In “Yeah, Yeah,” Dylan Moran offers a comedic exploration of daily absurdities, the peculiarities of modern society, and the complex dance of human relationships, all with his characteristic blend of whimsy and cynicism. From the beginning, Moran muses on the overwhelming and often contradictory nature of existence, poking fun at everything from the relentless pace of news to the peculiarities of national identities and the ludicrousness of political discourse. With a keen eye for the absurd, he lampoons the societal obsession with news, celebrity culture, and the idiosyncrasies of various nations, including his take on the British class system and the peculiar world of dinner parties. Moran doesn’t shy away from controversial topics, navigating through the complexities of politics, religion, and personal identity with a mix of humor and poignancy. His observations on relationships—romantic, familial, and societal—are both bitingly funny and touchingly sincere, showcasing his ability to find universal truths in the minutiae of everyday life. Through his performance, Moran holds up a mirror to the audience, challenging us to laugh at our collective follies while quietly acknowledging the beauty and tragedy of the human condition.
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(GOOD MORNING BLUES PLAYING)
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
ANNOUNCER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Would you please welcome to the stage, Mr Dylan Moran!
Hello!
AUDIENCE: Hello!
Hello, thank you for coming. All right. It’s Friday night in London, and you all came. Thank you. Thank you. All of the other things you could have done. You could all have gone to a Nando’s. I’m very touched, thank you. So, I don’t know. I don’t. There’s too much. Isn’t there? And not enough at the same time. And it just carries on. I can’t, I can’t cope any more with days. There’s too many days. Days are a stupid length. You know, they’re just long enough to get regret and then you have to go and sleep. It’s that feeling of “Ah, I should have” and you go, “Argh.”
There’s too much of everything. There’s too much world, there’s too many people, there’s too much news. There’s far too much news, and it all happens too close together. How are you expected to keep up? With what the changes, I wanted to talk about what’s going on but I’d said enough, fuck it, just settle it. It won’t. It keeps becoming something else. And you know, even when the… You must find it hard to keep up with what’s going on. There was the… ‘Cause it is too close together. There was the royal wedding, for instance, which is kind of silly news, you know, celebrity news. And then a couple of days later, Osama bin Laden got killed. This is too close together. In real time, it’s hard enough to keep track. Imagine what’s it gonna be in 30 years’ time when you have lost your mind completely.
The name Osama bin Laden will come up and you’ll go “Yes, he was, he was a very wicked man, he was. But he did look stunning in that dress.”
Of course, his brother was the one everybody was talking about, you know, what an arse. So, it’s an incredible period of change. And, of course, a lot of the focus is actually here. In a great city. In London and other great cities. But you see it sort of close up. ‘Cause this is the power hub. Not just of the local area, the south bit, the whole country, and indeed, the British Isles. This is the most powerful place in this region. And so you are the decision makers. And you know that. And you’ve pretty much made up your mind about the rest of the country. You know what you think about Scotland, and Wales, and Ireland and the North. You think they’re all hilarious, and why would anybody live there? You laugh at the North, you think they’re all funny little short people who live in a big pie. Trying to sort out their relationship with the definite article. Throwing darts at their dinner. And you know… You laugh at Scotland. You think it’s full of drunken, violent, bestial people who are all mean and cold to the touch. I live in Scotland. It’s a beautiful place. Yeah. Scotland, the country where they fry the food five times to make sure it’s dead. The country that invented bacon-flavoured mouthwash. The country where everybody ends their stories with the same phrase. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to somebody who’s 15 or 85. They’ll tell you the same story, “So what did you do on Saturday?”
“Oh, it was really lovely, you know, we had a few friends around, “we had some lunch, it was really great. And we had a wee walk, had a look at the loch and all that. You know, the mist came down, it was gorgeous. And then, you know, couple of wee glasses of wine, very nice.”
“So, what happened then?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I was like that…”
And then… You long ago decided what you think of the Welsh. English people are always laughing at the noble Welsh people.
(MAN HOOTING)
Beautiful people. But you have decided they’re all maudlin, inbred trolls, liable to burst into song at any time. Because they’re so short-legged and smelly. That’s what you think, isn’t it? The Irish, you long ago dismissed as fearful, drunken, unpunctual, unreliable and very charming. Charming in the sense of being incapable of running a chip van. ‘Cause Ireland got messed up, you know, we’re not cool-headed people like you. Ireland got messed up. Fucked really, by money. ‘Cause people couldn’t cope with it, they’d never had money. People made soup and salad and risotto out of stones for hundreds of years. Imagine you doing that for hundreds of years, then one day their menu changes.
And it goes, “Stones, stones, stones, cocaine! That’s what you’re having.”
So, people lost it. They’re on the street going, “I’ll buy your jacket if you buy my trousers.” Now they have nothing. Far too emotional to deal with money. Not easy, you were people who had an empire. Three-cornered hats and long scrolls and everybody walking around saying, “Export more marmalade and import more cats, where are we invading now?” You’re still doing that. You’re still bombing countries that have nothing. You have everything. Decent towel rails, nipple rings. Probably whole shelves of them. And Nando’s or whatever. And you’re bombing countries that have sand? That’s all they have. Really. There’s two kinds of people, and two kinds of nations in the world. You know, there’s… You got your people like you, cool-headed people. I would call you beckers. You keep everything inside. You beck it. And then the shakers. Arabs, Mediterranean people, Irish people. People who have to get things out. You know? You keep it in. Look how quickly the revolution happened in the Arab nations. Overnight, the touch paper was lit, (POPPING) it all went off. How long would it take for a revolution to happen in this country? How many times would you have to be fucked sideways by the banks for that to happen? Ten thousand years of people wandering round rattling their newspapers going… “I mean really!”
Another 40,000 years of people settling their tea cups a little heavily saying, “I’m just, you know… I… “I don’t know.”
And they… A hundred thousand years before somebody stands up and says, “This is actually getting on my wick.” Now, you… I’m not gonna be talking about politics for too long because it’s so depressing, the people involved are depressing. And you know what you think anyway. You don’t need me to argue with you about that. You know where you are on the spectrum and you know what you think of the figures. Some people don’t like Mr Cameron. Mr Cameron and his cube of air. He doesn’t seem to know where to put that thing down. Anyway… He can’t find a place for it. I think the reason he can’t get rid of it is because it contains the essence of the Big Society, and nobody wants that shit. Some people don’t like Mr Clegg, the token human being in a glass box who’s not allowed to touch anything. “Hey, Nick. What’s up?” “I like music.” “Thanks, Nick.”
