(THUNDERCLAP) SPOOKY VOICE: Long ago, in a castle laboratory, (ELECTRICITY BUZZING) sort of like Frankenstein’s, you know, science turned abomination, a mad doctor’s dream to create a human being from the body parts of other human beings. A bit pointless, really. He wanted to create the world’s finest comedian. Popular, clever, funny. So a male comedian, obviously. Got a penis and everything. A little bit smaller than he would have wanted. But, you know, it’s fine. It’s average. He’s a little bit fat, but fat is funny. Average penis. Little bit chunky, but… So, please welcome to the stage… (BABA O’RILEY PLAYING) …creator of The Office, Extras, Flanimals, record-breaking stand-up, winner of three Golden Globes, two Primetime Emmys, and seven BAFTAs, a man with an average-sized penis – it’s fine, honestly – the one, the only, Mr Ricky Gervais. (CROWD CHEERING) (BABA O’RILEY CONTINUING)
Thank you. Hello. Hello. Wow! Thank you so much. Wow. Thank you. Wow. Thank you so much. I should explain something straight away. Usually, when I come out on stage, it’s amazing. I’m doing cartwheels, I’m doing back flips. It’s fucking spectacular. But I’ve hurt my back. That’s true. That is true. I’ve pulled a muscle in my spine playing golf. I know what you’re thinking. Serves me right for playing such a stupid game as golf, but… No, I’ve been in agony. I’m on painkillers right now. So if I suddenly start talking like Kerry Katona, you’ll know why. ”I’m not drunk. I’m not drunk.” Mother of the Year, one year. When the doctor gave me the painkillers – this is true – he said, ”Now, you can’t drink alcohol with these,” and I went, ”I don’t want them, then,” and he went, ”What?” I said, ”Give me some you can drink alcohol with.” And he went, ”Well, you’re not meant to drink with any painkillers.” ”Who are you? My fucking mother? Just give me them.”
So, yeah, I’ve been walking round like the Elephant Man. But without the big cock, obviously. I assume he had a big elephant’s cock to go with the head. Then it would balance things out. ‘Cause then he’d look in the mirror and he’d go, (SAD VOICE) ”Oh, no.” What… Fucking Zippy. What the fuck was that? No, shut up. Then he’d sort of go, ”Oh, no, oh, look at that head.” ”Hold on, though, what’s going on down here?” ”Swings and roundabouts!” ”Let’s celebrate! The buns are on me.”
Um… So, yeah, that’s my problems. I didn’t cancel, though. Don’t you hate that, when an artist cancels? You turn up, you go, ”Concert cancelled due to sore throat.” Or, ”I couldn’t go on. I was depressed.” Aw! Can you imagine a labourer trying that? Going, ”Oh, I got a little tickle. I’m fed up.” ”Aw. Move the fucking bricks, mate.” One artist has had a good excuse to cancel a concert in recent years, and that’s Michael Jackson. Everyone else is a fucking malingerer. Never cancel. I had a gig in Dublin couple of months back. O2 Arena, Dublin. 10,000 seats. Sold out way in advance. Getting towards the gig. Looking forward to it. A few days before, all the planes start being grounded ’cause of this volcanic ash cloud. A volcano goes off in Iceland and we can’t get on a plane. What’s the point of fucking Iceland? Really. I thought it went bankrupt. Just get rid of it. It’s no good. It’s not doing… Just fill in the fucking volcanoes with concrete. In fact, tarmac the whole country, and make it a car park for real Europe. Waste of space! So, yeah, um, and… Sort of like pop stars not coming to England. We’re cancelling. They couldn’t get on… And I was thinking, ”I can’t cancel. I can’t cancel, I’ve got to get there.” So I hired a helicopter to and from Dublin. Cost me $12,000. Just ’cause I couldn’t bear to let anyone down. Or take the ferry. Yeah, they were still running fine. Sure. I think there were extra ones they put on, but… That would have meant mixing with the general public. This is about as close as I ever want to be to… to – no offence – scum. No. I don’t know if anyone was affected by the volcanic ash cloud, but I had friends all round the world that couldn’t get back. They missed weddings, and funerals, and they had to put themselves up in hotels they hadn’t budgeted for for weeks on end, and they couldn’t get their money back ’cause the airlines were saying, ”No, we can’t pay you, ’cause the insurance companies won’t pay us, ”’cause they’re saying it’s an act of God.” What? What isn’t an act of God? If you believe in God, that’s sort of a definition of him, isn’t it? That he does everything. He’s… He’s all-powerful and he’s everywhere. He invented everything. He was… Before he was around, there was nothing. He invented time, space, everything, okay? So he’s across it all. Nothing happens by mistake. He’s not absent-minded. A volcano going off is not him going, ”Oh, fuck, I left the oven on!” That… And who are these insurance companies that know what is and isn’t an act of God? How do they decide? Have they got a hotline to God? They call God up, do they? And go… Ring, ring. ”Hello?” ”Y’ello.” ”Um, could I speak to God, please?” ”Speaking.” ”Oh! I didn’t think you’d answer the phone yourself.” ”What do you want?” ”Um, sorry, that volcanic ash cloud, was that you?” ”Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was an act of me, all right.” (GIGGLING) ”So I shouldn’t pay out?” ”Don’t fucking pay ’em a penny, son, no.” ”Oh, cheers. ”While I’ve got you here, did you make a tree fall on Steve Baxter’s car?” ”A lot of Steve Baxters.” ”Um, 2 Acacia Road, Hounslow. ”It happened on the third of June, 2:15.” ”Third of June, 2:15. No, that wasn’t me. ”I was in Africa then, giving AIDS to babies.” (CROWD MOANING) He does everything.
Anyway, I’m so glad I didn’t cancel. It’s fantastic to be here, seeing all you happy, smiley faces. Probably… (PEOPLE HOOTING) Yes, thank you. You’re… You’re probably feeling very fortunate that you managed to get a ticket to see a living legend. Or am I… I’m not being funny, but you lucky cunts! Yes, you are! I’m joking, of course. The pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much for coming out, spending your hard-earned cash. I know there’s been a recession on. Someone told me. Is it still going? It really didn’t affect me. (LAUGHING) Just being honest. Just being honest. Um… We can laugh about it now, come on. I don’t understand the recession. It wasn’t till last year I found out that you could go into your bank and say, ”Can I withdraw my cash?” and they could go, ”No, we ain’t got it.” ”Sorry?” ”We… No.” ”I’ve got $50,000 saved.” ”Ha! You ain’t.” ”Well, where is it?” ”Dunno.” ”Well, have you checked the vault?” ”It’s empty.” ”What was the point of that? ”You might as well have kept it in a drawer, you spotty little twat.” I hope you enjoy the show. This is nearly the end of the UK leg of the tour, then I’m off to America, to finish that off, and then I’m doing the rest of the world. It’s going to be the first world comedy tour. And then I’m going to enter Britain’s Got Talent. ‘Cause, whoa, that’s when the career really… (MIMICKING AIRPLANE TAKING OFF)
Look at Susan Boyle. If you can. Fucking hell! Jesus Christ. Oh! Shocking. Be fair, though. ‘Cause usually, in the music industry, it’s all about image, isn’t it? You can’t just have a great voice and a great talent, you’ve got to be young and thin, and trendy and pretty, and she’s turned all that on its head. Although I think it’s the same powers of image, just working in reverse with her, ’cause I don’t think she has got a great voice, actually. I think she’s fooled a lot of people. It’s sort of like mock opera for people who don’t know any better. But I don’t think she’d be where she was today if it wasn’t for the fact that she looked like such a fucking mong. ”He said ‘mong’.” Yeah, he did. Yeah. ”You can’t say ‘mong’.” You can. It’s fucking easy. It’s one of the easiest words to say. It’s like, ”mong”. And it’s, like, you just need lips. (STAMMERING) Even mongs can say it. That’s part of the beauty of the word. They don’t consider it a perk, I’m sure. But… ”Why does he get away with it and no one else can? ”Ban him from the telly.” Good luck. (CLEARING THROAT) And even if they do ban me from the telly, I’ll just go around and shout ”mong” through their window. I care about it that much. It’s just words, and there is no better word to describe Susan Boyle. When… When she first came on the telly, right? When she first came on the telly, I went, ”Is that a mong?” You all did! You all did! And you’re meant to. Like the judges hadn’t planned that. Didn’t they! They knew it in rehearsal. They knew that was going to happen. They knew the headline was going to be, ”Oh! Voice of an angel, face of a mong.” And they… They were right. And we all fell for it, you know? And it… I don’t mean she has Down’s syndrome, by the way. No. No, that would be offensive. That word doesn’t mean that any more. It’s far removed from that. We don’t use that word to describe that condition. ”What about the derivation?” Never mind the derivation. Words change. When I came out here tonight, I called you all ”cunts”, remember? That used to be an insult, but now it’s a term of endearment. So… Words change. Okay. Let’s get on with it. No one wants to be here all night.
