Desert Island Discs

Harry Hill

3 August 2025Presented by Lauren Laverne

Comedian, writer and broadcaster, best known for his BAFTA-winning TV series TV Burp and surreal send-ups of British pop culture.

Open on BBC

The keepsakes

Book & luxury

The book

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

I think it should be a big book, a thick book that you could also use to kill small mammals with. I started reading it a few years ago... I thought this is funny... so this would be a good opportunity.

The luxury

a bucket and spade

I thought maybe a bucket and spade, because where's the fun of a sandy beach without the ability to make sand castles?

In conversation

Questions & quotes

Presenter asks

So talk me through that feeling of coming up with a really good idea. When a joke works, how do you know?

How do you know? Well, I love jokes. Well, my favourite type of joke is set up punchline, which is quite old-fashioned, really. The truth is, you never know. I mean, sometimes you really know straight away, but nine times out of ten, you don't know. And if you look back over history, there are only, you know, a few jokes, really, the types of joke, and it's just a way of reinventing them. I'm really interested in the form of jokes. I mean, you know, I'm sure this isn't of interest to most people, but just the form of it and how you can subvert that. So I, you know, I do a lot of stuff with my ventriloquist dummy Gary, my son Gary, from my first marriage.

The recording

Transcript

Timestamps play the recording from that turn

Presenter
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the comedian, writer and broadcaster Harry Hill. He's carved out a career as one of the most popular comics on prime time TV with shows like You've Been Framed, Harry Hill's Alien Fun Capsule, Junior Bake Off and the hit series TV Burp. Over the course of 11 years it won three BAFTAs, three Royal Television Society Awards, a Rose Door and seven British Comedy Awards. His surreal send-ups of British pop culture are as unpredictable as they are delightful. One of his shows played out each week on a musical number by the Delia Smiths, a female singing group dressed as the TV cook covering songs by Morrissey. Another featured the K-Factor, an X-Factor spoof about knitting, which was eventually won by a character called Peter the Duck. Then there was the time he staged a fight between EastEnders Phil Mitchell and Mr. Blobby to establish which of them was better at making a dramatic entrance. It's all a world away from his first career as a doctor. He hung up his stethoscope in 1990 and won the Perrier Award for his Edinburgh Fringe Show just two years later. He says, Writing good original gags is really hard, but when it works, it's a fabulous feeling. You want to punch the air or run out into the street and tell the joke to the first person you see. Harry Hill, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
Harry Hill
Thank you very much, Lauren. It's uh actually that K factor is the only thing I ever got in trouble with I T V over.
Presenter
Oh really? Why?
Harry Hill
Because we cut the head off and knitted Simon Cowell.
Harry Hill
And they sent someone down to have a word with us.
Presenter
And they sent someone
Presenter
Well, it does sound a bit strong, to be fair. At least you could stitch it back on. So talk me through that feeling of coming up with a really good idea. When a joke works, how do you know?
Harry Hill
How do you know? Well, I love jokes. Well, my favourite type of joke is set up punchline, which is quite old-fashioned, really. The truth is, you never know. I mean, sometimes you really know straight away, but nine times out of ten, you don't know. And if you look back over history, there are only, you know, a few jokes, really, the types of joke, and it's just a way of reinventing them. I'm really interested in the form of jokes. I mean, you know, I'm sure this isn't of interest to most people, but just the form of it and how you can subvert that. So I, you know, I do a lot of stuff with my ventriloquist dummy Gary, my son Gary, from my first marriage.
Speaker 3
That.
Presenter
Come on, Peppy.
Harry Hill
Hello Gary. Yes, I'll be with you in a sec.
Presenter
Yes.
Presenter
And and it would be fair to say as this is radio that um you know usually when when Gary is uh performing your lips move as well.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
I have to be with Gary. Obviously, I can't speak for Gary, but.
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
But Gary I have to be there with Gary to support him largely. So there's all these kind of old-fashioned tropes which I grew up on. You know, I grew up in the seventies. All this stuff was still on T V, you know, kind of remnants from the I suppose the musicals or the kind of variety days. And that's my interest, I suppose. And the great thing about it you know, if there is a good thing about being Harry Hill is that I can get away with
Presenter
Supported
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Pretty much any silly behavior.
Presenter
Well, and also that you you get to invite other people to do that, right? And to be playful. You know, they come to see you live on tour or they t they watch one of your programmes'cause they're up for that. And that must actually be really a particular joy. It must be a nice dynamic between you and your audience.
Harry Hill
Exactly.
Harry Hill
To roll the toe
Harry Hill
And that but
Harry Hill
Your audience. Well, it's it's thrilling, you know, when it works. But I mean, there's still, you know, that's no comic, however long you've been doing it for, necessarily finds every moment fun. You know, it is.
Harry Hill
You've got to be really on top of it. I mean, you relax at times.
Harry Hill
You know, I've just come off a sort of uh seventy f I've just done seventy five dates on a tour. And you'd think by date seventy four you would have got the hang of it, but there's still moments where you're kind of thinking, Oh no, I'm losing them or you know
Speaker 3
Black.
Speaker 1
Are you sure?
Harry Hill
What do I do now?
Presenter
So Harry, how did you go about selecting your music today?
Harry Hill
I tried not to overthink it, but then I woke up this morning and I thought, what? Look at this list. I mean, this is like.
Harry Hill
This was never my intention. Is it too late to change it? But I've tried to go with, you know, stuff that's.
Speaker 1
Pretend
Harry Hill
You know, reminds me of places and people, I guess.
Presenter
Let's get stuck in. Disc number one, what have you got for us, Harry Hill?
Harry Hill
Well, you know, uh this is the first single I ever bought, and I wish I could say it was something edgy, but in fact it's Earnie the Fastest Moment in the West by Benny Hill.
Presenter
Where does it take you back to when you hear it?
Harry Hill
Well, I was seven.
Harry Hill
I mean it was played on the radio all the time as number one for weeks. The song is a little story about a a Milkman who you know falls in love with a a girl but has a a love rival that's a a two-ton Ted from Chennington who drove the baker's van. And he dies in a hail of um well he the actual killer blow is a stale pork pie that catches him in the eye.
Harry Hill
And only a bit of the dust. But I think that and I was thinking this morning, would that would that kill you?
