"A girl from Maidstone in the Hospital Club - they said it would never happen." "That's my window-cleaning van." "I do a round." "Are you queuing up to go in?" "Yes." "Have you come to listen to sparkling, entertaining conversation?" "Yes." "Wrong place." "APPLAUSE" "Hello." "I'm Alan Davies and welcome to As Yet Untitled." "This is the show where there is no agenda, nothing is prepared, don't really have any questions or anything." "We just try and come up with a title for the show." "Limited ambition." "Here it is." "I can't manage it on my own, so please welcome my guests." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "Hello." "Hello, hello." "Welcome." "So let me just go round and introduce you all." "This is Angela Barnes." "Angela is an ichthyophobic who once sang the Archers theme to a dying man." "Angela Barnes is here." "APPLAUSE" "Michael Ball." "Michael Ball is here." "Michael Ball, it says here, offered up Cher's noony live on ITV and is wary of backing singers with minor injuries." "Michael Ball, ladies and Gentlemen." "APPLAUSE" "Ross Noble." "Ross Noble." "Welcome back, Ross Noble." "Hello." "Ross Noble was nearly killed on a World War I battlefield." "That's correct." "That's good to hear." "APPLAUSE" "Janet Street-Porter." "Of Janet Street-Porter's many achievements, she was once the winner of third prize for mixed vegetables at the Nidderdale Agricultural Show." "APPLAUSE" "Do you mind if we get that out the way first?" "They weren't cooked, Alan." "They were ones that I'd grown," "I'd nurtured, I'd talked to, and I arranged them in a basket." "And despite that..." "I arranged them in a basket called a trug." "Is it kind of a low, shallow, rectangular...?" "Yeah, you've obviously got a trug or two at home." "I've seen them." "And what do you talk to these vegetables about?" "I tell them to shape up and fucking well grow." "I don't know what Prince Charles says." "She's like that in the bedroom as well." "Oh, I know!" "Yeah." "Can you tell me, what made you go for the Yorkshire Dales for your...?" "I love it." "I love walking there and I've got my vegetables and I've got my garden." "Nice." "And it's nice and quiet, apart from all the farmers on their quad bikes, of course." "Really?" "They don't actually round up sheep any more." "He's got land right, right." "Have you got land?" "And he is one of the sods on the quad bike and drives over..." "Yeah." "Fucking ramblers!" "You just go up and down all day?" "What's happened to your arse if you don't walk around?" ""What's happened to your arse?"" "You're asking me what's happened to my arse?" "!" "We're looking for a title for the show, so bear that in mind." "What a man does on his estate is entirely up to me." "I bet your arse is like Joan Collins - all withered and got no muscle on it." "Leave Joan out of it." "Do you mean my arse is like Joan Collins as a whole or Joan Collins's arse?" "No, elderly people, their bums just shrivel up and have no muscle in them, but yours is probably like that because farmers and landowners used to walk around inspecting their land." "Now you sit on your quad bike." "No, now I shoot at ramblers." "That's what I do." "Have you got public right of way?" "I do, I have a bridleway and they wander up there with their little Thermos..." "I used to think a bridleway was the way to church, for brides." "Well, I do rent it out at the weekends." "For training brides, you know?" "When they go over, do they have a stick in each hand?" "Oh, stick in each hand." "Have you got that?" "No way, I hate that." "We live in Hampstead and out on Hampstead Heath, you see people going..." "No, they're doing something different." "Playing sticks." "No wonder they're so shifty when they're extending it." "They were really going up from Belsize Park tube with the sticks." "I know." "Do you take issue with the sticks?" ""Put your sticks away - you can walk!" I've shouted at them before." "Cos they're not leaning on them." "I don't believe in all that equipment - it's not necessary." "But I wouldn't like to cross your land if you're going up and down on your quad bike." "I don't ride quad bikes, I ride proper motorbikes." "OK, but you don't like ramblers either." "They're just whingeing about..." "You're on my land, complaining about me." "No, I'm on my right of way." "Never thought you'd hear Ross Noble going, "You're on my land!"" "That's my day made." "That's all I do, all day long." "That's the great thing about having land." "I literally walk around going, "You're on my land!" Like that." "Yeah, Ross, but that land is not your land, it's our land." "Right of way." "Here we go." "Is it properly delineated so you know when you're on, when you're off?" "Can people stray?" "Yeah, but it's me that has to pay to have all the trees cut back, so..." "Why?" "You know, it's my