Micky Flanagan

Speaker 30:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:47

My castaway this week is the comedian Mickey Flannagan, one of Britain's most successful stand-ups. He fronts sell-out tours and his DVDs top the charts. As journeys go, his is something of a jawdropper. He's been a Billingsgate fish porter and a painter and decorator, and once upon a time he was a window cleaner, working opposite the building site of the Millennium Dome and thinking, who's gonna go to that? He's just finished an astonishing twelve-night run of shows at the Dome's O2 Arena. Quite something. For a man who describes himself as a right East End Herbert. Of course, it's not just his cockney gift of the gab that's taken him all the way to the top. Funny, yes, but his routines burst with adroit observations on class structure, sexual politics, and social conditioning. He says, Am I ever scared it'll all stop? Of course, but that's why you've got to enjoy it and not to worry too much. And I've still got my window cleaning bucket and my paintbrushes in the basement. Welcome, Mickey Flanagan. You've just finished this run of twelve gigs, as I was saying, at the O2 Arena. Also, four at Wembley as well. You've been doing. So 16 in all of these great huge arenas. It puts you in a very elite group of people because you've done as many gigs at the O2 as Beyoncé did. She did a 12-gig run.

Micky Flanagan1:50

It was sixteen and all.

Micky Flanagan2:00

That's what I've always wanted to be, bigger than Beyoncé.

Presenter2:03

Is that true? Yeah, that is true.

Micky Flanagan2:03

True. Yeah, that is. Okay. Well, that's good. Yeah.

Presenter2:05

What was your support like? I mean, I'm at, you know, Beyoncé came with the whole shebang, the whole entourage.

Presenter2:11

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan2:11

But But yeah. I've got Barry, my tour manager, and we travel with our own kettle and tea bags. I take along some stone dates and I like a towel. That's it. Anything more than that is just aggravation.

Presenter2:27

When you are on stage and when you are letting it all go, is I was looking at your early performances and you were very sort of you're very tight physically and now you sometimes even look like you're flying. You look like you have wings on stage, you're occupying the whole space. Does it feel like a kind of a you're at your most free when you're on the stage?

Micky Flanagan2:35

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan2:44

Yes, yeah, I hate going back on small stages now. The bigger the stage, the better. I will fill it up. I will run and jump and skip and sing. I can feel the energy coming back to me. It's electric. I didn't realise how planned small comedy clubs, how hemmed in they were, you know, because sometimes the box you're standing on gets smaller and smaller. You couldn't lift a leg without kicking someone in the teeth in the front row. I mean, I don't ever want to get to the point where I come down on a swing, although it's all bets are off, you know.

Presenter3:13

So to come off, having been in front of thousands of people and it being, as you call it, electric, how are you for the next hour or two?

Micky Flanagan3:20

Next hour or two?

Presenter3:25

What do you do in that couple of hours?

Micky Flanagan3:29

Well the bits I can talk about on the radio. What I tend to do is I'll have some herbal teas.

Presenter3:34

Are you ha are you having me on no?

Micky Flanagan3:36

No, I'm not. And I'm not saying that in the past I've not shot straight to the bar on many occasions, but not at the moment. So generally it's valerian tea, a nice salad, go back and just try to get my brain to slow down and then by about two o'clock in the morning I can probably nod off somewhere between two and three.

Presenter3:56

We are recording this in the morning. You're saying this is the earliest you've been up in years and years.

Micky Flanagan4:00

King, you're

Presenter4:02

First of all, my apologies. Secondly, what time would you normally be getting up at?

Micky Flanagan4:06

I get up at 11. I might wake up a bit earlier, but I'm not getting out of the bed. And I mean that. I don't mean you. I know, I can tell. This idea that the minute you go open your eyes, you've got to spring out of bed and be productive and do stuff.

Presenter4:12

I know, I can tell.