Presenter
There's only one way to find out.
Harry Hill
Yeah, so
Harry Hill
Yeah, yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
What would that be?
Presenter
Just keep throwing the pies. Span the stainless pies you can.
Harry Hill
Yeah. So uh yeah, it was fun, you know, and uh there was a thing in the seventies which was this thing for the novelty song. So in the charts at any one time there was some silly song that was very catchy and it was often by a comedian of the day, you know, like Tommy Cooper had one. And I kind of wish that still happened a bit.
Harry Hill
You know.
Harry Hill
You could hear the yuff beats pound As they raced across the ground.
Harry Hill
and the clatter of the wheels as they spun round and round And he galloped into Market Street, his badge upon his chest, His name was Ernie, and he drove the fastest milk cart in the West.
Harry Hill
Now Ernie loved a widow, a lady known as Sue. She lived all alone in Lily Lane at number 22. They said she was too good for him, she was awdy, proud and chic. But Ernie got his cocoa there three times every week.
Presenter
Harry Hill singing along with every word to Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West by Benny Hill.
Harry Hill
How are you hill
Presenter
So Harry, let's go back to the beginning for you, around about the time that you first discovered comedy. You were born in Surrey in nineteen sixty four, the second of four kids, becoming five when your half sister came along. What did you enjoy about growing up in a big family like that?
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Uh well, I mean I'm not sure I did like being in a big family. I probably would have preferred to have had a bit more, you know, um
Harry Hill
The thing about being in a big family is you can never get any privacy. It was a relatively small house, you know, on this big sort of 60s housing estate out in rural. I mean, I grew up in Kent and the thing with a big family, you just can't get away from the sort of noise. I just remember, you know, there wasn't a lot of spare money. You know, part the other part of being in a big family is this sense of humour, this kind of gang, where you can all basically gang up on someone. If one of my sisters had a boyfriend, we'd all just pick on him. There's a lot of in jokes. I mean, I guess that's true of all families. We did feel like a unit. You know, my brother was a lot younger than me, maybe four or five years younger than me, and he was very annoying.
Speaker 1
Been I mean I
Harry Hill
Is it
Harry Hill
I mean, I remember we used to have physical f fights, you know, we used to sort of roll around on the floor. Tickling was very big in the in the seventies. I don't know if people still tickle each other.
Presenter
Because I don't know
Presenter
It was massive. I remember from the 80s, I remember it being huge as well.
Harry Hill
Bring back tickling. How about a show Celebrity Tickling? Oh, that would be so good. Yeah, feather on the end of a stick or something.
Presenter
Um and I know that, you know, given that there wasn't a lot of money around, as you just mentioned, T V was a big thing. That was like your family's leisure activity, wasn't it?
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Well, it was, I think, that window on the world, you know, it was um that's how you found out about things.
Presenter
What were you watching?
Harry Hill
Doctor Who, we'd watch Bruce Forsyth's Generation game, which I just loved. A lot of people might look at Bruce and think he's quite old fashioned, but actually I think what he was doing is very modern. He didn't come on and tell gags, he worked with the crowd, he worked the cameras, you know, he would do that thing where he'd turn to the camera and look directly at you at home. My dad always wanted to watch uh my stepfather always wanted to watch um
Harry Hill
the news at nine o'clock, and that was really annoying because on BBC Two at nine o'clock were all the interesting programmes, you know, Monty Python and Spike Milligan's Q series. I remember watching it and thinking, Yeah, he's talking to me, he's saying to me, This is what you need you know, it's like that. It was sort of like some people get with music when they you know, like they
Presenter
An Awakening.
Harry Hill
And a way
Harry Hill
Exactly.
Presenter
And he had that anarchic spirit that you have. I mean, so he was so.
Harry Hill
Oh yeah.
Harry Hill
Well actually I don't really have that. I don't have that.
Presenter
But it's part it's in your act, it's part of your act.
Harry Hill
I'm fake I fake it, but he I think he had it.
Presenter
Harry, as well as TV, I know that your mum Jan had a big influence on you. Tell me a bit about her.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
She's great fun. I mean, she's still alive. You know, she's 88 and she's still bright as a button. Yeah, so her and my stepfather, Tony, he um they were in a local amateur dramatics group, staplist amateur dramatics group. He used to write the Panto and he would often be the dame in the panto. And this guy actually he was he was not outwardly a lot of hugely f funny.
Harry Hill
To me he's always seemed a bit careworn. You know, he'd be on the first train out to you know, he was a commuter and he'd come back about seven o'clock. He'd have his whiskey, he'd have his dinner, and he'd sit down in his armchair and I think there was a lot going on. He inherited four kids, you know, when he uh uh married my mum and uh I always think I mean not I didn't think it at the time, but now I think wow, you know, that's quite a guy to take that on. Yeah. But then we would go and see him at the panto and he'd be dragged up and and being widow twanky
Presenter
He transformed.
Harry Hill
Yet
Presenter
What kind of roles did your mum get? Bearing in mind that she's a fan of the majority of the menu, you know.
Harry Hill
Oh, fairy, you know, she'd be the fairy. Fairy bungle. She was, I don't know what that was. She still does a bit of that. Does she? Yeah, she's a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a.
Presenter
Was she still
Presenter
Does she? Will she still do a fairy bungles, if you ask her?
Harry Hill
Get her on the phone. Mum. So my mum would say, Do you want to come down the shops? or you're coming down the shops.
Presenter
Mother.
Harry Hill
We'd go da down to Liptons and on the way we'd bump into, you know, misses Harmer a couple of doors down and uh she'd start telling her a story. It was, you know, I'd know some story about something that happened at the school or
Harry Hill
some local bit of gossip. And then we'd walk on a bit further and she'd see someone else and then she'd she'd start the story. And I and by the time we got to Lipton's, the supermarket, she would have this story completely ironed out, you know, with sort of um
Presenter
She would have like a tight two minutes.
Harry Hill
Yeah, exactly. You know, and it would end with a punchline in the
Harry Hill
And a dead air.
Harry Hill
So, I mean, yeah, I guess you pick all this stuff up, uh, subliminally. I mean, I don't know whether that's why I am the way I am, but uh
Presenter
And what about your dad, Keith? What what tell me about him?
Harry Hill
But he was in the amateur dramatics as well, but not the same one.