And then… Some people don’t care for the ferocious opposition. (GROWLING) What a wolverine Ed Miliband is. He’s been trying to clear not just a fur ball but an entire cat from his throat for a whole year. (CLEARING THROAT) But you know what you think. I mean, you know where you are on the spectrum. You’re left or you’re right, really. That’s it. You know, and if you’re left wing, you’re boring. That’s the truth. Nobody wants to hang around with you. You’re very dull, you’re the voice of conscience. You know, the one saying, “Now look, put it down. “We should all be nice to one another. “Let’s try and not eat everything today. Okay?” Very dull voice. The right wing? Cruel, yes. Vicious, certainly. But honest. Not a sophisticated philosophy, it just says, ‘What is this? Do we fuck it or eat it? “Let’s try half and half.” (GROWLING) Now, you might be liberal. You could be. I forgot. You could be, you could be one of those thoughtful, troublesome people. People who say, ‘Well, things are actually a little bit like this “and a little bit like that. “So, let’s do whatever you say.” If you’re liberal, you have no purpose. You are the thing in your kitchen you never use. Something you bought once when you were out at a market, feeling frisky. You bought this thing. You came home. You put it in a drawer. Twice a year you take it out and you go, ‘What the fuck is this thing anyway? “What’re you supposed to do with this?” And the person you live with tells you it does nothing. “It goes up to eggs and it squeezes them, then it leaves them alone. “Why did you buy the fucking thing?” You might even be a little green person.
(IN HIGH-PITCHED VOICE) The little green people. People who say, “Mind the planet. Be nice to the monkey and the fishes. Let’s make our own clothes out of body fluids.”
Now, these people, everything they say is pretty much correct about the planet and the environment and so on but nobody listens to them anyway. They are the vegan at the dinner table of life. People who come to your house and say, “I’m hungry.”
And you go, “I’ll try and feed them.” And they say, “I’m vegan.”
And you go, “Fucker. Here’s a torch, go into the garden and see what you can find, okay? Leave me alone.”
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
They tell you, “You can get everything you need from pulses and lentils “and things like that.” Yeah, everything you need except company, which is not to be had because you are dying, bent double in a miasma of your own toxic farts. So… So you know where you are. And people, look at all the systems that failed, the Westminster, the expenses, the church in Ireland collapsed and the banks… Banks didn’t really collapse here ’cause the government said, “Oh, we’ll deal with all that.” And they went up to the banks and they went, “Oh, you guys. You’re just like when you were in college. Close the hospital.”
And they… And now the media… It’s falling apart and… When you got that pace of change, you feel old. “I can’t help that. I feel old.”
Now, if you’re 20 or 25, you’re probably not that aware anyway. It doesn’t really matter what government you live under. If you’re a young man, you know you live in a sexual tyranny anyway and your penis is Kim Jong. Sex decides everything. You can have a car crash. You lie in the ditch thinking, ‘What is the erotic twist in the situation?
“I can’t quite seem to see it yet.”
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m at that age. Which is, I don’t know what the number is but it’s roughly the age in a man’s life when he walks into his own kitchen and his wife looks up to him and begins to tell him stories. I don’t know why, really, about other women she knows who are married to other men roughly his age, who suddenly died doing something remarkably similar to whatever you happen to be doing at the time. Wandering around complaining there isn’t enough cheese in the house. It’s the age you when you get the idea, you somehow get the idea that you suddenly deserve respect from younger people who don’t even know you’re there to decide whether they can respect you or not. They don’t know you’re there ’cause they’re too busy with machines. Logged on to machines, computers and phones and so on. People don’t know how to be alone any more or in company. ‘Cause when they’re alone, they fuck about with the computer and when they’re talking to you, they’ve got a phone. And they muck around with that.
You know, I said to him, “‘What are you doing?”
“I’m downloading the picture of a squid.”
Why? Or they talk and they’re fiddling with their phone. “What’re you doing? What is it?”
“It’s an app.”
“Well, what does it do? What does it do? What’s so great about it that it justifies interrupting our conversation?”
“It measures sand from a distance.”
“What’s wrong with you? What does that one do?”
“It tells you the burning point of celery.”
“You’re fucked up, you know that?”
They’re everywhere. We’re living in a machine culture. There are machines in the supermarket. Robots. They blip, blip. This is de-humanising! I miss the conversations.
I enjoyed standing there, talking to the lady or the man saying, “No, I don’t want a bag. No, I don’t have a loyalty card. Do I look like a fucking cretin? I’m sorry the biscuits are open. I like to eat while I shop. It helps me focus. Give me the things.”
With a tin blip. You can’t put a machine that goes blip in a grocery shop. You know, you need to talk to people. This country is made up of ethnicities. Of Irish people and Pakistani people and Bengali people and Italian people, people from the Caribbean, people from Africa, people from everywhere. These cultures talk. You know? If you’re going to put robots in supermarkets, at least give them an identity.
Put Irish robots in there so they don’t just go blip, they go, “Ah, that’s a fierce lot of mangoes, what’re you gonna do with them now?”
Put Italian robots in there that go, (IN ITALIAN ACCENT) “Well, I make you a deal on the beans. You take off your top and talk to me. We work things out. What do you say? Come on here.”
French robots. (IN FRENCH ACCENT) “You think I’m smaller than the other robots, do you? “Do you? Well, I’m not, you know. I’m not. I am a king!” German robots.
(IN GERMAN ACCENT) “Have you actually got the actual money on your person? “Can I see it please? Are you sure you can pay for this?” Irish people have a very strange relationship with Germany at the moment. Lot of respect and fear. And…”Please, please feed us.” No, you don’t give a shit. You’re not bailing anybody out, are you? You’re not going to help the Greeks. ‘Cause this is the English mind. You don’t fucking… You’ve made up your mind about the whole world. You look at the Greeks and you go, “I’m not helping you. You’re just a slightly soiled, shop-worn Spaniard. Go away.”
You know, because this place was an empire. You have to remember. Rule Britannia. Remember all that? Britain, you know, did rule the waves before it became a permanently moored prison boat full of the disaffected. (STUTTERING) It was quite inflated ’cause you were an empire, you were very powerful before you became an eleventh-rate nation that everybody in the world laughs at.
And then there was the era of Cool Britannia. Remember that? You know, when Tony Blair was around and those cool British bands, a lot of Manchester bands. They all had that very distinctive walk. You’d see the Manchester roll, their walk was a very interesting walk. It was this kind of… I was looking at their walk and they all did this. I was like, what is that walk saying? And I realised it’s the walk of somebody who’s just got out of prison and they’ve been acquitted but they know they’re guilty. This was in the era of Blairism. You know? You remember that philosophy? The belief system that held that if you smiled hard enough into the face of God, you would eventually shit money. So…
One of the things that’s very striking about Britain is the class system. And class is back. People are talking about class again. Using these playground words. Chavs and toffs. I found that very weird ’cause I wasn’t aware of a class system growing up in Ireland. There didn’t seem to be a class system. Not that I knew about anyway. There just seemed to be everybody and then there was four people over there who had big houses but you didn’t know them. It seems to me British people like the class system. You like to have little boxes to put people in. You know? You like to have aristocrats, people with four sets of teeth. Nobody understands what they’re saying. They live in big, draughty houses that smell of wet spaniel. And they have all the fun with their surnames ’cause they’re called things like Mr Tresorius-Bletchly-Sarasingle-Pukington and so on. And there’s the upper-middle class who actually have all the money. And they have all the fun with their first names ’cause the child is christened or baptised but it’s never called by that name afterwards. It’s always known by a nickname. Johnty, Ning, Nong, Biff, Squiff, Titface, whatever is it, go on.
