[audience cheering and applauding]
[announcer] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome to the stage a man who really doesn’t need to do this.
[audience laughing]
Ricky Gervais.
[upbeat music playing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
[audience cheering]
[music fades]
Hello. Hello. Thank you.
[cheering continues]
Shush. Thank you very much. Shush. No, shush. Thank you, but shut the fuck up. No fucking whooping or… Just laugh. No, but thank… Shush. Everyone calm down. Shush! I’m filming this. Shut up, you cunts!
[audience laughing]
Thank you very much. Um… Welcome to my show. Uh… It’s not a show. There’s no dancers or jugglers. It’s basically a bloke talking, um, which is essentially what stand-up comedy is. A bloke talking. Sexist. Um…
[audience laughing]
What about all the funny female comedians? Like, um…
[audience laughing]
No. No. No. Right. No, no, no, no, no. I’m not doing that. Okay, right. That was irony, okay? There’ll be a bit of that throughout the show. See if you can spot it. Now, that’s when I say something I don’t really mean for comic effect, and you, as an audience, you laugh at the wrong thing ’cause you know what the right thing is. It’s a way of satirizing attitudes. Like that first joke, I used the old-fashioned sexist trope that women aren’t funny. Now, in real life, I know there are loads of funny women. Like, um…
[audience laughing]
I did it again. Well spotted. Good.
[audience laughing]
No, but there are. Um… Dame Edna Everage. She’s…
[audience laughing]
Uh… Eddie Izzard.
[audience laughing]
She’s brilliant, in’t she?
[audience laughing]
She’s not only a great comedienne, she’s also a great actress, isn’t she? She was brilliant in that thing as that man, weren’t sh…
[audience laughing]
It’s good to be back. Um… I fell back in love with stand-up on my last tour, Humanity. I played arenas around the world. Netflix bought it for a record amount. It was the most-watched special of the year. I thought, “Everyone loves me now. Everyone loves me now.” Then I got this tweet.
[audience laughing]
A real tweet, right? “Call yourself a comedian?” He knows I do.
[audience laughing]
Literally says the word in my Twitter bio.
[audience laughing]
“Call yourself a comedian?” “You’re about as funny as…” Now, I thought he was gonna go for the jugular and say, “Miranda,” or…
[audience laughing]
Come on! Come on, guys. Don’t… [Ricky laughing] I’m joking. Right.
[audience laughing]
“Call yourself a comedian?” “You’re about as funny as a fart at a baby’s funeral.”
[audience laughing]
Yeah. He was trying to hurt my feelings. But his big mistake was choosing summat that’d be fucking hilarious!
[audience laughing]
As if that would… A fart at a baby’s funeral?
[audience laughing]
Big, echoey church. Everyone just silently sobbing like that. Tiny little coffin. Tiny little coffin.
[audience laughing]
And someone farts?
[audience laughing]
You’d laugh.
[audience laughing]
Even if it was your baby. You know? No.
[audience laughing]
If you’re at the funeral, it’s been dead a week. [surprised laughter] You’re probably up for a giggle.
[audience laughing]
Particularly if you’re the father. If you’re the mother, you probably still find it hard seeing “the funny side of things.”
[audience laughing]
Oh, women! [groans]
[audience laughing]
Not all women. I mean, the old-fashioned ones. The old-fashioned women. Oh God! You know, the ones with wombs. Oh.
[audience laughing]
Those fucking dinosaurs. [groans]
[audience laughing]
No, I love the new women. They’re great, aren’t they? The new ones we’ve been seeing lately. The ones with beards and cocks. They’re as good as…
[audience laughing]
They’re as good as gold. I love them.
[audience laughing]
It’s the old-fashioned… And now the old-fashioned, they go, “Ooh, they wanna use our toilets!” “Why shouldn’t they?” “For ladies!” “They are ladies. Look at their pronouns.”
[audience laughing]
“What about this person isn’t a lady?” “Well, his penis.”
[audience laughing]
“Her penis, you fucking bigot!”
[audience laughing]
“What if he rapes me?” “What if she rapes you?”
[audience laughing]
“You fucking TERF whore!”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
But that tweet sums comedy up, doesn’t it? How subjective it is. How one person, some people can find them hilarious, some find them the least funny person in the world. When someone says to me about another comedian, they say, “Oh, they’re not funny,” even if I agree with them, I stand up… I say, “You can’t say that. You gotta say you don’t find them funny.” I hate it when people say, “That joke was offensive.” I say, “No, you gotta say you found it offensive.” It’s about feelings, and feelings are personal. And there’s loads of types of comedy, and comedy evolves. There’s a new type of comedy at the moment called woke comedy, right? No, it’s very progressive, you know? There are clubs where the comedian has to sign a thing saying he won’t say anything contentious or anything that could offend anyone. It’s a safe space for the audience. Woke comedy. And, uh, I tried to watch a bit of it, and I decided I’d rather watch Louis CK masturbate.
[audience laughing]
Can’t mention him anymore. He’s canceled. Uh… Not enough to apologize and move on. You gotta… Like poor Kevin Hart. See, Kevin Hart, he got the job hosting the Oscars. His best day ever. He was on Twitter, “I’ve wanted to do this all my life.” And then someone found these ten-year-old tweets. Look, they were sort of childish, sort of shitty homophobic tweets. It was about his son. He was mucking around. He said, “Oh, my son’s doing so-and-so. I hope he’s not gay.” There was a massive backlash. He went, “I’m not homophobic, sorry.” He deleted ’em, right, and said, “I’m really sorry.” Ten years later, someone finds a screen grab and goes, “Look, he’s done this.” And the Oscars go, “You gotta apologize again.” He went, “No, I’ve apologized. I can’t keep apologizing.” And he’s right. If there’s no value to saying sorry and evolving, he might as well just tweet ’em again.
[audience laughing]
That’s how I deal with shit anyway.
[audience laughing]
But if you’re the type of person to revel in someone getting canceled for summat they said ten years ago, you’re just ensuring that one day you’ll be canceled for summat you said today. You can’t predict what’ll be offensive in the future. You don’t know who the dominant mob will be. Like, the worst thing you can say today, get you canceled on Twitter, death threats, the worst thing you can say today is, “Women don’t have penises,” right?
[audience laughing]
Now, no one saw that coming.
[audience laughing]
There are no ten-year-old tweets of people saying… You won’t find a ten-year-old tweet of someone saying, “Women don’t have penises.” Do you know why? We didn’t think we fucking had to.
[audience laughing]
Liam Neeson. Oh. He nearly got canceled, didn’t he? Liam Neeson. Now, I don’t know why he told this story.
[audience laughing]
But he did, at a press junket to a journalist, right, and he just started saying, uh, “It was 30 years ago, and, uh, my friend came home, and, um, she’d been raped,” right, and… That’s not the funny bit.