Micky Flanagan4:19

No, laying in the bed, have a little think. There are possibilities and opportunities out there. You haven't got to take them all. Come on. Licky Flanagan, what's your first disc? What are you going to hear? The one thing that will get me out of bed, I suppose, is a party. I come from a big family and we used to have big house parties. And when I think back to the 70s and 80s and all my aunts and uncles, everybody up singing and dancing, it was always this album that got the party started.

Speaker 34:45

Yesterday's day and gone

Speaker 34:51

And tomorrow is our decide.

Speaker 34:57

And it's sad to be alone.

Speaker 35:03

Help me make it through the night

Presenter5:13

That was John Holt and help me make it through the night. Memories for you, Mickey Flanagan, of big family parties. I had to when I was introducing you today, I had to rather sort of truncate the quote that I used to introduce you, because it got slightly more salty in its language. And I'm wondering as you yes. I'm wondering as you

Micky Flanagan5:26

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan5:28

Yeah.

Presenter5:29

Unbelievable. I know. Disgusting, actually. If as you sit in front of a microphone, do you have to mind your P's and Q's? Because on stage you are.

Micky Flanagan5:31

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan5:31

Yeah.

Presenter5:38

You let you let it all go onstage. Does it make you more self-conscious to be in front of a microphone?

Micky Flanagan5:38

Yeah, but

Micky Flanagan5:40

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan5:43

Not really. I spend the majority of my day not swearing and being polite and civil to people. It's only when I'm with my friends and family that all bets are off, and when I'm on stage.

Presenter5:47

And several.

Speaker 25:48

Uh

Presenter5:48

Buck

Speaker 25:49

Okay.

Presenter5:56

Jackie Mason once talked about the rolling laugh. He wants them to almost never stop laughing. Are you looking for an explosive moment of recognition or are you looking for that sort of constant delight in what

Micky Flanagan5:58

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan6:02

Exposure.

Micky Flanagan6:07

What you're saying? You want a sort of constant rolling titter in the background. You want to hear people still laughing at the last bit. It is crafted. So, my job is to get you from this funny bit to the next funny bit as quickly as possible. And that's it, really. Is there no one? So it's like a song almost. It becomes almost like an album. You know where everything goes.

Speaker 36:21

And then

Speaker 26:21

Stock is

Speaker 26:23

Because

Micky Flanagan6:27

Your job is just to put it all together as as well as you can on that night.

Presenter6:30

You talk a lot about relationships. You talk about your wife on stage. Do you ask for her permission before you include her in the

Micky Flanagan6:34

HDU

Micky Flanagan6:37

Yeah, well I I sort of get permission from her and then she comes and sees it on the night and I drop most of the terrible stuff.

Micky Flanagan6:46

No, I actually I write the show and then she comes to see it and she gives me a few notes afterwards saying, Have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about doing that? And which is often really good'cause she'll sometimes soften things up.

Speaker 26:54

Two.

Micky Flanagan6:59

and sort of say, you know when you talk about that, as a woman, it's probably nicer if you say it like this. And nine times out of ten she's right. Sometimes she's wrong.

Presenter7:11

Have your next piece of music, Mickey Flanagan.

Micky Flanagan7:13

So this is for my wife. We met in the year two thousand at a comedy club. She hadn't actually been watching the comedy. She'd been upstairs probably drinking her eighteenth pint of lager or something. And we just fell in love really quickly. And I think part of the attraction was I found a girl who could party. You said eighteen pun So I know you were sort of exaggerating for candy effects. No, she doesn't drink beer, she drinks high-end gin. Right. But no, what I'm saying is that we had a lot of late nights together, and we could sort of feel time running out. I was pushing into my 40s. My wife, she was 109 then. No, she was pushing on. We did want to settle down and have children, have a little boy. So this song always just reminds me of sort of getting in at 4 or 5 in the morning, chinking the last glass of wine, and we always put this album on.

Speaker 28:04

Sail away with me, honey.

Speaker 28:08

With my heart in your hand

Speaker 28:11

Say long way with me, honey now

Speaker 28:15

Yeah.

Speaker 28:17

Now

Speaker 28:18

Say long way with me

Speaker 28:22

What will be well?

