00:00:00.05
Talal K
113 are rolling yeah
00:00:01.26
alexei sayle
I'm springing to life now, Stuart.
00:00:03.48
Talal K
yeah
00:00:05.83
alexei sayle
You don't believe the before and after personal personality. of Hello, everybody. Hello, everybody.
00:00:16.73
alexei sayle
um welcome to episode 113 of the Electric Cell Podcast with my guest, Stuart Lee. And Stuart remarked...
00:00:24.52
S lee
130. Wow.
00:00:25.53
alexei sayle
Yeah, episode 113. Stuart remarked before...
00:00:27.54
Talal K
yeah
00:00:28.82
alexei sayle
We started recording and I seemed a bit tired and I just said I was saving myself for the comedic jousting that was ahead, really.
00:00:36.17
S lee
You've changed. You're like a radio presenter voice now.
00:00:38.26
alexei sayle
Yeah, i've I've come alive, yeah.
00:00:38.69
S lee
you've got Yeah, it's gone.
00:00:40.62
alexei sayle
Hey, everybody on...
00:00:41.47
S lee
Good.
00:00:42.28
alexei sayle
Did you ever do... in You know, in the old days, you ever do saga radio?
00:00:46.65
Talal K
Mmm.
00:00:49.91
S lee
No, I didn't do Saga Radio, no.
00:00:50.97
alexei sayle
No. And it... um You weren't allowed to say where you were because they just wanted it to be in a sort of nebulous, not know to be local, but it it to be everywhere.
00:01:05.83
alexei sayle
I don't know. i't This story seemed to make a lot more sense when I but i started saying it in my head.
00:01:10.71
S lee
What's a saga for old people?
00:01:12.60
alexei sayle
Yeah, it was kind of, I think it probably still going.
00:01:13.63
S lee
Yeah.
00:01:14.52
alexei sayle
I don't know whether it's still going, but yeah.
00:01:15.54
S lee
And so they they didn't want you to say, I'm in London or I'm in Liverpool.
00:01:19.19
alexei sayle
I mean, Nottingham or something.
00:01:20.09
S lee
They wanted everyone to feel included.
00:01:20.51
alexei sayle
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:01:23.48
S lee
Well, ah the problem is that sometimes the specificity of a place makes people feel that they can relate to it and they're creating meaningless, vague space.
00:01:29.40
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:01:31.71
S lee
i mean, that's kind of what um Netflix are doing, isn't it? They try to set programmes in places that don't exist. Like they filmed um Sex Education, the school's kind of comedy drama, in the Forest of Dean, but they made all the kids dress in clothes that look like they could be American or British or French.
00:01:50.30
S lee
didn't say where it was and addressed all the interiors in a way that gave it no specific regional character so could sell the programme anywhere in the world and no one would feel left out.
00:01:59.28
Talal K
Hmm.
00:02:02.38
S lee
But to me, it created a strange sort of distancing effect. And as a writer, you know, One of the great things about that is, i I mean, you asked me where I am and I said Stoke Newington. And part of the reason I like living in Stoke Newington because you had a really good routine about it about 45 years ago, which was full of very culturally specific details about ah middle class hipsters moving in into an area and changing it that was actually universally applicable.
00:02:15.13
alexei sayle
yeah yeah
00:02:25.80
S lee
And so so saga were wrong is what I'm saying.
00:02:26.01
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:02:29.50
alexei sayle
Yeah, they were wrong to do that.
00:02:29.66
Talal K
Yeah.
00:02:30.86
alexei sayle
They may have changed their policy since this was in the 2010s or something or even earlier.
00:02:33.72
Talal K
Well, they've ah they've gone away. The only remnant of Saga Radio now is Smooth FM.
00:02:40.50
alexei sayle
Oh, are they right?
00:02:42.00
Talal K
It's run by the same peeps. But yeah, Saga was aimed at 50 and over audiences.
00:02:47.26
alexei sayle
They do cruises and stuff.
00:02:48.20
S lee
and over.
00:02:48.78
alexei sayle
so They still do.
00:02:49.30
S lee
you remember when that seemed old, 50 over? Do you remember that?
00:02:51.93
alexei sayle
Fuck, I know. It's like a young person, isn't it, now?
00:02:54.33
Talal K
Yeah.
00:02:54.65
S lee
ah did the I did the 25th anniversary of the jazz saxophonist Alan Wilkinson's regular monthly Stoke Newington free jazz gig last night. And I remember the first time I saw him, he was 44.
00:03:07.96
S lee
And I couldn't believe how full of energy he was and that he could still blow into the horn, walk around and things like that.
00:03:11.86
alexei sayle
but ah ah
00:03:15.46
S lee
God, imagine being 44 and being able to do that.
00:03:15.66
alexei sayle
They just... Yeah, yeah.
00:03:19.13
S lee
It seemed incredible.
00:03:21.62
Talal K
Well, nowadays, oh like people who are 50 say they feel young or they they act young. But did they...
00:03:28.47
S lee
Well, I'm 58 this year, and I feel much more similar to when I was 18 than I did 10 years ago.
00:03:29.21
Talal K
did they
00:03:35.70
S lee
58.
00:03:36.15
alexei sayle
you tell them How old are you going to be this year? Sorry, I missed that.
00:03:39.03
S lee
Yeah.
00:03:40.20
alexei sayle
58, right? A child.
00:03:43.13
Talal K
But wonder if 50 years ago, did 50 year olds feel young then as well, but they were just constantly told they were old?
00:03:43.26
S lee
The problem is, though, no, it
00:03:48.07
S lee
didn't. It was My dad like wore a little jacket and a tie and nice shoes all the time. And he would put on a blazer to go to the pub. you know And um and i remember a few years ago, my but ah was about 52, and my kid wanted to go on a zip wire thing in the Forest of Dean where you had to be accompanied by an adult.
00:04:08.38
S lee
And so I did it with him and I really hurt myself and found it really difficult. And I thought the idea of my dad doing that when he was 52, absolutely impossible. because it'd be like, it's like a little old sensible man. He wouldn't even, he'd have been in a blazer and tie anyway. And like,
00:04:24.12
S lee
Wade shoes and stuff. And you know I was doing this thing. But the problem is I'm of of the age in comedy where I should be becoming an older statesman. But the problem is these are these other older statesmen that won't die clogging up the system.
00:04:37.24
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:04:38.02
S lee
You're being the older still the older statesman. And us people who are nearly 60, we're still in a pipeline.
00:04:40.74
alexei sayle
I know. you yeah
00:04:45.02
S lee
When will we become the older statesman is the question.
00:04:48.23
alexei sayle
Well, eventually, don't... I mean, you didn you didn't come to the Radio 4 comedy Christmas party in the end. There was a rumour that you were going to come because you were doing a podcast with Armando Iannucci.
00:04:56.89
S lee
Was there? was doing a podcast. had to go to another thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:03.89
alexei sayle
Another Christmas thing. You didn't deign to come to...
00:05:05.56
S lee
No, I had to go to another piece of work, I think. Yeah.
00:05:08.49
alexei sayle
Oh, right. Okay.
00:05:09.40
S lee
Well, I'm desperately trying to promote these over-ambitious run at Ali Pali, which starts on February 3rd for two weeks.
00:05:15.60
alexei sayle
Oh, really?
00:05:19.11
S lee
Yeah.
00:05:19.10
alexei sayle
Yeah, well, this this this ah this podcast will put you over the top.
00:05:19.25
S lee
Yeah.
00:05:22.50
alexei sayle
Don't worry. this
00:05:23.48
Talal K
Oh my God, that is a long run. ah like You've queued me up. So i I've been told by the authorities to ah plug your tour, Stu. And so i'm gonna do it at the top here and then maybe we'll talk about it at the end as well.
00:05:36.22
Talal K
But yeah, you're doing a bloody third till the 15th of February at Ali Pali, Alexandra Palace Theatre.
00:05:42.20
S lee
Yeah, but it's in the old Victorian theatre out the back. I'm not doing, you know, where Pink Floyd used to play. I'm doing it out the back.
00:05:47.38
alexei sayle
ah
00:05:47.74
Talal K
Okay, you're not trying to fill that whole thing out every day.
00:05:50.02
S lee
No, and then I'm off again and in a couple of months until December with it, with the...
00:05:54.67
alexei sayle
Oh, I mean you're off.
00:05:54.90
Talal K
yeah
00:05:55.44
S lee
Versus the...
00:05:56.36
alexei sayle
but but When you say you're off, that means you're actually on. You're touring then.
00:06:01.34
S lee
Yeah, I'm touring, yeah, yeah, with this with a show that I wrote like at the end of the year before last, which was about um how authoritarian bullies are taking over in politics, media and entertainment.
00:06:02.81
Talal K
So, yeah, you're doing...
00:06:13.66
S lee
And a lot of it seemed to be of um people going, well, it's not that bad.
00:06:13.91
alexei sayle
Really, I have.
00:06:17.43
S lee
And now I've not done it since November. ah So much has got so much worse so quickly that oh I really need to do a lot of rewrites and learn them by Tuesday. But it's trying to judge it as well because that there's this werewolf comedian character in the second half who's like American Netflix kind of comedian who like says Donald Trump style things. So the things he's saying need to be a lot worse now.
00:06:43.45
S lee
But actually, some of them are so bad, I'm not sure people will actually want to hear them. you know like I mean, i was yesterday, Trump was saying that that um Somali and ah politician from Minnesota had faked the attack on herself.
00:06:58.81
alexei sayle
Yeah, Ilan Omar. Yeah.
00:07:00.73
S lee
I kind of think it's sort of, well, it's like a cliche to say this, but the things he's saying are so mad and so awful. They're kind of beyond the satire.
00:07:10.58
alexei sayle
yeah
00:07:10.64
S lee
Although I think maybe a conspiracy theorist type Netflix right-leaning comedian werewolf can probably make the case that that um that that politician did attack herself somehow.
00:07:22.59
S lee
But don't know.
00:07:22.81
alexei sayle
Right, right. I haven't seen this show yet because I think we you were ill or I was ill every time we...
00:07:27.80
S lee
Yeah, I had pneumonia. Yeah, yeah.
00:07:30.34
alexei sayle
What was that like?
00:07:30.81
S lee
We can come to... What was it like having pneumonia?
00:07:32.58
alexei sayle
I'll come to Ali Pally, yeah.
00:07:33.41
S lee
on them
00:07:34.14
alexei sayle
Eh?
00:07:34.19
S lee
It was terrible. didn't know I'd got it. I just felt a bit ill. And then in the end, of the night then between Christmas and New Year, I couldn't get out of bed. But luckily... But few years ago, the and NHS gave me some breathing apparatus for something and I don't need it anymore. So I tried to return it, but they couldn't tell me how to do it. So I had this thing in my house and I just lay in bed for a week on breathing apparatus. And then my promoters made me go to medical insurance and they said, you've got you've got seriously really bad pneumonia. And if you do any work, we won't be able to insure the show.
00:08:05.27
S lee
so i had to stop um for two weeks but it was kind of amazing like do do you ever quite like being ill either of you but it's kind of quite i don't do drugs but if i'm ill i think that's probably what it's like isn't it you feel quite hot and weird and you can't tell what's going on you have mad dreams is that what it's like i wasn't there and
00:08:19.03
alexei sayle
yeah
00:08:26.62
alexei sayle
i think it but must be more of a leave for you because you work so much really it must be she should the the the permission to stop but isn't that part of the enjoyment of being ill i will thought yeah i think i quite enjoyed having covered i seem to remember
00:08:36.92
S lee
Yeah. Yeah, i suppose so. Yeah, I don't ah don't like not working. Yeah.
00:08:44.57
Talal K
You can get stuff... Enjoyed it.
00:08:49.43
S lee
you fill up your You, Alexa, you fill up your time with interests and hobbies.
