Nov. 10, 2023

Robin Ince: Bibliomaniac, Moomins, ADHD, Writing Comedy, Anxiety, Neurodiversity, Ricky Gervais, Octopus Sex Arms & Talking About Suicide Openly

Robin Ince: Bibliomaniac, Moomins, ADHD, Writing Comedy, Anxiety, Neurodiversity, Ricky Gervais, Octopus Sex Arms & Talking About Suicide Openly
The player is loading ...
Robin Ince: Bibliomaniac, Moomins, ADHD, Writing Comedy, Anxiety, Neurodiversity, Ricky Gervais, Octopus Sex Arms & Talking About Suicide Openly
Robin Ince: Bibliomaniac, Moomins, ADHD, Writing Comedy, Anxiety, Neurodiversity, Ricky Gervais, Octopus Sex Arms & Talking About Suicide Openly

Matt delves into Robin's remarkable talent for blending comedy with science, all while championing rational inquiry through candid discussions on pressing societal issues. Robin's unique approach bridges the gap between humour and serious topics, as he fearlessly tackles subjects such as homelessness, addiction, suicide, and the pervasive stigmas surrounding them. Robin Ince is a multi-award winning comedian, writer and broadcaster. As well as spending decades as one the UK’s most resp...

Spotify podcast player badge
Apple Podcasts podcast player badge
Youtube Music podcast player badge
RSS Feed podcast player badge
Spotify podcast player icon Apple Podcasts podcast player icon Youtube Music podcast player icon RSS Feed podcast player icon
Season 1

Matt delves into Robin's remarkable talent for blending comedy with science, all while championing rational inquiry through candid discussions on pressing societal issues. Robin's unique approach bridges the gap between humour and serious topics, as he fearlessly tackles subjects such as homelessness, addiction, suicide, and the pervasive stigmas surrounding them.

Robin Ince is a multi-award winning comedian, writer and broadcaster.  As well as spending decades as one the UK’s most respected stand-ups, Robin is perhaps best known for co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage radio show with Professor Brian Cox.  For his work on projects like Cosmic Shambles he was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by Royal Holloway, University of London.

Click here to text our host, Matt, directly!

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Please take a moment to leave a review — it helps others find us.

🔗 Then share this episode with someone you know who could benefit from it.

Browse the full archive at 👉 www.believeinpeoplepodcast.com

This is a toolkit for recovery & resilience. Whether you’re in recovery or seeking to understand addiction, there’s something here for everyone.

📩 Contact: robbie@believeinpeoplepodcast.com
🎵 Music: “Jonathan Tortoise” by Christopher Tait (Belle Ghoul / Electric Six)

🔗 Listen & Subscribe
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4Cr4wzZ6bxku1cRcoYKbGK
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/believe-in-people/id1617239923

🎙️ Facilitator: Matthew Butler
🎛️ Producer: Robbie Lawson
🏢 Network: ReNew

WEBVTT

00:00:00.034 --> 00:00:22.605
This is a Renew Original Recording.

00:00:28.865 --> 00:00:38.521
Bibliomaniac, an obsessive tour of the bookshops of Britain, offers readers a delightful and insightful journey into the world of bookshops and the passionate quest for knowledge through the written word.

00:00:39.201 --> 00:00:52.222
Beyond his creative endeavours, Robin is known for his candid discussions on topics ranging from homelessness, addiction, technology and societal stigmas, making him an engaging and thought-provoking voice in the world of entertainment and intellectual discourse.

00:00:52.770 --> 00:00:54.951
Would you first introduce yourself please?

00:00:55.531 --> 00:01:05.740
My name's Robin Ince, I sometimes write books and I spend a lot of time travelling around the UK and beyond doing shows, sometimes about science, sometimes about Moomins.

00:01:05.921 --> 00:01:18.893
I was doing a gig the other day, it was Camp Wildfire Festival and I had my mate Trent with me and someone thought he was kind of in charge of me and just went up and went, oh what's Robin talking about today?

00:01:18.933 --> 00:01:25.319
And he went, I have no idea and I can tell you that he has no idea at this current time but in two minutes time and he's behind the mic it was something you'll start

00:01:25.358 --> 00:01:43.978
yeah brilliant that's brilliant uh obviously my producer's done so many uh so much research for this podcast and i've got here that you mention your experiences with niche podcasts and the enjoyment of engaging in fun conversations so with that in mind robin i'm curious how are you feeling today and is there anything particular occupying your thoughts at the moment do

00:01:44.019 --> 00:02:21.908
you know what there's there's always something occupying my thoughts and it was we were talking about this when i just arrived at the station which i always love getting to hold station because one you go past Humber Bridge and I love the Humber Bridge and then you see the Philip Larkin statue and then you see the blue plaques for Mick Ronson and the other spiders from Mars as well and such a great Bowie album and Ronson album really but one of the things that was occupying my mind was I was thinking because I had to get up at 6am and I've gone from Manchester to Hull and then tonight I go to the edge of Scotland and that's going to take about 5 hours I'm momentarily thinking why am I doing this?

00:02:22.786 --> 00:02:35.545
And then I realized that I'm in a position where I can say yes to things, that it's not about finance, that as long as I've got a certain number of jobs in the year, then I can make enough money to do things for free.

00:02:36.066 --> 00:02:45.300
And so I've been thinking a lot about the freedom that comes with being able to not be in a constant state of anxiety about money.

00:02:46.081 --> 00:02:47.943
And I think that's an incredible freedom to have.

00:02:47.985 --> 00:02:54.080
So almost every job that I say yes to, is something that I want to do.

00:02:54.561 --> 00:03:08.081
So the ones that are about money, I'll go, you know, if I get offered an advert or something like that, I can say no to it because I know that Arthur Smith, the comedian Arthur Smith once said the perfect amount of money is you can go to a bookshop and buy the books you want.

00:03:08.282 --> 00:03:11.967
You can go to the pub and drink what you want and you can hopefully get a cab home.

00:03:12.549 --> 00:03:18.638
And I think that kind of thing that says that's a level of freedom, which, but then the moment you go, I'm now so rich, I'm going to have a second home.

00:03:18.849 --> 00:03:29.860
And from what I can gather, a lot of people with second homes, third homes, fourth homes, fifth homes, what they do is they spend all the time in the home they're living in worrying about what's happening to their other luxury accommodation.

00:03:30.259 --> 00:03:42.110
So I think, you know, there's a level, as I look at the government that we have at the moment, and I think about how, you know, I saw today there was a thing from Jeremy Hunt saying we can't give any tax cuts at the moment.

00:03:42.189 --> 00:03:43.692
I'm thinking, why do we want tax cuts?

00:03:44.111 --> 00:03:45.913
Why do we, the tax is okay.

00:03:46.354 --> 00:03:47.455
I don't want tax cuts.

00:03:47.895 --> 00:04:20.711
I want a society where where people are happier with the largest number of people are as happy as they can be and that people are not angry and unkind and all of those that to me and yet this definition of money and I think if you if you have and I know that I'm in a very rare position to have that luxury of one having enough money that I don't have to worry about you know if I go to the supermarket I mean I still do I look like I'm not paying that for crumpets but you know that kind of but not having that worry and I think if we all if we found that place where more It's not about having more money.

00:04:21.632 --> 00:04:25.637
Once you've got security, that should feel enormous.

00:04:25.677 --> 00:04:35.430
And then we were talking again when we were walking up here about the fact that sometimes I've been in rooms with people with lots of money, and all they talk about is lots of things that cost lots of money.

00:04:35.990 --> 00:04:37.613
So it becomes a definition of who you are.

00:04:37.913 --> 00:04:40.958
And then that becomes, I think, another chain to be kind of tied by.

00:04:41.399 --> 00:04:42.961
More money, more problems, by the

00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:43.461
sounds of it, yeah.

00:04:43.701 --> 00:04:44.041
Do you know what?

00:04:44.062 --> 00:04:45.845
I spoke to one of our service users, and I remember...

00:04:47.105 --> 00:04:50.781
I'd recently been homeless got himself in sort of accommodation.

00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:56.699
I'd got himself drug-free was participating in aftercare program and And I remember chatting to him and he was like, ah, you think you've got freedom?

00:04:56.720 --> 00:04:57.661
He said, you haven't got freedom.

00:04:57.822 --> 00:04:58.802
He said, I've got freedom.

00:04:58.843 --> 00:04:59.983
He said, you've got bills to pay.

00:05:00.004 --> 00:05:00.824
He said, I have bills to pay.

00:05:00.845 --> 00:05:03.687
He said, I wake up every morning and think, what is my day going to consist of?

00:05:03.726 --> 00:05:05.548
He said, you've got your nice car over there.

00:05:05.569 --> 00:05:06.829
He said, how much are you paying for that a month?

00:05:06.870 --> 00:05:08.252
He said, then you've got to pay your petrol.

00:05:08.271 --> 00:05:09.552
He said, you've got your rent and all this.

00:05:09.932 --> 00:05:11.014
And he went on this massive rant.

00:05:11.033 --> 00:05:11.875
I was like, God, he's right.

00:05:12.336 --> 00:05:12.875
He's got it down.

00:05:12.915 --> 00:05:14.517
I went, so where do you actually live then?

00:05:14.538 --> 00:05:15.278
He went, I live in my mum's.

00:05:15.298 --> 00:05:15.999
She pays for everything.

00:05:16.038 --> 00:05:18.221
I was like, nice, there we go.

00:05:18.262 --> 00:05:19.663
So there's always a caveat to it.

00:05:19.702 --> 00:05:22.725
But up until that moment, I was like, this guy's got it all worked out.

00:05:22.978 --> 00:05:23.218
Yeah.

00:05:23.778 --> 00:05:26.141
That bit of freedom of how much freedom you can have.

00:05:26.182 --> 00:05:26.422
Yeah.

00:05:27.043 --> 00:05:27.523
Well, this is it.

00:05:27.543 --> 00:05:30.425
I think in terms of the job that we're in now, we're working at a charity.

00:05:31.247 --> 00:05:37.613
For the skills, I mean, I look at my producer, as talented as he is, could be earning a lot more money.

00:05:37.733 --> 00:05:39.997
But what we were saying is we've got so much freedom for our work.

00:05:40.016 --> 00:05:40.997
We get to do things like this.

00:05:41.538 --> 00:05:42.860
I left the office this morning.

00:05:42.879 --> 00:05:44.262
They're all there taping on the computers.

00:05:44.302 --> 00:05:46.124
And I'm like, yeah, look what we get to go and do.

00:05:46.223 --> 00:05:49.406
We get to go and have these really interesting conversations with really interesting people.

00:05:49.487 --> 00:05:51.168
And I think that in itself is...

00:05:51.810 --> 00:05:53.423
We've got security.

00:05:53.826 --> 00:05:54.766
and the rest of it is fun

00:05:55.247 --> 00:06:38.322
well that's the bit where I think because last year I did this huge tour with Brian Cox so we played like kind of arenas and stuff like that in fact did a couple of nights in the Hull Arena and that to me in fact there was a very right this is a very Hull thing this is one of the many reasons I love Hull right this was not long after the Queen had died right so it meant that every night would start with a great bit on the huge screen we had you know the Queen 1926 to whatever it was you know and every night the audience audience would go oh the queen like that and i feel i felt there was a pressure as well right the first time no one did second night in whole first night in whole yeah second night was like no it's gone on for ages no too long and i love

00:06:38.461 --> 00:06:40.105
that i thought he was gonna say she got booed

00:06:40.326 --> 00:06:46.076
no no it's just like no And I could hear the sound man going and then going, oh, come on.

00:06:46.096 --> 00:06:46.617
No, that's not good.

00:06:46.757 --> 00:06:48.059
No, it's like 10 days ago.

00:06:48.139 --> 00:06:48.358
No.

00:06:50.721 --> 00:06:51.882
No, I completely get it.

00:06:51.942 --> 00:06:55.925
To be fair, it did feel like it went that, what was the call it, state of mourning or something?

00:06:56.065 --> 00:06:56.466
Oh, God.

00:06:56.726 --> 00:07:07.475
My dad, who was quite upset when the Queen died, because he was like, you know, he was born in 1930 and he, you know, that's a long period of time and he was, but by day two, he was going, this is ridiculous.