Harry Hill
So my parents got divorced when I was about six, I think. So, I mean, I grew up with my mum and stepfather and, you know, and then I'd see my dad every every two weeks he'd come and pick us up. I mean, it was that thing, that custody thing where
Presenter
Yeah. And and was it difficult to kind of form a close relationship because of that?
Harry Hill
Um but it didn't didn't help.
Harry Hill
It's a tricky one, you know. Divorce, I think, and particularly at that time because people didn't do it. I mean, everyone's parents are divorced now. I mean, if your parents aren't divorced, you're unusual. But back then.
Presenter
But back
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Harry Hill
People just stuck it out.
Presenter
And did you feel that? Did you feel like it was a a bit of an odd situation? Yeah.
Harry Hill
Yeah, I didn't like it. I was quite happy for them to be divorced, you know, in that they were obviously both much happier.
Harry Hill
But it was a bit, you know, there weren't those sort of conversa you know, no one ever sat me down and said, um
Speaker 3
I wanted this
Harry Hill
Yeah, how are you feeling?
Speaker 3
How you feel about it?
Speaker 1
Healing
Harry Hill
It wasn't any of that. And I you know, I don't know if that's a a good thing or a bad thing, but um, you know, you just kinda muddle through, don't you? I don't know.
Presenter
All right, Harry, let's take a break for some more music. It's your second choice today. What are we going to hear next, and why are you taking it with you?
Harry Hill
Have I the right by the honeycombs? It's another bit of froth.
Harry Hill
I bought a whole load of singles from a jumble sal you know, jumble cells were the thing in uh rural Kent in the seventies and eighties. And I bought this uh a job lot of singles, one of which was Have I the Right by the Honeycombs. And when I was at medical school, me and my mate Matt, probably my best friend at medical school, was this guy Matt Brassock, who's sadly no longer with us.
Harry Hill
And he was a brilliant pianist, and in those days we would go to the pub, and most pubs or a lot of pubs had a piano still, and we'd have a few drinks, and at some point he would get on the piano, and I would sing Have I the Right by the Honeycomb.
Speaker 3
Have I the right to hold you? And you know I've always told you that we must never, ever part.
Speaker 3
Have I the right to kiss you? And you know I'll always miss you. I've loved you from the very start.
Harry Hill
It's quite a coy way of asking someone out, isn't it? Have I the right to kiss you?
Presenter
The honeycombs, and have I the right. So, Harry Hill, as a kid, would you describe yourself as happy?
Harry Hill
Yeah, it was great fun. I mean, we were on this sort of housing estate, but it backed onto fields and so we would go home from school, run over the fields and muck about, you know, and then my mum would call us in for our tea, you know, summer holidays, six weeks, you're thinking, Great, here we go And we'd always have some little plan, you know, like um
Harry Hill
My friend Adam, who um
Harry Hill
He had a shed where we would do sort of ex science experiments, you know, and we started this where we were always trying to make um something explode.
Presenter
What kind of thing?
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
You know, so this is the first time.
Presenter
Innocent times.
Harry Hill
Yeah, we weren't trying to further some cause. It was just for our own interest, you understand. So we used to make stink bombs and smoke bombs and and stuff and we used to sell them to the other kids at uh at school.
Presenter
How did that go to a little business that you
Harry Hill
Yeah, Stapleers Chemical Industries. Well, it it was very popular. So there were three of us in Staples Chemical Industries, me, Adam, and Patrick. And me and Adam were the kind of the brains behind it as far as the sort of you know making the produce. So a smoke bomb might set you about five P, a stink one maybe seven P because there was a bottle involved. And Patrick used to be like the sales guy, he'd handle that. And then he came to us after a while and said we were sort of saying, well, where's the money? And it turned out that he had been letting the stuff go on tick. He wasn't taking the money.
Harry Hill
And so in fact we we had made sixty p.
Harry Hill
So we decided to wind up the business. We split the money because the pressure was was getting to Patrick and that didn't seem fair.
Presenter
That didn't seem fair. Well, it's difficult being a young industrialist, isn't it?
Harry Hill
Yeah, yeah.
Presenter
You were also, as you know, we would imagine, with a a separate
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
It's not exactly Diary of a CEO, but yeah.
Presenter
So but in in uh you know this rural childhood of the seventies, were you a Cub Scout?
Harry Hill
Yes.
Presenter
Yes.
Harry Hill
Yeah, I thi I mean, I didn't really want to be a Cub Scout and then I was a scout, but once I joined my mum wouldn't let me leave and I think probably in retrospect it was like free babysitting for her. And my first um kind of attempt at, you know, on a stage was the Cub Panto, so I was um
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Widow Twanky
Presenter
Ooh, that's a plum roll.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Presenter
Following in your stepdad's footsteps there.
Harry Hill
I guess I was, yeah. And I remember doing it.
Harry Hill
And being on, you know, doing these jokes and everyone laughing and I was thinking quite clearly remember thinking, This is easy you find this easy. This you're good at this.
Presenter
How old were you?
Harry Hill
Nine. Yeah, and actually I was singled out for special praise in the Kent Messenger.
Presenter
Do you remember what they said?
Harry Hill
Undoubted star of the show.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Presenter
When you were 14, I think, your stepfather got a job in Hong Kong and you all moved there. How did you feel about it?
Harry Hill
Step forward.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Well, I mean, I burst into tears. I couldn't believe it. You know, we were literally sat around the T V. He gets home from work and he says, um
Harry Hill
We're moving to Hong Kong. I was thinking, we're not. I remember finding out it had the most densely populated square mile in um
Harry Hill
In the world, I think at that time. And I'm in a sort of little village.
Harry Hill
I remember just getting off the plane. It was like a fog. It was like a really humid.
Harry Hill
And noise, just loads of noise, great big high rise buildings. I remember stepping off the plane and just saying to myself, You're not going to like this. And I didn't like it. You know, I d I really didn't like it for the first six months.
Presenter
Well, let's find out what happened next after some music. It's time for your third disc, Harry Hill.
Harry Hill
This time feels
Harry Hill
Oh, yeah, so this is Grandad's Flannelette Night Shirt by George Formby. I am a a ukulele plan, not particularly good one, although I've I've let it lapse. I was once a member of the George Formby Society.
Speaker 3
Great.
Harry Hill