00:08:49.62
alexei sayle
and
00:08:53.87
S lee
Judo, cycling.
00:08:56.21
alexei sayle
Kung Fu, Tai Chi.
00:08:56.44
S lee
If I...
00:08:57.83
Talal K
judo how dare you
00:08:58.17
alexei sayle
class Yeah, I can do that.
00:08:58.85
S lee
Chi then.
00:09:00.33
alexei sayle
Japanese.
00:09:01.11
S lee
I thought you did judo.
00:09:02.46
alexei sayle
No, fuck off. now That's Japanese.
00:09:04.63
S lee
That was...
00:09:05.56
alexei sayle
Yeah, don't you fuck. That's the most controversial thing you've ever said.
00:09:09.91
Talal K
yeah that's fucked up stewart yeah this is the world's first marxist kung fu podcast stewart
00:09:10.69
S lee
What you would do judo.
00:09:10.78
alexei sayle
i do Yeah. No, man, fucking, that's just Japanese nonsense. Me and Talao both do Kung Fu.
00:09:18.21
S lee
I'm sorry, I didn't know.
00:09:19.77
alexei sayle
Yeah, it's Chinese. Yeah, yeah.
00:09:23.35
S lee
Was it? Yeah. Kung fu. Yeah.
00:09:24.73
alexei sayle
We can actually come around and kill you if we want.
00:09:25.38
S lee
Yeah.
00:09:27.11
Talal K
If we wanted to, to yeah.
00:09:29.14
S lee
Did you like that program in the seventy s Kung Fu with David Carradine? Is that why you're doing it?
00:09:33.78
alexei sayle
and No, that was cultural appropriation, I think.
00:09:35.49
S lee
Didn't you like that?
00:09:36.62
alexei sayle
No. I do i think at the time...
00:09:37.47
S lee
Great.
00:09:40.38
alexei sayle
um I think at the time I probably had a I think, well, yeah, like I was remember I was living in a Marxist, house communist household, so I think we probably disapproved of it, and and it probably was disapproved of it because cultural appropation appropriation, No.
00:09:58.68
S lee
Well, it's true that he wasn't Chinese, but he looked a bit Chinese.
00:10:01.94
alexei sayle
na
00:10:03.10
S lee
But what was good about it was he had he had a Zen passive aggressivity. And I really loved that program. And I've watched, I've got it all on DVD and I've read the paperback novelizations.
00:10:16.50
S lee
And I think it was a big influence on me because he's very, he's like, he's quite a satirical character.
00:10:22.62
alexei sayle
Really?
00:10:24.02
S lee
Yeah, well, he's very, he but to eat but he either doesn't understand why people are annoyed with him or pretends that he doesn't, and that makes them more annoyed. and um And that's kind of why doing comedy, like that kind of, and also in my life, of course, a lot people do that.
00:10:33.05
alexei sayle
Right. Yeah.
00:10:39.58
Talal K
Yeah.
00:10:40.76
alexei sayle
ah
00:10:41.30
S lee
I've caused a lot of problems by just going, well, why would you think that? or you know and i'll get up If I'm being beaten up, I'll go to the aggressor. Why are you doing this?
00:10:49.17
alexei sayle
yeah
00:10:49.84
S lee
What you think it will achieve? Which is what the bloke in Kung Fu would do. but then he'd get more annoyed.
00:10:54.03
alexei sayle
Right.
00:10:55.70
S lee
And then he'd just go and does him in with like one move. The difference is i just then get more beaten up because I can't do martial arts.
00:10:59.22
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:11:03.78
alexei sayle
that's where That's where it diverges from.
00:11:05.06
S lee
I provoke them in a passive-aggressive way, but I've got no escape route or fallback position.
00:11:08.06
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:11:10.66
alexei sayle
You don't have to...
00:11:11.76
S lee
Yeah. But I think he's really funny.
00:11:12.76
alexei sayle
I don't know whether it's...
00:11:12.85
Talal K
That's great, like the gas the gaslighting kung fu master.
00:11:17.34
S lee
Yeah, he was. But I don't think he knows the character.
00:11:19.51
Talal K
think
00:11:19.58
S lee
I think he's just sort of, he's like an innocent abroad in the world whose body is a lethal weapon. Oh, it's great. It's great.
00:11:27.06
alexei sayle
I don't know whether, I'd have to see, to that I don't know whether his Kung Fu was actually any good. Do you remember Talal, whether his, his actually?
00:11:32.02
S lee
Oh, it was, because every film that he was in, David Carradine, he would do Kung Fu.
00:11:33.06
Talal K
Uh...
00:11:35.78
S lee
Like in Quetzalcoatl, in Q, the Winged Serpent, an early 70s New York film in which he is a policeman investigating an Aztec god, ah an inca a South American mystical god living in the attic of the Chrysler building.
00:11:36.14
alexei sayle
Not really.
00:11:42.21
alexei sayle
There.
00:11:54.04
S lee
He also just, whenever there's a fight, he does Kung Fu.
00:11:57.17
alexei sayle
I really
00:11:57.27
S lee
He always does Kung And in the Tarantino films, he did Kung Fu.
00:11:59.12
Talal K
Right.
00:12:00.87
S lee
So he was very good at Kung Fu. And he also made a folk rock album that's not great. And he had a terrible drug problem as well, didn't he, unfortunately?
00:12:11.90
S lee
Tarotene.
00:12:12.41
Talal K
I imagine Steven Seagal kind of kind of poed poached that zenness off of him, that stillness.
00:12:13.14
S lee
Hard though, isn't it?
00:12:18.01
S lee
Yeah, that's right. He had that stillness about him.
00:12:20.50
alexei sayle
I don't know I wonder where he got his kung fu from then because it was quite early on I mean you know
00:12:26.22
S lee
Oh yeah, I mean, was tea he was young when he was doing those those things.
00:12:30.58
Talal K
he was
00:12:30.62
alexei sayle
Yeah, which I mean, yeah.
00:12:30.78
S lee
Maybe learned
00:12:31.26
Talal K
That was the the age of Bruce Lee and stuff, wasn't it?
00:12:32.38
alexei sayle
I don't know whether... whether Yeah, and man with I don't know who really...
00:12:34.43
Talal K
So...
00:12:35.43
S lee
it.
00:12:37.91
alexei sayle
ah should i should I didn't used to know, but I've forgotten who brought kind of Kung Fu to the stage. Kung Fu, of course, just means hard working in Chinese.
00:12:46.02
S lee
Does it? Oh, I didn't know that.
00:12:47.03
alexei sayle
Yes.
00:12:47.81
S lee
What does what does the name of the one you do mean then?
00:12:48.54
alexei sayle
Yeah. I do... know, you fall into my trap now. I do Xuanyang Sun and Frost...
00:13:00.15
alexei sayle
Soft and gentle white crane ultimate fist is the full title of what I do.
00:13:05.75
S lee
If the word fist wasn't attached to the end of that, it would sound like something you hair product.
00:13:10.52
alexei sayle
Yeah. It's only when you get to, yeah.
00:13:12.34
S lee
Fist makes it sound really awful and frightening because the first bits you into a false sense of comfort and then fist comes in.
00:13:16.86
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:13:20.54
alexei sayle
Yeah. Yeah. Ultimate fist. Well, Tai Chi just means means grand ultimate.
00:13:30.01
S lee
Does it? Right.
00:13:31.15
alexei sayle
Yeah, Tai Chi Chuan's Grand Ultimate Fist.
00:13:34.87
Talal K
I do Nam Pai Chuan, which is North South Fist.
00:13:38.07
S lee
What does that mean?
00:13:39.48
alexei sayle
Yes, yeah wellre I'm a Southern style. I'm a crane Southern style. You know yeah Kung Fu Panda has five and mates.
00:13:46.35
Talal K
Yeah.
00:13:48.64
S lee
Yeah.
00:13:49.56
alexei sayle
he has ah ah He has a mantis, a snake, a monkey, a tiger, and I always forget the fifth one, and a crane.
00:13:50.32
S lee
Well, I don't know that.
00:13:56.63
S lee
And a stand-up comedian from Liverpool.
00:13:57.57
Talal K
Crane. Yeah.
00:13:59.51
alexei sayle
and the
00:13:59.58
S lee
And a cracker. Yeah.
00:14:00.98
alexei sayle
ah And those are the five main animal styles of Kung Fu.
00:14:01.34
Talal K
And a comedian.
00:14:05.82
Talal K
Yeah, it's bit on the nose.
00:14:06.14
alexei sayle
ah man like Mantis is a lot of this stuff.
00:14:06.30
S lee
Oh, right. So Kung Fu Panda actually is, it's a lot more, it's a lot more detailed.
00:14:11.62
alexei sayle
We're a southern crane style, so there's a lot of this making wings and you can't really see them.
00:14:20.22
S lee
So Kung Fu Panda as adept, you recognise that it's properly researched.
00:14:25.68
alexei sayle
It's authentic, yeah. our Our teacher called us together,
00:14:27.38
S lee
Yeah.
00:14:30.62
alexei sayle
ah drum on class, and he said, i've got a i've got i've got really serious... I've got something I need to tell you.
00:14:38.09
S lee
Yeah.
00:14:38.87
alexei sayle
really important. He said, come poof Kung Fu Panda 4 is really disappointing. ah It's really... It's not...
00:14:54.93
alexei sayle
No, but Kung Fu Pandas 1 through 3 are very, yeah you know, they're authentic Kung Fu. And, of course, the message is, of course, there is no, you know, there's no message Kung Fu Panda 1 is there is no secret.
00:15:10.84
alexei sayle
It's just you.
00:15:11.37
S lee
It's true.
00:15:11.60
alexei sayle
It's just practice. and
00:15:14.58
Talal K
yeah
00:15:14.74
alexei sayle
ah So you were saying what's yours is a northern style, what you do, Taral?
00:15:20.47
Talal K
north south fist
00:15:20.60
alexei sayle
good to ignore your guest, isn't it, and just talk to your other host. ah
00:15:24.94
S lee
You do it before, because when I used to tour with Dave Thompson, he became Tinky Winky. He used to do Tai Chi or something or some kind of ritual before he went on. do you do do you do do you think Do you think in Kung Fu terms before you go on stage?
00:15:40.12
S lee
Either of you? Both of you?
00:15:41.61
alexei sayle
No, not really. But obviously the...
00:15:43.45
S lee
No?
00:15:44.98
Talal K
the The funny thing, ah you know what, very long before I have actually did stand-up, I did improv for a long time before I ever did stand-up and I did this improv workshop run by an amazing guy called Tony Anamenowick, who's in um what we do in the shadows and stuff like that.
00:16:03.30
Talal K
he's And he, you remember, you ever see the Trump versus Bernie debate debates where there were two comedians dressed up as Trump and Bernie.
00:16:07.83
S lee
Yeah.
00:16:10.80
Talal K
um He played Trump in that.
00:16:11.74
S lee
All right.
00:16:12.36
Talal K
And he had the Donald Trump show, the president's show.
00:16:12.70
S lee
But...
00:16:14.16
Talal K
Anyway, he did a workshop.
00:16:19.10
Talal K
Sorry, called, Mindfulness, meditation and improv. And he was like visiting the UK to do this workshop. And the whole fucking workshop was just us sitting in silence.
00:16:31.58
Talal K
All of us with our eyes closed, focusing on a point, three fingers below the navel and three fingers in and just imagining a glowing ball there.
00:16:41.81
alexei sayle
The dantien, that's what we call the dantien.
00:16:43.32
Talal K
Yeah, your chi basically. And just everyone just focusing on that bit of your chi.
00:16:45.49
S lee
I think I don't know. Right, well, I started going out with someone who's into all this kind of stuff, and she took me to some kind of thing in Tottenham.
