Russell Howard: How To Laugh Through Fear, Anxiety & Imposter Syndrome

the thing I think about most especially when I'm on the go but also when I'm sat here in the bar of a studio studio is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with in fact anytime I'm filming away from the studio one of the first things I do is when I arrive I open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is and the number of screenshots I've said to my team about Wi-Fi signals at different locations is actually pretty crazy it matters that much to me because it's such a competitive advantage to have fast Wi-Fi because on any given day if I'm recording let's take hours and hours of footage for the podcast guest I then often have to have my team send that across to our London team who then do the edit so fast Wi-Fi internet is not nice to have it is absolutely business mission critical so when it came to finding the best provider who can supply internet Wi-Fi to our new LA studio which I'm saying right now we look to every single option and of all the providers the one that came back with this day's connection as well as being the cheapest was today's sponsor Spectrum Business Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected with fast reliable internet advanced Wi-Fi phone TV and mobile services millions of business owners already rely on Spectrum to keep their operations connected so if you want to join them head to spectrum.com slash business to learn more that's spectrum.com slash business restriction supply service not available in all areas if they're laughing it's fine if they're not it ain't this is the Russell Howard we have never seen before when you're low it leaves you mentally fragile but then that makes you work hard and go again because you know the excitement you get from making them love it's an unhealthy treadmill but at the end of that treadmill there is this incredible sharing that's what happiness is figure out a healthier way of being the best view without it being so draining to realize what you have there will always be sort of shimmering lights of hope in the misery but sometimes somebody has to help you find them when he died it's just this sledgehammer to your heart where you just go Jesus one of the one of the one of the good souls isn't here anymore Russell Howard I've watched Russell Howard on TV for years and years and years and of all the podcasts I've done Russell and this conversation was the most stark difference between the person I've seen on TV and the person I had a conversation with today I think your mind is going to be blown he's got a new Netflix show coming out called lubricant and the reason it's called lubricant is because he believes comedy and laughter is the lubricant that allows us to deal with the pain of life and we talk about the pain of his life we talk about everything and this conversation there's more tears recently I did an episode of this podcast with Jimmy Carr and the resounding feedback we got was we've never seen that Jimmy Carr before I have a suspicion in fact I know that people are going to say the same about this conversation this is the Russell Howard we have never seen before and it's an incredibly inspiring valuable vulnerable Russell Howard it's the side as a Russell Howard fan that I wish I'd seen more of I have a feeling you're going to be really surprised so without further ado I'm Stephen Bartlett and this is the I'm funny because of my mum and I'm determined because of my dad you said that right I did say that yeah I felt that was the beginning of a riddle I thought you were sort of a Gollum figure can you explain it to me please um my mum is a warm twinkly eyed little lady who is inadvertently funny all the time has no idea of her power is just naturally uh bright and joyful if you ever feel that you're kind of getting used to hotels and the humdrum life of oh here we are in another place um take my mum with you separate rooms and watch her reaction when she goes into a hotel room because it reminds you of how you used to be oh really she's got kettles they've got tea bags they've got a chowder press look like she's so excited and happy by the world and my dad is um a very quiet unbelievably determined man who you know when we were kids we'd sort of we'd have us mixed in cement um we'd be sort of like you know building kind of walls with him plastering as a kid I remember watching my dad plaster and he was trying to keep this kind of wall up and he screamed to himself come on David and sort of even at 11 I was going that's a bit much um so I had these kind of two very different uh dominant personalities that kind of raised me who I love dearly both but they are very very different you know my dad challenged me to a press-up competition recently um at a family barbecue and he beat me he did um 68 he did yeah and he's uh 65 years old and uh yeah remember this story this sums my dad up I had a school report when I was 11 and the teacher said um what Russell needs to know is that he can't do everything and I kind of go home and you know that moment you give the report and your dad looks and he goes what was this mean you go well the teacher says I can't do everything he goes why do you say that well I just think that I can I think I can do anything if I put my mind to it and my dad goes you've got to go down that school now and tell her that so I have to walk back to the school yeah and I kind of go and my dad says I can do anything you're not allowed to say I can't which is a pretty you know incredible thing to do but you know it's still tough so yeah very different what are brothers and sisters I have a brother Daniel who's an amazing human being very funny um and I have a sister who's an actress who's also incredible um they're very different as well um I'm very close to my brother not so much to my sister we sort of all my brother we just played football together as kids and oddly Kerry's in the same world as me now and is kind of a BAFTA nominated actress she was in um him and her BBC three and super talented and yeah a great human being they're a lovely bunch but very strange in my family it's like being a pogue song when you go to kind of Christmas parties around our way do you know what I mean yeah it's sort of you know those like I remember really the funeral of my nan and granddad um it was separate it sounded like it was packed but but that feeling sometimes when you go to a funeral and you're so proud to have the same blood as the people in the room I kind of feel that whenever I'm back with my family in the west country there's there's such a lunacy and energy to them that I adore and feel so kind of delighted to be part of you know it's kind of yeah um Jimmy Carlton said something to me which I've been waiting to ask you another comedian there's a stereotype that comedians are funny because they're depressed yeah but Jimmy Carlton said that's wrong he said you've really got to ask a comedian who in their family is sick um because he says that much of his comedic genius or his desire to please people came from um trying to make a family member happy or trying to ease moments of tension in the family dynamic when he was younger um do you resonate with that at all yeah yeah completely um that my dad my dad is you know is successful and super serious but used to lose his mind watching kind of Billy Connolly or watching Have I Got News For You so he was like howl with laughter and we sort of figured out the way to break that serious energy was to make him laugh you know so definitely it was kind of there's no tension if people like I've got a line of money special which is laughter is the lubricant that makes life livable and it you know it really it soothes tensions and it's a bandage that gets over cracks definitely you know and then it's sort of this thing that when you discover you know you can make people laugh it's so addictive and you can literally create your own energy and like you do in arena there's 15,000 people there you're orchestrating this almost societal orgasm where they're kind of like lost in laughter together it's you feel like a necromancer man it's the best and I think Jim's right in that that initial spark comes from probably I'm thinking about comedians as well as myself it's all that sense of you know like I've got a lazy eye it's that was you know so I became funny to deflect and do jokes about my eyes to get to stop people looking at them and then you kind of realize okay this is kind of cool or if you're a bit thick or if you're not good at football or you don't fit in you can kind of sort of rebrand yourself in a strange way through humor and you can create your own kind of energy that sounds kind of wanky but do you know what I mean of course I do because there's also another stereotype which is that people who are slightly um slightly bigger what tend to be really bubbly and have funny personalities as well which is would fit that kind of idea that it's a tool of deflection yeah from something else you know they don't want to focus on um you talk about having to self-esteem as well and you're yeah yeah what's odd the further you get into it you realize that it's so much fun doing stand-up um and it's such a wild drug effectively because you're doing this massive gig to 2,000 people and I was laughing or 15,000 people you're in New York you're doing a gig in Finland and you can't quite get over it and then as a consequence it's quite hard to sit down and watch the tv and be normal and um so you're kind of chasing that sort of high and it's about the real the real skill is trying to figure out the sort of work-life balance you know I'm speaking to somebody whose uh house is above work but you know what I mean it's like see the only the only way around is to sort of integrate it really but like I don't know I've been doing stand-ups since I was 18 I remember doing the first gig and it felt like it was you sort of discovered a mechanism through which you can do life for everything sad good happy weird peculiar can go through this sausage maker and you can then uh understand life figure it out but also that's a very strange way to do it because you you're you know you're using the stage to kind of um uh dissect yourself but the aim is always funny but I don't know the better way to do it than to kind of make sense of the world and the funny thing about all comics is guaranteed if they find themselves in a strange situation sometimes a heartbreaking situation in life there's always a little part of your brain going could be a bit in this and it's that horrible sort of you know sort of disease that we have that you can't ever truly be there because there's always a little bit of you whether you're Seinfeld or you know Taylor Tomlinson or Bill Burr or Chappelle or whatever your brain is going no there's stuff in this as you're getting beaten up or whatever your brain I remember getting mugged in Brighton when I was 18 and and this this guy shouted me come back I'm a police officer clearly wasn't and I said no you're not you're a monster and as I said it I went that's gonna be quite funny but I'm literally running away I'm terrified but my brain's going yeah probably build a little bit about that and it's I think all comics I know have that thing where reality is always auditioning to find its way into your set wow I could uh I could get out of hand you can start willing this this is the weird thing yeah but but exactly but it's yeah we haven't got any jokes about if you just walk around dressed as a clown going to like a fucking zoo there's got to be something in this but yeah you're right but it's sort of about keeping life open a bit and keeping the third eye open really probably that's the same of all creatives where you kind of you or all people really like you have to notice the things that niggle you and if you're talking about them whether it's you know like my last special I had a big bit about kind of young women self-harming I couldn't I was like what like one in four women self-harming I was like I couldn't get my head around that and I just knew I had to talk about it on stage and yesterday I saw this lady complaining because the foam in her cup wasn't at the top of her cup and I for the rest of that morning I couldn't I couldn't get my head around it just how do you get the confidence to complain about your foam not being there I know somehow that's going to end up in the show somewhere that's the way I kind of operate really I sort of see these little things or and they kind of make a note on my phone and they gradually kind of make their way you know interesting like collecting dots from society and then figuring out these how they feel well I think I know Chris Martin does a similar thing where you just make little notes of lyrics and Woody Allen does a similar thing Woody Allen will just write a load of stuff and then he puts it in a um a drawer and then when he comes to write a film he just gets the drawer out empties all these notes that he's been making for the last six months and figures out what films can be and I think that's a lot really interesting I think is there's kind of um almost analogies for life within which is after you've come off stage to thousands of people in an arena you then go home and have to like sit in front of the tv the anti-climax dealing with like that consistent high then low it feels like a lot of emotion because that's a huge adrenaline surge and even like physiologically that feels like that must be non-natural yeah have a consequence yeah Chris that's deep and that's how he doesn't but yeah you're right it's it's yeah every comedian when they're in the middle of a tour needs a really really good box set like you know you need succession you need madmen you need something to get you through because yeah it's sort of otherwise like if you're trying to maintain that high um you know if you're sort of drinking and you're doing drugs or whatnot it's gonna make it harder to be that version it's kind of like whereas if you're a musician you can still sing the song that they want you to sing if you're on kind of coke or like or you're pissed up it's kind of hard to be a good comic for a long time if you're kind of you know on drinking drugs so yeah you have to sort of develop this kind of way of like reintegrating your life but also it's nonsense as well it's just it's fun make-believe like and and also what's important is kind of you know going for a meal with your wife and and hanging out and seeing friends and and there's joy in that you know and you see you have to you have to try you have to plan fun I think that's the crucial thing you have to go right we'll go on holiday and we'll go to that restaurant and we'll watch this film because I think like you say it's the sitting and the and the waiting is very difficult to compete with the the innate rush that you get from stand-up because of what you do professionally do you find it harder to enjoy the sitting and the waiting in the meal where you're sat there just you know and the holiday where you're sat on the deck chair not like I normally what I love about holidays I don't know what your feelings are about them but by the end of like 10 days I'm ready to go back to my life because holidays remind me of how much I love my life and that's the thing so you need to have that kind of I'm a real sit in the sun you know read some books um listen to podcasts whatever and then kind of go again but I like the recharge of it if there was a if there was a thing where you can literally plug yourself in like a mobile phone I would happily do that on the beach do you know what I mean I mean kind of go again but I'm not really when I'm in holiday mode I'm not really a culture vulture I'm kind of a sit down plonk book sun relax get ill because I've been putting it off do you know I mean your body just kind of gets a bit sick and then you kind of go again how about you do you are you a relaxer uh I think I'm a forced relaxer right yeah I think my girlfriend is the reason why I would go on holiday and I think she's also the reason why I would be present on holiday and she's the reason why I'd go and look at like a castle or something okay castle like wherever she would want to look at okay I think if it was just up to me I wouldn't go and I wouldn't do it and even if I did go I wouldn't leave a hotel room yeah but it's also that thing as well like you clearly with the job you do you clearly love it as well I love it yeah so that's the thing if you're fortunate enough there are so many there are billions of people who want who are who you know live the weekend do your job punch in job you don't like get your money smash your weekend try and find you find if you're one of the there's so few people in this world that truly have a thing that they do that they get paid for that they adore you just gotta get hold of it and just like there's no shame but it just seems peculiar to the outside so you know how obsessed you get about your job or I get about stand-up or there's a documentary about a comedy store um on sky recently and I watch it it's incredible it's a beautiful kind of summer's day and I smashed the whole thing one the best days of ever in my life because it was incredible and it evoked this kind of the comedy store from the sort of the 70s and the 80s and Jay Leno and all this and it just you know I was like we need a time machine we need to go back to to those times at the comedy store but it's because I love stand-up and I kind of you know it's you have to be with people that understand your passions because you can't fake it you can't go let's go to the castle if you're not a go-to-the-castle guy do you know what I mean but you're right you can be you can have help to look at the castle and you get to the castle that's just really nice castle yeah I wouldn't have come had you not completely yeah yeah but you start writing so on that point of finding your passion and pursuing it you started writing jokes at 14 yeah why you doing research yeah yeah an old computer And, yeah, I kind of, I watched that Lee Evans video with my mate Craig, and it blew my mind. Because when I was a kid, stand-up really wasn't on TV, that you'd have, like, a Billy Connolly tape, you'd have, like, Have I Got News For You, it was a big show at Bottom, or Shooting Stars, it was that kind of era. But stand-up wasn't really a thing. He was the first sort of person that I'd seen who kind of was just funny, wasn't an alpha.

