Rob Delaney

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the comedian, actor and writer Rob Delaney. He's best known for the Channel 4 series Catastrophe, which he co-wrote and co-starred in alongside Sharon Horgan. Its dark, witty and close to the bone portrayal of family life won the pair a BAFTA and a Royal Television Society Award for comedy writing.

Presenter1:04

The success of the show brought him from Los Angeles to London, where he and his wife settled with their young family.

Presenter1:11

Then in twenty eighteen they experienced a terrible personal loss, the death of their two and a half year old son Henry from a brain tumor.

Presenter1:19

It was in the throes of his unimaginable grief that he wrote his best-selling book, A Heart That Works. It was a tribute to his son, his family and the NHS. His acting career continues with Hollywood blockbusters like Deadpool and Mission Impossible, but so does his most important role as an advocate for the health service and for bereaved families. He says, Optimism is good, I suffer from it congenitally, but let's not be ridiculous. The world is still just a horrible toilet.

Presenter1:49

Rob Delaney, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Rob Delaney1:52

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you very much.

Presenter1:56

You are very welcome. Now one of the things, Rob, that you articulate so well is the way comedy is not incompatible with going through incredibly difficult times. Perhaps it's even a necessary ingredient in surviving them.

Rob Delaney2:09

I think it really is. And I think about whenever you might wind up at sort of a strange hotel buffet, maybe a work convention sends you there or something, and you're eating at a buffet. And you get the opportunity to take all the weird little things that you might not have ordered a la carte on your own or made at home or even shopped for, but you can assemble the most bizarre plate and go to your little table.

Presenter2:34

So that play is our lives.

Rob Delaney2:36

It is. And you're so happy to get all these weird things. Like, why not have some weird blueberry compote next to a roast beef, next to some macaroni and cheese, you know, that normally only you would give to your children with like nuts and maybe mango? I mean, that is what life to me feels like. And I think if we can sit at a buffet in a strange hotel near some motorway and eat that and be happy, then you know we can live this brilliant and varied life. So, yeah, it's okay to have your comedy be sad. It's okay to have your tragedy be funny because so is life.

Presenter3:07

It's okay.

Presenter3:11

And more and more you've told your own story creatively. I wonder whether that's changed the way that you live and the way that you think about your life and yourself.

Rob Delaney3:13

Yeah.

Rob Delaney3:21

I don't know. I do sometimes wish that I would just for once think of something to write that was about, you know, some weird herb farmer on a moon of Jupiter that communicates with clicks and beeps and has nothing to do with my own life. It just doesn't shake out like that. The things that I've made that have connected with people the most have been mined from my own life at a cost. And I don't yet know how to do the other thing. Maybe one day I'll learn. People tell me when I complain about it, they're like, well, I guess that's what you do, you know? And I guess it is.

Presenter3:59

And what is the cost? You said add a cost?

Presenter4:03

Will fly.

Rob Delaney4:04

The cost is, because I do mine things for my own life, is that people will think that they know me or they know my story when they know the tippity tip of the iceberg and it's an occupational hazard, right? I'm grateful for what I do and what I get to do, but it is weird when people are like, oh yeah, I know about this thing, and you know the like QR code on the banana, but I know about the farming of the banana, what had to be done to the soil, what happened to the village surrounding it. I know the stuff about the banana that you could only imagine.

Speaker 14:45

Yeah.

Rob Delaney4:49

And so it is weird to have people be like, Oh yeah, that guy that that's what happened And I'm like you don't know what you're talking about. And so that that can feel very confusing and strange. But like I say, occupational hazard, it's worth the price.

Presenter5:05

Rob, it's time for your first disc. What have you got for us?

Rob Delaney5:09

It's The Galician Overture by the Chieftains. I chose this song because the first time I heard it, it just nailed me to the floor. And my last name is Delaney, but my parents and even my grandparents were born in the United States. It's all great-grandparents that were born in Ireland. And I've always kind of been suspicious of American people who feeling that they don't have sort of an ethnic history necessarily. You'll hear people be like, Yeah, I'm Irish, you know, particularly in Boston where I grew up. And it's like, are you? So I didn't want to be like a plastic patty, as I've heard, you know, that term used derogatorily here. But the first time I heard Galician Overture when I think I was 20, I was like, oh yeah, no, this is in my DNA. Oh my god, like the Illin pipes. Like, I was like, yes, this is, oh, I'm like looking through the mists of time watching ancestors like come out, crawl in windows and stuff. So this to me awoke something ancestral and powerful in me in a way that was, I'm embarrassed speaking about it, but that's just absolutely what it felt like.

Presenter5:55

This staring at your

Speaker 15:55

Yeah.

Presenter6:47

The Chieftains and Galician Overture. So Rob Delaney, were born in Boston, Massachusetts, nineteen seventy seven, and brought up on the coast in Marblehead on the North Shore. Did living there instil you with a love of the sea?

Rob Delaney6:57

Yeah.

Rob Delaney7:00

It really did. Honest to God, as I look back on my childhood, it reminds me of like deleted scenes from the Odyssey or something because I'm literally in a 12-foot sailboat routinely sailing around between little rocky islands with my friends and stuff. And it's just, it was so beautiful.

Presenter7:24

Yeah. So you were outdoors all the time pretty much.

Rob Delaney7:24

So you are

Rob Delaney7:26

They are

Presenter7:27

What else is sailing, swimming, cycling, all those things?