Now, listen. (LAUGHING) You can have too much of a good thing. Like heroin. What? Um… Although, too much heroin is death, basically. ”What’s up with him?” ”Too much.” ”Was it good?” ”Yeah, it was lovely, but just too much.” That’s the thing, kids. Try anything once, sure. Try… But know this about heroin. You go, ”Oh, go on, I’ll have one. ”I’ll have one heroin. Go on. That’s right. Oh, I’ll just have the one. ”Oh, that’s just what I thought. ”Oh, it’s fucking lovely, that. Give us… I can’t just have one. ”They’re like HobNobs.” Or serial killing. That is… That’s surprisingly moreish. You think, ”I’ll just do one heinous crime. ”I love all that. I love all that. I’ll just go out…” You go out, tooled up, and you chop someone up… And don’t just kill ’em. If you’re a serial killer, kill ’em, fuck ’em, eat ’em, right? In that order. At least have a thing. Do you know what I mean? I don’t want to see you on telly in 10 years’ time going, ”Oh, why did you do it?” ”Oh, Ricky Gervais told me to try heroin and be a serial killer.” ”Oh, what did you do?” ”I just killed him.” ”What, you didn’t fuck him and eat him?” ”No.” ”Get out of my fucking courtroom.” So… And you go, ”Well, I’ve done that.” Get rid of all the body parts. Well, not all of them. Keep a bit for later. What? Oh, no, Jesus Christ. Oh, maybe you shouldn’t mix alcohol with painkillers. Right? It just seemed like a waste, right? And… You get home and you go, ”Right, I’ve done that. ”I never have to do that again.” Before you know it you’re back down B&Q with a brand-new claw hammer going, ”Oh, fuck me. ”Here we go again.”
So just be warned. Okay, let’s get on with it. The show is quite long, but not as long as when I saw Ken Dodd at the open-air theatre in Regent’s Park, and I left after two and a half hours, during the interval, okay? He did five hours. I mean, he was 75 then. Five hours of stand-up comedy. I can’t even fucking stand up for five hours these days. And he bounced out. I mean, I went along somewhat ironically, but he is a legend. We got there, and I went along with a girlfriend, and I was… We were the youngest by about 30 years, I think. Everyone else was, like, in their 70s, and they must follow Doddy around, and they knew they were in it for the long haul. They’d come in cagoules and pack lunches, right? And I don’t know if you’ve been to the open-air theatre in Regent’s Park, but it’s like this, but without a roof, obviously. It’s got a stage show, and lights and it’s got fixed seating, okay? It’s sort of like amphitheatre seating all the way round the outside, and there’s nothing in the middle. They just left that wild. You can’t sit there. It’s just like a… I want to say grassy knoll, but I’m not sure I know what a ”knoll” is. I’ve only ever heard that when people are talking about the Kennedy assassination. I assume it’s a hillock, but I didn’t want to say ”hillock” when a president’s had his brain shot out ’cause it’s vaguely comical, isn’t it? You go, ”The president’s been shot!” ”Oh, from where?” ”A hillock.” ”A what?” So they say ”knoll”. And they go, ”Oh!” So you go, ”Oh, no, who shot him, and what the fuck’s a knoll?” It adds to the mystery. Anyway. So… I look down, and I realise that one person – I use the term loosely – had sort of sat there, okay, and the security had let her and people were ignoring her. I thought, ”Oh…” Anyway, she was a bit… And, oh, my God, she was… I’m trying to be politically correct tonight. I’m trying to avoid the phrase ”fat mental bird”, but… That’s what she was.
Why do people use euphemisms like that? They go like that. Like they’re trying to… But you’ve said it. We know what you were… You’ve said ”mental”. In fact, you’ve said it so more people can understand. The deaf and foreigners can understand what you’re saying now. And they don’t want to say ”fat” any more. They use euphemisms for fat. They don’t want to say ”fat” ’cause they think it’s a derogatory term. It’s not. It’s descriptive, okay? They say things like, ”Oh, you know Brenda?” ”No.” ”Oh, you know Brenda. F… Big girl.” ”What, seven-foot?” ”No, not tall, but… Big.” ”What does she look like?” ”Oh! ”You know, she’s clammy, even in winter.” Just say ”fat”. ”You know Brenda. She’s out of breath just standing up at her desk.” I’ve been accused in the past of having a go at fat people. I’ve never had a go at fat people. I’ve only ever pointed out the scientific fact that you get fat, you put on weight, you put on a sub-cuticle layer of fat if you take in more calories than you burn off. That’s indisputable, okay? I don’t judge them in any other aspect of their life, but they got fat ’cause they took on more calories than they burned off, okay? And they knew that is what was happening. No one ever got fat behind their own back. No one ever went, ”Huh? What the fuck’s that?” No one’s creeping in to thin people’s apartments and injecting their lettuce with a million calories, okay? So, they’re doing it. They’re doing it with their own free will, and they know that’s what’s making them fat, okay? You see a fat person surrounded by puddings, right? You go up to him, you go, ”Frank, you know what’s making you fat?” He doesn’t go, ”Is it all the running?” He knows it’s… So all I’m saying is you get fat if you eat too much and you know that’s what’s happening. But I don’t judge them in any other aspect of their life. I don’t make value judgements on any other corridors of their existence. If I see a fat person, I don’t go, ”Oh, he’s fat, therefore he’s probably jolly.” A lot of them are miserable. If I see a fat girl, I don’t go, ”Oh, she’d be pretty if she lost weight.” That’s rarely the case. So don’t… A lot of them started eating ’cause they had fuck-all to lose, if I’m being… I don’t want any fat people to feel uncomfortable at one of my gigs, so next time, buy two seats. Right? Um… I’m joking. I’m joking. I haven’t got a problem with fat people. I haven’t… In fact, I feel sorry for them. No, even though it is their own fault – and it is their own fault – I feel sorry for them. Particularly women, because I think fat is a feminist issue. Men get fat and we go, ”Fuck it, all bought and paid for,” right? We don’t come under the same scrutiny of society as women, ’cause they’re inundated with how they should look. There’s size-zero models and magazines with, ”Look like this.” And this diet, that diet, keep your man, and I think they make such an effort. You see fat girls, they make an effort. They’ve always got lovely hair. Aren’t they? They’re always having their hair done. Eh? They always… They’ve always got lovely hair and lovely long nails. They make an effort. Anything but jogging. All right? They love high heels, don’t they? Fat girls, they love high heels. They think it makes their legs look less… It doesn’t. They’re… It… You can just hear them coming now. Not on the lino! Up and down the lawn, it’s good for it. Go on! Out you go. But I’m not having a go.
