Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedian, writer and TV host who turned from alcoholism and unemployment to stand-up comedy, known for his confessional style and opera fandom.
On the island
Eight records
And this woman, the Queen of the Night, comes on and does this aria. I don't think I even knew the word aria at the time. But she did things with the human voice which I couldn't believe were actually leaving another human being. And I realized that I'd listened to the whole thing with my mouth open. I mean, it completely blew me away.
Elvis Presley has kind of been my hero since as long as I can remember. I think my big brother Terry liked Elvis, and he gave me this album. ... I played it. I mean, I can't tell you how many times ... I just completely fell in love with it. I don't just know the words, I know every little grunt, I know every click of the symbol, you know, I listened to this so many times.
Well this was a song my dad used to sing a lot. And it's called The Volunteer Organist and it it tells a tale of something that happens in in a church on a Sunday morning. And this song is it's got some great turns of phrase in it. So I wrote I very much think of him singing this when I was a kid.
This is the England 1970 World Cup singing Back Home.
The first gig I ever went to was Johnny Cash. And this song, I used to play this song before I went on stage in the dressing room because I find it impossible to hear this song without feeling uplifted and happy. It's like taking some sort of drug. This is the happy pill that people speak of.
I am very much a a city boy. And what I love about craft work is they sort of celebrate cities and industrialization, and they sound like they're a machine. So I've completely fell for craft work and this is a song called Neon Lights which is about as close as they get to romance.
This number seven is uh the magnificent George Formby doing uh Why Don't Women Like Me? I have to say, I I like seeing myself as part of a British comedy tradition. I like to think that I'm walk in the same path as Chaplin and George Formby and people like that.
Rowche RumbleFavourite
Well, I am a man who is prone to obsessions and a few years ago I discovered a band called The Fall. And although I was, you know, late forties at the time, I was like a fifteen year old again. I bought all their records. I listened to them every day. I saw them on tour seven or eight times, and I've continued to do that. I wallow in The Fall.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:04How did that go? That was the first gig.
Now the first gig was horrendous. But you know, first kicks should be for a comedian, because uh you have to learn the terror of of dying on stage. And anyone who experiences that, basically you either get better or you get out. and I decided to try and get better.
Presenter asks
2:21Can you remember the first time you intentionally made somebody laugh?
I seem to remember um at school the teacher once she w she had to go out for some reason and she said, Can you entertain the class? and she put me at the front of the class and I did like about four or five minutes of funny stories. Looking back it feels destined, but I didn't work it out till I was thirty.
Presenter asks
5:55Why did you go back to touring [in 2007]?
It is hard work, but I think I I was starting to lose my mojo a little. I mean, with the T V things, I was I felt going through the motions a bit, and I felt that I needed to return to the source, as it were. I don't mean start drinking again, I mean source S O U R C E and go back to stand up comedy.
The keepsakes
The book
I'd like to teach myself French'cause it's been my uh New Year's resolution to learn French since 1986.
The luxury
I would love to have a ukulele on there because part of my George Formby fandom is that I started playing the ukulele.
Presenter asks
Did you lose money, though I read that?
Yes, I did. I was a victim of the credit crunch. ... Yes, I had I'd been persuaded by my uh personal bankers that AIG was a very, very safe place to put my life savings. And AIG, um, as you may remember, had a bit of a hard time. So there was a period when I I thought I'd lost it all.
Presenter asks
23:57What were you expelled [from school] for?
Well the latter said embezzling the school meal service. ... Well, I found out where they threw the dinner tickets, the used dinner tickets, and then I resold them. Much cheaper, can I point out. But it never occurred to me they had serial numbers on them, and that they would notice things like, you know, the money being down.
Presenter asks
26:05When did you decide you weren't going to accept [the drinking], that actually it's not going to go like this?
Well, I got uh a place at Birmingham Polytechnic doing English, and every day I went in and learnt new stuff, and it was amazing. I couldn't wait to get in, but the hangovers were getting worse. And um I then went and did a master's degree, but I got the flu and I couldn't drink and it's I went three days without a drink. It's the first time I'd been three days without a drink for about twelve years. And I thought, well, I'll see if I can keep this up. So there was no pledges, no big moment. Right. That's how it's carried on. I haven't had a drink since September the twenty-fourth, nineteen eighty-six.
“I replaced alcohol with comedy, which is um safer, I think.”
“I think that um after that I thought that the idea of dying of a broken heart is not quite as metaphorical as I thought it was. I think you can just not want to be around any more.”
“I only really get neurotic about my work, I think. I get very fretful that one day the bird of comedy will fly away from my shoulder and leave me alone and naked.”
“I went to see George Formby's grave, and I expected the the big epitaph, and it said George Formby in brackets, comedian, and I thought that is all I want on my grave. That would make me very, very happy.”