Rob Delaney7:30

All those things, yeah. I would regular it was a small town and w af every day after high school I liked to ride my bike around the whole circumference of the town, uh, which was really fun.

Presenter7:40

Tell me a bit more about your parents then. So Nancy and Bob, they both worked in insurance. Yeah, they did. And they had very different backgrounds. What did they tell you about their childhoods?

Rob Delaney7:43

What does it mean?

Rob Delaney7:46

Did they tell you about that?

Rob Delaney7:48

Well, yeah, so yeah, so my mom grew up in with real material comfort, and my dad grew up in orphanages and foster homes, despite the fact that his parents were alive. They just didn't have any money. Yeah, they came from vastly different backgrounds, but they really loved each other and had a beautiful love story that did not last forever, but they were wonderful, wonderful parents to my sister and I, my sister who's five years younger. And my dad died a year and a half ago, and my mom is still alive and hail and hearty and swims in the winter off the coast of Massachusetts like a crazy person. And, you know, we talk every day. We send each other our wordle scores and connections. Don't sleep on connections if you're not playing that. And have a wonderful, so I don't know. I just love them more the older I get.

Presenter8:35

It's interesting that perspective on particularly your dad from what you said about his background because.

Rob Delaney8:40

Yeah.

Presenter8:40

To be a good parent when you haven't been parented yourself is really challenging. Why was he in foster care and orphanages then? What happened?

Rob Delaney8:41

Yeah.

Rob Delaney8:49

Uh Guess

Presenter8:49

So

Rob Delaney8:49

His mom was an alcoholic, you know, would like have boyfriends who were like spent a lot of time like at prison gates being like picking up her new prison boyfriend and like going to New York and stuff. And so she was a bit of a crazy person. And then his dad didn't have a nickel. And so he wasn't able to provide for them for a while. But ultimately, he did get them all under the same roof. And they loved each other desperately, those four siblings. Two of them are still alive. So a wonderful family to be a part of.

Presenter9:23

Did he tell you the family stories? Did you know that history while you were growing up?

Rob Delaney9:27

Yeah, yeah, and he told me more the older I got. And then, particularly sad is that at 19, my dad got drafted and sent to Vietnam. If you were in full-time university, you didn't have to go. But if you were going to night school, like he was, because he's a super smart guy and an avid, voracious reader, he was scooping ice cream in the daytime and then going to college at night. Well, that didn't count. I mean, that meant you were poor. And so the government said, yeah, go to Vietnam. And he did. And luckily, he didn't have to kill anybody. He didn't get shot himself.

Presenter9:57

But he went through all of that and was a great dad to you. I mean, what are your memories of him as a father?

Rob Delaney10:03

Well, full disclosure, when my parents got divorced at fourteen, he did split for a while and he did a subpar job for some years. Yeah, we had a good decade where things were, you know

Presenter10:15

So like fourteen to twenty four.

Rob Delaney10:16

Yeah, there was a pretty drastic sort of chunk where it just wasn't what it could have been. And that hurt and was hard. But you know what?

Presenter10:25

Yeah.

Rob Delaney10:25

Yeah. I forgive him. I loved him and he loved me. And so we rekindled things and grew closer again. So, yeah, a good guy.

Presenter10:27

Yeah.

Presenter10:34

What about your mum? Because I think she might be the person that you get your sense of humour from.

Rob Delaney10:39

Yes, that's true. Definitely. My sense of humor comes from my mom. My mom is incredibly funny. I can remember one time coming home with my sister when we were quite young. We go into the room where my mom is reading a newspaper, and we're like, Mommy, mom? And she takes down the newspaper, and she's wearing.

Rob Delaney10:55

An unbelievably high quality mask for the 1980s. Like something that would have cost you would be like $30 at the scary Halloween store of an old man, bald, wrinkled, with a big black beard. So my sister and I, blood-curdling scream, jump into each other's arm. We're hovering, hugging in the sky above her. And um like that's her idea of fun. Or to go up to her as a little kid and be like, Mommy? and have her like turn towards us and go, I'm not mommy you know, like And so I I realize these are both terrifying things, but she's also just like, you know, normal fun.

Speaker 311:23

You know, right?

Rob Delaney11:30

And um so fun to laugh, so fun to make laugh.

Presenter11:33

So that was an important part of your relationship with her?

Rob Delaney11:36

Oh my God, yeah. And the value of hard work and sacrifice and putting one goddamn foot in front of the other because when my dad was gone, she wasn't. She was right there. So she's a stalwart and exploding with love and a truly special person who I try to emulate in many different ways.

Presenter11:42

Because

Speaker 111:43

Uh

Presenter11:55

Let's have some more music, Rob. It's your second choice today. What have you gone for?

Rob Delaney12:00

This Is to Mother You by Sinead O'Connor. And when I first heard Sinead O'Connor when I was 12, I was quite dumbstruck, and I knew I'd found something special. I didn't quite know.

Rob Delaney12:15

What it meant for me. I knew that she was my favorite artist in any medium I had ever discovered until that point. And she stayed with me, her music for years and years afterwards. I saw her in concert many times, once with my mom. And she's one of the better transmuters of pain into beauty that's ever existed. She just gave me a real map for how to begin to be creative from an honest place and to use your heart maybe a little more than your head. She's my North Star.

Speaker 112:35

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 312:50

This is to mother you.

Speaker 312:55

To comfort you and get you through

Speaker 313:02

Through when your nights are lonely

Speaker 313:08

True when your dreams are only blue

Speaker 313:15

This is

Presenter13:19

Sinead O'Connor, this is to mother you.