“Come on, we’re going skiing again for no reason.”
Why would anybody want to go skiing? You could sit in the comfort of your own kitchen and break your knees with a hammer. What is the human impulse? What’s wrong with these people? I think it’s because they’re so closeted, their lives are so comfortable, they actually seek out danger as a pastime. If you’re poor, you don’t go and look for danger ’cause you’re surrounded by it. Your accommodation is dangerous, your neighbours are dangerous. Your own family are pretty handy. You probably have a couple of moves yourself. Your dinner can fucking kill you anyway so you don’t have to go and look for danger. I mean, probably, the key to the English mind is The Archers, the radio programme. Now, it’s not a programme I’m hugely familiar with because every time the theme music comes on, I leap across the kitchen with an athleticism I don’t actually possess in search of the “Fuck off” button on the radio.
I’ve caught a few phrases over the years and I gather it’s about some people who are very, very worried about getting the crisps to the fete on time. No wonder everybody’s hooked. Is it just me or is it hot in here? It is, isn’t it? Ah! It’s always hot in the south. I mean, you people, you live in a permanent kind of Hawaiian buffet anyway, don’t you? Most of you are in a steel band. That’s another thing you laugh at in the North. You laugh at the woman who goes out dressed on a Friday or Saturday night, in string. You think that’s all very funny. And you know what? There’s a very good reason for that. It’s because that Northern woman in Newcastle or Leeds or wherever has had to get through the winter and the dark, a thing you know nothing about. I’ve seen pictures of the winter down here. I know that’s not snow. It’s just an over production of cream cheese you left outside. You people don’t know about suffering. She goes out dressed like that ’cause of the winter and what it does to you. The first 14 months of the winter are okay. Then you get a bit fucking edgy. That’s why she goes and buys an outfit that costs more than the rest of her wardrobe even though it only weighs a tenth of an ounce, is the colour of nuclear fusion and just about covers the entry points to her body. She’s giving a message with this piece of clothing.
She’s saying, “Fuck off. Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you. I’m going out. I don’t want to talk to you unless you’re a taxi or a doorman or somebody disguised as a Bacardi Breezer. Leave me alone.”
A perfectly sane reaction. The dark creates all kinds of things. The dark creates music, particular kinds of music. Horrible folk music you don’t want to listen to. And heavy metal which they love in dark places. They love it in Scandinavia. They have all these metal bands, you know? And they’re not like the English ones or American ones that have names like Metallica and Megadeth and so on. The names are… ‘Cause English isn’t their first language in Scandinavia even though they all speak it. So they call their bands things like Anus Hammer. Egg Smuggler, all that stuff. It’s a very interesting look, heavy metal, you know. You have everything down here. You’ve got jazz and ska and everything, you know. Whatever, folk music, too, probably. Folk music has its own look. It has a…
You know, people wear dungarees ’cause they say, “I’m a man or a woman of the people. This isn’t my main thing, you know. I’m just like you really. My main job is harvesting turnips. Anyway, this next number is called Cross-eyed Mary of the Lowlands. I’d like to dedicate it to my wife.”
And then there’s jazz, you know, where you get people in suits but they’re non-conformist suits ’cause they’re wearing a pink shirt with a green jacket and a blue tie and trousers too complex to describe. ‘Cause they’re saying, “Yes, I’m wearing a suit but I work for me. “And my job is to play the electrified tractor horn till 5:00 in the morning, so fuck you.” Heavy metal is a very interesting look. The look is a kind of an argument. It’s an argument against Darwinism. Because what the people who are involved are saying, is that attraction is not necessary for reproduction. That’s why they shave all the hair off where it would naturally be and cultivate it in places it shouldn’t be. And that’s why the music is so angry. You know, if you shave all the hair off your arse and get into a pair of leather trousers, you’re gonna sing an angry song. It’s not gonna be some wistful ballad about that crazy summer in Paris with Justine.
It’s going to be much more, “Death in the morning, death for breakfast. Little pots of toasted death.”
Heavy metal is what happens when a group of people with competitively disgusting appearances come together to try to kill air. No, partly… Partly, that is probably age speaking. I just can’t tolerate certain things, you know. It’s easy if you’re 20 or 25 to put up with that shit. But then again, so much is easy when you’re 20 or 25. You know, you wake up, you sit down, you eat breakfast, you walk outside, you talk bollocks all day long, you find somebody, go to bed with them. That’s a Wednesday. If you’ve been on the planet for a certain period of time, it gets much harder, you know? ‘Cause you sit down, you look at your breakfast and voices kick in. ‘Cause you’ve acquired voices just by being alive. So part of you is going, “You don’t deserve breakfast, you fat fuck. “You had breakfast yesterday. Are you really gonna sit there and slobber over this shit again before you bumble off? To pretend to be a person all day long, you fucking thing. You disgust me.”
You’re in the middle of it, thinking, “Leave me alone, I just wanna eat my breakfast.”
And the other voice kicks in going, “More jam. More jam! You deserve more jam than these other fuckers. Put it in your pocket. Run off and eat it in the toilet. They won’t see you in there. Go on!”
This is age. And strange things happen that no one warns you about. Like, you know, your dreams become more boring. Nobody told me about that. You’re 20 or 25, you dream whatever you want. You dream that you are a swan made of honey burping little Barry Manilows who are all stabbing each other in the calf with compasses.
When you get older, you have a five-hour dream about being stuck in aisle two of Tesco’s going, “Where’s the yogurts? The yogurts was here yesterday. Where is the yogurts?”
What’s that about? That’s if you sleep. Who can sleep? Who sleeps? Really, if you’re a proper gown-up person in the 21st century and you’re an adult human being, how can you relax at all? The mind keeps churning. You think, “What if this thing happens? Um-hmm? What if that thing happens? What if they happen together? What if I lose my job? I hate my fucking job, but what if I lose it?”
Your mind is a hive of worms and worms don’t live in a hive so it already feels unnatural. You lie in bed, you’re beside your partner. This thing, that thing.
“What if I died?”
If you don’t have a partner, you just think, “What if I died? Okay, I would be dead.”
But if you do have a partner, and a family, then “What if I died? How would they cope? How would they? They wouldn’t. They would be out on the street in half an hour stealing food from seagulls’ mouths.”
Or worse, they would cope! They’d have a much nicer, cleaner house. And an improved sense of self-worth. Probably more money.