Speaker 28:26

I wanna hold it now, now, now.

Speaker 28:33

Crazy skies are wild above me now

Presenter8:36

That was David Gray and Sailor Way. I'm Mickey Flanagan, you were brought up in Bethnal, Green. How did your dad, Jim, earn a living?

Micky Flanagan8:42

He was a fishporter most of my life. Prior to that he'd been a welder. He'd been um he'd been involved in crime at a certain level with his mates.

Presenter8:53

Were you aware of that as a kid?

Micky Flanagan8:55

Yeah, you know, why are there fifty Uvas in the front room?

Micky Flanagan9:00

Why is there all this after show, all these nail vardishes? So, you are aware we sort of didn't talk much about what was going on inside the house, outside the house. Say we were out, and I sort of said to my mum, Oh, mum, you know those air dryers indoors? And she'd say, like, earwigs at the rhubarb, you know, don't ever talk about anything outside of the house about what's going on inside the house because essentially, you know, you don't know who's sitting next to you or overhearing it. So, he came from that world of knocked-off gear, you know. I've read that he did time, is that true? Yes, yeah.

Presenter9:31

Is that yes?

Micky Flanagan9:33

Yeah, he went to prison a couple of times. He wasn't a jail bird. I think he really liked life as well. He liked to drink, he loved his horse racing, he liked his nights out, and I think when the couple of little bits of prison he got, I think it just knocked him for six. I can remember going to see him in uh Pentonville.

Micky Flanagan9:52

I think I was probably ten or eleven at the time and was had to miss the big match, so I was already at the ump. And I remember looking at him even at that age, I looked and thought, You're not coping with this that well. I wouldn't say he was forever changed, no, but I think he looked and thought enough's enough.

Micky Flanagan10:07

Yeah.

Presenter10:07

I saw you do a routine once about it very f very, very funny, about watching the T V and and your dad getting up and going off to the pub and and it it was just about you talked about the family being on on the sofa and watching T V and you said this is a direct quote here, you say, and my mum's outer not on Valium, she doesn't know what day it is. Now, th the way you said it was extremely funny and it got a big laugh. But was that artistic licence or was that a memory?

Speaker 310:24

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan10:24

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan10:26

Was that artistic?

Micky Flanagan10:29

That was probably a memory. I think, like so many women of that generation.

Micky Flanagan10:37

tranquilizers were part of everyday life. You know, it wasn't uncommon for certainly East End women to to take half a valium on a on a stressful day.

Presenter10:48

Your mother in turn once described you as a strange and sullen child.

Micky Flanagan10:55

Enough of the sullen. Yeah, I wouldn't know. She did exaggerate a little bit, my mother. I was a thoughtful child.

Presenter11:02

What were you making of of your life at the time?

Micky Flanagan11:05

I can remember things just all seeming quite confusing as a child.

Micky Flanagan11:10

Everything just seemed fast and furious around me. I don't know if that's a common thing for a child. Because I was trying to make sense of the world. I'd see something horrendous on the news, and it would affect me the whole day. You know, I'd worry about it all day. Or I'd see someone in school get beaten up.

Micky Flanagan11:29

And that would really affect me. You know, nothing seemed to go eas settle easy with me. I was continually like you know. I was that sort of child. It didn't make me unhappy.

Micky Flanagan11:40

It just made me a bit different. And the thing I certainly knew about surviving an East End childhood was you couldn't be too odd or too different. So you internalised it and then you went out and you played football. Let's have some music, Mickey Flanagan, we're on your third. Yeah, so this probably harks back to that sense of being in the East End but never really content there. I can remember watching all the kitchen sink dramas over the space of one winter. I'd come home from the pub quite early and it suddenly started to click that I wasn't on my own. This constant anxiety or this feeling of wanting more and wanting different wasn't unusual. And I suppose hearing records like this made me realise I wasn't on my own either.

Speaker 312:27

Push car and a screening fly run the

Speaker 312:30

You mess.