[audience laughing]
[laughs] He said, “She’d been raped.” I said, ‘What did the guy look like?'” “Said it was a Black guy.” “So I got my cosh and I went out looking for the first Black guy.” “Nothing happened. I came to my senses.” But the weird thing about that story is, who has a cosh? Who has a…
[audience laughing]
But it was touch and go. They canceled the premiere ’cause of the backlash. People wanted the film to be deleted, and I get it. Some people can’t separate the art form with the artist’s personal life. I know Liam. I’ve worked with him. He’s a lovely man. Definitely not racist. But when that broke, even I was like, “Oh, will I ever be able to find Schindler’s List funny again?”
[audience laughing]
I… I… I do still find it funny, obviously.
[audience laughing]
But now there’s so much outrage, and we hear about it, and it’s taken seriously, you know? There’s Oxbridge comedians writing for the posh papers, the rules of comedy, they’re laying it down, laying down the law. And it’s all stuff like, “Comedy should punch up. You should never punch down.” Sometimes you’ve gotta punch down, like if you’re beating up a disabled toddler. Know what I mean?
[audience laughing]
If you punch up, you’ll miss the little cunt. He’ll win.
[audience laughing]
I like that joke ’cause it highlights the difference between metaphorical punching down in jokes and actual punching down. But people nowadays want you to believe that words are actual violence, right? Now, you laughed at a joke about beating up a disabled toddler. No one got hurt. If I’d have actually dragged out a disabled toddler and started beating him up, you wouldn’t laugh, right? That’s why I dropped that bit. Um…
[audience laughing]
But these people are virtue signaling. They’re trying to bring people down to raise their own status, and they say, “No, we’re protecting minorities.” They’re basically saying minorities haven’t got a sense of humor, which is so patronizing. And I get that as well, what it’s like to be outnumbered. In this country, we’re still only 5% Black, 5% Asian, 5% LGBTQ, you know? Tiny numbers. Now, I’m a white, heterosexual multimillionaire, right?
[audience laughing]
[audience cheering]
Um… There’s less than 1% of us.
[audience laughing]
But… do I whine? No! Do I…
[audience laughing]
I don’t mind. I just get on with it. “Come on, Rick. Come on, Rick!” “Just keep fi…” I’m like Rosa Parks, know what I mean? I’m like…
[audience laughing]
Except I fought for the right to never have to take a seat on a bus, but…
[audience laughing]
People complain about things they don’t have to watch. It doesn’t affect them, you know? And, again, everyone’s got the right to be offended and complain, but they’ve gotta know that we’re not trying to offend. That’s not our aim, you know? We’re tying to make you laugh. We’re trying to give you a good time. Here’s the deal, right? So I riff… If I say summat tonight that’s so offensive, that you’ve never heard anything so fucking off the charts in your life, don’t make a scene. Go to the box office after the show. They can’t give you your money back straight away. There’s a form you fill out with the complaint, and I take those away, and I shit on them.
[audience laughing]
So that’s the rules of comedy.
[audience cheering and applauding]
SuperNature. Why SuperNature? Well, for two reasons. One, I wanna debunk the supernatural. I don’t believe in anything supernatural. I believe that anything that exists is by definition part of nature and is explainable, if not now, then eventually. Also, SuperNature ’cause nature is super enough, you know? It’s… It’s amazing that we’re even here discussing it. We’re the only species that allows the universe to understand itself. The chances of us being here at all, the chances of you being you existing now, the chances of that sperm hitting that egg is 400 trillion to one. And I think life is like a holiday. We don’t exist for 13 and a half billion years, then we have these 80, 90 years if we’re lucky, then we die, never to exist again. Some people are even offended by that. They go, “You can’t say that. This can’t be chance.” “It’s too good. Someone must have made it all.” “I’m too special. I can’t just not exist.” “I’ll live again. I’ll, uh… I’ll go to heaven.” “I’ll be with my friends and family or come back as a spirit and walk amongst you.” “Or I’ll be reincarnated. I’ll come back as someone else.” That’d just be someone else.
[audience laughing]
That’s all that’s happened. You’re not involved. That is just…
[audience laughing]
…someone else, right?
Many people believe in reincarnation, of course. Some people claim they remember who they were in a previous life. Um… There’s a society in America, of course… Um…
[audience laughing]
In California, of course, right?
[audience laughing]
And they remember who they were in a previous life. They’re always someone pretty special in their previous life. Not so much in the life they’ve got now, right?
[audience laughing]
But I saw a documentary about it, and every year, they have a “come as you were” party, where they go dressed as the person they were in history. Two Napoleons.
[audience laughing]
So at least one of ’em is fucking lying.
[audience laughing]
No reincarnation. No ghosts. You seen all the ghost hunter shows? Oh my God, hundreds of ghost hunter shows. Years and years. Celebrity Ghost Hunter. All around the world, thousands and thousands of hours of footage, they’ve never seen a fucking ghost. Not one. It’s all like, “What was that? Oh, it’s just the… No, not the…”
[audience laughing]
“Did you hear that? Oh, was it you?” “No.”
[audience laughing]
Imagine if wildlife programs were like that.
[audience laughing]
Imagine watching David Attenborough all these years and he goes, “Here on Kilimanjaro, we see…” “Oh, no, it’s not…”
[audience laughing]
“And by the banks of the Limpopo, the elusive…” “Oh, it’s not…”
[audience laughing]
You’d stop watching the cunt.
[audience laughing]
They’ve never seen a ghost.
The pedo hunter shows, on the other hand…
[audience laughing]
There’s usually a couple in the crew just in case.
[audience laughing]
Particularly if it’s a BBC production. Oh shut up!
[audience cheering and applauding]
There’s no reincarnation, no ghosts, no heaven, I believe. People can’t get over that. People quiz me on Twitter when they find out I’m an atheist. They go, “You don’t believe in God at all?” I go, “No.” “Do you pray?” I go, “No.” They go, “Why don’t you pray just in case there’s a God?” I say, “Why don’t you put garlic over your door just in case there’s a Dracula?”
[audience laughing]
I got no problem with praying. I know loads of nice Christians and Muslims and Jews, and if one of my family is very ill, they say, “I’ll pray for them.” I say, “Thanks very much,” ’cause it’s a nice gesture. If they said, “We also canceled the chemotherapy,” I’d go, “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”
[audience laughing]
“Pray? Fill your boots, son, but let’s…”
[audience laughing]
“Let’s do the praying and the chemotherapy, shall we?” “‘Cause that’s the same result as just the chemotherapy, so let’s… let’s definitely keep that one, shall we?”
[audience laughing]
I got in trouble talking about praying on Twitter. Remember a few years ago, that terrible disaster in Oklahoma, the hurricane? People lost their lives, their livelihood, and I donated to the Red Cross. I tweeted about it with a link saying, “You can donate here too,” trying to help them, and one of those frivolous entertainment magazines from America, their account tweeted this thing that annoyed me. They tweeted, “Beyoncé and Rihanna send prayers to Oklahoma.” And I tweeted back going, “I feel like a cunt. I only sent money.”