00:16:57.80
S lee
don't even know where it was. North East London somewhere, above a pub where everyone sat cross-legged and had to think about things. And it really freaked me out. I had to get out. And I hated it.
00:17:08.46
S lee
was really frightened by it and upset and disorientated. And then the woman running it,
00:17:12.82
Talal K
Oh, God.
00:17:13.21
S lee
said where are you going and i said i'm really sorry i was having a panic attack i couldn't make head or tail of that and then she got really annoyed of me and said i'd ruined the whole thing
00:17:17.21
Talal K
Jesus.
00:17:23.96
S lee
bring to anything again i don't even know what it was we went in ah a room above a pub everyone sat cross-legged a bloke whispered inaudibly for ages then people stood up and started walking around and he said you can
00:17:40.50
Talal K
Yeah, it sounds about right.
00:17:42.46
S lee
You can be touched if you want or not. I thought, I don't even know what this is. And then I got out and then I was told off whilst putting my shoes back on.
00:17:49.20
Talal K
Jeez.
00:17:53.78
S lee
I don't i don't know even know what it was called to this day. Yeah.
00:17:57.40
Talal K
Well, no one had that reaction in my club.
00:17:57.82
S lee
Right. Yeah.
00:18:01.64
Talal K
Tony Atamanik, that's his name. Sorry for butchering it earlier.
00:18:04.12
alexei sayle
yeah it's an easy fucking It's an easy fucking gig, though, isn't it? Just to get you to sit. He probably went to the fucking pub while you were sitting there with your eyes closed.
00:18:15.25
Talal K
It may, no, I guess, look, if you do it, I've enjoyed meditation over the years and I think it's a really useful tool to have.
00:18:16.28
alexei sayle
You don't know that he was there.
00:18:24.15
Talal K
And that fucking class, even though it was what, 15 years ago, stuck with me. And anytime I'm having a panic or I'm getting flappy, I just, all have to do is takes me one second now.
00:18:35.27
Talal K
I just think of that bit of my body and it just brings me stillness, you know?
00:18:36.29
alexei sayle
Meeting.
00:18:38.41
Talal K
And just kind of reframe everything and center myself and I go, all right, I'm in control. Here I am. And boom. So that is something that even in the middle of a set, if I'm, you know, I catch someone in the audience looking fucking grumpy and I can't stop thinking about them.
00:18:53.43
Talal K
I just fucking think about three fingers below my navel and I'm chill.
00:18:58.51
S lee
That's funny because what I would do is i would I would notice that person, lean into it and make the confusion and irritation that it had given me that would colour the way that I did the next 10 minutes or whatever.
00:18:59.51
Talal K
I'm chill again.
00:19:13.65
S lee
And i would let that I would let that happen. I would sort of... I would let the thing... i ah rather Rather than trying to rise above the room, which is a ah really good way of doing it, I'm not criticising it, I would sort of...
00:19:29.30
S lee
I would sort of lean into whatever bad things were happening and see if they if i if the if the act would survive the pressures they put on it. and But the risk of that is sometimes it doesn't, you know, and you don't get it back.
00:19:43.35
S lee
But I kind of, yeah.
00:19:45.28
Talal K
Oh, no, that would just give me it gives me the stillness to just drill right into them and insult them in a way that makes them break down into.
00:19:49.43
S lee
Right, right.
00:19:52.19
Talal K
No, they're not.
00:19:53.50
alexei sayle
And just to provide a third perspective, i always sit at stand up gigs, I always been always have the the spotlight shining in my eyes so I can't see the audience.
00:20:02.49
Talal K
Hmm.
00:20:02.90
S lee
Oh, do you?
00:20:03.48
alexei sayle
ah Yeah, yeah.
00:20:03.86
S lee
That's really interesting, right? Because I spend ages in the theatres trying to get the lights at a level where the audience are dark enough to feel comfortable, but I can see them to to interact with them.
00:20:17.18
S lee
But if yeah if it's too bright, which is how they always used to film stand-up for telly, then um people don't laugh because it's weirdly...
00:20:24.85
alexei sayle
No, no.
00:20:25.04
S lee
Even though they they like being in a big group of people laughing, but they don't like being exposed individually, I think.
00:20:29.24
alexei sayle
No.
00:20:30.00
Talal K
Mm-hmm.
00:20:30.47
S lee
We...
00:20:30.84
alexei sayle
No, that's it.
00:20:31.35
S lee
I was thinking about that, actually, when they did...
00:20:31.72
alexei sayle
That's just
00:20:33.09
S lee
Because I was in the Mildmay Club last night in Stoke Noonan where I filmed my show, and I always had Wheel Tappers and Shunters Social Club at the back of my mind when I filmed that, which I thought was really good set-up for stand-up on telly.
00:20:45.19
S lee
But I was thinking about Boom Boom Out Go The Lights, when the first time... I ever saw your generation comics on telly, it was shot in a brightly lit studio where the audience was sat at the kind of tables you get a community centre and they had drinks in plastic pint, orange and pink plastic cups, as I remember.
00:21:04.42
S lee
It was the most awful atmosphere.
00:21:06.05
Talal K
you
00:21:06.58
S lee
It was like
00:21:06.97
alexei sayle
Well, not in a doubt, they weren't drinks, they were just coloured water.
00:21:10.58
S lee
coloured water. Yeah, yeah, they weren't allowed to have drinks.
00:21:11.51
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:21:12.68
S lee
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:12.98
alexei sayle
No, in the studio, no.
00:21:13.98
S lee
It was the most hostile atmosphere for for a comedy. that i've now Now I think back on it. And yet what a groundbreaking moment it was actually getting it on telly. But it looked terrible.
00:21:22.65
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:21:23.77
S lee
Then around the same time, you had Julian Temple's film of you all at ah the comic strip, which kind of went the other way, didn't it? Because it was kind of sort of a faked audience of...
00:21:33.46
alexei sayle
Yeah, I didn't like that. I think it' all i mean that's what that's i think the only
00:21:35.22
S lee
Yeah.
00:21:40.15
alexei sayle
the only record left of my act at the comic strip is that um that Julian Temple film. But it is, me as you say, performing to this fake audience of extras and it doesn't...
00:21:51.99
S lee
Well,
00:21:54.74
alexei sayle
I can see. I mean, it's ah it's ah as an archive, it's fine because I'm doing the material that I did, but my performance is off, really, because I'm not performing to a real audience.
00:22:05.21
Talal K
Yeah.
00:22:05.30
alexei sayle
I can tell my performance isn't really working, but that's the only there's ah that's the any record that there is, I think, of it.
00:22:14.77
Talal K
Whenever you see a stand-up comedian in a in a narrative TV show or movie, it's always shit, isn't it? so You don't get that.
00:22:21.75
alexei sayle
Yes.
00:22:22.17
Talal K
they They're so hard to portray that same energy, isn't it?
00:22:25.02
alexei sayle
It's really difficult. Hax nearly gets away with it.
00:22:26.74
S lee
Usually it was a very low budget Scottish film about a standard comedian getting mixed up in a murder. that And the guy in that was pretty good. I wish I could remember what it was called. I remember when I was first on the circuit, 89, 90, Linda LaPlante started turning up at gigs, the TV art dramatist, because she was writing a TV drama about an American comedian who got stuck in London and involved in a murder.
00:22:42.42
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:22:50.52
S lee
And I remember she'd be at clubs and um she came in somewhere. It was actually the comedy store and I was doing a tryout spot and um the comedy store when it was in Leicester Square and she wanted to see the dressing room and the dressing room there was basically, you know, a sink and a chair and
00:23:11.06
Talal K
Yeah.
00:23:11.70
S lee
and She said, is this it? And but she just couldn't believe that there was no dressing room. And then when the TV show came on, the clubs all had massive dressing rooms and all the comedians were lounging around in the night.
00:23:23.57
S lee
Probably dramatically, they needed a place for them to interact.
00:23:25.50
alexei sayle
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:26.37
S lee
It's interesting that she just, she had to change it because it was so shit that um it wouldn't have worked on television.
00:23:31.35
alexei sayle
Yeah. ah Well, it's very interesting that conversation has taken this term because just at the minute, moment before... I started doing this, I was listening to This Cultural Life with Jonathan Wilson, um with Jonathan Price, and he was just talking about the comedians, Trevor Griffiths, the comedians, which actually predated, which Jonathan, neither of them on didn't really understand the play they were in, in terms of Jonathan, because it predated...
00:24:05.78
alexei sayle
and alternative comedy didn't it it sort of pre but it wasn't funny I mean have you got strong feelings about the comedians as I have
00:24:11.24
S lee
Yeah.
00:24:13.78
S lee
Do you think that on some on level, the play the comedians in which a guy tries to do material that we would recognise on the working men's club circuit, do you think that on some level it gave British comedians a template?
00:24:26.85
alexei sayle
yeah
00:24:31.90
S lee
did it Did it fictionally create
00:24:34.84
alexei sayle
No, i i know I don't think it did. well I think but it what Trevor Griffiths sensed was that that we were coming, really, and tried to tried to kind of capture it before. But we did, me and, you was before VHS, Tony Allen had arranged for a community centre in Paddington or somewhere to record it on an open reel video recorder in black and white.
00:25:05.08
S lee
Wow. Yeah.
00:25:05.30
alexei sayle
And then me and Tony and Keith Allen went down and watched this because we were all working, I guess, when it was on. We watched this recording in black and white on this open real Sony video recorder.
00:25:19.56
Talal K
Bye.
00:25:21.69
alexei sayle
And so i think I think, I mean, I think I sort of remember thinking this isn't, this is sort of it, but it's wrong really that what we're doing is the real thing.
00:25:35.03
alexei sayle
You know, ah because I mean, the mistake because one of the things that Trevor Griffiths couldn't envisage was where you would do it, really, because he has Gethin Price performing in a working men's club and that's impossible, really, you know.
00:25:49.36
S lee
But that there was a guy that Bernard Manning used to put on that was a bit like that. I forget his name.
00:25:54.49
alexei sayle
Really.
00:25:55.54
S lee
trying to do Trying to do stuff. um
00:25:59.67
alexei sayle
and that will be to that audience. You can't. It's impossible, you know.
00:26:03.26
S lee
Yeah, I was on with Mike Harding last Sunday in Glasgow, at a celebration of the life of Dick Gockin, the Scottish folk singer, who has sort of had a stroke and gone missing a bit, but has been been been found and actually ended up singing, which was unexpected because he hasn't sung for 10 years.
00:26:06.62
alexei sayle
All right.
00:26:22.01
S lee
But I was talking to Mike about how I was really, really pleased to meet him because before you were on telly,
00:26:26.61
alexei sayle
Mm.
00:26:29.88
S lee
When I was a kid, ah even even as a 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old, I was aware that Jasper Carrot, Mike Harding, Billy Connolly, Malcolm Stent, who's a Birmingham one, um Max Boyce, and all those guys, and even some of the...
00:26:46.61
S lee
ones sort of from the folk there were these kind of folk comedians yeah they they were they were better than the club comics and the light entertainers tell that i always assumed they were generating their own material with jasper carrot i think a lot of it was kind of very influenced by american bits that he'd heard on records and then changed you know good but america might as well have been out of space then in fact andy de la tour
00:26:50.47
alexei sayle
No, they were all folk musicians. They were all ex-folk musicians. Yeah.
00:26:56.47
alexei sayle
Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:07.74
alexei sayle
yeah
00:27:12.57
S lee
got an Arts Council grant, didn't in the late 70s to go to America and look at stand-ups.
00:27:15.35
alexei sayle
ah you yo yeah ah yeah
00:27:17.86
S lee
and um But I was really pleased to meet Mike because I i i remember, you know, that I really looked forward...
00:27:17.98
Talal K
Jesus.