Presenter13:22

Rob Delaney, you went through some difficult times in your teens. You once described it as a period where you allowed your self will a little more free rein. What was going on with you, and how did it all start?

Rob Delaney13:36

I think

Rob Delaney13:37

Very likely, it's nothing more interesting than garden variety alcoholism. You know, I found that drinking just made me just feel better, complete, happier, relaxed. You know, anytime I took a drink, it was just like, this is it. This is. I first got drunk at 12 and then began to drink with more regularity at 14. You know, I mean, it could be as simple as, you know, I had alcoholism on both sides of my family, and so then I got it too. And you can.

Presenter13:53

Promote.

Speaker 113:53

Yeah.

Rob Delaney14:08

You know, it doesn't really care where you come from.

Presenter14:11

Did your parents know what was going on? They knew

Rob Delaney14:15

But they don't, nobody gets the whole picture, you know, because you get okay at hiding it. You can't hide it all from everybody, but you can hide chunks from individual people and stuff.

Presenter14:26

And so that would have been developing as well, you know, at the point at which your dad left and then also your mum's holding the fort by herself, so so presumably they couldn't see what was going on.

Rob Delaney14:28

You are the point of

Rob Delaney14:30

And then also

Rob Delaney14:32

By herself.

Rob Delaney14:36

Uh, yeah, and it would have been harder for them to have a confab at the end of the day and be like, I saw this, did you see this? you know, and put two and two together.

Presenter14:43

What did it affect your life at school? I mean, affect your life at school.

Rob Delaney14:46

Right, so I was more of a

Rob Delaney14:48

Drinker because I knew that any time I uncorked the jug, that anything could happen. So I did try to be somewhat disciplined about it. So people would merely be like, Oh, yeah, Christ, yeah, he drinks, you know. But yeah, he is also going to class and you know seems capable of maintaining basic friendships. Because you were a good student at school.

Presenter15:06

Because you were a good student at school.

Rob Delaney15:08

Pretty good, yeah. And I, you know, I graduated from high school and university. That was a thing. At that time, I liked to do everything. I liked to read a lot. I liked to meet all the girls that I could. I liked to still exercise and go to the gym and do all these things, but I also liked to drink a lot. So I knew it was a problem. Oh, and I should say I blacked out not infrequently. And that's a huge red flag. It's not okay to black out. You know what I mean? That's a sign that very possibly something's quite wrong.

Speaker 115:23

Go to the gym.

Speaker 115:24

Okay.

Presenter15:36

You know what I mean?

Presenter15:40

But what was going on for you emotionally? So so was there unhappiness under the surface that you weren't dealing with?

Rob Delaney15:45

Yeah, I would say extremely average teenage and early 20s, really unremarkable vacillating between thinking I'm a piece of garbage, I'm the greatest thing that ever happened, rocketing between those poles with hormones and

Presenter16:00

Also,

Speaker 316:00

Uh

Presenter16:01

Insecure.

Rob Delaney16:01

hoped hoping to try to fall in love and try to excel at what you're doing and thinking like it's gonna happen or thinking like no I should just move under a bridge now and so r really bog standard stuff for that age I think

Presenter16:01

Oh.

Speaker 316:04

Uh

Presenter16:16

I think.

Presenter16:18

You'd also discovered theatre as a kid at school, I think.

Rob Delaney16:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I I loved it out of the gate. It made me very happy to be on stage and perform and make people laugh and try on different characters for size. Yeah, really loved it.

Presenter16:35

Let's have some more music, Rob Delaney. Number three, what's it gonna be?

Rob Delaney16:38

Chopin's Nocturne Number 11 in G minor, played by Maurizio Pollini. I play Chopin's Nocturne all the time for my boys when I'm reading them to sleep. It's just on in the background. My three surviving boys could surely hum you this nocturne in all its complexity. So it makes me think of my beautiful boys, who I can't wait to go home and see right after this. And then Nocturne number 11 is a weird one. It has a weird little musical secret in the middle of it, which is sort of hard to elucidate, but he kind of does a chord progression thing where he's like, I'm going to just mash the keys in a bunch of chords for a couple of minutes in a very anti-Chopin way. So you have to be a Chopin psychopath and have all his nocturnes memorized to notice this. But once you do, baby, it's bananas. So I'm just crazy about what he did. He like plays a trick on the audience in this nocturne, and I love it.

Speaker 117:04

Yeah.

Speaker 117:31

Bananas.

Presenter18:40

Chopin's Nocturne No. 11 in G minor performed by Maurizio Pollini.

Presenter18:46

Rob Delaney, you studied musical theatre at New York University. What did you get out of your course?

Rob Delaney18:52

So for me, during that time, I was singing and dancing and, you know, training the only instrument that I have as an actor. And so it was great. It was great for me. Yeah. Then my first job that I booked once I graduated was a national tour of the musical Camelot. And when we were doing it, one time our bus broke down on our way to a venue. And so we wound up getting there quite late. And we had to do sound check. We got there like 20 minutes after we were supposed to start. So an audience of 2,500 people is in the theater in West Virginia. And we have to do sound check. And I played Sir Lancelot. And sound check consists of singing a few bars of one of your songs and then a few lines of dialogue. And there you go. And so King Arthur did his in front of the crowd, then Guinevere did hers. And then I went to do mine. And they had both said lines of dialogue from the play, but I was like, well, I don't want to spoil it as if these people didn't already know Camelot. So I was like, so I'm just going to talk a little bit. So I spoke a little bit about our day, you know, broke down by a river in Virginia. And people laughed. And I was like, what is this? And so from that moment forward, it was just all comedy all the time. I was like, see you later. I finished the tour. And then immediately. Tights off. Yeah, it tights off.

