my child?"" "I either go there or pet shops, which are, of course, a free zoo." "And people who work in pet shops know this, and they look at you going, "You're not gonna buy a thing, are you?"" "And you walk in, "No, I'm not buying a thing." "Ha-ha-ha!" ""Look at the fish." "Come on." "Go on, look at the fish for half an hour" ""'cause daddy's hung over to fuck." "So you look at the fish for a while" ""while I rest my head on a terrarium." (SNORING)" "Now, I'm aware that is actually slightly risky for a comedian to talk about these kind of topics, right." "These are the ones that actually kind of alienate people, 'cause a Iot of people, they're a certain age, they don't have kids, don't want to hear about this, right." "It can look mawkish or sentimental, and that's not what I'm trying to achieve." "And particularly, say..." "well, Iet's go very, very, very..." "You, you, you, you two there, right." "What age are you two?" "14." "And you?" "You're 14 as well." "Okay, grand." "Right, now, you are perfect, right, for these kind of things, because you're teenage boys. 14-year-oIds don't want to hear something about..." "I'm sorry, am I interrupting your recording illegally of my show?" "I loving the brazenness there." "Like, we have nine cameras, but you thought," ""No, the phone will capture the moment better" ""than any possible media production thing that we have."" "No, go for it, no, go for it." "I'd Iike to..." "You can run it as an extra." "Your view." "What's your name?" "Johnny." "Johnny, is it Johnny?" "Yeah, as an extra, "Johnny's view of the show", which is like that." "Just can't stay..." "Every time I Iook over, it'II go down, right." "No, Johnny, we'II use you as an ambassador for young men in the audience, right, just for a second, 'cause you don't want to hear stuff about babies, I know that." "I know that you don't wanna hear that." "That's not as rare an instinct as you might imagine." "How many people..." "This is a test I run every night." "How many people in this room think babies are cute?" "(WHOOPING)" "Okay." "How many people in this room think kittens and puppies are cute?" "(CROWD SHOUTING)" "Yep." "Every night, the kittens and the puppies win." "believe me, I've done this show 1 20 times, every night, the kittens..." "There's never even a debate, the kittens trounce babies." "There's something really fucked up on an evolutionary level." "We find the young of other species to be more appealing than the young of our own, right." "Not just kittens, not just puppies," "Iambs, ducklings, baby crocodiles." "If you're ever on a plane and an air hostess went," ""I'm afraid you will be sitting next to a baby", and you automatically go, "Oh, for fuck's sake." ""Oh, no." "Oh, come on." ""No, I do not need..." "It's my holiday as well." "No."" "And then she goes, "A baby crocodile."" "And you go, "Yay!"" "You'II be feeding it rashers all the way through the flight." ""Come on, Snappy, have a bit of bacon." "There you go." ""(EXCLAIMING) You little monkey, get down."" "It's just one of those things." "You know, we don't like them much." "Here's another thing." "I'm not gonna be sentimental about it, trust me, in any way." "In fact, I'II give this piece of advice:" "anyone here who doesn't have kids and who may have kids in the future, a little tip for you," "little habit you could break now, something that, trust me, you do this, you'II thank me for it in years to come." "Very, very simple." "Stop using the word "dirty" in a sexual context." "We've all done it, I'm not judging you." "We've all thrown the word in to add a bit of spice to a situation, sort of a frisson to a night, but it will rear up and bite you when you turn to your infant child and go, "Don't do that, that's dirty." ""Oh, you're a dirty girl." ""Look at you now..." "God, I can't believe I just said that to my own child." ""That is the creepiest thing I've ever done in my Iife." "That is horrible."" "It's a word that has a proper meaning." "A proper, genuine..." "Like naughty is another one as well." "These words and phrases have definite, proper meanings." "And when we subvert them for sexual reasons, we ruin them for when we really need them." "Dirty, naughty, and "Do what Daddy tells you"." "So, no, not sentimental." "But I might be slightly nerdy in the next little bit." "Is anyone here, are there any nerds in the room?" "(CROWD SHOUTING)" "Okay, loads of nerds." "Good stuff." "Don't fear us, non-nerds." "We're gentle folk." "I myself am a nerd." "I did a degree in Science a Iong time ago, right." "A degree I still get credit for on chat shows or on QI." "They go, "Oh, my God, you did a degree in Science."" "And I have to go, "Yes, I did." "Don't ask me any questions."" "Fucking a decade and a half ago." "I can't remember." "I mean, you can't keep trading on this stuff forever, right." "You'II know this if you've ever played five-a-side football." "If you ever play five-a-side football, there's always one bloke going," ""well, yeah, I had trials, semi-professionaIIy, when I was 14."" "And you go, "really?" "'Cause you're not 14 now, are you, ya fat prick?" ""You've kind of bulked out a bit in the Iast 25 years." ""At 14, well, you'd be useful, we could send him down the wings." ""But you've kind of, you know..." "Get in the nets and block shit." ""That's all you're good for now."" "But it does still, you know, get me angry about things like..." "For exampIe, the Iast show I did, right, I had a 10-minute routine about homeopathy and what a crock of shit homeopathy is, right." "I don't have any homeopathy jokes in this year's show, 'cause I feel if I dilute my homeopathic material, it'II become much more powerful." "If you got that, you're a nerd." "AII right." "welcome to the group." "Now, what got me angry this year and in the Iast couple of years, it's been to do with the babies, right." "'Cause the amount of quasi-scientific bullshit that's peddled at new parents, who don't know any better and are easily frightened, is shocking." "About when the child should sleep, or cry, or eat, or what they should play to it, and what you should play with them..." "It's a horrendous industry." "Even before the child is born, right." "Now, my two young friends." "hello, how are you?" "I'm going to talk about a thing called an antenatal class." "I'm taking a wild guess here that you don't know what that is." "Is that right?" "Now..." "You've a vague idea?" "You've seen it, maybe seen it in films, where there's like pregnant women, circle of pregnant women, and they're breathing, and..." "That's the one, that's an antenatal class." "In this part of the world, the classes are run by a charity called" "The national childbirth Trust, very commonly known by the abbreviation NCT." "little note for any comedians in the room, beware abbreviations - they can mean very different things in different countries." "In ireland, for example, NCT stands for national Car Test." "The Irish equivalent of the MOT." "I, Iike a fucking eejit, forgot that and walked out at the start of this tour and said," ""So, I brought my pregnant wife for an NCT."" "And the whole room recoiIed in horror, as if to go," ""Why would you do that?" "Why would you walk her into a garage and go," ""'Jesus, the handling is gone on this, she's all over the road." ""'Mind you, the headlamps are better than I've ever seen them." ""'Don't do anything with them."'" "Now, you don't do this course because of any of the information involved - you can get that on a load of different sources." "You do the course because you'II meet other new mothers." "And it is vital for new mothers having their first baby to have a network, a support structure of other new mothers also having their first babies at the same time in the area, so they can share with them their total lack