Speaker 1: This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
Speaker 1: and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually
Speaker 1: it's about an hour and a half and I don't
Speaker 1: have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Speaker 1: Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now, and
Speaker 1: we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
Speaker 1: go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
Speaker 1: on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
Speaker 1: The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to
Speaker 1: interesting people about what brings them happiness. Now, I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. You're looking behind me here. You're thinking, Craig,
Speaker 1: are you in an enchanted magical for is that in
Speaker 1: the wintertime? Are you doing a show from Narnia? Are
Speaker 1: you going to be talking to mister Tumnus, the man
Speaker 1: that has horse legs for trousers or something. No, I'm
Speaker 1: not actually in Narnia, but very close to Narnia. I'm
Speaker 1: in a place called New Jersey. And in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: I know if you can hear in the background, you
Speaker 1: might be able to hear in the background and buy
Speaker 1: something called a freeway. In New Jersey. They have a
Speaker 1: couple of freeways in New Jersey. And the reason why
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you from there today is this last
Speaker 1: week on the Joy podcast, we did an episode of
Speaker 1: Tweets and Emails where I answered tweets and emails, and
Speaker 1: like I used to do in the old late night show.
Speaker 1: You know, you guys send in some tweets and emails
Speaker 1: and I answer them and rab it on and bleather
Speaker 1: about whatever nonsense comes into my head, as you know,
Speaker 1: stimulated from the conversation or from the email, not really
Speaker 1: a conversation because it's just me talking. But what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is this. It was an overwhelmingly positive response, apparently
Speaker 1: everybody was very happy about it, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's quite hard to put together a podcast
Speaker 1: from the road, and I'm on the road doing some
Speaker 1: shows right now. Hence I'm in New Jersey, which is
Speaker 1: a much maligned state. By the way, it's actually very nice,
Speaker 1: much nicer than you we think. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: that should really be what the state model should be.
Speaker 1: New Jersey. It's much nicer than you would think. I
Speaker 1: think that would be a more accurate description of the
Speaker 1: of the area, because you think it's going to be
Speaker 1: just all the freeway and newdi bars and car dealerships,
Speaker 1: and it certainly has that. But doesn't every state doesn't
Speaker 1: every state of that, well, some some states have that.
Speaker 1: New Jersey has that. Anyway, Look what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: it's much nicer than you we'd think New Jersey. It's
Speaker 1: much nicer than you would think. So I'm in a
Speaker 1: hotel in New Jersey, and I'm traveling from one show
Speaker 1: at the show last night, and I'm going to do
Speaker 1: another show tonight in Pennsylvania, so I stopped at this hotel.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is we're going to do a second
Speaker 1: episode of Tweets and Emails on the Joy podcast, where
Speaker 1: we have received further tweets and emails and questions from everybody,
Speaker 1: and what we're going to do is answer those as
Speaker 1: accurately or as irresponsibly as possible, and then we will
Speaker 1: resume normal Joy podcasting next week, when I'll be talking
Speaker 1: to someone about something as opposed to me talking to
Speaker 1: you about your thing. But I have the tweets and emails,
Speaker 1: and I will begin. This is an email from Pana Slaughter.
Speaker 1: Pana Slaughter. Now, it's a lovely name, panaslatter. It sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit like panacotta, which is a delicious thing
Speaker 1: to eat, panacotta. I think it's clearly Italian. I wonder
Speaker 1: if Panaslota is Italian or maybe more kind of around
Speaker 1: that area, maybe eastern east of Italy, in the Adriatic somewhere,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, but Panislota, who is
Speaker 1: not panacotta? And asks who would you never invite on
Speaker 1: the show. Well, you know, I don't really have rules
Speaker 1: about that. I'll kind of talk to anybody as long
Speaker 1: as they'll talk to me. I'm kind of interested. The
Speaker 1: only people I do avoid and I avoided when I
Speaker 1: was doing the late night show, there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of people I avoided, and New Jersey springs to mind, actually,
Speaker 1: because I would never I loved the TV show The Sopranos,
Speaker 1: and when I was doing Late Night, the Sopranos was
Speaker 1: on TV, and I would never invite any of the
Speaker 1: cast members from The Sopranos. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: would agree to come on anyway, I didn't invite them,
Speaker 1: but I would never invite them on because I was
Speaker 1: what the show, and I loved the show, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to meet the actors and have the actors
Speaker 1: be the actor and kind of destroy the fourth wall
Speaker 1: thing that I enjoy in TV. Which is an interesting
Speaker 1: thing then because actually a few years ago I was
Speaker 1: having a conversation with Kevin Bacon, now Kevin Bacon, as
Speaker 1: you know, it's very interested man, very very busy actor,
Speaker 1: and he was telling me that he had done a
Speaker 1: he had done a TV show. I wouldn't say which
Speaker 1: one because because he's done so many, but he was
Speaker 1: doing a TV show and the production company had asked
Speaker 1: him to tweet as the show was going out about
Speaker 1: his experience that as doing the show, like you know, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this day was raining and I farted or something,
Speaker 1: and he said, I really he really didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it for the same reason as I wouldn't invite
Speaker 1: the sopranos on the show, because his job, as Kevin
Speaker 1: Bacon is to convince you he's not Kevin Bacon's that's
Speaker 1: kind of the job. That's what he was saying. Is like,
Speaker 1: I have to do all this work to convince you
Speaker 1: I'm not Kevin Bacon. I'm actually somebody else. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: Joe the astronaut or Bob the guy who works in
Speaker 1: Starbucks or something, and and he's you know, and it's
Speaker 1: clearly it's Kevin Bacon, because you can see it's Kevin Bacon.