[audience laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
Someone tweeted me once, “Would you come to the bedside of a dying child and tell them there’s no heaven?” I tweeted back, “Is it a paid gig?”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing] Oh…
[audience laughing]
I don’t care whether you believe or not, what you believe in, who you pray to. Doesn’t affect me. I just think that nature is super enough, you know? I don’t think we need angels and unicorns. We’ve got the fucking octopus. That actually exists. Eight legs, nine brains, three hearts, and a beak. Make your fucking mind up! What are you doing? The duck-billed platypus, a monotreme. When scientists first found that, they thought it was a hoax ’cause it produces eggs and milk. It could make its own custard. It doesn’t, but it… it could.
[audience laughing]
It could. It definitely could. [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
But even though we know the chances of us existing at all are astronomical and that life is so short, we waste so much of it worrying about stuff, about things that might never happen, about things that won’t matter in a week, let alone a year or ten years. I’m terrible. I worry. I’m a worrier. I lay awake at night thinking, “What if…” and all that, and I hate being stressed. So I try and rule stress out of my life, which is really stressful ’cause I have to have a plan A and a plan B and a plan C. And if I do all my work, at home, I go, “Right, militant. No work. Just relax.” “Just a glass of wine. Just relax.” If summat comes through the door, I’m like, “What the fuck’s that?”
[audience laughing]
It’s usually money. [sighs] Um…
[audience laughing]
Right. [laughs] And Jane, my girlfriend, she’s like, “Let’s have a look, shall we?” She tries to calm me down. I’ve been with Jane now nearly 40 years. And we’ve…
[audience cheering]
Thank you. And we’ve always had cats ’cause Jane read early days that a cat will make you live longer, de-stress you, stops you having a heart attack and stroke if you’re wound up. She was basically trying to save my life. So we got cats. We’ve always had cats. I think it works. Like, if I’m really stressed, I go, “Where’s the cat?” Right? Fell asleep. “Wake up!” [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
“What?” So, no, then I stroke the cat, and I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m stressed.” “Look, she’s so unstressed.” And I think, “That’s unfair,” and that stresses me out a little bit. I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders. She’s got nothing. No conscience, no guilt. You will never see a cat feeling guilty. You will never go into a room and see a cat like that, “That’s fucked up.”
[audience laughing]
You go, “What’s the matter?” “What’s the matter?” “Yeah.” “All the fucking shit in there. That’s what’s the matter, mate.”
[audience laughing]
“Like what?” “Like… like that bloody mouse I killed.”
[audience laughing]
“Probably had a family, didn’t it?”
[audience laughing]
“Probably, yeah.” “I didn’t have to torture it first.”
[audience laughing]
They don’t give a fuck.
[audience laughing]
If a cat was big enough, it would kill you and eat you. They’re the opposite to dogs. This sums up the difference between cats and dogs once and for all. The cat has got a barbed penis. True. Google it. Careful. Right, but…
[audience laughing]
A barbed penis, right? Two reasons. One, it holds the female in place during mating. So it slides in easy, then it goes, “Oh, run? Oh, you can’t.”
[audience laughing]
And, two, when it withdraws, that pain causes the female to ovulate. Think of a different way, mate. And that makes me think maybe there is a God ’cause, I mean, maybe he did cats and dogs ’cause they’re… He went, “Boom, there you go.” “Cats and dogs, you’re ballpark furry mammals.” “You live at home. It’s a good gig. You get fed. “What sort of penis were you… hoping for? “Dog.” “Doesn’t matter.” “Whatever you… It’ll be the best penis ever.” “Just summat that matches my onesie, just a little, uh…”
[audience laughing]
“Maybe a little furry mound. Summat lady dogs would like.” “A little furry mound with a little pink lipstick in it.”
[audience laughing]
“Furry lipstick. Good choice.”
[audience laughing]
“Cat.”
“Gimme a fuck-stalk with hooks.”
[audience laughing]
The cat is the only animal that domesticated itself. It’s true. Just wandered into civilization about 10,000 years ago and went, “Meow! Feed me,” right? They made the meow up for us. They don’t do that in the feral state. “Meow!” They learned that we… “Aw!” And it works. My cat goes, “Meow!” “Aw!” I let my cat do anything it wants. It can sleep or go where it wants. If we get a parcel in the post, if I undo it, right, and if she gets in the box, “Aw!” I can’t throw it away. We got about 17 all over the… mansion. Um…
[audience laughing]
And if we’re watching telly, me and Jane, if it gets in our lap, such a privilege, we don’t move. Even if we need a wee, we don’t wanna disturb it. The other one gets the drinks all night. “Aw!” And people say to me, “You spoil that cat.” I go, “Yeah, I do. It’s a cat.” It’s not a person. What’s the worst that can happen if you spoil a cat? It doesn’t grow up to be fucking Boris Johnson. It’s…
[audience laughing]
No, I don’t… I don’t get political. Um… Although he is out of his depth, okay?
[audience laughing]
I mean, he started off by saying women in burkas look like postboxes. Now, it’s not up to Boris Johnson what a Muslim woman wears on her face. It’s up to her husband.
[audience laughing]
Not… Not my rules. Not my rules.
[audience laughing]
This won’t be in the special. Um…
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience applauding]
Edit.
[audience laughing]
Yeah, cats, in’t they?
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
No, I… I do love cats. Um… I really love dogs. We haven’t got a dog ’cause we travel too much, usually. But wherever we are in the world, New York or London, we go for a walk every day just to meet dogs, in Central Park or Hampstead Heath. I know about 200 dogs by name now, and you always meet a few of your little friends, and it sets me up for the day. It’s like my fucking heroin. And if you meet a brand-new dog, you go, “Hello,” he’s never met you before, and if you’re nice to it, he’s just met you, and suddenly you’re best… He’d do anything for you. “Need a kidney?” They are amazing, dogs. It makes me laugh, that sign people put on their house, “Beware of the dog.” That makes me wanna go in the house to meet it. So if you wanna keep me out of your house, put up a sign that says, I dunno, “Beware of the AIDS,” you know?
[audience laughing]
Although that’s not as good as it was, is it, AIDS? No, seriously, it’s like all diseases let you down, but that was… I mean, in its heyday, it was fucking amazing, wasn’t it, AIDS?
[audience laughing]
Coronavirus? Fuck off. That couldn’t… couldn’t hold a candle to AIDS.
[audience laughing]
In the ’80s, two blokes talking, it would be, “Oh, will you suck my cock?” “Fuck off. You’ve got AIDS. I’d die.” Now it’s, “Give it here. I’ll take pills for the rest of my life.” There’s no…
[audience laughing]
But the bigots jumped on it in the ’80s, the Christian right, all fundamentalists, actually, by going, “This is God’s wrath.” “This is God’s punishment for homosexuality.” Imagine thinking that. What are you imagining in your head to think that’s true? So you think God’s in heaven, do you, and he’s looking down on civilization, and he suddenly goes, “I’m sick of all this bumming”?
[audience laughing]
“I mean, what the…” “Oh, come on, lads! What’s going… What?”
[audience laughing]
“Oh, look at…” “I’ve warned ’em. It’s in the Bible.” “No bumming.” Not in those words.