land, innit?" "He has to preserve the bridleway." "Your duty is actually to keep it going." "I didn't realise I was coming on Countryfile." "Am I the only person here who doesn't have land?" "And also, what's brilliant is this should be on Countryfile." "It should just be you and me..." "Yeah, arguing about rambling." "Yeah." "Me just shooting at you going," ""What are you doing?" "I'm allowed on here!"" "Have you got a gun?" "Have you got a shotgun?" "Shall we move on?" "There's two sides to him!" "I bought a compound bow." "A bow and arrow." "Like a crossbow?" "Like in Walking Dead?" "Exactly!" "Exactly." "Oh!" "Can I have a lend?" "Of course you can." "Not only can you have a lend..." "Have you got land, Michael?" "Sorry." "You know what I'm going to do after the show?" "This is going to happen." "You're going to come to my land." "I've got the compound bow..." "I don't have to come up the bridleway?" "I can come up the drive?" "I'm going to have velvet barbed wire that you can come around." "Wouldn't that be amazing?" "I'd love for my neighbours..." "Cos I'm always up to stuff on my land." "Like what?" "Well, I'll get to that." "Back to the crossbow." "I would love it if in the local pub they went," ""You seen what Noble's up to?" ""He's down there with a crossbow and Michael Ball."" "That would be the best story ever." "You know in the film..." "Have you seen the film Brazil?" "Yes." "One of the nightmare visions of the future of Brazil is that when you go on a road out of the city and you're thinking it's going to be open vistas and countryside, they've got advertising hoarding 20 foot high without a gap in between" "all the way on every road in between all the cities." "That's a good idea for you, isn't it?" "Either side of the bridleway." "Yes." "Your latest tour." "Just tour DVDs." "Like North Korea have so South Korea can't see in." "Yeah, like a DMZ." "My friend Michael has a theory that it's like Disneyland back there, really, and they just don't want anyone to have as much fun." "Sadly, the Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty have thought of that." "My house is in an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty as well and I certainly do not shout at ramblers." "OK." "Well, I don't need to, cos now I'll just go, "Michael!"" "And he'll be up a tree." "And I would!" "It would be like Walking Dead." ""Walkers!"" "I want to ask you, cos I've got you here..." "You told me a story a long time ago about when you were touring and your normal support act wasn't available and they brought in a local lad." "Just for me." "This is for him." "In Harrogate, and it's a charity gig and they said..." "It's not his real name." "Tommy Twinkle I'm going to call him." "That is not the name of this comedian." "Anyway, I didn't know this bloke, so I'm talking to him and he says, "You don't need to worry." "I know this crowd." ""I'm absolutely on it." "I'll get them warm for you." "They'll love it."" "I said, "That's really encouraging to know." ""Couple of things though." "I don't want you to be sexist," ""I don't want you to use bad language" ""and I don't want you to do anything dodgy and rude." "Is that all right?"" "And he said, "You can trust me." "You're in safe hands."" "I think I know who it was." "That's my favourite line - "You're in safe hands"!" "So I'm getting ready for my gig and I thought," "I'm going to have to watch the beginning of this." "So I go down and he's got his boom box, cos he's got his intro music, and he goes, "Are you ready, Mike?"" "And I'm going, "Michael!"" ""Here we go, pet."" "And he puts it on." ""Ladies and gentlemen, will you give a big Harrogate welcome" ""to the famous Mr Tommy Twinkle!"" "On he goes." "The first thing out of his mouth is," ""Well, fuck me, ladies and gentlemen." ""Fuck me, what a world we live in." ""You can get a man on the moon." ""You can't get one on Martina Navratilova."" "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "First thing out." "Did it get a laugh?" "No!" "It was like, "What the...?" "!"" "And I went, "Off!"" ""You're in safe hands"!" ""You're in safe hands." "No need to worry."" "SHE HUMS THE ARCHERS THEME" "I really hope she's trained and not just a nutjob!" "Angela, can you tell me at what point you came across a dying man and why you sang the Archers theme to him?" "Well, I was a student nurse at the time." "Oh, were you really?" "Yeah, and we'd just learnt first aid and CPR, things like that." "Were you at a hospital?" "Attached to a hospital?" "I was, St George's in Tooting." "OK." "And I was in Islington with some friends and I saw a road accident and suddenly I was like," ""Oh, God, I'm going to have to deal with this."" "I've just learnt how to do this." "I can do this." "I went over to the guy and he had like a nasty head injury and dealt with that and I