Speaker 312:31

The river time's called the race

Speaker 312:34

Maybe weighing straight on mountain

Speaker 312:37

Screw it brakes and vampire fleet here Let's

Speaker 312:41

Untertain Muns Unertain Man

Speaker 312:50

A smash of glass and the rumble boost

Speaker 312:54

An electric triangle

Presenter12:55

That was the jam in that's entertainment. Mickey Fanagan, back in 2010, you did a series for Radio 4, in fact, and it was called What Chance Change. And for those who didn't hear at the time,

Presenter13:06

Can you describe the attitude of your school and teachers in general towards the pupils they were teaching in the East End at the time that you were a schoolboy there?

Micky Flanagan13:16

There was a real split in the school. We had younger, more idealistic teachers who kept saying to us, you are not factory fodder, you could be more.

Micky Flanagan13:24

And yet there was a general belief that most of us weren't going to go on to do jobs, you know, beyond what we could do with our hands, make things, drive things, clean things. There was a sense in which, you know, we were very quickly going to be little grown-ups that you left school very early and you got a job, you got a girlfriend, you possibly got her pregnant, that would be it. And you would be possibly working

Micky Flanagan13:53

At a job you might be happy now or not.

Presenter13:55

To to what extent, when you were in that school surrounded by a a mix of different attitudes, were you aware that you were bright?

Micky Flanagan14:04

Yeah.

Presenter14:04

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan14:04

I found the work really easy and probably that was the worst thing that could have happened because not only was everybody playing up in the classroom, but the bit of work that they gave me, I was like, so what you've you actually want me to read this and reproduce it or something or then you're going to take it away and I've got to answer five questions. Is this it? You know, school for me was just a nuisance. And how important was the funny? Well, we always had a laugh in school. It was essential that we laughed, whether it was at the teacher's expense or other kids or whatever. We loved a laugh in school. It flew by my secondary school. I started bunking off in the third year.

Micky Flanagan14:45

I took it far more seriously in the fourth year and and hardly went.

Presenter14:48

You took the bunking off far more seriously.

Micky Flanagan14:49

Yeah, yeah, I got committed as they say. And this is gonna sound uh I I used to bunk in for certain lessons.

Presenter14:58

The ones you were interested in. Yeah. Which ones were they?

Micky Flanagan14:59

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan15:00

Uh American Studies, Mr. Paperman. I chose that as part of my options. That I really enjoyed and I just used to go in for his lesson.

Micky Flanagan15:09

When did you become a member of the Young Socialists? Uh when I was thirteen, fourteen. And what was it?

Presenter15:14

The Labour Party Young Socialists. Yeah, no, I don't know what it was, but I mean, what was it that attracted you to do it? Yeah. Well, I'm radio.

Micky Flanagan15:16

Yeah no.

Micky Flanagan15:18

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan15:25

It's a movement, an ideological movement, which has looked after Labour. Thank you for that. Okay. Why did you want to?

Presenter15:30

Thank you for that.

Presenter15:32

Let's do that.

Micky Flanagan15:33

Because we were all naturally left wing, I felt. Me and my mates, you had to be a socialist. You had to want more. You had to want better. You know, and the only way you're going to get that is being part of a movement. Tell me about your next piece of music then, Mickey Flanagan. We're on your fourth.

Micky Flanagan15:50

So this brings us nicely into the whole of the 80s to me seemed to be about people finding a camp and deciding which one to go in. Was it all going to be no such thing as society and were we all going to fracture and split? Or were we going to hold on to something which I felt was really important and that was the collective, the idea that people had to stick together. Sounds a bit old-fashioned now, doesn't it? But I used to go and see Billy Bragg all the time and when he sung songs like this there was genuine hope in the room that it wasn't all going to fragment and fracture, that possibly the workers did have a future.

Speaker 316:26

There's power in a factory, power in the line.

Speaker 316:31

Power in the hand of the worker

Speaker 316:36

But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand. There is power in a union. Now the lessons of the past for all work with workers' blood. The stakes of the bosses, we must fight more. From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud.