00:07:07.576 --> 00:07:09.297
Why don't they put an antiques road trip back on?

00:07:09.357 --> 00:07:11.598
I'm having to watch this car drive around all the time.

00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:20.007
Non, So even people who genuinely felt emotionally attached were, I think, blackmailed into going, no, keep mourning.

00:07:20.028 --> 00:07:22.411
Well, because obviously we haven't lived through it ourselves.

00:07:22.471 --> 00:07:28.637
I remember obviously the Queen died and my wife seemed to think that we were going to be putting the crown on Charles within seven days or something.

00:07:28.658 --> 00:07:30.519
So I was like, no, it's not until next year.

00:07:30.540 --> 00:07:31.521
She was like, why that long?

00:07:31.940 --> 00:07:34.283
I thought it was all going to be happening within the next seven days.

00:07:34.343 --> 00:07:37.086
I was like, no, this is quite a long process that we've got here.

00:07:37.166 --> 00:07:38.887
Yeah, the slow trudge.

00:07:39.149 --> 00:07:42.031
So you tweeted last night that you possibly performed your last stand-up gig of the year.

00:07:42.192 --> 00:07:45.225
You've done the Weapons of Empathy, Bibliomaniac.

00:07:45.367 --> 00:07:45.968
Have I said that right?

00:07:46.853 --> 00:07:48.440
Bibliomaniac, Infinite Monkey Cage.

00:07:48.781 --> 00:07:49.324
They've made us.

00:07:49.954 --> 00:07:53.536
Are you Britain's hardest working and most travelled writer and comedian?

00:07:53.916 --> 00:07:54.398
I don't know.

00:07:54.418 --> 00:07:55.057
I mean, I'm not

00:07:55.178 --> 00:07:56.059
far off, I reckon.

00:07:56.098 --> 00:07:59.762
I reckon the miles that I do in a year are...

00:07:59.882 --> 00:08:01.624
I mean, I don't often say no to things.

00:08:02.384 --> 00:08:04.045
And again, like I was saying before, it's all things.

00:08:04.367 --> 00:08:05.687
But I just really like...

00:08:06.487 --> 00:08:09.571
I've got a very short attention span, so I always have to have something new immediately.

00:08:10.011 --> 00:08:50.017
So I've still got, after this, even though that was the last long solo show, I've still got about 30 book festivals to do and a bunch of bookshops and libraries to go to and various other events and recordings but immediately now I'm writing a book at the moment and then I need to start working out hopefully I'm going to get another series of the radio show that I do with my mate Carl and so I just always need something happening so sometimes I'll be really tired and I will have a moment where I go oh it'd be nice just to have a break and then after an hour I go that is so boring and I think that's common of a lot of the people that I know which is to and it's not a retreat into busyness it's not like a kind of fear of not it is you just light your brain Working the whole time.

00:08:50.057 --> 00:08:58.437
And that's, again, one of the reasons that I love travelling is because every town and city you go to, and like you were saying as well, that chance to sit down with people.

00:08:58.476 --> 00:09:02.086
I was doing a book festival in Melrose, the borders of Scotland.

00:09:03.201 --> 00:09:09.267
And the woman who was interviewing me, she said at one point, she went, in your book, you write about the fact that sometimes you get lifts with members of your audience.

00:09:09.386 --> 00:09:10.248
Isn't that scary?

00:09:10.788 --> 00:09:17.615
And the first thing I said to her was, if you've read the history of light entertainment, you'll know that the green room is a far more frightening place than hanging out with the audience.

00:09:18.654 --> 00:09:21.477
We won't go through many, but we know the stories and we know that.

00:09:22.118 --> 00:09:33.168
But the other thing is, that's where it's really, I love the fact that when I'm playing small gigs, I get to know, like when I'm playing Penzance or something like that, the same people, they come back every year because a lot of comics don't go down and play comics.

00:09:33.168 --> 00:09:33.509
Cornwall.

00:09:33.948 --> 00:09:36.332
And so they'll, they'll be like giving me the news.

00:09:36.573 --> 00:09:37.735
Oh, you remember last time?

00:09:37.796 --> 00:09:40.299
And this guy, well, he's got married, doesn't live down here anymore.

00:09:40.379 --> 00:09:41.302
And that person's died.

00:09:41.322 --> 00:09:42.403
And that's why you had all this stuff.

00:09:42.783 --> 00:09:45.929
And, and getting those lifts are not scary things.

00:09:46.149 --> 00:09:53.842
And again, like you said, those conversations you have, like there's people, members of my audience that become friends with like Natalie, Natalie Kay Thatcher, who did the illustrations for Bibliomaniac.

00:09:54.063 --> 00:09:54.965
I met her in the audience.

00:09:55.004 --> 00:09:55.385
That was it.

00:09:55.618 --> 00:09:57.259
After a gig, we got chatting.

00:09:57.318 --> 00:10:00.261
She was interested in science and she was a really good artist.

00:10:00.842 --> 00:10:05.966
And then years later, from just a friendly conversation, I went, do you want to illustrate the book?

00:10:06.027 --> 00:10:06.827
I'd love you to do that.

00:10:07.327 --> 00:10:12.572
And my mate John Ottaway, he was like, there's loads of different things, which I think, yeah, just kind of, was that the question?

00:10:12.592 --> 00:10:14.254
Honestly, it was

00:10:14.293 --> 00:10:17.317
just about how travelled and how hardworking you are, but obviously...

00:10:17.356 --> 00:10:17.476
But

00:10:17.756 --> 00:10:23.282
it's not, I mean, that's the thing, which is it really doesn't feel like, the travel can feel like work.

00:10:23.442 --> 00:11:25.716
Like yesterday, going from Birmingham to Manchester, on a really packed train really feeling the collapse of the infrastructure in the United Kingdom that bit is the work but standing up in front of people and showing off is not work do you ever get nervous or anxious before you perform not often I used to and I used to I mean I used to have anxiety the whole time it was only it was basically when I got diagnosed by an autistic stranger called Jamie and he diagnosed me with ADHD and from that point onwards at the age of 52 everything fell into place which was like a really so I would always be worried about like this conversation now the moment afterwards I think why was I saying all that stuff and that was a load of rubbish and they're really angry about it and blah blah blah and that was going on every single infinite monkey cage that I made if you could have heard my inner monologue you would have heard me going why did you say that oh everyone just wants to listen to Brian Cox oh no you've ruined that bit oh that wasn't funny enough that was going on the whole time and then just walking around and that's now gone I still every now and again I'll get a bit of it and I'll go oh my god how did I live that length of time.

00:11:26.158 --> 00:11:37.046
I walked into, I went to an exhibition in London with my wife and my son and we were sitting for a coffee afterwards and I just went, I've just realised all of the experiences that I've not had.

00:11:37.086 --> 00:11:43.154
All of the anxiety that I would have gone through from the moment I woke up and thought, did I do anything wrong yesterday?

00:11:43.195 --> 00:11:44.717
Was I argumentative?

00:11:44.778 --> 00:11:49.365
And then the first bit of getting on the train, it's that person looking at me because they're going, who's that?

00:11:49.884 --> 00:11:50.866
That guy looks like an idiot.

00:11:51.347 --> 00:11:55.173
And all of those, every little thing, I've definitely got the right ticket, haven't I?

00:11:55.193 --> 00:11:56.174
I've got the right ticket.

00:11:56.195 --> 00:11:58.097
And that was perpetual.

00:11:59.038 --> 00:13:07.101
And then once that went, that is like doing the arena tour you know playing the O2 14,000 people and just having a chat to the guy at the side of the stage who works with Judas Priest just talking about Rob Halford and things like that and then oh god that's McHugh hi Brian you know and showing off to the max and improvising and then wandering back off and going oh so it was Austin was it and that's and then I haven't lost the interesting thing is I used to think if you lost the anxiety then would you not put the effort in but that's not it doesn't change I still my desire for people in fact it's probably increased I really want everyone who comes to any show that I do to leave it with a greater sense of kind of love and excitement because I think there's a lot of comedy out there which punches down all the time and you'll get people going yeah but that's what comedy is you know comedy is this kind of really negative and angry and I think no it doesn't have to be you can have a really amazing time and have a lot of fun where someone is on stage celebrating It can sometimes be a bit harder because the easiest thing, the easiest thing to do is to make fun of the person in the front row.

00:13:07.643 --> 00:13:14.511
That's really, it's a bit like when I was doing a gig at a primary school about the joy of science.

00:13:14.532 --> 00:13:15.734
And that did worry me.

00:13:15.793 --> 00:13:21.721
That kind of gig will because I'm like, I really want these five-year-olds to, you know, and their minds are so different.

00:13:21.761 --> 00:13:23.524
And will I be successful doing this?

00:13:24.105 --> 00:13:25.086
And yeah.

00:13:25.346 --> 00:13:28.562
And this science communicator had said to me, oh, don't worry about five-year-olds.

00:13:28.581 --> 00:13:28.943
They're easy.

00:13:28.984 --> 00:13:32.822
You just talk about farting in space and dinosaur poo.

00:13:33.606 --> 00:13:36.592
And then I thought, That's really underestimating an audience of five-year-olds.

00:13:36.933 --> 00:13:39.918
That's the simplest thing to do is to talk about farts and poos with them.

00:13:40.418 --> 00:13:41.980
And instead, I talked about the brain.

00:13:42.020 --> 00:13:45.125
I showed them a picture of my brain because I'd had a brain scan, talked about their brains.

00:13:45.525 --> 00:13:51.674
And then suddenly we were off and we were talking about the size of the universe, the number of stars in the galaxy.

00:13:52.015 --> 00:13:55.922
I showed them pictures of Jane Goodall with chimpanzees and all of this stuff.

00:13:56.610 --> 00:13:59.335
And I overran by 20 minutes, and it was only a 20-minute talk.

00:14:00.297 --> 00:14:00.998
I checked with the teacher.

00:14:01.018 --> 00:14:01.859
I said, yeah, yeah.

00:14:02.159 --> 00:14:08.029
And we had so much fun because that's the other thing as well, which is I think there's such an underestimation of an audience.

00:14:08.711 --> 00:14:13.240
There is, I think people are much more, you know, far more curious.

00:14:14.442 --> 00:14:21.214
They will go, if you start off somewhere where they're not expecting, they'll kind of go, okay.

00:14:21.474 --> 00:14:56.818
so like one of the shows I was doing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year started with me I was just sat on stage while the audience came in drawing a picture of Vernon Kaye's face on a watermelon or sometimes a golium melon or whatever melons have been available on the way there and then when the music ended I would suddenly stand up scream some things about Vernon Kaye start singing Mustang Sally and then repeatedly punch the melon until it exploded and then it would go blackout I'd say blackout and then blackout I'd go so that's how my first Edinburgh solo show used to end and it was quite divisive but then And from that point onwards, audiences, especially if they knew me from Radio 4 or something, they were like, I don't know what this is.

00:14:57.599 --> 00:14:58.639
But now I don't know what it is.

00:14:58.900 --> 00:14:59.961
Okay, what happens next?

00:15:00.701 --> 00:15:05.666
And even on the last night, I overheard a woman as I was punching the melon going, are you sure we've come to the right show?

00:15:05.706 --> 00:15:07.048
And I thought, yeah, I still got it.

00:15:07.427 --> 00:15:11.331
And that bit of going, because I used to always think, is that okay?

00:15:11.370 --> 00:15:12.272
Is that enough of a joke?

00:15:12.292 --> 00:15:12.993
Is that the right?

00:15:13.253 --> 00:15:20.019
And once you go, well, let's just make something and not listen to the critical voice, it just frees you up amazingly.

00:15:20.058 --> 00:15:32.397
So I get so, I genuinely, like last night, standing at the side of the stage and I'm just chatting away to the crew and then they say oh you're on now and I walk on And I just start talking and see where it goes.

00:15:32.457 --> 00:15:32.778
Was it the

00:15:32.817 --> 00:15:35.360
diagnosis of ADHD that made all that go away then?

00:15:35.601 --> 00:15:36.582
Or what sort of

00:15:36.702 --> 00:15:37.725
caused it to disappear?

00:15:37.804 --> 00:15:38.846
It's such a weird thing.