And inevitably, your partner would find somebody within the first three to four days and begin a tumultuous sexual relationship. They would be having sex a lot in your bed when you were dead. The morning, the afternoon, the evening and the nighttime would be the main times they would be having sex in your bed when you were dead. Feeding each other lobster with their bare hands to give each other more energy to try it in new and more demanding ways. When your realise you are lying besides somebody who is waiting for you to die! And what’s more, they’re sleeping to make the time go faster.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
You are the last…
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
(MAN WHISTLING)
You are the last sensitive, caring person on earth. And don’t fucking whifle… Whiffle? Woof. Don’t wolf whistle me. It’s disconcerting at my age.
(MAN WHISTLING)
Okay, You’re probably a young person, it’s fine if you do that. You hear that. You turn around, might be somebody attractive at the other end. If it happens to you at my age, you look round and there stands Death. So, don’t fucking wolfwhistle at me!
Listen… What’s… I’m losing my thread now. I never had one, but I lost it anyway, you know, I… Mmm… Uh, you know… I’m sorry, I need to… I was holding something. And then, this… Um… Uh… Exercise does not have to be a big deal. A lot of people use that as a kind of social competition. They boast, “Oh, yeah, I’m just going to the gym.” Or “Oh, yeah, I just had a swim.” Fuck you! That is showing off! It’s… You can work some simple knee bends in though, pretty much anywhere. You know, it doesn’t have to be a big deal. I’m not doing this as a thing. I’m just… Because, the thing is… You can do it at… You can do it while you’re being fired. You can do it anywhere.
“What’s that, Tim? No pension? Oh, yeah, okay. Fuck you!”
I might be unemployed, but I’m supple. So… Yeah, it’s so hard to relax, is what I’m saying. And there… People, people go funny in middle age, you know? Men go funny. They get into things. You know, they get a hobby.
Say, “Yeah, I’ve always been interested in wood. I just didn’t want to say anything until now. I need to go and be with my big lump of wood.”
They get a silly car. You know, a bright-coloured car that nobody else can fit inside so they can pretend they can drive around in their own penis. And, my thing… What happened to me was I got… I had this period of being addicted to action films. Thrillers, modern thrillers. Really stupid ones. You know, the stupider the better. Not the old-fashioned kind of James Bond one where he is in a car, you know? And he’s got a sharp suit and a lady in a frock is there and he clicks a pen and people’s feet fall off and all that stuff. Not those. This is the modern one where you don’t know what’s going on, and neither does the hero. That’s the important thing. Everybody has amnesia in the film. And it begins with him running across the desert, picking numbers out of snakes that have been nailed to cactuses. ‘Cause that’s somehow going to explain who he is and what he’s supposed to do. And then suddenly he’s on a boat and he kills 19 people with his insoles. And then, you know, he finds out he can speak a dozen languages and he’s an amazing pastry chef. He can control condiments by thinking about them. And… Rubbish, in other words. Even better if it’s got Jason Statham in it.
(AUDIENCE HOOTING)
Those films are unimprovably stupid because they begin with him being thrown out of an airplane. He’s got one wire attached from his heart going to his arse, another one going from his brain to his bollocks. And if he pulls the wrong wire, he swallows his eyes and vomits his liver. They are fabulous! Exercises in homicidal manliness. And… Because that’s what is happening to you. You’re becoming a blob, so you outsource your masculinity. You watch Jason do all that stuff.
“Go on, Jason! Break his other collarbone! I got a parking ticket this morning.”
You see, he’s such a man! Even his lunch sweats! He… Most men are what? Nerveless bags of glands. You know, people who… Jason makes decisions! Men, most men, me, most men get pole-axed by indecision, just walking into Pret a Manger… Not Jason! He pulls the whole fucking circuit board out! That’s how much of a man he is, you see? Most men are ambiguous creatures. You can imagine another life for yourself. You could have become a library glue wholesaler in Worthing. You might have been a bicycle customiser in the Isle ofWight. You might have been somebody who repaired lighthouses in Cornwall. And fallen in love with the local fruit seller in midlife, realized you were gay, and he has been nursing a crush on you for all these years ’cause you’d been going in and out of there buying yams. And then you move to Andalusia and open your own small B&B with an incredible range of sherries. It could happen, you know? But not to Jason! Jason could never make love with another man. Never! Not unless that man contained information that could only be released through the enzymes in Spam. You see what I’m saying? I can remember when homosexuality was still an issue.
And it still is to a degree because the Anglican church is saying, “Yes, you can have gay bishops but they have to be celibate.”
Which kind of defies the point of having a gay bishop, doesn’t it? What’s the point of being a gay bishop unless you can say, “Nice to be here. This is my friend Geoff.”
You know… And the truth is that straight culture has a lot to learn from gay people. Now, I’m talking about men. I’m not talking about women. That’s just jolly japes. And the…
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
We’d all do that ifwe were girls. That is the mainstream view. But there is a lot of honesty in that culture that we don’t have. As, as… We, I say we, I mean me, obviously, and other straight people. Because, you know, I saw an ad in a magazine, in America. It was men looking for men. And I was very… I didn’t understand all of it, but I was very impressed by the honesty. Because it said, “Brown/green”.
Okay?
“Hairy and versatile.”
Which is good. There is no point being hairy unless you can turn a few tricks.
“Mainly top, mainly. But will do most things.”
And people say romance is dead. But my favourite ad on the page just said, “Anything! I will do anything!”
Now, that is a wonderful position to be in. To know you can walk up to somebody’s house, and say, “Here is the box of cottage cheese, here is my saxophone, where is that kitten? ‘Cause when we pack this baby and you hit a high C, that cat has to go over the roof. Otherwise, we don’t get to eat my shoes.”
There is a wonderful directness about that. It would be much better for straight people instead of all this “GSOH, I love country walks” nonsense.
Just give it to people and say, “Come around, sit on my head and insult my furniture. Then we’ll talk!”
Homosexuality, of course, is not a big deal anymore. I remember when it was. You know, it’s been adopted into the mainstream, very much so. It’s at the heart of the mainstream, which is… Can only be a good thing. I mean the mainstream… You have to work hard to be left out of the mainstream now. ‘Cause it adopts a lot people. You know, you live in London. You see everybody. Who are you? Ernesto, the sculptor from Chile with the built-up shoe and a stutter. Come on in! What’s your name? Quinn, with no upper teeth. You’re a performance artist. You make your own cheese, sometimes on purpose. Welcome! I… You know, with sexual orientation, if you were a man, some people have a sexual crisis in their 30s. How would you not know if you were gay as a man if you’re in your 30s? It’s very simple. If you get to your 30s and you still take a small size in trousers, you’re a gay person. All straight men are covered in excess fat. All of them! Because they are pregnant with unused desire and resentment. That’s why you see them hanging around barbeques, eating hamburgers they don’t need. Saying, “She won’t make love to me anymore.”
(MIMICKING EATING) “Maybe it’s ’cause you’re depressing and overweight?”
