Hello and welcome to sitcom gigs, I'm James Carey and this week we're back with Al Murray at the Landono Craft of Comedy Festival and this time we're talking about the great sitcom, Folty Towers. So let's go back to a, I don't know how small a child was cross-legged on the floor when Folty Towers was coming on. But how did you experience Folty Towers? Folty Towers, my uncle, he's John Cleese.
No, no, no, no, no, it's not quite that good. Although my great uncle, Stephen Murray, he was in the Navy Lock. OK, sure. That's a good story.
My uncle lived in the next village house and he worked in advertising, so he had a VHS player in 1979. Mmm, top logo. Yeah, yeah. And they had...
We beat them up. Well, they were, which is a better format, as everyone knows. They had, they had the Riddler of the Sands, Bugsy Malone, Folty Towers, an Emmanuel hidden somewhere in the house on VHS and Cabaret. They had like maybe seven VHSs, but they had Folty Towers.
And we would, we used to go there for some of them, it was my dad and his brother were really close. We'd go there one Sunday in three and sometimes when my mum went to work in the school, they'd drop me off at my, at their house, my auntie's house, and I would watch Folty Towers over and over and over again. But mainly, mainly series two and mainly tape two. Which are?
Which are? Well, episodes that burned in my memory, Mrs. Richards. I've memorised that one.
Yeah, and Basil the Rat. Yeah. And the dead guy, whatever it's called. Yes, Mr.
Lehman? Exactly. Yeah. Those three, I had not seen the first one with the builders until 20 years later, because they didn't, I don't think they had that cassette.
But to me, Folty Towers became an ear text of comedy. Completely, and like, this is how you do it. Yeah. And it's canonism.
And it was funny, funny for me when I was nine, ten, then fourteen, fifteen, in my twenties, thirties, watching my children when they were a little younger, like five, six, seven years ago. Right. And still now. And because they left enough in it that it works on all those levels, all of us, and none of the levels interfere with each other.
So there isn't a level that overpowers any other level. His performance is simultaneously hilarious and sympathetic, because my kids would watch it and I'd be like, Basil, don't. Don't. Basil, don't.
Yeah. You're doing, don't. Don't do it. Which I don't remember feeling but watching children, watching and getting that out of it.
But it's just, it's so well drawn, so well written. It's also of a piece with all the doctor who I used to watch, the wobbly sets, studio lighting. And when Doctor who came back, he would say, oh the wobbly sets. That's not how I see television.
See, it's all like that. Yeah. It's not the sci-fi. The sci-fi didn't do it like that.
So did I Claudius and so did Folty Towers. What were you talking about? That's BBC reality from the seventies. But it's so funny.
Yeah. And they all work as fast as in character studies and, you know, there's a sprinkle through a satire in it. Yeah. You know, class and stuff.
Yeah. It's just, it's immaculate. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, you don't, like I say, you don't really care. I mean, this is, again, something that annoys me when you go to an audience sitcom recording and they, you know, a half hour show takes, whatever, four hours to record.
And the reason is that scene which you watch once and it's really funny. And the audience laughed and it's all great. We're going to just film exactly the same scene again because we missed this angle of this thing. And then, so the audience has to sit there again and laugh at the jokes again, which is everyone knows you cannot laugh at a joke.
You already know who's coming. Less than they, they do. They're doing it. You can hear the texture of the laugh and you know that that's not a laugh.
That's not a laugh. That's a laugh of encouragement. Yeah. And that's, and it's like, it's actually takes a prize every day of the week.
But it's like what Paul Mertem was saying about, got the Simpsons told about the Hancock shows that they, that there's some really kind of awful continuity errors in them because they have, they filmed them in like a 10 minutes, in 10 minute, 10 minute chunks. And so there was this bit that happened nine and a half minutes in with Sid and Jane, as Sid and James and the Hancock where that's completely wrong. But they couldn't re-record it. You know, so they just kept it in and nobody cares.
Well, there's the odd boom in full to those, isn't it? It's actually, it's actually clearly shot in a bit of a rush. Right? Why not in a rush?
In a like, well, we've got that. Yeah, there's a boom in it. Move on. Yeah.
And I think people always slightly staggered. That it's pretty much one take. We've got it. Move on.
But actually that was the idiom of the time. Because also, presumably, they didn't realise that they were making a show that we'd still be talking about now. Yes, of course. But also, famously, Cleese and Booz had spent an awful lot of time on the scripts and an awful lot of time rehearsing them.
