TRIGGERnometry - Geoff Norcott on Conservative Comedy, Brexit & Free Speech

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissin. And this is a

00:00:13.480 show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing

00:00:17.880 about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our fantastic

00:00:23.660 guest this week is a wonderful comedian, Jeff Norcott. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for

00:00:28.520 me on it's great to have you here man listen to the question we always like to ask our guests

00:00:36.600 before we get into the interview itself is how are you where you are what's your background what's

00:00:40.380 your story now we know quite a bit about it yeah tell us anyway so i am a comedian i'd probably be

00:00:44.540 better known for being right of center conservative voter leave voter working class just scumbag

00:00:52.520 basically depending on who you are but i've been around for a while you know i was talking about

00:00:56.520 when i arrived here was i've been a circuit comedian for a long time since the early noughties

00:01:00.900 then i was uh i did like writing for television you have lots of different phases of my career

00:01:06.020 did a period where i did a lot of gigs for the armed forces obviously i'm not totally pitching

00:01:09.600 for like jim davidson's but yeah and then you know sort of uh around about the early noughties

00:01:16.060 i sort of decided to chat about the fact that i voted conservative because i thought it was just

00:01:20.320 odd my wife was the one that said it oh really well i just said to her like you know you do the

00:01:24.140 the club game is brilliant

00:01:25.260 do you know what I mean

00:01:25.800 you do end up talking

00:01:26.780 a lot about gender

00:01:27.880 and stuff like that

00:01:28.620 and I still do

00:01:29.420 to be fair

00:01:29.820 but she said

00:01:30.300 I said I need a new subject

00:01:31.980 I need a new angle here

00:01:33.040 you know

00:01:33.340 what's

00:01:33.860 and she said

00:01:34.340 well voting Tory

00:01:35.000 is a bit weird isn't it

00:01:36.460 now it's a bit

00:01:37.060 it's hard to calibrate that now

00:01:38.500 because that was in the middle

00:01:39.440 of the coalition

00:01:40.180 right

00:01:40.600 which is a slightly

00:01:41.360 different era

00:01:42.120 a bit more

00:01:43.060 it wasn't the Tory brand

00:01:44.600 that was as much of a problem

00:01:45.720 as it was the Eaton set

00:01:46.860 or the Bullinden Club

00:01:47.700 right

00:01:47.960 and austerity as an idea

00:01:49.520 was a problem

00:01:50.060 so I started talking about it

00:01:51.800 and people were like

00:01:52.240 yeah

00:01:52.520 yeah it's interesting

00:01:53.420 but I think the real change maybe happened in 2015

00:01:56.280 when there was that surprise Tory majority

00:01:58.780 and then again in 2016 when the Leave vote happened.

00:02:02.320 So basically, as the country sort of descended into political chaos,

00:02:05.200 things have been pretty christine.

00:02:06.860 Well, what about you?

00:02:07.520 It's interesting because you come from a working-class background.

00:02:10.260 You talk in your comedy about how your dad was disabled, right?

00:02:13.460 Yes, yeah, yeah.

00:02:14.400 Not according to him, though.

00:02:16.360 He had one arm, but it's above the waist.

00:02:18.820 It's not disability, yeah.

00:02:20.100 But traditionally, someone from that background,

00:02:24.500 you would not expect them to be voting Tory.

00:02:26.960 Well, expect, but traditionally, I mean,

00:02:29.060 there's plenty of, like, you know, evidence that that has been the case.

00:02:31.820 I mean, I think in the 1992 election, it was called Mondeo Man,

00:02:35.320 you know, which was people that sort of, like, done all right,

00:02:37.820 you know what I mean, a bit aspirational,

00:02:39.540 moved out of London, bought bigger ass, you know,

00:02:42.360 garage, stuff like that,

00:02:43.700 that just wanted to keep doing well for themselves.