Yeah, me and my uh friend Rob. So Rob was the at school, was my kind of best friend at school and um he had a seventy eight of George Forby singing this song and he would sat he would stand in the playground and sing this to us.
Harry Hill
And he'd do it at parties and things. I mean, we were we were kind of odd uh kids.
Speaker 3
Now in a family we've got an heirloom.
Speaker 3
They handed it to me a year ago.
Speaker 3
It's been in our possession since granddad was a lad. I'll tell you what it is and then you'll know. It's my granddad's flannell at night shirt. In it I was christened one day.
Speaker 3
Down at the church they were in the world.
Presenter
George Formby and Grandad's flannelette nightshirt.
Presenter
So Harry Hill, you moved to Hong Kong and started a new school, so an international school. Now you'd had a happy childhood, but I think you were also quite shy when you were little. Is that fair to say?
Harry Hill
So it internet
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Well, when I hit no well, when I hit my teens basically, I think. Yeah, I was a very shy kid and
Presenter
I think
Harry Hill
joining that school. So it was an international school, so people were coming and going all the time and they weren't interested in being my friend, Lauren. Hard to believe. Yeah, but school was tough. And then gradually I after I think about six months,
Speaker 3
No.
Harry Hill
You know, I made a couple of friends and I did that really by being funny, I think.
Presenter
And what about teachers? Were there any that you connected with?
Harry Hill
There were a couple of teachers. I mean, we had a really I mean, because Hong Kong was like a small um kind of little area, the local T V, so the English speaking T V, there were two channels and the my history teacher was the newsreader. So you'd see him in the history lesson and in the evening he'd be saying
Presenter
history lesson in the evening
Harry Hill
And he was just in from the South China Sea, you know, you know.
Presenter
That must have seemed incredibly impressive, especially to a T V loving kid who's
Harry Hill
Especially
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Presenter
Just kind of come from six effectively.
Harry Hill
Come from.
Presenter
So who is what was his name?
Harry Hill
Paul Gillingham. And I remember once he we had to do this talk about, I don't know what it was. I remember my talk was about.
Harry Hill
Using child labour in the Victorian eras like chimney sweeps, you know, when they'd send kids up. I can't remember the details, but I'd done these diagrams and and everyone got up and did their talk. I did my talk and and then he pulled me aside at the end. He said, Did you notice that everyone listened when you did your talk? You're good at communicating with people and that's kind of a useful thing to be aware of.
Presenter
And had you noticed what he said had been.
Harry Hill
Yeah, I had yeah, I had, yeah, I mean I absolutely had them in the palm of palm of my hand.
Presenter
Harry, after a couple of years the family returned to Kent. Were you relieved, pleased, to come to the city?
Harry Hill
Well then I didn't want to come back because by then I'd got used to it and you know the city was an exciting place to live in. You'd just walk out the door, get on a bus and you'd be in Wan Chai or uh
Harry Hill
you know, central and there'd be, you know, cinemas and all all sorts of stuff.
Presenter
So Harry, you were back in Kent at a local grammar school. You took science A levels. And obviously, this put you on the path to becoming a doctor, as you did. We know that you did. But you know, from everything else that you've said, you were this very creative, communicative kid who sort of should have been
Speaker 3
As he
Speaker 3
We
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Presenter
Going in a completely different direction. How could you more? Well, how committed were you took a wrong.
Harry Hill
Completely different.
Harry Hill
I couldn't agree with you more.
Harry Hill
It took a wrong turn, Lauren. That's all I can say. I took a wrong turn.
Presenter
Hey!
Presenter
Where?
Harry Hill
Towards science. Well, I think it was this science company that we set up.
Harry Hill
It involved us buying the explosions. Yeah, the staple as chemical industries. It involved us buying a lot of chemicals. You know, in those days you could buy mostly ingredients for um well, explosives and stuff in the chemist.
Presenter
The explosions.
Presenter
I didn't
Harry Hill
And I had to have a kind of cover for that, and that was that I was interested in science. I mean, I was genuinely interested in biology. I think biology is really interesting.
Harry Hill
And then what happened was my parents went to a parents' evening.
Harry Hill
And the physics teacher said, My mum said, oh, he wants to do medicine. I mean, she was keen for me to do medicine. You know, who wouldn't be?
Presenter
Yeah
Presenter
Of course, yeah.
Harry Hill
And the physics teacher said, Oh, no, no, there's no way he could he's going to get to medical school and they reported that back to me and I thought, Right, I'll show you. So I sort of went into medicine out of spite.
Harry Hill
It was mad. But part of it sorry to interrupt, but part of it was also that I couldn't articulate what I wanted to do. If someone had said what if you had uh three wishes, what would they be? One would be I'd like to be a comedian, but I couldn't say that out loud. I couldn't say it to my parents who were very middle class.
Presenter
And so
Presenter
P.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
And why was that? Was that because you didn't you couldn't sort of see the roots? I couldn't see the root. Oh, right. It wasn't a kind of shyness and embarrassment.
Harry Hill
Consider route.
Harry Hill
It wasn't it.
Harry Hill
Yeah, it was a bit of that. A bit of that. Not being able to say it.
Presenter
Not being able to
Presenter
And so you studied medicine at St George's Medical School in South London, where you threw yourself in with the Drama Society. What kind of productions did you take part in?
Harry Hill
Well, there's a big tradition, and I don't know why there is a big tradition, of reviews, medical school reviews. And that's what I did. I mean, the medical school review, how it would work is you'd write a sketch and and you'd come to the meeting and if you'd written a sketch you'd be in. You know, there was no sort of um
Presenter
Prefer.
Harry Hill
Editing process.
Presenter
Can you give me an example of the kind of piece that you would be putting in?
Harry Hill
I remember once there was a thing, it was like a waiting room, and I was dressed as a pancreas. Someone else was dressed as a kidney. So it was kind of not a million miles away from my sense of you know, the the stuff I've had. Everything that you follow. Yeah, but I wrote a hell of a lot of stuff. Yeah. And I.
Presenter
For everything that would follow.
Presenter
Yeah. And did you enjoy it? Did you just felt easy? It was having that feeling of, yeah.
Harry Hill
I loved it.
Harry Hill
It's all I think that feeling.
Harry Hill
That's all I think about.
Presenter
I can do this, this is easy. Yeah, so you you s c started uh as a trainee doctor in 1988.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Yeah, I qualified in ATA. My first job was in orthopaedics and I didn't know any orthopaedics.
Harry Hill