Um… I was listening to Radio 4 the other day and there was a discussion about political correctness. My name came up straight away, as always, okay? And this woman was going, ”Well, yeah, it’s not right, you know, it’s not clever. ”He makes fun of fat people. He makes jokes about fat people, and it’s not right. ”I mean, he wouldn’t make jokes about gay people, would he? ”And being fat is like being gay.” What? No… No, it’s not. You can’t choose your sexuality. We’ve established you choose to be fat by eating, okay? But with your sexuality, you’re born, you grow up, you discover you like same-sex relationships, you move to Brighton, and… And that’s it. You’re gay. With being fat, you have to work… For being fat to be the same as being gay, you’d have to be born straight, grow up knowing you’re straight, but gradually and consciously wean yourself onto cock. Do you know what… It doesn’t happen. ”Happy 16th birthday, son.” ”This is Raul. Right? ”Suck his cock.” ”Uh, I’m heterosexual, Father.” ”Oh, these new-fangled words. ”Suck his cock. Come on.” ”I… I… I don’t like cock.” ”Doesn’t like cock! ”How do you know if you never tried it?” ”Well…” ”Ah! ”Suck his cock, come on.” (IN FALSETTO) ”Oh, suck Raul’s cock for your father. He’s paid for it. Go on, suck…” ”I don’t like…” ”Just try it, just suck a little bit of cock. ”Just try…” ”Ugh.” ”He’s bloody playing with his cock. Put it in your mouth. Put it in your mouth.” (GAGGING) ”Oh, don’t ‘ugh.’ Come on. Suck it, you bastard. Suck it.” -”Oh.” -”It’s not so bad, is it?” ”Ugh… Oh… ”I fucking love these.” When that happens, being fat will be like being gay. Until then, it ain’t.
I was on a plane, going from New York to LA this year. And they’ve got proper fat people in America. Oh, really. They put ours to shame, really. You see one and you think, ”Oh, yes, a fat person. I’ve seen that. ”We’ve got them in England. Yeah, big fat face. Big… ”What the fuck are they?” It’s like they’ve gone, ”I’ve got as fat as I possibly can, we need to get an extension. ”We need to…” What the fuck? Some of them have got shelves. Actually got shelves. Like… They keep biscuits on them. Like, fucking, ”Ooh…” ”Ooh.” And me and my girlfriend were one side of the plane, okay? Then there was the aisle, then this side were two really big, fat women, okay? And one was even fatter than the other one, right? In fact, she got on and she went, just blase, quite loudly, she went, ”Can I have a belt extension?” And they went, ”Yeah, sure. Yeah, course you can. You’ve earned it.” Right? So, proper fat. In fact, I was thinking of calling the pilot out and going, ”Should one of us swap with one of them? ”’Cause otherwise, we’re just going to Canada.” I mean… And she was there, okay, and she’d got on the plane with one of those takeaway buckets of fast food. Bucket. I mean, there’s your first clue. When did that happen? When did fat people just go, ”Oh, fuck it. Give me… Treat me like a farm animal. Just… ”In fact, just strap it to my fucking head. ”Give me it in a bucket. Give it…” ”How would you like your meal?” ”In a bucket, please.” ”You sure you don’t just want a big plate?” ”I grew out of plates when I was five, you cunt. I want it in a bucket.” Fuck’s sake. And she’s there, and she’s chowing down on it, and she turns to her friend and says, ”This is the best fried chicken I’ve had all day.”
Unbelievable. But I’m not having a go, I’m not having a go. Even though it is their own fault – and it is their own fault – I feel sorry for them, because… I found this out, actually, to be fair… I don’t know if you know this about fat people, they fucking love cake. They love it. You can’t leave a cake out with a fat person. You could’ve just baked a cake for later and your neighbour, fat neighbour, could come round, she could still be chewing the last of her lunch, and she’d come in and she’d see the cake and she’d just stop like that. And then she’d look at you like that. And you’ll go, ”Oh, that’s for Brian’s birthday. ”Do you want a little bit?” ”Yeah, go on, just a little bit. Yeah, just… ”Just a little taste.” ”There you go.” ”Oh, thank you. Oh, that is lovely. Ooh! ”That is beautiful.” ”Oh, fuck it.”
But I blame the food industries, right? If you go in a supermarket, it’s full of that crap. Everything is hydrogenated fats. Everything’s got thousands of calories in, like, a portion. They’re injecting calories with calories and deep-frying them and sprinkling on fucking calories, okay? And I think that fat people find that irresistible. They’ve got no willpower, so I think we’ve got to help them, okay? And also, have you seen how big the doors are, to get into a supermarket? They’re… They’re quadruple. No one gets too big to get through the door of a supermarket, okay? So… And they open automatically. So no one’s using calories by pushing anything, okay? It’s a good job they do open automatically, ’cause they’re usually glass and the fat person’s seen the cake from down there and they’re just doing like that… And they’re grazing. They’re grazing, like that, right? Keep the door. Keep the big door. Come on, fat people. You can all get in. You can all get in. They’re coming… I can hear them, here they come. Right? And they’re in there, but when they get in there, it’s all fresh fruit and veg and wholegrains, so… Uh? And they’ll be, of course they’ll be flabbergasted at first. They won’t understand it. That’s not real food to them. They think Brussels sprouts is packaging. They’re looking… ”Where’s the cake? The cake, the cake.” ”Cakes are over there.” ”Ooh, the cakes are over here.” The cakes are over here, through a human-sized door. Oh! And they go, ”Oh, fucking hell.” ”I can’t get in, I can’t get the cake.” They take their heels off, they’re trying to hook some cake. (MOANING) ”Oh, God!” Like that. And they don’t know what to do, they’re starving, so they have to go and eat a banana. (GAGGING) (PANTING) ”Fuck me, carrots, nuts, anything. Just try…” And they’re back and forth and the fat’s falling of them, right? And soon they can slip through the door and have a cake, and then they can’t get out again. But… But I’m saying we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to intervene. Because we’ve got to help them. And people say, ”No, no, no, nothing to do with you. ”It’s their body, it’s their life.” Yeah, but we don’t say that about wearing a crash helmet or wearing a safety belt, do we? Or if you’ve got a smackhead in the family, you don’t go, ”Oh, it’s his body. He loves the old heroin.” Right? You… You go, ”Please don’t die, please stop this shit.” And you grab him and throw him in a cupboard for three weeks, or whatever. You can’t throw a fat person in a cupboard, you’d do your back in, like me, but I’m saying… Smackheads don’t weigh anything, you can fling them around. They’re… In fact, when they’re lying there, just get the needle and just flick and they just sort of go in like that. Fat people, you’ve got to lure them in. Just a little trail of M&M’s, they’ll follow that anywhere. See? I do care. (LAUGHING)
Oh, God. Mmm. Where was I? Oh, yeah, Ken Dodd. Right. So… I’m at Ken Dodd. There’s this big, fat woman sitting there. And obviously, security… I assume she must follow Dodd around, ’cause everyone’s turning a blind eye, right? Even Dodd. Dodd’s ignoring her. She’s 20 yards from him, right? And she’s… Oh, my God… I’ve got to use one of his words. She’s blobular, okay? She’s about 45, 50…stone. No. She’s about 20 stone. And she’s sat there, cross-legged, eating a pack lunch, okay? She’s in this, like, big, white, greying sort of T-shirt. And… Oh, and wearing leggings. No! Don’t wear leggings if you’re that shape, okay? It looked like someone had painted the bottom of an egg black, right? And she’d made no effort. She had lank, greasy hair and she’d eaten her nails, I think. I’ll tell you what she looked like. This might not mean anything to you, but they’re the bane of my life, she looked like an autograph hunter.
Now, these people are the epsilon minors of society. Even trainspotters look down on autograph hunters. They’ve all got this haircut, right? Everything is tucked in, like that. They’ve always got, like, a satchel where they just rip things out of the Radio Times. ”Sign this, Ricky.” ”Yeah.” ”Sign this.” ”Sign this.” ”That’s a piece of toast, mate.” ”What?” Not one of them’s symmetrical. I mean, they’re a mess. I don’t mean their clothes, I mean their fucking DNA. It’s just… Back to handsome. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING LOUDLY)
I was doing a radio interview a while back, on Capital Radio in Leicester Square. And it was live, which is always a mistake ’cause these little freaks hear you at home. And nowadays, because of the phone scandals, if something’s pre-recorded, they have to tell you about it. So if it really is live, they bang on about it. And they were going, ”He’s actually here now ”in the heart of London, it’s Ricky Gervais, it’s 10:45.” And they hear you and they go, ”He’s there”, and they come along and wait for you. They know where you are. Like that, right? And I was coming down the stairs after the interview, and the security guard said, ”Oh, there’s a few autograph…” I thought, ”Oh.” I went out there and there they were, about 16 of them, like that. I don’t know the collective noun. A gaggle of mongs, right? Yeah. Right? And the first thing that hits you is the BO. It is staggering, okay? And so I’m… I’m nice to them. They’re strong. And… Fuck it. And I’m signing and I’m getting away, and as I’m going away, right, I feel something hit me there, and I look down and it wasn’t one of them, it was this old lady that had sort of wandered over the square. She was about 60, 65. Really sort of grimy, right? And sort of had a bandana with sort of tassels on it and sort of these, a robe thing and sort of bangles, and she was selling some sort of twig in tinfoil. Again, I don’t know the politically correct term. Is it ”smelly traveller”? I think it is, I think it is. Right? And she went, ”Lucky heather?” I went, ”No, thanks.” I wanted to go back and go, ”What? What?” ”Lucky heather? Is it? ”Is it? How lucky is it? ”’Cause you’re covered in the shit and you’re begging in Leicester Square, so…” Fucking maggot, get off me.