[audience laughing]
Leviticus 28:11. “Any man who lieth with another man as he doth a woman, they are both an abomination and shall surely be put to death.” Basically, no bumming, right?
[audience laughing]
So he went, “They’re taking the piss. I’ve gotta do summat.” “I know. AIDS.” Like that. Like he did with light, just like, “Oh, it’s dark. What can I do?” “Light,” right? “Let there be light.” The same with this. “Let there be AIDS.” “And there was AIDS.” Not on earth, but up in his laboratory, right? So he’d made the AIDS, all there, horrible little things, right, “There you are.” [growls] You couldn’t see ’em, but he could see ’em. [growls] Like that, right? And he went, “Right, you’re AIDS.” They went, “We’re what?” He went, “You’re AIDS.” They went, “What’s that?” “It’s, like, the worst disease ever.” They went, “Oh, brilliant.” And he went… Netflix have already bought this. Fuck ’em, right?
[audience laughing]
“You’re AIDS.” “Right, what do we do?” “Right, I want you to kill homosexuals.” “Why?” “I don’t like watching ’em.”
[audience laughing]
“Don’t watch ’em, then.” “I’ve got no choice. I’m omnipresent, so…” “I’m watching 50 million people bumming right now.”
[audience laughing]
“So, you know…” “Right. So what do we do?” “I’m gonna put you down on earth.” “Where?” [sighs] “Africa, right?”
[audience laughing]
“Why Africa?”
“They’re dying anyway.”
[audience] Oh!
That’s not me saying that, is it? That’s God. That’s God saying that.
[audience laughing]
[sighs]
[audience laughing]
“Where… where in Africa?” “Oh, just in an arse, right? I’m gonna put you in…” [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
“I’m gonna… “”In all the shit?” “Yes, yes. I’m gonna put you in an arse.” “That is where you’re gonna do a lot of your best work through the 1980s.”
[audience laughing]
“Right? So I’m gonna cram you in an arse, right?” “Then what?” “Right.” “If a cock comes in, that shouldn’t be there, right?” “Get in the cock as well.”
[audience laughing]
“What, all of us?” “No.” “Some of you get in the cock, some of you stay in the arse in case another cock comes along.”
[audience laughing]
“And if I know this arse, there will be another cock.” [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
“So some of us get in the cock, some of us stay in the arse.” “Yeah.” “Then what?” “Kill ’em both, right?”
[audience laughing]
“So kill all homosexuals?” “Exactly.” “What, even lesbians?” “No, not lesbians, right?”
[audience laughing]
“Why?”
“‘Cause I like watching them.”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience applauding]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
But all diseases let you down eventually, not just AIDS. Um… After AIDS, it was SARS, wasn’t it? Remember SARS? “Ooh, gonna wipe out humanity.” Didn’t. Then, uh, Ebola, the flesh-eating disease. “Ooh, Ebola’s come to London!” Some nurse got hot for the weekend and that was it, right? Then Zika virus. Remember those babies born with half a head? “Zika virus!” “Don’t worry about it.” “Oh, I’m pregnant!” “Start knitting a hat.”
[audience laughing]
You know? Talking of abortion, um…
[audience laughing]
Now, I don’t wanna divide the room, um, but I’m pro-choice. I don’t think it’s anything to do with me or any man what a woman does with her body. But on the…
[cheering]
Thank you. On the flip side, there are people who are anti-abortion. Not just people who wouldn’t have it for themselves. They want no one to have it. There’s a small percentage that are really militant. Of those, there’s a small percentage that are fucking… There’s ones in America that are like terrorists. They bomb abortion clinics, put fetuses through your door, and they’ve got this propaganda machine that goes, “Liberals, they’re aborting babies at nine months, pulling them out of the vagina, liquidizing them.” Like, crazy conspiracy theory, right? And now they’ve got the Internet. So they’ve got fonts and memes. It’s like science to them. And this thing goes round. You’ve probably seen it. It goes… I’ve heard different derivations of it, like, “This was a real lecture,” or, “This was a real questionnaire.” Nonsense. It’s all made-up. It goes like this. “A woman is pregnant. She already has five children.” “Two are deaf. Two are blind.” “One is mentally retarded.” “She has syphilis. Should she have the baby?” “No?” “Well done. You’ve just killed Beethoven.”
[audience laughing]
What are you talking… That makes no fucking sense at all. Okay, keep it fair. Let’s do the opposing… So, okay, there’s another woman. She’s pregnant. Two children, great hearing, great eyesight, really smart. She hasn’t got syphilis. Should she have the baby? Yes? Well done. You just gave birth to Hitler.
[audience laughing]
Now, I don’t wanna divide the room, but I’m not a fan of Hitler. Um…
[audience laughing]
Hear me out. I’ve got my reasons. Listen, listen, listen. And it’s sci-fi. Whenever I see a sci-fi series, there’s always one where they invent the time machine and they go back in in time and try to kill Hitler. And if they’re successful, they come back to the present, and it’s worse ’cause they’ve mucked up the time-space continuum. Of course it is. You change the slightest thing in history, it has a catastrophic effect. I wouldn’t change anything, even if I could. My life’s too good. I can’t take that chance. Know what I mean?
[audience laughing]
If scientists came to me and went, “We’ve sorted it.” “You don’t have to go back in time. Just press this button.” “It kills Hitler before the Holocaust, before the war.” “The present is exactly the same, except it makes you a bit more ginger,” I’d go, “No.”
[audience laughing]
“Why should I suffer?”
[audience laughing]
But whenever you see one of those fluff pieces, whenever they ask in one of those questionnaires celebrities do, there’s, “What’s the first thing you’d do if you had a time machine?” They all say, “Oh, I’d go back and kill Hitler.” Really? You’d go back and buy Microsoft shares, you fucking liar, right?
[audience laughing]
I’ve interviewed people on my radio show in America, and I always ask that question for a laugh, and they all say, “Oh, I’d go back and kill Hitler.” I go, “People tried at the time.” And now they say, “Oh no, I’d go back and kill him when he was a baby.” So you’d go back and find baby Hitler, right, who hasn’t done anything wrong yet, and just strangle him?
[audience laughing]
Also, have you seen Hitler when he was a baby? Oh my God, absolutely adorable. Look at that.
[audience laughing]
Look at his little face!
[audience laughing]
You’d go back, and you’d go, “Is that Hitler?” “Yeah.” You’d go, “Oh, you little Nazi, you!”
[audience laughing]
I know what you’re thinking. Why have I got a picture of… [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
…baby Hitler on my phone? That’s my business. Um…
[audience laughing]
What if I do masturbate over it?
[audience laughing]
What? What if that’s the only thing I masturbate over? There’s no victim, no crime. You could call the police now, have them come to my house, and they’d say, “We heard you admitted you’re a nonce.” I’d go, “Yeah, but only for pictures of dead baby Hitler,” right? I’d go, “Check the rule book.” And they’d go, “Yeah, good as gold.”
[audience laughing]
Right. “Do you wanna see where I masturbate?” “Yeah, go on.” So I take them down to the wanktorium, right?