“Shut up! You hate me as well! Everybody hates me!”
“There is a butterfly. Grill it!”
And then… Men express themselves through grilling. And the… We should stop talking for a bit. Because I have to… You’re rubbish at talking. I have to keep doing it. So, go away and have a bath or something. Or give each other some squash. And I’ll see you shortly. Thank you very much. Bye.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
(MAN CHEERING)
(MAN WHISTLING)
(AUDIENCE CHEERING) Okay, so what did you do in the interval? MAN 1: Drink. MAN 2: Drink. Drinking, drink, yes, you see. Yeah, I know. Yes, yes. Drinking, mainly, is what you were doing. You know, that’s a little disappointing. I made out. That’s what I did. I can’t help it. That’s what I do, you know? All the time. I have to make out or I’ll die. I’m like a shark in a beret. I… You know the thing is… I’m… The truth is, look, I’m talking to you, you know, we’re trying to relate to one another. But the truth is, I’m not like you. I’m not like you bourgeoisie. Sitting there in your clothes. You probably all live in houses or roofed structures. That’s a sign of a sell-out. I live on the edge! I’m a very edgy person. I walk sideways. I don’t have nipples, it’s more aerodynamic. I sneak up on myself and accuse myself of things. Later on tonight, when you all are at home, in bed, in your flannels, talking about how great I am, I’m gonna go out and do what I do every time I hit a new town, I’m gonna go out and buy up all the ham I can find. And leave it in a lift. I think you know what I’m saying with that. ‘Cause the thing about modern art is, how do you know if it’s any good? You get a representative piece of modern art, say, a skull, with some Findus Crispy Pancakes stuffed into the eye sockets. How do you know if you should like it or not? It’s all about the title. If it’s called something pretentious like The Death of Love that’s… It’s bad art. If it’s called something honest like Skull with Pancakes, that’s bang on. That’s perfect!
All men like to think they’re cool. Oh, what’s that? Is that cake? It’s a cake, it’s a cake, it’s a cake! (LAUGHING EVILLY) Mmm-hmm… Mmm. This is good cake. Mmm. The only disadvantage, the only drawback to this, and it is nitpicking to mention this… Mmm! Is that this stuff is great when you are a kid. You know, you just… Mmm, it’s very good. Instantly, you eat this as a child and you just convert it into extra miles to run. When you’ve been around a while, you eat this, and you instantly convert it into extra pallbearers. Mmm, this is very good cake. Ah-ho. Thank you very much, whoever is responsible. Thank you. Good call. The um…
What were we talking about? I don’t know. Oh, yeah, stuff. That was it. And um… So, you know, I like to think I’m cool. All men do. All men tell themselves they’re cool. You have to tell yourself this bullshit, just to keep going. You know? I essentially think I’m what James Dean would have become if he’d survived and discovered carbohydrates and orthopedic shoes. That’s what I tell myself. I suppose that’s why I was watching those films, you know? And the thing is, I worked out why I got addicted to them. Because when the bloke is running around and everyone’s trying to kill him and he doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s a perfect metaphor for middle age. That’s exactly how it feels when you’re walking around your own kitchen, clutching a bunch of keys that you’re looking for.
Your whole family hates you.
They are shouting at you, “What the fuck are you doing now?”
“Shut up! I’ve nearly cracked the code. Wait a minute.”
You forget things. You forget things. Names, your address, all that stuff. The compensation is you remember things. They come out of the blue because you have a past. I remember things. I remember… Some of them are not so useful. I remember avocado stones with three matchsticks in the sides in a shot glass, by the kitchen sink. That’s the thing you would do. You would get a stone of an avocado and prop it up on the sticks and put it in a shot glass. Because then after you leave it there and after a couple of days, you have… nothing. It’s an avocado stone in a glass.
“What the fuck is wrong with me? I should get on with my life.”
And you’d throw it out and, you know, do something useful. Um…
Well, you see, you know, that’s… I remember other things… I remember conversations. I remember people used to have them. Sentences, people would talk in them. People would say things like, “Oh, I was very worried about seeing him but when I got there, he was quick to reassure me and we actually had a lovely evening.”
That’s 10 years ago, roughly. Not 100. Now people just go, “I was like, ugh! And he was, duh!”
That’s it. There’s no time for anything else.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Eventually people won’t use words at all. They’ll just stick out their tongues and there’ll be little icons like you have on the phone. Smiley face going…
And I suppose the notion of respect. I mean, that sounds like such an old fashion word even to say it, doesn’t it? But you do, you imagine you’ll get respect from younger people. And even from your own children you imagine you would get respect. You don’t.
I have a beautiful 13-year-old daughter. Wonderful, intelligent person. I mean, any parent would say that. And… It’s just true in this case. I mean, it’s not, not like other people’s children.
You know, people talk to you about their children and you go, “Ha ha, I’ve met your children… They are like a documentary from the ’50s. They are very dull people.” And the um… Anyway, I said to her, “There is an exhibition on in town.” I said, “Would you like me to take you?” And she said, “Oh, do we have to?” I said, “No, of course not. I’m just saying if you want to go, I will take you. You might like it or it might be useful to you in some way.” And she thought about it for a moment and then she said, “Well, I don’t mind if we don’t go. But if we do go, I don’t care.” I had to go and lie down.
I have a nine-year-old son. Every man imagines he is going to get respect from his own son. It’s a thing you have to have.
I see him, I light up, I say, “Hey! What happened to you today? How did you get on at school? Did you play outside? What happened?”
He doesn’t even speak to me! He just walks up to me, grabs the bottom of my stomach and goes, “Blib-blib-blib.” And walks away! Walks away to play Angry Pigeons or whatever the fuck it is.
I can’t help what’s happening to my body! And… It’s a gift as far as I’m concerned. It makes you more empathetic with women. ‘Cause you become more like them.
(AUDIENCE DISSENTING)
Don’t talk to me about being a woman. I know a lot more about that than you! Just because you’re a girl. Don’t talk about the thing I have to put up with in my new state. And I am not putting up with the names for the body parts that are used. That women have had to endure for a long time. It is deeply insulting. I will not be objectified like this. I am not tolerating the word moobs! They are not moobs! They are mests! And they are badges of wisdom.
Oh, don’t get feminist on me! Look, I’m not a feminist ’cause I’m a man, I’m not qualified. You know, I can’t be a feminist. Just like most women. If women were serious about feminism, they would have everything that feminists talked about getting. Equal pay, you could have that tomorrow. If women would give up bitching about one another for five minutes. Which doesn’t seem to be possible.
(AUDIENCE WHISTLING)
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Not for four, not for three, not for two, not for one. You know that amazing woman, Aung San Suu Kyi the Burmese dissident leader. She was doing the Reith Lecture, it had to be smuggled out of Burma. An amazing figure, very courageous and serene and visionary person. I was talking about her to a woman friend of mine and she said, “Yeah, but…”
“What? Yeah, but what?”