So I go to the I arrive on the ward and I have to go round with my trolley and I didn't know anything I couldn't answer anyone's questions.
Presenter
How did that feel?
Harry Hill
From that moment, I just felt out of control. I mean, that's how I felt, you know. And I remember this, he was quite a young man, he'd had his leg implaster.
Presenter
You know
Harry Hill
And he said to me, Oh, Doctor, how long uh i g is this going to be in plaster for? I didn't know. And I said, Oh, well, yeah, how long did the other doctor say? and he said, Six weeks. About six weeks and I said, Well, how long have you had it in for? He said, Two weeks. I said, Well, I'm expecting you to have it in for another four weeks. You know, it was like that. I was just busking it the whole time.
Speaker 3
Mm-mm.
Harry Hill
And I learnt most of it in the first.
Harry Hill
Few weeks from the Ward Sister is the truth.
Presenter
Harry, we'll find out what happened next in a moment.
Harry Hill
What happens next?
Presenter
We've got to make some room for the music. It's number four. What are we going to hear?
Harry Hill
This is Gay Bar by Electric Six. I don't know anything about Electric Six, but I know this song and I found it really funny. It really makes me smile. And when I used to do T V Burp,
Harry Hill
Jill Halfpenny was on EastEnders, she opened a nail bar.
Harry Hill
on Albert Square. And I used every time we had a clip of uh Jill Halfbury and the Nail Bar, I would sing this, but I would sing Nail Bar instead of Gay Bar. Girl, I want to take you to the Nail Bar, Nail Bar, Nail Bar
Speaker 1
Well, I want to take you to then
Speaker 3
Kill
Speaker 3
I wanna take you to a gay bar!
Speaker 3
I won the Zoo and K-Bar!
Speaker 3
I wanna take you to a gay bar, gay bar, gay bar.
Speaker 3
Let's start a war!
Speaker 3
Start a nuclear war!
Presenter
Electric Six and Gay Bar. I must make an appointment to get my nails done, Harry. Hopefully, yes. So, Harry, comedy was an itch that you were desperate to scratch the whole time you were training to be a doctor, and you teamed up with your friend Rob, and eventually you managed to get a gig in South London as a duo. And what did you say the act was? Like, what were you doing?
Harry Hill
And eventually
Harry Hill
We were called the Hall brothers, you know my my real name's Matthew Hall.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Harry Hill
So this is the same Rob that used to sing Grand Law's Planet Night Shirt. And if you asked anyone at our school out of our year who would be the comedian, it would be Rob. He is the funniest person I know.
Harry Hill
But he didn't want it as much as me.
Presenter
Um, first kick, how did it go?
Harry Hill
It says this is at the Tunnel Club.
Harry Hill
It was run by this guy, Malcolm Hardy, who's a sort of legendary, kind of an anarchist, a really sort of naughty.
Harry Hill
He gave a lot of people their first breaks and he probably put off a lot of people as well because it was a tough gig. And we had printed off these leaflets. You know, this is a kind of naive enthusiasm of ignorance. We printed off these
Harry Hill
leaflets about ourselves, the Hall brothers with a phone number, my phone number, put them out on the tables and we we go on, we go down to silence and then after a while they roll up the leaflets and throw them at us.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Harry Hill
And then Malcolm faded down the mics and faded up the music.
Presenter
And that was that.
Harry Hill
And that was that. But at least we h we had each other, so we we kind of laughed about it. I mean, given the choice, I'd much rather have been in a double act because I d I think, you know, it's not lonely now, but I think at times it used to be a bit lonely, you know, particularly if you're at an open spot turning up, no one wants to talk to you. You know, you're basically the wheat link in the night.
Harry Hill
Potentially.
Presenter
So, Harry, there was a turning point though, in nineteen ninety, you decided to give up medicine for good.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Presenter
Wha why did you make the decision? What what pushed you to do that in the end?
Harry Hill
It had been a long time coming, and then my stepfather died of cancer, and I thought, ah, you know, here's a man that sort of worked all his life.
Harry Hill
And they'd always used to talk about, you know, what they were going to do in retirement. How old was he? Maybe fifty four? And I thought I don't want that to be me. I mean, the other part of it was that I think if I if I'd said to him, I'm giving up to be a comedian, he would be it would have been quite disapproving.
Speaker 3
Ha ha.
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
So kind of
Presenter
He would have wanted you to have the the sensible job.
Harry Hill
Sensible jobs. Yeah, so it probably kind of set me free a little bit from that. But really, I was just kind of at the end of my tether with it. I mean, you just know.
Presenter
I mean, you must have seen some very upsetting things as a doctor as well. I mean, that must have been difficult for you if your heart wasn't in it.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
I think it's difficult even if your heart's in it. I mean, the first six months I had to break.
Harry Hill
The news to this bloke his wife had died in an operation unexpectedly and they had young children and uh
Speaker 1
Men.
Harry Hill
And I was completely out of my depth. I mean, I told him, and he started crying, and then I started crying, and I thought, this is.
Harry Hill
This isn't good. You're not supposed to be doing you know, yeah. I mean, I'm not really in a very I certainly wasn't a very emotional I mean actually what it makes you do is bottle up your emotions and you know
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Thank you.
Presenter
Yeah. How how long did that you know
Harry Hill
The bottling
Presenter
Yeah, the bottling. How long did the bottling go on for?
Harry Hill
Until I had kids, I think. Something about having kids that's uncaked you, yeah. Yeah.
Presenter
You were uncore.
Harry Hill
So I went to my consultant. He said, Oh, let's have a careers chat He was he was a nice bloke and he seemed quite interested in me and you know I wasn't a bad doctor. You know if I'd sort of stuck at it I probably would have been I don't know I would have ended up as a GP. Actually when I gave it up my mum I said to my mum Look I'm gonna try for a year. I'm gonna give myself a year off to sort of have a go.
Harry Hill
And she said, What you need to do is get a G P practice with a really strong ematodramatic script, which would have been my future.
Presenter
Could you have been happy to think?
Harry Hill
I don't know. I mean, you know, all these kind of sliding doors things. But it was that moment.
Presenter
So what about your mum? Because you said that she it sounds like she was she was quite supportive of you. She wasn't horrified when you said that you wanted to give up.
Harry Hill
She had enough on her plate. She was recently widowed and actually it meant that I had a bit of time off. You know, I moved home for a bit because basically I was pretty much broke. You know, the year turned into two years. You know, so I never had that moment where I said, I'm giving it up for good. Mum. I'm a comedian.
Presenter
She would breathe