So they must have been on the view that, well, you've got it. Haven't you? We've done it. We'll do the next scene.
How could they possibly be? I mean, they're again the same if you want. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The last one we did.
And that's obviously one of the things that really messed that show. And the thing is, I found Python long after 40 times. So I watched Python thinking, what is the puzzle 40 funnies? I know this guy's a faulty funny.
And he's not a faulty funny. He's half a multi-party. Yeah, the TV sketch show is really not as funny as people make it out. No, no, no.
What I found quite interesting watching the recent three, four years ago, the live show they did at the O2. Oh, what? The Python. The Python.
And that was, I watched that in a cinema, actually. They were showing live in the cinema. But what really shone through there was that the material was the material was the very best of Monty Python. It still was.
It wasn't that great. It was great. It was great. It was amazing.
John Cleese performance. Every time he came on, he just went up several notches. And just Cleese being Cleese. I even felt that watching that show, the new show, which is great.
I watched a little bit of it. It's a little bit gentle. There's not a lot going on. But there's just little moments of cleaseness in there.
It's my 15 year old self, or however I was when I first saw 40 towers. I'm just clutching my sights. It was a little moment. He's incredibly funny.
He knows this is his moment, the way it looks on screen. He's absolutely 100%. We've got this right. And also, I think what I like about it is it's much funnier than, because he said to me, I was sick of doing sketches where suddenly someone would say, oh, this isn't a sketch, it's a sausage.
I wanted to do something that just meant to be funny. Which is sort of where we started. And when you read about it, the rewrites, they'd done the rewrites. The rewrites, the story that they would draft a script for months and everything.
Obviously, there's a good deal of mythology around the show because it's become such a classic. And that there was the four year gap is really interesting. And they only did 12, they only did because they divorced. They got divorced.
And also, we'd like to make a show with their ex-wife. Well, in the biggest, he couldn't do what an American owner would have done. One billion dollars. And they would have said, yeah, all right, we'll do it.
And there's also no culture of a billion dollars and other writers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely. You just know that now it will be a different story.
They'd have been cajoled or induced into doing a load more. I think the show really teaches that earlier on we were doing a session about characters. And we often talk about characters being larger than life. And quite often people are reluctant to make characters larger than life because they feel too sick, but again, the beauty of Basil Folti is that he is those moments of pathos you get.
Where he's absolutely pushed to the limit. But then there are just those tiny little moments. The one that always sticks out because you'll know this by memory. I audiotaped an episode off the TV.
The Mrs. Richards episodes because they repeated them probably in about 1986 or something like that. On BBC One, I taped one of them. Sorry, I listened to that one.
And it's the, it's the bit where it's the jump. What was that? That was your life mate. Do I get another?
Sorry mate. I just thought, oh my goodness, the darkness is looking into the void at that. Yeah. You know, and there are some amazing moments like that.
And you just think he's got all those white basil. But that's why Basil works. It's not because he's not just angry shouting at him. Yeah.
And there's a reason he's angry. And there's... It's like you say your kids are going, but don't do that. Yeah.
He's human. Exactly. And it's not just because the other thing you get sort of focused on is he's a snobbery. But it's not just a snobbery.
He really wants to be, he wants to do better. And that's why he listens to classical music. Yeah. Because not because then he sucks up to people because he thinks that'll help.
Yeah. It's not because it's not a flaw. Yeah. It's a foible.
You know, it's not because it's a bad person. Yeah. No, that's right. It's not.
Yes. That's interesting, isn't it? He thinks he'll be happy if he ultimately has respect. Yeah.
He thinks he's a hotel. Yeah. He's a means to an end, isn't it? Yeah.
But Cleese is literally larger than life though. That's the really interesting thing about Faux-Das. He's literally larger than life. He's a head taller than everyone else.
Yeah. But easily. And you know, in a quiz just now they read out the famous rejection letter. He's the standard characters.
But that's also what's interesting about Faux-Das. They do that thing that really great writers do where they go, here's some things you're familiar with. Now let's see where we end up. Rather than here's some things that you're familiar with that stay being familiar with.
Treats me in a familiar way. That's what you do if you don't want to do it. You start from the obvious point and then you embellish on it rather than stay there. And that's what's brilliant about the major.
The casting as well. That was one of the finest moments where the first radio show that we wrote, the series called The Best of British was from Sketch Show with Willie Rushton. We insisted on one of our castes, the Balar Bartley. So we had the major that we could be watching and recording our episodes.