realised he wasn't responding and I was going to have to do CPR." "But our tutor at college had taught us that when you do CPR, to get the chest compression rhythm right and to get the right numbers before the breaths, the Archers theme tune is the best thing." "SHE HUMS ARCHERS THEME" "So that's what I'd just learnt." "Now, when you see something like that, the adrenaline surge is obviously immense." "And I went over and I sort of took charge." ""You phone the ambulance." ""You do this, you do that."" "Good work." "Well done, student." "Thank you." "Like, when the paramedics arrived and they took over from me and I have to give a statement to the police and everything and the police told me that the paramedics had told them that when they came over, I was doing it out loud." "SHE HUMS THE ARCHERS THEME" "They were like, "I really hope she's trained and not just a nutjob!"" "You could have gone into a full episode of the Archers." ""Right, those cows need milking." ""There's been a shooting up in the top field." ""Ball's got his hands on another compound bow."" "Do you like the Archers?" "I love it." "I'm a massive Archers fan." "Now you can get it on podcast." "It's like having a 15-minute cuddle every day, that's how I feel." "Although my friend did point out the other day, 15 minutes for a cuddle is quite creepy, but..." "After about 30 seconds, it gets weird." "Well, there's a lot of characters on the Archers I can't stand now." "That comes as a shock." "It's Helen I can't stand." "You know why?" "Cos they're landowners, that's why." "Can I just ask, did you two dye your hair in the same bath?" "Yeah, we had a phone call." "I dyed my hair." "I realised I could spend a lot of money on hairdressers or I could do it during Downton, so I got three bottles of dye, different colours, whacked them in a bowl, put them on my head," "tie a plastic bag over your head, obviously leaving...." "A hole so you can talk." "No, for my dinner!" "Then I had the bag..." "That's where it went wrong." "Eyes is where?" "Eyes out." "I had a big paper clip bag on head, carrier bag on head, which I've now told you is a top tip." "Yeah." "Did you get yours done professionally?" "No, I did it last night at home." "My bathroom now looks like a murder's taken place." "It's got a lovely shine to it." "Thank you very much." "You could do that advert." "Is it because you're worth it?" "Yeah." "That's how you cover up a murder scene - you go and dye your hair there afterwards." "Oh, God, yeah, Davina McCall killed many times, many times." "Britain's most prolific murderer." "Did you become a qualified nurse, then?" "I finished my training, but then I decided nursing wasn't for me quite quickly." "I worked in social care." "I preferred things..." "Before you even thought about doing comedy?" "Yeah, I did my first open spot gig when I was 33, so I'm a late starter." "What prompted you to do that, then?" "Breakdown?" "No." "I think it's kind of a midlife crisis." "My dad died quite suddenly and it made me go..." "Cos I was always a bit comedy fan, I was a big comedy nerd." "And I would go to gigs." "I've been to your shows..." "But still a comedy fan?" "Still a comedy fan." "That's it - you're not having a go on the bow." "It was there." "I had to go for it." "Put the bow back in the shed." "Ball's been uninvited." "Always finish, even in practice." "Kevin Day taught me that." "I used to love comedy so much and I ran a little comedy night above a pub in Brighton where I lived." "I just booked the acts " "I didn't ever perform." "And my dad used to come to it." "He used to say, "Have a go!" "Oh, I'll be rubbish at it."" "And then after he died, I was like, you know, you have always wanted to do this." "Oh, no, and he never saw you do it." "Never saw me do it." "Oh, no, I'm breaking my own heart." "Didn't mean to say that out loud." "That's sad." "I was talking to a friend earlier, saying, you know..." "You know, I'm enjoying this ride." "This is the best midlife crisis anyone could have and I'm loving it, and every time something like this happens, I go," ""This is brilliant, but there's one person..."" "I want to ring my dad and tell him, "You'll never guess " ""I'm sat right next to Michael Ball!"" "So everything is tinged with that little bit of sadness." "Did he die unexpectedly?" "Yeah, he had a heart attack." "He was only 60." "My best mate at school, that happened to his dad." "He was 58 and it was just lights out." "Went to bed, didn't get up, and he was in his motor home that he loved, so that was quite..." "Now you're making me laugh now." "I don't know why that's funny." "You can laugh at that." "That's fine." "It's not funny, but he was in the motor home that he loved." "My dad died playing cards." "My mum and dad hated each other and she was living in the Canary Islands and he