of aggregate knowledge or experience." "It is like the rest of us having a computer helpdesk that we'd ring up and go," ""help, my computer's fucked." "That sounds terrible."" ""It is." "How are you?" "I'm all right." "Bye."" "That's the level of care they can offer each other, right." "The course, by the way, is also run by midwives." "Now, midwives are fabulous people who do wonderful jobs." "But some midwives are surprisingly political." "Some midwives think they're in a turf war... with doctors." "In a "Don't let the doctors near you" kind of a way." "'Cause some midwives seem to have mistaken doctors in their head for Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of fleet Street." "actual quote from a midwife:" ""Don't let the doctors near you with their knives."" "actual quote." "As if the process isn't scary enough, we're now thinking doctors are ready to lash out randomly in dark corridors." "The course is also taught in that tone, that tone that I can't stand." "(SOFTLY) "Okay, we're all here together." ""We're all just taking our first steps on an incredible journey of Iife."" "At one stage she goes, "No surnames, no job titles." ""What you do outside this room isn't important right now." ""We're all the same here." "We're just new parents" ""taking our first peek into a wide, new world." ""Try to ignore the large, bald man off the telly" ""sitting in the corner of the room," ""openly taking notes for use in a future routine."" "It was all I couId do to keep sane." "She would do things like..." "She handed out a homeopathy kit, you know, for labour pains, and it came round to me, and I went," ""Oh, ingredients: water." "That'II be handy when you're screaming your face off."" "I imagine all that screaming probably dries your throat out a bit, right?" "And then she gets to some of the genuine science." "My two young friends here, for example, there's a hormone in a woman's body called oxytocin, right." "Oxytocin is a hormone released during lovemaking and is also the hormone that regulates labour, right." "The woman is talking about this and she says," ""Oxytocin," she says..." ""Oxytocin is best released" ""in a quiet, dimIy-Iit," ""nurturing environment," ""where there are no loud noises" ""or sharp sounds."" "You're going, "It's not a fucking badger."" "She goes further." "She says the production of oxytocin will halt, will halt, if your partner has to answer any difficult questions," "or make any decisions, or perform any rational thought." "And we're all sitting there going, "well, that sounds handy, doesn't it?"" "If you go into labour in a shopping centre or up a mountain," ""Oh, God, I've gone into labour."" ""Pop quiz." "Oh, fuck, it stopped." "Nice work."" "presumably you can stave off labour using only a Nintendo DS and a copy of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training Regime." "And then she gets to a major issue." "Oh, lads, lads, lads, lads, lads." "You'II know nothing about this." "I'm gonna say something here that you will never heard of before in your life." "Never heard of this." "But when I say it, watch out for this." "When I say something in about a minute's time, every woman in this room is gonna make a noise." "Every one of you will make this noise." "And I'm not proud of this noise I'm about to make you make." "It's not a good noise I'm gonna make you do." "But there's good stuff just beyond the noise, there's gold." "But there's a noise barrier and you've got to make the noise to get through that barrier, right." ""During the process, there is a point where a decision may have to be made..."" "(IN NASAL TONE) I cannot apologise enough." ""Between a tear and a cut."" "(AUDIENCE EXCLAIMING)" "There's the noise." "There's the noise I've heard 1 20 times so far in this tour." "The noise and also the hands." "If it's any comfort to you, there are two 14-year-oIds who haven't a clue what just happened, who are sitting in the front row going," ""What, do they have to cut them out of their jeans?" "Is that what happens there?"" "We get to this important point and the woman's discussing it, and in her fuII-on, "Don't let the doctors near you" way, she goes," ""obviously," she says, "you should chose the natural path."" "Which is a debatable point, right?" "But to back up this stance, to back this up, unbelievably she goes, "Besides which," she says," ""Besides which," ""a tear heals better than a cut."" "(AUDIENCE EXCLAIMING)" "I'm loving you for that sound." "Yes." "That's exactly the sound we made at the time of," ""Huh?" "What, that sounds..." ""What?" "That sounds counterintuitive at best."" "I turned to my wife, who is a surgeon." "although not allowed to say it." "I said, "really?"" "And she goes, "No, it fucking doesn't."" ""That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my Iife." ""What does she think we've been doing for the Iast 250 years?"" "I said, "well, do you want to correct her on this?"" ""If I correct her on this, I've got to correct her on everything she said" ""for the Iast day and a half." ""Let's just get the email addresses and get out of here, all right?"" "A friend of mine summed it up brilliantly." "A mate of mine, himself and his wife had just been to the whole thing, and I was talking to him a few days later, and I said to him," ""Oh, my God, she said an incredible thing." ""She said a tear heals better than a cut."" "And your man goes, "Oh, yes!" "Oh, yes!" ""That's very well known now." ""In fact, most surgeons these days, for the initial incision," ""will use a bear."" "There's an image to get out of your heads." "This..." ""Dr Bear to Theatre Three." "(GROWLING)" "(WHOOSHING)" ""What are we doing today?" "Appendectomy." "Stand back."" "(TEARING) "Goodbye."" "(GROWLING)" ""Oh, Dr Bear, are you going back to the mess now?" ""Yes, maybe my porridge has cooled down by now."" "(GROWLING)" "There's a question." "There's a question." "Apropos of nothing, but how, how, how, do you cook porridge in one pot, on one ring, on one stove, then dole it out into three separate bowls and it goes to three different temperatures." "How exactly does that happen?" "Somebody explain to me the physics of that situation." "I'm not getting it, right." "Mummy bear, your porridge is cold." "Why are you going for a walk?" "It's not gonna heat up while you're wandering round the woods." "Your child's porridge is the right temperature." "Let him eat his breakfast." "Just 'cause Daddy bear, Mr Doctor Daddy bear, is going," ""Oh, it burns my mouth." well, blow on it, you prick." "blow on it, for Christ's sake, or put milk into it." "That's what we do with hot porridge." "We don't go for a walk every time." "That's how we get all these burglaries all the time." "And another thing." "How do you construct a wooden chair, Mr Handyman?" "tell me this, Mr Handyman." "How do you construct a wooden chair that will take the weight of a baby bear, a big, roIy-poIy baby bear, and then the minute a small, blonde girl tries to sit on it, the thing collapses under her weight." "And another thing." "How do they even have a baby bear, given that he won't go into her bed 'cause it's too soft?" ""Come over here, Mummy bear."" ""I will not." "It's too hard."" ""It's not the only thing that's too hard." "Get over here now!"" "Sorry." "I'm sorry." "Let's go back to the room." "We're in the quiet room with the midwife and all of the couples, right, and then a thing happens, and this is word for word the way it happens." "I Iove this story." "Every time I tell this story, 1 20 times now," "I can see his face." "I can see his face, right." "So we're in the room with the midwife and she does quite a clever thing, where she reads out a list of all the physical changes that will occur in a women's body over the course of the pregnancy." "So that the women