In your way. Yeah. Such a pleasure. Oh, of course he did.
And he likes to release some of these. He's a shovel. He's a shovel, he's a shovel. No, because yeah, sometimes you work with a hero and just go, well the worst thing is when we do Miranda and we think he could play Miranda's dad and we chucked out a couple of names and were like, oh well, this person or that person, and the casting agent would just go, they can't really do the lines any more.
Oh no. Tom Consey was fantastic. But there are people at his age who find that hard now. At age like always.
Angels and effects for stress. to do a DJ2 way. It doesn't date, does it? No, and the only bit they cut, of course, is the major talking about ethnicity.
Although actually, that's a completely serviceable joke that makes its point and delivers a point and is a funny joke at the same time. But obviously, it contains language you know, you can't even put it in the damn box. So it's gone from, although it's on the video release that my children watched. Okay.
And I remember it coming up and thinking, let's be interesting. Here we go, clicking to the top of the record. Oh, that is a C word strength thing, isn't it? Well, yeah, although my new generation, racism is so...
You're a young adult to see where it's strength, she never heard it. Okay. They never heard the words. Because for her generation, they have actually been removed.
Which is a good thing, bad thing. Because they need to know that people used to talk like that. Yeah. And these are bad things to say.
But afterwards, I said, do you, I remember pausing it and saying, you got the joke, didn't you? And they're like, yeah, of course, yeah. They got the point. Yeah, yeah.
But that's the only bit that I think. It's a lovely interaction as well. Where I was... There's an example of where you can just show a little bit of something with a very short line, it's a bit where Major comes in and he says, Hampshire won and Basil says, oh, did it?
It's not, did we? Or did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It shows like, I'm just not interested in whatever.
I do not care. I do not understand sport at all. Yeah. And just a little line about that.
So it's got the big, and then it's got the subtle, it's got the emotional. Hope you're enjoying this episode with Al Murray, we'll get back to that in a moment. Just wanted to let you know that we're recording our 100th episode of sitcom geeks live at the Museum of Comedy, where better than the Museum of Comedy, on the 5th of December, we would love you to join us for that, both for the show and then in the bar afterwards. We will be having special guests, including Marcus Brickstock, who was the star of the first sitcom I wrote, Think Me and Thinkable, and Marcus has also written a radio sitcom called The Wilson Save the World, along with the brilliant Sarah Morgan, who will also be there on the 5th of December.
Please do join us and you can get tickets online, you'll find links on our Twitter feed, sitcom geeks and our Facebook page. And with a little like Googling, I'm sure. And if you go to Dave website, DaveCohen.org, DaveCohen.org, he will be able to order his brand new book, The Complete Comedy Writer, which he says will make your sitcoms get your stand-up and screen-placed and stories. 62% funnier, I've read it and I concur with his assessment, it's excellent, go and have a look at that now.
But let's get back to that interview with Al Murray about the wonderful, faulty tags. The thing is, is it's famously based on the real hotel proposal. Yeah. And the thing is, is actually how much of it?
Did Cleese see that thing? Right, isn't it? I want you to do some mad stuff. But did he also see the Sympatico side of the guy, or did he think that they built that in?
Because he needs it or it doesn't work. The story told about how this guy assumed that there was a briefcase that was a bomb, and he grabbed it, ran out into the top of it, and threw it. Yeah, yeah. And therefore, and that John Cleese thought, oh, I'm going to stay another night.
Because even if you're filming on location apparently, you can just do that. Yeah. And it's weird, isn't it, how our media, when they're reporting on entertainment and showbiz, they have to have a backstory. Oh, no, it's a foundation myth.
Yes, because the idea that he just came up with it is not acceptable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I often think that he is very similar to the Michael Palin's pet shop owner in the parrot skates. Yeah.
There's a lot of basil in that, in that character. No, no, no, he's not dead, he's just resting. Yeah, you know, it's like a character who will just lie, and like, and each lie may be the next lie worse. Yeah.
And that's kind of a lot of faulty sounds, isn't it? Yes, yes, in fact, yeah. That's absolutely right. They were obviously really interested in people prepared to lie.
Yeah, do bear those lies. You must have met hundreds of thousands of times. Oh, Jesus Christ, I mean, you don't know. Well, no, I remember, well, here's a perfect example of, uh, staying in a hotel in Brighton, staying a lot.
