Cancelled Anti-PC Comic Speaks Out
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per minute
172.03488
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
214
sentences flagged
Hate speech
45
sentences flagged
Summary
I m not a racist, I m not anti-semitic, and I'm not a homophobe. I ve got no malice in my heart, I don t judge people on their sex or creed or race. I just want the right to hate, like, and dislike what I want to like and dislike, and to be able to vocalise it without fear or censorship.
Transcript
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You tell me what I can't say. You censor what I can.
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You say I'm offensive because I believe my eyes and I say I see a woman, not a man.
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You call me thick and racist for not wanting to be a part of a rich man's club in Europe
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or a globalist new world order with no soul or guts or heart.
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You throw at me the slave trade. You tell me my five-year-old grandson is to blame.
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You point your branding, accusing intolerant fingers and tell me to hang my head in shame.
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I'm free to have opinions as long as they fall in line with yours.
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I can fly my banners high and proud as long as you support that cause.
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You have to be right all the time. Yours is the only way.
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I have to like the things you like, be they black, trans, left or gay.
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It makes no difference if I tell you I'm not the things for which you accuse
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because once you've made up your closed-off minds, I'm always going to lose.
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I have black friends, so you're still a racist.
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Homophobic, but I've shared beds with gay men.
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I'm an anti-Semite, but the Rothschilds is the richest banking family in this world
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and that's got nothing to do with them being Jewish
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and everything to do with them being multi-billionaires
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You sip your Pinot Grigio in trendy bars down in the smoke
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looking down your noses with loathsome contempt at billions of working-class folk.
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Well, I've come here to tell you that you have had your time
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because the winds of change are blowing and bells of freedom soon will shine
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because my class, my fucking class, is waking up and staring
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We're going to breach those peace-seeing walls of segregation
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that have divided gay, straight, white and black.
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I don't judge people on their sex or creed or race.
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I don't speak ill of absolute cunts behind the back.
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So to all you branding liberals who won't allow debate,
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I want the right to hate like I want the right to love.
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I want to like and dislike what I want to like and dislike
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And I'm not taking any blame because the white privilege built on black slavery
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Beyonce, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, Rihanna, Floyd Mayweather,
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Beyonce spent $87 million on her house just through shaking the ass
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while me and our last said at home lamenting about ways to pay the fucking gas.
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And I don't see too much white privilege in a system
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that lets East European immigrants or wounded soldiers live in cardboard boxes.
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Why do Black Lives Matter and progressives fail to see
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not all white folks live in stately homes chasing fucking foxes?
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I'm non-homophobic, transphobic or anything phobic you see
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Don't confuse my use of slang with racism and bigotry.
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Don't confuse my rejection of your shite with spite.
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Don't naturally assume I'm thick and racist because I'm northern working class.
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And I will not walk a minefield every time I open my mouth to speak.
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And I will not apologise for things I've glibly said or spoken tongue-in-cheek.
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So shape up or fuck off with your madness because I'm going to bring you down.
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I'm going to bring working class people together.
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I'm going to bring those globalist walls of Jericho crashing on your brainwashed liberal feet.
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And I'm going to blow my loving, inclusive, un-PC fanfare.
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And your communist, fascist, capitalist, socialist, left, right, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Christian,
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black, white, gay, straight, male, female, leave, remain, against COVID-19, for COVID-19, against vaccinations, for vaccinations,
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And you've fucking laughed at us at the top.
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So I'll come onto my mate's programme to tell you, right now to this camera,
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today is one of our favourite comedians working in the UK today
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We have known you for a while and you and I particularly go back a long way.
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But tell everybody who doesn't know you, who are you?
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What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?
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Well, basically, I've been a comedian for 33 years.
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And for most of that time, I've been a working men's club comedian
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and working in the social clubs in and around the north, all over the north of England.
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But I have had forays into the comedy circuit, you know, over the years.
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And I've done that under my own steam, you know.
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And I don't know how these people on that, in the main middle class progressive kind of like comedy circuit take me.
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I've always tried to amalgamate both styles of humour, really.
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And I do that not only in the middle class circuit here in London, on the comedy circuit,
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So I've been doing that for some time now, to great effect.
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And my comedy has become more political over the last 11 or 12 years, in particular.
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Because I fought a political campaign in Medcar that was totally corrupted, really.
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We exposed all kinds of things and changed the law in this country regarding open spaces.
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And after that, it was kind of like my comedy, when I'd seen, like, the level of corruption and things locally.
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My comedy had to reflect that, if you know what I mean.