there can go, "Ah, that happened to me,"" "or (GASPS) "That happened to me", and it'II demystify them." "She goes through her list." "She goes, "Some of you," ""some of you may have experienced" ""constipation."" "And in the corner of the room, one man raised his hand." "And it's better than you think, 'cause we all went, "What the fuck!"" "Even the midwife went, "What the fuck!"" "And your man goes, "We've had that."" "If you can imagine her face, the look of, "We?" "I don't think we had that." ""We've shouldered many burdens together over the Iast eight and a half months," ""but, frankly, constipation wasn't one of them."" "We all just about recover and a minute or two later she's going through the list, and she goes, "Some of you," she says," ""some of you may have experienced" ""sore nipples."" "Up his arm goes again." "No one can look." "Everyone's going, "Don't look." "Don't look at that." ""That is the funniest thing that has ever happened." ""That man's nipples are sore because his wife is pregnant." ""Look at your shoes, look at your shoes." "Don't fucking look." ""I will die laughing if I Iook at that man." ""earnestly, with his sore tits because his wife is pregnant." ""Oh, my God, that is the funniest thing that has ever happened."" "Me, I'm checking me nipples." "I'm just seeing if I'm one of the lucky ones." "I've dodged a bullet." "I'm all right." "I'm saying to me wife, "This is actually quite pleasant." ""This might get me through the labour, to be honest."" "And we're all going, "Oh, God, do another one." ""Do another one, do another one, do another one."" "'Cause we know this game is about to end." "We're about to break for lunch." "It's like 1 2:30 on the first day." "When we break for lunch, that couple are not coming for lunch with any of the rest of us." "She's dragging him away to the farthest cafe she can find, getting the rustiest fork she can find and ramming into his thigh and going," ""Nobody else was sharing information about their partner's arse or tits." ""Why are you telling them this stuff?" ""You better zippity, zippity for the rest of the weekend."" "We're going, "Oh, do one more, do one more, do one more."" "And your woman only has one or two on the list." "She's almost at the end of her list, and she goes, "Some of you... (GRUNTING)" ""Some of you may have experienced" ""unusual discharge."" "And the whole room just went, "Hmm?"" "And just as his arm went, she went," ""Fucking zippity, zippity." "Fucking shut up." "Shut up."" "genuinely..." "I have met him since." "It kills me." "Er, sorry..." "Okay, we're off the biology." "Young men, we're off the biology." "We're just on to the culture now, right." "We're off the ickiness, right." "If you have a child, this is the thing that everyone says," ""Oh, you're having a child?" "(GASPS) You'II have no time." ""Oh, you'II have no time." "Oh, God, no, you'II have to give up..." ""You'II have to give up so much, you'II have no time any more."" "people say this to you Iike it's a sacrifice." "It's not a sacrifice, all right." "We got too much shit at the moment." "Too much culture, too much content, too much stuff to keep across, right." "I had a night in not long ago." "This may have happened to any of you." "child asleep, wife out, house to meself." ""What'II I do?" "What'II I do?" "well, I'II watch a bit of sport." ""I've got 14 sports channels." ""There's bound to be a match or a tournament or a game" ""or something I can have a look at." ""I got the house to meself, I'II watch a movie." "I got 20 movie channels." ""And besides which, I'm always buying DVDs." ""Let's look at the DVDs I've bought and never watched." "(GASPS) "A box set of a TV series." "I haven't seen the end of this" ""'cause I watched a couple of episodes..." ""So, what am I doing?" "The stuff's saved onto the Sky+ box." ""There's 200 channels being pumped live into the house," ""there's bound to be something to watch." "No, I won't watch, I'II play." ""I've got three consoles and guitars, and wobble boards, and all sorts of guns..." ""No, I won't play." "I'II listen." "I'II listen to some music." ""I'm always buying CDs." "I never listen to all this music."" "shall I go online, to Spotify?" "I can listen to all the music in the world." ""I'II go online." "I'II go to Facebook or Twitter." "I'II read a book!" ""I'm always buying books." "I never can keep on with a book."" "In the end I watched the Iast hour of Robocop." "Faced with all of the world's culture," "I panicked and just fell into a fetal position and went back to me childhood again, right." "There's too much stuff." "And do you know what's irritating?" "Often the same stuff over and over again." "I'm in a battle with the film I Am Legend." "I Am Legend is your typical "meh" blockbuster." "You know, you watch it for 90 minutes and then go, "Meh!" Right?" "But sold to us across a million formats, sold to us repeatedly, sold in the cinemas, then on DVD, then on BIu-ray, on the movie channels, then on the terrestrial channels." "also downloadable for the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad." "You can also download it for the Xbox 360 and the PS3, on a small disc for the PSP." "You can also get it..." "I was travelling last year, every plane I was on and every hotel I arrived at," "I Am poxy Legend was being pitched at me." "Everywhere for a year, I couldn't get away from the film." "This is the irony." "It's a film about the Iast remaining man on Earth." "And still the fucker can't leave me alone for five minutes." "He's got the entire planet to run around, and everywhere I go, "I'm a legend." "Here's me dog." ""I'm a legend." "I'm a legend." "Come here, play with me."" "I expect to be stuck in traffic and for my satnav to go," ""Traffic is very heavy at the moment." ""would you Iike to watch a bit of I Am Legend?"" "No!" "And it's not just blockbusters." "Stuff we didn't even need." "Ten years ago, right, mouthwash." "Mouthwash is a product we didn't even need ten years ago." "It is currently on sale from Listerine..." "It is currently on sale in supermarkets in this country in six types of mint." "Name a type of mint." "WOMAN:" "Spearmint." "Spearmint." "Yeah, spearmint didn't make the cut." "Spearmint wasn't one of the mints that did it." "Name another type of mint." "Peppermint." "Peppermint didn't make the cut either." "cool mint did." "These new bullshit mints." "cool Mint, Fresh Mint, clear Mint." "I bought all six and I racked them up in front of myself like a taste test." "For the purpose of this show." "Trust me, you go any direction and any permutation, they're all pretty much mint, right." "And you've a moment of realisation when you go," ""What am I doing?" "It's a mouthwash." ""You use this immediately after you've brushed your teeth." ""Everything tastes of mint immediately after you've brushed your teeth." ""Fruit, chocolate, chilli, tarmacadam, a vagina." ""They all taste of mint."" "obviously the key word is "immediately"." "I keep a tube by the bed." "Okay." "Anyway, so you have finally an opportunity to walk away from all this choice, this tsunami of choice that we have culturally, 'cause if you've got a kid, you can go, "I'm out of the game." ""I'm out of the game." "I don't have time to keep up with this." "I'm gone."" "First thing to go, right, first major cultural movement I just dropped, was new music." "New music, I've gone." "I couldn't give a damn about new music." "Fuck you, Zane Lowe." "Fuck you and everyone else on Radio 1 going," ""You got to listen to this twingetty twing-twing." "Yeah, twang, twing, twang."" "Fuck you, right." "Fuck Pixie, Gaga Boots, whatever you're called." "florence and the Mechanics, good luck to you, right." "You fight it out amongst yourselves, become classic hits, I'II hear you eventually, all right." "I