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.