Speaker 1: But the art and cleverness of what he does is
Speaker 1: convince you he's not Kevin Bacon. And if he's tweeting
Speaker 1: out on his account, you know that he is Kevin Bacon,
Speaker 1: and he was Kevin Bacon when he was doing it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of working against himself and I see that anyway.
Speaker 1: That's why I wouldn't invite anyone from the sopranos on
Speaker 1: the show. And the other people I wouldn't invite on
Speaker 1: the show. There's only one other person. And I've talked
Speaker 1: about this at the time, that I would never invite
Speaker 1: David Boie on the show. No, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: he would ever agreed to have been on the show,
Speaker 1: but I would never have invited him on the show
Speaker 1: because I was concerned because of the never meet your
Speaker 1: heroes thing. I always liked the the mystique and the
Speaker 1: kind of the kind of slightly from another planet version
Speaker 1: of David Billy. He sort of was from somewhere else
Speaker 1: with designs a different color, and I thought, I, if
Speaker 1: he becomes normal to me, I'll lose something, because people
Speaker 1: do become normal sort of when you meet them. Like
Speaker 1: over the years I was doing Late Night and doing
Speaker 1: this show and doing other shows, you meet people who
Speaker 1: are very famous or very accomplished in what they do,
Speaker 1: and of course they're human beings, and when they become
Speaker 1: human beings, they cease to be demigods to you. And
Speaker 1: whilst I'm fine with that most of the time, boy
Speaker 1: was a demigod that I kind of didn't want to
Speaker 1: give up. Is that weird? I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just a fanboy. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: some people who came on the show, you know, we're
Speaker 1: only I was only kind of a little bit aware of.
Speaker 1: But as they came on the show, I became much
Speaker 1: more of a fan of them. So I guess it,
Speaker 1: and some people are disappointed. I think it would be
Speaker 1: kind of mean to say that, you know, so I
Speaker 1: won't say that, But who would never invite on the
Speaker 1: show is the cast of the Sopranos, which is not
Speaker 1: TV anymore, or David Boy who is not available anymore
Speaker 1: to do talk shows anyway, So pretty much everybody else
Speaker 1: is good, all right. I hope that helped missus or
Speaker 1: MS or Sir Pana Slaughter. I don't know the correct
Speaker 1: pronoun for that name, actually Pana. I don't know if Pana,
Speaker 1: I don't know what is connected. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to talk about this, all right. So this next one
Speaker 1: is from Eliza Beson Eliza Vison or Vison or Eliza Veson,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But Eliza said, what made you want
Speaker 1: to become a comedian? Well, I don't know that I
Speaker 1: ever did want to become a comedian. I think I
Speaker 1: don't even know if it's entirely an accurate I mean,
Speaker 1: I do it. I do stand up comedy, and I
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing it, and it is it is a very
Speaker 1: big part of my life, and I love it. I
Speaker 1: love doing it. It seems to go okay more. And
Speaker 1: it went well in Jersey last night, and the night
Speaker 1: before in Boston it went well. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of blowing over Trump to hear a bit and
Speaker 1: that's going a humble brag. But what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: I do it, but I don't define myself by it,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. It was kind of the
Speaker 1: same as being a late night host. I mean, for
Speaker 1: me late night. There are people, young people I'm aware
Speaker 1: of now, you see, who like they look for a
Speaker 1: career in comedy or they would like to be a
Speaker 1: late night host. And whilst I understand it, I mean
Speaker 1: it's been very good to me and it's it's a
Speaker 1: lovely job. I never really say how to do that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be what everyone else wanted to be
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, which was there was really
Speaker 1: three three things I wanted to be when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I either wanted to be an astronaut, which
Speaker 1: in Scottland was limited. There wasn't a huge space program
Speaker 1: in Scotland in the nineteen sixties when I was born,
Speaker 1: or indeed now I don't even think they have a
Speaker 1: particularly big space program. I'm sure there must be a
Speaker 1: Scottish asterer not somewhere, but anyway, I wasn't cut out
Speaker 1: for astro noting. And I either wanted to be a
Speaker 1: sports star. You'll be really good at sports, particularly football,
Speaker 1: or as we call it in America, soccer, but football
Speaker 1: in Scotland. I wanted to be a star football player,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't any good at football, so that gets
Speaker 1: in the way. It's I mean, you really can't hide
Speaker 1: in sport. It's one of those things like like in
Speaker 1: show business, you can be shit and it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: you know, if you get a good agent and you're
Speaker 1: in a good thing and people like you the right
Speaker 1: way and stuff, you can and even in a band
Speaker 1: you can kind of hide as long as somebody else
Speaker 1: kind of covers for you. But in sports it's on you.