Presenter17:02

That was Billy Bragg, and there is power in a union. Mickey Flanagan, take me back then to that uh period in your life when you were working as a Billingsgate fish porter. I mean that was a difficult job to get, but

Micky Flanagan17:13

Yeah, yeah, but it was a sort of Shut up.

Presenter17:15

So it was handed down to relatives and

Micky Flanagan17:17

And it's a relative.

Presenter17:18

You were what, eighteen, nineteen, you'd have making about two hundred and fifty quid a week. Yeah. That was nineteen eighty one.

Micky Flanagan17:21

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan17:23

Yeah, nineteen eighties, yeah.

Presenter17:24

Yeah, that's that's a lot of money. What did you do how did you spend your money?

Micky Flanagan17:28

I bought very nice suits and went out clubbing, always had nice shoes and saved up for holidays. But on the the flip side to it was that although I could have made that money, there were often weeks when I couldn't be bothered because I didn't really like the job. And what was it about it? I mean, a very hard physical work? It was hard. It was early start, 5.30, freezing cold.

Presenter17:47

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan17:53

putting on damp clothes, delivering fish in the rain. Your hands used to really hurt from the ice. It was just it wasn't for me.

Micky Flanagan18:04

But maybe tougher men might have found it easier. I've never really had a good attitude with work.

Presenter18:09

What's the point?

Micky Flanagan18:10

On a nightmare. People telling you what to do and not paying you enough money and treating you badly. And you know, the way I saw it, I wasn't having it. You ain't doing it to me. You speak to me politely, you pay me properly, and if you're gonna ask me to do something dangerous, I might say no.

Presenter18:25

I think a lot of people

Micky Flanagan18:26

Uh

Presenter18:27

That is all perfectly sensible and I think a lot of people might feel that way.

Micky Flanagan18:27

Yeah.

Presenter18:31

But unless they, you know, have the indulgence of a private income, they do get out of bed at seven in the morning and they do go and they keep their mouths shut. What was different about you that you didn't?

Micky Flanagan18:35

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan18:41

Um I tried to keep myself in a position where

Micky Flanagan18:46

I certainly didn't want to get married and have children and start buying houses'cause that's normally the beginning of you having to yes, sir, no, sir, three bags, full, sir. So that was the way I did it.

Presenter18:58

There was a time in your life when indeed you did chuck it in at Billingsgate and you ended up on a place called Fire Island. It's just a few hours from New York City, but it is it is a sort of world away from New York City. It is beyond Long Island where the Hamptons is and all the posh places and it is a it's a place of great partying and great excess. And you found yourself there in the 1980s. Just what did you get up to there?

Micky Flanagan19:05

But it is a

Micky Flanagan19:07

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan19:15

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan19:19

I arrived there in the April of 81 and met some fantastic people, worked in the kitchen doing the dishes, doing a bit of this, a bit of that, but just had the summer of my life. This is what happens when you take a chance. You can sit around all day talking about what you're going to do, thinking about what you'd like to do. You've got to go and do it. So I got on a plane to New York and went. And it started a relationship for me with America that I've continued to this day. Tell me about your next piece of music, then, Mickey.

Presenter19:50

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan19:51

I'd heard about Springsteen before I left. I knew he was a great artist. But going to Long Island, being in these beach bars and finally hearing him in his own environment. And I remember I walked into a bar about two o'clock in the afternoon and they were playing this full blast and there were some girls in bare feet dancing around and I thought this will do for me.

Speaker 320:17

Don't run back inside, darling, you know just what I'm here for.

Speaker 320:24

So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore Showing out of faith, there's magic in the night

Speaker 320:34

You ain't a beauty, but there you're alright

Speaker 320:39

Oh, and that's alright with me.

Speaker 320:45

I need to cover them and study your pain Because lover stole my rain Which

Presenter20:53

That was Bruce Springsteen and Thunder Road. Mickey Flannagan, it's interesting to me that uh you came back from your time in America and you built in your sort of mid twenties a small and, I understand, pretty successful small business. It was it was making furniture, selling furniture. Where did you think your life was headed at that point?