Speaker 119:45

You know, Camelot.

Presenter20:00

Like see

Presenter20:02

Tight self.

Presenter20:06

Okay. So when did you start writing?

Rob Delaney20:06

So

Rob Delaney20:08

Pretty soon after that, I started trying to write sketches and taking sketch writing courses. And I was trying to get hired as a late-night writer, you know, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert. So I'm writing so many jokes every day and sending them in. And sometimes they're reading them and being like, hey, pretty good. We're not going to hire you.

Speaker 120:28

What?

Speaker 320:28

Uh

Speaker 120:28

I got higher.

Rob Delaney20:29

But then when Twitter came along in like two thousand nine, I was like, all right, nobody's hiring me, but I've got so many jokes. So I just started putting them online, and that really helped. And then like I would amass followers on Twitter, and then that made it easier to sell tickets to go do stand up in Cleveland that weekend.

Presenter20:39

Mm-hmm.

Presenter20:46

Because you could say that you were going to be there.

Rob Delaney20:48

Yeah.

Presenter20:48

Are you quite disciplined when you're sitting down to write?

Rob Delaney20:51

I would say so. I've gotten better, you know, because I'm less prideful now. So now I'm very happy to write a terrible first draft. And I think that's a big one that separates the big dogs from the pups on the porch. Because the pups on the porch are afraid to write a bad first draft. They write a first draft that they don't like, and they're like, oh no, I'll just stop.

Speaker 321:05

Oh yeah.

Rob Delaney21:12

Big Dog says, Yeah, look at that. That's terrible. I'm going to keep on going, you know? And so for me, the measure of a successful day is how uninterrupted was the clickety clack of the keyboard. Absolutely not the quality of what was written.

Presenter21:28

Let's have some more music, Rob. It's your fourth choice today. What are you going for and why are you taking it to the island?

Rob Delaney21:33

Okay, so this is Bluer Than Midnight by The The. The The was on a mixtape, actually, that a girlfriend gave me when I was 16 years old. The song Love is Stronger Than Death, which is on the same album as Bluer Than Midnight. And I remember thinking, well, this is quite something. I love this song. And then a couple years later, I moved to New York and I'm cat sitting for some friends of my mom. And they have some The The C D's. So I put them on and I'm like, uh-oh, I love every song. And I just was really struck by Matt Johnson's. He's one of those rare performers where both wings of the bird, you know, the lyrics and the music, are equally strong. Bluer Than Midnight ends with him lamenting, why can't love ever touch my heart like fear does? And he kind of wails that twice. And when I was in my early 20s, I mean, that was my big question. So it was really, really important to me, his music, just sort of situating myself because it didn't necessarily offer solutions, but it did say, it's okay that this stuff waylays you.

Speaker 322:41

I ask myself, where does lust come from? Is it something to you to all be overcome?

Speaker 322:53

I asked myself why love

Speaker 323:01

Can never touch

Speaker 323:05

My heart

Speaker 323:08

Like see

Presenter23:12

Bluer Than Midnight by the you were feeling every note of that Rob Delaney.

Rob Delaney23:16

It's so gorgeous, and just you're welcome to anyone who just heard that song.

Presenter23:20

And the air piano was going on as well. You must play that.

Rob Delaney23:21

What's going on as well?

Rob Delaney23:22

I can, I can play that on the piano.

Presenter23:25

So, Rob, let's go back to 2001. By that point, you'd moved to LA and you were trying your luck as an actor, but throughout this time, you had carried on being a heavy drinker. And on the surface, you were keeping things together. But everything came to a head in February 2002. What happened?

Rob Delaney23:31

Yeah.

Rob Delaney23:34

Yeah.

Rob Delaney23:37

Yeah.

Rob Delaney23:43

Yeah, so I had quit drinking for a few months, and then inevitably I began again. And for the final run, it really got scary. At this point, I'm drinking now to alleviate the previous night's hangover and stuff like that, and becoming more maintenance drinker. Yeah, so one night in February, I passed out on a friend's floor after a party, and then in the middle of the night, I have no memory of this, got up and thought I should go for a drive. And I did. And thank goodness, nobody else was involved, but I did drive my car into a building. And, you know, terrifying. And so I'm in jail in a wheelchair.

Presenter24:25

So you woke up where? You woke up what in hospital in jail?

Rob Delaney24:27

I woke up, I think, being admitted to the hospital by multiple cops and pretty quickly there was an element of relief because I knew then I could no longer hide from people what my drinking resulted in.

Presenter24:43

So what happened? What did you do?

Rob Delaney24:45

So I had an upcoming court date at which they gave me a couple of choices. They said I could go to jail for a while. I didn't want to for a variety of reasons, one of which was both my arms were broken and I didn't want to be in that condition in jail. And then the other one was I really knew I needed to go to rehab. So they said if you go to rehab for a lot longer than we would have put you in jail and then move into a halfway house after that, then you don't have to go to jail. And I thought that sounded like a great deal.

Presenter25:13

So that was the beginning of your recovery, which which now has gone on twenty years. You've been sober twenty years?

Rob Delaney25:15

Yeah.