Speaker 1: You better be good or you fuck. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: wasn't good. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't remotely good.
Speaker 1: Wasn't I wasn't good enough to be even sort of
Speaker 1: considered as a someone who could hang around. And the
Speaker 1: other thing I wanted to be, of course, was a musician.
Speaker 1: And I think in a very strange way, that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I am. I mean, I still play I
Speaker 1: you know, I play the drums and I play the guitar,
Speaker 1: and I don't play them publicly because that, I think
Speaker 1: would be a way to to look foolish in a way,
Speaker 1: which probably I'm not quite ready for. And then the
Speaker 1: I've sung in my life, I've you know, I've done
Speaker 1: shows where I've sung songs, and I'm not a great singer,
Speaker 1: but you know, you kind of don't really have to
Speaker 1: be a great singer to sing. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of particularly now with autotune. Good Lord, I mean,
Speaker 1: he just kind of little. And then they put it
Speaker 1: through a program and you sound like, you know, Maria
Speaker 1: Kaos or something. I don't know who's a really good
Speaker 1: singer anyway. I don't know enough about opera or even
Speaker 1: when she did, I don't know. I think so, I
Speaker 1: think I've wandered off track here. What I'm saying is
Speaker 1: I don't consider myself really a comedian as such. I
Speaker 1: think of myself more as a kind of I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I'm right, that's what I do. I express myself right now.
Speaker 1: I express myself orally in a kind of socratic sense,
Speaker 1: I suppose in doing stand up comedy. But I don't
Speaker 1: really tell jokes in that same way. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not and I'm not even I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm one of those kind of Hey, have
Speaker 1: you ever noticed how some things are like other things
Speaker 1: or what's the deal with those things? I'm not really
Speaker 1: like that. My stand up tends to be more anecdotal.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's a lot of it, Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: It's lies in fabrication of or artistic license. Certainly the
Speaker 1: current tour is called pants on Fire, just that flat
Speaker 1: out admitting that a lot of this is made up,
Speaker 1: but it's based on truth. I always think that when
Speaker 1: you see when you see a movie and it starts
Speaker 1: with this is based on a true story, and you go, well,
Speaker 1: isn't everything based on a true story? The fuck you kidding?
Speaker 1: Based on a true story? Sure, and it's based on
Speaker 1: a true story, but then you add you know, aliens
Speaker 1: and stuff, and you know, or wherever you're at anyway,
Speaker 1: the up show is. I don't think I did want
Speaker 1: to be a comedian. I it wasn't something I aspired to.
Speaker 1: Some people are do and I admire it. I guess
Speaker 1: it's a skill set which there are some great, but
Speaker 1: like Billy Connolly, I think who the great Scottish comedian
Speaker 1: who was? Billy's about twenty years older on me. So
Speaker 1: when Billy was just coming through and breaking through, he
Speaker 1: was in his early thirties and I was in my
Speaker 1: early teens, and he was very profane and comedy. Was
Speaker 1: done an album with Vinyl albums back then, and we
Speaker 1: would get his Nyl album and our parents would not
Speaker 1: allow us to listen to it because he sent swear
Speaker 1: words and he was dirty and stuff. But it was great.
Speaker 1: He was so good. But Billy is also a musician,
Speaker 1: so he would play a little. He actually came through
Speaker 1: playing in a band called the Humble Bumbs with Jerry Rafferty.