Micky Flanagan21:08

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan21:13

I suppose I was doing that thing of sort of imagining settling down. Got a trade, got a girlfriend, we could go and get a mortgage, which is probably why I was quite glad when it all went wrong. That restless part of me was still deeply there. And in the space of six months, the girl left, the business went down the pan, the tax man knocked at the door.

Micky Flanagan21:41

So in the space of a year, I was suddenly back with my mum. And it wasn't ideal being at home, but it wasn't the end of the world either. And it was also allowing me to sort of get my head together again.

Micky Flanagan21:53

Which is why I went back to Fire Island for a summer to have a little think on the beach.

Presenter21:57

And is that what led you then? Because at the age of 26, 27, you went back into education. Was it the thinking on the music?

Micky Flanagan22:03

Yeah, it was certainly coming back from that second stint on Fire Island. I knew I wanted to get an education. That was what I really wanted to do, and I didn't know where to start or how you started. And I literally walked into Bethnal Green Institute of Higher Education and said, Look, I want to come back to school. What do I do?

Presenter22:24

It sounds now, of course, quite simply and easily as the beginning of the start of the next bit of your life, but at the time what did it feel like?

Micky Flanagan22:32

At the time it felt like at least I wasn't going to make a mistake. While I had the education moving forward, there was always something to do and a little bit of hope, and who knows where it'll end up. I was more than happy to live like that for the next five to ten years.

Presenter22:47

And of course, you know, they talk about youth being wasted on the young, and there you were among much younger people who were all sort of I guess socializing a lot, going out a lot, maybe drinking a bit. What were you like as a student?

Micky Flanagan22:52

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan22:55

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan22:57

Well, I certainly wasn't like that. By the time I went to full-time university, I think I was 28 because I'd done two years with the Open University and I did my GCSE English. So I was much older than the kids. So I'd grown up to a certain extent. And not only that, I didn't want to go out staying up late every night because I wanted to study. You know, when they said this is the reading, I did the reading.

Speaker 323:10

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan23:20

Tell me about the next piece of music. It's your sixth, Mickey Flanagan. That whole period from 90 to the year 2000 is all a bit of a whirlwind to me because it was university and it was girlfriends. I had an absolute bore, I had a fantastic time. And the one album I can remember hearing constantly was this album. And we'd heard about this band. They're going to be big, apparently. This is what and they were big and they were brilliant. And there are very few albums you can pick up and go, just stick anyone on. And this was one of those albums.

Speaker 323:56

So, Sally can wait. She knows it's too late, as we're walking on by.

Speaker 324:08

The souls light the way.

Speaker 324:13

But don't go back in anger

Speaker 324:16

I heard you say

Presenter24:28

That's Oasis, and it looked back in anger. Mickey Fannigan, you've said in the past that teacher training was the worst year of your life. What was the problem?

Micky Flanagan24:35

What was the problem?

Micky Flanagan24:36

Where do we start? I don't just want to blame the system. A lot of it was my attitude as well. I don't think I was the most committed. I did that thing that a lot of people do where you just stumble into teaching at the end of a degree. That combined with the fact that I got a couple of fairly tough placements in schools, which were, should we use the language, challenging? Yes, they're challenging. And what with that and the slow realization that it wasn't going to be a career for me, the wheels came off. So, yeah, I was very, very miserable.

Presenter24:57

Yeah, let's see that.

Speaker 224:58

Mm

Presenter25:10

Um and you worked for um a couple of years, I think, as a painter and decorator whilst starting to do comedy gigs,'cause obviously in the beginning one doesn't get paid, you just go and you do open mic spots and so on and so on.

Micky Flanagan25:14

To post.

Micky Flanagan25:17

One doesn't get peed, you just go in

Presenter25:21

What made you think you could be a a stand up?

Micky Flanagan25:23

I thought you can say if you're copy paint and decorate it.

Micky Flanagan25:27

Well, it's a fair question. You should see some of my cutting in. It's the best in the country. What made me?