was playing golf inland." "She got him over for a brief holiday so he could play cards, cos they were both very, very good card players and he must have died in the middle of the game of cards, cos she rang me in London." "And my mother is such a drama queen, she just went, "He's dead!" And hung up." "He dropped dead in a game of cards - that's not being a drama queen." ""Back off!" "Back off!"" ""Yadda, yadda, yadda." "I'm listening to the Archers."" "Can you tell me about Cher's noony?" "Yeah." "How long you got?" "Ages." "But I'm saying noony..." "am I meaning vagina?" "ALAN GRUNTS" "MICHAEL GRUNTS You actually did that afterwards." ""Vagina"." "HE GRUNTS" "What happened..." "I had this music show on ITV." "We'd have these extraordinary guests coming." "No time to rehearse, and we wanted a really, really big..." "Vagina." "A really..." "Oh, that's awful to say that." "You can't say that." "Just thinking about it." "I saw it." "So she was on the show." "There was this drama to get her on." "I was singing the duet with her." "Larry Adler is on the harmonica and George Martin is playing the piano." "So not a normal Tuesday." "Not a normal Tuesday." "Tony Bennett's also there." "What song were you singing?" "I was singing Summertime." "Oh, wow!" "Porgy and Bess, with her." "She said she decided, OK, but she wanted a Harley Davidson that it had been completely converted..." "Noble turns up." "I wanted the crossbow." "So we did it." "Before the show," "I thought she was going to be really..." "Cos getting her on it was a real nightmare." "She was just lovely." "I had a tap at the door of my dressing room." "She can't get her shower to work." "Oh, that old chestnut." "But I fixed it." "So it all kind of went all right, and we did this song." "And I was seriously overexcited." "It was my birthday." "Tony Bennett had just sung Happy Birthday to me." "Cher and I sang this number together." "I went up to her, I picked her up and I twirled her and she's screaming - it's on YouTube " ""Put me down!" I haven't put my knickers on!" "'" "And she was wearing this really skin-tight leathery thing... and I flashed her bits to the nation." "Wow!" "I felt my work had been done." "APPLAUSE" "You're getting a round of applause." "Do you know what he did?" "He showed Cher's vagina." "And a very pretty..." "It was all lovely." "Did her face move?" "What moved more?" "The earth." "Every time her face moves, her vagina goes..." ""She smiled!"" "What happens when she sings?" "It's that old joke." "She had a goatee and she's had so many lifts..." "Did she have that very thin layer of rubber over her face?" "Here's the thing." "I saw her with no makeup on and she looked phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal." "Then she goes, "I'd better put Cher on"" "and she would disappear, she'd do all the makeup and..." "Is she very different off stage than on stage?" "She's just really natural, really easy." "You hear stories about people who are going to be absolute divas." "And I sang with some..." "Once you sit down and you rehearse and they think," ""Oh, no, you can actually do what you do"..." "I sang with James Brown on the show." "I've never been more scared in my life." "He's armed to the teeth, for a start." "They said, "He's bringing his wife." "Not the one he shot."" "I'm thinking, "Oh, great."" "And you have to guess who it is." "His limo's arrived at the studio and all these people are getting out, they're all in sweat pants and the great medallions." "They're all like that." "Then comes the wife." "And I went, "Hello." "I'm Michael Ball." "It's my show."" "And she went, "Mrs Brown."" "I went, "Oh, well, I'm Michael" and she said, "Well, I'm Mrs Brown."" "Did you say, "Where are the boys?"" "Is she a man dressed as a woman?" "Yes!" "So I went and hid in the loo while James Brown arrived." "This is an absolutely true story." "In comes James Brown and he goes, "OK, let's start."" "And he starts singing and he's firing my band and putting his people in." "As he's doing the thing, I'm going, "Oh, dear God in heaven!"" "And I decided we were going to duet on I Feel Good - you know, the most iconic song he's ever done." "There's one word I can't use in this story, but you'll know what I'm saying." "He used the word." "I can't." "So he then goes, "Who am I singing with?"" "And I go..." ""Hi!"" "And I go, "Hello." "I'm Michael Ball" and he goes," ""Never mind that shit, gimme a big strong beat. # I feel good... #"" "And he starts and I'm going, "Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"" "So I start singing..." "# I feel fine You're mine now... #" "We're singing away and it's going all right." "He's getting a groove going." "And it comes to the end - and he always does it in his act - he starts inventing stuff at the end." "So he's going..." "# Elvis