Presenter
Hmm.
Presenter
Yeah, I do.
Harry Hill
Yeah, it wasn't in the back of the black cat.
Presenter
In the back of a black cap. Yeah.
Harry Hill
Living.
Presenter
Uh
Harry Hill
Leaving the square.
Presenter
Can you remember your last shift, though, as a doctor?
Harry Hill
No, I remember getting in the car, and this sounds impossible. I remember getting in my car, there's an old Toyota Corolla.
Harry Hill
P. Reg Carolla. Driving out of the hospital car park. I turned on the radio and the tune that came on was Eric Burden and the Animals, You've Gotta Get Out of This Place. It's no word of a lie. I mean, I'm sure I must have
Harry Hill
Confabulated, you know, I must've, it must have been the second song or the third song, but that is my memory. And I remember driving away, the kind of weight lifted, and I thought, wow, this is.
Harry Hill
This is it really exciting and it was it was incredibly exciting
Harry Hill
And terrifying in equal measure. Yeah.
Presenter
All right, Harry, let's have some more music. This is your fifth choice today. Oh, yeah. Live tuning.
Harry Hill
Oh yeah, Life During Wartime, Talking Heads. So uh I'm a big Talking Heads fan. You know, I love David Byrne and I went to see American Utopia. It looked fantastic. They were all in suits and they're all all the musicians are The instruments are wireless, they're choreographed, and all.
Presenter
Free roaming round the stage and all of that, yeah.
Harry Hill
I mean, I was kind of
Harry Hill
Just up out of my seat, not dancing, just because I wanted to be closer to it. It was just electric. And I thought, here's a guy, you know, he's what, 65 something, 65 or something. He could have just played the hit, you know, done it, and we all would have gone home happy. But here's a guy who's just pushing it and pushing it. And I came away thinking, this is how you need to approach stuff. You need to raise your game. So I've tried to do that. I mean, in my live work, I did write a routine after that, funny enough, that doesn't really bear any relation to that show. But in my mind, I always associate it with that inspiration.
Presenter
And what was the routine? What was the
Harry Hill
If it's about the
Harry Hill
It was about the differences between tray baits and tears and tear and shares.
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
And about how you can allocate all people as either a trade bank or a town share.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
I gotta I think David Byrne would like that.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Yeah, well he's a he's a Terran ship.
Presenter
Please don't share his menu.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Heard of some grave sites, I find a highway
Speaker 3
Next one, nobody
Speaker 3
The sound of my mind off in the distance
Speaker 3
Now
Presenter
Talking heads and life during wartime. So Harry Hill, at this point I think we should talk about the fact that the name on your birth certificate, as you mentioned, is actually Matthew Hall. When did you become Harry Hill exactly?
Harry Hill
Well in when I started I was Harry Hall. I mean a lot of my act is kind of I don't know, tongue in cheek kind of throwback to those old so you know, Arthur Askey, Max Miller, they're all double, you know, alliteration, that thing of so I thought Harry Hall and I liked Harry Hall'cause it was H A, H A so it was ha ha contained within it.
Harry Hill
But then you had to get an equity card and you couldn't have the same name as someone else in equity and there was a an actor lady called Harry Hall at H A R I I think it was. I think it was Harriet. And you could write to them and try and get permission. She said no. So I thought, oh, you know.
Harry Hill
What do I do? And anyway, I settled on Hairy Hill.
Presenter
And does it help to have a stage name and that slight separation between the person and the persona?
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Harry Hill
Between the
Harry Hill
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't deliberate, but it's great. It's worked out really well because you do have two sides. Apart from you you know who your showbiz friends are'cause they call you Harry, you know your you know, Rob calls me Matthew. Obviously my family do. And the other thing is to have an outfit, a uniform like I have.
Speaker 3
Yeah yeah
Speaker 3
Hmm.
Harry Hill
You know, I can be Matthew, and then I put the outfit on, and I'm Harry.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
So so tell me about the the uniform and how that took shape.
Harry Hill
You know, I always thought that you should put on a show.
Harry Hill
And so I was buying my clothes from charity shops and uh in the eighties and nineties the clothes that were in those shops were from the sixties and seventies and that's what I bought. You know, I it was a sixties suit and uh I had this one shirt with a big collar. And what I found was when I wore the shirt with the big collar,
Harry Hill
People would say to me, Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's good. And so it's that old thing of if it works, keep it in.
Presenter
And and you know that that experience of, like you say, kind of slipping into character almost before when Matthew becomes Harry.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Presenter
Like how big a change is that? How different are the two?
Harry Hill
Well, it's a big change when I'm live. You know, I have to have an hour to myself. No, I don't really want people talking to me beforehand. I'm in the dressing room and I'm it's not a character, it's ki it is me, it's as a persona, if you like, it's part of me.
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
Or if you like
Harry Hill
But I have to sort of pace up and down and and work myself up and if I don't do that it's not as funny.
Presenter
And what about your first solo gig? It was at the Aztec Comedy Club in South London. How did it feel to...
Presenter
To be embraced, was it a triumph?
Harry Hill
It was a Mexican restaurant in South Norwood and I got there very early. I'd written these jokes on a great big long, I got all these pieces of A4 paper, so it was like as tall as me, this script that I'd learnt. And I went on and I got the first gag got a laugh and it completely threw me. Because I had been rehearsing it without laughs.
Harry Hill
And fortunately I'd written the list on my like the set list on my hand so I was able to recover and actually I got a booking from that.
Presenter
And Harry, it sounds like once it came together, once things started working, it sort of happened relatively quickly for you because by nineteen ninety two, you know, that's when you won the Perrier for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival.
Harry Hill
Yeah, I was absolutely driven. Remember, I had been I'd gone from doing
Harry Hill
eighty, a hundred hours a week as a doctor, getting up at a crack of dawn.
Harry Hill
Suddenly, I had all these time-free during the day, so I really felt like I had something to prove. So, I would get up and I would write jokes, and I would bash the phones, I would phone these people up, and most of the time they didn't answer. You'd leave a message, they wouldn't get back to you, and I would just bug them and bug them. And if they didn't get back to me, I would go to the club and say, Oh, hello, I've been phoning you, and they'd think, Oh, Christ is this, better give them an open spot. So, I was absolutely merciless in my pursuit of it.