And I was like, wow, like, it was mind-blowing. I think I could be, that's sort of a bit like how I'm funny. Like, you know what I mean? And me and Craig just wore that tape out, we just watched it over and over and over.

And I didn't tell anyone about it, I just started writing these little kind of jokes and routines and ideas that, none of which were any good, but it just became, like, my little, it was, like, my little fun place to go to every so often, and goes, I'm going to write some of my jokes. Did you perform them to anybody that page? My first ever gig was in Bristol, a place called Virgin Mirth, and I took all these jokes I've been writing since I was 14, and I whittled it down to my best 20, and I did it there at Virgin Mirth. I followed a guy who was eating a banana with a spoon, singing these theme tunes to the Sweeney, and another bloke that was sort of, like, his act was to punch himself in the face.

So, in a sense, it didn't really matter how bad my 14-year-old stuff was. But, yeah, so that was it, and then I kind of, some of it stuck, some of it didn't, but it was all, like, I had this bit about, like, how did Captain Kirk get through the entire, I wrote this when I was 14, but how did Captain Kirk get through all the Star Trek episodes without once flicking Spock's ears? So that was one of my first, and I told him it's all right, it's not bad, but that was the first joke I ever kind of told. And one of the things I found quite peculiar in your story is that your dad really pushed you to give comedy a go.

Yeah. And that seems, all guests I sit here with, the thing that has typically made them famous or well-known or successful, their parents were usually quite against it and would much rather have them got a, quote-unquote, real job. Yes. So what were you doing at the time, and, yeah, why was your dad supportive of it when, you know, at a time that's probably not considered a highly profitable, high chance of success career?

Yeah. I was working at the RAC in Bristol, a part-time job, and I was also doing stand-up, and I started standing at university and then finished my degree, went home, and I was just kind of doing probably three gigs a week for, you know, 50 quid a pop, or sometimes 100 quid a pop, that kind of thing, and alongside this kind of, like, shift at the RAC. And it was, I was kind of like, I'd have to drive back to get to work, and it was kind of like mackering. And my dad basically, I don't really, not to name drop, but I was talking to Matthew McConaughey about this, and it's a very similar thing where his dad, when he told his dad he wasn't going to become a lawyer, he was going to become a comedian, an actor, his dad said, don't half-ass it.

And that was a similar reaction to my dad. My dad basically was like, right, if you want to do this, you're 21, go for it. Give yourself a year. Don't stop.

Put everything into it. And then if it's not happening in the year, you stop, you get a proper job. And I kind of, I really respected that option that he gave me. Do you know what I mean?

It was like, I'll be fine. It was like, don't fuck around. Contract. And my now agent saw me at the Edinburgh Festival have like a really good gig.

And he kind of said, oh, does it always go that well? I was like, oh, the time, you must, yeah. But I was doing lots of sort of improvising and stuff like that. It was quite hit and miss back then.

And we went for a meal. He gave me, I used to have a thing called the Comedy Network, where it was like 30 gigs around universities. And that day, he put me into these 30 gigs that were, at the time, I still remember the money, it's 150 pounds per gig, spreading out into November. And to work for a comedy company called Avalon, one of the biggest kind of comedy producers in the UK.