00:27:25.55
S lee
when When those guys all used to have their own BBC Two shows, at Jake Thackeray, know, at 10 o'clock at night, and they would do bits between the songs, and those were the bits that I...
00:27:31.58
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:27:35.26
S lee
look forward to. that was I feel it it kind of, after the death of the music hall, I feel it kind of went into hibernation and it was kind of buried in the folk circuit somehow, almost. Yeah.
00:27:44.54
alexei sayle
Yeah, and it it was a bridge from, yeah, the Working Men's Club to, you alternative comedy, really, yeah.
00:27:49.46
S lee
Yeah.
00:27:52.91
alexei sayle
I mean, it both, but it suffered from the restrictions of the folk movement, didn't it? And that it was always, it was apolitical, really. And it also wasn't really about lifestyle.
00:28:03.86
alexei sayle
i mean, that's what I brought to alternative comedy was the the lifestyle and the the left-wing politics, really, I think.
00:28:05.75
S lee
yeah
00:28:14.56
alexei sayle
But, it's yeah, it's... um It was interesting listening to Jonathan Bryce talking about the comedians. I thought he misunderstood the play he was in.
00:28:26.65
alexei sayle
I think Trevor Griffith.
00:28:27.51
Talal K
Oh, was he in the original run of that?
00:28:27.54
S lee
Did you tell that we you'd tell him that
00:28:29.75
alexei sayle
I will tell him. I'll ring him up and... I will ring him up and tell him. oh Yeah.
00:28:37.63
Talal K
Oh, he's never had hair, has he, Jonathan Pryce?
00:28:39.48
alexei sayle
Who? Yeah, he has him. When he was young, he did.
00:28:42.59
S lee
Oh yeah, lovely hair. in Something wicked this way comes, he had hair.
00:28:44.22
alexei sayle
Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:47.32
Talal K
Oh.
00:28:47.59
S lee
There's a lot of...
00:28:48.22
alexei sayle
I mean, he's had he's said quite a career. I did a TV thing with him. He was quite hard work. A thing called Selling Hitler.
00:28:54.68
S lee
some quite good films when you There's some quite good films where you don't see the comedians act, like Goodfellas, where they're talking about their acts and you never see them do them.
00:28:56.66
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:29:00.98
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:29:05.00
S lee
and i that That seemed pretty like quite a good way of portraying the lifestyle without having to spoil it by seeing them act.
00:29:10.62
alexei sayle
Yeah. yeah
00:29:11.46
Talal K
Mmm.
00:29:12.60
alexei sayle
Yeah, by saying, yeah. I mean, I always say the only one, I mean, I hate Adam Sandler now, but I mean, I think the only one that really, the I always think the film that kind of evokes very effectively the kind of, the the affection that comedians have for each other is Adam Sandler's funny people.
00:29:31.93
S lee
I've not seen that. I've seen Punchline with Tom Hanks.
00:29:32.95
alexei sayle
Oh, it's really, no, that's shit. That's awful. That's terrible. No, so funny people because it's all, it's about a comedian who thinks he's got cancer.
00:29:47.26
alexei sayle
And so he's he goes down to a club one night and he's, it's a younger generation.
00:29:48.66
Talal K
Oh, yeah.
00:29:52.58
alexei sayle
It's Seth Rogen and um Jonah Hill and that lot who are a younger generation to Adam Sandler.
00:29:54.43
S lee
Right.
00:29:59.42
alexei sayle
And it's about that sort of, It's about ah a comedic legend coming down to a club and actually failing. And his relationship, he develops this close bond with the younger generation of comedians.
00:30:13.30
alexei sayle
rather like it's It's the story you and me, Stuart, really.
00:30:16.04
S lee
right
00:30:16.54
Talal K
ah
00:30:17.11
alexei sayle
but um
00:30:20.23
Talal K
He is, yeah.
00:30:20.82
alexei sayle
But I hate Adam Sandler now because I think he's a Zionist.
00:30:23.40
S lee
there's a lot of sitcoms aren't there where the the the sitcom has the name of the comedian and the comedian is uh is a is a stand-up comedian in it like we and i think i think in the josh widdekin one was he supposed to be a stand-up comedian but we didn't see his act i can't remember and there was that
00:30:24.17
Talal K
Hmm.
00:30:31.86
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:30:38.44
alexei sayle
I think so.
00:30:38.80
Talal K
Hmm.
00:30:39.38
alexei sayle
wasn't a lead balloon with Jack D, wasn't it?
00:30:41.21
S lee
lead balloon. And then there was one called joking apart that the bloke that went on to write doctor who wrote about a standup comedian, but we didn't really see his act.
00:30:47.83
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:30:48.89
S lee
Um, so, well, it's, I don't know that one doesn't feel like they've gone on a very long journey.
00:30:49.78
Talal K
Seinfeld, of course.
00:30:49.78
alexei sayle
And they're all awful. Awful.
00:30:56.44
S lee
Um, write them also louis ck's in retrospect seemed to be putting in place a lot of um arguments and excuses for male behavior which he was perhaps hoping would come in useful later on but um you know it's sort of that it's a it is a weird thing i i i kind of i'm glad i didn't do it i had no i started writing a film about exactly that situation that you've described of a young comedian being on the road with an old comedian who was sort of in decline and uh but um and i kind of made a sort of pastiche of various people i wrote it up at one point as an epic poem which um malcolm hardy read and was convinced it was entirely about him and and said he remembered all the incidents happening even though many of them were things that john dowey told me had happened to him and things like that so i think it's got bits a bit confused in their minds oh yeah
00:31:09.85
Talal K
Yeah.
00:31:45.19
Talal K
Uh.
00:31:48.51
alexei sayle
I always think, the about the the one of the life lessons you take from Mark and Hodges, there seems to be an irresistible kind of pull between alcoholics and houseboats so that you have to drunkenly cross a bridge. or I mean, he died trying to row out to his houseboat, didn't he, or fell in.
00:32:10.71
alexei sayle
and he know I don't know whether that's true, whether his pockets were full of chains because he'd just won big on the on a one-armed bandit.
00:32:20.42
S lee
Who else had it struggled with a houseboat then?
00:32:22.36
alexei sayle
ah um and Well, houseboat, what's his name, from Bonzo Dog Doodah Band?
00:32:31.38
S lee
Well, the instance lived on a houseboat, Lillie, and drowned from it.
00:32:31.63
alexei sayle
Vivian Stansoll, he lived on a houseboat. Yeah, he set it on fire. I think it was more it might have been more of a canal boat, really. um um ah
00:32:39.28
S lee
Right, right.
00:32:40.28
alexei sayle
I think when you ask, I can't remember who else. It just seemed...
00:32:44.90
S lee
Actually, Jack Russell lived on a houseboat, the stand-up comedian Jack Russell. He didn't end well, sadly, either. Yeah.
00:32:51.13
alexei sayle
Yeah, is.
00:32:52.06
S lee
yeah And Ian Cognito lived on a houseboat, and he died quite young, relatively speaking.
00:32:58.04
Talal K
There we go.
00:32:58.30
alexei sayle
Did he fall into the river?
00:32:59.14
S lee
He didn't fall in the river, no. He died he died on stage superbly in um an ordinary circuit gig, slumped into a chair.
00:33:01.02
alexei sayle
no
00:33:07.61
S lee
And, oh, slumped into a chair. People were laughing and laughing. And then realised that he'd died. And you kind of, you really, I would love that to happen to me. Not soon, but I'd like to, love to stage and people
00:33:20.41
alexei sayle
Was he the one who used to knock a nail into the wall and hang his coat on it?
00:33:23.00
S lee
Yeah, it used to come in and knock a nail into the wall and then hang his coat on it and then do it. It was full of brilliant stories. I mean, you know, Incognito is one of those people like Malcolm who the stories that surround their life were kind of, you kind of almost think, did they go out in the morning and think, I'm going to create an anecdote today that other people will tell at a later date.
00:33:46.94
alexei sayle
yeah
00:33:48.24
S lee
certainly to think that about Markie Smith from The Fall as well, the few times I met him. I felt he embedded lies into me about himself that he knew I would repeat. you know i think and so I think there's a certain kind of person that's thinking ahead about how will this be remembered.
00:33:57.59
alexei sayle
Right.
00:34:04.34
S lee
And I think Cognito was really good at creating a legend about himself. I don't know if Malcolm did that self-consciously. I think it just sort of happened around him.
00:34:13.27
alexei sayle
No, he did have... I mean, the first time I think I met him was at the Old Albany Empire in Deptford, and he to eat he'd been in prison for some kind of sexual assault, which he hadn't committed, which he said he had, and the local community did...
00:34:22.38
S lee
Oh, right.
00:34:26.97
alexei sayle
gather round and um um get him out. he was He was then, I don't know the details, I remember him saying that, that he'd been freed after public pressure. And then, of course, he he was Jerry Sadowitz's manager for a while, which I can't imagine now.
00:34:44.50
alexei sayle
Oh, that's the other thing as well. The opening, OTT, of course, my first big break into live ah television was also the greatest show and legs, know, that did the balloon dance.
00:34:57.47
S lee
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:58.42
alexei sayle
that and And when I rang my mother the next morning, she told me how much she'd enjoyed the balloon dance. She thought that was the best thing on OTT, really.
00:35:06.55
S lee
the ballen dance was an act where the you know for for yeah for younger viewers the but The balloon dance was an act where, an act where...
00:35:10.33
alexei sayle
Yes.
00:35:12.63
S lee
ah Malcolm Martinson and a rotating third man um would do a dance where they were all naked and didn't have quite enough balloons to cover both their genitals and their buttocks and perform this dance movie very moving around.
00:35:17.25
Talal K
I
00:35:24.66
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:35:27.54
S lee
It was ripped off, wasn't it, by ah by sort of club comic acts as well. I think they had to get um a group called The Oddballs started doing it.
00:35:36.80
alexei sayle
Really?
00:35:37.10
S lee
But yeah, it was brilliant. And when that went on OTT on television, I can remember. mean, know OTT was a really interesting thing as he to watch as a kid because Chris Tarrant, who kind of had the sense of humour of a head of a rugby club in a student union, but nevertheless was quite was great on Tiz Was for kids.
00:35:51.13
alexei sayle
Yes.
00:35:55.94
S lee
you know They tried to bring this mad kids show energy to late night telly. And it was a weird mix, wasn't it, of progressive values, but also really old fashioned sexism.
00:36:06.17
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:36:06.39
S lee
And you'd have you'd have the beat on, or you'd the you know, mixed race band from Birmingham. And Lenny Henry, who, like, was fighting a battle for black comics in Britain to not have to do material where they went, if you don't laugh, I'll move next door to you and bring your house value down, you know.
00:36:11.38
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:36:18.26
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:36:23.75
alexei sayle
mean,
00:36:23.78
S lee
and um and And yet at the same time, Bernard Manning would be on. And they were having to kind of slip through that.
00:36:28.63
alexei sayle
yeah
00:36:30.30
S lee
And also, but you know, he was it was it was the it was the early 80s and feminism was a thing and there were women comedians, but Chris Tarrant just loved gratuitous nudity in it all the time.
00:36:40.50
S lee
So it was kind of weird, which we liked as 12-year-olds, you know, as well, but ah watching that. So it was a mad kind of mix, but it was brilliant seeing you on that and with the people that were on it.
00:36:49.98
alexei sayle
Yeah, I didn't know. I felt... I think I felt like I'd... Well, I felt, I think, that what ah that I was in the wrong place with that. and I needed to be with people who believed exactly the same as me, and that's what The Young Ones was, and that's what really saved me, I think. But um I felt with OTT that it was it's such a battle every week to...
00:37:16.38
alexei sayle
I said i wouldn't I wouldn't be in any of the sketches eventually after I filmed a couple. And then I wouldn't. I also went home. They went out drinking in the in the Hagley Road or whatever till the next morning. I said I wanted to go home. And the first week there there was a Jaguar.