spent a quarter of a century just forced to keep up with this stuff." "I'm out of the game." "It is like throwing off a heavy coat." "And you know what?" "It's also good to be out of music snobbery as well, to go, "Nah, I'm not part of this."" "Music snobbery is the worst kind of snobbery." ""Oh, you Iike those noises?" "Those sounds in your ear?" ""Do you Iike them?" "They're the wrong sounds." ""You should like these sounds in your ear, right."" "It forces people who like something a bit mainstream, Iike a bit of pop," "like a bit of girls aloud or Take That or a bit of Abba, you know, to have to go, (GASPS) "They're my guilty pleasure."" "I hate that phrase, right." "It is an insult to top-quaIity pop." "It is also an insult to guilt." "I might be an atheist now, but I did my time with the catholic Church." "I learnt a Iot about guilt, and it needed a Iot more than," ""Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight"" "to merit the phrase "guilty..." You had to have the man after midnight, then you can talk about guilt." "If you've got a guilty pleasure, Iet it be something you genuinely feel guilty about." "You know what my actual guilty, my genuine guilty pleasure is?" "I Iike to use a crowded tube train to touch women." "It feels wrong, but it feels right." "That's practically the definition of a guilty pleasure." "It's particularly good if you can make it seem like it's their fault." ""Ah, what are you doing?" "Jeez." "Buy me dinner next time, honey."" "I don't do that, all right." "Don't walk away thinking..." "I don't, I don't." "I just smell them, all right." "That's okay, isn't it?" "They don't own the air. (INHALING)" ""What are you doing?" "I'm asthmatic."" ""Maybe."" "Come back." "The smell of warmth." "No, new music gone." "Do you know what else went?" "Movies." "Movies went as well." "This is the weirdest thing for me." "I used to love movies." "My two young friends over here, 14 and 15..." "You're still filming!" "I'm loving the way you're still filming this." "We've got to get this stuff and stick it on the DVD somewhere." "You know there may be a point where you're physically removed from there." "So we may need another 14-year-oId to sit there for the retakes, for where the guy who couldn't stop pirating, even though it was repeatedly pointed out to him, "Don't pirate."" ""I can't stop myself." "I've got to tape it." "I've got to tape it." ""I'm even blanking out earlier bits I taped." ""It's just a compulsion to see the thing ticking over." ""I'm deleting beloved family memories." ""I've got to have this show on tape."" "It's recorded for a DVD." "How could you not..." "You can watch it glossy and live and shiny with your own face in it." "That's how much better the version on DVD..." "You're in the one we're selling in the shops." "That's got to be better than the one you're gonna record now!" "I love it!" "And I know the minute I talk to you, he's got it out again, hasn't he?" "He's taken it out again." "I know, I know." "It's ridiculous." "Anyway." "The thing is, that was the best bit to record and you've chickened out for that bit?" "That was definitely the bit to have." "Anyway, where were we?" "Right." "No, if you were only..." "At your age..." "Sorry, technical question." "Have you seen The Godfather yet?" "You haven't." "Have you seen Dog Day Afternoon yet?" "Dog Day Afternoon?" "Does it ring any bells?" "Have you seen Taxi Driver yet?" "Oh, man, you've got stuff ahead of you." "The two of you have got such gold ahead of you." "Incredible movies that you have to watch." "It's gonna be brilliant." "You're gonna love it." "And there's so many of them." "1970s American independent movies, 1990s American independent movies, 1980s French and Continental movies..." "Then, of course, you get to 38 and you've seen them." "And you're stuck with just a giant shiny robot flinging Megan Fox through a Styrofoam wall, right." "And it kind of doesn't measure up really, you know." "You're kind of going..." "And 3D." "Ask my arse 3D, right." "I'm sorry." "Here's my take on 3D, right." "They tried in the '50s, they tried in the '80s, they're trying in 2010." "Once every 30 years." "It's like tuberculosis." "It flares up once a generation." "You have to zap it with some antibiotics and get on with your lives." "That's what you have to do, right?" "Don't get me wrong." "Awatar." "Ooh, Avatar, what a premise." "(GASPS)" "It picks up where Titanic left off." "In as much as half the cast are blue." "Anyway, no, here's the movie that sums up movies at the moment for me." "I want you to come with me, 'cause I guarantee the majority won't have seen this film." "Incredible film, but you won't have seen it, right." "It was a film come out last year, it was called 2012." "Now, how many of you haven't seen 2012?" "Okay, right, a good number of you." "Right." "2012 is an apocalypse movie." "Was an apocalypse end of..." "Like a disaster movie." "Was the most insane, over-the-top, ludicrously apocalyptic movie." "Entire cities tilted and fell into lava." "It was just ridiculous, you know." "obviously you didn't see us dying, right?" "That's one of the things about American disaster movies." "You know you're dead somewhere in that movie, but you never see it, right." "You just see the hollywood sign and the New York skyline and they're all destroyed." "You never actually see us." "I think you could IocaIise them now." "You know you could put a thing in when the DVD comes out." "You know when you put a DVD in the first time and it asks you the language you want, Iike english, Francais, Suomi." "And you're always tempted to click on Suomi, you know, to see what "play" is in Suomi." "But you're afraid you'II get trapped in an extras menu in Suomi and not be able to navigate your way back out again." "So, you chicken out, and you press english, right." "They could do that." "You could say, "I'm watching it in..."" "scroll, scroll, scroll, "London", right." "And then you'd forget about it." "But an hour and a half later, there'd just be a scene where a bloke runs in and goes," ""TrafaIgar Square is fucked."" "And then runs out again." "It's one of those." "By the way, that line I do everywhere." "In every town, I change it for a local landmark." "This is the toughest town to do it in." "Because for the simple reason, if I go, "Leicester Square is fucked!", a London crowd just go, "Yeah, it is, really." "They really have."" ""They've just let it go down so terribly." "Yes."" "Anyway, it's a ludicrously over-the-top disaster movie, it is hilarious in its over-the-top-edness." "No plot!" "No plot!" "Just John Cusack running away from lava for two and a half hours." "And always just slightly ahead of the lava." ""Oh, God, lava." "Oh, Jesus, lava." "Quick, get into the car."" "He drove off, the lava sped up." "Then he gets into a plane, the lava accelerates again." "After an hour and a half of this brinkmanship, you're going," ""Jesus, John, I'm spotting a pattern here, right." ""Why don't you hold still for a minute and see what the lava does then?" ""will it come up to you and go," ""'Oh, Jesus, he's called our bluff." "Quick, get back down the hole." ""We can go, we can go." "He's stopped."" "It's the most ludicrous..." "They destroy everything." "And it's all on the screen and you're going," ""Oh, my God, if you destroyed everything, there must be a reason..." ""You must have sat down with geologists, or cosmoIogists, or meteorologists," ""to come with some justification for the greatest apocalypse that we've ever seen."" "No." "There's one line in one scene at the start of the movie to explain the entire apocalypse." "And it's not even repeated to or alluded to, just one line, right." "I'm now going to do this." "This is why you have to come with me a bit 'cause you wouldn't have seen