Speaker 1: He was a folk musician. He's a good banjo player, Billy,
Speaker 1: and he's a good singer, and so he kind of
Speaker 1: drifted into comedy from doing playing folk clubs. And so
Speaker 1: I was very heavily influenced by Billy because he was
Speaker 1: from the same socioeconomic background as me. He was the
Speaker 1: first person I ever saw who was famous who sounded
Speaker 1: like we did, like you know, my family or my
Speaker 1: friends and stuff. So he was very and he was
Speaker 1: and he was and is a great comedian. I mean
Speaker 1: for me, he's like he's like Jackie Robinson almost, if
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. For me, it was like
Speaker 1: he had that kind of gives the first guy into
Speaker 1: the big leagues, and I think that that if anything
Speaker 1: made me want to be a comedian, it was maybe
Speaker 1: to emulate Billy. But Billy is a rack on tour.
Speaker 1: He's a musician, he's a writer, he's an artist, and
Speaker 1: so whatever past he carved, I think I kind of
Speaker 1: rather pathetically follow in his way, like a little kind
Speaker 1: of tribute band. Not the Zen wrong being a tribute band,
Speaker 1: but that's right. Hello, This is Greig Ferguson, and I
Speaker 1: want to let you know I have a brand new
Speaker 1: stand up comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called
Speaker 1: I'm So Happy, and I would be so happy if
Speaker 1: you checked it out. To watch the special, just go
Speaker 1: to my YouTube channel at the Craig Verguson Show and
Speaker 1: is this right there? Just click it and play it
Speaker 1: and it's free. I can't look. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: come around your house and show you how to do it.
Speaker 1: If you can't do it, then you can't have it.
Speaker 1: But if you can out, it's yours, all right. This
Speaker 1: is from Killy dyl Meister, which almost sounds like like
Speaker 1: you might be related to Lenny kil Meister from Motorhead,
Speaker 1: but probably not because it's a different name. What music
Speaker 1: are you currently listening to at the moment, I have
Speaker 1: for some reason, I'm listening to a lot of Schubert.
Speaker 1: I know, it's the it's the weirdest thing. I listened
Speaker 1: to a very eclectic taste of music, as most people do,
Speaker 1: and I listened to a lot of different things. I like,
Speaker 1: you know, death metal and Bossanova and everything in between.
Speaker 1: But I reread a book recently that I had read
Speaker 1: a long time ago, a book called The Master and
Speaker 1: Margarita by Michael Bulgakov. It's a great book if you've
Speaker 1: if you've never read it, give it a go. It's
Speaker 1: a fabulous book. And in The Master arga Rita there's
Speaker 1: a reference at one point when I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do any spoilers for you, but the protagonists imagine a
Speaker 1: place where everything is all right and they can walk
Speaker 1: in the park and listen to Schubert. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything Schubert, so I listened to some Schubert.
Speaker 1: And I gotta be honest. I know this is probably
Speaker 1: not news to some of you, but pretty fucking good,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty fucking good. I'm not a huge fan of it.
Speaker 1: Seems terrible thing to say. I'm not a huge fan
Speaker 1: of classical music. But I'm kind of kind of no, really,
Speaker 1: you know, that seems to be a lot of dumb
Speaker 1: dumb dumb bum bumbody dumb. I'm like, oh, settled down,
Speaker 1: But he doesn't have a lot of that. He's a
Speaker 1: It's a very melodic and sweeping and kind of ethereal
Speaker 1: and gorgeous. So the big news from today's show, I
Speaker 1: think that is going to rock. It's just going to
Speaker 1: shake the foundations of the music again. This stee is
Speaker 1: that I think Schubert is pretty good. All right. This
Speaker 1: is from its Becked. It backed umm it Becked says,
Speaker 1: it's a lovely name. It Becked just one name like
Speaker 1: Sting or Madonna or Flash. I don't know who flashes
Speaker 1: Flash Gordon, but that that wouldn't be one day, that
Speaker 1: would be two names. It would be Flash, just Flash.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll call myself Flash Flash. Hey it's Flash. Hi everyone,
Speaker 1: it's me Flash. Anyway. This is from It's Becked. Who
Speaker 1: is it's just got one name like Flash? He said?
Speaker 1: Of the many venues you've performed in which one sticks
Speaker 1: out to you the most? And why? Well? I have
Speaker 1: performed in a great deal of venues, some of them
Speaker 1: quite un new usual. I remember I did stand up
Speaker 1: once on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: It was weird. It was one of those corporate gigs
Speaker 1: which everybody in show business does. Like everybody if you think,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, but my favorite rock band would never do
Speaker 1: a corporate gig, They've fucking done it. Everybody does it.
Speaker 1: So I was doing a corporate gig on the floor
Speaker 1: of the New York Stock Exchange. You know. All they
Speaker 1: did was they just after the day's trading was over,
Speaker 1: a bunch of stockbrokers got together, and you know, they
Speaker 1: hired me to come up and tell them stories and
Speaker 1: jokes and stuff. And I did it and it was okay.