Presley, he was the man" "# Jim Morrison, he done his thing... #" "And I'm thinking, I've got to think of dead musicians." "And I'm starting doing a few and it's fine." "When I came up with Karen Carpenter..." "He laughed, but he took it." "We got to the end of the song..." "George Formby!" "# He was on a lamppost!" "#" "It was amazing." "He came up to me and said, "I'm going to tell you something." ""You got soul." ""You want to check your ancestry, there's a - word I can't say " ""in your woodpile"." "And it was the coolest moment I've ever had in my life." "But there was a review that came out about it." "You only ever remember the bad reviews." "It was in Private eye and it said," ""Watching Michael Ball perform with James Brown would be kind of" ""like watching Rolf Harris paint the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo."" "Nasty!" "Can't say "Rolf Harris" now either, can you?" "What we need is a list of the people..." "Because I've got a lot of anecdotes." "Right, who's gone down, who's pending." "Were they on Top Of The Pops in the '70s?" "If the answer's yes, then no." "This show could be called Redacted Anecdotes." "I jumped up and went, "Ya bastard!" Like that." "When you have a caesarean, they put up a curtain, don't they, over part of your body." "They do." "You're having the baby, there's the curtain." "And I was doing a TV series where I worked in a midwife unit in Barnsley Hospital." "Obviously they thought it would be comedy value, because I've had four husbands, no babies, no pets, and I had to do..." "That's like a sign you'd have outside your house." "They thought, "This would be hilarious!"" "How will Janet cope with delivering babies?" "Well, by the time I got to the caesarean," "I was on about number three." "The first two had been normal births where women wandered in and wanted to have a fag during the birth, so I had to say," ""No, get back in the birthing chair and get on with it and push." ""And you can't have a crate of Newcastle Brown Ale in the room."" "You're harsh." "I was harsh, but someone's got to impose rules." "Anyway, by the time I got to the caesarean... the woman had her hair done especially and they put the screen up." "She knew she was going to be on the telly." "She was banned from calling the baby Janet!" "They told me that I could assist and I said to her husband," ""Would you like me to hand you the baby?"" "And he went, "Oh, no, give it a wash first."" "Oh, my God!" "So she's got..." "She's there, they make the incision and out suddenly it plops." "That's the only way of describing it." "And then I had to cut the cord, wash it, hand it to Mum and Dad." "I had to cut the cord for our first baby, and I wasn't expecting to be asked." "With the weird scissors." "With the weird scissors." "They came through, "Would you like to cut the cord?"" ""No." "You carry on - you're really good at this."" "And they gave you..." "I think I'm like Angela - I wasn't cut out to be a nurse." "I had to do a midwifery placement for my nurse training and I remember the first birth I was at." "She was a really young, about 17, she just had her mum with her." "And she was tiny, and she was giving birth to this nine-pound baby." "It was massive and I was ...." "There's a gasp from the audience." "A mum back there." "Oh!" "Eyes watering." "If only she'd been Cher - straight out." "She would have just had to smile and it would have popped out." "Catch it!" "I just remember being at the business end." "With the cord." "Bungee baby!" "So being at the business end with the midwife, and this poor girl is trying to push out this nine-pound baby." "We're both going, "Push, push!"" "And I found myself pushing for her." "HE HUMS THE ARCHERS THEME" "The midwife leant over and said," ""You've got to stop doing that - you'll give yourself piles."" "Cos I was going "Arrrgh!" for her." "What do you think of that Robbie William video of him...?" "I haven't seen it but I've heard about it." "It looks mental." "But it is hilarious." "It's all about Robbie, isn't it?" "She's there." "She's had enough and he's doing a pop video." "But the thing is, I've got a feeling that they might have done that before it got..." "Well, she's in full makeup." "Hang on, is this his actual partner actually having a baby?" "Have you not seen that?" "No!" "Because I realised..." "I've got two kids and I realised that past about seven months, no jokes." "No jokes whatsoever." "Certainly not.." "Cos I..." "like..." "This..." "Right." "Let me..." "This is..." "It's a delicate subject." "Right, you know my wife, so you understand that this makes me sound incredibly sexist, but it was deliberately..." "She was lying on the bed." "She was, you know...massive." "She's having a baby - of course she's massive!" "For her." "She's a very slight woman." "And she rolled over