[audience laughing]
It’s basically a converted wine cellar. But it’s that picture blown up 100 times, right, just around the walls, like that, dripping with 40 years of come.
[audience laughing]
I’ve only lived there five years, so I don’t know… [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
That won’t be in. Um…
[audience laughing]
No, but, uh, people do have a problem with Hitler. Um… [Ricky laughs]
[audience laughing]
They wanna go back and kill him, and I say, “Chill.” “Hitler is the man who killed Hitler, in’t he?” Give him his due. Due. D-U-E.
[audience laughing]
I don’t worry about dying. Um… Or I don’t worry about being dead ’cause I won’t know about it. That is the best thing about being dead. You don’t know about it. It’s the same as being stupid, right?
[audience laughing]
It’s only painful for others, right? I worry about how I die. I don’t wanna die alone in agony, or I don’t wanna be found in a wardrobe hanging by a belt, wearing ladies’ tights, covered in amyl nitrate, know what I mean? I’m not into that shit, so if I am found like that, just know that one of my mates has stitched me up, right?
[audience laughing]
I don’t worry about dying. I don’t do anything towards not dying, if you know what I mean. I eat and drink too much every day, have done for 40 years. Day and night, I eat and drink too much. People say to me, “Rick, if you gave up the booze, you’d live an extra ten years.” I go, “But they’re the last ten years, the shit ten years.” I don’t want them, right? If I gave up booze now and I made it to 80 and someone said, “You can have an extra ten years,” if I could go, “Oh, great, I’ll have 20 to 30 again,” that’d be perfect, but, no, you gotta have 80 to 90. Have you any idea how awful it is being 90, right? I’ve seen 90-year-olds sitting in an armchair, and they go, “Argh!” And you go, “What?” They go, “I’ve broken every bone in my body!” ‘Cause they’re brittle. They’ve got dust for blood. They bruise up blood clots. They got hernias popping out everywhere, right? If you’re 90 years old and you get to the kitchen by yourself to make a cup of tea, if you lift that kettle and it’s too full, there’s a very good chance your stomach’ll come out of your arsehole.
[audience laughing]
So eat and drink as much as you want and just fucking die is my advice.
[audience cheering and applauding]
Thank you. [laughs] I should say I’m not a doctor. [laughing]
[audience laughing]
I do see a doctor once a year or once every two years. I have to have medicals for things like this and TV shows, and, uh, I go private, right? It’s 600 quid. It’s three hours long. But they do everything. Blood sample, stool sample, urine sample, ECG, ears, nose, throat, bollocks, the finger. Everything, right? And you have to fill out this big form, write a lifestyle thing. That takes fucking ages. I tell the truth, except units of alcohol. I work those out, then I halve them, right?
[audience laughing]
And when he gets to those, he still goes, “That’s an awful lot.”
[audience laughing]
And I think I’ve won. I go, “Is it?”
[audience laughing]
And, uh, at the end of the three hours, they’ve got all the results back from the lab, and he’s got this big computer… It’s like body composition. And from there, they work out your percentage chance of a stroke, heart attack in one year, five years, ten years, and mine’s always about the same. It always gets worse with age. Nothing you can do about that. But I’m always like… I’m at the end of healthy weight. I’m just nearly obese. I’m just right, oh, like that. I was prediabetic once. I had to sort that out. And now I’m pre-gout, right?
[audience laughing]
Pre-gout, right? And so he tells you all that and goes, “So, what are we gonna do about this?” And I wanna go, “What do you mean, ‘we’?” “I’ve just made you 600 quid, mate, right?”
[audience laughing]
“You’re gonna fix it, and I’m gonna carry on.” You don’t take a car to the garage and he goes, “Tires are bald.” “Big end’s gone. What are we gonna do?” “You’re gonna fix it, mate, and I’m gonna pay you.”
[audience laughing]
He went, “You need more fiber in your diet.” I wanted to go, “Get me wine with fiber in it, then.” “I can afford anything. You must be able to invent that.” He said, “You’re heavily constipated.” I wanted to go, “Get in there with a spoon, son.”
[audience laughing]
And then they always leave it right to the end. They don’t even look up. They go, “And can I give you a rectal exam?” Which means I have to go, “Yes, please.” I just… I want them to surprise me on the way out. “Bye.” “Bye.” “And that’s fine.” “Thank you.”
[audience laughing]
But there’s a big build-up. And as they’re washing their hands, they’ve gotta say, “Oh, um, would you like a chaperone?” So you’re gonna have your finger up my arse, and now you got a mate watching? No, just do it.
[audience laughing]
And they lay you on this bench, on your back to start with, pants and trousers round your ankles, knees apart like a little frog.
[audience laughing]
And they do the balls first, right. And I’m nervous at a doctor, I’m really nervous, so I’ve got no balls, right?
[audience laughing]
He has to dig them out like a tortoise’s head, know what I mean? It’s just like a little fist of fear down there. It’s… [laughs] And I fucking hate it. I go… [gagging] Like that, right?
[audience laughing]
I still… It’s horrible, right? And then they turn you on the side and lube you up and go… the finger up the arse. That’s great. Not great. That’s not why I go, but…
[audience laughing]
“Me again.” “You were here yesterday.” “Come on.”
[audience laughing]
But this one time, it was an old man, and… It was still a doctor, not just an old man.
[audience laughing]
“Doctor said he couldn’t make it, so I thought I’d… I’d have a go.”
[audience laughing]
There was a sort of, like, old-school GP. He was about 75, little shirt and tie, tweed jacket. And he was sitting on an armchair, and he didn’t put me on the bench. I was just standing up, and he went, “Just pop your pants and trousers down.” So I just… So he was little… So he was head-height to my balls, and, as I say, I’m nervous at the doctor, so I jabber. I talk. I think, “If I put ’em off, they won’t find the cancer.” And so he started doing the balls, and I went, “What are you looking for there, exactly?” And they usually go, “Shush,” and they go… And he didn’t. He went, “That’s a good question.” And he sat back, and he started telling me all about cancer. So now I’m just having a chat, right?
[audience laughing]
And he went on for ages. He was loving it, right? And I remember it felt rude to do that, so I was going, “Oh, right, right.”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
I do work out a bit. Um, I actually joined a gym, literally on my road, I discovered. I’ve got a gym in my house. I got bored with that. I, uh… But I thought, “If I join the gym, if I pay a year in advance, I’ll try and get value for money. That’ll make me go.” Then I remembered, “Oh, I’m fucking rich. It doesn’t…”
[audience laughing]
I could join a different gym every day for a laugh. Just go along and go, “There’s £2,000.” “See you tomorrow.” “You’ll never see me again.”
[audience laughing]
And, uh, I go about once a month, and I sort of do ten minutes on the machines, and I run home, like that. I don’t use the changing rooms. I’ve got a thing about public changing rooms. I always have, and I’ll tell you why. I don’t know if it’s the same in ladies’ changing rooms, but men are so proud of their offal, right? If I’m in a public place, I have a shower, one minute, towel, corner, pants on, right? There’s blokes walking around naked before the shower, talking. “How you doing?” After the shower. There was one bloke in the shower way too long. He took ages, right? And he got out, no towel, just dripping wet, just went up to the mirror and started doing his hair first.