And then he signed me. And so it worked. And then I kind of moved to London and kind of, you know, slowly kind of kept on keeping on. I really, I liked the deadline that my dad gave me.

Do you know what I mean? Because it was kind of, and I really respected it. And he had this amazing quote on his office that said, something like, I think it's by T.E. T.S.

Eliot or T.E. Eliot, that said, those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind wake in the day to find that all is vanity. But the dreams of the day are dangerous for they act upon their visions with open eyes and make them happen. And that is at the core of my dad.

So he's kind of quite disciplined, but he also has a, fuck it, go for it. But yeah, I just went for it. But also because I loved it. And I didn't love working at the RSC.

And I didn't, I finished my degree and I knew what I wanted to do. And I just, I just worked my bollocks off. And I did every gig you can imagine. But I loved it.

And my brother used to come to them, we'd travel down Brighton to do 10 minutes. And, you know, we'd have to sort of bunny hop the car to Reading Station, which we didn't fill up. And, you know, it was real kind of fly-by-seat-your-pants stuff. But just the best, it was the best.

It was like, it's the best night I had to go to Plymouth. And, you know, it's a six-hour-round journey, but you do 20 minutes and it goes great. And then the promoter says, oh, I'll get you back. And you're like, brilliant, I'll go back to Plymouth.

You know, and yeah, it sort of all worked out. Something that's so interesting when I speak to successful comedians, because it's one of the purest forms of like, insanely, I say insanely, but like, if you were trying to reach a lucrative outcome, one of the insane paths, one of the most insane pure followings of one's passion, because it seems to be the case that you follow this passion, which doesn't promise to ever pay you that well, or promise to no chance of success. And you follow it for years, and you paid 50, 100 quid. And then, I mean, I speak to the ones that were successful, right?

But when you look back on that period of your life, if I was to say, what are the key things? You've identified hard work as one of them. What are the key things that made you get here when so many won't get here? Hard work, luck, natural talent, perspiration.

But mostly, luck is a big thing. Luck and hard work are big ones. And taking your opportunity and having little kind of moments. And always listening to the crowd as well, because it's sort of that thing where, certainly as a live comedian, you can't bullshit people.

Like, there is, you get a tangible answer every time. The laughter is yes, the silence is no. You just can't fight with that. Like, that is, there is a truth to the gig.

Like, if they're laughing, it's fine. If they're not, it ain't. And that's the big thing, really. It's just kind of, you know, all great comedians listen to the audience because they're all the matters.

And you can be critically lauded. You can be, you can win awards, you know. But ultimately, if you don't hear laughter, you won't be here. And you have to have new stuff.

That's the big thing. You have to make them laugh and constantly renew yourself. That's the thing. To kind of, to stick around.

You make the audience laugh. They all burst out laughing and clap. They say, oh, you're amazing after the gig. They say, we break you.

You're the best person ever. Does that impact your self-esteem in a positive way? Yeah, of course. But yeah, it's the best, man.

It's just, but that feeling when you do the Brighton Comedia and you're 20 and you do 10 minutes and it goes really well. And Stephen Grant, who is still the booker at the Brighton Comedia, says, oh, we'll get you back for a 20. That journey home, that's the best. Or someone says, oh, you're going to do the, we're going to get you back to host the Lincoln Student Night.

And you're like, yeah, do you want to do it monthly? Yes. And you build up this little following in Lincoln because it's, of course, your self-esteem is just up there because you feel like you're a youth team footballer that's breaking into the first thing. That's how it must feel like.

You feel like you're kind of Phil Foden and you get these little opportunities. It's probably the same thing with footballers, like what makes Phil Foden probably that he has a natural talent, he works his arse off. And when there's opportunities, he's kind of clinical enough to take advantage of them. Do you know what I mean?

And learn from mistakes. And comedy is constantly about learning from mistakes because you go, you do new material, it doesn't work, you tweak it, you tweak it, you tweak it until you get something that kind of makes them laugh. Well, we then assume that comedians have just tremendously high self-esteem. If they laugh at it, yeah.

But then the interesting as well is how quickly it crumbles down if it goes badly. And I've got a friend of mine, Al Pitcher, who's a comic in Sweden, we talk about this a lot, where when you're low, irrespective of what you've done before, you just feel like such deep, deep shame that you've been unable to kind of make them laugh. But then that makes you work hard and go again because you know the excitement you get from making them laugh. So it's an unhealthy treadmill.

But at the end of that treadmill, there is this incredible cherry. Deep, deep shame. Just because it's embarrassing. It's like you've tried to make, even this, I'm really enjoying this.

It's really fun, but it's very serious. We've got a little mini audience so over there I can hear. And every little laugh, my brain's going, that's good. And when they're not, I'm like, yeah, totally.

Just because you sort of feel like, you know, it's sort of that weird thing for me. Laughter is truth and victory and silence is failure. But then the interesting thing about that is when you watch a performance, you actually realize that of another comic, you go, wow, there's real power in the silence actually, which took me a long time to realize because I was very initially, just give it up, give it up, give it up. And then you kind of, you know, you watch someone like Chappelle, for example, and you go, he's a real master of the silence and you don't lose him.

Do you know what I mean? I find it's the kind of, you can never know whether you've been captivating or dull because the sound is the same. Do you know what I mean? It's sort of that weird thing of like, I mean, I don't come off stage again, was I captivating or dull?

Yeah, yeah. But hopefully, yeah. It's really interesting. So when you have conversations like this, because there is no, like, there's not huge amounts of laughter because it's a serious conversation.

Oh, I love chats like this. This is the best, man. But yeah, go on. That's what I was basically asking was, when we have comedians come here, we've had Russell Kaye, we've had Jimmy Carr, they do make a lot of jokes.

Even before we're filming, I think, you know, Jack will like put the microphone close to Jimmy Carr's mouth and I think he said something like, just keep it like a fist away and that's what your mother said. And it's almost like a Tourette's of humour. Yeah. I wonder how you kind of get through life like that.

It almost feels like uncontrollable. Honestly, that is the best description of it. Like there's a joke that I think sums up comedian's brains the best by a brilliant comedian called Mitch Hedberg. He's no longer with us, one of the greatest comedians of all time.

And this joke sums up the brain that comedians have. And I'll do his impression. If there's fans of Mitch out there, forgive me for this, but it works better if you try and do it. He kind of goes, I mumble, man.

I mumble a lot off stage. I'm a mumbler. So I'll be with my friend and I'll say something and he'll be like, what? And I'll say it again a little bit louder and he'll be like, I didn't hear you.

And then the third time I'll say it and he's still getting hurt me. So I'll say it to him. But now I'm yelling at him, that tree is far away. And that's what it is.

It's this thing in his head that's gone out of the tree's far away. And it's a joke about the mania. What were you about? I was just saying, the tree's over there.

It's further away. And it's that thing. The amount of times I've been with my wife and you sort of say something. I saw this bin in Brimrose Hill the other day that generally said, protect our birds.

This was the line on the bin. Protect our birds. It's a picture of a bird and respect their way of life. And I just went into this thing of like, I don't know, you show respect to a fucking bird.

In my head, I'm just kind of like, I didn't know there were just grunt or chaffinches all over Brimrose Hill. I've never seen that on the news. I'm just going to go, today a bird was the victim of, of somebody attacking him. And my brain was just like whirring around with this.

And she can see, I'm kind of full zombie eyes just gone. And it's sort of that. That's kind of the way that comic brains are, I think. You spend a lot of time playing around in your head and then you kind of go, oh, that might be something.

You know, like the other day, I talked to a friend about sperm donors and somebody had, there was this website and on that you could sort of get, you could get your batch. And one of them was like, you know, he was like six foot four, Swedish, keen reader, and you're a really good job. And you're like, yeah, that's exactly what I'd say if I was trying to flog sperm. You know what I mean?

You're not going to kind of go, bit of a loner, comes in every Wednesday. But my point being, poor, high achieving intellectuals that kind of just nip out to a spaff into a pot. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't exist.

But the point is, you spend a lot of time in that kind of fun zone. And I think that's the brain that a lot of comics have. Speaking of that brain spiralling, after you did a gig, can you remember a time where you go on Google, you go on the Daily Mail or something, you Twitter, and you look at articles of what people are saying to you and it has a really profound negative impact on what you think about yourself and you start to question yourself? I don't do it.

I came up in the days of MySpace and whatnot and I've never been on Twitter, I've never been on Facebook, to a bit of Instagram. It's the same with reviews. It's a very funny thing. You get a five-star review and your brain's like, exactly, yep, correct.