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I had to start speaking out about things that I felt were bullshit.
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And, like I say, I've tried to do that in that middle class comedy circuit style,
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but I've always tried to stay true to my working men's club roots and that quick, you know, one-liner style of comedy.
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But I guess I've never been in comedy for the money, do you know?
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I mean, I appreciate I've got to make a living, but it's always been the love of it.
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And over the last 11 years or so, it's wanting to say things, if you know what I mean,
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And I've been trying to do that more and more over the years, you know.
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And when I met you, a mutual friend of ours, when we were at the Edinburgh Festival at the same time,
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I didn't know who you were, I went to see you in the caves.
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You had this massive room, it was 120 seater, I think, big.
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And the day I saw you, there was nine people in, one row.
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And I sat there, watched you for an hour, played to nine people.
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I think two of them were German Tories, you couldn't understand a word.
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And I came back again, because that's how good it was.
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And that's the thing that you do, is you combine, as you say, good jokes, really good funny jokes.
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And you talk about the political things that are happening in the world today.
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What I've always wanted to do is I've always wanted to bring both sides of comedy together.
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So, like, I think at the moment, comedy's too imbalanced.
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The whole of the industry these days is controlled by middle-class, progressive kind of people.
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Whether it be agents, whether it be promoters, bookers, the comedy clubs, certainly.
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And I've been trying to sort of, like, even things up, to a certain degree, if you know what I mean,
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by bringing working-class, traditional working-class humour into these places,
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but mixing it with the kind of humour that you would find in a comedy club.
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Because I think working-class comedians, or working men's club comedians,
00:09:09.400
When was the last time you saw a working men's club comedian?
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And I know stacks of lads on the circuit who were really funny men,
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and they would never get a look in at Live on the Apollo,
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or any of these kind of game shows, or panel shows, or whatever.
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They don't do the humour that these people who control comedy like.
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they don't want to put these types of comedians on telly and all the rest of it?
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they have their perceptions of what comedy should be,
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and it isn't what's in the working men's clubs.
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They think it's hacked, they think it's all dated, and perhaps it is.
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But it appeals to millions and millions and millions of people.
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I mean, listen, I wear this unashamedly all the time, right?
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I've got loads of T-shirts that say a working class man.
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And I'm even more proud of my class by virtue of the fact
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And everything is controlled by this middle class progressive mindset.
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they'll say, oh, did you see that comedian?
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I'm just saying it's wrong that it's only one kind of comedy
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that's been foisted on the public of this country
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Because there are millions of working class people, right,
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who love the comedians who go in the working men's clubs.
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And yet their taste in comedy isn't catered for on television
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And I just, I think I try to be a bit of a Trojan horse, really.
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Taking one set, one kind of humour into a comedy club
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because I always try and take that middle class comedy
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I try and take that into the working men's clubs
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or in a sportsman's dinner too, do you know what I mean?
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But I can see that I've been a comedian for 33 years,
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If you want me to be over the top, I'll be over the top.
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do Bernard Manning-esque style jokes from the 1970s.
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Because society's moved on and you need to accept that.
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Well, it's not about doing Bernard Manning-style jokes.
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When you watch these guys on the After Dinner Speaking circuit,
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Once again, it's like a small-minded view of these comedians.
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You know, it's like I've said to a couple of comedy critics,
00:12:12.960
when was the last time you ever went into a working men's club?
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And I think that working class people are discriminated in lots of ways.
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You can get, if you're working class and you do the style of comedy
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that, you know, everybody else does in the comedy clubs, that's fine.
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But if you do that traditional working class kind of humour
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that appeals to working class people, you've got no chance.
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Because, you know, I opened with the anecdote about how you and I first met
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when you were having a rough time of it in terms of getting audience in
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and it wasn't easy, even though your show was brilliant and you are a brilliant comic.
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But last time that Edinburgh happened, which was 2019,
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you did a show called Forgiveness, which Francis and I both saw,
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which was one of the best shows at the festival.
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You got, you sold out your room, you got brilliant reviews,
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and it got followed up with a run at the Soho Theatre.
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And you've been doing brilliantly on that front.
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And as of a couple of weeks ago, you were supposed to get your run at Soho Theatre,
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which is one of, for people outside of the UK, one of the biggest theatres in London.
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Certainly like a taste-making kind of theatre here.
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Well, I mean, it's been in the press to a certain degree,
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and I don't think it's over as far as the press goes.
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And I, more or less instinctively, forgave the man who murdered him.