[audience laughing]
There was me and this really fat bloke once in the changing room. I was getting changed, and he was really big. Like, 350 pounds, right? And he was naked on one of those precision scales. And he was there for fucking ages like that, and I was… He was like that for ages. I wanted to run over and go, “Mate, you’ll never be an astronaut.”
[audience laughing]
“It doesn’t need to be this accurate. “Just pop some pants on and take a fucking gram off.”
I’m not having a go at fat people. As I say, I’m fat. I’m overweight. Know why? ‘Cause I eat and drink too much. That’s what does it. I don’t judge fat people. I just know how they got fat. If I see a fat person, I go, “Well done,” you know? “You’ve eaten way more than you’ll ever need, same as me,” right? If I see a fat couple, I go, “Yeah, that works,” right? But then as they’re walking along and you see their little fat toddlers and you go, “Aw, that’s not fair,” right?
[audience laughing]
And the mother always goes, “They love cake.” ‘Course they love cake! They’re baby mammals. We’re the same species as we were, like, 200,000 years ago. We’ve got a hunter-gatherer brain, right? All this affluence is so much faster than our human biology. So when you get one of those cakes from the supermarket that’s packed with fats and sugar, your brain goes, “Fucking hell, that’s amazing!” “Keep eating that. There might not be food tomorrow.” But there will be food tomorrow. The fridge is full, and your mum’s on the phone to Ocado. Know what I mean?
[audience laughing]
Now there’s even a stigma. Doctors get in trouble for saying to someone, “You’re overweight.” No, that’s a political… No, it’s like fat shaming. You don’t get cancer shaming. He’s trying to save your life. There was a school that tried to ban the word “obese” ’cause they said it was derogatory to… I don’t know what to call ’em. Um…
[audience laughing]
Round children, right?
[audience laughing]
But that’s the polite word. That’s the word we invented so we didn’t say “fat little fucker.” Don’t… Don’t keep changing words ’cause one person gets offended. Also, fat people aren’t offended by the word “obese.” They did it all. They’re jolly, aren’t they? They’re jolly. You see a fat boy, you go, “All right, fatty?” [laughing] “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”
[audience laughing]
[laughing] “Oh yeah!” Blop, blop, blop. [laughing] “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” And they go to the doctor. “Come in.” [laughs] Blop. [laughs] Doctor goes, “Fuck me.” Oh. [laughs] “Am I obese?” [laughing] “No, you’re morbidly obese.” [laughing]
[audience laughing]
“What does that mean?” [laughs] “Means you’ll die of it.” “Oh, does it?” “All right.”
[audience laughing]
“What, straight away, or…” “No, you’ve got diabetes, so you’ll have your legs amputated soon.” “And if you carry on, you’ll die later of stroke and respiratory, heart failure.” “Oh, right.”
[audience laughing]
“Is there anything I can do?” “Of course. Start working out and eat healthy.” “You’ll be right as rain.” “Oh, right.” “But you won’t, will ya?”
[audience laughing]
“No. No.” I feel sorry for them, even though it’s their fault. When you see one of those documentaries on telly, like The 600 Pound Man or summat, and he’s being winched out of his house to go to hospital, right? If you’re dangling from a crane, right…
[audience laughing]
Right?
[audience laughing]
And you see a film crew, right…
[audience laughing]
[Ricky sighs] …you know you fucked it.
[audience laughing]
And then, you know, as I say, they wake up the next day. They’ve had their legs amputated. It’s really sad, and they’re crying, and I’m crying. They’re going, “Why did I let it go this far? I’m so stupid.” Then they get philosophical about it, and they go, “I never really used the legs, so…”
[audience laughing]
And by then, it’s lunchtime, and so…
[audience laughing]
And they go to the nurse, “Didn’t throw them legs away, did you?” [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
Guys, do you ever act more working class around builders?
[audience laughing]
I do. I can be walking around leafy Hampstead, right. Book of poems, right.
[audience laughing]
Scarf, right.
[audience laughing]
Just humming Brahms, right.
[audience laughing]
And some scaffolders go, “Ricky!” “All right, cunts! How you doin’, boys?”
[audience laughing]
And I don’t know why I do it. [laughing] I don’t know why… why I try and impress them. I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior, right? But as I said at the beginning, we’re the only species that allows the universe to understand itself. But we see all nature through our eyes, so it all comes back to us. Why are we here? What makes us? Is it our genetics or the environment? The old nature versus nurture argument. The psychologist Piaget was once asked, “What’s more important for the intellect of a person? Nature or nurture?” And he replied, “What’s more important for the area of a field?” “Length or width?” All right, if you don’t know the answer, just fucking…
[audience laughing]
But psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, it’s still in its infancy, and we still know so little about the brain. And 150 years ago, we knew nothing. It was just… It was all guesswork, right? And, uh, like, everything was just mental. If you weren’t a white, heterosexual, married, Christian man, right, if you deviated too far, “Mental.” They just went, “Mental,” like that. Homosexuality? “Mental. Mental illness.” You were put in an asylum for life, or worse, tortured. Women who fell pregnant out of wedlock, “Mental.” Asylum for life, right? And now we understand things more. We’re more tolerant. We’re… I think it’s going too far the other way, though, because now nothing’s mental. You can’t find summat that someone’s… Nothing is considered mental. Everything is a syndrome or an addiction or a preference, right? I could have my legs removed, have wheels put on, identify as a pram, right…
[audience laughing]
And if you say I’m mental, you’re a bigot, right?
[audience laughing]
That’s a bit hack, that joke, now, isn’t it? “Identify as a thing, then.” It’s a bit old-fashioned, but I’m gonna leave it in to annoy people, right? Because that’s the bit that’ll offend people. Same as humanity. I talk about AIDS, famine, cancer, the Holocaust, rape, pedophilia, but the one thing you mustn’t joke about is identity politics. The one thing you should never joke about is the trans issue. “They just wanna be treated equally.” I agree. That’s why I include them.
[audience laughing]
You know?
[audience cheering and applauding]
But they know I’m joking about all the other stuff, but they go, “No, he must mean that,” right? Like a joke is a window to the comedian’s true soul. It’s just… That’s just not the case. I’ll take on any view to make the joke funniest. I’ll pretend to be right wing. I’ll pretend to be left wing. I’ll pretend to be clever. I’ll pretend to be stupid. Whatever makes the joke funnier, without prejudice. Okay, full disclosure. In real life, of course I support trans rights. I support all human rights, and trans rights are human rights. Live your best life. Use your preferred pronouns. Be the gender that you feel that you are. But meet me halfway, ladies. Lose the cock. That’s all I’m saying.
[audience laughing and applauding]
That’s all…
[audience applauding]
[audience laughing]
And it’s mad to think joking about summat means you’re anti-it. Like, I made a joke about self-ID. In fact, I wish self-ID had been around when I was a kid. I’d have used it to get shit. I’d have gone to my mum. “Mum, I’m trans.” She’d have gone, “What?” I’d have gone, “I’m either trans or I need a new bike.”