00:37:34.52
alexei sayle
They sent for me back to London. and next week it was a transit van.
00:37:44.30
S lee
you ever wish that you'd that you'd joined in more right because I had all sorts of rules about things that i wouldn't do and though I wouldn't go to
00:37:52.98
alexei sayle
Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:54.65
S lee
And there's loads of venues that I won't play and promoters that I won't work with. And now I can't remember what reason it was that i wouldn't do them. But that's no reason for me to start doing them.
00:38:04.12
alexei sayle
yeah
00:38:06.10
S lee
But there's lots of things that I that i took positions on. And I don't know that they've made any difference. and i think maybe I would have just had more. that There was all sorts of people that I kept out of the way of. And and i i when i when I got on telly, more or less on my own terms doing Comedy Vehicle,
00:38:23.58
S lee
I sort of, I said and did a lot of things that I knew would make me unacceptable to panel shows or to to be part of the club of comedy because I felt I had to keep out of it for um to be independent.
00:38:40.34
S lee
you know i thought if I felt that, I could say what was happening around me in comedy at the time was The world of the podcast was happening. There were loads of panel shows. so all the comedians a generation younger than me were writing for each other on all these programs.
00:38:55.06
S lee
and they were also appearing on all these panel shows and writing for each other on them. And then they were also all had podcasts.
00:38:59.72
Talal K
Well, it's not all improvised.
00:39:01.75
alexei sayle
you
00:39:02.82
S lee
It's funny, actually, because I remember I'd do a joke about ah do a joke about some joke Frankie Boyle had done or something. together you know i mean and then And then, like, 20 circuit comics from from the northeast of England and from Scotland would all be annoyed with me. And then I realised they were all writing for him. you know It was kind of weird. but So that they they all seemed to be in a big club together.
00:39:24.44
S lee
where they couldn't really afford to write material that was critical because they were all dependent on each other for support. And partly it made me realise that, A, your generation even more than mine, but we had a certain degree of economic freedom
00:39:33.16
Talal K
Right.
00:39:40.41
S lee
We didn't have to necessarily do things we didn't want to because life just wasn't as expensive. But it also, ah so i kind of didn't get involved in all that. Burnt my bridges with all those people. I'd be on a comedy festival in Ireland or something and realised that I couldn't go in the bar because it was full of promoters I said I wouldn't work with and medians I'd done jokes about. And I'd go off on my own to some folk pub or something but Now I think, I don't know what difference it made in the long run. I wish I wish, I don't
00:40:12.18
S lee
ah dun know, maybe it would been better to find a way through.
00:40:13.02
alexei sayle
Yeah, no, I understand. Yeah.
00:40:16.30
S lee
I mean, would it have killed you to go out um to a late night strip club to get a drink in hagley on the Hagley Road in Birmingham with Bernard Manning and Chris Tarrant?
00:40:26.68
S lee
Would it have been the end of the world?
00:40:26.81
alexei sayle
Yeah, well, being a man in it, were but it would have been, i could never have done that. But Chris Jarrett and John Gorman and, you know.
00:40:34.07
S lee
Yeah, John Gorman was was another one of those people like the folk comedians, wasn't he?
00:40:35.03
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:40:37.91
S lee
There was a kind of, there was a sort of state-subsidised experimental theatre world that people like him and Ken Campbell were in that was also keeping weird comedy alive when everyone was trying kill it, you know.
00:40:39.06
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:40:45.96
alexei sayle
Liverpool, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it wouldn't have, yeah, it wouldn't have, it wouldn't have hurt me to go out with, with, with Tarrant and Lenny and Helen Atkinson would and, yeah, John Gorman.
00:40:57.40
S lee
Yeah.
00:41:02.06
alexei sayle
Brett Manning, I could, no, I could never.
00:41:03.09
Talal K
But what surprises me, Alexei, and I don't mean this ironically, ah because this is your essentially your big break on telly, isn't it?
00:41:10.34
S lee
Thank you.
00:41:11.54
Talal K
Like your first time on...
00:41:12.54
alexei sayle
i suppose so, yeah.
00:41:14.04
Talal K
So like, aren't... ah aren't you just like so fucking excited and grateful to be there at all because even back back then there's only like two or three channels on the television at all anyway isn't this something that you once you're in you're like I will do anything to fucking not to the extent that you're you know that they were complete sellout but like wouldn't you just be so I'm on national TV I'm gonna do everything to get in with this crew and fuck so how does that how does that not happen because you know it's your first fucking time on
00:41:33.87
alexei sayle
Mmm.
00:41:40.98
alexei sayle
a ha
00:41:47.51
Talal K
And I mean it genuinely.
00:41:48.60
alexei sayle
yeah
00:41:48.91
Talal K
I would, if I was in my early twenties and I'm fucking suddenly on the, on the national television late night show, fucking, I would be going out with them and fucking, and then it would take me at least a couple of years to realize that I've compromised myself and maybe I should rethink things.
00:42:05.51
Talal K
Like, how did you have that? How did you have that constitution from such an early time, you know, to, to self-censor and,
00:42:12.73
alexei sayle
i but that's fine I think partly it came from my time in politics, I think. So I saw the, I saw things in a different way, really.
00:42:26.71
alexei sayle
And I don't know, itn what do you think, Stuart? I mean, it's, I just, I just, I mean, I do regret in a way being such a prick to like Tarrant and actually getting him criticised in the annual report of Ofcom that year because of something I said.
00:42:31.53
S lee
I was like,
00:42:40.40
Talal K
whoa let's
00:42:42.52
alexei sayle
But no, I wasn't grateful at all. I wasn't i think i was I was angry with them for not for them not being better. I was angry with them for being so... um Why didn't they just let me on the telly all the time? and I was just in a rage all the time, really, with them.
00:43:03.95
Talal K
it's
00:43:07.01
alexei sayle
mean, I sort regret It wouldn't have hurt me to go out
00:43:10.08
Talal K
Well, it's impressive. It's specifically at that age to and at that bigger a break, you know, it it does feel impressive, you know.
00:43:11.35
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:43:15.26
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:43:16.15
S lee
but so I was talking to Roy Chubby Brown's tour manager the other day, last year, who used to work at Leicester Square. And obviously, you know, Roy Chubby Brown's one of those weird mainstream comics where He seems to and understand that he has to do what he does in character.
00:43:32.86
S lee
So he sort of dresses up as a kind of clown in weird motley.
00:43:37.56
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:43:37.65
S lee
is He has an undeniable comic timing. I hate it when people used to say that about Bernard Manning as if he excused everything. But he's the ah the problem is his racist jokes that don't tend to make sense.
00:43:44.95
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:43:50.41
S lee
They they tend to proceed from a sort of reform party talking point that we know is demonstrably untrue. And then they go into um a funny bit off the back of it.
00:44:01.70
S lee
But what we have to do on the left, when we write a joke, somebody will check check it at the BBC if it's on the telly. And they'll go, well, that's not actually true that 90% of Tories have got sex offence charges against them or whatever.
00:44:14.43
S lee
And so you have to change that before you can do the joke.
00:44:15.90
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:44:17.32
S lee
But he did say... that before every tour, Chubby has a room where he lives full of post-it notes that are stuck all over the wall and he spends weeks moving them around and moving around until he finds the perfect structure for the for the hour, right?
00:44:33.72
S lee
and And I thought, wow, I'd really like to talk to him about that because... I would be really interested in in what he thinks he's doing because because one one thing I've noticed on this last tour, I've got into some venues that I don't normally do, like one's run by AEG or whatever, and I'm...
00:44:41.01
alexei sayle
What do you think, sis?
00:44:51.27
S lee
the house managers have been saying, wow, it's really interesting seeing your acts because we get all these kids that have come through because they got spotted for doing 75-second bits on um social media. And we don't tend to see as many finished acts as we as we do.
00:45:05.34
alexei sayle
Right.
00:45:06.02
S lee
And um they tend to be bits all stuck together that then stop. And um so I feel like I'm from some old tradition, you know, and I'd be interested in...
00:45:17.11
S lee
what How does Chubby Brown structure a set? Does he start off with mild racism and think he's got to work to towards more extreme stuff at the end?
00:45:24.02
alexei sayle
Build.
00:45:26.67
S lee
or just it's just the But the fact that he is structuring a set, I think is really interesting.
00:45:28.13
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:45:31.13
S lee
you know And um I'd love to see what's written on those ah on what's written on those cards.
00:45:36.54
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:45:37.75
S lee
it
00:45:39.19
alexei sayle
ah
00:45:40.41
S lee
The punchlines or I'm in over here or girls allowed to suck my cock or whatever. But it's a post-it note. think it's funny. there was There was a legendary room at the BBC, which was the yeah which was the um the the the the ah last of the summer wine ah writer's room where people would go in to so kind come up try and come up with plot lines for Roy Clark.
00:46:04.86
S lee
and the cards were left there for years and ah long after it had been vacated the cards were still up on the wall and in amongst them amongst all the plot lines compo rolls downhill in bath foggy goes betting whatever one of the plot lines and one of the cards was compo bursts puppy with cock and uh
00:46:27.80
S lee
putting yeah yeah
00:46:29.27
Talal K
and
00:46:30.33
S lee
a must
00:46:30.65
alexei sayle
ah ah
00:46:32.95
S lee
stayed for years after the summer wine writers room plot line ideas board i used to find that with but because when i when i script edited harry hill he obviously has a sort of ironic relationship with um with mainstream entertainment which he he sees rather like peter blake he sees it
00:46:33.98
alexei sayle
ah
00:46:37.24
alexei sayle
ah ah
00:46:54.52
S lee
as a sort of resource for art, I think, you know, in the way that Peter Blake liked wrestlers and things like that.
00:46:59.93
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:47:00.30
S lee
So Harry would get people like Ted Rogers on, on the show. And Ted Rogers really knew who we all were. You know, he knew about that. Whereas Jim Bowen was utterly dismissive of it and said, alternative comedy, it's the alternative of to comedy.
00:47:12.98
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:47:16.54
S lee
But Ted Rogers knew where we all were and talked to me about how do you write?
00:47:16.76
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:47:22.74
S lee
You know, where do you guys get ideas from? And he understood that it was sort of different to where he'd come from.
00:47:28.70
Talal K
Where do you get your crazy ideas?
00:47:31.00
S lee
Where'd you get your crazy ideas from?
00:47:31.10
Talal K
i was I was just about to mention Harriel because I was imagining what his post-it note room would fucking look like for his fucking hour.
00:47:32.66
S lee
Yeah.
00:47:39.92
Talal K
It's like an infinity loop of post-it notes.
00:47:41.66
S lee
Yeah, it'd be great, wouldn't it? Love to see that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:47.03
Talal K
Fucking love him. You know what? Last night at three in the fucking morning, I was watching him on David Letterman in 1996.
00:47:54.24
S lee
Yeah,
00:47:54.78
alexei sayle
Jesus, really, what the...
00:47:55.51
Talal K
Harry Hill went to David Letterman and he didn't change his act at all. He did the lining dazzles.
00:48:01.16
S lee
but then Letterman used to do it. Letterman used to do bits of it for years afterwards.
00:48:05.02
Talal K
he After that set, exactly, he did the, he used to show off his lining for months after Harry Hill came
00:48:05.64
S lee
Letterman was open to
00:48:05.98
alexei sayle
Really...
00:48:09.43
S lee
it. Yeah, go you like the lining, don't you? You did kind of bits of um of it. ah Yeah, i mean, um Letterman, yeah, Letterman's a proper comedy fan, isn't he?
00:48:15.20
Talal K
I fucking love Harry Hill.
00:48:17.58
S lee
He really likes the good stuff. Yeah, yeah.