Speaker 1: I felt a little weird doing it, and I think
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of a strange experience, but
Speaker 1: it worked out all right, and that was quite memorable.
Speaker 1: One of the memorable things about that was there was
Speaker 1: no dressing There's no dressing rooms in the New York
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange, so there wasn't a place for me to
Speaker 1: go and prepare myself for the day, you know, to
Speaker 1: put on my outfit and make up and stuff. As
Speaker 1: usually there's a dressing room or something where you can
Speaker 1: go and like, you know, hang out until it's time
Speaker 1: to go on on stage or on the floor of
Speaker 1: the New York Stock Exchange. And they didn't have anywhere
Speaker 1: for me to sit, so they said, oh, we'll just
Speaker 1: go into the chairman's office. You can just go to
Speaker 1: the chairman's office of the New York Stock Age because
Speaker 1: he's not there. Now I don't know who that is,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's somewhat super powerful, probably like I
Speaker 1: don't know, Satan or something, Satan's office at the New
Speaker 1: York I don't know if say, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: but somebody, you know, somebody very powerful who runs the
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange. And they had this very fancy
Speaker 1: office and obviously it was in the evening, so this
Speaker 1: individual wasn't there. And I went into the office and
Speaker 1: on the wall was hanging at Jackson Pollock painting. Now
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know anything about Jackson Pollock,
Speaker 1: but Jackson Pollock was that he's the scatter man or
Speaker 1: modern art. And the paintings are the title paintings. They're abstracts,
Speaker 1: and they're they're kind of their evocative and emotional pieces
Speaker 1: of art, but they're not figurative. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: have there's not a picture of a cat or you know,
Speaker 1: a little boy fishing or Sinorita turning to you or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So you know, so it's not it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing. My wife is more involved than
Speaker 1: she knows all about that. But I don't really I
Speaker 1: like paintns of things, you know, like, oh, look a
Speaker 1: look at that painting. It's a painting of a cat,
Speaker 1: isn't it really good? But but she understands Rothko and
Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock and you know, Cy Twombly and all those
Speaker 1: very clever people. And but it was the first time
Speaker 1: I'd been in the presence of an actual Jackson Pollock painting,
Speaker 1: and the first thing that, you know, I'd seen reproductions
Speaker 1: of his paintings in photographs, as I'm sure all of
Speaker 1: you have. And we could probably put some up in
Speaker 1: the web site or something into it. We have a website,
Speaker 1: we probably do. We have a website, right, so you
Speaker 1: can put Jackson Pollock up and you go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. But what was interesting was
Speaker 1: that being in the presence of the actual painting was
Speaker 1: a very different experience. It hit me like a freight train.
Speaker 1: It was amazing because I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is and I can't put into words what it did.
Speaker 1: And I know this sounds fanciful and a bit kind
Speaker 1: of you know, really Craig, but it was a very
Speaker 1: emotional response and I couldn't describe it in words. And look,
Speaker 1: I have no fucking slouch when it comes to describing things.
Speaker 1: I work with words. I'm fairly decent, you know, describing
Speaker 1: how I feel or how I see things or right,
Speaker 1: I like to think I'm fairly air dye. But I
Speaker 1: couldn't express the emotion that this painting seemed to construct
Speaker 1: or elicit from me. And I was I'm still kind
Speaker 1: of impressed by that. I'm kind of amazed by that,
Speaker 1: and it made me kind of drew me into it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't all happiness, and it wasn't all sadness. It
Speaker 1: was it was a very weird kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: only thing I can kind of equake to is a
Speaker 1: sort of fairly low impact drug, you know, like maybe
Speaker 1: shit cannabis, but it kind of it kind of or
Speaker 1: maybe like week like a weak diazepam or something. It
Speaker 1: made me feel kind of good and a little bit
Speaker 1: different and but it was it was a visual experience.
Speaker 1: That's why I thought was so amazing about it. And
Speaker 1: so I mean I became kind of a a little
Speaker 1: more converted to the to the world of abstract expressionism
Speaker 1: from doing that gig. So in answer to the many
Speaker 1: of which venue sticks out to you the most, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that sticks out the most, but what
Speaker 1: it does do is it certainly changed me. There are
Speaker 1: venues that I've played, you know, in doing stand up.