00:15:39.086 --> 00:15:46.196
I cannot understand why a stranger saying, you do know this is how your mind works.

00:15:46.535 --> 00:15:50.621
Even though, of course, I've read loads about that because I've done shows and written books about neuroscience.

00:15:51.383 --> 00:15:58.292
Somehow that stranger, this guy Jamie, Jamie and Lion, well worth listening to his podcast, which does a lot of stuff on neurodiversity.

00:15:59.874 --> 00:16:00.416
It just...

00:16:01.379 --> 00:16:01.721
Everything...

00:16:02.043 --> 00:16:05.919
It's like a cliche to say it's like the perfect game of Tetris.

00:16:06.280 --> 00:16:06.361
Yeah.

00:16:06.381 --> 00:16:06.783
Everything went...

00:16:06.964 --> 00:16:08.631
And...

00:16:09.474 --> 00:16:14.258
After all those years, suddenly my mind just went, oh, yeah, that's why people have been coming back to your shows.

00:16:14.798 --> 00:16:21.144
Not because you will often walk on stage and at the end of the gig you'll think, oh, I didn't do the show that was in my head.

00:16:21.563 --> 00:16:25.148
And forget that no one in the audience knew the show in your head.

00:16:25.868 --> 00:16:30.052
And it doesn't matter how much laughter or applause there was, you felt, oh, I've let them down.

00:16:30.211 --> 00:16:30.432
Yeah.

00:16:31.212 --> 00:16:33.475
And that wasn't like a proper comedy show is meant to be.

00:16:33.934 --> 00:17:04.048
Yeah, I proper get that because, to be fair, I've never really spoke about it on this podcast, but my other life is professional professional wrestling so when we do professional wrestling matches we plan small parts of the match and go out there but obviously kind of what you were saying we always treat the audience as if they're stupid as well but when we do parts of the match it could be oh we forgot to do that part where i jump over the top rope and hit you with a clothes sort of thing and we think everybody knows but and we come back and we'll be beating ourselves oh we we fucked up we missed this part we missed this part and then you have this second where you go actually Nobody knows.

00:17:04.087 --> 00:17:08.806
Nobody knows that we said we was going to do all that bad because they think we're not friends, that we're enemies and da, da, da, da, da.

00:17:09.086 --> 00:17:09.709
They don't get that.

00:17:10.130 --> 00:17:13.948
So when you go out there, and you do it, and they don't know that you've forgotten.

00:17:13.968 --> 00:17:15.128
I imagine it's the same with comedy.

00:17:15.269 --> 00:17:15.410
Do

00:17:15.450 --> 00:17:15.849
you know what?

00:17:15.910 --> 00:17:16.611
I love wrestling.

00:17:16.770 --> 00:17:17.692
I love the theatre.

00:17:17.751 --> 00:17:25.057
No, I really, I find, I wrote a movie about wrestling, and unfortunately with my mate Darren, and we could never get enough finance for it.

00:17:25.077 --> 00:17:45.978
It was such a pity, but it was so much fun to go back through all this archive footage of, especially some of the American wrestlers who came over to Australia in the early 1970s, and they're doing those early versions of, I'm coming for you, and I'm going to, and you can see that they can't read the board that's being handed And watching, yeah, I find it such an interesting thing.

00:17:46.018 --> 00:17:46.939
It's changed so much.

00:17:46.959 --> 00:17:48.901
I always say it's a really interesting form of theatre.

00:17:49.280 --> 00:18:03.877
I've shared this story with Robbie before, but I met with Diversity, the dance troupe, when we was working in Butlins, and they couldn't get their head around the fact that we don't rehearse, we have a little conversation, and then we go out and do it.

00:18:04.298 --> 00:18:06.161
Well, they will rehearse all day.

00:18:07.281 --> 00:18:10.105
Putting all this choreography together, they'll rehearse, and then they go out and do it.

00:18:10.690 --> 00:18:13.053
And they just couldn't believe that we don't rehearse.

00:18:13.133 --> 00:18:14.816
We literally talk about it, go out there and we do it.

00:18:15.477 --> 00:18:22.445
And I think that's one of the things that have been a really interesting form of theatre because there is so much drama to it, because there is so much story to it.

00:18:24.048 --> 00:18:25.009
And it's just not rehearsed.

00:18:25.170 --> 00:18:27.313
It's a conversation that goes on and then we play it out.

00:18:27.353 --> 00:18:28.775
We play the story out in front of people.

00:18:28.914 --> 00:18:32.700
And that's what I think people don't often get about wrestling is that it is a story.

00:18:33.161 --> 00:18:33.340
Yeah.

00:18:33.441 --> 00:18:34.122
That's what we're telling.

00:18:34.201 --> 00:18:37.846
It isn't just two guys hitting each other with elbow drops off the top rope.

00:18:37.906 --> 00:18:39.048
We build a story up.

00:18:39.469 --> 00:18:47.616
So you've got the audience in the palm of your hand reacting to everything that you do and I imagine again going back to comedy there must be some links with

00:18:47.778 --> 00:19:10.067
that well that's certainly my approach my approach is I don't ever want anyone to see exactly the same show no so there was a friend of mine Mick who sadly died last year and Mick I first got to know him because he had a kind of slightly gothic look and he had a wide brimmed hat so I'd always see him in the audience because I'd see the hat and he used to come to every gig that I did in the Eventually, I went up to him in the bar one day.

00:19:10.086 --> 00:19:13.830
I said, Mick, I said, stop paying to come to my gigs.

00:19:14.231 --> 00:19:15.093
I said, I'm on Facebook.

00:19:15.133 --> 00:19:15.913
You just tell me which ones.

00:19:15.952 --> 00:19:17.194
He said, no, no, I'm always going to pay.

00:19:17.755 --> 00:19:20.117
I said, but you've seen this show nine times.

00:19:20.137 --> 00:19:20.939
He said, it's never the same.

00:19:21.519 --> 00:19:22.279
I said, are you sure?

00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:23.320
He went, it really isn't.

00:19:23.560 --> 00:19:25.803
And sometimes I'd come off and I'd think, I wonder if that was the same.

00:19:25.823 --> 00:19:26.904
And he'd go, no, no, you didn't do that bit.

00:19:26.924 --> 00:19:27.545
You didn't say that.

00:19:27.625 --> 00:19:28.185
That's all new.

00:19:28.465 --> 00:19:36.094
And that is what I love, which is that bit, which I presume is a similar thing, which is you get a level of instinct which says, I'm going to trust you.

00:19:36.193 --> 00:19:41.259
that what we create here and the way this happens is going to work.

00:19:41.299 --> 00:19:45.544
And that level of trust, whether it's a trust with someone else or whether it's a trust of your own mind.

00:19:45.584 --> 00:19:49.868
And there was a thing that I loved Andy Warhol said in his book of philosophy.

00:19:50.230 --> 00:19:53.613
He said, I don't really like watching professional entertainers because I know they know what they're doing.

00:19:53.894 --> 00:20:01.342
And that really rung a bell because when I watch certain comics, I think this is very well done, but I know something.

00:20:01.761 --> 00:20:05.227
that you said the same thing yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

00:20:05.267 --> 00:20:11.455
And when I watch someone that I think I can see the instinct there, I can see that they also don't know.

00:20:11.476 --> 00:20:15.422
It's so exciting to suddenly, briefly, your brain goes, what are you talking about?

00:20:15.442 --> 00:20:16.503
I don't know where the hell this bit is.

00:20:16.824 --> 00:20:19.027
Or when you come off stage and someone says, oh, I love that bit.

00:20:19.167 --> 00:20:20.148
And I go, that wasn't me.

00:20:20.169 --> 00:20:20.650
They went, it was.

00:20:21.185 --> 00:20:21.866
What, just now?

00:20:22.007 --> 00:20:22.186
Yeah.

00:20:22.208 --> 00:20:23.569
I don't remember saying that.

00:20:23.750 --> 00:20:25.833
It was like, you know, you go for an improvisation or whatever it is.

00:20:26.113 --> 00:20:27.736
And that, to me, that's proper

00:20:27.796 --> 00:20:28.297
interaction.

00:20:28.416 --> 00:20:28.936
Absolutely, yeah.

00:20:29.077 --> 00:20:29.699
And I think that's it.

00:20:29.878 --> 00:20:32.082
Going back to wrestling, we have to listen to our audience.

00:20:32.142 --> 00:20:39.613
When the good guy is getting beaten up by the bad guy, once the crowd starts clapping, that's the time for the good guy to start fighting back.

00:20:39.712 --> 00:20:39.933
Yeah.

00:20:40.193 --> 00:20:43.057
We always say the audience are dictating what is kind of going on in the ring.

00:20:43.117 --> 00:20:45.079
When they're up, that's when the good guy's up.

00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:46.582
When they're down, that's when the bad guy's down.

00:20:46.642 --> 00:20:48.624
But we do that without them even realising.

00:20:48.683 --> 00:20:50.967
I always think that's like the impressive thing for audience interaction.

00:20:50.987 --> 00:20:59.596
I mean, talking about your career, you've had such a diverse career covering a wide range of thought-provoking topics from assisted dying to mental health and addiction services.

00:21:00.137 --> 00:21:03.182
Your openness about your ADHD diagnosis has been inspiration to many.

00:21:03.809 --> 00:21:09.296
Can you take a moment to share how your ADHD has influenced your career both creatively and personally?

00:21:09.316 --> 00:21:12.772
And for those listeners who may not fully understand what living with ADHD is like...

00:21:13.153 --> 00:21:16.957
Could you share an anecdote or describe what it feels like in a way that might resonate with them?

00:21:17.377 --> 00:21:18.018
Well, do you know what?

00:21:18.538 --> 00:21:19.759
I'll use an example of Hull.

00:21:20.140 --> 00:21:30.308
When I was here and I went to play Wrecking Ball, which is a record shop and also publishes great books, Drunken Bakers and all Barney Farmer's stuff is amazing.

00:21:31.730 --> 00:21:32.150
I arrived.

00:21:32.170 --> 00:21:35.794
I can't remember where I'd been playing in the afternoon, and I got to Hull, and I said I'd get there at 6.30.

00:21:35.874 --> 00:21:40.478
I wasn't on until 8 or whatever, but I suddenly thought, oh, God, I've got to get somebody to eat because I'm not eating all day.

00:21:40.917 --> 00:21:43.480
So I sent the guy a text just saying, oh, I probably won't be there at 6.30.

00:21:43.561 --> 00:21:45.249
I might be there about 7 o'clock.

00:21:45.549 --> 00:21:47.277
And he sent me back a text and just said, OK.

00:21:48.141 --> 00:21:48.864
So that would be OK.

00:21:49.125 --> 00:21:49.305
OK.

00:21:49.707 --> 00:21:53.181
But what I saw was, OK.

00:21:53.761 --> 00:22:03.349
So you can see in even just two letters, you can see that you've disappointed someone and your imagination will straight away go to, oh, I've let one down.

00:22:04.010 --> 00:22:05.913
So that would be, for instance, one of the examples.

00:22:05.992 --> 00:22:12.597
Another example is, you know, in one way it's performance enhancing and inability to follow a line of thought.

00:22:12.657 --> 00:22:18.544
So the moment you start one sentence, it makes a connection with another idea and then another connection and then another connection.

00:22:18.624 --> 00:22:20.825
So suddenly there's just the whole brain is lit up.

00:22:21.546 --> 00:22:26.155
And, of course, for anyone, you know, I'm lucky because because that's actually part of what I do.

00:22:26.217 --> 00:22:33.180
But if you've got a job where the parameters are a lot more narrow and you're finding it hard to...

00:22:33.922 --> 00:22:35.384
Because suddenly you've thought of something else.

00:22:35.943 --> 00:22:43.553
A typical thing, just for normal things that I do, is yesterday morning I woke up and I realised I had to answer an email from a bookshop.

00:22:43.894 --> 00:22:46.936
So I opened my email and, of course, there was another email there.

00:22:47.377 --> 00:22:49.641
And I then dealt with that and that led to something else.

00:22:49.681 --> 00:22:51.663
And then I suddenly realised that made me think of a writing thing.