this." "But I will make the scene come alive." "It's India." "It's a monsoon." "A man arrives, clearly in a hurry." "He's wearing a suit, he's got a small bag, he's rushed to be here." "He's a scientist, he's meeting another scientist, and he goes," ""I came as soon as you called."" "The other guy in a white coat goes, "We've had some incredible results."" "At which point this bloke should have gone," ""well, why didn't you email them to me like we normally do in science these days?" ""Why instead did you compel me to fly from Washington to India?" ""I've been on nine aeropIanes, I've watched I Am Legend 14 times."" "But he doesn't say that." "He goes, "Oh, my God, what are they?"" "And this bloke delivers the greatest line in the history of cinema." "Some of you won't get this immediately, but, trust me, I will explain it." "This guy, a physicist, turns to the other physicist, and, without any shame or compunction, goes," ""The neutrinos have mutated."" "Now, for the non-nerds here, neutrinos are tiny, sub-atomic, really, really almost mass-Iess particles." "They're released in nuclear breakdowns, Iike in the sun, for example." "500 trillion of them pass through your bodies every second." "They can't mutate." "Their structure is fundamental to the structure of the universe, right." "They can't just change." "He might as well have gone, "The electrons are angry."" "Or, "The light from the sun, it's gone off."" "That's how fucking ludicrous it is, right." "But he doesn't do this, he goes, "The neutrinos have mutated." ""And they're heating up the planet."" "At which point this bloke should have gone, "What the fuck are you saying?" ""What sort of shit physicist are you?" ""What crappy CaIcutta university spat you out with a fucking degree?" ""The neutrino..." "What the..." ""Did you not ask one of the blokes to check your figures?" ""Then he would have given you a slap in the chops" ""and told you not to get some guy to fly from Washington" ""in a monsoon with no change of underwear," ""to tell me about the fucking neutrinos." "You're a fucking eejit."" "He doesn't deliver this speech." "Instead he goes, "Oh, my God!"" "And runs away from lava for two and a half hours." "And it's never mentioned again." "This, the most incredible thing that's ever happened in the history of science, is never mentioned again." "people don't even go, when they're running away from the lava," "(SCREAMS) "Why?" They don't even think to ask." "They just run and scream, and do or die, right." "Even at the end of the movie." "I know you're thinking, "End of the movie." "spoiler alert."" "I can't spoil it." "They're on a boat, there's a new dawn." "They've all survived." "Everyone in the cinema got up and walked out." "I was the only eejit in the Curzon in Leicester Square with me arm up going," ""(EXCLAIMS) What happened to the fucking neutrinos?"" "A week ago they had mutated and were heating up the planet." "How did that change all of a sudden?" "That was the most amazing thing to have happened in physics." "Did it happen twice in eight days?" "Did they send a note going, "Sorry about last week." ""Boss was giving me a bit of grief at work." ""Wife was nagging me, I lashed out." ""Mutated, heated up your planet." "Won't happen again." "Yours, the Neutrinos."" "How exactly did that threat go away?" "And then you're going, if you're just gonna make shit up, if you're just gonna suspend all logic, then go for it." "Jesus, go for it, right." "If you're just gonna go wild, then go wild." "With the tiniest of changes, you could have a genuinely amazing movie." "Same opening scene." "Rain, man, suit, bag." ""I came as soon as you called."" "Other guy goes, "We've had some incredible results."" "This guy goes, "What are they?"" "If at that stage, with the tiniest of changes, this bloke had just gone," ""The Latinos have mutated," ""and they're heating up the planet."" "Now, there's a movie." "Two and a half hours of running away from gloria Estefan." "(CHUGGING)" ""Oh, no, the rhythm is gonna get me."" ""Quick."" ""Quick, get into the car." (IMITATING CAR ENGINE)" ""Who's that in the rear view mirror?" "It's Ricky Martin."" "(HUMMING)" "AII over the world, mariachi bands erupting out of the Earth's core." "(VOCALISING)" "And the ending." "Oh!" "The ending would be the greatest ending in the history of cinema." "They're on the boat, it's a new dawn." "They've survived the Latino apocalypse of 2012." "John Cusack looks at his wife with love in his eyes and she looks at him with love in her eyes, then mounting horror as she raises up her arms and she realises she's got giant, multicoloured, ruffled sleeves on" "and a set of maracas in her hands, and she just goes," ""tequila!"" "And John Cusack goes, "No!"" "The End." "Now, that's a fucking movie I'd pay money to watch." "But they don't make them like that any more." "However, in case you think I'm just being overly negative," "I'm dropping music, I'm dropping movies." "There is an art form I'm keeping." "There is an entertainment industry I am supporting and continuing to support." "And I'm going to say this." "half of the people who will shout in response and half of the people who don't, who'II be like a bit, "Oh, for God's sake, Dara."" "This is the industry: video games." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "hello to the gamers." "hello to the non-gamers who are going, "You're kidding me."" "Yes, yes, I know it's supposed to be embarrassing." "I know I shouldn't admit to it." "I know this because if I'm at a dinner party and somebody goes, "Dara, how do you relax after a gig?", it's less embarrassing if I go, "I masturbate to hardcore pornography."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "'Cause once you've got past that line, the conversation is exactly the same." ""Oh, I've not done that since I was a teenager." ""Oh, you should check it out, it's really moved on since then."" "The graphics alone are unrecognisable and you have to use all ten fingers." "This is my argument for why video games are the winners, are the greatest of all these industries, right." "Video games do a thing that no other industry does." "You cannot be bad at watching a movie." "You cannot be bad at listening to an album." "But you can be bad at playing a video game." "And the video game will punish you and deny you access to the rest of the video game." "No other art form does this." "You've never been reading a book and, three chapters in, the book has gone," ""What are the major themes of the book so far?"" "(STUTTERING) I don't know." "Oh, for fuck sakes!" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "You've never been listening to an album, and after four songs the album has gone," ""Dance, dance, show me your dancing is good enough to merit this."" "And you go, "Is this good enough?" And the album goes, "No" and stops." "No other art form, but video games do it all the time." "I'II give you an example." "A famous game came out a couple of years ago." "A very controversial game, Grand Theft Auto IV." "A Iot of people have played that." "Very controversial game 'cause you could drag people into an alleyway and shoot them in the head." "I never got to that bit." "I got stuck on the bit you had to steal a car and drive across the city and assassinate a guy in a train station." "But the fucker kept running away." "So I had to steal the car again and drive all the way back again, but you couldn't drive quickly 'cause there's a toll booth in the middle of the route and I had to slow up at the toll booth and pay the toll." "Trust me, six or seven attempts of this, you're in your front room in your pants going," ""I'm in fucking traffic." ""I'm on my day off and I'm commuting." ""What kind of a eejit am I?" "How am I wasting my Iife here?"" "If I lived in