You get a shitty review and you're like, what the fuck? And you realize that you have to pay no heed to it. I mean, it's flattering, it's great, and it's lovely to get nice reviews and anyone who says otherwise is bullshit. But with social media, you can't, it's too much to kind of seek validation from people, particularly in the world that we live in at the minute, where you're having to check to see if you've been correct.

You're not going to be right for everybody and some people will not like a joke or some people, you know, you just have to try and stay where you are. So I've definitely had times like that when I was younger and it just crushes you and you realize actually all I'm doing is paying attention to the really negative things that people say and they'll be like, you know, one out of 50 that's super horrible rather than focusing on the kind of things and you realize actually my brain focuses on the negative and you go, yeah, right, actually, yeah, yeah, I am that, yeah, correct, correct, correct. It just doesn't make me a better, more functional human being. It just, it hurts, so I don't do it.

Do you know what I mean? So I just kind of... Yeah, but what I do and what I love about social media is I like making things and then putting it on there and so putting clips of stand-up or the TV show or whatever but I don't, I'm lucky, I have, if I want to do comedy, I can go to a comedy club and it's a dark room and I can howl, I can scream, I can do whatever I want, it's in a comedy club. Social media is the worst comedy club in the world because people aren't there to laugh.

I mean, everyone there is there to laugh and there's this sort of lovely bonding experience we're here for a reason whereas social media, some people, most people in the world are just up for a hoot, some people are looking so I can play Twitter. Do you imagine how hard that comedy club would be? Do you know what I mean? And so I just don't, I don't bother with it but I like making things that are finished and then putting them out but I kind of literally email them to my agent and say, oh, we should put this bit from the show on.

I don't even know, I haven't got my logins, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Just because of this. Yeah, but, and also maybe it's because I'm 41 and I kind of came up in an era where stand-up was still playing clubs.