Right. One time we stayed there, we rang ahead, we're coming from somewhere else, because it's that thing, you're onshore, so what you do is you drive onto the next place. And then you stay there, and then you wake up in the town, you're working in the morning, it's just softer. And you've got two hours of adrenaline still.
It's one morning in the night, and all that, just get in the bus and get in the morning. But we'd done a show in Brighton, and we said, um, we'll be in a week when we get to the hotel after the show. Absolutely no problem. No problem at all.
So we go to the bar, and they, and there's nothing to eat, and we're like, you told us we'd be in a week. No, we didn't. Contre-toms, right? So the next time we're there, it's sort of nine months later, and we'd, we'd, we'd complained, we'd complained formally.
Right, expensive hotel. So we were driving, it was for Michael McIntyre's comedy road show, which was at Brighton Dome, and I was in Carlisle the night before, and they wanted to be for Brighton the next day. Of course they did. So we said, you're all right.
So we drove from Carlisle to Brighton that night after the gig. So show ends about half past ten, packed up in the car 11. We'll maybe a bit earlier than that. We get to, we get to Carlisle, we get to Brighton at four, 13 a morning.
That's going somewhere. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. My guy's very good.
And we go into the, we go into the hotel reception, and the bloke on reception says, Ah, Mr. Murray, Mr. Booker, great to see you. I understand, last time you hit you here, you had a reason to complain.
Right? And, uh, I don't know what you want to thought about it. Exactly. I didn't mind talking about it.
I just went, I don't think this is the time, mate. Give us the keys. But I went, and maybe it's something about hotels, that when someone treats you like that, somewhere that you're supposed to be home from home, or a safe space, someone who's more than a part of it. Somebody meant to be welcome, and they're like, I'll be with you.
Like, it's double. Yeah. And that was one of those moments you think, you know, fuck you. The only thing I had to struggle out, and it's a big gig tomorrow, and I'm stressed out about it, and you're doing this now.
And in the morning, I can't remember, there was a difference between the one he said, that was all forgotten. But that moment, that hotel moment, you think, right, we're ready to fight now. You've got one of those meat platter in your room. It's like that.
It goes in and he spots your face in. Enjoy your food, Mr. Muddy. But it's odd, isn't it?
Because the Germans episode is an example of a thing that people, it was obvious what Cleas was doing with that episode. He was saying, this country is obsessed with the Germans. They moved on. We need to, for goodness sake, right?
But he did it in a really, really, like funny, on the nose way. It's the point where people thought he meant it, or just like it. Yeah, yeah. I guess you've never experienced that.
No idea what that. I don't know why I brought that. Well, that might be like, the thing is, I mean, in a way, maybe one of the reasons I thought was surely, because I think one of the things with Python is I thought, they in general, they seem to launch a load of things that I thought was like, life of Brian, I kind of think after life of Brian, they've done that now. So we understand where blasphemy fits into comedy.
And so where blasphemy fits into, with other regions, we've done that, we've been through that process. And then we can look at that film and we can understand it in lots of ways. It's not blasphemous at all. That was not the intention.
So lots of things you felt Python had done at running, and especially the Germans thing, because he was doing it at the same time for any style of dressing. It was very, very far ahead of its time that episode, the Germans. Yeah. Because people were not, those characters, and I do remember watching it whenever it came out.
So I would have been 20 or something, 21. And these Germans who were kind of OK, because obviously I'd grow. My culture, the Germans were, you know, we, this was the one place where Jews and the English met was our hatred of Germans. And so it was, I remember it was a real shock.
Those, those, the four, the two couples, the two, the two, the two, the two, the two, the two. We're just, hang on, Germans, this is not how Germans are portrayed on telling. They're human, they're human. They're human, they're human.
Yeah. And of course, and Basil is the monster, of course. That's the whole point. And Basil is Britain's imperial past.
Yeah. I think that's a big, really good pretentious man. And it did. And funny enough, I remember talking to Henning Vain about this on the way to gig with it.
And talking about the way that we kind of, I said, we were so far ahead, 40 times so far ahead. He said, yeah, yeah, like that, like people still think like that. You know, because Henning, when he started out, and people didn't, people used to think, this is an English person, taking the piss out of Germans. And so he would get a sort of, sometimes he'd do a gig and he'd get the sort of laughs for that.
But then it, they sort of, as the more it went on, the more it's like, hang on. What's happening in this guy? Is this guy? Yeah.