Speaker 1: I think I'm the only person I know that's played
Speaker 1: the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Carnegie Hall in
Speaker 1: New York City I've known, and they're very different venues
Speaker 1: or as we say in New York at Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 1: but as they say in Dunfermline called Nagie Hall. I
Speaker 1: think probably there's some more Carnegie Halls. I think that
Speaker 1: was one in Pittsburgh has got to be one in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: They are very different venues, the Carnegie halland on Fermline
Speaker 1: and the Carnegie Hall or Carnegie Hall in New York.
Speaker 1: In when I played the Carnegie Hall and done Fermline, Scotland,
Speaker 1: it was before I stopped drinking. It was in the
Speaker 1: early days of stand up, when I was still performing
Speaker 1: as a character that I called bing Hitler. It was
Speaker 1: the whole story. And when I was doing a character thing,
Speaker 1: and I was playing a kind of a kind of buffoon,
Speaker 1: a kind of idiot who was sort of from Dunfermline, Scotland.
Speaker 1: Now that's a bit of a problem because I'm not
Speaker 1: from Dunfermlin in Scotland and from a town called Cumbernauld,
Speaker 1: which is just outside Glasgow in Scotland, kind of the
Speaker 1: New Jersey of Let's Go and so I so I
Speaker 1: was a kind of natural enemy to the audience there anyway,
Speaker 1: And it was a lot of punk rockers and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And it was the upshot of it was
Speaker 1: that I was drinking. I went on stage. I did
Speaker 1: not go down well with the audience, and I was
Speaker 1: still playing a guitar at the time, and they they
Speaker 1: started throwing things at me, and then they rushed the
Speaker 1: stage and they stole my guitar and things were getting
Speaker 1: a little hairy, and I had to get a cab
Speaker 1: out of there to get back to Edinburgh, to get
Speaker 1: away from the audience who were at that point had
Speaker 1: the kind of morph from being an audience said the
Speaker 1: more of a kind of angry bob. And they chased
Speaker 1: me out of the venue and I jumped into a
Speaker 1: taxi and I was driving away in the taxi and
Speaker 1: somebody through a rock and it it broke the back
Speaker 1: window of the taxi. I had to pay the taxi driver,
Speaker 1: but he was like, you'll have to pay for that.
Speaker 1: I went, fine, just keep going. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: like and he drove me back to Edinburgh. It was
Speaker 1: very cold because the window and it was glass, but
Speaker 1: I had to pay for his weird window to get fixed.
Speaker 1: This is a long time ago and that was my
Speaker 1: experience playing the Carnegie Hall in done Fermline. Now years
Speaker 1: and years later, I played Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Speaker 1: I actually did it twice in the same day. I
Speaker 1: had booked a show and it sold out and they said,
Speaker 1: we do another show, and I mean sure, I said,
Speaker 1: but we only have a matinee available at half past
Speaker 1: two in the afternoon. All right, we'll give it a go.
Speaker 1: So I played Carnegie Hall in New York twice in
Speaker 1: the same day half past two in the afternoon. And
Speaker 1: I've got to be honest, it was a little sedate
Speaker 1: it was a bit of a sedate. It was more
Speaker 1: like a Schubert concept, to be honest with you. But
Speaker 1: the evening show was very much the same thing, and
Speaker 1: nobody beat me up or chased me out of the venue.
Speaker 1: At Carnegie Hall in New York, nobody stole my guitar.
Speaker 1: I wasn't playing a guitar at that point, and the
Speaker 1: audience seemed much happier and with the show than the
Speaker 1: audience and Nfermline the New York audience. I will say
Speaker 1: this though. The difference is that by the time I
Speaker 1: played Carnegie Hall in New York, I had stopped drinking.
Speaker 1: I had stopped drinking for about probably about fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty years at that point, so I imagine the performance was
Speaker 1: of a different type. I think that's the case, and
Speaker 1: I rather loved it. I will give you a little
Speaker 1: piece of information about Carnegie Hall as well, just to
Speaker 1: say if you're ever playing it, be very careful. There
Speaker 1: is a very steep rake on the stage. A rake
Speaker 1: is a kind of gradient on the stage which slants
Speaker 1: towards the front of the stage so that the audience,
Speaker 1: when they're looking from the auditorium, get a better view.
Speaker 1: I think it's really for plays and for orchestras and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. It gives people a better view, or
Speaker 1: maybe projects sound better or something. And the Carnegie Hall
Speaker 1: in New York is a very steep rake and it's
Speaker 1: made of wood the floor. So all I'm saying is,
Speaker 1: don't wear your socks when you're playing Carnegie Hall in
Speaker 1: New York. Wear a pair of grippy shoes, or you
Speaker 1: could come a cropper. I learned that hardly. This is
Speaker 1: from Tyler brou who says, Hi, my name is Tyler.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have a question about fatherhood. All right,
Speaker 1: Later this week my second child will be born and
Speaker 1: I'll become a father of two. Yep, what tips do
Speaker 1: you have for someone bringing new life into the world. Well, Tyler,
Speaker 1: as the father, I have to say, it's pretty obvious
Speaker 1: you are not the one bringing your life into the world.