“Well, you know, her calves are kind of chunky.”
That’s the fucking problem! I guess women do get dumped with childcare all the time. Even if they have powerful jobs. It doesn’t matter. A woman might be a heart surgeon, she still has to go, “Clamp, sponge. Don’t play with that.”
Because… Men, they just make excuses!
Say, “Aw, I can’t, I have to… ‘Cause the… You wouldn’t understand. It’s about numbers and stuff.”
And they… Or “I’m just too tired. I’m not doing it. I’m knackered from standing around generating my own saliva. Leave me alone! I’m not doing it.”
Anyway, I don’t know how we started talking about that. It was ’cause you had issues. And now we fixed all that. And the… So, yes, I suppose men and women and you know, things… I don’t know what to talk about. Let’s talk about things comedians talk about. I don’t know… What… Cats and dogs. The difference between cats and dogs, okay? You know, you’ve got cats, and then dogs and they are not… It’s different. They are different. But even with that stuff you can’t get away from politics, can you? I mean you look at a dog. A dog is… Dogs are left wing. They all lick their own balls. Look at them. They… A cat does as well but reluctantly. They are clearly right wing. They do it, but just before they do it, they look at you as if to say, “Are you busy?” You…
What does anyone think or believe any more? Belief itself is treated with disgust. Belief is now regarded as a kind of fat marbling the brain. Who here believes in organised religion?
MAN: No!
(FEW AUDIENCE MEMBERS CLAP)
Who doesn’t?
(AUDIENCE CHEERING LOUDLY)
You see? People in the West don’t believe in anything! And we’re proud of it!
“What do you believe in?”
“Nothing! Nothing!” “What did you have for lunch? I don’t fucking believe you!”
We don’t believe in anything. We treat religion with contempt. Faith. All that rubbish. What are you, a child? Believing in this, you do good and then you know, you die and then you get a biscuit! What are you, a fucking idiot? What’s wrong with you?
We don’t believe in anything! Because we know about science! Believe in science! That’s the only thing we know about! The atoms and quarks and things. We don’t understand it! Any of it! But… But that’s the case. So, that’s totally different to having a faith! Isn’t it? You know, they’ve mapped out 5% of the universe? 5%! I mean in any other job description that would be pretty poor, wouldn’t it? “Have you built that wall in my garden?”
“Oh, I’ve done 5%.”
“You can fuck off!”
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
The… I don’t believe in God! Of course I don’t. Or religion. I go along with science like everybody else. But I don’t understand any of it. So I have to rely on television programmes to explain it to me. You know, things like Brian Cox, Dr Good-looking. A lot of women became very interested in the universe recently, I noticed. People will be talking and they’ll go, “Shut up! The Universe is on! Shut the fuck up! It’s the Universe! Very important. You need to know this stuff.” ‘Cause he would come on and go, (MOCKING BRIAN COX IN FALSETTO) “Hello, um… He’s from one of those places. Look! Look at the nebula! Look, isn’t it beautiful? It’s made up of millions and millions of years of things you don’t understand. The white light comes out of the dark matter and goes into the green lounge area. It’s beautiful!” And all the women who are watching this are going, “It is, yeah, it’s lovely! Walk around some more, pretty boy. Go on! Go back up the mountain,” I like that bit. “Why can’t you be back-lit like him?”
And he talks in metaphors, which is no use to you if you don’t understand the thing in the first place! (MOCKING BRIAN COX) “Imagine you’re head is frozen sodium phapibibate. And your feet are planets. When you sit down, you are going to see a lot of moons in your armpits!” What the fuck are you talking about now?
Anybody who has totally given up on the idea of God and the Devil, has never been properly kissed or flown on Ryanair with a hangover.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
You can have God, but you go to leave the Devil to explain a few things.
So. Anyway, back to pleasure. The… You see, pleasure is difficult, isn’t it? There was a young woman outside Heathrow. A couple of… A while ago I was there. And she was on her mobile phone. And she would’ve been called a chav. I don’t use the word myself. I don’t like it very much but that’s what she would’ve been called. And… She was a very big young woman, she was fat. And… Uh… Get on the spoon. She… I mean fat in a way that people used not to be, you know? You need to be of a certain age to know what I’m talking about. Time was, people would be a bit fat. But they’d run around, skip a few dinners, and they’d go back to the normal shape. Not this young woman. This was third generation, shit food fat. The fat wasn’t going anywhere without dynamite. She looked like a sort of AGM of spheres. And… She was talking into her mobile phone and she was saying, “I mean, I have never ever been so drunk in my life. “Tom kept getting me blackberry smoothies or something. “I had like nine pints of cider. I didn’t know where I was. “I woke up this morning and it’s taken me two goes of food.” What’s a go of food? Is that when you take a run at it? “I had a McDonald’s for breakfast. I’ve just had a Burger King for dinner. “Up until two minutes ago, I was fucked.” Now, I totally related to this young woman. I did. We’re all trying to control the chariot of our appetites, at all times. Oh, she didn’t care, I think, of what people would’ve described her as. She was herself. And her voice stuck in my head because at the other end of that flight, the last person I’d spoken to was a very pretentious person. Who would’ve been called a toff, I guess. One of those English voices full of birds. She was an actress. And she had a lot of time on her hands because everything reminded her of something else. She would say thing like, “Oh, these potatoes. Aren’t they fabulous? “They’re like my friend Roger.” “Roger Rogerson. Do you know him? He lives in Rogeronio in Italy. “Italy is wonderful, too, isn’t it? “I mean, it’s full of Italians. You’d fuck one, but you wouldn’t talk to it afterwards. “This salad is like my girlhood. “It’s wildly overdressed and bewilderingly full of lychees.” I suppose the classes was probably quiet easy once you get the hang of it. It seems to me it’s all about how much time you spend with you parents. If you… Because the upper… The higher you go, the less time you’re with your folks. You know, because around the age of one and half, they come up to you and go, “Well done, you, whatever your name is. “You’re going to boarding school in Argentina.”
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And then… If you’re poor, you’re just with your family a lot more. You’re crawling out of the laundry into this bag of potatoes. You’re swinging off your parent’s cigarettes as they have sex. You’re there. So it’s funny to hear people talk about all this stuff again. But they’re caring about all that, measuring themselves. And um… Here’s another thing that comes out of the dark. Right? I worked this out.
Dinner parties. Dinner parties must have… The first dinner party must have happened in the winter. ‘Cause I think what happens is women get tired of looking at the man in their house. And they say, “Let’s get some other bastards round.” Not in those words. But that’s what they mean. “Let’s get some other bastards round or go to some other bastard’s house. And eat with them. ‘Cause I don’t fucking wanna look at you any more. It’s depressing.”