00:22:51.682 --> 00:22:54.165
And then at lunchtime I went, I've not replied to that bookshop, I must go in.

00:22:54.385 --> 00:22:55.267
So I just opened my email.

00:22:55.287 --> 00:22:56.929
But, oh, hang on a minute, that was another email.

00:22:57.028 --> 00:23:02.490
And then last night at one in the morning I went, I still want to answer that bookshop.

00:23:02.770 --> 00:23:08.596
And that was the one moment where I think I was tired enough that I was able to keep concentrating and going, that's it.

00:23:08.876 --> 00:23:13.441
You're answering Blackwell's Oxford email about doing a gig on Halloween.

00:23:13.980 --> 00:23:14.642
You've done it now.

00:23:15.201 --> 00:23:16.282
But sometimes that can take weeks.

00:23:16.542 --> 00:23:18.944
Also paranoia on phone calls, for instance.

00:23:19.006 --> 00:23:22.969
A lot of people I know with ADHD find it very, very difficult to ring people.

00:23:23.108 --> 00:23:28.493
And that's certainly something when I was doing stand-up and you had to ring clubs and clubs would say, ring us on Tuesday, we'll give you a gig.

00:23:29.153 --> 00:23:31.056
And I wouldn't be able to do that for six months ever.

00:23:31.056 --> 00:23:33.038
I'd wake up and go, today's the day I'm going to write.

00:23:33.077 --> 00:23:33.337
No, I'm not.

00:23:34.680 --> 00:23:38.884
Uh, and, and the negative thoughts that generally that negative thought thing is a very light.

00:23:38.963 --> 00:23:47.574
I was, I did this 26 hour live online show, uh, just after lockdown for, it was a Christmas show with loads of scientists and musicians.

00:23:47.693 --> 00:23:49.476
It was like Robert Smith did it from the cure.

00:23:49.496 --> 00:23:53.380
And we had Tim Minchin there and Helen Sharman, the astronaut and all this stuff.

00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:57.284
And at the end of it, I remember like two in the afternoon, just sitting there going, that was good.

00:23:57.324 --> 00:23:59.145
And my mate Trent, we were like, yeah, we did well.

00:23:59.185 --> 00:24:02.410
And then I got home and, uh, My wife and son were like, yay.

00:24:02.789 --> 00:24:06.375
And then about 10 minutes after I got home, my wife went, why did you put that there?

00:24:07.076 --> 00:24:07.435
And that was it.

00:24:07.777 --> 00:24:13.284
For three months, it was like suicide ideation and all of those things.

00:24:15.486 --> 00:24:17.528
So that's the negative side of it.

00:24:19.070 --> 00:24:22.335
And for a lot of people who have no escape from that, that negativity.

00:24:22.355 --> 00:24:25.699
And it is that whole thing of masking so much of who we are.

00:24:25.878 --> 00:24:40.257
One thing that I do now is quite often, because I've spoken about neurodiversity, people will come up to me after gigs and they'll tell me a story and they'll get really, you know, the kind of, and I can see the ADHD thing, or sometimes it's a story about autism, late diagnosis of that, whatever it might be.

00:24:40.938 --> 00:24:48.626
And now what I always say to them afterwards is just so you know, I know that when you leave here now, when you leave this bar, you're going to go, why don't I go and tell him all those things?

00:24:48.666 --> 00:24:49.749
He must think I'm an absolute idiot.

00:24:50.009 --> 00:24:50.509
I can't believe it.

00:24:50.529 --> 00:24:56.048
I said, I know you're going to think that more than likely because that's exactly what I always did for the majority of my life.

00:24:56.450 --> 00:24:58.291
So just so you know, I don't think you're an idiot.

00:24:58.593 --> 00:24:59.855
I'm glad you told me the story.

00:25:00.134 --> 00:25:02.979
You didn't waste my time and just take that away.

00:25:03.038 --> 00:25:16.258
So that's what, and I know you might now still say, yeah, I know he said all those things, but yeah, but, and it's that bit of, I think, you know, of trying to be able to be honest and say, these are my experiences, my internal experiences.

00:25:16.298 --> 00:25:17.359
And I think they might be yours too.

00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:19.875
And if they are just so, you know, I'm happy you spoke.

00:25:19.915 --> 00:25:23.282
So, so, so now it is a predominantly positive thing.

00:25:23.864 --> 00:25:23.943
Yeah.

00:25:23.963 --> 00:25:35.615
And it has, it's, it's like when you lose the, you don't realize how energy sapping anxiety is until you, escape from it.

00:25:36.036 --> 00:25:41.645
And suddenly you go, oh, my God, that was taking up so much of my mental space.

00:25:41.707 --> 00:25:45.353
That was taking up so many times when I could be having ideas and creating things.

00:25:45.733 --> 00:25:46.715
I was just worried.

00:25:47.457 --> 00:25:58.376
And the weight of it, it does feel like, you know, when you lose it, it's like I've been wearing this really heavy, horrible old horsehair coat that's been itchy and scratchy and it's just agonizing.

00:25:58.396 --> 00:25:59.057
But I didn't know.

00:25:59.554 --> 00:26:09.526
And sometimes when there was a woman I met the other day from the early 60s and she'd had late diagnosis autism, and though I'd never met her before, I could tell that she was taller than she was before.

00:26:10.166 --> 00:26:14.010
You could see there was a lightness that was like, now I know.

00:26:14.051 --> 00:26:27.944
And I still think, even though you'll see lots of naysayers in the press and stuff about a lot of mental health stuff, but I've spoken to a lot of mental health experts and actually in the UK, we're still way behind in And there's just so many people out there.

00:26:28.224 --> 00:26:41.769
A lot of things, and some people listening or watching this will, you know, might, is that I think one of the problems is the parameters, again, of what is considered to be normal and socially acceptable is way too thin.

00:26:43.211 --> 00:26:49.182
And lots of things which are currently a diagnosis in a truly healthy society wouldn't even be a diagnosis anymore.

00:26:49.442 --> 00:27:07.951
Because all of those people who are seen as eccentric and strange, and a lot of those eccentric and strange people are also the reason that we have so much art, we have so much creativity, that we have scientific understanding of so many things, that comes from people who are going through the world and going, this isn't quite right, there's something wrong here.

00:27:08.992 --> 00:27:14.500
So that starting point is very often that your mind is not in the same place as...

00:27:15.266 --> 00:27:24.700
People who are at least, you know, from outwardly behaving in a normal manner and perhaps inwardly have believed that they have a normal kind of way of their brain.

00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:27.644
You know, I know some people who sometimes go, so you're thinking all the time.

00:27:27.683 --> 00:27:28.885
Go, yeah, yeah.

00:27:29.287 --> 00:27:30.167
Don't you have any quark periods?

00:27:30.248 --> 00:27:35.935
And it's like, I've never learned to drive because I think I'd be rubbish at it because I just would be, I'd be thinking about too many other things.

00:27:37.038 --> 00:27:37.117
Yeah.

00:27:37.410 --> 00:27:41.095
So, yeah, I think in a healthy world, but it has been.

00:27:41.134 --> 00:27:46.821
And it's really, I genuinely, when you get people coming up to you and having trust in you.

00:27:47.102 --> 00:27:53.249
And this couple came up to me and they said, oh, can I just tell you a quick story?

00:27:53.549 --> 00:27:56.953
I said, I'll tell you what, wait till I finish signing because then we can just sit down and we can chat.

00:27:58.336 --> 00:28:00.178
And they'd recently lost a baby.

00:28:00.513 --> 00:28:09.623
So very close to the, it turned out that the baby wouldn't survive if born and it was, yeah.

00:28:10.143 --> 00:28:11.263
But she had to go through the birth.

00:28:13.066 --> 00:28:23.776
And what happened was that they found out in the scan that the baby now had one of its arms behind the back, which is a really difficult birth.

00:28:23.955 --> 00:28:25.076
And there's a lot of problems with that.

00:28:25.577 --> 00:28:29.821
And there's no particular technique at all, apparently, that's very effective.

00:28:29.953 --> 00:28:41.272
But one of the obstetricians went, I've seen this, said I was based out in, I can't remember where it was, Ghana or Nigeria, said there they've got a technique for this.

00:28:41.814 --> 00:28:54.394
They've got this kind of way that they've got this kind of, it's literally like taking a very thin piece of rubber piping and you kind of make a lasso and you get in there and you manage to pull the arm round.

00:28:55.355 --> 00:29:00.962
And then once that's happened, That makes everything much easier and less dangerous both for the mother and the child.

00:29:01.983 --> 00:29:05.208
So they got a couple of other people and went, do you know, yeah, I've heard about this method as well.

00:29:05.989 --> 00:29:06.910
And they managed to do it.

00:29:08.152 --> 00:29:11.055
And so she lost her baby.

00:29:12.297 --> 00:29:18.203
But what she hopes is that now more people are going to know about this technique.

00:29:19.005 --> 00:29:20.707
So in fact, they call their child Hope.

00:29:21.887 --> 00:30:36.650
And now she, you know, and her partner, they go, well, maybe something that came from our loss was that someone else now won't because you know someone who might have even died in childbirth or whatever it might be that they've now got this technique and that to share that story for someone to think oh you know what that bloke we've just seen larking about and reading from moomins books and books about giant killer crabs and whatever else we can tell him a story and we want to share it and that's what i really that bit of you know sometimes where it's like when people sometimes come up and I had a thing when I was in I think it was Lowestoft and I was doing a quite late night gig and a couple waited till late on so I was chatting to people and then they kind of came over last they said I just want to say and he said I've never heard my brain on stage before because when people see because it's quite a manic kind of thing I do it's been really interesting to find out that people have heard their own brain the brain they've hidden the mind they've hidden and he started crying And it was like, and that realizing how many people are going through life, hiding who they are, which is agonizing, thinking they're insane or that they're not right.

00:30:37.892 --> 00:30:44.301
And then seeing someone or hearing someone or whatever it might be and going, I'm not the only one.

00:30:46.018 --> 00:30:58.794
You know, to realise how much, you know, in one way it's given me a kind of, not exactly a messianic zeal, but it really, I really do want people to, you know, that moment of someone feeling comfortable enough.

00:30:59.855 --> 00:31:01.096
Or even they don't have to come up.

00:31:01.176 --> 00:31:03.779
Maybe they just afterwards they go, I'm all right.

00:31:04.721 --> 00:31:10.909
That is to me a really important part of what performance can be, which is, you know, empathy.

00:31:11.470 --> 00:31:11.549
Yeah.

00:31:11.970 --> 00:31:22.905
we often inquire about an individual's rock bottom moment on this podcast, not to dwell on the lowest points, but because we found that the narrative leading up to these moments can be both inspiring and offer hope to our listeners.

00:31:23.807 --> 00:31:26.871
Have there been any personal or professional low points in your life?

00:31:27.030 --> 00:31:34.060
And if so, could you describe the journey and growth that followed offering a metaphorical olive branch of encouragement to our audience?

00:31:35.063 --> 00:31:36.044
It's a weird one,

00:31:36.084 --> 00:31:48.266
that one, because I think there's a point where I know a lot of things kind of unraveled, which was just before my third birthday, because I was in a car crash.

00:31:48.507 --> 00:31:50.929
There was a car on the wrong side of the road at speed.

00:31:51.390 --> 00:31:52.550
My mum was nearly killed.

00:31:53.772 --> 00:31:57.696
And then she suffered from depression for much of the rest of her life.

00:31:57.737 --> 00:32:05.105
She was a very good mum, but she also, like, there's a great moment in, have you seen the Australian TV series, Mr.

00:32:05.125 --> 00:32:05.586
Inbetween?

00:32:05.625 --> 00:32:05.726
Yeah.

00:32:05.953 --> 00:32:06.515
It's

00:32:06.535 --> 00:32:07.175
fantastic.

00:32:07.195 --> 00:32:08.317
It's really, really great.

00:32:08.978 --> 00:32:14.905
And there's a scene in one of the episodes where the guy who's a kind of, he sometimes works as a hitman and stuff like that, but there's a very interesting moral.

00:32:15.266 --> 00:32:29.305
He has a, you can see he's an ex-soldier and you can see that a lot of the stuff he does, he just still views as if, well, this is what happens with the enemy or whatever, but you can see he's also, his brother has got a motor neurone disease.