If you're a young guy now, it must be completely different and there's loads of kind of great comics that have kind of come up through social media or through podcasts and I love that because there's podcasts I think with young comics, there's a real era of punk about it where you're kind of going, I'm not going to wait for TV to give me anything. I'm going to make my own thing and then people gravitate to that and that's your thing and you, you can't mess with that whereas i love that i love the fact that people aren't gonna be waiting for tv to anoint them but i was very lucky that i was just in live gigs and then when i was 26 after having done stand-up since i was 18 somebody said you want to go on tv and i kind of went the traditional path as it were and kind of social media grew alongside it but i was never and i never needed it which is not to say i couldn't have been bigger if i cultivated it but the content i like making exists in the club and it's finished when i do a netflix special or it's finished when i do a tv show it's in a state of flux when i'm in a comedy club um it's in a constant state of becoming and the problem with social media it makes everything finite and tangible and sometimes it's not sometimes jokes evolve or routines evolve you put out there it might be rubbish or it might be ill-conceived it might upset people but by the end of it having worked in a comedy club it might say exactly what you want it to say it's a really sort of sort of holy space the comedy club versus versus twitter as a comedian do you ever feel a sense of imposter syndrome yeah i think i don't know any great comic that doesn't i'm talking to billy connelly billy connelly used to get nervous he billy connelly was worried that the audience wouldn't love him that he wasn't worth their evening billy connelly if billy connelly is thinking that then you know you know all of us are and it's i think you get to that stage where you're like this is gonna be great i know it's gonna be great it probably won't you have to have a healthy degree of of imposter syndrome in order to be the best version of yourself because you have to kind of you know you have to burst into that party and be the best funniest you because that's what's on the ticket that's the thing the only way to do that it's kind of hard work you know um but to just rock up for example an arena tour having done no kind of warm-ups it'll be fine you fucking won't arrogance destroys stand-up you kind of have to you have to go to small clubs before you start doing the tour to kind of know you're okay to get rid of that and without imposter syndrome you uh you don't grow as an artist do you know what i mean but you have to deal with psychologically right because it sounds like it must be similar to living with a sense of like self-scrutiny which can be quite unhealthy i don't know yeah yeah well i guess the the key thing is to you've got to i think you have to leave on your own terms you know i mean there's a while where this won't be healthy forever because it's a strange way to live with that do you feel like it won't be yeah just because you just kind of go there will just come a time where you're you're just you're not as sharp as you want to wear and you're like fine i'll just go work in local radio but like like that's not a dig at anyone in local radio you do important stuff keep those weather checks coming but doing kind of arenas for a long time is you know i've been doing them since like 2012 now that is a crazy level of pressure because you sort of do we do i do like a month-long block in the uk and it's kind of right okay you know and then you get through it and you're okay go again go again and that isn't necessarily the healthiest way to be forever does it have mental health implications on you because if you're living with that kind of internal fluctuation all the time and that anticipation that those feelings of self-doubt that you know they say that anxiety in particular is like concern about the future if you're constantly thinking about the future that moment in that arena is do you feel anxious at all well the funny thing is the only time you don't feel anxious is when you're doing the uh when you're doing stand-up but weirdly that's the that's the respite um but leading up to it it's nerve-wracking but as soon as you step on the uh on the stage you kind of you know exactly what you're going to do and it's fun it's the most fun in the world and then it's the but the leading up to it and the afterwards was you know i think you sort of just make your peace with it and like you say it's it's meant it leaves you mentally fragile but i don't know another way of doing it have you suffered anxiety oh yeah massively i like it sort of but i think it's sort of that thing like i have these gigs but don't do this work i'm gonna look like a fool people gonna boo me there's gonna be anger so you go so that fear drives you to write to perform and get a show that's good enough right and i've not found anything that was a useful motivator but like i say it's a tough way of being like johnny wilkinson i remember seeing this by him johnny wilkinson kicked the uh winning um i don't know rugby but the winning world cup kick yeah right um and as the ball sort of soared over apparently he said to himself his brain went as it went over like he's won the world cup and the next day he was training and he's kicking goals again to ensure that he didn't make that mistake and unfortunately for him that's what makes him magnificent you know i mean and i think it's sort of that thing where you go the only you get you can try and adapt it and try and figure out and you know and we're all in a constant state of becoming as regards to mental health and trying to um figure out a healthier way of being the best view without it being so draining but he's got the winning goal the world cup you know and it's sort of it's kind of shitty but but that determination is what sort of made him it's kind of i guess the thing is it's about kind of ensuring that you have enough kindness to yourself around that so that you kind of give yourself a break from time to time and the overall picture is happy yeah but but but i don't know of a better motivator than fear to make good stuff like if it exists i mean do you recognize that if you have what what is another thing that you have i guess excitement if you could turn fear into excitement that would be a healthy way of doing it yeah but i just don't find it as oh yeah it's so much fun because we'll go there and it'll be great but then you wouldn't do the prep right as you say if i was excited i wouldn't i'd probably neglect well that would be things so that so you have like six months of joy yeah and then you do the thing it'd be fucking awful and then whereas at least this we have six months of tension and then you have joy and then the kind of joy lasts throughout the tour and then after this all you go back to fear but i don't know like it's but i don't have the answers and i i don't know what works for other people but for me it is that and it's something i'm trying to address like living in fear too much or putting too much responsibility on the thing but i don't know another way yeah like you know i'm sort of seeing people and trying to figure it out but i don't know what makes it for example it's a trade-off right if you want to check the goal you need this unfortunately i always think this i think i think everything has a cost yeah um and everything good in my life that i love comes with a cost it might be it could even be a financial cost or it could be some other type of sacrifice and those that have risen the highest in certain professions it's so obvious to see the cost in their lives it's much more obvious than everyone's here with my guests he's built the number one boxing promotion company but he never ever sees his wife and kids yeah he's like it's unsatisfiable as a human yeah you know that's why he's called relentless i think well that's the clear quote unquote cost potentially yeah um and yeah we've got you saying being an arena performer one would think that you spend a lot of time in a certain mental place which is uh not always great yeah but then i was just thinking then i was thinking about the the fascinating thing about life is you have these so for example we did 10 nights at the alcohol which is like a world record it's mental it's extraordinary that kind of little me used to sit in the back of mom and dad's um ford fiesta watching the raindrops go down the window i did 10 nights at the alcohol it's mental um and it's fun brilliant great but it was like you're playing snooker you know get all the reds then they're not the rest of them down done you know it's that lovely kind of controlled snooker brain joe joe joe joe joe joe joe joe joe end of the show hooray yeah go again right but it's fun that exists from a dopamine level on a very similar level as being on my standee with my cousins in vegas and hearing my cousin lewis tell a story and so i think it's my way of figuring it out is to have as many of those dopamine hits of joy whether it's good food good company um travel books music whatever so that you're kind of constantly feeding yourself like because if you just that's the big realization i've had if you only try and get happiness from work for me it doesn't work to sit around and hope that your life outside of work can compete with this joy that you get from work the only way you can do it is to surround yourself with people that you think are fantastic or experiences that you think are fantastic and it can be little things it's just like you know like we did some gigs in dubai and we went to a water park every day and i'm 41 and i went with my friends who are all big big lads and we were on this rubber dinghy and we kept going down the slide we honestly it was it was the joy the silliness of the day led into the fun of the gig and i remember reading a thing about chapelle that chapelle when he's on tour he brings his pals he brings friends along so that he's he's sort of living the joy of life is connected with the joy of work he's never sort of sat backstage with his notepad kind of waiting for an hour and a half to go on and that's something i'm trying to do i'm trying to kind of involve people more in kind of work and be less kind of you need to stay away and to concentrate you know to blend the two you kind of totally yeah you talk about this in the same way with you kind of moments ago you talked about living for the week and then kind of like compartmentalizing that and having your life on the weekend and how that doesn't feel like the best way to live either because you're five days of misery and two days of like you're going to find it but i think also the pandemic has recalibrated a lot of people that actually go we were kind of locked away from each other and we were locked away from experience and the happiness of something appearing from nowhere those magical nights down the pub or watching football or listening to music or having a barbecue with friends where a moment unintentionally becomes a memory and we were kind of robbed of those social moments that created memories because we were sat with this disease lurking not knowing where our lives were going to become we kind of felt like we were sort of immune from something this this heavy happening to us and it didn't happen to everybody and it feels like because of that we we are now kind of coming out of the cave as it were with a real desire to um find as much majesty in the universe as possible but i genuinely feel a lot of people like audiences post-pandemic like even british audiences who are you know by a stretch the the the toughest crowds in the world like by a stretch is that lovely english coming come you know you know whereas like in america they're already up they stand up as you walk in and but british crowds now because people are people want connection and they want experience because it was kind of robbed of us so um it feels like it could be a really glorious time like you were saying with the tour that you've got planned what a fantastic way of doing that rather than just i could just you could just do a q a but you're putting you know you're making what sounds like a really pulsating live theater show it's gonna blow people's minds and that's what i want to do that's what audiences want there's a friend of mine called alex edelman who said i like stuff that's ambitious and finished and that's kind of where i want to go and i feel like that's where audiences want to be they want to see something that's going to rock them you know and and blow them away what a target to aim for to a thing that's going to be i'm going to try and make a thing that's the best night out anyone's ever had one of the things you said was um just a couple of moments ago was that you've seen someone to help you with uh that kind of fear living in fear state that we described what do you mean by you've seen someone oh just therapy to um yeah try and uh um have like sort of little coping mechanisms you know you sort of just get you get far enough into it where you go maybe just have a bit of help now um to recognize kind of moments of mania and how to kind of manage them a bit better so nothing super exciting it's not shaming or um you know it's not any kind of ayahuasca or mushrooms it's just a bloke in an office so what was your intention when you went to um just to kind of make it a bit easier so that you weren't loading it too much so you can still like you know work if efficiently without it's becoming debilitating because i think that's the thing probably a lot of people suffer from that by using fear as a motivator sometimes you're probably losing 20 of your potential through kind of um panic so yeah it was sort of kind of fucking robot but you know i think of like just trying to figure out okay is there another way of doing this was that uh yeah it's even recognizing when you're um just a bit full-on and just kind of all right just calm down i'm a real sucker for like little quotes man or i was weirdly i'm in interview will smith on thursday which is mad for 10 minutes about 10 minutes i'm so jealous they email me because we have to publish it like what's coming to town yeah can i get on the podcast like you've got no time yeah i've got 10 minutes well but this is it well i'll send you along but but i was listening to the beginning of his book and um it's a brilliant story about his dad made him and his brother be on the wall and it's just this is very very simple analogy probably read it it's just brick by brick and that's particularly making a tv show and you're writing topical jokes sometimes sometimes it's really hard to make stories interesting and to write jokes about things that are going on and in that instance this week that really helped me brick by brick and i'm able to kind of go okay yeah cool i can i can get stuff from that you know i'm very much a from a philosophical point of view or a therapy point of view i need pointers and tips to make me better i'm not uh enjoy every sandwich kind of guy because it's a fucking sandwich like you know i mean like being the sandwich just it's a fucking sandwich like i i need very much kind of eastern philosophy of like okay how do we how do we make ourselves better i love the idea of kind of sort of self improvement and being the best you um so i find quotes help that you know and even talking to somebody like i am like an expert you he'll say something or you'll say something you kind of unravel a thing and even like what we're doing now sort of having a chat about the process and i have my friend james bay uh the singer we particularly during covid we spoke a lot about uh everything and about creativity and talking to like-minded individuals about the pursuit of a joke or a song or a uh any kind of piece of art i find really really interesting i love it i'm so interested in the way that musicians create i'm so envious because they sit in a cool room or they go to like the studio and they kind of write in the jam and they riff and they create a thing and then they perform it whereas the musicians i know are very envious of the way the comedians create which is you go in front of the crowd and you create with not for you know it would be like a comparison like chris martin going in front of the crowd and chis it and going it was all blue nope okay uh it was all green nope it was all yellow yellow right i'll be yellow tomorrow and it sort of is that kind of process so talking to different creatives or anyone who is sort of an expert in managing yourself is something that i find really comforting or or you know like even i've read on this about andrew huberman minutes like a professor from stanford there's all these kind of neuro-linguistic things you can do to help yourself you know like cold showers and all this and win hoff breathing all this kind of stuff does that work maybe it's psychosomatic but yeah it feels like it does do you know i mean you feel like you've done your it's like