I, uh… Ken Dodd. Sorry, right, so… Ken Dodd, me, hundreds of old people. Okay, Ken Dodd: ”Hum, humunctious!” Right? Fat, mad woman sat there, cross-legged. ”Ah.” Every time Dodd goes, ”Hum!”, she goes, ”Ahhh”, like that, right? I mean, everyone’s ignoring her. She must go to every concert, obviously a bit of a stalker. Dodd not put off at all, just doing his thing. ”Ah, hum!” ”Ahhh!” Jane’s going, ”Don’t look.” I’m going, ”You’re having a laugh, ain’t ya? I can’t take my eyes off her.” Right? I’m looking at this, every time he goes, ”Hum!” I’m looking at him, I’m looking at her, I’m looking at him, like that. Back and forth. It’s like tennis in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It was like… And… So she’s there, right – and this is a true story – after about 20 minutes, her hand goes down the leggings. Yeah. (AUDIENCE MOANING) Yeah. And… Oh! Right? So everyone just… I can feel them all, I’m going, ”Oh, my God. ”Suddenly this is interesting again.” ”Hum!” Right? So I’m just, like… And… See… No, but she’s not doing it discreetly. Her little fucking legs are straight out now. I mean… Twenty yards in front of Dodd, trying to tell little jokes about tax evasion: ”It was under the carpet!” ”Hum!” ”Ahhh.” Right? And she’s… No, but she’s making a noise! It’s not my fucking… She’s making a noise, she’s sort of going… (MOANING) Because she was Flipper, right? And… ”What? Timmy’s fallen down a well?” (DOLPHIN SQUEALING) ”I think she wants us to follow her!” (DOLPHIN SQUEALING) So, she’s going all… Right? She’s going away. She finishes. She goes, ”Ahhh! Ahhh!” Has another sandwich. (AUDIENCE GROANING) Oh! True story. I don’t know why I told you, but it is a true story. It’s out of my head and into yours now.
Oh. Mmm. Ah. This show’s called Science, by the way. (LAUGHING) Wikipedia says that science is, ”The concerted human effort to understand the physical or natural world. ”Science seeks the truth and it doesn’t discriminate.” So something’s either true or it isn’t. It hasn’t got a will, a hope, okay? You know, a moral conscience. ”For better or worse, it finds things out, ”whether that is inventing the atomic bomb, capable of mass human destruction, ”or discovering ways to end famine.” I heard an interesting phrase coined about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Someone said that dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is an example of science going wrong. Whereas I think it worked a treat, didn’t it? Actually, that’s what they wanted to happen, wasn’t it? They said, ”How can we melt 100,000 Japanese people really quickly?” Someone said, ”Try the atomic bomb.” They went…”Did it work?” ”Yup.” So the science went right, just a fucking bit. Yeah. The science going wrong would’ve been them coming round going, ”Did it explode?” ”No.” ”Oh, fuck. No?” ”No.” ”Oh! Did it kill anyone?” ”One. Just… Just hit him straight on the head. ”He was out shopping. ”For a camera, probably.” Shut up. Fuck off. No, but that isn’t science’s fault. Do you know what I mean? Science discovered that that process could release all that energy. The military did that. Governments, us. We’re in charge. Science is to enhance our existence. The big one there is obviously famine, okay? And you can’t have a good life if you haven’t got a life at all. And I’m all for ending famine, obviously. As long as it doesn’t affect me in the slightest.
Um… Which brings me to this little fad that we need to stamp out. This happened to me Christmas before last. Exchanging gifts with friends, old friends, good friends. Quite well-off friends, if I’m being honest. I gave them a coffee-making machine from Selfridges, top of the range. They loved it, they loved it. And they gave me mine, it was just a card. I thought, ”Oh, vouchers.” I opened it up, it wasn’t vouchers. It was just a card, with a picture of a goat on it. Um… And some stuff about… I said, ”What’s this?” They went, ”Oh, our gift to you is we gave a goat to an African family.” ”What?” I’m looking at the coffee machine, thinking, ”Is it too late to say that’s a mistake, take that back?” But they had it under their arm. Right? So… I went… ”Oh, we bought you a goat and we gave it to an African family.” ”Oh, did you? Oh.” So I’ve got fuck all, basically. That is basically what you’re saying, isn’t it? I mean, why the… I don’t even know this African family! Why would I give them a goat? Why would I give them my goat? A goat I didn’t know I had until a minute ago. ”Give me my fucking goat. Where’s my goat?” I mean, the arrogance, to say, ”I’ve got you a goat, but I gave it away.” Next year I’m gonna go, ”Oh, I got you a hedgehog. ”But I threw it to some Gypsies on the way. Is that all right?” This serves no purpose. This is good for no one. They’re 50 quid down, I’ve got nothing. Okay? The African family’s going, ”Not another mouth to feed.” Right? The goat is going, ”Where the fuck am I? ”What the… ”A week ago I was gambling around the Cotswolds. ”There was grass and tourists with nuts and shit. ”This is a fucking dustbowl. This is shit.” There’s no way the goat wanted to go to Africa. There’s no way. It was basically kidnapped. It was abducted. It was put in a sack and bundled on a boat to Africa, like Roots in reverse. There is no way. When they said, ”Do you want to go to Africa?”, it went, ”Definitely, no way. No.” ”Come on, why don’t you want to go to Africa?” ”Um, lions!” (NERVOUS GIGGLING) ”Come on, why don’t you want to go to Africa?” ”Um, AIDS!” (GIGGLING) ”Well, that shouldn’t affect you.” ”It shouldn’t.”
So just be careful with charity, okay? Particularly at Christmas. That’s when they sting you, when they give you a guilt trip. You’re sitting down, Christmas Day, you’ve got all your food, loads of food, too much food. Probably going to throw a lot of it away. And all the adverts on telly are for charity, right? Um, this one runs every Christmas Day. ”Is there an old lady near you, cold and lonely this Christmas?” ”Yeah, I fucking hate her. ”Nosy bitch winds me up all year round. ”I can’t wait for the cold weather, if I’m being honest.” There’s no old lady near me. She died last year of hypothermia. So, result.
The other big campaign, the other big campaign, ”A dog is for life, not just for Christmas.” Right behind that. I love animals, I’m really into animal welfare. And that’s obviously aimed at parents whose kids go, ”Can I have a puppy? Can I have a puppy?” ”No.” ”Can I have a puppy?” And they give in to shut them up. And they get the puppy, and they like it when it’s cute, but then they grow up and they get bored with it, they lumber the parents with it, and the parents get bored with it and they abandon it. 1 1,000 pets abandoned in England and Wales last year. And I think kids should have pets. I think it teaches them life lessons. I haven’t got children of my own, but I’ve got loads of nieces and nephews and they’ve got kids of their own now. And I want to be a cool uncle and give them what they want, but I want to be a responsible one, too, and sort of not add to the stray problem. But I think I’ve solved the dilemma. This is what I do, okay? Here’s a tip. You’ve got to wait till Christmas Eve, go to an animal shelter or an animal-rescue home, not a breeder. And I go there, and I go straight to the veterinary bit. And when they’re dealing with, like, the little runts that are born all sick, and they’re just putting them down, they’ve got no quality of life, I go, ”No, don’t kill that one. I’ll take that one.” And they go, ”It’s only going to live a day.” So I run home with it, going, ”Don’t die yet.” Get a Starbucks, little bit of Starbucks. ”Don’t die yet. Don’t die.” And I run in. And I call my niece, she runs over, I go, ”Look.” ”Oh, you got me a puppy!” ”I’m your best uncle, I got you a puppy.” ”Oh! Thanks.” ”Go and play with it, quick. Go and play with it.” And they take it to bed, Christmas Eve, and they sleep with it and they wake up Christmas Day, it’s cold, dead, stiff, gone, so… Not a problem. Um… And they always come down, saying, (CRYING) ”Oh! My puppy’s dead.” And I go, ”What? The puppy your uncle got you? ”He did his bit and whatever happened after that isn’t his problem.” And they go, ”Yeah.” And I go, ”Oh, no. ”Maybe you rolled over on it in the night.” ”Oh, did I?” (SOBBING) Oh, God! And they always go, ”I killed my puppy, I killed my puppy.” I go, ”No, no, you didn’t kill your puppy. ”Jesus killed your puppy. ”On his birthday. ”’Cause you didn’t spend enough on your uncle’s Christmas present.”