00:32:29.365 --> 00:32:30.586
He looks after his daughter quite a lot.

00:32:30.787 --> 00:32:35.933
You can see he's also, there's a real humanity in him, but he never got on with his dad and his dad gets dementia.

00:32:35.970 --> 00:32:40.336
And he goes into the home one day and his dad goes, hi, son.

00:32:40.518 --> 00:32:42.882
And he goes, oh, you recognize me today, dad.

00:32:43.301 --> 00:32:44.364
He goes, yeah, I'm having a good day.

00:32:44.443 --> 00:32:45.306
I need to have a word with you.

00:32:45.866 --> 00:32:47.368
And then they sit down, they start talking.

00:32:48.310 --> 00:32:51.836
And his dad tells him about when he was sent out as an Australian soldier to Vietnam.

00:32:53.298 --> 00:32:59.971
And at the end of it, he just says, I wish you'd known me before I'd gone to war.

00:33:00.991 --> 00:33:01.894
And I think that.

00:33:02.561 --> 00:33:10.834
is such a huge part of so many people's stories, which is there is a point in which so much of their potential is lost.

00:33:10.874 --> 00:33:16.823
Like when you're talking about abuse, and I think of the number of narratives of that and the number of people that I've known who've had that.

00:33:17.723 --> 00:33:23.132
There are these things that happen, which can mean that someone, they've gone to war.

00:33:23.271 --> 00:33:24.453
Sometimes it's a literal war.

00:33:24.493 --> 00:33:30.763
And so I kind of think that I don't have any, there's certainly been moments of...

00:33:32.577 --> 00:33:35.961
you know, when I've suddenly just really hated myself so intensely.

00:33:37.182 --> 00:33:45.491
And if I remember once doing fruit market in, in whole and just the negative voice was so loud at the end of the gig.

00:33:46.513 --> 00:33:54.923
And, uh, I just went backstage and I just burst into tears, which is quite an unusual, you know, it's not that I'm generally someone who, you know, this annoying thing, isn't it?

00:33:54.942 --> 00:33:55.544
Which is though.

00:33:55.604 --> 00:33:57.685
I have no problem with other people crying whatsoever.

00:33:57.965 --> 00:34:13.588
There's an internal shame to the, uh, But I would have moments like that and I would have moments where I just, sometimes where I would do something wrong you know, things like leaving the keys in the door overnight by mistake.

00:34:13.688 --> 00:34:15.050
And your partner goes, why have you done that?

00:34:15.489 --> 00:34:17.431
And that just would crash in on me.

00:34:17.672 --> 00:34:24.518
And I'd just like, I'd have to just walk and walk and walk and walk and just, you know, and not know what I was going to do and just feel utterly powerless.

00:34:24.557 --> 00:34:26.639
And so I'd have lots of kind of moments like that.

00:34:26.719 --> 00:34:32.824
But I don't think, I think a lot of those things come from the fact that I thought I'd caused a car crash because I was three, nearly three.

00:34:33.166 --> 00:35:07.146
And so you think if you do something, you know, when you're a kid, if you pick up a cup and a vase falls over there, you often think it's all entangled and you've caused it so I think that had a major effect on me and probably I think on all our family and that that was one of those things I think I battled with a lot and why I'm so worried very often about people's happiness is because I remember like when my mum would sometimes get very very upset uh And I would, this is such a cliche of comedian story, but I would go up to her bedroom as she was kind of screaming.

00:35:08.168 --> 00:35:11.875
And I would try and make her happy and check she was okay from a very early age.

00:35:11.934 --> 00:35:14.159
And I think that had a, you know, quite an effect on me.

00:35:15.101 --> 00:35:17.726
So I think, yeah, I can't nail it down to a certain moment.

00:35:18.367 --> 00:35:21.293
It's more a kind of the hum that was around and...

00:35:22.114 --> 00:35:23.456
That's interesting.

00:35:23.476 --> 00:35:26.364
Why is that a cliche with comedians, that story?

00:35:26.384 --> 00:35:29.331
It's that creation myth, that moment of something.

00:35:29.431 --> 00:35:35.246
It is higher than average, for instance, the number of comedians who've lost a parent.

00:35:35.458 --> 00:36:10.817
Alan Davis and Eddie Izzo there's quite a high amount of kind of adoption and things like that of course there's an enormous number of people who don't become comedians who've been adopted or lost a parent or whatever but it is slightly but it's like so it's just that you know there's always that love isn't there of going he made the whole world laugh but he himself was in tears tears of the clowns yeah and it is and I think that Spike Milligan talked about that he said the cliche he said the reason that people obsess about that is because of the clash of the fact that there's someone making everyone laugh, but actually they're deeply sad.

00:36:11.318 --> 00:36:12.681
But actually, I think...

00:36:12.702 --> 00:36:19.038
I wrote a book called I'm a Joker, So Are You, and in that, one of the things I wanted to say was that a lot of the...

00:36:19.521 --> 00:37:12.599
cliches about comics are actually true of an enormous number of people if anything I think one of the things that I find remarkable is like when someone like when Robin Williams one of the reasons I wrote the book was yeah because I remember that the night that we found out that he'd taken his own life I was actually doing a show about mental health and comedy and came off stage in the interval and then found out about that and then I saw so many cliche written articles about about him and of course one of the things about him is you know comedy might have actually been the mechanism that got him further through life than you know it wasn't I think it's an incredible thing when you think of the number of comics around the UK on any given night who might have just gone on stage and died on their arse and now they're in a budget hotel and they're just thinking all they're thinking is that they've and the fact that there are not more comedians I think the truth of it is it seems amazing the resilience to keep going back.

00:37:12.865 --> 00:37:16.168
but we really notice it because it's such, it seems like such a clash.

00:37:16.708 --> 00:37:16.969
Have you ever

00:37:17.030 --> 00:37:18.050
died on your ass in front of

00:37:18.130 --> 00:37:18.411
a light?

00:37:18.431 --> 00:37:19.130
Oh yeah.

00:37:19.431 --> 00:37:20.713
You know, do you know what?

00:37:20.932 --> 00:37:23.135
I think if you haven't died on your ass, you're not putting the effort in.

00:37:23.635 --> 00:37:31.561
I, I think that's the whole point is like, if every single night you're always storming it, every comic that I really admire, I've seen have a bad night.

00:37:32.043 --> 00:37:36.806
I've, you know, and it's like, and, and sometimes there's a brilliant comic called Paul foot.

00:37:37.106 --> 00:37:39.548
And I don't know if you know, but Paul was Paul one.

00:37:39.728 --> 00:38:16.753
There used to be three new act competitions in Edinburgh and he, won two out of the three and the other one was won by peter k and then paul was immediately promoted to he had a brilliant 10 minutes but he didn't have half an hour so suddenly he started dying on his ass but no one died better than him in fact sometimes you almost you didn't want him to die i'd love him to have a great gig but you just go but no one does it with such aplomb and so beautifully and seems to be in such control and um but yeah i i think if you're if you're being you know there's it's like uh the the best encore that i've ever experienced with at a Manchester club called the Frog and Bucket because one table was still booing me.

00:38:16.773 --> 00:38:19.601
And then you go, I'm still art.

00:38:20.262 --> 00:38:22.688
They loved me, but some still despise me.

00:38:23.362 --> 00:38:25.804
So I think I've had plenty of gigs.

00:38:25.824 --> 00:38:33.951
And also, of course, one of the things I think when I was failing quite often was because I was so worried that I wasn't doing comedy right.

00:38:34.351 --> 00:38:43.318
When in fact, I remember when I used to do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the early days, I quite often, you know, you'd play these venues where you thought, God, this is a lot to pay for a ticket for an hour-long show.

00:38:43.639 --> 00:38:46.021
And you'd be so worried about whether you're giving value for money.

00:38:46.342 --> 00:38:48.664
That worrying voice actually meant you didn't give a better show.

00:38:48.804 --> 00:38:52.007
So that's why I started doing the free fringe for a while because I was doing gigs for free.

00:38:52.387 --> 00:39:49.184
So in one way, it's like, well, they've not put any money in but it doesn't make you do a worse gig no because you still want them to have a great time yeah and so yeah i i think yeah at the time that you're dying on the on your ass you don't think you're learning anything from it but i think the the thing you should be learning should not be about becoming bulletproof it should be about having the confidence to die on your ass ago i remember with stewart lee years ago uh comedian stewart lee and and I had a bad gig and he went yeah but would you want to have a drink with any of those people and sometimes you can look at an audience you think you can be the beloved entertainer who wants to be loved by everyone but if you're loved by everyone are you actually saying anything because you know some nights I remember doing a gig I think this was one of my really big learning things after I'd done my first solo tour and then I got booked for this club in the west end of London and even the music that was playing at the beginning I was like oh this doesn't sound like it's setting up for the right kind of thing that I do and I And I thought, oh, do you know what?

00:39:49.204 --> 00:39:53.389
I could go back to a lot of old routines that I've got that I know will kind of cut through this crowd.

00:39:54.068 --> 00:39:59.934
And then I suddenly thought, what if out of the 200 people here, four people have specifically booked.

00:39:59.974 --> 00:40:01.335
They've gone, oh, I've seen Robin before.

00:40:01.376 --> 00:40:02.197
We saw his solo show.

00:40:02.777 --> 00:40:09.864
And then I go and do a hack set and they leave and they go, oh, that wasn't really what we thought he did.

00:40:10.744 --> 00:40:15.748
So I really dug my heels in and I thought, no, I'm going to do what I want to do.

00:40:16.909 --> 00:40:16.989
Yeah.

00:40:17.121 --> 00:40:18.324
And at the end, it all worked.

00:40:18.463 --> 00:40:19.927
But there was one table that didn't like me.

00:40:20.027 --> 00:40:24.695
And it turned out that earlier on in the evening, we found out that they were voters for the British National Party.

00:40:25.135 --> 00:40:28.760
So I wasn't that bothered that I hadn't won over the fascists, you know.

00:40:29.563 --> 00:40:33.268
But that bit of going, hang on a minute, what if someone is, they really were.

00:40:33.489 --> 00:40:38.217
And that moment when you say something that when you are not just going, what makes people laugh?

00:40:39.106 --> 00:40:43.351
then the moment that you're restricting yourself by a lot of clichés.

00:40:44.050 --> 00:40:49.016
It's an important thing to talk to people who don't have the same opinions as you, but not necessarily those who've monetised them.

00:40:49.117 --> 00:40:57.365
I've said some comment about when Lawrence Fox, in a very cack-handed way, set fire to those pride flags in his back garden.

00:40:57.706 --> 00:40:59.108
I just put up something about that.

00:40:59.809 --> 00:41:03.532
And then apparently Lawrence Fox got in contact and was like, well, I think we should have a discussion.

00:41:03.552 --> 00:41:04.574
I'm like, nah.

00:41:05.121 --> 00:41:13.054
No, there's nothing because– but I will have– you look on things like with the trans issue that has become so toxic.

00:41:13.795 --> 00:41:19.485
And I think the anti-trans movement, I personally believe, is hugely overrepresented.

00:41:19.987 --> 00:41:24.173
It's because I travel around a lot and I talk to a lot of people in a lot of towns, a lot of cities.

00:41:24.715 --> 00:41:37.472
But sometimes I meet people who I don't think are– they're not actively anti-trans– they've read lots of stories that are in the newspaper in the same way with Section 28 when homophobia was being stirred up.

00:41:38.193 --> 00:41:39.655
And they believed those stories.

00:41:40.376 --> 00:41:41.777
But it's not because they actually acted.

00:41:41.918 --> 00:41:43.621
And so you can end up talking to them.

00:41:44.021 --> 00:41:47.005
And they can go, oh, so that story in that paper, so that's not exactly what happened.

00:41:47.045 --> 00:41:50.528
No, if you read the full actual thing, this is what happened before that moment.

00:41:50.849 --> 00:42:12.494
And so I think it's working out who to be open to have a discussion with and who where you go– like with climate change deniers as well and people like that, you just go, no, this person is just fully committed to this particular cause and they have no interest in knowing any other details or any other facts apart from those which are...