going to the gym it just feels like medicine for you doesn't it you always feel like no one enjoys going to the gym uh you know i imagine i'm a sports negative but most people just like right do it and it feels like a nice little tick for your soul and it just feels like therapy is almost exactly that isn't it it's a workout for your brain or having a conversation like this is a really nice workout for your brain where we're both in kind of like strange dreamlike states where we're kind of having a deep conversation uh we're kind of riffing but somehow without planning any of this we're getting to a deeper place and yet it's very strange because there's people driving listening to us right now just so well that's the fascinating in the future as well in the future man and but you're in the now aren't you derek left there but it's sort of that fascinating thing that you let people travel to work with you it's the coolest yeah yeah it feels like a huge yeah especially because it comes up monday as well yeah which is a particularly like interesting day to be in the area at 6am yeah it's so funny what podcast you listen to what you're going to do if you just lock me up if you found out like i listen to like serial killer podcasts you're like theranos the tribe elizabeth holmes like crime and serial killers tends to be my like go-to yeah and you know what it's actually i probably know why now because i'm so fascinated the reason i do this podcast i'm so fascinated by people in their psychology and for me criminals and serial killers are the most extremely fascinating monster so i would love to have a podcast why did you do that yeah it's basically running out it's like different fascinations yeah it's just i get so fascinated by them i'm watching serial killer documentaries trying to understand the pattern in what made them like from their childhood and their dads at this and then kill them and punch them and then they just like kill them yeah so yeah what about you some more fantasy football stuff really no i kind of um yeah no no yeah it's because a friend of mine um uh yeah i listen to tim ferris yeah and andrew uh huberman um those are my go-tos i'm mark maron i really like yeah uh some really great interviews um yeah i love there's a brilliant interview with maron and seinfeld which is one of my favorites like i really got into jerry seinfeld during the uh during the lockdown which is kind of so late do you mean i just feel like hey radiohead are good um but um but yeah i kind of yeah that's my thing i like i like hearing people that i don't know and having my mind blown that's what i like about podcasts i'm not into serial killer i find it too do you know i mean it's too icky for me what do you call yourself murderinos don't you um what are you talking about these kind of practical hacks and quotes and stuff that allow you to get to a better place remind me of something that i read about you regarding your pre performance routine and superstitions yeah before you're going up on stage and there's you know 15 000 people out there and you're all got arms folded and demanding you to make them laugh what are you doing backstage to get yourself in a state you need to perform at your optimal so if it's arenas we get football we sort of kick around um really yeah yeah so we just sort of do keep you ups and you got to do 10 before you go on stage between so me kumar and pete um and then steve and we'll probably do 10 keep you ups before we go on stage can't really do that if you're doing a small club um there's a brilliant comedy club called top secret in london and um it's very very small and before that i'm literally in an alley just thinks of piss um looking at notes so so it's always looking at notes thinking what you're going to do sort of trying to be calm to listen to that inner voice that says hey you can also do this and that kind of weird kind of um funny that just appears from nowhere that's always the best way of starting a geek um and that's it really but there isn't really a psyching up process i like watch if i'm doing a picture i'll watch my friend who's supporting me um so you get sneak in the back of the theater or the arena and get a feel for them and um and then just go for it why keep you ups is that just a tradition or is it like no it's just sort of if you're this yeah there's maybe it's just that weird thing about right done 10 i can you know and then if you don't do 10 the first time it fools you got to 20 and if it fools 30 so do you know i mean so you have to do it and then it becomes this weird uh like little thing you just don't want that in the back of your head you can't do a big gig going shit man i only did 24 keep you ups so that's a superstition yeah like yeah and i just and i kind of like i spend a lot of time with my tour manager kumar the mighty kumar kamala garan um and um just chatting about stuff and just being kind of loose and sort of yeah just sort of getting in the zone of being silly and just talking about any old bollocks to try and sort of get things going or you know it's like my brother comes on tour with me that's always fun because it's kind of there'll just be a bit of a bit of nothing kind of happening and like yeah so i like sort of just hanging out and chatting talking bollocks and um sort of loosening yourself up really that's kind of what i did beforehand this is a very um i don't know this question came into my head but tends to be the kind of things i ask this podcast what was the lowest moment of your life what was the lowest moment of my life i think when my when my granddad died that was like i was it was yeah it was awful i was incredibly lucky because i i think i was 36 when granddad died and um he i'd never had anyone in my family um well my cousin shane had died when i was 18 and um but i'd never been to a funeral so it was shane and granddad so there's been this huge gap where nobody died and um you know this sort of beautiful family that i belong to they were all kind of there and my granddad was sort of like unbelievably special kind of man he was four foot nine and um just funny and warm and just like a quintessential granddad but like he got me into football so i used to watch football with granddad and watch match of the day he'd make me and daniel toast you know that thick white bread and he kind of like make us some granddad toast and he's just a brilliant brilliant soul that just was such a big part of my life and they used to come see us quite a lot whenever he was there i don't know he was just bathed in his love like him and my man just adored me and i adored them and it was they used to have a poster of me on their uh on their wall um and they used to and that used to keep all the all the reviews i'd get so she'd put them up like and it was just really some lovely reviews and some shitty ones too but but they used to watch me on tv and i come from a family where it's inconceivable that that i could be on tv from from the family that i come from it's it's you know it's like going to the moon but because now we watch on tv we watch it with the volume down you just swear so they would watch me when i was doing good news or i was on what the week with the volume down it's i wrestling on the box and just like that and but they were so through every part of my life i felt utter love from my nan and my granddad and they were around forever and and it's it's that thing where i don't know for whatever reason he's like this sage and my there's a beautiful photo of my cousin shane who who died when he was he was 18 and he's on a scrambler like and our granddad when you're about eight just look at that and just go there you go that is the bravest boy you've ever seen in your life and it was like it's a really interesting um story because he he had cancer and he died cancer he he went on this sort of scrambler he did this race and he was he completed it even though he was really not well at all and and our granddad told that was such pride and it was this beautiful story and that's what and granddad you knew granddad told similar stories obviously not as beautiful as that about all of us and and um yeah when he died it's just this sledgehammer to your heart where you just go jesus one of the one of the one of the good souls isn't here anymore and yet this is the the fascination of life i was in mexico and it happened and the mom just no um literally seconds later there was a there was a mexican man it was just like fuck me the universe is funny man it was like utter sadness and it was um yeah it was just this weird like moment where you're like going fucking really really um so yeah that was that was definitely an unbelievably low moment and yet weirdly okay at his funeral this beautiful moment where you were like i said at the beginning where you feel privileged to belong to the blood you belong to you know i've never done who do you think you are i know who i am i'm you know i know where i come from i know my people and i feel proud to belong to those people um and the funeral of my granddad was just this reminder of the excellence of my family and how proud how much we all love each other so from that deep sadness came this reflection of my granddad and you realize that everyone in this room were there because of his brilliance so it's this kind of weirdly bittersweet moment you know and my cousin my cousin steward wore a leather jacket and looked like fucking love joy and nobody understood and everyone's like why are you wearing a leather jacket oh we know we didn't have a suit and we were carrying granddad in the coffin and daniel's like nice jackets too and our fucking shoulders start going because it's like you know like oh mate and everyone's like they're gonna laugh and we're like fucking hold it together hold it and then um yeah six weeks later my man died and uh it was horrific six weeks later yeah six weeks later and then we went to the um went to the funeral again and steward rocked up that same leather jacket and you're like fuck me man and you can see everybody just looking down like i don't laugh why is he wearing a fucking leather he literally rocked up by Hasselhoff you're like put a suit on but it was weirdly funny you could everyone go fucking leather jacket i'm like jesus christ what's fucking wrong with the world um like it's all flapping and that um but i had to do the eulogy for my granddad as well and that is something i put deep deep deep deep deep deep time into to make it and you know and obviously you can't get it right you can't express what he meant to you but um yeah that was the it was a long answer to the lowest moments but yeah they say um people can pass away from heartbreak yeah is if your grandmother's nice six weeks following yeah i think yeah i think they would you know join to the hip yeah they just kind of yeah yeah maybe it was that it was just kind of yeah it's just also such constants and i've just wasn't i've never really been exposed to death and it was just this kind of like for it to arrive quite late in your life it's just a real like whoa yeah and then you look and then you suddenly lost your nan and your granddad who would kind of like we got like my nan in particular is just such a lovely she's got proper sort of blue gray owly eyes you know and she's always like tucking her sort of shirt down and she's coming to tell you little she goes they're just weird little shit so i remember doing my dissertation she was staying around her house and she's like what are you doing so i'm doing a a um i'm doing a dissertation now she's like what about it was about whether it's right or wrong to advertise to children and my nan went it's not well i gotta do 10 000 so you know it's not though is it come on come have your tea i can't just put it's not nancy veil i gotta do this but she was very strong we used to make flapjacks together as kids when i was a kid and she was obviously my nan but um we didn't like flapjacks and we used to make them as a thing and put them in the bin fucking weird yeah i know yeah and the reason we kept doing it is because it really annoys my mum because she's like what are you doing jesus christ what's wrong with you and then she would get the flapjacks out i've been i've got a weird family man but but um yeah those were the uh i wonder if she did die from heart i don't know i mean she you know they weren't particularly well towards their life as well they sort of had uh kind of you know certainly the beginnings of dementia so um yeah it was kind of you know it's a horrible thing where yeah it's just kind of yuck you know how about you what's the lowest moment of your life yeah um the lowest moment of my life good question is it shitty to ask you no it's not like if i can ask someone else it's okay fine i don't even it's a really interesting question um i think it would probably be i know what it is it was the one that i wasn't close to her right so it was just actually seeing my dad upset seeing your dad cry for the first time was very like oh yeah that isn't that if you have you got strong dad yeah yeah never seen him be emotional yeah that's the weirdest thing quiet passive just and then you know to see him cry is yeah that's very difficult to understand yeah and the other one is actually when my dad called me into his bedroom and told me he didn't love my mum oh wow and they were going to get a divorce and they didn't get a divorce they're still together now but at seven i think i was when he said that to me it was like earth like foundation shattering information i couldn't i don't always remember that i don't always recall that you know i can never forget that moment in my life what are you going to do with that at seven exactly especially when it doesn't even happen but um their relationship for me was so toxic i actually got to a point later where i'd come to terms with the illusion being burst that your parents actually might not stick together and i was actually willing them to get divorced because they were just screaming at each other too much so yeah i think that's probably that's the reason those two moments came to mind um if i told you that you could never write a joke again and you could never perform again yeah what would happen to you i don't know it's i think you go back to you i end up being what i was when i was younger just desperately trying to make people laugh and and just sort of i'd just be a a bit of a nuisance at tesco do you know what i mean when you kind of get your shop in you're like you know the sperm donor the other day oh you're six foot four like you know what i mean it's kind of you know so i think why why i don't like making people laugh i like the i like it makes me feel good and it it's um yeah it just makes me feel good i kind of like to say it feels like you're giving them a socially accepted orgasm every time they laugh so you're literally going around making people come why don't you make someone come in tesco but why don't we have a little help but why don't that's the new effort for christmas i'm sorry but why don't why do you have that need and i like i don't if you said to me i could never write a joke again i could never you know perform comedy again i would like my life would be unchanged but for you yours would be like an irritant what's the difference well it's the same as you like saying you know you can't you can't have your own business yeah you've got what you've got to work for somebody else so how does that feel for me it's a definite loss of purpose yeah it's like a huge loss of purpose um not so much working for someone else but not being able to like build yeah do what i do professionally it would be this huge sense of like loss of purpose i might move on to like doing shows or like just writing books all the time or something else but from a comedic perspective it's like what you're doing is like very reliant on feedback of sorts so i'm wondering where that's like coming from is that you know we kind of started earlier in the conversation it's just yeah it's been such a consistent coping mechanism in the toughest moments of your life definitely um that makes me ponder how you would cope without that coping mechanism dealing with the reality of life i think that's why i said laughter is the lubricant that makes life life is life is tough and laughter provides respite um for me and it and that's it's so deeply human everyone has irrespective of whether you have a an easy blessed life everyone's had moments of trials and tribulations and laughter is just this it's a it's a thing that soothes us i find it particularly soothing that you take the the sting out of pain by just making making it funny do you know i mean it's kind of it just works for me i just find laughing or making people laugh just because you're in the moment of laughter you're lost you are not of this realm you're kind of in this white noise space um and it's good it's it's a good place to be yeah yeah but exactly and then you come back to kind of reality and you're a little bit more reconfigured it lightens the load a bit you know and and i get a deep