Liberty City, I'd buy a flat near the guy I had to assassinate and I'd fucking walk to work." "There are these games called Guitar Hero and Rock Band, where you get a fuII-sized plastic guitar, and you can play along, "Whoo-hoo!" "Yeah!" "Whoo-hoo!"" "And you can play along to your favourite rock song, "Yeah!"" ""Red, blue, blue, red." "blue, red, blue, blue, red." ""Oh, difficult, this:" "blue and red, blue and red."" "(SCREAMING)" "And you buy them because at the back of the box it names the songs you can play along to." "One of them, I remember, said Sabotage by the Beastie Boys." "And I went, "Oh, God, I Iove Sabotage by the Beastie Boys." ""I can't wait to play Sabotage by the Beastie Boys." "I wanna play some of it."" "But you can't just play Sabotage by the Beastie Boys because it's song number 85 in the game." "So, you have to play the preceding 84 songs to unlock Sabotage by the Beastie Boys." "And trust me, round about the mid-40s you're playing Maps by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and other shite you've never heard of." "And you'II be in the same pants, in the same front room, going," ""Red, blue, blue." "I am fucking wasting my Iife here, yes."" "And the game purists go, "No, you have to unlock it." ""That's the way the game works."" "And you go, "Yeah, I'm 38." "I unlocked it in a shop with a credit card." ""Give me my fucking content."" "And they go, "No, no, no, this is the music industry." ""This mimics the music." "You've got to work your way slowly up the music industry," ""song by song, until you can get to the top and play the songs you want."" "And you're going, "Yeah, it's the music industry?" ""You can always suck a little cock to get to where you want to get" ""in the music industry."" "Why don't they simply put in a cheat level?" "Where you take the top off the guitar, pop the shaft into your mouth..." "Red, blue, blue, red." "Red, blue, red, blue, red and blue, red and blue, red and blue." "Mmm, there we go." "Right, Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, anyone?" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "I asked who was a gamer." "Who plays with the Wii?" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "That doesn't count." "This is a Wii game." ""Ooh, I'm stroking a pony."" "That's a Wii game." ""Ooh, I'm feeding sugar cubes to a unicorn." "It's going to poo out rainbows" ""that I can paint onto Mario's house."" "That's not gaming." "This is gaming." ""Oh, my God, I'm in a gun battle." "Which one of these isn't crouch?"" "Every game involves crouching." "You're always behind a little wall or you're behind an oil barrel." "You're always crouching." "But they put the crouch button in different places on different games." "And you get panicked in the middle of a space-marine laser battle and you're just pressing any button at all." "And before you know it, your soldier is just waddIing around the battle fields." "Just looking up at you, going, "Press anything." "Anything!" ""Not toggle maps!"" "There's a game called metal Gear solid and you play a character called Snake." "And when Snake dies, the camera pulls cinematicaIIy up from him and the man that Snake has been speaking to on his comms unit goes," "(DRAMATICALLY) "Snake!" "Snake!" "Snake!"" "Every time he dies." "When I play as Snake, he dies a Iot." "But the man's sadness seems undiminished by the regularity with which he has to mourn Snake." "You'd think once or twice he'd just go, "Ah, Snake."" "You'd think there'd be a sort of debriefing session where they go," ""Jesus, Mick, you were very fucked off about the death of Snake, weren't you?"" ""well, he's one of the best agents we've ever had."" ""He was not, Mick." "We've looked back over the mission logs." ""His behaviour in the field was erratic at best."" ""He spent most of his time" ""just waddIing around the battlefield for no fucking reason." ""He'd just be waddling into corridors, he didn't know where to go." ""He'd be toggling maps, then weapons, then items." ""Then items, then weapons, then maps." ""He tried to put his maps into his items and his weapons into his items." ""He had to get behind that." "He couldn't get behind it." ""He kept running at it." "He kept running at it repeatedly." ""He ran at it once, he missed it." ""He had to run around again in a little circle." ""He tried jumping at it." "Tried jumping at it." ""Then he tried touching it, touching it." ""Then jump and touch, jump and touch, jump and touch." ""Jump, crouch and touch." "Then he looked up." ""Then he hit it with a crowbar, then looked down." ""Then dropped the crowbar, picked up the crowbar." ""Weapons, items, items, weapons." "Items, weapons, weapons, items." ""Crouch, no crouch, crouch, no crouch, crouch, no crouch." ""Weapons, items, crouch, crouch." ""Then a robot attacked him, he gave him his fucking rations." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" ""The worst agent we've ever had."" "Fucking hell." "Some routines have a natural finale, a punchline." "Others just end when the comedian gets exhausted, jumping at an imaginary piece of video-game scenery." "And well aware that maybe 25-30% of the people in this room have spent the Iast five minutes going," ""Jump, crouch, touch?" "What is he talking about?" ""The man's a fucking idiot." "What the fuck, he's not even making sense any more."" "Sometimes you can see a big group of young people... (MIMICKING LAUGHTER)" "And then, Iike a meerkat, there'II be a middIe-aged person going, "What the fuck are you all laughing at?" ""You're mad." "You're off your head." "Jump, crouch, touch?" ""Is this supposed to be comedy?" "Is this what passes for comedy now?"" "I know." "I get angry myself." "Listen, I got one more story and then I gotta go." "AUDIENCE:" "Aw!" "You're very kind." "I say, "I gotta go,"" "I'm going to walk to there, turn round, come back out again." "AII right?" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "I'm not doing the encore thing, 'cause this is London." "I'd get behind that thing, you'II go, "Right, Oyster card, we're out, right."" "You'II have already swiped in by the time I get behind that door." "I'II be sitting behind there going, "Oh, come on, come on." ""Ask me back, I've got something prepared." "Come on, ask me back."" "I'II turn round, empty room." "Oh, yawn, stretch, Sunday morning, right." "So I don't even disappear from view." "It's appalling to watch." "I just walk to there, turn, swivel, back out again." "It's amazing." "You'II see it in a second." "Three stories, three stories, right." "These stories are linked by how you're perceived for this job, right." "At the start of the year, right," "I was starting this tour and I was in dublin, right." "And I got into the back of a taxi, right, in dublin." "It was a local bloke." "I said to him the name of the theatre I was going to." "A place called Vicar Street in dublin." "I said the name of the theatre." "The taxi driver turned, looked at me, and goes, "Oh, Jesus, you're that bloke from england."