Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A comedian who rose from unknown stand-up, deep in debt, to one of the most successful in the business with awards, chart-topping DVDs and sell-out arena shows.
On the island
Eight records
If I like a song I will play it until I don't like it. I just play it back to back. Some people don't use the repeat button on an iPod. I do. I mean everything I like, it's repeat. And on this album I listened to this song over and over again when I was about 17 years old. It still reminds me of that time and I was 17 and had a lot of hope and optimism and just always made me feel fantastic.
This is a song that I had never heard until I was about maybe 20. And it came on the radio, and I just had this instant affinity with it. And during a conversation with my mother, I said, What I really like this song from the 1970s. Why? And she said, That's hilarious, because that's the song I played almost every day, because she's much like me and incredibly obsessive, when she was pregnant with me. So I had heard this song through my entire development in the womb. And then 20 years later, I just had this extraordinary reaction to it.
This is probably the best singer alive. And I wasn't very familiar with her until I heard this song, and it's not one of her more well-known ones, but it had a huge impact on me at the time. And it was at that time when I was at university, and my friend was in love with this girlfriend in the next room. And I was alone in the living room, and I couldn't even bother to make it back to my bedroom. I used to sleep on the sofa, and there was footage of Aretha Franklin singing this song, and she had so much passion and angst, and it just reflected exactly what I was feeling at the time. And I've loved it ever since.
This is my first favourite song. You only have fleeting memories from your childhood, and for some reason one of my memories is me vowing to one day cover this song. So that still hasn't happened, but should I ever get into the musical industry, this is the one I'll be singing.
My fantasizing sort of became started to become a reality when I wrote a a film script at university and it was funny. So I started to find my sort of comedy through writing. And that during that whole time I played Natkin Cole. And this was my favorite and reminds me very much of that time when I stopped going to my lectures at university and spent their night writing.
The most poignant Edinburgh Edinburgh Festival has been a massive part of my life. I went when my son was born, and I decided to go up on my own without my wife, without my son, and I was. It's so insanely focused that people were really worried about me because I was so panicked about having a child and being so much in debt. And it's called Miss You and it just refocused my mind on I miss my family and I'm here for a reason and it got my head right for me to to take my chance.
This is a song that was played endlessly on my honeymoon, and we just loved this song and all the love in it. And we loved the words, and obviously changed the words slightly to each other, but sung it a lot to each other. And it was such an intense time that just listening to it sends me back there.
Bewitched, Bothered and BewilderedFavourite
This is the song that was my first dance at my wedding. I would also like to say it was my only dance. I'm not a dancer. So we had our first dance. It's um, I think, very romantic. Kind of an awkward affair because we have no real I have no experience of dance. I don't have any moves. It was sort of like a hug. I'd call it more of a hug. A hug to music. We don't really dance. Maybe we should dance more. But anyway, this is the one we dance to.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:34Given the heights to which you've soared, I wonder if you ever look down and get a bit dizzy with it all?
Well, it is mind blowing. It genuinely is. The way things have gone, it has been amazing and a bit uncomfortable as well because I've just been busy working and creating this stuff and now I've sort of stopped for a bit. And until you actually go out and meet people and see what the results of that are… but I'm very happy with it.
Presenter asks
1:43Some wise person said that if you don't know who you are when fame hits you, fame will define you. Are you feeling pretty steady on both legs right now?
I think I am because it took me so long. You know, I was on the circuit for like ten years. I lived a lot of real life and had my family and my wife. So I appreciate it. I mean, I really do every day. I love it.
Presenter asks
3:29Did you think about chucking it in, getting a proper job and putting food on the table and paying the bills?
Whether we were married then or not, I don't remember, but I remember [my wife] saying, Seriously, do you want to carry on doing this? Are you cut out for this? Because it wasn't just the fact that I wasn't getting a break and I was in debt. I was struggling greatly with nerves, and the pressure was it got it was too much for me a lot of the time. When I knew that the press would come to see my show, for example, in Edinburgh, I would crumble.