and went, "Oh, God, my back's killing me."" "She was really very uncomfortable." "And I thought I'd, like, lighten the mood." "And she rolled over and went, "Oh, God...oh!"" "I said, "Well, if you weren't so mad for the cock..."" "It was just a...it was just..." "It was like..." "No!" "Even I - and I've got no sensitivity - can see that that was..." "That's really funny, mind!" "But the thing is, it's comedically correct and even..." "But your wife's not part of a bloody text book - she's your wife." "Yeah, but, you know, she's got a sense of humour." "And during both the births and that..." "Cos the second one we had at home and it was in the middle...." "Did you help?" "Course, yeah." "What did you do?" "Well, er...scrubbing." "A lot of..." "I put down..." "It was like I was doing a murder." "I put loads of sheets down." "Do you watch Dexter?" "It was like that." "I was putting it down..." "Clingfilmed her." "Exactly." "Did she have a birthing pool?" "Oh, my friend had one of those and apparently they just handed her boyfriend a fishing net, cos she kept vomiting in it." "So his job was just to fish the vomit out." "Loads of stuff to fish out of there!" "Friend of mine did it and she was trying to push away the poo that was coming out." "You know like when you're in the sea and it just follows you?" "I did a poo in the sea once." "I thought it was going to sink." "It does not." "No, the worst thing was, right, when the first child was born in Australia, in a hospital..." "But you saw where we lived - quite a long way away from everywhere." "And she starts going into labour, and she goes," ""I'm not sure about how to time these contractions."" "And I went, "Hang on, I'll get the book."" "So I'm flicking through the book and she's, "Argh!"" ""Shhh!" "I'm trying to concentrate on the book."" "And the two of us are sat there and she's in quite a lot of pain, going," ""Right, do we time it from the end of one to the start of the next," ""or is it from the...?" "Argh!" "I'll go on the internet."" "So she's on the internet and I'm on the book, trying to work this all out, and at the point where we said," ""Right, we've got to go to the hospital", my car was full of straw and mice." "And mice?" "I was cleaning mouse poo off the back seat of my car." "I went, "There you go" and then we drove to the hospital around lots of windy roads and we were sliding around." "I'm sure mouse poo was good enough for the Baby Jesus." "She didn't half go on!" "They are unreasonable, aren't they?" "When she had the baby at home, did you cut the cord?" "Oh, yeah." "With the kitchen scissors." "Our second one, his little belly button, the little bit they put the clip on and eventually the last bit of cord drops off." "You either have an inny or an outy." "So for a while, it's like that and our bedroom began to smell like a fishmongers." "And my wife is going, "What's wrong with this bedroom?" ""We need to open the window." "We need to get this carpet cleaned."" "And I said, "It's the baby." "The baby smells like a fish."" ""It's not the baby!" "It's not the baby!"" "I said, "It's the baby!" "What's new in the room?" ""Everything was in here, we didn't smell of fish." ""He's here now and it smells of fish!"" "Seriously?" "It goes a bit rotten." "Oh...what?" "!" "How did you nearly get killed on a World War I battlefield?" "Oh, right." "I know this sounds like an absolute lie, but I was an extra in a Catherine Zeta Jones, Catherine Cookson drama" "called The Cinder Path and I got a job as an extra and I sort of blagged myself a gig with the special effects people, cos I thought that would be fun, blowing stuff up." "And they had a recreation of a First World War trench, and these guys said to me - no health and safety or anything - they said, "Right..."" "And they had hundreds of extras all lined up." "They said, "Sit in this hole with a smoke machine."" "And it was this thing where you had to mix the oil and there was a little pilot light thing." "So I'm just sat there in the middle of this battlefield and the lead actor guy, he goes," ""Right, chaps, we're going over the top!"" "And I'm there with my smoke machine, in the hole like this." "What they didn't tell me was in the hole next to me was a massive metal tank filled up with peat and cork and stuff" "that had a charge in it." "To be like a bomb going off." "Massive bomb." "Probably about 50 bucketloads of dirt in this massive tank." "And he goes, "Right, men, we're going over the top!"" "And he blows the whistle and this boom goes off." "But I didn't realise it went off next to me, like that, and I fell backwards and the pilot light..." "My coat caught fire, so it went boom!" "I jumped up and went, "Ya bastard!"" "And I did this and then there was a silence and then I hear, "Cut!"" "Somewhere, there's a take..." "And all these