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Right." "And I went, "I'm not from..." "I'm from 10 miles down the road."" "And your man goes, "I know, I know."" "I said, "well, why did you say, 'You're that bloke from england'?"" "He looks at me and goes, "Jesus," ""you're a Iot more cheerful on the telly, aren't you?"" ""You win this one."" "Then I arrive at the theatre and my mother rings me, right, from ireland, and she says, "I was talking to Mary today."" "I said, "Who's Mary?" She goes, "You know Mary."" "I said, "Who's Mary?"" ""Ah, you know Mary, Mary." "You know Mary, you know Mary." ""You know Mary." "Mary from the club." ""Oh, you know." "You know." "Oh, you know Mary."" "I said, "Mam, I don't know who Mary is." ""What the fuck did you say to Mary?"" "And she says, "Mary," she says, "has a daughter called Mary."" "Right." "Anyway, true story, but..." "She said, "She's doing," my mother says," ""She's doing a speech for a head-girI election." ""And I told her you'd write her some jokes for the speech."" "And I had to explain to my mother, A, I'm in the middle of writing a show myself." "I don't have time to do freelance work for Mary, right." "But more than that, I don't think the stuff that I'm writing at the moment is particularly suitable for a 17-year-oId girl who is about to do a speech to her school, right." "So, I say to you, girls of Loreto's college here," "I say to you, oh, why doesn't somebody put in a cheat level where you take the top off the guitar, pop the shaft into your mouth..." "Red, blue, blue, red, blue, blue." "Mmm, there we go." "Right, Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, anyone?" "And further, further, girls of the sixth form here in Loreto," "I say this to you, everything tastes of mint immediately after you've brushed your teeth." "Fruit, chocolate, chilli..." "You can do the rest of the list yourselves." "No, the story I'm going to tell you is one that I quite enjoyed bringing home, right, 'cause this happened three miles from here down in Chiswick, right." "This genuinely happened in Chiswick last year." "I'm sitting having lunch." "I just finished lunch, actually." "And a woman walks up to me and taps me on the shoulder and goes, "Are you the bloke off Mock the Week?"" "I said, "I am."" "And she goes, " would you do me a favour?" And I said, "I'd be delighted to." Right?" "And then she genuinely goes, "I've just made somebody redundant." ""So I was thinking you could come over, crack a few jokes and cheer us all up."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Not a word of a lie, right." "I went, "Why would I do that?"" "And the woman goes, "well, the way I figure it, that way for her" ""it wouldn't be 'The day I was made redundant'," ""it'd be 'The day I met the guy off Mock the Week. "'" "And I went, "It'II still be the day she was made redundant." ""I'm not a hypnotist, she's not gonna forget that." ""I'm not even going to be 50-50 with that." ""She's not going to go home and her husband's going to go, 'How was work?" "'" ""And she'II go, 'Ah, good and bad.'" ""Why would I do that?"" "And the woman genuinely looked at me and went, "It's your job."" "And it was all I couId do to go," ""Whoa, there are many reasons I didn't go into HR." ""And probably the most compelling was," ""I didn't want my job to be, 'Quick!" "We've got a weeper." ""'Get Coco.'" ""And I kept thwacking out in me big, red shoes." ""Hey, hey, hey, hey!" ""Let's turn that frown upside down." ""Giraffe!"" ""It's not me fucking job."" "I said, "Where's this poor woman sitting?" Expecting her to go, "Oh, she's over there."" "I said, "Where's this poor woman sitting?" And she went, "She's there."" "I turned around and there was a crying woman." "Oh, yeah." "Oh, she'd heard the entire conversation." "So, now, not only was it the day she was made redundant, as a little bonus, as a little cherry on top of that particularly repugnant cake," "it was the day she found out that the guy from Mock the Week was a prick." "So now I have to go over, right." "I'm looking at the HR woman going, "Okay, Iet's go over." "Ha!" "Let's go over!"" ""I'm going to fucking kill you." (FAKING LAUGHTER)" "So, we go over, I sit down." "Me there, crying woman here," "HR woman here." "Me looking at crying woman going," ""(SNIFFLING) You don't want to be here." "I know you don't want to be here..."" "I go, "I don't know why I'm here." "I don't know, I don't know."" "I'm trying not to cry myself." "And then this woman was going, "Oh, my God."" "And I went, "Okay, listen," I said to her," ""This is a terrible day." "This is an awful day." ""Nothing I say is going to make this not an awful day." ""But there might be one small thing, one tiny up-side," ""one silver lining to this cloud, one good thing."" "And she looked at me and said, "What?" "What's the good thing about today?"" "And I said, "You will never have to work with this bitch again."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Ladies and gentlemen, it was nice to talk to you." "I will walk off." "Oh, thank you very much." "Oh, thank you very much." "Oh, you're very kind!" "Oh!" "Oh, what's this?" "What's this?" "Oh!" "Hey!" "Oh, my God!" "Oh, that's amazing!" "Oh, you people." "Oh, that is touching." "You know, that is genuinely unexpected." "I was in the ice bath." "The limo was ready to run, it was incredible." "But you're still here and you wouldn't leave." "Oh, that, you know, you got the whole petition together." "That was incredible." "How quickly did you do that?" "Listen, very, very quick, ladies and gentlemen, because it's been an absolute pleasure and delight to talk to you, as it always is when you come here." "Thank you for coming out." "You're a class audience, right." "But, yes, don't clap yourselves." "You know that's all you were doing there." ""Yes, we are, aren't we?" "We're fantastic."" ""We have performed magically tonight." "Isn't it wonderful?" ""There were times when he was flagging, but we rose him up." ""We breathed life into him, we made him a god." "We are kings."" "That's more..." "You just did that." "I think I read a Iot into it." "But nonetheless, right." "But some people have been yet gods more than other people." "Some people have been heroes, and that is one of the things I enjoy about this job." "I get to meet genuine, awe-inspiring heroes." "Like, for example..." "No, not the fireman." "Because we didn't really need you." "We've met even better heroes than you." "We met a man who was cycling, as a teenager, with a girl he liked." "He wasn't gonna touch her or do anything inappropriate to her." "But she fell off her bike under slightly mysterious circumstances, and she hurt herself quite badly." "And she looked up at him and said, "Go, go, go." ""Leave me to die here in this ditch." ""I'm worth nothing to you now."" "And the teenage boy looked at her and went, "Oh, I couId find a use for you."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "So he carried her, he carried her horniIy all the way to the hospital, a mile." "How convenient to have a fucking accident a mile away from a hospital." "What, were you just doing laps of the fucking District general until eventually somebody got injured at the top of a hill?" "A mile!" "How convenient for you." "He carried her, he carried her all the way there, ladies and gentlemen." "And then he looked at the doctor and went, "Save this woman's life!"" "And the doctor went, "From what?" "She has hurt her leg."" ""Get in the fucking queue."" ""Right?" "Get to the AE queue."" "nonetheless, he saved her life, ladies and gentlemen." "He's only a young man and he did it." "Give it up to the man who carried the girl all the way to the hospital." "A round of applause." "A huge round of applause, ladies and gentlemen." "(ALL APPLAUDING)" "It's one thing saving the life of a woman, but to save the life of a baby?" "Of a tiny baby, whose blood is magical blood." "special blood, must normally be drawn from unicorns and special fairy-dust clouds." "And that guy, that's where they get it." "One guy..." "They don't even use his blood." "They hold it in an altar." "And they're freezing it in the hope that some day to clone him and his blood." "He gives baby blood, ladies and gentlemen, Baby blood Man." "Give a round of applause to Baby blood Man!" "And if that wasn't incredible, who among us has ever fought four, maybe five feet of water as a child struggled for life?" "And we had important sunbathing to do on the two weeks I get off." ""I don't know why I have to waste my time saving children."" "But she broke away from