Micky Flanagan25:36

I've been a fan of stand-up comedy all my life. It's always been the the thing that I used to look at and think, imagine being able to do that. Did you? Yeah, ever since I can remember.

Presenter25:42

Yeah.

Presenter25:44

When did you dare to think that maybe, maybe I should have said that?

Micky Flanagan25:48

Dear to bear. It was essential. I was watching TV one night around at a girlfriend's house and they went to Jackson's Lane. It's a community centre where they did stand-up comedy courses and they were showing the people doing it on this thing. And I looked and thought, I could do that. I reckon I could do that. And then the girlfriend I was with at the time said, yes, you should definitely go and do that. And I literally, I think it was the next day, I phoned up and I said, when's the next course starting? I'm coming. If I had watched you doing your open mic sports back then, what was your routine? I sort of hit the ground running. I got straight on stage and started talking about what had happened to me as a child, which was, you know, I grew up in the East End. I went to a school where they had low ambitions. And, you know, one of my very first jokes was about, you know, saying to the audience, very quickly, the most ambitious kid in our cast was Gary Atten because he wanted to drive a van.

Micky Flanagan26:42

You know, and that cat the author

Presenter26:43

And the teacher

Micky Flanagan26:44

Just said

Presenter26:44

There.

Micky Flanagan26:44

Uh Well, because I remember. Don't be a dreamer, but you'll never go on to drive a fan. You know.

Presenter26:45

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan26:50

I start that's how I started and that's how I've continued.

Presenter26:53

Did your girlfriend at the time did your parents did your

Presenter26:57

Siblings come and watch you do stand up?

Micky Flanagan26:58

Not really. They knew I was doing it. I did it very quietly. And if I've got any advice to give to people who are going to start doing it, just do it really quietly. Don't take your friends along. Don't take your Aunt Mary along. You go there very quietly, on your own, do the gig.

Presenter27:00

They know you were doing it.

Presenter27:16

Tell me about your next piece of music, Mickey.

Micky Flanagan27:18

Right, a lot of the travelling I've done is culminated me on beaches.

Micky Flanagan27:22

With a glass of uh rum in my hand, I've always thought that really in life I should have either been a cowboy or a sailor. That's essentially what's still time.

Presenter27:31

Essentially what I'm talking about.

Micky Flanagan27:33

You didn't see my painted decorated. So there are times when I've been on the beach, merry, shall we say, glass in hand, sun going down.

Micky Flanagan27:43

thinking, this is it. You know, I am the son of a son of a sailor, probably. Maybe it's because my dad worked down the docks or something, but I feel very, very comfortable by the sea.

Speaker 327:54

Don't know the reason

Speaker 327:58

Stayed here all season.

Speaker 328:02

Nothing is sure but this brand new tattoo

Speaker 328:09

But it's a real beauty.

Speaker 328:13

I max a computer

Speaker 328:17

How it got here, I haven't a clue.

Speaker 328:25

Wish that away

Presenter28:29

That was Jimmy Buffett and Margarita Vill. Mickey Flanagan, you're a member of that rather select grouping of migratory species in that you have uh you've crossed your class boundary. It doesn't happen very often, really. When and where do you feel most at home?

Micky Flanagan28:39

It doesn't happen.

Micky Flanagan28:43

I feel most at home with the people who have done the same journey as me really. When I went to university I met a really great group of people who were also mature students and we all had roughly the same story to tell. We all just get each other. We get that sometimes it's a bit awkward asking for Kwanoa or Kinwa. What are we doing here?

Micky Flanagan29:04

If you leave your class, which one of them do you join?'Cause I don't want to join anybody's. But it's quite obvious I'm not solidly working class any more. There's no way in a million years I want to be recognised as middle class or upper middle class. Can you think of anything more horrific?

Presenter29:20

Uh there came a very interesting point for you, and it was probably when you you had reached the peak that you are still currently occupying, where you were all over the telly and your D V D was was number one in the comedy charts and so on. You did a remarkable thing for a person in that position, which was in twenty fifteen you decided to take a year off. Yeah. Well, that takes cojonies.