00:42:12.775 --> 00:42:13.074
It's just

00:42:13.114 --> 00:42:14.295
important to be right, isn't it?

00:42:14.336 --> 00:42:14.797
Yeah.

00:42:14.876 --> 00:42:15.617
It doesn't matter what...

00:42:15.898 --> 00:42:26.527
I've said this before, it doesn't matter what evidence you provide to somebody, they need to be right and often it's about who shouts the loudest and it feels like that's what makes it right as well and it's just ridiculous, isn't it?

00:42:26.547 --> 00:42:27.568
Well, I get quite a lot...

00:42:27.568 --> 00:42:29.990
I get these people who say, why don't you listen to the women?

00:42:30.690 --> 00:42:36.717
And I go, well, I'm listening to my friend Carolyn, who when I was 18 introduced me to the first books on feminism that I read.

00:42:38.018 --> 00:42:46.427
I'm listening to my friend Josie and I'm listening to my friend who's been a feminist activist for years and fought for abortion rights in Ireland.

00:42:46.929 --> 00:42:54.036
And I'm listening to my wife and I'll go through all of these things and they go, no, but just because they're friends doesn't mean they're right.

00:42:54.056 --> 00:42:55.097
And you go, well, hang on a minute.

00:42:55.398 --> 00:43:13.597
I'm listening to a lot of women that I hugely respect and who have also people who've been feminist activists through their whole life but somehow now they've no not those ones and that's when you realise well that's no point in talking to those people because they're just saying well when I say this I don't mean those women yeah

00:43:13.793 --> 00:43:16.076
I

00:43:16.096 --> 00:43:27.905
think you've got it now it's like once you put your head above the parapet and it's and I understand why a lot of people stay silent but it's like I think yeah that's kind of

00:43:27.925 --> 00:43:40.476
where I am with a lot of things sometimes I'll see things and I'll go you know what it's more about engaging in arguments online I look and I say I could comment on this I could argue at this point but then it's 7 o'clock now and I know if I do that's my entire evening gone

00:43:40.737 --> 00:43:46.382
yeah but it's that cartoon isn't it I'll be with you in a moment darling, but I've just found out someone else is wrong on the internet.

00:43:46.643 --> 00:43:56.036
You know, that thing is just not, and it's like, you know, Twitter or whatever it is now, that is just, it's a cesspit if you get involved in those things.

00:43:57.237 --> 00:43:58.858
I don't really use it very much.

00:44:00.041 --> 00:44:06.128
My friend kind of looks after my account, but I find as long as you're just putting up nice things, there's loads of people I engage with who are lovely.

00:44:07.617 --> 00:44:15.184
But if you fall into, you know, those kind of people who've got their, whatever it is, you know, the search thing, which means if a certain term comes up, they leap on it.

00:44:15.786 --> 00:44:16.686
That's wasted time.

00:44:17.387 --> 00:44:20.409
And it's not, you know, it's, you can do so much better things.

00:44:20.590 --> 00:44:25.275
One of my friends has set up a separate account to troll.

00:44:26.175 --> 00:44:34.523
Bear in mind, he is very much a left-leaning supporter, you know, and his actual account is always, you know, against the Taurus and stuff like that.

00:44:34.623 --> 00:44:39.110
But he's created a separate account for, just to have fun arguing with people.

00:44:39.150 --> 00:44:46.717
So Jeremy Corbyn posted something the other day, and he just replied with a comment that was, you know, very anti sort of Labour...

00:44:46.818 --> 00:44:58.027
policies and the amount of people jumps in and he's engaging all these arguments and I just messaged him why do you do this he went I don't know he said I just found it really funny to do to argue where people have the same political opinions

00:44:58.088 --> 00:45:21.389
yeah years ago in the kind of earlier days the internet there was a mate of mine that used to go on gun rights forums in America and just start talking about guns and then getting overly flirtatious with the other men and then seeing them get really angry and homophobic and it just it just it gave him a kick whereas Whereas I now, you know, I would consider all of that, for me, is wasted time.

00:45:21.528 --> 00:45:21.929
Of course,

00:45:21.989 --> 00:45:22.349
yeah.

00:45:22.389 --> 00:45:24.592
Going back to it, of wasting time.

00:45:24.893 --> 00:45:32.420
I mean, I couldn't argue with people about things that I am actually for, let alone arguing with the same people that have similar opinions of me, just for a life.

00:45:32.440 --> 00:45:34.983
I'm like, what do you do when you have a family?

00:45:35.083 --> 00:45:35.943
What is this about?

00:45:36.704 --> 00:45:38.726
I'm going to go back to my questions, though, Robin.

00:45:38.746 --> 00:45:46.456
So, books have been a significant part of your life and you've visited hundreds of independent bookshops as part of your bibliomania tour, including Julia Lim's J.E.

00:45:46.496 --> 00:46:17.918
Books in Hull out of service we have a library for people in addiction in memory of Alex Alex was one of our service users he was a homeless chap actually always saw him with a book every time he saw him on the street he always had his head in his book I remember before talking about Game of Thrones to him and he was really interested I really like to read that so one of our colleagues actually went out and bought the entire Game of Thrones series and we've just given him one at a time sort of thing But you've mentioned music and comedy were your entrances into addies of social justice.

00:46:18.418 --> 00:46:23.382
They were what transported a middle class home county's bite into the experiences of others.

00:46:23.884 --> 00:46:27.947
Do you believe that literature can have a similar impact, especially for individuals dealing with addiction?

00:46:28.027 --> 00:46:32.630
And if so, can you elaborate on how books and reading can bridge understanding and empathy?

00:46:32.952 --> 00:46:46.005
Well, it is that thing of a weapon of empathy that if you, you know, so much of what we see with, well, for instance, people in prison, addicts, the way it's written about people with addiction generally, like there's a dehumanisation.

00:46:46.045 --> 00:47:00.226
There's a, you know, it's like if you read, you know, whenever you read the column in the back of The Big Issue, which is, you know, The Big Issue seller's kind of story, is that bit where you go, hang on a minute, that happened in my life and that happened in my life, but there was a net, there was a safety net, you know.

00:47:00.427 --> 00:47:12.146
And in the same way, it's like sometimes when I think about addiction and I think of some of the kind of, some of the people who in showbiz who are quite wealthy, right, who come from wealthy backgrounds.

00:47:12.907 --> 00:47:15.331
And I think that that is sometimes a safety net.

00:47:15.371 --> 00:47:19.516
So it's that kind of moment where they go, oh dear, I think you've had a little bit too much cocaine recently.

00:47:19.597 --> 00:47:20.920
I think you better go to the Priory.

00:47:21.340 --> 00:47:33.318
And then other people who've kind of made it into showbiz but don't come from a background with a safety net, sometimes when things start to fade, they don't get those people saying, right, we now need to leave.

00:47:33.438 --> 00:47:35.481
And we see it in sport a lot as well, I think.

00:47:37.284 --> 00:47:49.726
So I think it's really important to hear as many different voices as possible to find, you know, one of the things that can happen when people are reading a book is they can find, again, they're not the only one.

00:47:50.166 --> 00:47:59.559
They can hear a voice that is like their voice, or you're reading a book about a group that you're not part of and you go, Oh, hang on a minute.

00:47:59.760 --> 00:48:06.429
But I thought these people, because, because so much of our media turns every, every person into two dimensions of two dimensional cliche.

00:48:07.150 --> 00:48:07.230
Yeah.

00:48:07.458 --> 00:48:11.023
You have to find a way to reinflate those people to three dimensions.

00:48:12.264 --> 00:48:25.744
And that is, I think, when you can read a book and you can just go, oh, right, this is, you know, when you read an autobiography of someone who's been through different forms of hell and you start to notice the similarities is a very, very important thing.

00:48:25.764 --> 00:48:35.077
Because I think that empathy, it's like, it was interesting where there's a friend of mine, Alistair, who works in prisons and he wrote a book called The Sentence.

00:48:35.554 --> 00:48:40.342
And the sentence he'd found out that a lot of people who'd slipped through the education net as well.

00:48:40.661 --> 00:48:43.005
So, you know, people in prison who never really learned to read.

00:48:43.527 --> 00:48:48.894
And he found out that they didn't like they found sometimes longer words difficult and they found punctuation difficult.

00:48:49.916 --> 00:48:52.922
So he wrote a book that was just one sentence read.

00:48:52.981 --> 00:48:54.724
And it was about a prison sentence.

00:48:54.844 --> 00:48:56.246
And it was also a dystopian thing.

00:48:56.748 --> 00:48:59.110
And it was all just single syllable words.

00:49:00.333 --> 00:49:00.733
No words.

00:49:01.186 --> 00:49:02.027
punctuation at all.

00:49:02.849 --> 00:49:17.146
And it was really interesting when he would tell me the stories about people who had sweat through that book and then suddenly realised, because people are so scared of failing, if you're given a book that you can't really read, then you might just go, I can't read! And you would rather than...

00:49:18.338 --> 00:49:21.304
try and learn, you'll just go, I'm just going to leave that entirely.

00:49:22.947 --> 00:49:31.724
And I think that, you know, when I've been in prisons and I've, you know, listened to people's poetry and things like that, the weapon that they've been given, because that's part of the weapon as well with words.

00:49:31.985 --> 00:49:33.088
It's not just reading books.

00:49:33.949 --> 00:50:03.478
It's learning how to just understand order your thoughts sometimes on a page to start you know never be scared you know get rid of the critical voice if you want to start writing something just write it just keep writing and don't worry about you know I think sometimes one of the sad things that can happen in school is that someone writes a wonderful story but their punctuation is terrible and their grammar and all of those things and so what they get back is something with a lot of red marks on it So even though it might say this is a wonderful story, but still what you're mainly seeing is your mistakes.

00:50:04.420 --> 00:50:07.449
And to prioritise the imagination and go, do you know what?

00:50:07.469 --> 00:50:08.793
This is a brilliant story.

00:50:09.217 --> 00:50:11.440
That's a really, and that's the most important thing.

00:50:11.659 --> 00:50:18.726
Like I was telling an audience the other day, there was some kids in, I said, I'm not very good at punctuation because I normally put a comma where I'd pause, which means I don't use commas.

00:50:19.387 --> 00:50:22.869
And I said, but the thing is now, now I'm actually a published author.

00:50:23.190 --> 00:50:24.831
Someone else does the punctuation for me.

00:50:25.072 --> 00:50:25.932
I send in the thing.

00:50:26.032 --> 00:50:26.893
And so it doesn't matter.

00:50:27.032 --> 00:50:32.918
You know, that, so some of those things that we prioritise, some of the rules we prioritise are not the most important part.

00:50:33.259 --> 00:50:36.782
And I do think when someone starts to think, because I think everyone has stories.

00:50:37.121 --> 00:50:42.969
I don't think I've met anyone who doesn't, you know, when sometimes people say, oh, you mentioned about writing, but I don't really have a story.

00:50:43.088 --> 00:50:44.992
And then I'll sit with them and start chatting.

00:50:45.251 --> 00:50:46.213
And then I'll go, that's a story.

00:50:47.135 --> 00:50:50.278
It's just become mundane because you've carried it in your head for so long.

00:50:50.579 --> 00:50:58.250
So that ability to write out your story and then look at it is so different to just playing it through your head.

00:50:58.530 --> 00:50:59.030
Like

00:50:59.070 --> 00:51:07.144
when I was saying about the car crash that I was in, when I finally wrote about it when I was 47 years old, 48 years old, I think, I didn't even want to put it in the book.

00:51:07.164 --> 00:51:09.268
I thought it was a boring and stupid story and a waste of time.

00:51:09.668 --> 00:51:12.594
But suddenly it made me face up to that blame that I felt.

00:51:13.114 --> 00:51:17.461
And then I think by writing it also some of the rest of my family, we were able to start to talk about something.

00:51:17.702 --> 00:51:19.826
Because suddenly it wasn't just a conversation.

00:51:20.206 --> 00:51:20.887
It was in print.