sense of satisfaction from making people laugh so and you're right it's tied up in them you know it's very needy that's absolutely true but then you know i'm 41 now i kind of know who you know i'm i'm finding you know i'm not i'm finding most comics are because i've been asked to write sort of my autobiography quite a few times and it's like i just don't feel like sitting and entertaining myself um whereas when you write stand-up you're writing it for an audience so you can perform or you're making notes and go hey i'll take that on stage and i'll kind of riff it out and figure it out with them whereas a book to me just feels like it would be i don't think i've got these skills to sit down and try and entertain myself and then eventually entertain people through the book i mean i did a thing last year where we went to australia and new zealand during the pandemic and because we're doing some gigs out there we stayed in a hotel for two weeks and we made a stand-up show that blended me meeting people alongside stand-up and it was one of the most satisfying things i've ever done we met these incredible women in new zealand i think the coffin club and what they do is i didn't know this turns out um dying is really expensive and coffins are really pricey and what these retired pensioners do they make cheap coffins and they kind of sell them for like you know 300 bucks really kind of low don't make any profit so these beautiful funeral elves and they make their own coffins as well um just as a bit of fun i met this lady and she made three coffins for herself and i was like i just keep putting away and it was so touching and peculiar and then we went to another room there were little baby coffins tiny tiny it's one of those things that you i hope nobody ever sees that and i was like how people often say oh comedy hardest job in the world imagine making a coffin for a baby it blew my mind and i looked at this twinkly-eyed lady i was like how do you do that how do you get yourself in a place to make something that's that and she kind of looked at me and just went i do it so no one else has to and it was so beautiful and for me i i love being able to tell that story through stand-up with her on the show and i don't know if i have the skills to tell that story um through words on page yeah do you know i mean i'm sort of aware of a an ability i have as a communicator to make a story like that deeply human i can tell that in front of anybody and it gets to their heart it's so pure and there's so many stories out there like that that they're trying to find those examples of magnificence um i find endlessly interesting but you don't find them if you sat down writing a book you gotta get out there and you kind of got to put yourself in peculiar situations i met a lady that goes yaoi hunting turns out this yaoi is a big eight foot sort of like abominable snowman in australia uh that he lives just outside of brisbane she's absolutely wonderful right you know mad as a box of frogs but beautiful and she's like yeah we can put some cigarettes out and some beer that should lure him in like so no she puts this big jacket on me she goes yeah and you might want to make the mating noise and i'm like what does that go and she's like sort of like and she's like you're doing really well and then i panic because i start going what if this is real and suddenly this eight foot bloke comes along and fucks me like that and i'm sort of dragged off and you're like and then i'm telling you this and we're laughing it's funny that that again those stories i love trying to find those stories so i feel like i don't have enough stories yet to sit down and tell them all and the great thing about stand-up you can rotate the stories you go hey do you want to hear this hey do you want to hear that you know or things can happen from nowhere my brother isn't like we were we were having a conversation with a friend of mine recently from nowhere my brother goes but what because this bloke was talking about his friend he goes he's a vet my brother goes yeah to be a vet you've got to shoot a counterface and i'm like what's he talking about he goes yeah it's the only way is it what's they do six years of school and then right at the end they give him a smith and western and they blast him in the face and he's like i want to go and let you fit fuck we give him a bolt gun shoot him with a rifle fucking moron like that so we're having this kind of conversation and i'm like what's he talking about it's true kez told me okay so it's like that now weirdly a month later i'm doing a gig in leicester there's a guy chatting away and he's he's a vet and i go listen i've got to ask did they make you shoot cats in the face and he goes yeah yeah we have to it's one of the things the fucker was right so i ring my brother up in the middle of this gig there's two thousand people there i ring him up and i'm like put him on speak on the phone i go you're right yeah what and i go i'm just in leicester okay yeah and i go um yeah you know that thing you said about cow vets yeah it turns out you were right and he went yeah i know and he goes listen i've got to go watch him vigil but that was the correct story for that night is my point that that sometimes and it was so hilarious in that moment it couldn't have been more perfect and then all the ushers the work there that was planned right yeah but it was but it only came about because me and my brother were with friends of mine in exeter he told a man's story i had an argument with him we all laughed because my brother was talking shit what's he on about a month later i meet you know a vet he agrees with my brother and um we have a moment of magic and it's and it's the funny thing that's all anyone remember from that show um and i i i don't have the skills to do that through sitting on my own i would be too excited to tell people the story so please yes he sat there before jimmy carr said one day his girlfriend sent him and was like are you happy and he and at first he resisted that question because it makes people feel a little bit uncomfortable but um yeah are you happy um yeah at this moment yeah i've really enjoyed this chat like deeply and um i feel pumped up and energized so yeah but it's back to what i'm saying i'm kind of i need the energy of others to make me happy you referred to when i asked that question you referred to this moment as if happiness was more of a mood in your view versus in like a long-lasting state and if we say if we were to say that it's a state a long-lasting baseline would you say you're happy um yeah i'd say i have more i have more moments of happiness than sadness and then but but i'm in a state of flux with that like you know i can be super low and super uh sort of depressed about well i know the jokes are shit this week in the show god i've got i've got you know i mean so i kind of i can let things get on top of me um but i have more moments of happiness and sadness i think have you ever experienced what they call like depression like clinical depression um i don't know i don't think so um i you know i have moments of like well you can't you know you sort of way you need to shift it but i'm very much at right on the treadmill lifts some weights um kind of uh do something kind of a guy i'm restless you know um but uh yeah i've never been you know diagnosed or anything like that but uh yeah how are you you happy it's a heavy question it's a really heavy question i remember the first time i uh yeah i know right yeah what an interesting fascinating bloke he is as well just probably remarkable remarkable guy am i happy i remember the first time i was asked it and it felt really uncomfortable and i felt defensive for that question yeah my pa who was also my girlfriend at the time um she asked me in the car one day she's like are you happy i was like how dare you of course i am um i believe so yeah i believe so um and one of the things that i has helped me a lot is i'm very obsessed with gratitude and like constantly reminding myself of like how unbelievably fortunate i am to be one of the free ones and what i mean by that is like financially free free to do what i choose to most days um of course i have days where it sucks and my mood's shitty and like i'm irritable and i'm a bit of an asshole to be around but um i feel i feel somewhat content um despite my relentless uh excruciating ambition yeah yeah that's a very good answer i'll take that one okay your manager said you're the hardest working comic he's he's ever met right yeah well i just like is that toxic people in our society at the moment there's a kind of stigma around people that work too hard that it's toxic productivity or yeah but it's it's sort of you know you work at something you love so it's kind of like you know it's it's sort of those moments of like you just lose yourself and it's like i imagine it's the same with when picasso was painting do you know i mean he was just probably like it's fun like you know i mean like you know imagine i'm not comparing myself to picasso i'm using him as an example just sort of imagine his manager going he's fucking relaxed like do you know i mean the system but it's just i don't know i just i love it and i don't um i don't mind working hard it's all and it's also it's not it's not working in the true sense like you just said how fortunate to be one of the free ones well like it's ridiculous i write the t i do my tv show and i write it with um five people and um we get to write jokes that is our job it's an unbelievably privileged job to be able to sit around and think of funny things for people and that can be stressful but there are people working in um in jobs that they don't like that would kill for that opportunity so you're right you need those moments to kind of snap yourself out of your funk and um and remember that you're getting paid to do a hobby ultimately you know in my case um and in mine like this but my point being it's sort of like there's no there's nothing wrong with having low moments and everyone does and it feels like the world is better now in terms of being to talk about them but you also i think if you come from a certain background you don't want to bitch and moan about yourself then kind of say you're having a tough time whatever but if you're lucky enough to have friends that you can talk to um or things like this or a therapist or whatever just make it makes the pursuit of happiness a lot easier i think because i think that is possible maybe that's what happiness is it's about talking for long enough to realize what you have whether that is a loving relationship whether it's a job you love whether it's a hobby you adore but there will always be sort of shimmering lights of hope in the misery but sometimes somebody has to help you find them i think do you know because i think it's very difficult to sit within yourself yeah i can see everything's fine sometimes you need a little bit help to kind of remind you how lucky you are your upcoming netflix special you called it lubricant i now know why yeah yeah but tell me what we can expect from the special and how it's conceived and what makes it you know i guess worth watching wow um it is the best stories and jokes that i've written in the last two years from traveling around the world i did a tour called respite and i kind of put together all the best bits about kind of conspiracy theories and uh covid and leadership and madness in the world and i sort of splodged it all together and the you never quite know what it is until you step away from it and i think it's actually a love letter to laughter that's what the show is and it's the flower is about the the importance of giggling and of being silly and how deeply human it is and and it should be treasured there's a bit in the in the special world i was talking about you know you hear somebody play a musical instrument and you're envious of the notes they're making it it strikes me that laughter is a musical instrument that any one of us can play and now is not the time to put down our fucking trumpets and that's what if that's the show really it's about the importance of laughter and the role it plays in which we do life um and it's lots of funny stories they're kind of all about that really you talked about how as a comedian you have to kind of have this like self-evolution what evolution in a comedian that you are in this special lubricant have you observed in yourself um i'm slower and i'm more thoughtful and i try and make it more interesting for people sat at home than in the room i think previously i've been a bit too kind of high octane and i'm trying to kind of make it pleasurable for people at home so they can sit and enjoy it because that's how it ultimately is consumed i have a fascination with anger and i have a fascination with with beauty i don't like so i find anger strange and i find beauty beguiling and that is the only getting deeper and deeper so for example that story about the ladies in the coffins that isn't in the show but it's it's somewhere deep in me and i think that will come out in another show so it's sort of the evolution is comedian for me is that i want the next special next forward i do to be deeply human and i want it to be this in in the best sense a place where you can fucking nod with me and laugh with me and feel like this connection with people next to you and i think that comes through the through exploring how fucking weird and silly we all are i think i think the world's taking itself very seriously at the moment and um there's so much humor in it i think there's so much humor in the on the edges in the shades of serious stuff do you know what i mean i kind of find it uh yeah that's kind of that's where it feels like my evolution is i'm trying to kind of try and talk about you know i quite like being able to talk about serious stuff for example you know you know talk about cancel culture or woke like the amount of times you hear the word woke in newspapers at the minute it's because it just sells it sells papers man and it's kind of like hey have you seen what they've done you can't say the word farts and boobies and arse in scrabble that's a story in the newspaper and it's like furious woke scrabble bosses no one's furious about scrabble no one's like just and even if they were doing that how they're gonna police it i was gonna you know break into your house you just put a click on a triple letter they're not gonna do that so i find that mechanism really interesting at the moment that you go okay clearly there's money to be made in kind of you won't fucking believe what i've done now but in that energy but also recognizing that it's just a trick it's fake outrage it's kind of it's the what next brigade and i find that really interesting i was like pissing the whole thing for a while until it was like they changed toilets to unisex yeah because it sort of like it just it works it's easy it's click and then you're there but it's kind of not it's just not nourishing and there's actually a way of of making the people that are that succumb to that and the people think it's bullshit you can bring them together through really piss funny stories um or true like that story about the coffin and the lady doesn't doesn't matter your political orientation doesn't matter your gender whatever that's a deeply funny human story and like you look at some like billy connelly like like some of his bits are so beautiful and funny or george carlin that they're they're majestic and you're kind of lost i think there's a real value to to humor and it's it's often overlooked because it is silly and it is kind of fart piss shit fuck you know what i mean it's kind of you know what i mean it's fingers and ears and but it's it's a release and it's kind of it's a deeply important thing laughter deeply deeply important and we didn't have it you know like i think it's only like dolphins and rats are the only animals that laugh i don't know how scientists found that out and i do actually they tickle the rat's bellies with a pencil this is presumably pre-covid do you know what i mean imagine that if it's just going actually i'm busy just trying to try and get this rat to giggle but um but yeah so that's lubricant that's the 14th yeah it was it was respite um that's it's the show respite and then right at the last minute i decided to call it lubricant uh but that becomes i mean we all know now listen to this why it's called that but it's kind of 40 minutes and you go oh right there might be some furious perverts where's there's absolutely nothing here about like about vaseline about k-y jelly this is it's bereft of any lubricational yeah it's a review it's not what you think it is it's absolutely disgusting i was fucking outright right And then you've got Until the Wheels Come Off as well, which is a documentary. So yeah, so Until the Wheels Come Off is a documentary about making a stand-up special throughout the COVID pandemic. So yeah, it was kind of, yeah, cameras followed us around and tried to, you know, like we did gigs in football stadiums and car parks.