Micky Flanagan29:41

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan29:42

It's something I've always done. You know, the minute I feel things getting a little bit out of hand and that I'm possibly not enjoying them as much as I was before, I just stop.

Micky Flanagan29:53

You know, I always used to quote Kierkegaard about sort of life overwhelming you before you can process it. And I genuinely believe that to be true. So if it's just an overwhelming experience, when are you going to do the processing? The pressure to deliver. I think if you ask most performers what's the bit that's really horrible, it's you on your own having to deliver. It's fun a lot of the time, but it's just constant pressure to.

Presenter30:19

To do it again.

Presenter30:21

Yeah. Well, was it also, I wonder, because by the time you made it on stage, you know, you had 40 years' worth of life and material to remember and to mine.

Micky Flanagan30:21

You know.

Micky Flanagan30:26

Mm-hmm.

Micky Flanagan30:28

And

Presenter30:29

For what became the absolute backbone of your early act. Was there also a part of it where you thought, well,

Micky Flanagan30:29

So cool.

Micky Flanagan30:32

Yeah.

Presenter30:35

What am I now to talk about? Because I keep talking about what what's going before.

Micky Flanagan30:38

What's going on before? It was much easier writing the first couple of shows. People didn't really know who I was, you know, but it it's quite obvious that I had to approach this third show in being as honest to them as I've always been. So when I come out and say to the audience, look, there's something you have to understand. I am absolutely loaded.

Micky Flanagan31:01

And I say to the audience, look, I am still like you, but with money. You cannot tell lies in comedy. You can fantasize a bit and you can sort of run with a story to its extremes, but you can't lie.

Presenter31:16

The strange and sullen little boy in the flat in the East End. What would you say if you could go back and have a word with him and just tell him?

Micky Flanagan31:24

probably say to him a version of you are going to be a worrier, son. It's who you are. So just find a way of dealing with it and it not being a burden. But there's really not that much to worry about.

Presenter31:37

Let's hear your eighth, Mickey Flanagan. Tell me about this thing.

Micky Flanagan31:40

Before the what I call my sort of awakening summer, the summer when I started thinking, I sort of want more, I want to do some traveling, I want to try something else. We all had jobs, we all had cash on the hip. It was a very nice summer, I think the summer of 1980. We spent a lot of time over Victoria Park Lido. We were going to Benedor, What's Not to Like. Colin had forged his license and was driving a Cortina Mark II, which had a great sound system in it. And we played this album to death.

Speaker 332:18

I just wanna do that.

Speaker 332:22

Up on the night, it was bright inside. Someone come and ask me my name. Taken back by surprise, what I saw with my eyes, a firm in the loves discount.

Speaker 332:46

How so

Presenter32:49

That was Change, featuring Luther van Dross and Searching. I have now before you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You get to take another book along to the island. What's your book gonna be?

Micky Flanagan33:00

to take the Pan Dictionary of Philosophy.

Presenter33:02

Ah

Micky Flanagan33:03

Yeah. Because I my first year at university I did a year of philosophy. I've got it at home, I still enjoy it. It'll be a nice way for me to tie a lot of loose ends together. It's yours. A luxury too.

Presenter33:14

Yeah.

Micky Flanagan33:16

Uh a little mini hand hoover, because I've lived on beaches and you get so much sand in your bed, it's nightmare. You're presuming you'll have a bed. Well, I'm I I'll have a rudimentary bed, won't I, of some sort, but I hate having sand in the bed. Um the single disc that you would pick from the

Presenter33:25

BIOP

Presenter33:35

Eight, if you had to save just one.

Micky Flanagan33:37

I think it would have to be help me make it through the night,'cause that would remind me of everybody.

Presenter33:43

That's yours. Nikki Flanagan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Micky Flanagan33:47

Thank you.

Presenter34:08

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews with artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars, comedians and more at bbc.co.uk/slash desert island discs.

Speaker 334:36

This is the B B C.