Speaker 1: You're the one witnessing your life being brought in in
Speaker 1: the world, I suppose. I mean it's semantics. Really, I
Speaker 1: was there at the birth of both my children, and
Speaker 1: I have to say it's quite a show, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's been alive human birth? I mean, look for
Speaker 1: the mothers involved. You know, you know, I can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just craziness, but then pain and all that.
Speaker 1: But as a as a witness to your child being born,
Speaker 1: my goodness, it's a weird It's again again, It's something
Speaker 1: that's very difficult to describe. You know, maybe I'm learning
Speaker 1: on this edition of the podcast. I'm nowhere nearest there
Speaker 1: you day. As I say, guy, I can't really describe
Speaker 1: the emotion of what it's like to because you know,
Speaker 1: when someone is being what a human is being born
Speaker 1: in a room and like there's a kind of weird
Speaker 1: like anticipation and then someone news there like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: so wild. There's a lot of you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of gory business. I'm not good with any of that.
Speaker 1: I would have been a terrible doctor. That and the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, I'm not clever enough to be
Speaker 1: a doctor. But also I think that you know, to
Speaker 1: be to feel squeamish is not something you want. And
Speaker 1: a doctor. You don't want a doctor going oh like that,
Speaker 1: that's not you want a doctor. Do you have very
Speaker 1: tips about bringing new life? Tips about father? You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny, I you know, I spent because I'm playing
Speaker 1: in Jersey, my oldest kid, who's now nearly twenty four.
Speaker 1: He's not kid anymore. We were hanging out after the
Speaker 1: show last night. He lives nearby and and it's an
Speaker 1: amazing thing. I actually remember it from the movie Lost
Speaker 1: in Translation, when Bill Murray's character is talking to Scolet
Speaker 1: Johnson's character about his children and said, you know, as
Speaker 1: their babies, and when their little children, they're so adorable,
Speaker 1: and their little children they're funny and cuting all those things.
Speaker 1: And then when they grow up, and this is at
Speaker 1: the point of father Rudeima, you know that my youngest
Speaker 1: boy is fourteen. So he's not a baby. He's not
Speaker 1: you know, Philly cooked, but he's not a baby. But
Speaker 1: I mean, it is anyone Philly cooked to. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sixty two. I don't know if I'm fully cooked,
Speaker 1: but they I've been baked a couple of times somehow. Right.
Speaker 1: The business of what Bill Murray's character says in that
Speaker 1: movie is that they become just these very interesting human beings,
Speaker 1: maybe the most interesting people you know, And they do.
Speaker 1: My kids are the most interesting people I know. And
Speaker 1: if you know me, you know, I know it's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting people. But nobody is interesting as my kids. All right,
Speaker 1: this is from Elsa g Hernandez Gonzalez. I'm guessing maybe
Speaker 1: you know. I think I can guess your kind of
Speaker 1: ethnic background. I think Elsa g Hernandez Gonzalez. I may
Speaker 1: be wrong, of course you may. That may be a
Speaker 1: married name, and you've married into the Hernandez Gonzalez is whoever.
Speaker 1: It is great. You've spoken about your favorite bands and
Speaker 1: artists and your talks, and I've wondered, would you make
Speaker 1: a playlist of your favorites to share, like a playlist
Speaker 1: on Spotify or anything like that. That's a very long
Speaker 1: It's always interesting to see what others enjoy, especially if
Speaker 1: it's someone with good music taste. Yeah, I would do that.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like making a mixtape for someone you
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that making playlists is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting from artists that you like. So I guess that's
Speaker 1: what Eliza's saying. Yeah, yeah, I do that. I think
Speaker 1: there would be some Suber on it, obviously. Then i'd
Speaker 1: balance it with some Motorhead, maybe the Ramones. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing about the Ramones. I want to tell you. It
Speaker 1: was something I was talking to a British person about
Speaker 1: this fairly recently, and they were talking about it was
Speaker 1: an English person, someone from North London, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a niche market, and they were telling me, as
Speaker 1: I'm sure many Americans have heard before when talking to
Speaker 1: English people, that the phrase that begins you see the
Speaker 1: thing about Americans. You see the thing about Americans is
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, we Americans would be talking about here.