Presenter
And was that an important part of your success, do you think? Just that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Harry Hill
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, you know, the it's not the funniest people that get on, it's the pushiest. And I was, um, very pushy. Yeah.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Havihill. It's number six.
Harry Hill
It's the Beatles. As I once said to George Harrison, that didn't go down very well. I am a m I went up to him and said, Oh, George, I'm a mad Beatles fan. His face there was a kind of look of absolute panic in his eyes.
Harry Hill
Anyway, sorry, we digress. So this is Hey Bulldog and the reason I like this one, I could have chosen any of their tracks, but it feels to me like John and Paul are having fun. You know, they're muffing about doing dog impressions at the end of it. You know, I was in a band with my friend Steve and Mark and we used to do this in the sound check.
Speaker 3
Okay.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Again
Speaker 3
Some kind of happiness is measured out in my
Speaker 3
Makes you think it's something special when you smile
Speaker 3
Childlike
Speaker 3
Understand
Speaker 3
Just make it a bit
Presenter
The Beatles and Hey Bulldog. Harry Hill, in 1997 you got your own television series on Channel 4, and that enabled you to give your imagination free rein. What are your memories of making it?
Harry Hill
I you know, I was a big fan of Stuart Lee. Stuart Lee was a friend of mine by then and he was the script editor. And really what I should have had is someone to rein me in a bit probably, rather than someone egging me on.
Harry Hill
So there was my favourite bit was fly versions of T V shows.
Harry Hill
So there were
Presenter
How do you shoot that?
Harry Hill
So it was a miniature set with a Perspex box over it. So we had fly family fortunes, I think, or we had fly
Harry Hill
Blind date
Harry Hill
So you get a fly wrangler, a bloke would turn up.
Presenter
Yeah, to like hire someone, you can just like catch rabbits.
Harry Hill
Just like cats. And he'd have a stocking. It would be like a a lady's stocking full of flies. And there was a classic moment, and Stewart always remembers this, is that the director, Robin Nash, who was a very old school light entertainment, he did the two Ronnies. Actually, he did um Top of the Pops for a long time.
Presenter
Uh
Harry Hill
Of him shouting to one of the cameramen, put the camera on the fly's face.
Harry Hill
But yeah, it was brilliant.
Presenter
Harry, in 2001 you started writing and presenting TV Burp on ITV. Essentially it's a funny look back at the week's TV.
Harry Hill
A sideways look. A sideways looking at
Presenter
Aside from the week in telly, it ran for 11 series, it won many awards, but it was tough to make and took quite the workload was quite intense and the pressure was intense. How was that for you?
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Uh
Harry Hill
Yeah
Harry Hill
I've made a lot of T V shows and most of them have been a lot less success. Well, they've all been a lot less successful. Let's not beat around the bush.
Harry Hill
than T V Burt, but I I don't have many I don't look back at those years particularly fondly because of that stress. You know, I would start the week with with no show, knowing that on Saturday I'd have to write I'd sit down Saturday morning and write a show. You know, we'd work one week in advance, you know, off preview tape. So I would sit down with a blank page on
Harry Hill
on the Saturday and after at the end of that day I'd have to email it to the producer.
Presenter
And and you would have been watching VHS's, I guess, in those days.
Harry Hill
Yeah, so it wasn't just me, it was Dan Mayer, Paul Hawksby, David Quantic, Brenda Gilhooly. Um they were the ones that were really good at it. And me, and we would watch T V all the time, all day long. There were no shortcuts. That was the problem with it. You did actually have to watch the full
Harry Hill
Two and a half hours of Emma Dale. You just had to watch it. You couldn't fast forward through it. Don't get me wrong, the the best day was the recording day. But always I would come if you asked my wife, I would come back. Um every time I came back from a recording, I'd go upstairs, she'd be in bed and I'd say, I've got to get out of this, I've got to get out of this, you know.
Harry Hill
It was bad, you know.
Harry Hill
Uh
Harry Hill
And then I'd watch it on the Saturday and I'd think it was great. You know, I mean, I did really enjoy watching it.
Presenter
I'd really enjoy watching it.
Presenter
I wondered about, you know, finding yourself on prime time and being so successful and whether it was a bit of a challenge.
Harry Hill
Uh
Presenter
Balancing your kind of inner anarchic sense of humour with that kind of prime-time mainstream sensibility. Was that ever?
Harry Hill
I never felt restricted by it. And actually I T V never never really got involved. So I never felt in fact, I felt kind of emboldened by it. And and I think the beauty of that show for me was smuggling in that kind of sensibility into the um
Presenter
I never found it.
Harry Hill
into people's living rooms at at prime time. And I and always think that there's a temptation to patronize the mainstream crowd just because they're I mean, it used to really wire me up is people would say, What about the little old lady in Bradford? You know, and I'm thinking, well, how old is this little old lady? What is she, 70, 75? She was a punk.
Harry Hill
So I was always keen to push it.
Presenter
It's time for some more music, Harry Hill. Your seventh choice. What's next and why are you taking it to the island?
Harry Hill
Oh, so I might choke up on this.
Harry Hill
I worked for a long time with a friend of mine, Steve Brown, who's my musical director. I mean, he would call himself a musical director. I used to call him a keyboard player. But he wrote all the music for anything I ever did. So he wrote T V Highlight of the Week or you know any of that stuff, the theme tunes for all my shows.
Harry Hill
And we did a lot of stuff together. We did X Factor the musical. We did another musical about Tony Blair. And we were best of friends. I say were because he died in February 2024. Oh, sorry. Yeah, and it was quite sudden. And I haven't really come to terms with it, if I'm honest. So there's a big gap.
Speaker 3
I'm sorry.
Harry Hill
We would talk on the phone two or three times a week, and we'd always be laughing. And he was the person I would talk to about.
Harry Hill
About the business, and a lot of the time we would phone each other up and just kind of slag off other people.
Presenter
You must miss that.
Harry Hill
Well you need someone to be able to do that with and I haven't found that person yet. Yeah, I miss him terribly and we were working on a kids musical based on these kids books I had out years ago called Tim the Tiny Horse and he'd written the songs for it and he'd sent me the demos which is him playing them on a ukulele and this is a song from that which is Never Give Up on Love.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Love is better than ice cream