Rob Delaney25:18

22 years.

Presenter25:20

D2.

Rob Delaney25:21

Bananas

Presenter25:22

You often share those big milestones online. Why is that important to you?

Rob Delaney25:25

Yeah, why do I do that? Well, because so some of the most useful things that I've learned have been through difficult things. And I figure if I am in the public eye, and one big thread is you can have an alcohol problem whether you're famous or whether you're not. But since people do know who I am, I like to highlight the fact that if you have a problem with drugs and alcohol that you're worried may kill you, or is just even making your life miserable or the lives of those around you, that you can, in fact, stop.

Presenter25:57

So not that long after you got sober, you started treatment for depression. And I think it was then that you really began to take those first steps into comedy. It's interesting, isn't it, that, that that you'd already been through so much. You'd had this car accident, you'd have this kind of you know, life or death experience.

Rob Delaney26:00

I think it was that.

Speaker 326:05

Mm-hmm.

Rob Delaney26:10

At this car accident

Rob Delaney26:12

Yeah.

Rob Delaney26:15

Yeah.

Presenter26:15

dealt with depression, dealt with alcoholism.

Rob Delaney26:17

Mm-hmm.

Presenter26:18

And then it was time for

Rob Delaney26:19

Yeah, now it's time. Now that I've got enough raw material.

Presenter26:20

Yeah.

Presenter26:23

Yeah, it's sort of it's ironic but logical too. Yeah. That now then it was the time to laugh. Yeah.

Rob Delaney26:25

Yeah.

Rob Delaney26:29

Yeah, you mentioned the depression thing. I think other smarter people than me might say, oh, I think he was self-medicating something because after I removed all the drugs and alcohol, after I sort of finished all my surgeries and occupational therapy and obligations to the state of California, that's when the bottom fell out, you know, mentally and emotionally.

Presenter26:50

It's been terrifying because you must have thought I'm doing really well. You said things are going to get better now.

Rob Delaney26:51

Must have thought I'm doing really well.

Rob Delaney26:54

Yeah, but the sense is I got is that my brain was like, all right, so now that things are kind of smoother and you're going to start drinking again. And when I was like, nope, my brain was like, well, then check this out. Like, you know? And so then I started treatment for very serious depression.

Presenter27:09

How bad did it get?

Rob Delaney27:10

In case it's useful to anybody to hear, there was a major physical component to it. I would wake up and brush my teeth in the morning. When the toothbrush touched my tongue, I would vomit. My libido disappeared, and I'm 20 young at that time. I cannot sleep at all at night. That was the worst part. And my body really hurt. And then, mentally, my brain was telling me to kill myself all the time. So I got treatment for that. And.

Presenter27:36

Euro medication.

Rob Delaney27:37

I am, yeah.

Presenter27:38

And in terms of your recovery today, is it something that you have to actively manage? Or are you able to you know, do you do you kind of feel like you've got to a place where you can relax about it?

Rob Delaney27:40

Is it some

Rob Delaney27:47

It's sort of like a formidable thing that I respect, but I remain active in talk therapy and I have a pretty big arsenal of tools. So I'm pretty practiced now at like when the wolves are at the door, I know what I need to do, you know, when I need a moron, you know, get some sunlight, you know, go work up a sweats. Movie buddy that eat well.

Presenter28:07

You know, self-checklist, mo move your body, eat well, all of that. Yeah. All right, Rob, let's take a break for some more music. Your fifth choice, please. What have you got for us next?

Rob Delaney28:18

It's Hey by Pixies. This song is beautiful in a vacuum, but I never heard it in a vacuum. I heard it regularly on my little iPod when I was trying to make a young woman fall in love with me in Massachusetts, who is now my wife of 18 years. I met my wife in 2004 when we were both volunteering at a camp for people with disabilities on the island of Martha's Vineyard. And so this was an important one for us to just dance and hug and cuddle and kiss listening to this song because I was just really walloped by my wife when I met her.

Presenter29:02

What was it about her?

Rob Delaney29:04

Okay, well, first of all, I met her in the best possible circumstances for meeting a future partner. I met her taking care of a 17-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy. So she's helping another slightly younger woman, you know, enjoy her days at the beach and sailing and windsurfing and arts and crafts and putting on the sound of music. And so I got to see her, you know, showing incredible day-in, day-out care for somebody. And also, she was in a bikini, and she was very beautiful and very funny, very, very funny. So, so yeah, when I hear this song, I mean, I always think about her, and we still listen to it to this day. And four sons later in a different country, in a different continent than the one we met in. So, this song just makes me think about our love affair that became a love story, and now we've got quite a life together.

Speaker 329:57

Hey!

Speaker 330:01

Been trying to meet you.

Speaker 330:11

Hey.

Speaker 330:12

Must be a devil between us or Horace in my head.

Speaker 330:18

Poor as door, poor in my bed, but hey.

Speaker 330:25

Well

Presenter30:31

Pixies and hay.

Presenter30:35

Rob Delaney, in twenty fourteen, you moved to London and you started writing Catastrophe with your co star and co writer, the actor Sharon Horgan. How did the two of you end up working together?

Speaker 130:38

Uh

Rob Delaney30:38

And he started.

Rob Delaney30:40

Wait, you're not.

Rob Delaney30:45

Yeah.

Rob Delaney30:47

I saw she followed me on Twitter and I had seen pulling. So 2010-ish, I wrote her and I said, Oh, thanks for following me. Pulling is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life And she was like, Oh, thanks. I saw that some your stand up. It's great.