And we've come, again, we've come full circle with it now. Is that, you know, Basil faulty is the hero, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Although, of course, the brilliant thing is that, I'm going to win a war. Right, OK. I'm going to write a whole half hour signal, but it means we land there.
Yeah. Literally reverse it. We started it. Yeah.
Wouldn't it be brilliant if we had some Germans who end up having to say that? Yeah. Because of the way we've been. Wouldn't that be amazing?
And sometimes that episode looks like it's, because sometimes great plots are written to deliver. Yeah. One line, one touchdown, like that. And maybe that's what they did with it.
Well, except it's very hard to just, because occasionally, because I write Milton Jones' Radio Show with him and another one called Dan Evans. And occasionally, we sort of, we start with the idea, oh, this week, Milton is a busting dog, or a pest control guy. And sometimes, though, you set various hairs running. And eventually, you get to a point where you then just, then you think of a joke, which brings them all together.
And it's so perfect that you think, oh, it's going to sound like we did this whole thing. So we could do that whole thing. Yeah. And actually, that's not why we did it.
So it's really interesting. As you were talking about, faulty just then, though, there was an overlap, which I've never spotted before, is that in the Germans episode, he sort of rigs me, isn't he? Yeah. There's a hint of that kind of Little Englander about him and the desire for respectability, because although he was a Tory in real life, then Ross was a, which did not endear him to Francis to the tour, I believe.
But in fact, listeners, if you're interested in that, I actually interviewed Eric Chappell, who wrote, writing Dan, but I went to his house and interviewed him. And he was very delightful. He just thought that you write 24 episodes of something and then he'd stop and move on, which is why he's written about four or five shows, they're all about 24 episodes, and he's done, and he's on to the next one. Yeah, he's just thinking, he's just thinking, you could have kept going with writing Dan, that was.
But 24 is better than 12s. Oh, well, that is not, because I think one of the things for us is set in motion that mythology that you should only do twice. Yeah, the young ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let's talk about this. Lots of stuff. That was the writer-performer thing. And that was back when the writer-performer was the one sitcom every two or three years, maybe.
And it was partly, I think, the person playing the character was putting so much of themselves out there, I think, that they maybe couldn't, I mean, you were saying earlier today about how it's a character and how you are able to kind of be separate. You are clearly not the pumlin. Yeah. In a way that when you watched Steve Cougar being Alan Partridge, and you can see there's a kind of, he's putting a lot of Steve Cougar in there.
You never quite know how much, but you can see that. And I think that was the thing about the 12s. So 12 just feels like, if I have to do another six, if I have to give another six new bits of my new roasts out there, I don't know, is that I've got six more? Well, it's just famously what's happened to Cleasiese has not been funny since.
He did 40 hours, and then he did a physical wonder, and then he went to therapy and supposedly sold to his problems. What's the real shame? Fish called wonder, it's a brilliant film. The last time I saw it, it really felt, maybe it's the bad English light.
OK, he's a bit dull. He's a bit crummy. It's a bit crummy. I don't know.
Crummy sounds, right? We're going to come to blows over this, aren't we? Yeah, I don't know. But it's a lot of, yeah, I kind of half-watched it.
And also, clockwise was the thing he did first. Yeah, basically, yeah, basically reprised, faulty. It's got quite a lot of that, isn't it? Yeah.
And that's a sort of, that's a small film. Yeah. But funny though. Some of it.
I watched it, I remember watching it the first time and enjoying it, and then tried to watch it subsequently and found it very difficult. Well, there's that bit, you know, the hinges on him getting to a railway station and the guy going left. And he says, right. Right.
And you think, you know, I don't think you wrote that though, isn't it? No, you didn't write it. But you didn't write it, but you sort of think a forceful enough guy like that would... Yeah.
Some of that sort of interesting thing to go. Oh, yeah, that's funny. Yeah, yeah. Wave it through.
But there's an overlap of the character also in that wonderful bit because I know it's a Mrs. Richard episode really well. It's when he's sort of in a bit of a state, and then the delivery guy comes in and goes, you got Mrs. Richard staying in.
Oh. That's true. The brakes and camels back. That just reminds me of his persona when he sort of realises in clockwise.
He's just not making it up twice where he gives up. Yeah. And it's not the despair. It's the home car moment.
Yes, it's very like that scene. But again, I was in the car and the radio on the radio show for a radio show. A year ago he did a radio series. I can't remember.
I didn't hear the series. But there was a trailer for it. And it was just him doing a trailer and I'm doing the show. And there was just some little joke in it.