Speaker 1: I've never understood that. Well, you see the thing about
Speaker 1: Americans and then they start talking to you about, you know,
Speaker 1: some guy they've seen on a British documentary who was
Speaker 1: you know, survived on his boat in a you know,
Speaker 1: Hurrican in Florida and he was wearing a hat that
Speaker 1: said who Hearted. And they say that's America and that's
Speaker 1: part of America, and God bless them. That's great. I
Speaker 1: think that's awesome. But the the idea that America is
Speaker 1: one thing, well, talk to Eliza g Ornandez Gonzales or
Speaker 1: Craig Ferguson. I mean, America is very as we know,
Speaker 1: how do you even define that? But what this person
Speaker 1: says to the thing about America two things. One was
Speaker 1: that Americans are such loonings like okay, well, I think
Speaker 1: there are certainly moonies who exist here, but America doesn't
Speaker 1: have exclusivity on loonings. And the second one is you
Speaker 1: always say this in British people. British people from the
Speaker 1: intelligence and bourgeois British people also always say this, think
Speaker 1: about Americas. They have no sense of irony. They have
Speaker 1: no sense of irony. And I remember one of the
Speaker 1: writers on the Late Night Show. I was telling them
Speaker 1: about this, a guy called Ted Mail Karen, who was
Speaker 1: one of the head writers on the Late Night Show,
Speaker 1: and he said, Americans have no sense of irony. I said,
Speaker 1: that's what they always say. He said, well, that's rich
Speaker 1: coming from a country that called itself Great Britain. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, touchet, it's aus of milk for you. Ted. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the reason why I bring this up is about the
Speaker 1: Ramones because the type of America that I wanted to
Speaker 1: be when I was a kid, it was a very
Speaker 1: odd mixture of I wanted to be an astronaut because
Speaker 1: I'd seen astronauts landing on the Moon when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid than they were American, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to be one of those. But as I got a
Speaker 1: bit older, I wanted also to be in the Ramones
Speaker 1: because I saw them. I wanted to be like the Ramones,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be like Iggy Pop, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be like people who were in rock bands
Speaker 1: and people who chewed gum and had teeth. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing that really got me. When I first visited
Speaker 1: America in nineteen seventy five, when I was thirteen, I
Speaker 1: went to a bowling alley for the first time. We
Speaker 1: did have bowling analogies in Scotland at that time. I
Speaker 1: went to a bowler I'd never seen a bowling alley before.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is amazing. And I tasted a
Speaker 1: beverage and I remember it to this day. It was
Speaker 1: root beer over crushed ice, and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, whatever this say is, I have to I
Speaker 1: have to have more of this as much as possible
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. Now, I'll be honest
Speaker 1: with you. I don't drink a lot of root beer
Speaker 1: over crushed ice, but every now and again I have
Speaker 1: one and it brings me back to that. And anyway,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is, for some reason I was talking
Speaker 1: about the Ramones. I want to be a Ramones type
Speaker 1: I think he pop American but also an astronaut American.
Speaker 1: I think what I like about being in America is
Speaker 1: want to be a living It's America. Oh well, he's
Speaker 1: an email about that, and then probably we'll get done
Speaker 1: after this. But this is from Tony Gallo, who says,
Speaker 1: when you first landed in Smithtown, which is the first
Speaker 1: place that I went to in America, Smithtown, Love Island,
Speaker 1: on your first trip to America? What hit you heard this?
Speaker 1: The accents, the aggressive left turns, or the crushing realization
Speaker 1: that this was it? What was your funniest moment of
Speaker 1: culture shock? I no, I think I've been, you know,
Speaker 1: mine in the culture shock thing for a for a
Speaker 1: long time. Now. I'm kind of like the Scottish jakov
Speaker 1: Smyrna or something, you know, like in my country. You know,
Speaker 1: when I first came here, it was the root beer
Speaker 1: Overcross that is, that was the thing that really got me.
Speaker 1: I that was the first way in. And also you've
Speaker 1: got to understand it was nineteen seventy five when I
Speaker 1: first came here. It was the summer in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: I was thirteen, I'd never been out of Glasgow and
Speaker 1: I go to Prestbook Airport in Scotland and I get
Speaker 1: on an airplane that lands in JFK in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five and I go from Glasgow having never left there.
Speaker 1: I have never been anywhere to New York City in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five and to this day is to my mind,
Speaker 1: they still the greatest city in the world, New York City.
Speaker 1: It's just over the George Washington Bridge, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to go there in a minute to answer a question
Speaker 1: that's come in because I moved back to Scotland for
Speaker 1: a long time and people say to me, you still
Speaker 1: live in Scotland or I moved back to Scotland for
Speaker 1: five years and I don't. I don't. I live in
Speaker 1: New York City. So I'm going to go home. I'll
Speaker 1: see you guys later. Thank