Yeah, it was brilliant. We did Ashton Gate, which is the home of Bristol City and we had to get 2,000 people in a 10,000 seat to stand. They all had to be spread out and it was one of the weirdest gigs I've ever done, but it was one of the best. And that comes out on the same day?

So then the doc is on the same day as a special. So yeah. I'm excited for both actually to get the chance to watch the trailer. Oh, right, nice.

It was hilarious. I'm particularly excited to see someone with your smarts and both community genius and intellects take on recent times. Does that make sense? Yes, that's what I'm most excited about.

So really, really looking forward to that on December 14th. We had a long-standing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest, as I mentioned, writes a question for the next guest. So Patrice wrote, are you happy? Because that was the question I'm going to say who the person was that's written this for you, but I'm going to tell you what the question is.

What three things would you give to the world? You can only answer with single words to make it happier. Jesus. That's one.

What three things would I give to the world to make it happier? You can only answer with one, one, one word. I mean, this is a real reverse Aladdin moment, isn't it? A fixed climate.

That's two words, but you know, that's the first thing. Technology that stops mental health. So you zap them. And they're fine.

It's a sort of wand you wave at them. Okay, mental health wand. Yeah, so yeah. Fixed climate, mental health wand, and food.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like. Fixed climate, mental health wand, food. And starvation.

And starvation. And starvation. I give and I take. Now I'm going to ask you to be the same.

But before I do that, I just want to say a huge thank you for coming today because I've watched you on screen for many, many, many years. I find you hysterical. But also, I love this opportunity to get to know a side of you that I wouldn't have ordinarily seen on screen because of the way that you have the format of TV. And definitely, you're just, again, you're super smart, super introspective, you're a genius, clearly.

And you're doing a service to the world which is clearly so unbelievably selfless and cheering people up at a time when they really need it that I feel like The thing I think about most, especially when I'm on the go but also when I'm sat here in the bar of a studio is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, any time I'm filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do is when I arrive, I open up and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is. And the number of screenshots I've sent to my team about Wi-Fi signals at different locations is actually pretty crazy because it's such a competitive advantage to have fast Wi-Fi because on any given day if I'm recording, let's take hours and hours of footage with a podcast guest, I then often have to have my team send that across to our London team who then do the edit. So fast Wi-Fi and internet is not a nice to have, it is absolutely business mission critical.

So when it came to finding the best provider who can supply internet and Wi-Fi to our new LA studio which I'm sitting right now, we looked at every single option. And of all the providers, the one that came back with this day's connection as well as being the cheapest was today's sponsor, Spectrum Business. Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected with fast, reliable internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV and mobile services. Millions of business owners already rely on Spectrum to keep their operations connected.

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