So… They usually buck their ideas up the next year. The other big campaign, of course, ”Don’t drink and drive.” Right behind that as well. A lot more stigma attached now. When I was growing up, there was no stigma. It was like, if you got away with it, that was all right. I’d be getting in the car with grown-ups, with family, and I’d go, ”Oh, you can’t drive, you’re drunk.” And they’d go, ”It’s all right, I won’t get caught.” But people now know that that’s not the point. It wrecks lives. I’ve done it once. I’m not proud of it in the slightest. I’m fucking ashamed of it. I wasn’t drunk, but I was over the limit. That was Christmas, and I took the car out and I knew I shouldn’t. I knew at the time, ”I shouldn’t be in this car.” But I learnt my lesson, because I nearly killed an old woman. In the end, I didn’t kill her. In the end, I just raped her. But as I say, nothing came of it. ‘Cause luckily, 1,000-to-1 shot, I know, she had Alzheimer’s. Whoo! Whoo! Yeah, not a credible witness.
I’ll tell you what. Spiders, they’re always ready, aren’t they? Spiders, always ready for action. A spider is always ready, like that. Completely ready, all the time. I mean, some animals are sometimes ready. You scare a cat, it’ll go, ”Ooh!” Like that, okay? But then it goes back to chill. Most of the time they’re just on their side, aren’t they, cats? Cats are just, chill out, got their head down, all four limbs stretched out in one direction. You will never see a spider like that. You will never see a spider just lying on the floor with its head down, like that, and all eight legs just out like that. ”Oh, what the fuck…” They’re always ready, like that. And they’re always ready in every direction, like the fucking Matrix, like that. They don’t have to go, ”What was that?” They don’t have to… They’ve got fucking 10 eyes and eight legs. Over the top. They’re even ready when you don’t think they’re ready. You can see an empty web and you go, ”That spider’s not ready.” ”No? Touch the web.” ”What?” ”Touch the web.” And it’s there, like that. I fucking hate them. Thirty-seven thousand different species of spider. Thirty-seven thousand different species of spider. I mean, millions and billions of individual in each species, okay? And that’s just one class, arachnid, of one phylum, Arthropoda, of which there are many.
There could be five million species of animal on the Earth. Best guess, right, minimum, scientists say. There’s so many, we can’t… But five million. And that’s 1%% of all animal species that have ever existed. Ninety-nine percent of all animal species that ever existed are extinct. And that remaining 1%% is five million strong. Take one of those species, termites. If you were to weigh every termite alive now, it would be 10 times the tonnage of every human being on Earth. And it’s statistics like that that make me think that this book isn’t totally accurate. Um… (CLEARING THROAT) It’s the book of Noah. Um, the children’s edition. Um… I got this as a prize at Sunday school. I used to go every week. I believed in all this till I was about eight. Um… This was when I was four. St Agnes Sunday school. ”Presented to Rikki Gervais.” R-I-K-K-I. Like a fucking mongoose. ”For regular attendance.” Not even for doing anything good. Just for turning up. ”Oh, he’s always here. Give him something, he’ll be back.” ”Thank you.” Let’s have a look at the evidence. ”Long, long ago, when God first made the Earth…” I’ll let both those points slip. We haven’t got time. Okay. ”Long, long ago,” I should just say, is 5,000 years, according to the Bible. According to the Old Testament, the Earth is no older than 5,000 years, okay? Which puts us around the time of the agricultural revolution. Uh… It’s actually 4.6 billion years old. Let’s pop that in. ”4.6 billion years ago, when God first made the Earth ”and sky…” All right, don’t big it up. I mean, it… It comes as a package, really, doesn’t it? You couldn’t… The sky was never an optional extra. It could be… ”I built you a planet.” ”I can’t breathe.” ”Would you like an atmosphere?” ”Course I fucking would.” So… ”Everything was peaceful, everything beautiful. ”God made human beings, too. ”And he wanted them to be good, like himself.” Arrogant. ”But very soon, they wanted their own way. ”They would not listen to God. They became wicked and did wicked things.” Look at them doing wicked things there. Look at that. You can’t get more wicked than that, really. ”Oh, fuck off, wicked!” Really. ”Fuck off, wicked.” God looking on. ”Yeah, carry on. See what happens. See what happens.” Bloke there running off with a big bag of money. Don’t put it in a bank, you cunt. ”God looked at them and said to himself, ”’They are so wicked, I will have to wipe them off the face of the Earth.”’ Really? That’s your only choice, is it? That’s… You have to? Right… Straight to genocide. No one verbal and two written warnings? No? Just straight to the annihilation of the entire human race? ‘Cause a fatty yellow-trousers picked someone’s nose? That’s your solution, is it? I mean, anger management. Chill the fuck out.
I read this book to KarI Pilkington, right? Who… Yeah, he is an absolute… Yes. He is… (AUDIENCE CHEERING) Head like a fucking orange, I know. Um… But I got to this bit and I said, ”They are so wicked, I will have to wipe them off the face of the Earth.” And Karl goes, ”He sounds gay.” I went, ”What do you mean?” He went, ”Some gays are a bit like that.” He thought God was having a hissy fit. Like God’s going, ”Look what they’ve done. ”No, they’re treating me like a cunt, I’m gonna treat them like a cunt.” I said, ”Karl, God is not gay, all right? Read the Bible, he hates them.” ”They are so wicked, I will have to wipe them off the face of the Earth, ”and every living thing with them.” What’s the squid ever done? In Leviticus, I think it is, they list all the animals that you’re… All the punishments for sleeping with them. Like, if you lay with a stoat, you’ll do this, and if you lay with a stoat, you’ll do that and get killed… And one of them is, ”If you sleep with a squid, ”you get smitten in the knees.” So if people are coming back from the beach like that, you know exactly what they’ve done. Anyway, God is not gay. Let’s establish that. ”But there was one man who was still very good. ”His name was Noah. He was a friend of God.” Just a friend, so don’t… No. Just a friend. A friend with big hooped earrings. Rouge. What the fuck? Where did he get that from? He lives in a cave. What the… ”What are you doing?” ”Seeing God. ”You never know. Never know.” Handlebar moustache. Holding God’s hand, who’s wearing a blouse. The old hand, going down the leggings. What? But God isn’t gay. (GIGGLING) ”God said to Noah, ‘I am so angry with men…”’ ”You mean men and women.” ”Whatever.” ”…that I have made my mind up to destroy them all. ”I have stretched my bow in the sky. It is a rainbow.” That’s got to be the world’s first pun, hasn’t it? ”It will make so much rain pour down on Earth, ”that everything will be drowned. But not you. ”I want you to build an ark. It must be like a big boat, ”with three decks and a roof over it.” ”Yeah, I know what an ark is, mate. Jesus.” ”And you will make a door in the side of it.” ”Do you think I’m a complete fucking mong?” ”Noah did exactly what God told him. ”And then God said to Noah…”