Presenter31:01

So this is one of her early T V shows, her kind of breakthrough?

Rob Delaney31:05

Yeah, so pulling really rocked me. So, yeah, we wrote and kinda stayed in touch a bit and then met each other in real life. And then we decided to write up a pilot together, thinking, why not? We'll have fun.

Presenter31:18

So, you and Sharon had this creative chemistry from the beginning. What was that dynamic about? How would you describe it, looking back?

Rob Delaney31:21

Yeah.

Rob Delaney31:25

I think we, in our just comedy chemistry, have similar ratios of wanting to go to the dark stuff to the absolutely silly stuff, to the painful stuff, to the vulnerable stuff. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if we should never be autopsied side by side. If people looked at our brands and are like, oh, yeah, this slice looks like that slice.

Presenter31:47

Yeah, so the DNA is very good.

Rob Delaney31:47

Yeah, so

Rob Delaney31:49

Yeah, I think some real similarities there. So, yeah, so we were very lucky to find each other.

Presenter31:53

And the series is centered around this relationship between a married couple, Sharon and Rob. What was the story that you wanted to tell about marriage and relationships? You talked about kind of wanting to get into the difficult stuff and the dark stuff.

Rob Delaney31:56

Between the married

Rob Delaney31:57

Charity.

Rob Delaney31:58

Yeah.

Rob Delaney32:06

Okay, so I think we were both had had enough of sitcoms where the husband was an oaf and the wife was overburdened and shrill, and that just didn't ring true for us with either of our respective marriages or the marriages we observed. What seemed to be far more true was vacillating between being head over heels in love with your spouse and being thinking, how did I ever land this person? What a transcendental joy. What this gift have I been given? To 20 minutes later being like, I'm going to kill them. Not I'm going to haha kill them, but I'm going to grind them up. I'm going to go, I'm going to break into a mill where they have a thing where you can grind up a human body. And I don't care if I get caught. I don't care if I get the electric chair because they need to die. Why? Because they were rude to me about my socks or whatever. You know what I mean? So the fact that people go between that, and that's in a normal, good marriage. So that's what we wanted to show. And we wanted to show like the blue-collar work ethic that's necessary to have a marriage endure.

Speaker 132:43

I'm gonna

Speaker 132:44

Go.

Presenter33:13

So the what the the effort required.

Rob Delaney33:15

Yeah, that there's a big choice. I mean, you got to roll your sleeves up. You're going to have weird little burns on your arm shooting out of the forge as you hammer the new tool you need to make it work. And to me, that is romantic. When you again and again, day in and day out, make the decision to make it work. That's very special.

Presenter33:37

I mean, obviously, you know, the central relationship was the heart of the show, but it had a fantastic supporting cast as well. I've got to ask about what was it like having Carrie Fisher play your mum?

Rob Delaney33:42

Yeah.

Rob Delaney33:47

Beyond spectacular. I remember being so nervous, you know, shaking with nerves when she first came on set for the first season. And she did such a great job. She was the only person in the show that we would let improvise, let she didn't offer us a choice. And it would be so brilliant, so much better than anything we thought up. And she was okay, we know she's funny and we know she's brilliant, but she was also so kind. She was a wonderful person to talk to about Henry, and she knew all about him and was, you know, very sensitive and thoughtful and would hold my hand and ask me questions and give me little presents for me and my kids. And there's the Carrie Fisher everybody knows, you know, from TV and movies, who is incredibly funny. And then in real life, happy to report that she was just such a beautiful presence and really made feel warm to be around.

Speaker 334:04

It offers a choice.

Rob Delaney34:43

Yeah.

Presenter34:44

It's time for some more music, Rob. What are we going to hear next?

Rob Delaney34:48

So, this next song is Fire in the Hole by Steely Dan. I'm 47, so I'm beginning to think about what sort of midlife crisis I want to have.

Presenter34:58

Oh yeah, what are you planning?

Rob Delaney34:58

What are you doing? Well, since I don't drink or do drugs or anything, and since I love my wife and want to continue to live with her in my house, with my family, I have to have sort of a lower-grade one. I'm thinking it might be something like joining a Steely Dan cover band or something like that. And Fire in the Hole was the first song that took me off. I'd heard them on the radio, heard their hits, and thought, yes, I enjoy these. But when I heard Fire in the Hole, I was like, I need to know more.

Presenter35:06

Yeah.

Speaker 135:12

Under something like

Presenter35:24

How did it come to you? How did you discover it?

Rob Delaney35:26

Uh, by choice, I think I sensed a midlife crisis coming and I said, well, it's time for Steely Dan. So I just started real forensic listening of them. And with Fire in the Hole, that's when it clicked.

Presenter35:31

I am super steely.

Speaker 335:39

I decline to walk the line They tell me that I'm lazy

Speaker 335:46

Worldwise, I realize that everybody is crazy. A woman's voice reminds me.

Speaker 335:55

To show them not to speak

Speaker 335:59

Am I myself or just another freak?

Speaker 135:59

Bye.

Speaker 336:05

You know there's fire in the hole.

Speaker 336:09

And nothing less.

Presenter36:10

Steely Dan and Fire in the Hole. Rob Delaney, your third son, Henry, was born in 2015. Now.

Presenter36:17

He was diagnosed with a brain tumour when he was just a year old. The agony of what you all went through as a family is so difficult to comprehend.