Speaker 3
With a strawberry jelly underneath
Speaker 3
Love is better than chocolate And it's slightly better for your teeth Love is better than fun fares It's a ride where you never touch the ground Love is better than Christmas And it's every day the whole year round
Presenter
Never give up on love. Steve Brown and Never Give Up on Love. Harry, you've had an incredible career, but, you know, not all of it has gone according to plan exactly. Most of it has.
Harry Hill
No, most of it hasn't.
Presenter
So let's talk about some of the bits that that kind of veered off off track a little bit. You mentioned co writing a musical, I Can't Sing, based on the X Factor. It had Simon Cowell's Blessing, but it didn't run in the West End for as long as you were hoping.
Harry Hill
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Say
Presenter
How do you bounce back from something like that?
Harry Hill
But the truth is
Harry Hill
You know, if I had to choose one thing from my career that I enjoyed the most, it would be that. I mean, I remember we did all these rehearsals in a different rehearsal room and and they said, Oh, should we go and visit they're putting the set in at the palladium and I remember standing at the back of the and I'd played the palladium.
Harry Hill
And I remember standing at the back with Steve, right at the back of the dress circle, and I said to him, I'll give it six weeks. I said, There's no way we're gonna fill this And pretty much it was six it ran for six weeks. It became clear to me after a little while that the people who like the X Factor don't really go to musicals and the people who go to musicals don't really like the X Factor.
Presenter
And how how did it
Harry Hill
I think it's just a really bad idea.
Presenter
How did it feel though for you? I mean, how did you deal with it?
Harry Hill
Has heartbroken?
Presenter
Yeah.
Harry Hill
I wasn't really heartbroken because you can't be heartbroken about this sort of thing. You know, you'd be a complete baby if you actually got really, really upset about professional failure. And I think if you.
Presenter
Some people do though.
Harry Hill
Babies then.
Harry Hill
I didn't have anything riding on it. I mean, apart from ego and kind of the amount of time I'd invested in it. But I was I welcomed the change. It was pretty much one of the first things I did after T V Birth finished. I didn't want to go and do another T V show. I wanted to have some fun and it was just enormous fun from start to finish.
Presenter
It's time to cast you away to the island. How do you think you'll get on there?
Harry Hill
I think I'll be okay in a way. Those old Cub Scout skills, you know, I I used to be able to do a few knots, you know, uh round turn two and a half inches. It was a speciality. You know, we used to lash things together. I remember I made a wash stand once. I mean it's not the first thing you'd make.
Harry Hill
But if you need
Presenter
But if you needed one hand.
Harry Hill
Yeah, so I'm I'm kinda handy like that. For T V Burp, I watch pretty much ep every episode of Ray Mears. Yeah, that and Bear Grills. You know, I know how to sort of I think you have to hide inside a uh a dead cow, don't you, to keep warm. I think that's what I'll be doing. First night there, I'll probably well, first night I'll probably just sort of, you know.
Harry Hill
Stay up. Second night I'll be inside the camera. If you need me.
Presenter
Good to know. Before we cast you away though, your final track today, what's your last choice gonna be?
Harry Hill
So we talked about Brucey, Bruce Forsyth, who I met a few times.
Harry Hill
He gave me a couple of bits of advice which I, you know, I take. I remember I was moaning to him once about how the show was going to be received. You know, I'd forgotten what the show was. I said, Oh, you know he said, What are you worrying about the show you've just done? He says this is he said, You should worry about the show you're going to do next.
Harry Hill
Right. And he said, he said, do what I do. He said, as soon as you finish your show, he said, go on holiday. He said, and I do that. So, yeah, so this is Life is the Name of the Game, which is the theme tune to The Generation Game, written and sung by Bruce Forsyth. And when me and Magda got married, that's the tune we came down the, it's not an aisle, really, it's Wandsworth Registry Office, but that's the sort of tune we arrived on. And actually, it's a really sweet lyric, you know, Life's the Name of the Game, and I want to play the game with you.
Speaker 3
Light is the name of the game and I wanna play the game with you.
Speaker 3
Live can be terribly tame if you don't play the game with two.
Speaker 3
Lights is a go as you please and I'd be so pleased to go with you.
Presenter
Life is the name of the game, Bruce Forsyth. So, Harry Hill, it's time to cast you away to our desert island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one more book of your choice. What will that be?
Harry Hill
Uh well I think it should be a big book, a a thick book that you could also use to kill small mammals with.
Harry Hill
So I'm gonna go for um Don Quixote by Cervantes. I started reading it a few years ago, but it's a very thick book and I thought this is funny this is a funny book actually and actually I should come back to it, but I've never found the time to um
Harry Hill
So this would be a good opportunity.
Presenter
Perfect opportunity. You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?
Harry Hill
Come on, she
Harry Hill
Well, I'm assuming that this is a sandy beach, so I'm s I thought maybe a a bucket and spade, because where's the fun of a sandy beach without the ability to make sand castles?
Presenter
And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first if you needed to?
Harry Hill
I'm gonna say Never Give Up on Love. It's the Steve song. It's just nice to hear his voice.
Presenter
Harry Hill, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. My pleasure.
Presenter
Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Harry. I'm not sure sleeping inside a cow is the way to go, but what do I know? We've cast away many comedians, including Dara O'Breen, Greg Davis, and Victoria Wood. Bruce Forsyth, Harry's comedy hero, is in our archive too. The studio manager for today's programme was Donald MacDonald, the assistant producer was Christine Perflofsky, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylance, the content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the scientist Professor Dame Carol Robinson. I do hope you'll join us.
Speaker 3
I'm Helena Frigg and I'm Daryl Breen and we are back for another series of curious cases.
Speaker 1
where we investigate the scientific mysteries sent in by you.
Presenter
Are crows capable of complex emotions? What happens to our brains when we fall in love? And I was wondering.
Harry Hill
Dragon. Uh
Presenter
I do.
Harry Hill
We lie.
Presenter
I
Harry Hill
I think that one might be aimed at you guys.
Speaker 3
Alright.
Speaker 1
How would you know? That's what a liar would say. We tackle the mysteries of the universe through audacious experiments and expert insight. Curious current.
Speaker 3
That's what a liar would say.
Speaker 1
Uh
Speaker 3
On radio.
Speaker 1
And available now on BBC Sounds.