So it’s a kind of an adult woman’s idea of a good time. It’s not a good time. It’s fine if you’re 20 or 25. You go out with your friends. You’re eating and drinking and having a good time talking. That’s the main event. You’re talking about love and life and death and work and sex and family and everything and anything that matters. You don’t care about the quality of the food. You only know there’s food there ’cause one of the drinks is chewy…
And, you know, you go… And you… You have a good time talking. And then you arrive back at your house or somebody else’s house. You think, “Hurray, the teleporter worked again.” And you don’t think any more about it.
You get older and it becomes socially competitive. Because you get to somebody’s house and they start talking bollocks immediately. They open the front door to you and they say, “Hi, can we give you the tour?” No. I am only here. I only came out in the cold and dark because this woman, that I love, is sick of looking at me. Okay? I understood this was a food gig. Where’s the food? I have got a house full of shit myself at home, I don’t wanna see yours.
And people sit you down and they talk about house prices and schools. This seems to be the modern British person’s dream. To get their house into the schools so they can watch as their own children get selected for NASA.
They sit you beside somebody whose laugh sounds like bagpipes. Amazing, without the bagpipes. Somebody on the other side who’s always more interesting than you. It doesn’t matter what you do. You might be the captain of a submarine. They will be a jazz clarinetist architect neurosurgeon person.
And the people… I didn’t know people do this in their own homes. They… This is how competitive it is. People have watched cookery programmes so they bring out starters. The first time that happened to me I had a panic attack. I went “What the fuck is this? I thought we were gonna eat. This is a prawn pole dancing on a bread stick. Where’s the food?”
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
You cannot expect to be with people and have them relaxed if you’re gonna treat them like this. You got to give people decent, simple fare. You know, here’s an Irish classic recipe, okay? It’s very simple. You don’t freak people out. You feed them, and you talk. This is from my granny. She was beautiful, spiritual person. She always used to say, “Doesn’t matter how big the fucker is. They all have a neck.”
You know… Another thing she used to say was, “Never get involved with more than 11 people sexually at one time.” “You cannot keep everybody happy. Work on the farm deteriorates almost immediately.” Don’t do that and…
So what you do is you get a chicken. Okay. Get one. Use your contacts and… And don’t get started. Just cover the outside of the chicken with little things people like. With Twix, an orange, a pack of chips, whatever it is. And cocktail sticks, you see? And then you put a chocolate cake inside the chicken, so people work from the outside in. And then when they think it’s time to go, you go “No! Ha, ha, ha, surprise!” And they love you. The will love you for that.
So I think… Ah… Who wrote Frankenstein? Mary Shelley. Now this is gonna sound like a bit of a generalisation. All women. Past, present and future are Mary Shelley. And all men are the creature. Look at a man. Look at him. Look at a man in the morning. What is he? A thing, banging into walls, in search of a toilet. He is blind and he has an erection. (IMITATING FRANKENSTEIN GRUNTING) (MUMBLING INCOHERENTLY) (MUMBLING) In his mind the two things are related. (MIMICKING FRANKENSTEIN) I have no blood in my eyes! (MUMBLES) He goes to work to do a repetitive task. (MUMBLING) Takes a break at lunch to go for a sandwich. Sees something there to stir the little cosmos in his skull. He sees a woman. It entrains a very complex, psychological effect. He’s about to realise something. He goes, he dives to his own depths, to his own ocean floor and clutches at that insight. Breaks his own surface and this is the insight he comes up with. He goes, “Woman!” (GROWLS) And then he goes back to work. To masticate his hand patty. Rueing the fact that he didn’t get the beef. And then goes home to be told by Mary Shelley, “Darling we’re having the Jefferson’s around on Friday for dinner.” “Jefferson’s, what are they?” “They’re our friends, darling. They’re guests. “They’re going to be our guests on Friday.” “When did we meet them?” “You didn’t meet them. I met them and I liked them. “So they’re coming to dinner. Okay? I’m just telling you because you live here. “You can spend the evening talking to Philip. You’ll like him.” “Why will I like Philip?” “Because he’s a very boring man and I’m not going to deal with him. “Okay? So you can “have Philip to yourself all night long. “Anyway, you wouldn’t like Samantha. You just wouldn’t like her.” “Why wouldn’t I like Samantha?” “Because she’s very good-looking and she “doesn’t wrap up warm enough. So I’ll be talking to Samantha. “You can stay in the corner all night long “and make armpit farts while we have the roast potatoes.” “Roast potatoes!” Ahh! Nah, it’s… That’s because women are kind enough to tell you what it is you are going to be doing for the rest of your life. So. I mean, I suppose the dinner parties are kind of the acme of middle-class life. Most of us are that, aren’t we? I guess we are. Now, excuse me. The cake was fine, but I need to chase that up with some chocolate because I’m eating the chocolate and the truth is I’m not enjoying it. Um… But I’m gonna carry on eating it. Because that’s the way the mind works, you see? You tell yourself that the good chocolate is further on deeper down in the bar. Very much like when you wake up and you think “Oh, this is fucking hideous “I’ll get up, things will improve.” So. Having made a lot of generalizations about women and men, women… Women have to make themselves beautiful for men. Because men are the ones who go on about female beauty. It’s men who you hear say “Oh, I miss Nancy. “She had such dusky insteps. “Her knees were like porpoises’ heads. “Her eyes were like lapis lazuli thrown into little dishes of Utterly Butterly. “You could hear breasts as she walked behind you. “She was an extraordinary woman.” You don’t get women banging on in this manner about male beauty. You don’t hear women say, “Oh, I miss Simon. He had such beautiful balls.” We call ourselves a liberal democracy and there’s still no platform in this society for the appreciation of scrotal beauty. And the thing is woman do have to do all kinds of things themselves. And they lie about it ’cause of all the pressure. Woman go and get their hair made bullet-proof and get the implants. The silly clothes and the stupid shoes everybody wears now. You know these… And they say “Oh, I enjoy. I did it for me, you know. “I like the fact that it takes me 45 minutes to get in or out of a chair.” I’ve always wanted to look like a prawn who’s being airlifted. It’s a total lie. That’s not the kind of thing a person does for themselves. You know what I did for me? I had an éclair inside an éclair. That’s the kind of thing you do for yourself. Not getting, fucking vajazelled, getting a little chandelier hung over your uterus. So, because the mainstream absorbs more and more different kinds of people, you know who is outside. Well, I suppose there’s extremist fundamentalist people. You know? And… Ah… I’ve never really understood when… America’s reaction to Osama bin Laden’s assassination was not very politically mature, I thought, because they sort of, what they really as a country did, was go, (RAPPING) # Oh yeah, he dead Look at him with bullets in his head # He’s so dead. He’s dead forever# And that suggested a people who hadn’t really considered the idea of being bombed again. Um… (MUMBLES) As real news. That was real news. Not the celebrity thing I mentioned earlier. The royal wedding and so on, which there’s an awful lot of as well. You know, all those magazines telling you to catch up on all that stuff. The friendly, over-familiar names of the magazines. Hello! Come Here, Give us a Lick, all that stuff. Now, there are all sorts of crises happening in the world at any one time, you know, with food and energy and so on. Now, I’m not suggesting we return to a Maoist China. But if you got all those people who read celebrity news and put them to work on treadmills generating electricity or whatever, as long as you let them hang onto their magazines, they wouldn’t even notice.