her holiday, ladies and gentlemen." "She broke away to save that child's life." "Three feet of water she waded through to find that child, and then she lifted the child up and carried him the six feet to the edge." "It's not a heroic story, right." "We should have spoken to the fireman." "But these decisions are made in haste, ladies and gentlemen." "And I'm making the best of it, all right?" "So, give it up for the woman who saved the life of the child!" "(ALL CHEERING)" "But if you can save a child, you can save an entire nation." "You can save more than one nation." "You can save all the nations combined." "Because when nations are combined, they have to build some sort of listening device." "And when they need a listening device, they need a man who'II build anything." "He'II build anything." "He'II build towers, he'II build huts, he'II build anything." "But most of all, he will build the most difficult thing." "The most difficult tender to request at a building planning meeting." "He will build a secret satellite installation for the United Nations." "He's the one man who can do that." "Give it up for Simon the builder." "AII of these people have been brave, ladies and gentlemen." "By the way, I have to give a special mention to one young man, one young man who kept at it, ladies and gentlemen, who kept at it despite the fact that he was constantly pointed out" "and told to stop." "He didn't stop, he wouldn't stop." "He wanted to capture these moments and keep them for himself, where he could hold them, not pay 14 pounds for the DVD." "You cheap prick!" "If you gave me your name and address I'd send you a copy of the DVD." "Not any more." "I'm going to charge you now." "I'm going to come round to your house and charge you for the footage that's actually on your phone as well." "To the man who will one day grow up to be the greatest film director this country has ever seen." "Give it up for that guy and the two young lads!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "AII of these people are heroes." "AII of these people are legends." "But one man rises above them." "Because once a year - we don't know where it happens, but occasionally it happens - once a year, maybe once a decade, a rare thing occurs." "Somebody runs into a doctor's surgery with an x-ray and they go, "Oh, my God." "We've the worst possible medical emergency."" "He goes, "What is it?" "well, you're gonna have to see it first."" "They put it up on that thing on the wall, and they press the button and they both go, "Jesus wept!" "Is that what I think it is?"" "And they go, "Yes, there are spanners in this man's brain."" "And they go, "Who can deal with this situation?"" "And he goes, "I know a man." "I know a man who invented the technique" ""for removing spanners from a brain."" ""Where will we find such a man?" "In London?" "Nah, not quite."" "And then they pull over." "He is the forerunner of the exclusive "II spanero" technique." "They only know him as "Dave the Brain Surgeon"!" "Give it up for Dave, the Brain Surgeon!" "You are the legend." "Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure talking to you." "Thank you very much." "Goodnight, goodbye, good luck, we'II see you again." "You're very kind." "You're all legends." "I Iove your work." "Thank you very much." "You're good people." "(LATINO MUSIC PLAYING)" "Oh, my God, what is that music?" "Oh, my God!" "What is that Latino beat?" "Oh, no!" "Oh!" "Oh, building up to the big finale." "Here comes the big finale!" "Oh!" "tequila!" "Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen." "You've been fantastic." "Goodnight, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!" "Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen." "Goodnight." "(ALL CHEERING)" "Right." "normally this would finish right here, right?" "normally it wouId finish right here." "However, I've been doing this show 1 20 times." "Let me just get a glass of water 'cause I genuinely..." "This is the bit, by the way, that nobody else gets." "Not the drinking water bit." "Everyone gets that." "Very rare for me not to get a little bit thirsty when I'm roaring and shouting at a crowd for two hours, right." "MAN:" "We love you, Dara." "I Iove you too, my friend." "Hey, do you know what I forgot to do?" "Do you know what I forgot to do?" "I forgot to thank one guy." "One guy who kept me on the straight and narrow." "One guy who said a very important thing to me at the very start." "He said I shouldn't be aware..." "I shouldn't care about, you know, what the mores of society are." "He didn't quite say that, he said, "Fuck PC!" He just shouted it out." "Either it was a complaint about the constrictions of language by the orthodox of political correctness, or he's recently brought a computer back to a major chain and he's really pissed off." "Ladies and gentlemen, I've done this show 1 20 times, right." "And in them there are various routines I have done and I've performed them as much as I couId, right." "And I thought I'd done a very good job, but sometimes I worry I'm a little bit hammy about it." "And it wouId be nice to see some of the lines were delivered by a proper professional performer, a proper actor, right." "Say, for example doing the 2012 routine." "Just to see how they'd be delivered by someone who genuinely knew how to." "well, do you know what, even better, by someone who was in the actual film 2012." "How much better would my routine be with the guy who actually delivers the line that I am taking the piss out of night after night after night?" "So, just for tonight, as a little treat," "I would Iike to welcome onto the stage an actor you may know from East is East, or indeed from EastEnders, or currently on Strictly Come Dancing." "But most importantly, plays the physicist in 2012, who delivers the magic lines." "could you please welcome Jimi Mistry, ladies and gentlemen, onto the stage?" "(ALL CHEERING)" "Thank you." "(CLEARING THROAT)" "Tonight, for one night only, myself and Jimi will now recreate that routine and all of its important moments." "Picture the scene." "It's CaIcutta, it's India." "It's a rainy day." "A man arrives in a suit with a bag." "He is a scientist." "He has travelled great distances in a hurry to be here." "He is meeting another scientist." "He goes, "I came as soon as you called." The other man says... (IN INDIAN ACCENT) We've had some incredible results." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "If you liked that line, wait till the next one." "This scientist... (MUMBLES) You know that bit, right?" "This scientist goes, "What are they?"" "And then this guy, without shame or compunction, this physicist turns to the other physicist and says..." "The neutrinos have mutated!" "That's good, that's good." "What a ridiculous line." "He might as well have said..." "The electrons are angry!" "(ALL LAUGHING)" "Or even..." "The light from the sun, it..." "(SNIFFING) It's gone off." "(ALL LAUGHING)" "You're actually doing it better than I do now." "(LAUGHING) well, that's the way I'm doing it." "(MUMBLING) OK, fine." "How much better would the film be if this were the actual ending?" "This guy's goes, "What are they?"" "If at that stage, with the tiniest of changes, with the fucking most minuscule, with the most itsy-bitsy, tiny-weeny-winy of changes," "if the physicist said this..." "The Latinos have mutated." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "And they are heating up the planet!" "(LATINO MUSIC PLAYING)" "Okay, big finale, big finale." "BOTH:" "Oh!" "tequila!" "Jimi Mistry, ladies and gentlemen." "Jimi Mistry!" "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much." "Goodnight, goodbye, good luck." "We'II see you again." "Goodnight!" "Jimi Mistry!" "Thank you very much." "Russian translation..." "coming soon."