00:51:21.568 --> 00:51:45.505
And you can look at those words and you can kind of just– interrogate those words so I think it's not just reading books but writing yourself is a really important thing and to hell with spelling and to hell with punctuation initially first of all just get your thoughts out so you can understand them on the page and then maybe if they go further then someone else can go well hang on a minute I'll tell you what we'll reorder this so someone gets that meaning of that meaning

00:51:45.885 --> 00:52:08.893
to be fair is kind of what this whole podcast is about is the ethos that everybody has a story to tell and going to what you were saying then about putting words to a page that's part of Getting some of the guests that we've had on here with lived experience of substance misuse, of addiction, of a lifetime of just such negativity, having this medium there where we just talk about it for other people to then listen to.

00:52:09.697 --> 00:52:11.661
People come away from these podcasts thinking, do you know what?

00:52:11.681 --> 00:52:13.463
I feel like a weight has just been lifted off my shoulder.

00:52:13.483 --> 00:52:13.864
Do you know?

00:52:13.903 --> 00:52:20.652
Because we had a local boxer on, Tommy Coyle, and he said it was like therapy for him.

00:52:21.094 --> 00:52:21.614
I said, it's honest.

00:52:21.655 --> 00:52:23.637
It's like talking to a therapist doing this because it is.

00:52:23.657 --> 00:52:30.788
It's just having that story and then having someone to bounce off and being asked the questions of that story as well, which just elaborates everything further.

00:52:31.648 --> 00:52:31.929
Well, yeah.

00:52:32.009 --> 00:52:37.978
Talking honestly is something that we're so worried about social shame so much of the time that we don't talk honestly.

00:52:38.177 --> 00:52:45.025
And, you know, it's like a few years ago I was out in Adelaide in Australia and I became friendly with this former head teacher.

00:52:45.885 --> 00:52:52.614
And one night I was chatting to her and she said, you need to do stand-up about suicide.

00:52:54.295 --> 00:52:54.516
Which are

00:52:54.536 --> 00:52:55.896
two things, you just think stand-up

00:52:55.956 --> 00:52:56.677
and suicide.

00:52:56.717 --> 00:52:58.519
How are they going to go together?

00:52:58.539 --> 00:53:13.090
And it turned out that her daughter had taken a life and she felt that if it was just out there, just something you could bring up, Not in the official, you know, not in the corridors, not in the psychiatric ward, not that, just something that people could say.

00:53:13.110 --> 00:53:23.661
And I remember working, it's probably the hardest I've ever worked on a routine because even though most of the time I just improvised stuff, this was one where I thought, I can't put a step wrong here because this is such a...

00:53:23.780 --> 00:53:24.461
It's got to be right.

00:53:24.561 --> 00:54:08.902
And I remember, you know, the conversations I had afterwards every time I did it in the show and the fact that, again, by talking about it on stage, people then have permission to talk about it with you when you come off stage and and that bit of just you know when someone can honestly talk and not go you know it's that you know sometimes like you know if you sometimes go oh do you know what i can't say that out loud because all my friends are going oh idiot i can't believe you said that and i go don't change yourself change your friends yeah because more often than not there will be a moment and i'm sure you've had that i'm sure everyone in this room's had that thing where you suddenly let something out and you think oh god i don't know if i should have said that And then someone else leans forward and goes, God, that's really interesting because I had that thing.

00:54:08.922 --> 00:54:14.567
And that bit of masking everything, that's where so much unhappiness comes from.

00:54:15.150 --> 00:54:15.230
Yeah.

00:54:15.873 --> 00:54:16.454
Absolutely.

00:54:17.554 --> 00:54:21.057
Comedy, you know, speaking of which can be a powerful medium for addressing societal changes.

00:54:21.659 --> 00:54:30.025
Can you share an example of a moment where comedy helped break down barriers and challenge stereotypes related to issues like addiction or homelessness, much like you have them with suicide?

00:54:30.226 --> 00:54:38.934
Well, I think it's, yeah, again, it's that bit where there's more and more shows that have been going on where people have talked about sometimes drug addiction, sometimes alcoholism.

00:54:39.574 --> 00:54:44.338
And there's a big change, I think, that happened.

00:54:44.358 --> 00:54:45.840
I think it is a big change.

00:54:45.840 --> 00:54:54.791
If you look at the old history of comedy, like the 50s, 60s, 70s, there's a lot of stories of comics who were hiding who they were by doing comedy.

00:54:55.632 --> 00:55:04.324
And then now in the 21st century, there's lots of comics like, you know, someone like Hannah Gadsby, who her show Nanette dealt with, you know, abuse and violence.

00:55:04.746 --> 00:55:13.438
And that was, it was like rather than her going to the stage to hide herself, she was going to the stage to reveal herself.

00:55:13.858 --> 00:55:17.302
all of this stuff that might not have got out in the rest of life.

00:55:17.682 --> 00:55:36.467
And so I think, you know, when you see shows like that and when you see some of those comedians who have talked to, you know, because there's, again, obviously comedy, you've got a lot of kind of addictive personalities in comedy and there'll be a certain point where some people manage to kind of, you know, just crush those impulses.

00:55:36.688 --> 00:55:46.724
And then when they talk about some of the, you know, when you look at Robin Williams, the way that he would talk about Coke and what that did to him, And, you know, and he was drinking heavily then.

00:55:46.784 --> 00:55:55.715
And then, you know, when the comedian John Belushi died, taking a mix of heroin and cocaine, I think that was the start of him going, hang on a minute, I've got to change.

00:55:56.697 --> 00:56:01.442
And so I think, you know, it gave him some control to also turn it into stand-up.

00:56:02.543 --> 00:56:08.630
Because it's that bit, again, that if you can turn something into a story, then it gives you...

00:56:08.670 --> 00:56:10.793
It's like during grief and things like that.

00:56:11.492 --> 00:56:11.594
If...

00:56:12.226 --> 00:56:17.393
If something happened, like at the moment I'm talking sometimes about my dad's death because he died a few months ago.

00:56:18.215 --> 00:56:31.074
And I tell the story of on the final night, the final day when he was unconscious, we all sat around the bed and read Tark of the Otter, which was his favourite book by Henry Williamson to him.

00:56:31.094 --> 00:56:36.061
And there's a whole story that I tell around that, which allows me, it now has structure.

00:56:36.563 --> 00:56:38.726
So it's not as chaotic as just dealing with grief.

00:56:39.010 --> 00:57:12.273
You can put a little frame around it, and it allows you every single night to talk, if you want to, and you don't have to every night, I don't do it every night, it will depend on the evening, to sometimes talk about a big loss, but with a level of, because I think that's one of the problems, a bit like with the ADHD thing as well, and lots of other ideas, which is the world can seem so chaotic, and if you can find a way of boxing it in a little bit, So like the chaos of my mind is still the chaos of my mind, but now I've got a frame around it, which is this understanding of the ADHD mind.

00:57:12.574 --> 00:57:17.802
So as chaotic as it is, it will eventually, the chaos hits some walls and starts to bounce back.

00:57:18.202 --> 00:57:31.722
But until you have that in the same way as the framework of understanding other people's addiction and other, once you've got a framework around it, sometimes you go, hang on a minute, those stories have now given something to bounce off, whether they're your stories or whether they're other people's stories.

00:57:32.503 --> 00:57:32.583
Yeah.

00:57:32.603 --> 00:57:34.306
No, that's really good though.

00:57:34.326 --> 00:57:34.365
Um,

00:57:35.074 --> 00:57:38.007
Obviously, comedy often addresses societal issues with humour.

00:57:38.590 --> 00:57:46.159
How do you navigate the fine line between using comedy as a tool to challenge stigmas And ensuring that sensitive topics are approached with empathy and understanding.

00:57:46.179 --> 00:57:50.889
I imagine doing what you've been doing with suicide is very much part of that.

00:57:51.108 --> 00:57:51.188
Yeah.

00:57:51.248 --> 00:57:52.391
How do you really do that then?

00:57:52.851 --> 00:57:59.204
I don't now find it as difficult as I would have done because, again, I think it's that bit of honesty.

00:57:59.244 --> 00:58:06.577
It's that bit of going, well, first of all, it's the bit where you go, do you know what the most important thing is not necessarily sometimes the size of the laugh?

00:58:06.945 --> 00:58:10.733
It's about something that gets underestimated, I think, is fascination.

00:58:11.373 --> 00:58:16.903
Like when I first started doing things that could sometimes be longer pieces and I sometimes think, oh, there's no joke there yet.

00:58:17.704 --> 00:58:17.784
Yeah.

00:58:17.804 --> 00:58:19.909
And then I'd look at the audience, I'd go, they're leaning in.

00:58:20.690 --> 00:58:21.311
So they're interested.

00:58:21.331 --> 00:58:27.262
You know, this is something that is very, you know, far too much of our kind of light entertainment is about people go, woo, woo.

00:58:27.554 --> 00:58:30.137
And then actually not receiving anything.

00:58:30.199 --> 00:58:31.320
They're just cheering.

00:58:31.360 --> 00:58:37.972
And a lot of the comedy clubs, you know, I go and see people and they made the audience make a lot of noise, not necessarily even laughter, just woo, cheer.

00:58:38.012 --> 00:58:38.893
Hey, who's from there?

00:58:38.914 --> 00:58:39.373
Who's from there?

00:58:39.795 --> 00:58:42.278
But the actual bit where you go, oh, there's now a quiet.

00:58:42.519 --> 00:58:45.885
I've talked about this before, about the three cough rule that.

00:58:46.273 --> 00:58:49.436
If I'm talking about something and I think, oh, is it all right to talk about this?

00:58:49.697 --> 00:58:53.599
And then one person coughs, I'll kind of be, yeah, well, you know, it's autumn.

00:58:53.860 --> 00:58:54.721
People are getting a cough now.

00:58:55.382 --> 00:59:00.887
If someone immediately coughs afterwards, I think, oh, no, I mean, there is a cough going around, but that now is the warning cough.

00:59:01.527 --> 00:59:04.530
Did that cough come because that person coughed over there?

00:59:05.050 --> 00:59:12.476
If there's a third cough immediately after that, I realise if everyone's noticing the tickle in their throat now, this means that they've lost concentration in me.

00:59:12.536 --> 00:59:16.119
So I now need to change the energy or...

00:59:16.239 --> 00:59:21.847
find a punchline from wherever I can or do something that startles them back into concentration.

00:59:21.927 --> 00:59:23.235
And how easy is that to do then?

00:59:23.969 --> 00:59:30.079
Again, I think a lot of it is it's not as if you– it's not something you've clinically learned.

00:59:30.521 --> 00:59:32.684
You've learned by doing something for years.

00:59:32.824 --> 00:59:34.146
I mean, it's a really fascinating thing.

00:59:34.166 --> 00:59:38.653
When I look back now and I think, why wasn't I able to do some of the things that I can do now in stand-up?

00:59:38.713 --> 00:59:45.023
And one of the things is, well, I've done thousands upon thousands of gigs in so many different locations.

00:59:45.784 --> 00:59:50.052
And so I'm not consciously thinking– most of the time on stage.

00:59:50.393 --> 00:59:51.835
I'm just allowing the connection.

00:59:51.896 --> 00:59:58.251
But then if there is a moment where I start to go, hang on a minute, I don't think this is a good enough story.

00:59:59.333 --> 01:00:05.385
And now, because it's not an anxiety fear, now I think it is a performer just going, nah, that wasn't good enough.

01:00:06.108 --> 01:00:06.949
Let's do something else now.

01:00:07.202 --> 01:00:18.016
But again, much like when you were talking about wrestling, I would imagine the first time that you were dealing with trying to be instinctual, you just think, oh God, I've really screwed that up.

01:00:18.097 --> 01:00:21.320
And that was, oh, I think I hurt him more than I was meant to there.

01:00:21.340 --> 01:00:22.802
Or you got hurt more than you went to.

01:00:22.842 --> 01:00:53.590
I remember once being in a play where we'd improvised this fight and we hadn't realised how much we'd actually now got an innate sense of how the fight worked even though it felt improvised and I just slipped very slightly further back than I should have done and that meant that when the woman came to headbutt me she did actually connect with my nose and it broke my nose because that slight movement out of place we actually did know we had choreographed it without choreographing it and then one slip

01:00:53.909 --> 01:01:08.079
and a broken nose obviously relates that completely you've got to be in the right position at the right time and if you're not that's when injuries are going to occur um You played the unforgettable role of Stuart Foote in The Office, often regarded as one of the greatest British sitcoms ever.