The keepsakes
The book
Woody Allen
I became very obsessed with Woody Allen when I was a teenager and I I read this an awful lot. I love it and it makes me laugh.
The luxury
I was going to do something as boring as a pen, actually. I don't want paper. I've bought pads in the past to try and write jokes, but they're empty. I've just got endless empty pads. All my jokes end up on sort of little bits of newspaper or on my arm or, you know, on receipts. Loads of jokes on receipts. So I thought if I just take a pen, I'll just have like loads of leaves with jokes, maybe an entire tree if I was particularly creative that day. Obviously, my body will be covered. So I'll just take a pen, a lot of pens and no paper. I'll find places to write that just keep me occupied.
Presenter asks
6:14You once wrote, I've spent most of my life dreaming about success. What measure were you aiming for? Was it popularity? Was it money? Was it the girls? What was it?
It was definitely girls. I mean, massively, hugely. I was very unsuccessful with women. I was in the wilderness with girls all through my teens. I mean nothing, no nobody was interested on any level.
Presenter asks
27:03Why then did you decide to be a judge on Britain's Got Talent? That seems an unlikely decision, given how popular you were. You didn't need to do it. Why did you do it?
I really like those shows. There's only a few sort of juggernaut TV shows in this country. The peak of Britain's Got Talent when Susan Boyle was on it was nineteen million. The whole country stops to watch this show. And I was asked if I wanted to be part of that. I just thought, that's going to be so much fun. What else am I doing in January?
Presenter asks
28:01What about the envy that is heaped upon you? And I say envy and sometimes derision. There are people who are very rude about your comedy. Stewart Lee said that he felt you were spoon feeding your audience warm diarrhea.
I think it comes with the territory. I'm sure it does, actually. And of course, I can't say it's water for ducks back, and I'm so thick-skinned that I can just say that. I can say it now, because I'm getting used to it, but it did come as a shock at the beginning. I can't deny that. It was confusing, because when I you talk, you know, we talked about having a big break and everything going so well, but that came with, certainly at the beginning, amazing amount of hostility. Because I would never be rude about somebody else in my profession, because we're all doing the same thing. We're just trying to make people laugh, and I have my audience, other people have their audience. I'd go to the British Comedy Awards and quite a few people were making jokes at my expense and it just made me feel awful because my I'm there with my wife and she's gone out and bought a dress and it's my big night. And I won. And the overriding experience was that of nastiness. For what reason I don't know. And what I was doing is just making people laugh.
“When you're in debt, you never know the actual figure. People who are in debt don't tend to work it out.”
“I called so many times, you know, twenty odd miss calls. I mean, record breaking numbers of missed calls. And then I moved in, of course, near her. I got a flat on the next road to her.”
“Once a stalker gets access, they don't leave. The door opened. I've been standing outside that door for two years. The door opened, and uh we're still together.”
“A lot of my comedy came from being an outsider. And some of the things that happened in my childhood made me more of an outsider. And I think I've needed to be that because I'm the guy who's standing, you know, the audience are facing me, and I'm the guy on his own. I'm an outsider in my gigs, and I'm happy there. And I've created my life there, and it's been created there for me. And it's probably made me funnier. I hope.”
“Parenting is actually dealing with things on a day-to-day basis. You can have moments of clarity where you think, you know, I know I should be doing this and I plan on this. But actually, parenting is about trying to make sure that your child eats food that you make and doesn't eat glass off the floor. I mean, it's just things like that. I can have a few drinks and go, this is my plan. When it comes down to it, it's just like, don't interrupt me, I'm on the phone. That's more parenting.”
“I worry about the next thing, and I worry about things changing, and I worry about things ending. I have like catastrophic. I just you know, everything going wrong. And I do it too much, and I need her to set me right, and she does it has to do it so often that I think it it can be really hard for her to just recalibrate my mind to be happy and enjoy my life and stop worrying about everything.”