Presenter36:26

And I know that the shock of Henry's initial diagnosis actually affected your memory, but I wonder what you do recall about that period?

Rob Delaney36:35

Just the world stops and you're brutally humbled. I mean, it's like being ganged up by people with baseball bats. Just so confusing and so upsetting and so surreal. And then you've got to get through that and help your little guy. It was.

Rob Delaney36:59

Yeah, it was terrible.

Presenter37:01

Henry went through gruelling rounds of surgery and chemotherapy, but in 2017 his cancer returned.

Presenter37:08

You agreed to end his treatment and you brought him home, and you and your wife were absolutely determined to make the time that Henry had left as positive as it could be for all of you, to have the kids there, to have both you and your wife's mothers there, for everybody to be together. You described it as a good death.

Rob Delaney37:25

Yeah.

Rob Delaney37:29

He did have a good death. Yeah, his final months, we had four and a half of them where we knew he was going to die. You know, his brothers were just sewn to him. They all loved each other so much. It's interesting because bereaved parents get all the attention, but it's like I watched, you know, a four and a six-year-old hold their brother's dead body. I watched them take unbelievable care of him and learn difficult things because he required really intense things to take care of him. I watched them do that at that tender age. We called them the big boys, you know. And so to watch little boys see their brother die, I think about that a lot. I think the bereaved siblings should get more attention and more love. I just hate thinking about them not having him. I really hate it.

Speaker 137:37

We

Presenter38:24

But he had them.

Rob Delaney38:26

Yeah, oh god, yeah. And they talk about them all the time.

Rob Delaney38:29

And they love him and they smile when they talk about him. And they love to look at pictures of him and he's very much a part of our lives.

Presenter38:37

And you've gone on to share Henry with the rest of us, to write about him and and share him with the world, not just talk about his illness, but talk about who he was. When you think back now

Presenter38:49

Are you able to find all of those memories to access the memories of him as a person as well as?

Presenter38:56

all of the difficulties that you went through.

Rob Delaney38:58

Well, without question, I would say it's

Rob Delaney39:01

More of the time that I'm thinking of him and smiling and daydreaming than I am feeling, you know, waves of grief. Because mentally and emotionally, Henry was so funny and so clever. Of course, that ratio was very different, you know, in the early years after his death, but I'm so grateful to be his dad. I'm so grateful he was or is my son. Don't know what words to use, don't care. I talk to him. I don't know if he hears me. It doesn't matter. In many ways, I hope he doesn't. I hope he's transcended and become something that doesn't worry about, you know, English cries, you know. But yeah, he's my son, and I'm his dad, and I love him.

Speaker 139:19

You know.

Presenter39:55

Rob, let's have some more music. Your seventh choice today. Tell us about it.

Rob Delaney40:00

Well, this is Plain Clothes Man by Heat Miser. And it's so beautiful and it's so sad. And Elliot Smith's music was incredibly helpful to me during Henry's illness and after his death. Yes, I know a lot of people find his music depressing. I don't at all. I feel like it's an acknowledgement of so much that's truest about the world and the pain that is one of the major ingredients of life here on earth. So he was very, very helpful to me and sort of figuratively held my hand or held my ears in his hands during the most difficult times with Henry. And this is one of the songs I listen to most.

Speaker 340:42

Someone thinks I'm bothering the graph

Speaker 340:45

But you are the sweetheart mess

Speaker 340:48

Perfect moment, you love you flashy fly, coming back from three old war

Speaker 340:56

That's exactly what you've done

Speaker 341:01

So

Speaker 341:03

And surprise.

Speaker 341:06

I remember, I remember why I treated like him

Presenter41:12

Plain clothesman, heapmiser.

Presenter41:15

Rob Delaney, by the time Henry died, your wife was expecting your fourth child, and your youngest son was born in 2018.

Presenter41:23

You actually told Henry that you were going to have another child before anyone else, I think.

Presenter41:28

Why did you want to tell him first?

Rob Delaney41:30

Uh well, he had to know that this family that loved him was alive and was growing and and that there was somebody that we were going to tell about him.

Rob Delaney41:40

I don't know that there'd be another little nugget in the house that he could vibe with from whatever area in the cosmos he was, but he needed to know. And we knew that they would not overlap corporeally on this earth, even though Henry's younger brother was born in the same room that Henry died in, our living room. We don't live there anymore, but when we moved out I asked the landlord

Rob Delaney42:06

I said, listen, if you ever go to sell this place, will you let me know first, because I would like to buy it, so that when I'm 81 I can crawl in here and die.

Rob Delaney42:15

In the same room that my son died in, that my other son was born in.

Presenter42:19

So you're going to stay in London for good, you think?

Rob Delaney42:21

I don't know how to we've thought about leaving, but for so many reasons we've stayed. One of which is I like to go put my hands on slides at the playground that Henry slid down. I like to see nurses periodically bump into him that took care of him. So London is very important to me, and London took very good care of him. The NHS at large, the friends that we made, even our little boys' friends who took care of them. So London has held us and taken care of us in many ways.

Speaker 142:35

Yeah.

Presenter42:56

You said, you know, talked about y your family continuing to to live, that the the family that he's part of is is still here and is growing.

Rob Delaney43:02

Yeah.

Rob Delaney43:04

Yeah.

Presenter43:04

and is continuing to live life.

Rob Delaney43:07

Yeah.

Presenter43:08

Fully.

Presenter43:09

How have you managed to do that alongside honouring your grief and living with it? How have you managed to grow together as a family? It must have been extraordinarily difficult.