[audience laughing]
She’d have gone, “You need a new bike.”
[audience laughing]
I’d have gone, “You’re the boss.”
[audience laughing]
But I, uh… I grew up in the ’60s. Jesus. I had, like, Victorian parents. We hadn’t heard of any of this. But what if I was a teenager now in these really woke, progressive times, right, and I had really cool, hippie parents, right, and I went, “Mother, Father, I’m trans”? They’d go, “Oh goody, that’s so fucking trendy.”
[audience laughing]
And my dad would go, “Bagsy I pick the vagina.” I’d go, “Thank you, Daddy,” right? Pfft. Right?
[audience laughing]
Then there’d be a montage, and I’d go to hospital. I’d have all the electrolysis. I’d grow my hair. I’d have… I’d have a big fanny, I think. No. No, if someone else is paying, I’ll have the big one. Know what I mean? “Dad trying to buy me with minge. Fuck you, Dad.” Right? Big fanny, boobs, right, and, uh… Pfft. Right? [laughing]
[audience laughing]
No, I’d… I’d come out, and I’d emerge. I’d be a real woman. I’d be Vicky Gervais. I’d be Vicky Gervais, right?
[audience laughing]
Yeah. No, I’d be a real woman, right? And you can’t change your sexuality, so I find women attractive, so I’d be… I’d be a lesbian. I’d be a little lesbian fella called, um, Vicky Gervais, right? Right? And I’d probably be a butch lesbian ’cause of all the testosterone till then. Also, I like the fashion. Jeans, black T-shirt, short hair, beard! No, I’d be… No, I’d be a real lesbian called Vicky Gervais, lesbian about town, right? And so, I’d, uh… I’d go down to Brighton, right, and, uh, I’d go into a lesbian bar, right, and I’d go, “Hi.” Pool table. Winner stays on. I’d be there all fucking night. Voom. Right?
[audience laughing]
All right. This joke isn’t worth it for the punchline. The punchline is shit. So just enjoy the journey, right? [laughs] Anyway, so I look around, and I find one of those pretty lesbians. [laughs] This is so childish and misinformed, it hurts. I’m gonna leave it in though. Right, so… No, I’d find a pretty lesbian. I’d… [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
This is pathetic, right? Even for me. I can’t do this with a fucking straight face! Right, right, right… [Ricky laughing] And I’d go over like that. I’d go, “Hi. Are you a lesbian?” She’d go, “Yeah. Are you a lesbian?” I’d go, “Yeah, just a bit. Look at that.”
[audience laughing]
She’d go, “That is a lovely fanny.” I’d go, “Fucking cost enough.” She’d go, “What?” “Nothing.” And then I’d be wooing her, right? I’d be doing all the… [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
I’d be complimenting her on her lezzie ways. I’d go, uh…
[audience laughing]
I’d go, “Oh,” I’d go, “I love your Doc Martens,” right? She’d go, “Oh, thanks.” Pfft. Right?
[audience laughing]
[speaking indistinctly] Pfft.
[audience laughing]
I’d go, “Oh, those are big earrings.” “Yeah.” Right? Then she’d go, “Wanna come back to my place and lez off?” I’d go, “Yeah, just a bit.” So we go back. We get naked. I boob her up. I don’t know what…
[audience laughing]
Minge her off? I’d do that one. I’d do that one. Definitely do that one, right? I’d google it. I’d fucking google it, right? And I’d… Right. She’d go, “You wanna wear a strap-on dildo and give me a good seeing to?” I’d go, “Yeah.” So I’d put a strap-on on. I’d put the big dildo there on my new fanny like that and tie it at the back. And that’s when I’d kick myself.
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Ricky laughing] I told you it was shit, didn’t I tell you? [Ricky laughing] Oh God.
[audience laughing]
Oh. But one thing that isn’t ambiguous whether it’s nature or nurture is racism. No one’s born racist. You’ve gotta learn that shit, okay? And, okay, I don’t wanna divide the room. I’m not a fan of racism. Um… No, hear me out, right? I… I don’t care whether you’re Black, white, brown, European, African… You’re going, “That’s all right, Black, white, brown, European, African.” “What about the fucking Eskimos?” Racist, right? “They’re fucking weird, Rick.” They are not weird, just different. “They live in the snow.” Yeah, that is their little house, the snow. So? “They wear a dead sea lion for their clo…” Yes, that’s their clothes. A dead sea lion. But here’s the thing about racism. You drag one out of his hole in the snow and peel him out of his sea lion outfit, and he’s standing there naked, you take a closer look. He’s basically a cold Chinaman.
[audience laughing]
So…
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing] I know you can’t say “Chinaman” anymore, right?
[audience laughing]
I can’t believe you ever could because that is the laziest labeling of a demographic I’ve ever heard. So the first one lands on our shores, and we gather round, going, “Where are you from?” And he goes, “China.” And we go, “Oh, you’re a Chinaman.” And he goes, “I’m a what?” “You’re a Chinaman.” “A Chinaman?” “Yeah.” “What’s my wife?” “Duh. Lady Chinaman.”
[audience laughing]
“Why don’t you call me by my name?”
“I don’t know your name, do I?”
“It’s Ling.”
“Ling?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that your first name or your surname?”
“Both.”
[audience laughing]
“Ling Ling?”
“Herro?”
[audience laughing]
Right, no. Right. Right.
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughs] Remember, irony. Okay?
[audience laughing]
Also, that’s not me saying that, is it? It’s the little Chinaman, innit? So…
[audience laughing]
If he’s all right with it, then…
[audience laughing]
That won’t be in. Right, okay.
[audience laughing]
Fucking hell, have I got anything for this fucking special?
[audience laughing]
Oh, this is all right. Right. Um…
[audience laughing]
Did anyone have a pedo teacher when they were at school? Yes, yeah. Yeah.
[audience laughing]
[laughs] Round of applause for pedo teachers, yeah!
[audience cheering and applauding]
Fucking hell. Unbelievable.
[audience laughing]
That’s another thing. I think whereas people are now trying to be so politically correct, they’re trying to out-woke each other, soon someone’ll say, “You can’t say ‘pedo’ anymore.” “It’s a derogatory term. It offends people who are child-addicted,” right? So you’re gonna have people going to the doctor going, “Doctor, I think I’m child-addicted.” Right? The doctor’ll go, “Oh, you poor thing. How do you feel?” “I feel like I wanna fiddle with kids.”
[audience laughing]
“That is one of the symptoms.”
[audience laughing]
“Don’t worry. Sit down.” “We’ll get you into a facility at taxpayers’ expense, and we’ll wean you off children.” “How does that work doctor?” “You know when they give heroin addicts methadone?” “Yeah.” “Well, we’re gonna start you on dwarfs, right?” [laughs] “It might work. It might…” [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
“It might work.” [Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
[laughs]
[audience laughing]
“How does that work?” “Let me think. I haven’t thought it through.” Right, okay. No. Um… “So what you do is come into the facility.” “We’ve hired loads of dwarfs, and we’re not open during the panto season.” “We can’t get the staff.” “So you… you come in… you come in Feb…” Shush. “You come in February to November, right?”