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My father was a very forgiving person, never held any grudges.
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And, I mean, I had some counselling and so on and so forth.
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And then we, this is when I was doing Northern Monkey in Edinburgh in 2018.
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I'd had this, like, panic attack, and I'd ran off the stage.
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And I'd go back to my digs, and I wrote this poem called Blood Beneath Your Nails.
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And I realised then that there was stuff that I had to exercise,
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And I thought to myself, well, you know, I'm a comedian.
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And I always remember my mate, Wilson Milton, one of the lads on the circuit, like, you know.
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I said, I'm going to do this show about our dad's murder, you know.
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I said, I don't know yet, but I'll work on it, like, you know.
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So I came back from Edinburgh, and I started to write just the stories, the anecdotes.
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And once again, I mixed it with the traditional working men's club, quick one-liner jokes
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And I took it to Edinburgh, and as you say, it just went off the scale.
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Like, you know, every night, apart from one, the first night.
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But even then, the Times came to see me on the first night.
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But after that first night, it just went through the fucking roof.
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It was like, you know, there were, like, queues, like, literally up three flights of stairs
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or two flights of stairs and out the city cafe.
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People were hailing it as a masterpiece, a masterclass in comedy, genius, and all of this, you know.
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Some people were saying it's, like, one of the most important comedy shows
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because it didn't just address the issue of forgiveness and tolerance and everything else.
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It also addressed the issues of race because, you know, our dad was from a very multicultural area
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And then this top promoter came to see it, and he just said, this is fantastic.
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And just for people who don't understand, you've been at it at this point for 31, 32 years.
00:17:14.880
This is the thing I thought, you see, because, like, gigs were few and far between, right,
00:17:19.380
on the comedy circuit for the reasons I believe I stated at the top of the interview
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So, like, when I got all this, like, acclaim and everything,
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and bearing in mind, I mean, I'd been to Edinburgh three times, 17, 18, and 19,
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and every time I'd gone there, I'd been, like, critically acclaimed across the board.
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And it was, like, for me, personally, that recognition was, like,
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saying to these people who control comedy, look, you know, this is me.
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I can do what you do, and I can do, or I can do what you want me to do,
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and I can do this in the working men's clubs, I can do this.
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And I was so proud of myself at that moment in time,
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because leading up to that, the work had been so non-existent, really.
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I'd felt many times, like, just jacking it all in.
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I mean, that was just, like, everything for me, man, you know what I mean?
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I mean, the Soho Theatre, for anybody who doesn't know out there,
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You know, they don't have any shite in there.
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Well, no, well, I know what you mean, but in their eyes,
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Because they came to see me in Edinburgh twice.
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and then this girl came to see me on the last night,
00:19:22.840
And I said, well, what do they want me to take out?
00:19:24.080
Well, they said, well, they don't want you to use the word packy,
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and they don't want you to use the word chinky, right?
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So my first instinct was, I said, tell them to fuck off.
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Because some people are hearing this for the first time.
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will make assumptions based on what you've said.
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You've said they didn't want you to use those two words.
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And they're going to assume that you were making fun of those words.
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The words were used in the context of the 1970s.
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multicultural working class communities in the 70s
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and stuff when I was growing up with my father.
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And we'd used, or I'd used the words in Edinburgh
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I mean, the promoter, all the comedy critics that came and see it,
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they all knew it was in context and everything else.
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And my first instinct was to tell him to fuck off
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I'll make fun of the fact that I've been censored.
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And I'd written this, maybe it's 15-minute piece
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And it was all about working-class mentalities, right?
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And working-class slang and working-class jokes
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without actually being racist or whatever, you know?
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The director of the theatre was there on the Friday night
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it was, I like floated down the stairs back into the bar.
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And I always remember, I was just leaving the theatre.
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And I said, well, yeah, I'll be back here tomorrow night
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And he said, no, will you come back to the theatre
00:22:21.720
and how we're feeling about our place in the universe.
00:22:29.040
Well, he's two months away from a breakdown.
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00:22:32.400
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00:23:53.200
I mean, I like that working men's club humour.
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like political kind of, observational kind of stuff.
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But it was also done in a way of telling a story.
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And, um, and, and they want to co-produce the show.
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They wanted to film it and put it on pay-per-view
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and all this and the other, you know, blah, blah, blah.
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had said, we think you're the dog's bollocks.
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And it just, it was just everything to me.
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Just everything, you know, echoed, the whole lot.
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They were coming down from fucking Newcastle
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and they were coming over from South Yorkshire.
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