Rob Delaney43:19

Okay, well, Henry's youngest brother was a big help with that. I remember thinking that when he was about to be born, I was like, well, my heart's been destroyed. You know, it's been torn into pieces and, you know, dissolved and salt, and it's just garbage. So I'll take care of this kid. I will feed him. I will put him in clothing that fits. I don't know, am I going to be able to love him? I don't know if I can do that anymore. And then the nanosecond he exited my wife's body, I looked at him and just, you know, started weeping and was so in love with him and just wanted to sniff him and eat him and put him under my shirt and squeeze him. And I love him desperately. And then you have to let, you have to feel and honor your pain. You have to let it hurt and you can't run away from it. When the feelings come, it's best to let them.

Presenter44:11

Rob, the time has come. I'm going to cast you away to the island.

Presenter44:16

How do you think you'll cope and what kind of island are you imagining?

Rob Delaney44:19

So I think I will do pretty well for a good while, and then I'll probably unravel. But I often fantasize about being in some sort of accident or medically induced coma to somehow be forced in a way where you're not permanently you know

Presenter44:32

Uh

Presenter44:36

Just to be incapacitated to the extent that you get a break.

Rob Delaney44:37

Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. Also, when I was younger, I fantasized about like.

Presenter44:39

You know.

Rob Delaney44:43

Living in some sort of society where they gave you a test when you were young and said, This is your job, this is your pantsuit that you wear at that time.

Speaker 344:50

Yeah.

Rob Delaney44:51

So, I regularly fantasize about losing all freedom in a positive manner. So, I'd love to go. But at a certain point, I'd probably lose my mind. But I think I might surprise people with how long they were like, My God, he's not bored yet. And I'd be like, Nope, he's still lying face down. Half his feet are on the beach, but his head is under a tree at a weird angle. Why he hasn't moved? And I'm blissful. So I think that's how it would go.

Speaker 145:04

But my god, he's not.

Presenter45:16

All right, one more disc before we send you there. Your final choice today, Rob Deloney, what's it gonna be?

Rob Delaney45:21

My final choice is Rock Lobster by the B52s. This song is so weird and such an improbable, enduring hit. I mean, like a record executive, if they got this song now, would be like, get out of my office and don't take the door. I'm kicking you out the window. It's bananas, but it's so beautiful. It's like operatic in scope and so strange and specific and weird and danceable. And it's played with real instruments and you can count them all as you listen. And I love to dance to it. I really love dancing to this song.

Speaker 146:05

They were at a party.

Speaker 146:08

Selling the day.

Speaker 146:11

Someone treat the skin and ride in a chip

Speaker 146:14

What the R, Lock Job!

Presenter46:25

Rob Lobster, the B fifty two's. So, Rob Delaney, the time has come. I'm gonna send you away to the island. I will of course give you the books to take with you. You can have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other tome of your choice. What are you gonna go for?

Rob Delaney46:39

It's going to be any Alice Monroe short story collection. I don't care which one, because they're all brilliant. So maybe the thickest one. Her books thrill me, and they're about normal people doing things in a world that you absolutely recognize. So for her, to me, she's it.

Presenter47:00

We'll find the biggest we can. You can also have a luxury item. What's that going to be?

Rob Delaney47:04

It would be a piano because I now, as I get older, I don't care when I'm bad at things. I wasn't good at the piano when I was younger, and I cared. I would get angry and I walk away from the piano. I still stink, but I don't care anymore. And what can happen to my mind and my heart when I'm playing the piano poorly and the way that it wanders, it's like worlds, you know? So that would be very helpful to me on the island.

Presenter47:30

Oh, yeah, definitely. Have you got any specific pianos, any style, any specs? You want upright, do you want grand? What are we going for?

Rob Delaney47:37

How about a honky-tonk? It sounded it acquitted itself so well on fire in the hole earlier today, so.

Presenter47:39

It sounded

Presenter47:43

Oh, I'm going to give you a honky tonk piano that's seen plenty of action.

Rob Delaney47:46

Thank you.

Presenter47:48

Finally, which track of the eight that you shared with us today would you save from the waves first?

Rob Delaney47:53

I think it would be This Is to Mother You by Sinead O'Connor because to me that song is about love in practice and its power and how it is working in the background. Even if we might not be thinking about it, it might be thinking about us, and that's a really beautiful feeling to have.

Presenter48:16

Rob Delaney, thank you so much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Rob Delaney48:20

Thank you, Lauren.

Presenter48:43

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Rob. We'll leave him to contemplate his midlife crisis with the help of his honky-tonk piano. We've cast away many actors and comics including Adrian Edmondson, Daro Breen and Dawn French. Rob's catastrophe co-writer and co-star Sharon Hogan is in our back catalogue too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and on BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky. The production coordinator was Susie Roylance and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the composer Erilyn Wallen. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 349:37

Can you just tell me who he is? No. Has he got any distinguishing features? His anonymity.

Speaker 349:43

Banksy.

Speaker 349:44

I'm James Peake and I'm on a mission to find out how Banksy became the world's most famous and infamous living artist. He could literally be anyone. Banksy essentially humiliates the art world. With dealers, critics and someone who once worked deep inside Banksy's secret team. Do you wish you didn't know who he was? Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of Banksy. The Banksy Story with me, James Peake, on Radio 4.

Speaker 350:11

Listen now on BBC Sounds.

Speaker 350:14

How does he smell? Like paint.