[audience laughing]
“We’ve hired loads of dwarfs, and we’ve dressed them up as schoolchildren, and they just run around the campus like that.” [laughs] “They’re free-range dwarfs.”
[audience laughing]
“They’re free-range dwarfs, and they look like they’re about six years old, but they’re above legal age. You’re not breaking the law.” “They’ve been paid. It’s consensual.” “You just go up to one you fancy, pull down his little trousers, fiddle…” “Hey, Doctor, I said I was a pedo. I didn’t say I was gay.” “Do you think there’s, like, homophobia in the pedophile community?” Like, one pedophile, he’s all smug. He’s heterosexual. He’s abducting a little girl. He’s taking a little girl into the forest. He sees another pedo with a little boy, and he goes, “You fucking bender.”
[audience laughing]
There’s a London borough that tried to ban registered pedophiles living within one mile of a school. Now, say what you will about pedos, but they’re not lazy. Know what I mean?
[audience laughing]
A lot of ’em are bus drivers. That’s nothing. [laughs]
[audience laughing]
You know? So this pedo teacher, right… True story, this. It was about 1976. I was about 14. And, uh, looking back, I feel a bit sorry for him ’cause he was probably late twenties, and he was a nervous sort of guy, and he was obviously gay, and he had a fling with one of the older boys, who might have been 16, 17. So now, would have been totally legal, but then, technically a nonce. Banished. Convicted. Never heard of again. Big scandal, right? And when it broke, I went home that day. My mum was there, and she went, “Did he touch you?” And I went, “No.” She went, “You sure?” I went, “Yeah.” She went, “He couldn’t have fancied you, then.”
[audience laughing]
So now my mum is winding me up about me not being attractive enough to be sexually abused, right? What if I had got a complex? What if I had thought, “I’ll show her”?
[audience laughing]
I’d come in at midnight. “Where you been?” “Sucking off bus drivers. That’s what you get.”
[audience laughing]
But that was typical of my mum. My mum, she was the salt of the earth, but she just said what she wanted, right? She’d do anything for you, but she reserved the right to moan about it.
So, growing up, our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Dawson, she was about 25 years older than my mum. So when my mum was 60, this old lady was already, like, 85, 86. My mum was the last living witness to her existence. She lived alone. My mum did everything for her. Went shopping for her, did the housework. Made her lunch, sat with her for a while. She went back, made her tea. This went on and on. I remember calling home once. My mum was, like, 70. And I went, “I called earlier. You were out.” My mum went, “I was round Dawson’s.” I went, “Oh, how is she?” My mum went… [sighs] “She just won’t die, Rick.”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing] I have very fond memories of growing up in Reading, um, which is why… Yeah, why I never go back.
[audience laughing]
Wherever I am in the world, I bump into someone from Reading. “I’m a Reading boy.” “Oh good.” That should be enough, but it never is. They always want more. They say things like, “Oh yeah, you knows Norman Taylor, don’t you?” I never know this person. I go, “Oh, no.” They go, “Yeah, he knows you.” “Yeah, I’m on the telly, mate. Um…”
[audience laughing]
“You went to Ashmead School.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” “You knows Pete Shepherd.” “When was he there?” “1993.” “Yeah, I was 31, mate. I was…”
[audience laughing]
“He knows you.” “Does he?” “Has he got a telly?” “Yeah.” “That’s what’s happened here.”
[audience laughing]
But I do like old stories. I don’t tell showbiz stories. They’re boring to me. I like real stories. Whenever I’m working up a tour, I think of things that have happened to me and how my life’s changed. And I thought of one for this tour, and it was hugging, right? No one’s been hugging for the last couple of years, which I preferred. I liked that. I never liked hugging. I liked it when you couldn’t hug. It always felt awkward. I didn’t hug anyone growing up. I didn’t hug anyone till I came to London. A working class kid on an estate in Reading, you don’t hug people. You don’t hug your fucking dad, granddad, or your brother. You wind ’em up. You take the piss. That’s our hug, right? I’ll give you an example. We were at our dad’s funeral, and I was in the graveyard with my brother Bob. Bob was having a cigarette, and our uncle Mike came along. We hadn’t seen Mike for, like, 25 years. Last time we saw him, he was, like, 50, and now he’s, like, 75. He hadn’t aged well. He was an old man. And he came up to us and went, “Hello, boys.” And Bob sort of looked at him and recognized him and went, “Fuck me,” like that. And then Bob looked around the graveyard and went, “Is there any point you going home?”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing] Right?
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing] And Uncle Mike laughed and went, “Always nice to see you, Bobby.” And that was their hug. Know what I mean?
I’ll give you another example. When I left school, my best mate was a bloke called Mark. We did everything together. We took a year out before college to earn money to get pissed, really. And we did. It was the best summer ever. And, uh… But then summat happened. His, uh… His grandmother died, and he lived… he lived with her, so it was a big deal. And, uh, he went to the funeral, and the first place he came after the funeral was my house. He sat down in his little black suit, and he was just quiet. I didn’t know what to say. No hugging, right? So I went, “How was it?” He went, “It was awful.” Said, um, “She was cremated, and we all went outside to watch the smoke go up, and the wind changed, and it all blew in our faces, right?”
[audience laughing]
And I went, “In your mouth?” He went, “Yeah.” I went… I took a chance.
[audience laughing]
I said, “Did it taste bitter?” And he went, “Yeah.” I went, “That was her clitoris.”
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing] Right?
[audience laughing]
And Mark just went, “Fucking hell, Rick,” like that, right? And then he started laughing. And that was our hug. Do you know what I mean? Oh.
I’ll leave you with one final story, right? It’s another true story. If I say they’re true, they are. I promise, they’re all true. And, uh… My favorite are the school stories, and this is probably my favorite school story ever. It was 1976 again, so, uh, I was about 14, and we had a kid in our class called Gary Masterman. And Gary developed Tourette’s syndrome. Every sentence had a swear word in it. He had a tic. We learned all about it in assembly. Gary was up there. All the teachers, all the kids knew him. He was a popular lad, right. And, um… Yeah, nice guy, Gary Masterman. But sometimes his tics seemed relevant. I’ll never forget, we were having this lesson with a young female teacher called Miss Wilkie. She was at the blackboard. She was doing calling-out suggestions. Can’t remember what it was about. She’d go, “Simon, what do you think?” “Yeah, that’s good. Yes, that works. Brian, what do you…” “Yeah. Yeah, good. Yeah.” And she went, “Gary.” He went, “I’ll finger you, miss.”
[audience laughing]
And she just went, “Anyone else?”
[audience laughing]
And she pointed to Sean Dixon, and Sean went, “Yeah, I’ll finger ya.”
[audience laughing]
You’ve been amazing. Good night.
[audience cheering and applauding]