Now, okay, this book, admittedly aimed at children, but taken from the story in the Old Testament of Noah, I don’t think the author of this book was a zoologist. Um, as we’ve said, there could be five million species. I don’t think he knows all of them, the way he backs out very quickly in this next sentence. ”I want you to take two of every kind of animal with you into the ark. ”Two lions, two tigers, two elephants, so on.” ”Look after them well and keep them alive. ”And Noah did what God said.” Now, I want you to study that scenario. So, God is angry with mankind, okay? He’s wiping them out and starting again with just Noah and his wife. He’s angry at the animals, as well, for some reason. I don’t know why. But he’s going to start again, two of each, right? He calls a flood, builds an ark. Okay, Noah says, ”Right, two of every kind, you two, you two.” There’s a fucking stampede. Brrr! Every animal species… Brrr! Two elephants! Brrr! Two toucans, just walking. Don’t know what… I think this one’s in charge. This one wants to fly, I think. He’s going, ”We’d get there quicker if we… if we flew.” ”No.” ”No?” ”No.” I could do this all night. ”No?” ”No.” ”Sure?” ”Yeah.” ”I mean, we’ve got wings.” ”We got feet, too.” ”Why don’t you want to push in?” ”’Cause that elephant’s looking at me funny.” ”Yeah, I am. ”You push in and I will stamp on you, you big-nosed twat.” ”Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Who are you calling big-nose?” (LAUGHING) ”What?” ”Well, pot, kettle.” ”What does that mean, pot, kettle?” ”Pot calling kettle black.” ”What the fuck are you…” ”Oh, forget it.” ”I can’t forget it, I’m a fucking elephant.” Two camels, two lions, two ostriches, two leopards, two tigers, two zebra… Ah, here’s the crux of my point. Just one species on the ark at the moment. Uh, giraffes, okay. Another five million to get on there. Two of each, 10 million. Ten million animals to get on that ark. They’ll go on… I mean, that’s just a few of them, right? That’s, like, 10 or 1 2. They go on as far as… Ten million more to get on there. Just two on there at the moment. Uh… Look how much room they’re already taking up. It’s at a third capacity. What’s it going to be like on there when these two fat cunts get on? ”Then God bent the bow of his anger ”and the rain came flooding down, covering the Earth with water. ”It rained for 40 days and nights. ”The flood water rose higher and higher, ”until it covered the tops of the highest mountains.” (GASPING) ”Every living thing was drowned, except Noah and the animals in the ark.” And the fish. They were fine, weren’t they? In fact, all the sea creatures… I mean, they’re loving it. They were better off, if anything. Mountains underwater – their domains have increased, like, tenfold. You’ve got crabs going, ”I’m on a fucking mountain! This is amazing! ”I’ve never been up here before. It’s great!” I think that when you see on the news, when a little village in Gloucester gets flooded or somewhere, and it’s really sad, people have lost their homes and they’re sort of traipsing around, they’re in dinghies, carrying their pets, and it’s tragic, right? But you see, like, a little row of antique shops, just completely underwater, and I always think of a fish just looking in the window of that antique shop for the first time, right? ”So that’s a chaise longue.” ”For 150 days, the Earth was covered with water. ”Then Noah opened the window of the ark and looked out. ”The water seemed to be going down, but how could he be sure?” Well, just ask God. You’ve been chatting to him all the way through. Why’s… Why’s he suddenly copped a deaf ‘un? I mean, we’re getting cryptic here. ”He sent a raven out, but it soon came flying back. ”It could find nowhere to settle. ”Noah waited another week and he sent out a dove.” Why did the raven lose his job? ”But the dove came back, too.” See? The raven wasn’t bullshitting. This… ”There was still no dry land anywhere. But one day the dove flew out…” Why did the dove get another go and not the raven? Racist! ”But one day the dove flew out and brought back a green olive branch, ”and Noah knew that God was no longer angry. ”Then God told Noah to let the animals out of the ark. ”They must once more fill the Earth with living things. ”The first thing Noah did was to build an altar. ”He offered a sacrifice to God to thank him for saving them. ”And God said, ‘I will make a pact of friendship with you.’ ”’I will never again send a flood to destroy the Earth. ”’The rainbow, which I put in the sky, will no longer be a sign of my anger, ”’but a sign of peace. It will be a sign of my friendship with men.”’ That is… That is… That is how it’s… That is how it’s used today. Um… They took it a bit literally, I think. ”’It will be a sign of my friendship with men, which begins today, ”’and which my son, Jesus, will one day prove by shedding his blood for men.”’ ”Who?” ”You’ll see.” There wasn’t a teaser campaign in the Old Testament, was there? ”Coming soon, the sequel.” Ahhh! ”And so when you’ve done wrong and you’re feeling very sad about it, ”think of the rainbow and the peace which God wants to put into your heart. ”He has promised to be your friend. Promise to be his.” And that’s just one of 12 in the Dove book series. I’ve only got one. Number nine, Noah. But I think my favourite would be number eight, just from the title, Jesus and the Cripple. We don’t use that word any more, Jesus. (LAUGHING) I’m writing number 13, Moses and the Mong. I read that whole book to Karl. And he believed every word. Why wouldn’t he? It’s written down. Um, and I said, ”But, Karl, how could they get 10 million animals on a boat?” He went, ”So it was a big boat.” I said, ”Yeah, no, that’s true. They did.” I said, ”But they’re all part of the food chain. ”They would have literally had to have eaten each other to survive. ”Why didn’t the lion eat the antelope? Why didn’t the spider eat the fly?” And Karl said, ”’Cause in a crisis, you all pull together.” Amazing. He’s amazing.
I’d love to do a book of his quotes. Um, I love books of quotations. I sort of… I read them for pleasure. I’ve got a few of these compilations, and one of my heroes is Winston Churchill. And when I read, ”Give us the tools and we will finish the job”, I thought, ”How inspiring.” And when I read, ”Never in the field of human conflict ”was so much owed by so many to so few”, I thought, ”How patriotic.” And when I read, ”It is a good thing for an uneducated man ”to read books of quotations”, I thought, ”You cheeky fat git.” People say that Oscar Wilde is the greatest genius that’s ever lived. Let’s test that. Here’s one of his. ”All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. ”No man does. That is his.” That sounds a bit gay to me. Just, I don’t know… We’ll give it another go. Here’s another one. ”I couldn’t help it. I can resist everything, except temptation.” That sounds gay as well. I want to start that with an ”ooh”. I want to go, ”Ooh, I couldn’t help it.” You know? And I want to end it with, ”I can resist everything, except temptation. ”Chance would be a fine thing.” Do you know what I mean? And when he went through customs, all those years ago in New York, and the customs officer, just doing his job, said, ”Have you anything to declare?”, Oscar Wilde famously said, ”Nothing but my genius.” (MOANING) It’s not witty. He planned that. I bet the first time he went through customs in a foreign country, he was all, ”Yes, sir. No, sir.” ”Anything to declare?” ”No.” ”On you go.” ”Thank… ”Oh, I just thought of something fucking brilliant to say. Oh, my God. ”Excuse me, can I go… No? No? Oh, God!” He had to wait weeks in those days, back on a boat to England, planning it. ”Anything to declare?” ”Nothing but my genius. ”I’ll be in a book of quotations with that.” So he gets there again, finds the same bloke, goes on, bloke goes, ”On you go.” ”Aw, he didn’t even fucking ask me that time. ”Excuse me, they didn’t ask me if I had anything to declare.” ”Random.” ”Fucking random!” Back on the boat, three weeks later, planning it. ”Anything to declare?” ”Nothing but my genius.” Gets there again, right? Gets in the same bloke’s queue. This time he looks all shifty, so he gets called out. And the bloke goes… ”Did you buy anything?” ”That’s not the question. Just… ”Say, ‘Do you have anything to declare?”’ ”Have you anything to declare?” ”Nothing but my genius.” ”Whose are the butt plugs?” ”They’re… They’re mine.” Incarcerated in Reading Gaol for homosexuality. Come a long way, from it being punishable and illegal to total equality, as it should be.