In the context of being in the world and watching all this stuff happen, I don’t think it really penetrates, a lot of it. I don’t think you care that much about it. In the end, what’s gonna matter to you is… Who you’re with and, and what’s happening between you. What’s happening in your own kitchen. Now, I have a friend who’s my age and single and childless. And I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate him. Because he’s naive in a way that men are if they don’t have children. If you are a woman, you don’t need to have children to be empathetic. If you’re a man, you do. ‘Cause he still says to me things like, “So, what did you get up to at Easter?” He forgets I have a family. If you’ve a family, you don’t get up to things. I got in a sleeping bag, but they found me. So, tell me all about what you got up to?
Single men who give you… If they have a friend who has children, they give them the worst kind of presents for the children. They give them those big plastic things that talk in American voices that you only ever find at 3:00 in the morning as you’re crossing the landing to go for a piss. You break all your toes on it and then it talks at you. “A is for apple. I love you. Kiss me.” Fuck off! You’re the only thing that talks to me in this fucking house! But he is immature. You see? And what happens is that he says… He falls in love all the time. He says, “Oh, I met this woman. She’s amazing. We have so much in common.” “What do you have in common?” “Well we both like sex and champagne.” Three days later they break up. I say “What was the matter?” “Oh, she couldn’t make bisque.” Um… This doesn’t really get to the nitty-gritty of a relationship, you know?
And it’s difficult for people to relate to one another. I mean, you’ve to find somebody first of all. And I worry about the younger generation. Not just because you’re losing skills all the time, but that’s okay, you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to write or speak or spell anymore. You can straddle a computer and lick it. It’ll do everything for you. But there are certain key skills you need that are being lost. Like dancing. Young people cannot dance. I know this ’cause I got tricked into going into a disco situation. Yes, I said the word “disco” from the Latin. Meaning to put the moves on a lady under spangly lights.
They don’t know what they’re doing in there anymore. The music is hideous. But you’d expect that sort of stuff that makes your eyes foam after about three seconds. But… This is what they were doing… This. They looked like they were being tasered. What happened to the popular classical dance that was established for all time in the mid ’80s, when I was growing up. There was nothing wrong with those moves. I did say it, pronounce that in a French way. But never mind. Moves. Do you like my moves? The beautiful moves, you know? There was nothing wrong with this. What intelligent woman is gonna resist that from a man. Look at this. Cleaning the ovens, that was called. Or this. Judging the mice. These were the greats!
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
I should go. I’m losing it.
Um… Before I do, I’ll tell you… I got a kind of a very sad letter, kind of moving, actually, from this guy. People contact me sometimes for advice. I’m a very giving person and they can tell. He said, “My father tells me “that women “are like canoes, “full of soup. “At first everybody is suspicious. “And then they all want one. “My mother maintains women are like enigma machines made of hair. “They might come across as fuzzy but they always know what you’re thinking. “Who’s telling the truth? “P.S. Where do women hang out? “Billy, 47.” Now, isn’t that sad? I mean… Billy, if you’re out there, I don’t know, I hate to be the one to tell you, but. I think the folks are giving you a bum steer there. The truth is that women are like chick peas under a psychopath’s hat. They can be cherishable and zingy and surprising. But you ask too many questions and you get killed.
(AUDIENCE CLAPPING)
Thank you very much for coming, everyone. Good night.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Okay, very quickly. ‘Cause it’s some night of the week and you’ve other things to do probably. So look, this friend of mine that I was telling you about annoyed me, actually, because he… He gave a woman a present and he was disappointed by her reaction. I said “Well, what was the reaction?” He said “Well, you know, she said, ‘Oh, I love this. This is really great. Thanks very much.”‘ He wanted more. I mean, In a mature relationship that’s a fantastic reaction. Because usually what happens is, somebody gives you a gift. You open it. You’d look up and then they’d look at you and they’d tell you why you should like it.
“What’s wrong with you? Put the fucking coat on. It’s a fantastic coat. It takes all the attention away from your face. It hides you ass. Put the coat on. It’s got big pockets. You can keep all your self-help books in there. I got you a new one. I got you Personal Hygiene for the Manically Depressed. Put the fucking coat on.”
He’s in love with the state of a relationship when you’re in love. You go out to restaurants all the time. You go to the cinema. You sit there in the restaurant saying, “How’s your fish, darling? Is it good? I won’t tell you about my fish until you tell me about yours. Is it delicious? I’m so pleased. So is mine. They’re probably brother and sister.”
Coming out of the cinema going, “What did you think of the scene? When he was hiding under the piano and the governess came down the stairs and she was holding the toy dog and she was trying not to look Austrian and she looked in the mirror and he looked in the mirror and they saw each other. Did you know he was thinking… Exactly. We’re the same.”
This is nonsense. In a mature relationship, you are in the restaurant. Your partner looks at you and says, “What are you eating?”
“I have a lot of onions having a fight.”
“Bullshit. Gimme that steak. Give it to me”
I come out of the cinema, my wife turns to me and says, “You loved all the shit, didn’t you? “When he was running around killing all those innocent people you where having a whale of a time, weren’t you? You were sort off pretending you were him in your head. “Weren’t you? I could see it in your face. You’re still doing it now. You’re trying to wear that Robert Downey Jr expression of vague criminality with intense charm. Except when you do it, it looks like you’ve got piles.”
“You disgust me on so many different levels. I had to sit beside you all evening watching you snack a popcorn. What is snacking? You’re making this up now. What is snacking? Snacking is when a person laughs and inhales popcorn at the same time. It’s revolting and actually distressing to be around. Well, we went to go and see the fucking ballerina thing you wanted. She’s dying. She’s a swan. It takes about three weeks. We went to that.”
“That was art.”
“It was bollocks.”
The single best thing that can happen to you is when you catch the person you love in your house having a nap.
“Oh, no, no, no. Trying to enjoy yourself in your own lifetime. Are you out of your fucking mind?”
And because everybody walks around with an obscure sense of guilt anyway, they bounce up in bed going, “I wasn’t asleep. I just lay down and closed my eyes.”
“You weren’t asleep? You were fucking snoring.”
“That’s not true. I don’t snore. I never snore.”
“Really? Well, it took me five minutes to pull the curtains out of your mouth.”
“Sounded like somebody throwing bananas into the Hadron Collider.”
“Two rhinos fucking in a giant vat of crisps.”
Ladies and gentlemen of London, thank you very much for coming. I’ll see you again. Goodnight.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
(GOOD MORNING BLUES PLAYING)