00:48:19.67
Talal K
Did either of you ever go and do Conan or Letterman or do a five minute spot out?
00:48:24.70
alexei sayle
No, I regret that. I think I i should have. did You did just for laughs, didn't you, Montreal? Yeah.
00:48:29.96
S lee
I did just last two or three times and and I did the Aspen Comedy Festival.
00:48:32.70
alexei sayle
yeah
00:48:36.46
S lee
It was fascinating experiences. But the the last time I was asked back to Aspen, no, to Montreal about 10 years ago, they wanted me to go. And I said to my agent, I don't want to go and do like seven minutes everywhere.
00:48:48.89
S lee
you know And they went, well, they've thing now. you know You can do half an hour. don't want to do half an hour. There's a theatre. You can do an hour in it. went, well, don't really want to do an hour.
00:48:57.34
Talal K
what do you want to do oh
00:48:57.46
S lee
And two hours, you know, and they went, oh, right. because The bloke was really desperate to have me. And then I said, also, I don't want to be on mixed bills, because they like to put you on mixed bills with other people.
00:49:07.96
S lee
so i didn't really, in that when I went before, I really didn't like most of the American acts. They seemed like bullies and gangsters, and they did just shit about how they hated Mexicans and gays and things like that.
00:49:20.76
S lee
And i was really, like, just, ah I really didn't like most of it.
00:49:20.98
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:49:24.41
Talal K
And Arabs.
00:49:24.56
S lee
And I didn't like people, in yeah, and Arabs. Anyway, they they and then ah then I just didn't want to go in the end because I was doing dates here and I just don't think they'd ever been turned down.
00:49:28.02
Talal K
Thank you.
00:49:34.81
S lee
And um they got they got quite anno annoyed about it. But um yeah, I remember being on with Bobby Slayton, who you if you know him at all, you'll know he plays a plaard casino manager in the Scorsese film Casino.
00:49:48.34
S lee
He does it very well, actually. He was like a leathery kind of guy who looked like a porn star, you know. And um he had this bit about Mexicans all being stupid. And I remember saying to him afterwards, you know, i said, well, you can say that. But then the the South American civilization that predates the European conquest is incredibly sophisticated. There's this architecture. There's an understanding of astronomy, you know. And he goes, yeah, well, fuck that.
00:50:20.57
S lee
They had this show called The Nasty Show at night, which was supposed to be to saying the unsayable show.
00:50:26.74
Talal K
What is it? The Nasty Show, did you say?
00:50:27.14
alexei sayle
Right.
00:50:28.38
S lee
Nasty show, yeah. The saying the unsayable show. And the problem is what we've seen, and this is partly what my current tour is about, is those people saying they hated Mexicans and women's and gays and trans people and everything and immigrants.
00:50:43.83
S lee
they were they imagined they were saying the unsayable because it felt to them like they lived in a liberal consensus. But those people are still all saying that.
00:50:54.71
S lee
And yet now, those ideas, particularly in the States, are the views of government. And they're the views here of the newspapers.
00:51:00.67
Talal K
Mm-hmm.
00:51:03.08
S lee
And they're the views of the people in power. And the Labour Party, Alexei, as you said, and I was one of the people that said, no, it'll be all right. They have moved towards the right to accommodate those ideas and acquiesce towards them and think and they can somehow get the people that support them on board.
00:51:18.12
S lee
If only they, you know, can...
00:51:18.67
alexei sayle
Yeah. Shittier to immigrants, yeah.
00:51:22.65
S lee
Yeah. And so it's sort of that's why ah ah the only person that was any good on the, on the, on the nasty show was, um, uh, Mike Wilmot, who used to do an act about being frustrated with his wife and women generally, but it was clearly about his own love for his wife and his feelings of inadequacy, whereas Bill Burr's act, to me, ah just seemed like misogyny.
00:51:49.20
S lee
And if it wasn't meant to be, it certainly was being received as such by an audience of men going, Yeah, Bill, fuck those bitches, fuck them.
00:51:53.50
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:51:57.29
alexei sayle
Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:58.83
S lee
So it was kind of... um I just didn't like it, you know. And and I also thought...
00:52:03.38
alexei sayle
yeah
00:52:04.49
Talal K
Thank you.
00:52:05.75
S lee
I mean, I remember being on a bill there with... um ah with a Andy Parsons and Russell Howard, and they seemed so much better than their American equivalents.
00:52:20.44
S lee
You know, ah it was just... um ah It was, you know... I'm sure there are ones, but on the whole, and I think it's taken a really bad turn in that country where stand up now through the filter of Joe Rogan has become part of the means of control by which people are made to feel threatened.
00:52:26.38
alexei sayle
Mm-mm.
00:52:43.86
S lee
And it's part of what enforces the sort of Trumpy values from what I can see. And I'm, This week I've been trying to write something about how should culture respond to to um to what's happening and is it beholden to us? Do we have a sort of duty to comment on it? and ah And I've got to file column for the NERV today, Carol Codwaller's Observer continuity outlet for all the people that were sacked or a quit at the Observer when it got bought.
00:53:16.25
S lee
I kind of had it last night that people weren't stepping up to the plate. And then this morning i woke up and Springsteen's done a song and... which will you know put him in in the crossfire in and lose him a lot of fans. But he's written a song about Minnesota.
00:53:32.59
S lee
Billy Bragg has as well.
00:53:32.65
Talal K
Oh, I see.
00:53:33.99
S lee
He wrote it on Saturday, recorded it on Sunday, released it yesterday. um again It's one of its it's ah very explicit in its condemnation of King Trump.
00:53:46.20
S lee
And... Philip Glass has just withdrawn his latest opera from the Trump Kennedy Center, which will come as a huge disappointment to all the magazine who I know love serial minimalism.
00:53:58.07
S lee
but um But, you know, it does you do I do feel like they are starting to step up to the plate. So I was thinking about how, this is what i'm trying to write about, how, you know, free free Nelson Mandela. by the specials.
00:54:09.12
S lee
we know People of mine didn't know Nelson Mandela was, you know, and then suddenly you did. And then you thought about apartheid.
00:54:14.27
Talal K
Right.
00:54:16.14
S lee
And um that was a moment where I think popular culture did make a real difference. ah So, ah you know, I'm um'm sort of wondering what will happen.
00:54:26.36
S lee
And I i don't want all those kind of comedians at Montreal.
00:54:27.19
Talal K
It's true. Um,
00:54:31.10
S lee
They seem to me like MAGA in waiting and reactionary people in waiting and even the ones that we seem to have some liberal consent, liberal values like Dave Chappelle talk such a load of rubbish about playing in in the Riyadh Comedy Festival.
00:54:35.10
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:54:50.36
S lee
i just it going Yeah.
00:54:51.64
alexei sayle
Bill Burr as well. He seemed, yeah. Well, i because i my experience was just when I was filming there, I think in like 1919, just went down the comedy store and I was just,
00:54:55.29
S lee
yeah
00:55:02.81
alexei sayle
Astonished, you know, compared to the comedy store here, that they were all doing, yeah, racist and misogynistic material. Really poisonous shit, you know.
00:55:14.19
alexei sayle
I was surprised, really.
00:55:14.23
Talal K
Well, look may I just say, if any TV execs or bookers are listening, I, Talal Karkuti, if given an opportunity, will be grateful for it. Actually, unlike these two louts, I will acquiesce.
00:55:26.31
Talal K
I'll go out drinking with the crew till 4 a.m.
00:55:26.46
alexei sayle
Do I ever...
00:55:28.75
Talal K
m and do as I'm told for the opportunity. Thank you very much.
00:55:33.18
S lee
from
00:55:33.41
Talal K
Carry on, Alexei, what you say.
00:55:34.84
alexei sayle
Yeah, no, I don't. don't let Don't learn the cameraman's name and the lighting guy. I would sometimes pal up with some weirdo, like an assistant wardrobe.
00:55:48.50
alexei sayle
I'd sometimes become best friends with them and everybody.
00:55:48.61
Talal K
Yeah.
00:55:51.10
alexei sayle
Like, look askance.
00:55:51.61
S lee
But you know, I was thinking about this, and I don't know what you think about this Talal, but I think that like, okay, comedy was you know to me the stand-ups were people like you Alexi square pegs in round holes people had a different view of the world because they didn't fit in they weren't clubbable they weren't companionable they were outsiders and uh that's what I liked about it and one of the reasons I wanted to do it was because I didn't want to have to join in with the world now partly because of how social media works everyone's obliged to be a personality and cooperate and be able to fit in and yeah you have to have a much bigger skill set for Talal's generation of being able to do all kinds of things and be yourself and be and be sort of a lot of people's acts particularly with with young men seem like it's an advert for them to be your boyfriend
00:56:41.82
S lee
you know like yeah which yours definitely wasn't
00:56:42.30
alexei sayle
ah
00:56:46.46
Talal K
Um,
00:56:46.81
alexei sayle
ah
00:56:50.46
S lee
I just think it's become it's become like you have to you have to be a nice all-rounder sort of person, whereas actually before it it seemed like a haven for people that probably might not have been able to do anything else almost.
00:57:02.78
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:57:06.74
alexei sayle
Yeah. v Yes, extremely. dysfunctional
00:57:12.28
S lee
Yeah.
00:57:12.36
alexei sayle
That's what I was going to say before about the Radio 4 comedy Christmas party that you didn't come to. That um i i was I am Nicholas Parsons now. I was the oldest.
00:57:25.94
alexei sayle
I was the senior comedian there now. I mean, I do four shows every two years for Radio 4 now. But I mean, and i yeah, I'd taken on them.
00:57:35.24
S lee
Well, it feels like more because they make such an impact when people talk about them. It feels like more than a new.
00:57:40.30
alexei sayle
Thank Yeah, yeah
00:57:43.15
S lee
Also, there are probably meetings where they're accused of bias and they go, think you'll find we have Alexei Sale on Radio 4, so I don't think we are biased.
00:57:54.61
alexei sayle
Well, Linda thinks that's the sole reason why they have me on, this is this is to say that, yeah, yeah.
00:57:58.68
S lee
You're a fig leaf.
00:58:01.66
S lee
Yeah.
00:58:03.32
alexei sayle
and
00:58:03.33
S lee
Linda's often disparaging about your work, though, isn't she?
00:58:07.17
alexei sayle
Linda, yes, and me personally.
00:58:09.05
S lee
When you were coming back, she said, don't do a comeback because youll people will remember you fondly and you'll spoil that if you come back.
00:58:14.88
alexei sayle
Dilute the legacy, yeah.
00:58:18.39
S lee
I think something like that.
00:58:19.67
Talal K
Yeah, she said dilute the legacy.
00:58:20.22
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:58:21.39
Talal K
Yeah.
00:58:22.05
alexei sayle
Diluting the legacy, yeah.
00:58:24.86
Talal K
I don't know what you mean by the younger... i You know, people... my age like fucking james acarston nish kumar and all that lot they're old now you know my favorite gigs to get booked on and i don't gig a lot in terms of stand-up i have a bit i have my chunk of material that i've been doing for years and it works and i don't put it online or anything so that i can keep fucking doing it i don't i'm not uh you know that's that's my shtick but um
00:58:34.84
S lee
Yeah, I know they're all old, yeah.
00:58:41.51
S lee
Yeah.
00:58:51.28
Talal K
But my favorite gigs to get booked on are the ones run by 20 year olds and 25 year olds.
00:58:55.96
S lee
Yeah.
00:58:56.38
Talal K
These guys, they are they are fucking cool and they are not advertising themselves to be your boyfriend. and
00:59:02.74
S lee
In a way, I i hesitate to make generalisation about it because I'm ah i am aware now that I am out of touch. And the only time I see loads of comics, because I'm doing my own shows, is if I'm on benefits or mixed bills.