Gay age of consent, same as heterosexuality, and, uh, even gay marriage, um… Although, in the one place that was ahead of the game, ironically, they sort of fell behind. Uh, California. Um, they overturned it at the last election. They had a referendum, and they said no to gay marriage. Uh, you’ve got people in San Francisco going, ”That’s why we moved here.” It’s a strange sort of bigotry, that you could affect someone’s lifestyle that doesn’t affect you back. It’s not like they asked someone once and said, ”Do you mind if these two men get married?”, and they went, ”Uh, yeah, okay.” ”Okay, wank them off, then.” ”What? I didn’t know that was going to happen.” That… It’s also a strange sort of bigotry because, presumably those people that object to that are the same people that said gay people were promiscuous and immoral. But now they don’t want them to be monogamous and respectful in the eyes of God. And it must be so confusing to a gay guy in California, going, ”That’s the bit they don’t want? ”With all the other shit we do, that’s the bit that…” They must be going to judges, going, ”Sorry, can I get the rules straight?” ”What do you want to know?” ”Can I marry a man?” ”No.” ”Can I shag one up the arse and give him a little reach-round?” ”Yes.” ”Right, I can’t marry…” ”No.” ”Can I pick up a stranger in the bushes, take him home, jizz on him, ”and throw him out in the morning, all crusty and homeless?” ”Please do.” ”Couldn’t marry him?” ”No.” ”Right, can I get 15 men in a…” I’m just riffing. ”Fifteen men in a semi-circle, naked, bent over, ”spreading their arse cheeks, and attach a dildo to every part of my body ”and go at them for half an hour?” ”If you want, yeah.” I don’t know why I chose 15 in a semi-circle. I think subconsciously I was thinking of that TV show Fifteen to One. That would’ve been different, wouldn’t it? Also, I’d line them up, also, I wouldn’t face them away, I’d face them to me so you could get a… That’s one thing. Ah, no. If you were to wank off 15 men at a time, kids, it’s like plate-spinning, it is like plate-spinning, because… No, it is. ‘Cause you get these two ready to go, but they’re losing it, so you have to… So you have to go, ”Oh, oh, oh… Oh, for fuck’s sake.” ”Oh, ain’t it knackering, wanking off 15 men at once?” Never thought I’d say that. Again. What?
Oh… I hope I haven’t offended anyone with any of the subject matter in this show. I really do. It’s not the point, but if I have offended anyone, and I’m sure I have, then I don’t apologise for it, because there’s a spate of comedians going, ”Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean it.” You shouldn’t have said it, then. You’re an idiot. Right? It’s… They bow to this pressure of going… These witch-hunts going, ”Are there things you shouldn’t make jokes about?” No. There’s nothing you can’t make a joke about. It depends what the joke is. Comedy comes from a good or a bad place. It’s contextual. It’s like this big debate about swearing. People say, ”Is swearing okay on television?” It depends. Use your common sense and your remote control. Don’t write a letter. It’s like, be warned, right? If it’s a documentary about prisoners on death row, there’s probably going to be a bit of language, okay? They’ve got nothing to lose, right? Whereas I’d complain, if it was the news, and Trevor McDonald came out and went, ”Oh, fuck me, nasty train crash.” Right? I’d go, ”No, Trev, do it straight. That’s the news, mate. That’s…” Right? But if was watching Antiques Roadshow and Michael Aspel was there with a sweet old 90-year-old man, and he went, ”Well, Albert, this ring your dead wife left you ”is worth fuck all, and she’s made you look a right cunt on telly.” Actually, I’d love that. That would be amazing. (LAUGHING) Best episode ever.
Um… No, but what I’m saying is there’s this big thing about, ”Oh, um, sick jokes. Oh, sick jokes. Oh, sick jokes.” Thing is, you tell a sick joke with the express understanding that neither party is really like that. I wouldn’t tell a ”sick joke” to a known paedophile. I wouldn’t go, ”Here, mate, you are going to love this more than anyone, son.” All right? Do you see my point? Right? And I’ve never been in trouble for anything I’ve said, ’cause I don’t care what people think and I refuse to apologise for it. I mean, growing up, I always used to sort of like, you know, test the boundaries a little bit and try and get people to laugh at things they thought they shouldn’t. Um… I remember when I was… Actually, I wasn’t a kid. I was about 25. (LAUGHING) Um, me and my girlfriend had met this other couple, they’d moved down from the north, okay? And they used to come in the place where I used to work and we had a couple of drinks with them, and then one day they invited us to a party. And we went along. And, one, it was a dinner party. They hadn’t warned us about that. But, two, it was with their parents, both sets of parents, their grandparents, and some great-aunts and uncles that had come down from the north to see how they were getting on. So, average age of about 85, right? And I think we were an afterthought. They thought, ”Oh, we’ve got no one there our own age. ”Oh, what… Ricky and Jane, invite them.” So we came along. And we’re still sort of getting to know them. And, as I say, I always used to, you know, muck around and make up jokes and see if I could, you know… We’re… Us Brits, we use humour all the time. Two Brits meet, it’s the first one to get a gag out, okay? Whether it’s irony, satire, silliness or… We use it as a sword and a shield and a medicine, but mostly as a getting-to-know-you. Are you like-minded? Okay? So, uh, I told this joke. I started off lightly, in case they didn’t like that sort of thing. I said, ”Why did the little girl fall off the swing? ”’Cause she had no arms.” Yeah, right? Okay, sweet. And they laughed. A little bit louder than that. There was only two of them, so thanks, right? So I thought, okay, they get it. They like that sort of thing. And, you know, you up the ante a little bit. And I told this joke. Oh, okay.
Let me have a little drink. Start the car? Right. I told this joke. I made sure the old people couldn’t hear. Right, right. Father, sitting at home, reading the paper. His little girl comes running in, she’s only six. ”Hello, dear.” ”Hello, Daddy.” ”What you been doing, then?” ”Playing in the park.” ”Oh, with your friends?” ”Yeah, until the man came along.” ”Till the man came along?” ”Yeah, a man came along and he asked my friends to leave, ”so it was just me and him.” ”Darling, come over here. Come on, darling. ”Whatever happened, none of it was your fault, okay? ”But tell Daddy every detail. What happened, darling? What happened?” ”Um, he took me behind a wall, so no one could see what we were doing.” ”Oh, God, darling. Then what happened?” ”Um, he took my dress off.” ”Oh, God, darling. What happened then? What happened then?” ”Um, he took his thing out.” ”Oh, God, what happened then, darling?” ”Nothing, that was it.” ”Oh, well, make something up!”
Don’t tell anyone that. I want it to be a surprise. So I told that joke, and I carried on, we’re getting a bit drunk and I’m telling more jokes. Eventually, we sat down about 9:45, they’d put two sort kitchen tables together, and the hosts sat at either end and they sat me in the middle, opposite this very sweet, but very deaf sort of 80-year-old man, so the conversation was a bit stilted. And after about 20 minutes, Ian, one of the hosts, pipes up and says, ”Oh, tell that joke.” ”What?” And all the old people go, ”Oh, we love jokes.” ”Do you?” I looked at Ian, he went, ”It’ll be fine.” I went, ”Okay.” And he’s sort of got on with his conversation. I went, ”Oh, um…” They’re all like that. Little, sweet, old faces. I went… (GASPING) ”Uh… Oh, what the fuck… ”Father, sitting at home reading the paper. His little girl comes round.” Told the whole joke, got to the bit, ”Well, make something up,” and they went, ahem, silence. I looked at Ian, he went, ”Not that one!”
Thanks very much. You’ve been fantastic. Good night. Cheers. (AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you very much. Um… Oh, thank you. Uh, I should… I should just say, um, not a lot of science. Um, but then, if you’ve come here to revise for your thesis, you’re fucked, to be honest. I should have called it ”An Investigation Into the Rational and Non-Rational.” ‘Cause we impose sort of scientific method on a few… We busted a few myths, remember? Fat birds losing weight and looking attra… Remember that one? We did that. And we looked at a few things you may or may not believe in – religion, or racism, homophobia, two things I’ve never been a part of, because they’re born of ignorance and fear. And it’s fear that I think threatens rational thought more than anything. I’ve always considered myself a sort of liberal, rational sort of bloke, and then, after 9/11, the world went a bit crazy. Understandably – the rules suddenly changed and there was a lot of anger and fear, and finger-pointing and hysteria, and I still tried to remain rational in it all. I’d be in the pub with friends and I’d be going, ”No, you can’t say that. That’s a generalisation. ”Oh, you just read that. No, you don’t… ”That’s not true, that’s a received wisdom, that’s not a… ”No, you can’t tar everyone with the same brush. ”No, it’s still the safest form of transport. It’s 16 million-to-1 .” Trying to remain rational. That’s in a pub. When I’m flying, it’s more like, ”Check him again, can we? ”What the fuck? ”What, he’s getting on? He’s getting on my… ”Can I check him? Can I fucking check him?” But that’s… That’s fear. I’ve always been a nervous flyer, actually. And I flew before, soon before and straight after 9/11 . Always in and out of, like, New York and LA. And I try to remain, again, rational. I was thinking, ”No, it’s even safer now. ”It’s even safer now. It’s harder to…” And then I found out that a suicide bomber doesn’t have to get on the plane now. They don’t even have to commit suicide. Now they can… They’ve got heat-seeking missiles. They can take the plane out in the first 10 minutes of takeoff. So now I’d be on the plane like that. ”Right, we’re out of range. Now who’s got the bomb?” All right?