And it was just, I just found myself laughing out loud at this little non-joke. And I think, you know, whatever he has, he still has it. And I don't think he's ever lost that. And I think that showed in the life.
I mean, I think the thing with him is, or the thing with all of his guys, if they've made another six then, great. But if they go over there trying to do it now, could we make sure that never happens? Well, they went back to Porridge, which was a bit of a shame. Well, you couldn't put similar buzzer than how many children.
So it would have to be a shouting nephew. Were there any shows? So just a little bit of a wrap up. Were there any shows that were really close to that, where you had a tape and you virtually wore it out?
What sitcoms? Yeah. Or were you more comedy albums or? Comedy albums.
Steve Martin, live at the Hollywood Bowl, is the thing I completely wore out. That was the record that SoundUps were introduced to and changed to SoundUps in that 1985. Were you watching that when you were about 15? No, that was my parents didn't have a video play.
Okay. So that was at university. A very, very good friend of mine. Still a good friend of mine.
Simon Oakes. A new child friend of mine. It's a great guitar player and a geography professor of all things. He had, because he was an only child.
So he had VHS's and 10 action men from his younger. I'm still annoyed about that. He had friends. Exactly.
And he had, he had, he had, he had all the young ones and he had like Fistful of Travis Chex comic strip stuff. All of the NHS. But it was Steve Martin live at the Hollywood Bowl. And that whole thing, the whole thing of his performance being 100%.
There was no video. That video was somebody got. And nobody had video then, like of American standup and somebody over there, like Roy Hutchins, who was a standup at the time, got hold of this Steve Martin video. And just every comedian watched this video and it was like, oh my God.
It's amazing. We forget. You know, I can remember those times. We just couldn't get hold of it.
And we've all been shuffling on the stage being left wing and all this stuff. And then suddenly we saw his kind of suit and it looks like a bank manager. And he's just saying something like, excuse me. And it's just the funniest thing.
And it's like, it's not much more than the sum of the person. And suddenly, the comedy. Oh, it's the whole thing. It's the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah. And it'd be better dressed than anyone on the gig, rather than turn up in a t-shirt. And that really like, I remember just thinking, why am I laughing at this? Because he had the nozzle of a petrol pump.
And he'd hold it up and go, you see this? 15 bucks. And the whole thing would bowl. I'd laugh at it.
Why do I laugh at this? It's because he's, yeah. So that video, and the thing is, there were things on it that were short before it. It's him doing a songwriter masterclass.
And Joey Chase, he's telling, Paul's going, how about this? Well, I think Paul, what you need to do is. It's the secrets of comedy. It's like a bunch of people sitting around and saying, so Steve, tell us, how long do I leave between the setup and the punch.
It's going to be like one and a half seconds. And then someone else asks the question. And then Paul Sibons sitting in the corner, he says, when I'm writing a song in a minor key, I want to go down to Paul talking about comedy. Shut up about your music.
That's right. I love that. He explains why Chubby Chase is in the You Can Call Me Out that you have never quite done how that exists. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They were all not together. Steve Martin live at the Hollywood bar, I think. And probably life of Brian. And probably also playing straight into the field.
Because I was into Steve Martin's film career for a long time. Steve Martin was asked, who's the funniest person you've ever met? Who do you say? John Cleese.
John Cleese. There we go. There's a bit of similarity between them as well. People really want them to be something that they're sort of not that interested in being.
And they seem to really know who they are. And I saw Steve Martin seven years ago when he came to UK with his banjo. Yeah. That ban, that band, the Banch Lady Band.
And basically it was an hour and a half show. And an hour and ten of music and between it, twenty minutes to stand up. And it was so funny. Oh my God.
We were only in the fourth row. My girlfriend at the time had made sure we got good tickets and done some blaggery. And there we were and there he was. And it was as near as to seeing a wild and crazy guys you could get.
And it was great. And he did it in a very self-conscious, I'm not that guy. I know that guy any more but here. Here's some sprinkles of it.
The way he used to do the Oscars actually. And he was just so funny. He used to do the Oscars. That'd be great if it's not him doing the Oscars.
I might be sure. Well, exactly. Well, thank you very much for, I don't know where we started or how we ended. But we went all the way around.
It was great. Really interesting. I'm so pleased we didn't ask you the questions that you get asked a lot. But yeah, thanks very much indeed to you.
And thank you for listening. And we'll speak to you next time. Bye bye. Bye bye.