guys were all ex-soldiers dressed up in all the full First World War gear and he was supposed to go, "Right, men, over the top!"" "Blow his whistle - boom!" "Boom!" "And at that point..." "So from their point of view, the camera is there and it tracks along all of the soldiers and you just hear," ""Right, men, we're going over the top!" Boom!" "And then just some bloke in modern-day clothing, on fire," ""Oh, ya bastard!"" "It must have looked like you'd come from the future." "I was on fire, you know, and had to reset the thing." "Must have cost a fortune." "Have you ever done the special effects where you're shot?" "Have you watched Toast?" "Toast Of London." "I did the last episode." "I played myself, but I'm Andrew Lloyd Webber's enforcer." "When I'm not singing, I'm going around and I'm getting all the money that is owed." "It's plausible." "It's actually true." "Which is why I'm here to talk to you." "But the other premise is, the reason I can sing like I do," "I've got twice the amount of blood as any other human being." "And I'm shot at the end, and I'm doing a great death scene with blood pumping out, literally fountains of it." "And I'd never done this." "So they put a charge on you, on your chest, and they say," ""And you'll feel a little kick" ""and then a little bit of blood will ooze down - not yours."" "I'm going, "It's fine." "Lovely."" "Well, they set it off." "I nearly, talk about..." "HE HUMS ARCHERS THEME Bang!" "The pain!" "I had this huge bruise, nearly broke a rib." "They'd over-charged it and the thing didn't rip properly, so there was this little wibbly bit of blood coming out." "And I'm in agony and knowing that they can't do it again, cos they haven't got any money," "I'm hitting it trying to make the blood come out." "Trouper!" "Big old painful thing!" "It's not easy." "I just suffered for my art, that's all." "This is the same principle as being on a tube." "This is not QI!" "Can you tell me what an ichthyophobic is phobic of?" "Fish." "Terrified of fish." "You don't want to meet his kid!" "He doesn't smell of fish any more." "Dead ones or live ones, Angela?" "Either, just.." "And the small ones..." "The bigger they get..." "A shark, not so bad." "You can't eat fish, then?" "Only if it doesn't look like a fish." "I could eat a fish finger or a tin of tuna." "Shark's fine." "Sharks look a bit more mammalian, don't they?" "Whereas the little..." "Properly phobic - like if you see one, you're repelled by it?" "When I was a student, I had quite a lot of piercings, and I had this little scam going." "Around your face?" "I hate one in my tongue, one in my eyebrow and one in my navel." "What did you attract with all the piercings?" "ALAN AND ANGELA:" "Magnets!" "What was the thinking behind them?" "I know it's a bit of a digression but I want to know..." "I was a student in Brighton and it was just..." "It was the '90s, and it was something to do." "You didn't do them yourself?" "I didn't do them myself." "I had a nice little scam going, because they are quite expensive to get piercings." "And I was working in a nursing home and I noticed that in the piercing shop, they sold these sachets of saline solution for a quid a go and I knew that we have them in the nursing home and at the end of every month," "we'd throw one load out and get another load in." "And they would just go in the bin." "But they were still in date, so I would get them out of the bin and swap a box of them for a piercing, because that was like 100 quid's worth to them, cos they'd sell them for a quid." "So I had my eyebrow done first and then I went back to get my tongue done and I got my box of things to swap for it." "And it was a clothes shop upstairs and the piercing studio was downstairs and they'd had a refurb in the piercing studio and I went down there and they put fish tapes everywhere to calm everyone down, so I walked down there and went, "Fuck that"" "and came back up and they ended up piercing my tongue on the shop floor on a Saturday afternoon." "That was less scary to me, having it done in front of loads of shoppers, than having it done where the fish were." "It's a lifelong thing you've had?" "As long as I can remember, yeah." "So when you go to a fairground, there's no incentive to get the rings over the thing?" "I deliberately miss." "You still go for it." "Oh, yeah, I'm competitive." "My sister was once on the Meteorite, where you're all strapped..." "Where the floor falls away." "Centrifugal force." "And there was a guy next to her with a goldfish in a bag and she's..." "Brilliant." "And she was strapped in like that, and the thing starts up..." "And the music's playing." ""OK now, here we go - it's time to ride the Meteorite!"" "And he's there with his fish in the bag and she's thinking, "Oh, shit, this isn't going right."" "The music's playing