I flew a couple of weeks after 9/11. And it was an internal flight from New York to LA. And we get off, I go, ”Right, we’re out of range. Okay.” And I was still a bit nervous, and I said to the air hostess, I said, ”Have you got any magazines?” And she went, quite loud and blase, she went, ”No, honey, we’ve got no magazines. ”We’ve had to undertake severe cutbacks ”because we’re one of the companies being sued over 9/11.” One, don’t mention 9/11. Surely a new rulebook went round. ”Don’t mention 9/11 when you hand out the chocolates.” Just, you know… Two, don’t say ”severe cutbacks”. ‘Cause I don’t think of magazines any more. When you say ”severe cutbacks”, I think of a bloke in an aircraft hangar earlier that week, going, ”Do we really need all these rivets?” So… What terrible bedside manner that is. I mean, I take first-class flights everywhere. You wouldn’t have it any other way. I… I sort of do it for you, really. And… Some of those flights cost 10 grand. And for 10 grand, in a disaster, I expect my bit of the plane, at the front, to gently break off and float down to a desert island. It doesn’t. I’d die with the rest of you fucking losers. That’s not fair, is it? I know you’d try to save me, but you couldn’t. Just be… I’ll probably be the only one mentioned on the news. Um… You’d be ”450 others”. So that’s… That’s something, I suppose, isn’t it? No.
So, I’m flying all the time, right? And then it happened, okay? I was flying back from New York, 9l25, BA, first-class, to London, JFK. The whole week in America, leading up to that flight, on every channel on TV, there was a rolling tickertape that said, ”America on red alert.” Okay? And every bulletin said, ”We have an intel that there’s going to be another 9/11, ”this weekend, in New York or LA. ”Do not fly, unless you absolutely have to.” I had to. I was filming. ”And if you fly, be extra vigilant.” Okay, so I’m there, I’m the only one in the first-class lounge, right? And I’m still trying to remain philosophical about it. I’m thinking, ”Right, today’s the day ”you definitely don’t try and get a bomb on the plane.” Do you know what I mean? You think, ”No, everyone’s…” Wait till Monday, right? And I’m there, and about 15 minutes before boarding, into the first-class lounge comes this guy, I don’t know whether he was North African or Middle Eastern, but he had all the gear. And… Beard, everything. Steel attache case, okay? Here’s your middle-class, rational liberal. I go… I’m suddenly just engaging staff in inane conversation. I’m going, ”Flight on time?” They’re going, ”Yeah.” I’m going, ”What’s the weather like in England?” And they’re going, ”Oh, it’s…” Like they’re going to go, ”It’s a bit cloudy. ”There he is!” Right? It didn’t… Didn’t happen, right? So now I’m stewing on this, all the things for the week leading up to it, ”There’s gonna be a 9/11, it’s gonna be here, it’s gonna be today, it’s gonna be New York.” Oh, my God, right? But now I’m in two minds. There’s a fight between good and evil, between rational and irrational, okay? So this one goes, ”Oh, that’s a suicide bomber.” ”Oh, don’t be stupid. What do you know?” ”That’s what they look like.” ”Why do you say that?” ”There’s a picture of him on every page of the Daily Mail. ”There’s… It’s him.” ”Don’t be stupid. It’s a cliche. Don’t be stupid.” Then he makes a phone call. I can’t understand what he’s saying, but he sounds a bit angry, right? This one goes, ”Oh, he made a phone call.” This one goes, ”You just made a phone call.” ”Yeah, but not in foreign.” ”Just shut up. Shut up. Stupid.” ”Oh, I still don’t…” ”Why do you think that?” ”Look at the beard.” ”He’s been checked. He’s been checked, the same as us.” ”Do they check the beard?” ”Yeah, they check the beard. They check the beard, okay?” And then I’m sort of… This is going on in my head, and I’m sort of looking at him, absent-mindedly, sort of staring at him. And he catches me looking, and he goes like this… This one goes, ”Oh, he knows!” This one goes, ”No, he knows why you’re looking at him. ”He’s had that sort of prejudice, that shit, for fucking months. ”Stop looking at him. Shut the fuck up.” Right? But this one starts winning. The fear starts beating the rational, okay? It’s going, ”Well, they said it’d be today.” ”Yeah, I know, but what… But the statistics.” ”Well, they’re up today, aren’t they? They’re up. ”Yeah, but what…” ”Don’t give it ‘It won’t happen to us.’ They said that on 9/11 .” ”Yeah, but what about all the checks?” ”Well, they find new ways of getting past our detectors ”and then we have to up our game, and that’s… ”Yeah, you’re right.” So suddenly now we’ve won there, and I think, ”Oh, my God, this is it.” And you know that wave of nausea, when you suddenly go, ”Oh, my God. ”This is it. I’m one of the people that witnessed… There’s a…” And I think, ”Okay, yeah, let’s report him.” This one goes, ”No, we can’t.” ”Why?” ”In case someone thinks we’re racist.” ”What? What the… No! Let’s report him and be a wrong, live racist. ”Let’s… Let’s… ”Let…” And so I’m there, and I think, ”He is a suicide bomber, ”I’m going to get on the plane with him and I’m going to die.” And I have a little breakdown, and I’m nearly crying. And all this happens in a few moments, and I look over, and he’s joined by his wife, who’s got all the gear, and his… And his two little girls, right? And I go, ”Oh! ”Of course he’s not a fucking suicide bomber. ”If you’re off to see 72 virgins, you don’t take the wife and kids along.” So… And I got on the plane, and I was sort of relieved and embarrassed, and I saw the funny side of it, and… And of course he wasn’t a terrorist, he was a businessman and a family man, he was playing with his little girls, they kept running up and down, bumping into my chair, he wasn’t doing anything, um, and he was sort of like scaring them and they were screaming at the top of their voice, like… After half an hour, I was hoping someone would blow the fucking plane up, right?
But a really weird thing happened during that period. I got so worried about terrorist attack, that I started taking private jets and helicopters everywhere, just ’cause I was so rich. No, I’m… No, no, ’cause my… Again, my rationale was, ”I’m the only person on this plane, ”and I definitely haven’t got a bomb, so… So we’re fine, okay?” And I was taking a helicopter once, from Manhattan to the Hamptons for a screening. And I’m waiting for the helicopter… Rewind, two days before that, I’m in my apartment in New York, okay? Just eating my Cheerios, there’s a carton of milk there. And in America they put missing persons on the milk cartons. I’ve seen a thousand of them. But this one, it was for a child, which is always, you know, sadder. It’s sad when anyone goes missing, but… Because of her age, presumably it was an abduction as well, and… And there was also a plea from the mother, and it was the language she used, it was… It was sad. She just said where the girl went missing and the name of the girl, which I won’t say, but I remember it, um, and she just said, ”Five years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, ”always happy. Please help me.”
Two days later, I’m in the Lower East Side, waiting for this helicopter, a little helipad, it’s just a little sort of like station there, and it’s like a wharf development, and I’m sort of looking down onto a building, a derelict building. And I look down, and someone had put a brown blanket up, as a curtain, on one of the windows, sort of gaffer-taped it up, and it had fallen away. And I’m sort of looking, and I look in, and it’s an empty room – this is true – except a mattress, and a little girl sat on the mattress with her hands tied. And my fucking heart… I thought, ”Five years old, five years old, blonde hair, blonde hair, ”blue eyes, blue eyes, always happy… ”Crying her eyes out.” It couldn’t have been her. I left it.
Thank you so much. You’ve been fantastic. Good night. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you.