00:59:13.98
S lee
right I was on with you, wasn't I, at Christmas?
00:59:15.70
alexei sayle
Yeah, it was great in Reading and the Hexagon.
00:59:16.50
S lee
i
00:59:16.86
Talal K
Robin Ince is...
00:59:17.90
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:59:18.49
S lee
We did the Nine Lessons and Carol, the million-inch one.
00:59:20.22
alexei sayle
Yeah.
00:59:20.54
Talal K
Yes.
00:59:21.40
alexei sayle
Oh no, it's going to him.
00:59:21.45
S lee
And there was a woman on called Chelsea Butte, who on for all of us.
00:59:22.48
alexei sayle
So he can't, I can't tell who you're looking at because we're on a flat screen.
00:59:23.02
Talal K
He's talking to me, so...
00:59:26.10
S lee
Yeah, I know, there was Chelsea Berkley was on, I'd never seen, it was really good. I thought, oh, she must be new. And then I realised she'd done about three full-length shows. shes the The sort of acts that I would have really known about. um I always get criticised for slagging people off, but it seems to me that I spend a lot of time saying how great i always think the comedians that I see are.
00:59:46.18
S lee
And I thought she was great, and I'd never heard it.
00:59:47.61
Talal K
Say her name again. I think it got a bit muffled when you said it.
00:59:49.28
S lee
Chelsea Berkley, is that her name? Chelsea Berkley? don't remember.
00:59:51.80
alexei sayle
I still didn't know say that again.
00:59:54.26
S lee
chelsea burkby i think she was cool could be wrong yeah that will look they will you know so i see see people like that and uh and um then i think oh you know maybe people freed up now by the fact that economic security is so far beyond the dreams of anyone in their 20s or 30s that there's no point trying to
00:59:55.90
Talal K
Oh, she was brilliant with the PowerPoint.
00:59:56.15
alexei sayle
Chelsea Bay.
00:59:59.54
Talal K
Yes, she was.
01:00:18.23
S lee
trying to play the game, I don't know. i mean but but there was was a period where it all seemed very internecine. I think I was old enough to remember when Alexei's generation started, it was very explicitly critical of the previous world of comedy. And it had parodies of both the, you know, Oxbridge um sketch type comedies and and of the Working Men's Club comics. And it it's it's sort of defined its terms in opposition. And I think I was still sort of doing that after a lot of those battles had become irrelevant to most people, you know.
01:01:05.46
Talal K
Look, before we get too late, i need to mention your tour again, please, Stu. Do you mind?
01:01:11.16
S lee
Oh yeah, well, I'm at Stuart Lee versus the Manwharf and I'm at Ali Pally in nor North London, Alexandra Palace for two weeks, first two weeks of February.
01:01:18.63
Talal K
Mm-hmm.
01:01:20.63
S lee
I think there's some tickets left. And then I'm on the road in Britain and Ireland on and off from about March to December. And the show is ever evolving as the world gets worse, it only gets funnier.
01:01:37.85
alexei sayle
he Hehehehe.
01:01:41.06
S lee
I'm like a horrible parasite feeding off human misery. I punch the air every time there's some an ethical disaster.
01:01:45.16
Talal K
Fuck yeah.
01:01:50.36
alexei sayle
yeah
01:01:51.82
S lee
It's lucky though, because I had a show about, ah forget which one it was, but the plot line was very much about Brexit and Boris Johnson. And it I had about six months left of it. And it was during that period where look every week it looked he was going to be sacked or quit or go to prison or something. And every time he'd just walk away from some disaster, I was going, Oh, yeah, he's still in there.
01:02:11.97
S lee
I've got a whole end. He actually quit about two weeks after I finished the show. But this one, the news is accelerating towards it at such a rate.
01:02:18.49
alexei sayle
Better look.
01:02:21.52
S lee
It's quite hard to you know to make it awful enough. So we'll see.
01:02:26.46
Talal K
Well, look, for more information and the full tour schedule, I think it's from May. You said March. I think from May onwards, you're fucking hitting it hard and you're basically going to every corner of this sweet land.
01:02:32.82
S lee
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
01:02:37.85
alexei sayle
Have you just been we've been doing Leicester Square and like the Q...
01:02:40.39
Talal K
Let me finish the plug.
01:02:41.44
alexei sayle
Oh, sorry. Sorry, go ahead.
01:02:42.23
Talal K
Go to StuartLee.co.uk.
01:02:42.46
alexei sayle
Sorry. I don't want people to see him. Why would I allow you to plug his shows? Go on.
01:02:48.98
Talal K
Oh, ah fuck, I'm torn now.
01:02:49.13
alexei sayle
Say again.
01:02:51.86
Talal K
Who do I acquiesce to?
01:02:51.93
alexei sayle
Go on.
01:02:53.11
Talal K
No, go to stuartlee.co.uk for info and tour schedule. Find out if he's coming town near you, stuartlee.co.uk. Support the Alexis L podcast as well.
01:03:03.42
Talal K
Please go to patreon.com forward slash Alexis L podcast. Chuck us a couple of quid a month. It's really not much and you get to see full video episodes and all the other exclusive bits and bobs that we put up on there.
01:03:13.53
alexei sayle
to Stuart's kitchen.
01:03:15.34
Talal K
patreon.com forward slash alexisellpodcast
01:03:18.07
S lee
ah yeah if If this goes out, i'd let Alexa, you need to look at what is hanging up on your wall there behind you in case it's important personal information.
01:03:28.06
alexei sayle
Oh, yeah.
01:03:28.25
Talal K
Oh, we've never that's been up there for months that's never been Oh shit.
01:03:30.52
alexei sayle
No.
01:03:32.02
S lee
But they do, they they zoom in on things.
01:03:37.46
alexei sayle
This Splendors Pass from your party confounding conference.
01:03:39.31
S lee
What's that?
01:03:44.08
Talal K
Mm-hmm
01:03:44.92
alexei sayle
I think that would be very used to any frauds there.
01:03:45.28
S lee
Well, someone might...
01:03:51.21
S lee
I don't know You just need to be careful.
01:03:53.02
alexei sayle
Go back in time. There is a password there, but it is sort of, I think it's a Wi-Fi password to something, to a box that's no longer...
01:04:02.14
S lee
You know, I've looked, there's nothing I've got. You can see I've got a list of things I've got to do, but ah nothing. I'm not giving anything away here at all.
01:04:09.56
alexei sayle
No, it's an interesting point you make. How is it? I feel like, how how are you doing? How are you? How is it get all going and stuff? yeah And you still have the energy.
01:04:19.19
S lee
It's going really well and it's been really good for me personally because um I've had to do I'm not a natural athlete like you and I've had to do an hour every night. The second hour is me in a really heavy costume running around. So I've lost quite a lot of weight and I've found that when I'm not doing the show, i have to go and do things like cycle or do stuff because I've got used to the endorphins of it so it's been really good also about halfway through when i change into the costume i feel like the show's done and i stop worrying about it and this other character takes over and it's also really it's a really kind of weirdly quite upbeat i think because the subject material is so bad you kind of play against it so it's actually been a show that makes me happy to do
01:05:07.48
S lee
and fit whereas a lot of my shows make me depressed to do and the stressful and make me ill and uh i you know i suffer for them and so do the audiences but this one is actually what really good fun and it's really it's really i really love doing it and um and it's also made me think about Because i do I do quite a lot of physical comedy in it, which is not something I had ever done.
01:05:34.20
S lee
And it's made me think about big ideas for the next one. The next show I want to write specifically about national identity in the UK. I want to use loads of flags. I want use massive costumes, Morris dancers.
01:05:48.76
S lee
you know ah i' kind of a kind of it's it's given me a new which way of thinking of doing things in my late fifty s which i wasn't expecting so it's great and i'm very
01:06:01.18
alexei sayle
No, well, I always thought that was what was impressive about you, so how you evolved really from, you know, I tell this, I was in a taxi after a recording of OTT with some club comic and he didn't know. And he said, what you do? And I said, I talk.
01:06:18.94
alexei sayle
I talk about, you know, social issues and politics, but there's always a subversive kind of surrealist there, you know, that I perhaps borrow from the situation. And he said, oh, you're a patter merchant.
01:06:33.03
Talal K
Pattern Merchant.
01:06:33.66
alexei sayle
You're a patter merchant. That's what you are.
01:06:35.22
S lee
Yeah. Yeah, I'm a patter merchant.
01:06:36.54
alexei sayle
Like, you a special act or whatever. You're a patter merchant.
01:06:38.74
S lee
I'm a special down-a-patter merchant now.
01:06:40.99
alexei sayle
Well, you were a patter merchant, weren't you, when you first started, but you've become so much more now that you've...
01:06:45.96
S lee
That's very kind of you. you know it's it's ah ah ah I'll tell you what always partly think is, you know everyone's broke.
01:06:47.28
alexei sayle
Well, it's true.
01:06:54.48
S lee
There's loads of cuts everywhere. there isn't you know the The BBC isn't doing its job of educating, entertaining and informing. And if you go to some town that people don't believe you ever play at because it was a Brexit vote, Brexit supporting town, and you do what's nominally a comedy show and people go, I'll go to that, i like comedy.
01:07:13.10
S lee
but you can put in weird bits of surreal art or old-fashioned physical comedy or, you know, I kind of think you can you can subversively get theatre and art and things like that into it's a comedy show and people go away having seen something they wouldn't have thought that they would have liked and they wouldn't have gone to if it had been Samuel Beckett, you know.
01:07:25.88
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:07:34.04
alexei sayle
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
01:07:35.46
S lee
I think that's the that's the trick now. um And it's going to get interesting if and when reform get in, because obviously one of the things they'll do is cut funding for regional theatres.
01:07:43.52
Talal K
Hmm.
01:07:46.13
S lee
They'll lean on what's being programmed, like Trump does in America. you know when i was When I was on with...
01:07:52.18
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:07:54.61
S lee
Dick Gockin and all these lefty folk singers last week in the big publicly funded venue in Glasgow. I thought this is exactly the kind of thing that wouldn't make its way onto the programming if places like the Royal Festival Hall are subject to the whims of a right-leaning dictator that the Kennedy Centre has been.
01:08:16.07
S lee
you know
01:08:16.15
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:08:16.98
S lee
So it sort of it's an interesting time to be trying to do that kind of work. could be you know could be a bit of a shock um i think that some of these publicly funded venues are trying to future proof it a bit there seems to be suddenly a lot more plans about outreach to different regions and different communities i wonder if they're trying to make themselves impregnable to the suggestion that will come from reform, that they're only there for of the elite.
01:08:50.46
S lee
um
01:08:50.78
alexei sayle
Right.
01:08:51.64
S lee
You know, certainly that's one of the things that Vance was saying in America. He said that we didn't need culture because culture was just a way for elites to show that they were better than ordinary people because they under understood culture.
01:09:01.89
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:09:03.42
S lee
I mean, there's something in him, what he's saying.
01:09:04.50
alexei sayle
Yeah, yeah, it's not entirely wrong.
01:09:05.82
Talal K
Fuck off, no.
01:09:06.29
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:09:06.80
S lee
Yeah, I know.
01:09:08.74
Talal K
But it's not available to a lot of people and that's why they're not.
01:09:12.34
S lee
Yeah. know
01:09:14.62
Talal K
And I was in a in Finsbury Park with Sammy Abawarte, we're doing some promotion for his for his show, which is at the Park Theatre.
01:09:14.87
S lee
Yeah. No, I don't. go
01:09:25.37
S lee
Oh, yeah.
01:09:27.77
Talal K
And there's a huge Algerian population in that region, in that area region, in that fucking area London, massive Algerian population.
01:09:32.97
S lee
Yeah.