and all that, and the..." "Was the fish like this?" "As it's getting faster, she's thinking, this is going to fly off, but of course, it doesn't, does it, because the force pushes it and the fish exploded in the bag." "It went boof!" "Like that, so now she's on..." "That's not what I was expecting." "You probably love that story." "You know when you're in a hospital and have the bags of blood on the thing?" "He's essentially like that, next to..." "She's on the thing and he's there with, like, a bag of offal and it's next to her head and she can't get away, cos when she tries to move her head..." "You could have just let go of the bag." "No, because if you just let go of the bag, it would have just stayed there." "If you let go of the bag, will it go there or will it go down?" "It just stays there." "It's physics." "It's basic physics." "What I'm saying is, if you're strapped to the thing and you throw something in the air..." "It will go out and then slap back on to the wall and stick." "Because it's moving at the same speed as the..." "The air in the middle isn't, though." "It is - it's pushing the air out." "It's the same principle as being on a tube..." "This is NOT QI!" "APPLAUSE" "It's what QI would be like if I was in charge, where no-one actually knows anything." "We had it on QI - why, when you're travelling on a tube train and there's a fly flying around it, it doesn't go smack into the end of the carriage." "For the same reason when you jump up, you stay and you come down in the same place." "You don't jump up and go like that." "It's weird, though, isn't it?" "It is." "It is odd." "It's cos the air in that space is as a whole." "There's the goldfish there." "Sorry." "There's the goldfish and as it starts to move..." "Because otherwise, if you had a hat on and it started to move, the hat would stay there and every time you came round, the hat would swap." "Or the thing would be going round and you'd go, "This isn't my shirt."" "Those aren't my legs." "I went on a charity event at the..." "I still call it the Post Office Tower, but it's BT Tower in London." "And it's got the revolving thing on the top, and Rick Astley was singing." "Swoon!" "He's great, isn't he?" "He's doing Never Gonna Give You Up." "So the loo is in the kind of central core of the thing, so you have to go to the loo." "And when I came out, everything had revolved and I came straight out of the loo, did my fly up... and I'm next to Rick." "# Never gonna give you up... #" "Sorry!" "You weren't here when I went in." "Go back in the loo and wait for him to pass." "Can you tell me, Michael...?" "I want you to tell me why you are wary of backing singers with injuries." "I'm prone to laughing when I shouldn't on stage." "I was doing this gig - lovely lady, Mary Caru." "She's got a beautiful voice." "She was one of my backing singers." "She said, "I've just been to hospital." "I've broken my finger." ""Everything's fine." "I'll be able to do it."" "I said, "OK, no problem, we'll get with the gig."" "We hadn't had a chance to rehearse, but we're doing the duet from Phantom Of The Opera," "All I Ask Of You." "So what I'll do, I'll just call you forward at the right moment." "So I'll call you forward, you come down, grab the mic and we'll start singing." "So I'm doing the gig, going very well, very nicely, and this song from Phantom starts with..." "# No more talk of darkness Forget these wide-eyed tears... #" "And she picked up the mic..." "# I'm here Nothing can harm you" "# My words will warm and calm you... #" "Then she looked at me, got her mic and went..." "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "And it was the full..." "And it was huge, cos the plaster..." "But flesh-coloured." "So all the way through..." "# Say you'll share with me... #" "And she hadn't clocked it." "And I'm starting to piss myself." "And then it turned into a ballet." "It was just the worst moment." "The worst." "Isn't that terrible, in a lovely song like that?" "Listen, we've got to think of a title for the show." "Can anyone remember any of the things that we've talked about in the last couple of hours?" "Rick Astley." ""Oh, ya bastard!" in the trench." "Oh, Ya Bastard?" "Oh, Ya Bastard!" "Your hatred of ramblers figured early on." "Your irrational hatred." "I'm reluctant to call the show If You Weren't So Mad For The Cock." "We've got the vagina story." "That could look good." "Cher's Vagina..." "I like You're In Safe Hands." "You're In Safe Hands." "My Baby Smells Like A Fish." "That's not going to go down well at home." "Yeah, let's just call it Countryfile." "Better Than X Factor." "Perfect." "So, thank you very much to Angela Barnes, Michael Ball," "Ross Noble, Janet Street-Porter." "I'm Alan Davies and you have been watching Countryfile." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"