01:01:08.119 --> 01:01:10.101
It's worth noting that your collaboration...

01:01:10.121 --> 01:01:10.521
Change that.

01:01:10.581 --> 01:01:14.824
Change that to often considered to be one of the greatest performances in a British sitcom.

01:01:15.045 --> 01:01:15.985
Let's make it about me.

01:01:16.085 --> 01:01:17.186
Absolutely.

01:01:17.246 --> 01:01:20.208
Often regarded as one of the greatest performances in a British sitcom ever.

01:01:20.690 --> 01:01:25.594
It's worth noting that your collaboration with Ricky Gervais extended beyond The Office as you supported him on his stand-up tour.

01:01:26.014 --> 01:01:33.420
Can you take us through the experience of being friends with the world's highest grossing comedian and, additionally, given Ricky's reputation for Practical Joe screaming in your ear.

01:01:33.922 --> 01:01:38.867
How does it feel to have had millions of people on YouTube right now see him be ever so endearing to you?

01:01:39.467 --> 01:01:40.688
It's such an odd...

01:01:40.708 --> 01:01:53.521
I mean, it's a very odd experience because one of the things that I found, because I knew Richard Vase from the early 90s, so long before he became famous, and one of the things that you don't notice is when a friend of yours becomes very, very famous.

01:01:54.802 --> 01:01:57.385
And it's suddenly you go, oh, hang on a minute.

01:01:57.806 --> 01:02:00.889
I mean, it was very useful when he became famous because...

01:02:01.409 --> 01:02:05.436
He used to walk down the street screaming at me and making stupid faces and grabbing my arm.

01:02:05.936 --> 01:02:10.824
And then, of course, once he became famous, people would notice if he was making a show of himself on the pavement.

01:02:11.226 --> 01:02:13.708
And they'd go, hey, Ricky, do the dance.

01:02:14.010 --> 01:02:15.773
And he'd go, bloody hell, get us out of here, get us out of here.

01:02:16.813 --> 01:02:19.177
But it was really wearing.

01:02:20.800 --> 01:02:27.451
He has a very short attention span and he loves making other people embarrassed.

01:02:27.992 --> 01:02:29.213
It's his favourite thing.

01:02:29.378 --> 01:02:39.949
So, like the Living With Ricky DVD extra from, I forget, it was Polly, Fame, I think it was, that people sometimes go, why did you do that?

01:02:40.931 --> 01:02:42.753
Why did you let him bury you on a beach or whatever?

01:02:42.773 --> 01:02:47.579
I go, well, what you don't see in the 20-minute documentary is the month of him going,

01:02:47.699 --> 01:02:48.739
God, I'm going to bury you in the beach.

01:02:48.780 --> 01:02:49.501
I'm going to bury you in the beach.

01:02:49.561 --> 01:02:50.302
I'm going to bury you in the beach.

01:02:50.362 --> 01:02:51.282
I'm going to bury you in the beach.

01:02:51.563 --> 01:02:56.969
So eventually, just to get half-day silence, you go, oh, bury me on the beach.

01:02:57.313 --> 01:03:07.166
And that means that then you've bought six hours where, one, he's tired because he's had to dig some sand, and two, he just hasn't got, you know, it's like, and then, of course, the next day,

01:03:07.186 --> 01:03:09.530
I want to hang you upside down on the thing, I want to hang you upside down on the thing.

01:03:09.951 --> 01:03:10.692
So, yeah, it was...

01:03:11.152 --> 01:03:11.373
He's like

01:03:11.532 --> 01:03:12.653
a giant toddler, isn't

01:03:12.673 --> 01:03:12.815
he?

01:03:12.835 --> 01:03:13.195
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:03:13.215 --> 01:03:18.202
He really, he is, he demands to, yeah, control the world.

01:03:18.822 --> 01:03:20.625
Finally, Robin, we have thousands of listeners.

01:03:20.724 --> 01:03:22.007
Can you tell us what's next?

01:03:22.367 --> 01:03:27.114
And this is any opportunity for you to plug any upcoming work that you've got coming up in the coming months?

01:03:27.297 --> 01:03:29.780
Oh, I'll probably be in a bookshop or library near you soon.

01:03:30.740 --> 01:03:34.304
And then, yeah, there's a new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox and we're doing...

01:03:34.704 --> 01:03:37.065
We did one about the octopus, which is very interesting.

01:03:37.746 --> 01:03:43.472
And then it kind of really got derailed when they found out that one of the octopus's arms is a sex arm.

01:03:43.632 --> 01:03:47.054
And so, obviously, at that point, Russell Kane took us down a very...

01:03:47.094 --> 01:03:48.536
I mean, I don't know how much of that will make the edit.

01:03:49.257 --> 01:04:15.123
The thing I found most interesting about the octopus is the fact it's got such a complex brain and consciousness and all of these things, it appears, and yet it only lives for one to two years to have such a complex brain so yeah we're doing a new series of that and then yeah I'll just keep touring around I've got my book I'm a Joker So You has just come out in a new edition and Bibliomania has just come out in paperback and then I'm writing something else but yeah I'm just always travelling around and making new things

01:04:15.242 --> 01:04:30.280
well again world's well Britain's most travelled and busiest comedian we've got here we end every one of our podcasts with a series of ten questions not related to anything that we've spoken about so far just to end it on a high I know, because we often do talk about some depressing things on here, don't we?

01:04:30.340 --> 01:04:31.882
So it does lighten the mood a little bit.

01:04:31.902 --> 01:04:33.965
So my first question is, what is your favourite word?

01:04:36.588 --> 01:04:37.731
Oh, I love curmudgeon.

01:04:37.911 --> 01:04:38.952
I'm a very big fan of curmudgeon.

01:04:38.992 --> 01:04:40.034
I've never even heard of curmudgeon.

01:04:40.054 --> 01:04:40.454
No, I know.

01:04:40.494 --> 01:04:42.416
I was told that when I did a BBC Three documentary.

01:04:42.436 --> 01:04:45.280
You know, curmudgeon is someone who's, oh God, grouchy.

01:04:45.300 --> 01:04:51.230
But, you know, curmudgeon is, it's a Scroogish kind of take on life, which is always, yeah, curmudgeon.

01:04:51.369 --> 01:04:52.911
Look at his curmudgeonly face.

01:04:55.135 --> 01:04:55.376
And what's

01:04:55.456 --> 01:04:56.396
your least favourite word?

01:04:57.217 --> 01:05:01.090
Oh, it might be okay, actually.

01:05:01.369 --> 01:05:08.231
That bit of, you know, when I was saying about, okay, okay, there's something about that, which because it can be misread by me so easily.

01:05:08.251 --> 01:05:10.438
Tell me something that excites you.

01:05:10.818 --> 01:05:14.282
Well, the Humber Bridge, of course, I've mentioned already.

01:05:14.943 --> 01:05:16.085
The fact that I'm going to go to J.E.

01:05:16.144 --> 01:05:21.132
Books during our lunch break, that excites me, and I'll find out what second-hand books I need desperately now.

01:05:22.233 --> 01:05:25.797
Finding a new badge or being given a new badge, that's a lot of fun.

01:05:25.898 --> 01:05:26.498
I like getting those.

01:05:26.659 --> 01:05:27.900
So there's a lot of things.

01:05:27.940 --> 01:05:29.342
Playing crazy golf with my son.

01:05:29.623 --> 01:05:30.824
We love Hastings, right?

01:05:30.905 --> 01:05:31.324
Hastings.

01:05:31.344 --> 01:05:35.510
You go to Hastings, seaside town of Hastings, and it's got three crazy golf courses.

01:05:35.550 --> 01:05:37.673
So that is a holiday complete in itself.

01:05:38.675 --> 01:05:40.677
Tell me something that doesn't excite you.

01:05:40.898 --> 01:06:07.047
the news media I really find I think it's the most negative thing that the UK has is it controls so much of what is ultimately I think in particular the English character even more than the British character I think mean spiteful vindictive and sneering and I just find that that's why don't start the day this is why we were talking earlier on that's why I start the day by reading Moomins you see if you read the Moomins you'll have a much better day than

01:06:07.166 --> 01:06:09.630
reading the news what sound or noise do you love?

01:06:10.914 --> 01:06:12.876
Oh, that's an interesting one, isn't it?

01:06:13.097 --> 01:06:16.501
I mean, the clichés are things like the sea because I do really like just that.

01:06:16.762 --> 01:06:24.795
But I do quite like when I'm at a music festival and there's a sound system in the background and I think, how am I going to get to sleep with that noise going on?

01:06:25.074 --> 01:06:28.239
And then there's a little point where you get hypnagogic and you start to just drift off.

01:06:28.621 --> 01:06:34.949
And I really like that bit where your brain suddenly comes in tune with a distant sound system.

01:06:35.550 --> 01:06:36.672
What sound or noise do you hear?

01:06:37.697 --> 01:06:41.387
People beeping their horns.

01:06:41.527 --> 01:06:43.032
What is your favourite curse word?

01:06:44.637 --> 01:06:49.530
Oh, that is arseholism.

01:06:49.826 --> 01:06:50.686
Arseholeism.

01:06:50.847 --> 01:06:57.275
Arseholeism is someone who is, again, many of the people in the news media are guilty of arseholeism, yes.

01:06:57.876 --> 01:06:58.217
I like that.

01:06:58.237 --> 01:07:00.019
It's in a movie called Pink Flamingos.

01:07:00.059 --> 01:07:00.280
Yes.

01:07:00.519 --> 01:07:05.025
If you wasn't doing the, I suppose, the many roles that you do, what profession

01:07:05.065 --> 01:07:05.847
would you like to attempt?

01:07:05.867 --> 01:07:08.331
I don't think, I think I've only got one choice.

01:07:08.630 --> 01:07:09.693
I think what I do is what I do.

01:07:09.713 --> 01:07:13.757
I really, you know, I mean, I've always, I think in one way I've kind of...

01:07:16.081 --> 01:07:16.621
Oh, there we go.

01:07:16.902 --> 01:07:18.925
That's the, is that repetition or deviation?

01:07:19.726 --> 01:07:19.806
Fire.

01:07:20.577 --> 01:07:21.402
in the building.

01:07:21.826 --> 01:07:23.166
Has it, though?

01:07:23.547 --> 01:07:23.807
Has it, though?

01:07:23.827 --> 01:07:24.447
What day is it?

01:07:24.507 --> 01:07:26.550
Friday, 5 to 12.

01:07:26.889 --> 01:07:27.411
Do you know what?

01:07:27.451 --> 01:07:27.931
We can jump.

01:07:28.090 --> 01:07:29.032
We're not that high up.

01:07:29.092 --> 01:07:29.652
We're all right.

01:07:29.713 --> 01:07:30.994
Tell

01:07:31.014 --> 01:07:32.594
me a profession that you would not like to do.

01:07:34.416 --> 01:07:40.702
Anything that would involve some form of potholing or going into a very small underground space.

01:07:41.202 --> 01:07:42.724
Well, I'd love to be an astronaut.

01:07:42.824 --> 01:07:43.965
I'd love to go on the ISS.

01:07:43.985 --> 01:07:48.429
The opposite of that would be anything that required me scrabbling around in kind of pipes and stuff.

01:07:48.588 --> 01:07:48.989
Perfect.

01:07:49.690 --> 01:07:53.974
And then lastly, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say it when you arrive at the pearly gates

01:07:54.934 --> 01:08:00.460
yeah well shown you haven't I oh you're not believing for so long I would

01:08:00.481 --> 01:08:25.390
imagine it's just that petty yeah Robin you've been absolutely brilliant thank you very much thank you very much you've been wonderful and if you enjoyed this episode of the believing people podcast don't forget to check out our other episodes and hit that subscribe button follow us on Facebook Twitter Instagram and TikTok our name is CGL Hull that's CGL HUL We're on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Google Music.

01:08:25.770 --> 01:08:28.253
So please like and subscribe to receive regular updates.

01:08:28.734 --> 01:08:32.140
You can also search for Believe in People podcast on your favourite listening device.

01:08:32.520 --> 01:08:37.850
And if you could leave us a review, that will really help us with getting our message out there and rising up the daily podcast charts.