Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A successful British stand-up comedian known for sell-out tours, top-charting DVDs, and sharp observations on class and social conditioning.
On the island
Eight records
Help Me Make It Through the NightFavourite
it was always this album that got the party started.
this song always just reminds me of sort of getting in at 4 or 5 in the morning, chinking the last glass of wine, and we always put this album on.
hearing records like this made me realise I wasn't on my own either.
there was genuine hope in the room that it wasn't all going to fragment and fracture, that possibly the workers did have a future.
the one album I can remember hearing constantly was this album.
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:27When you are on stage and when you are letting it all go, does it feel like you are at your most free?
Yeah. Yes, yeah, I hate going back on small stages now. The bigger the stage, the better. I will fill it up. I will run and jump and skip and sing. I can feel the energy coming back to me. It's electric. I didn't realise how planned small comedy clubs, how hemmed in they were, you know, because sometimes the box you're standing on gets smaller and smaller. You couldn't lift a leg without kicking someone in the teeth in the front row. I mean, I don't ever want to get to the point where I come down on a swing, although it's all bets are off, you know.
Presenter asks
6:30Do you ask for your wife's permission before you include her in your routines?
Yeah, well I I sort of get permission from her and then she comes and sees it on the night and I drop most of the terrible stuff. No, I actually I write the show and then she comes to see it and she gives me a few notes afterwards saying, Have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about doing that? And which is often really good'cause she'll sometimes soften things up. and sort of say, you know when you talk about that, as a woman, it's probably nicer if you say it like this. And nine times out of ten she's right. Sometimes she's wrong.
Presenter asks
The book
Because I my first year at university I did a year of philosophy… It'll be a nice way for me to tie a lot of loose ends together.
In your routine you said 'my mum's on Valium, she doesn't know what day it is.' Was that artistic licence or a memory?
Yeah. That was probably a memory. I think, like so many women of that generation. tranquilizers were part of everyday life. You know, it wasn't uncommon for certainly East End women to to take half a valium on a on a stressful day.
Presenter asks
13:06Can you describe the attitude of your school and teachers towards the pupils in the East End when you were a schoolboy?
There was a real split in the school. We had younger, more idealistic teachers who kept saying to us, you are not factory fodder, you could be more. And yet there was a general belief that most of us weren't going to go on to do jobs, you know, beyond what we could do with our hands, make things, drive things, clean things. There was a sense in which, you know, we were very quickly going to be little grown-ups that you left school very early and you got a job, you got a girlfriend, you possibly got her pregnant, that would be it. And you would be possibly working at a job you might be happy now or not.
Presenter asks
18:27What was different about you that you didn't just keep your mouth shut and go along with bad work conditions?
Um I tried to keep myself in a position where I certainly didn't want to get married and have children and start buying houses'cause that's normally the beginning of you having to yes, sir, no, sir, three bags, full, sir. So that was the way I did it.
Presenter asks
28:39When and where do you feel most at home after crossing your class boundary?
I feel most at home with the people who have done the same journey as me really. When I went to university I met a really great group of people who were also mature students and we all had roughly the same story to tell. We all just get each other. We get that sometimes it's a bit awkward asking for Kwanoa or Kinwa. What are we doing here? If you leave your class, which one of them do you join?'Cause I don't want to join anybody's. But it's quite obvious I'm not solidly working class any more. There's no way in a million years I want to be recognised as middle class or upper middle class. Can you think of anything more horrific?
“I found the work really easy and probably that was the worst thing that could have happened because not only was everybody playing up in the classroom, but the bit of work that they gave me, I was like, so what you've you actually want me to read this and reproduce it or something or then you're going to take it away and I've got to answer five questions. Is this it? You know, school for me was just a nuisance.”
“I arrived there in the April of 81 and met some fantastic people, worked in the kitchen doing the dishes, doing a bit of this, a bit of that, but just had the summer of my life. This is what happens when you take a chance. You can sit around all day talking about what you're going to do, thinking about what you'd like to do. You've got to go and do it.”
“If you leave your class, which one of them do you join?'Cause I don't want to join anybody's. But it's quite obvious I'm not solidly working class any more. There's no way in a million years I want to be recognised as middle class or upper middle class. Can you think of anything more horrific?”
“probably say to him a version of you are going to be a worrier, son. It's who you are. So just find a way of dealing with it and it not being a burden. But there's really not that much to worry about.”