01:09:36.06
Talal K
And Park Theatre have this cultural outreach program thing they do, but they don't have anything specific to Algerians who are in the neighborhood on the doorstep, you know, um which I think is a ah missed trick.
01:09:45.91
alexei sayle
Right next to us.
01:09:51.31
Talal K
You know, i wish we'd see more of that, that, um,
01:09:53.24
S lee
Well, in Birmingham, you know, at the Rep, for example, they were always trying to do outreach to Muslim and Sikh communities and whatever and think, what theatre people want to see that are not coming here when they're such a significant portion of the city?
01:10:07.16
S lee
And then what kind of happened was it sort of took care of itself when once those communities became middle class or had money, because one of the things people do when they've got a bit of money is they define themselves in terms of their cultural, you know, what they consume culturally. So it was a kind of weird thing where, yeah, you have to do outreach, you have to you know you have to try and do stuff that's relevant to people, but also there's a kind of thing where you you you you You also, things have to be affordable for people.
01:10:38.02
S lee
You know, things have to be accessible in in that way.
01:10:39.32
alexei sayle
Yeah, that's true.
01:10:41.43
S lee
And um I mean, that's, again, is one of the good things about about stand-up is that, I mean, you know, I, went When my son did um Waiting for Godot for GCSE or A-Level, anyway, i looked, you know, was there a production of it on?
01:11:00.92
S lee
And when I did it for GCSE or A-Level, there were, I saw it about four times in a year. I saw a student production at Birmingham University. I saw one at Solihull Technical College.
01:11:10.48
Talal K
hmm
01:11:13.36
S lee
I saw two theatre and education touring ones, and they were all either free or 50p, you know, and the set was a stick in a bucket, and they were all great. But the only Godot that was on anywhere in the south of England, when when all the kids were doing on that syllabus for for their exams, was the one with the Paddington Bear bloke in the West End.
01:11:37.37
S lee
And it was, you know, 60, 70 quid starters.
01:11:40.69
Talal K
Yeah.
01:11:40.92
S lee
no I took my son, obviously, because I'm a champagne socialist and I can afford that. But loads of people wouldn't be able to. the i just saw a brilliant Othello in the West End with... um of
01:11:54.23
alexei sayle
David Haywood.
01:11:55.44
S lee
Toby, you know, from Captain America. And and um and and it was it really, really good.
01:11:59.98
alexei sayle
Toby Jones.
01:12:01.36
S lee
But, you know, it was um it was expensive. and so But standard, unless you're with Avalon and you're charging like 90 quid for Greg Davis, you can keep it at a ah a cost-effective level.
01:12:16.08
S lee
You can keep it down. and you know i i do my um I'm not saying I'm better than everyone. But I do my tickets the lowest the theatres would allow me to, basically. And I still do all right out of it.
01:12:27.10
S lee
And it helps the theatres because there's comedy audiences come in large numbers and drink a lot.
01:12:27.26
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:12:33.13
S lee
And, um and you know, it you kind of feel like it's it it was meant to be an accessible art form that people, you could load other stuff into it because it was...
01:12:34.22
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:12:46.36
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:12:46.55
Talal K
You say that now, Stu.
01:12:47.03
alexei sayle
but That was always my intention. Yeah.
01:12:49.05
S lee
Yeah.
01:12:49.59
Talal K
You say that now, Stu, but think about the Morris Dancer budget you're going to have for your next show.
01:12:53.75
S lee
Yeah, but what I do, I use different Morris dancers in every town. I use the local one, right?
01:12:57.95
alexei sayle
So you don't have to get to know them and travel with them in a fucking van.
01:12:59.99
S lee
I use the local one. And you what? When we got married, me and Bridget, we had the Forrester Dean Morris men. they didn't even they were like a hundred quid and that was they didn't want anything because were to promote morris but they were really they're really good value morris dancers they look because they love it they love they love dancing so much so i use a different one every every town there's loads of great sides now they call them as well with like the you know very specific looks and political agendas and whatever and funny if i was at the whittlesea straw bear festival
01:13:15.11
Talal K
All right.
01:13:31.70
S lee
the other week, which is a little village near Peterborough where once a year people dress up in these straw costumes and parade around the town. and They obviously would have been sacrificed for the new year in the old days, but they're not anymore. And Morris dancing sides come from all over the country.
01:13:49.78
S lee
And Morris dancing sides now, ah there'll be a trans side or a pagan side or lots of all women's sides, which you never used to have. but they're doing it in this little you know town near Peterborough, which has obviously got red crosses painted on the walls and reform posters in the pub.
01:14:03.74
alexei sayle
Yeah, yeah.
01:14:05.56
S lee
And a lot of the metropolitan liberal elitist folk dancers were a bit freaked out by it. And it also was interesting because they've spent a lot of time trying detoxify folk culture, but you put it into that environment, everyone panics about it again, you know?
01:14:13.72
alexei sayle
Yeah, it's fascinating.
01:14:19.83
alexei sayle
Yeah, it's fascinating.
01:14:20.74
S lee
Yeah.
01:14:22.27
alexei sayle
Well, I think we should let you know.
01:14:23.33
S lee
Yeah.
01:14:24.74
alexei sayle
I think we've we've laughed less than than on your previous outing.
01:14:30.10
S lee
Sorry, Alexi.
01:14:30.10
alexei sayle
But we've, we've, we've, no, but I think we've gone deeper in terms of subject matter, really.
01:14:30.66
S lee
Yeah,
01:14:32.71
Talal K
we've yeah we've learned more yeah
01:14:35.29
alexei sayle
So, yeah, so we've laughed less, but we've learned more. Because I think the last time, well, just me laughing hysterically. Yeah.
01:14:44.15
S lee
yeah but you, I think you seem a bit, are you all right?
01:14:44.54
alexei sayle
ah
01:14:47.22
S lee
You seem a bit tired, tired out.
01:14:48.73
alexei sayle
Yeah, I know you said that.
01:14:49.34
S lee
Yeah.
01:14:50.41
alexei sayle
I picked up in the middle, didn't I? But I've i' sort of... I think I'm all right. I mean, you know, I'm obviously... Well, I'm 73, so,
01:15:00.57
S lee
yeah but dave brock from hawkwind is 84 and he's still fronting the state rock so you know the main bloke from the sunra orchestra paul uh marshall allen has just released his first solo album at the age of 101.
01:15:08.15
alexei sayle
and
01:15:14.77
S lee
yeah
01:15:17.34
S lee
yeah
01:15:18.01
alexei sayle
Well, that's, yeah.
01:15:18.09
S lee
he's finally realized that they were holding him back the others
01:15:21.27
alexei sayle
I think, yeah, I'm not, I i got should i should tap into me, into me dance, yeah, and get that golden ball.
01:15:27.26
Talal K
Well, you're doing all that.
01:15:29.37
alexei sayle
I've got to go through notes with Linda later afterwards in about me book.
01:15:34.17
Talal K
And then you've got that zip wiring you're doing later this afternoon as well, Alex.
01:15:37.82
alexei sayle
No, I think I'm saving myself a bit for, because I've got to go through, I've got to do the final edit on me fucking book.
01:15:47.89
alexei sayle
um
01:15:48.14
Talal K
Oh, what a note. Stu, when we say goodbye, please don't actually leave, yeah?
01:15:51.43
S lee
Yeah,
01:15:52.66
Talal K
We need to upload all the data and shit, yeah?
01:15:54.62
alexei sayle
but you know I think I say think we've we've gone deeper we've gone deeper than we did last time we're getting you know it's more it's more profound and we'll come
01:16:01.05
Talal K
I think was very good.
01:16:04.06
Talal K
Did you enjoy yourselves with us, Stuart Lee, today?
01:16:07.26
S lee
did. I listened to Robin on it last week as well.
01:16:09.85
Talal K
he He was brilliant.
01:16:10.30
S lee
Robin Inch. Yeah.
01:16:12.50
alexei sayle
he knows everybody he knows about all the young ones doesn't he seems to he mentions all these people you know he
01:16:15.74
S lee
Yeah. He's great. He's an incredible er cog in the in the machine of the circuit.
01:16:23.26
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:16:24.02
S lee
Certainly when I had a period where didn't know what I was doing, about 20 years ago now, 20, 25 years ago, Robin was trying to create spaces where people could do slightly different kinds of things.
01:16:35.46
S lee
and
01:16:35.58
alexei sayle
yeah
01:16:36.60
S lee
And he sort of... There was a phrase that um my friend, the sort of performance artist Ben Moore used to me once, which is, the second mouse gets the cheese.
01:16:47.16
S lee
And he's talking about how in Mount Trap, the first mouse goes through and sets off all the traps. And it's adventurous and bold, but it gets you know doesn't get anywhere.
01:16:55.22
alexei sayle
All right.
01:16:55.86
S lee
And then the other one comes here afterwards and picks up all the cheese that's left because the first mouse...
01:16:55.86
alexei sayle
Yeah.
01:17:01.30
alexei sayle
all right
01:17:02.30
S lee
it and i think you know robin's a good example of first mouse the second mouse gets the cheese he's quite a pioneer in terms of thinking about new ways of doing things and trying to create new spaces and and then but then other people kind of move through and benefit from his from his work in a way that doesn't necessarily because he he just sort of he's ah he's on to the next thing by then know yeah
01:17:11.67
alexei sayle
yeah
01:17:25.66
alexei sayle
Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. um ah We will come and see your show at Alexander Palace.
01:17:31.01
S lee
right
01:17:31.14
alexei sayle
It's a bit of a net bit of a nightmare to get to alex Alexander Palace.
01:17:34.30
S lee
I know. and thought I was really worried that it was a mistake because I thought people might come in from out of London and I don't know if they do.
01:17:40.95
alexei sayle
They get there for the, I mean, this is it the snooker, the darts they have there so they can find their way.
01:17:40.97
S lee
It's a nightmare.
01:17:45.51
Talal K
The dots, yeah.
01:17:45.52
S lee
it's It's got snooker and darts on at the moment. Yeah.
01:17:48.25
alexei sayle
Yeah, so they find, the people of Britain, the provincials find their way.
01:17:48.60
S lee
but yeah
01:17:53.20
alexei sayle
they' ah And they're usually dressed as fucking bananas, aren't they?
01:17:53.21
S lee
Yeah.
01:17:56.44
alexei sayle
Or nuns or dinosaurs.
01:17:57.01
Talal K
I fucking hate going up there, man.
01:18:00.10
alexei sayle
And they still manage to make their way to Alexander Palace. So, comedy.
01:18:04.79
Talal K
Yeah, we'll do it for you, Stu.
01:18:05.16
S lee
Yeah. All right, thanks.
01:18:09.02
alexei sayle
So, yeah, we'll speak to your promoter and come and see you at Alexander Palace, I think.
01:18:12.21
Talal K
If there's any tickets left, if you'll have us. ah Thanks so much, Stu.
01:18:17.75
alexei sayle
but don't know what we'll do afterwards, so it's such a...
01:18:18.78
Talal K
One last time, stewartlee.co.uk. Get all the info about the tours, please.
01:18:23.38
S lee
Thank you.
01:18:23.59
Talal K
Patreon.com forward slash LexSail podcast as well. right, last words, Lex.
01:18:29.50
alexei sayle
No, I'm sorry I was a bit, I'm not, you know, it's a bully.
01:18:32.82
Talal K
ah We get you to bed now, Lex. Yeah, I've got some nice snacks for you waiting in your room. Oh, we're not going to do that bit.
01:18:39.03
S lee
Is it finished now? I'll turn my oven on if it is. All
01:18:42.84
Talal K
No, he hasn't said bye-bye yet.
01:18:44.89
S lee
right, okay.
01:18:45.05
alexei sayle
Bye-bye. Thank you, Stuart. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
01:18:49.98
Talal K
There we go. Yeah, Tenya Rovinan. Thanks for that. Don't leave the web.
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