00:02:46.460 And I think that's one of the things, I suppose,

00:02:48.340 I've always had a problem with the Labour Party

00:02:50.660 particularly in recent years

00:02:52.420 is what message do they have

00:02:54.160 for aspirational working class voters

00:02:56.600 of which there are many

00:02:58.000 and that's the thing about British societies

00:03:00.540 is there are these unwritten rules

00:03:02.240 about who you vote for

00:03:03.140 but actually all the evidence suggests

00:03:05.060 that things have always been different

00:03:07.120 if anything the Tories right now

00:03:08.980 are doing very well with working class voters

00:03:11.080 Labour doing very well with city centres

00:03:13.020 with middle class metropolitan types

00:03:14.620 so the idea that any one party

00:03:17.100 has a sort of

00:03:17.840 entitlement to your vote

00:03:18.820 I think he's a sort of

00:03:19.680 it's a bit dated

00:03:20.480 as an idea really

00:03:21.460 and have you always

00:03:22.440 voted Tory

00:03:23.120 no

00:03:23.720 no I started off

00:03:24.660 I think I always

00:03:25.580 was a Tory

00:03:26.280 if you know what I mean

00:03:27.440 like looking back

00:03:28.740 looking back

00:03:29.460 even when you were

00:03:30.200 a teacher

00:03:30.680 even when I was a

00:03:31.660 well yeah

00:03:32.100 I mean you talk about

00:03:32.860 admitting that you're a Tory

00:03:33.860 in stand up

00:03:34.920 in a staff room

00:03:35.920 I mean

00:03:36.280 I remember once

00:03:37.280 I brought the Telegraph

00:03:38.020 into a staff room

00:03:38.980 and they were all like

00:03:39.620 and I didn't really

00:03:40.840 I didn't even realise

00:03:41.800 what I'd done wrong there

00:03:42.800 but teachers

00:03:43.420 yeah they're pretty militant

00:03:45.140 you know

00:03:45.460 and I

00:03:46.520 I think as a kid, I look back now on some of my attitudes and I think, yeah, I was quite

00:03:51.860 a judgy little bastard at times, you know, because I lived on a council estate and stuff

00:03:56.880 and I remember like some days me and my sister would be the only ones going to school and

00:04:00.620 I'd be like, look at them just sitting around and wasting their fucking lives, just scrounging,

00:04:05.000 get on with it and stuff.

00:04:06.000 And I was, I remember one day in particular, like, you know, my family always give me stick

00:04:11.580 about it.

00:04:12.460 Apparently I was about nine and I really gave out to my mum for the fact that she was still

00:04:15.980 in her dressing gown

00:04:17.420 when I came back from school

00:04:19.660 I was appalled by this fact

00:04:21.240 I was like, haven't you done anything with your day

00:04:23.140 you should get out there

00:04:24.940 you should motivate yourself

00:04:26.100 so there was evidence that it was always there

00:04:27.860 but I did vote Labour the first time in 97

00:04:30.640 we all did right, things were going to only get better

00:04:33.120 well that was the Tory government basically

00:04:34.920 it was kind of, yeah

00:04:36.140 and in 2001 more of the same

00:04:37.720 2005, I remember at the time

00:04:39.820 there was a lot of stealth taxes

00:04:41.260 a lot more nanny state coming from Labour

00:04:43.440 and I just instinctively, the council tax

00:04:45.380 Everyone forgets it's council tax more than,

00:04:47.460 well, certainly where I was living, doubled, you know.

00:04:50.120 And I thought, where's this going?

00:04:51.840 And I voted Lib Dem in 2005,

00:04:54.080 and then it's been Tory ever since 2010.

00:04:57.420 And do you think you'll stay with the Tory?

00:04:59.540 Do you think you're a flyer?

00:05:00.480 Well, it's difficult, isn't it?

00:05:01.320 I don't think I'll go any further, right?

00:05:05.780 You know, but equally, yeah, it's weird.

00:05:10.240 I think, in a way, some of the stick I've got

00:05:11.680 has radicalised me, you know, as a Tory.

00:05:13.600 I might have.

00:05:14.480 If I'd have just kept these views personal at this point,

00:05:17.000 I mean, I'd never vote for a Labour government under Corbyn, never.

00:05:19.520 That is just not my cup of tea at all.

00:05:21.000 That's interesting. Why not?

00:05:22.340 Well, because of the brand of politics and it's too hard left for me.

00:05:27.620 What I believe in intrinsically and part of the thing that makes me a Tory

00:05:31.180 is a small state, a lean benefit system and relatively low taxation.

00:05:35.140 I mean, that is the opposite of what Jeremy Corbyn wants.

00:05:39.100 And I also think it's quite a regressive approach to politics generally.

00:05:42.960 but I suppose if I hadn't spoke about my politics

00:05:46.240 if Labour, you know, a more centrist type

00:05:48.240 more sensible person got in charge

00:05:50.360 and, you know, they sort of moved back to the centre

00:05:51.880 there would have been a chance perhaps

00:05:53.080 but I've just been called a Tory wanker

00:05:54.940 so many times I sort of think

00:05:56.840 well, I'm going to live out my days as a Tory wanker

00:06:00.860 yeah, yeah, that's how I am

00:06:02.340 and the Lib Dems, my problem with them

00:06:04.300 is obviously, you know, their immediate response to the referendum

00:06:06.320 is very hard, you know, to call yourself Democrats

00:06:09.720 and then just immediately kind of ignore

00:06:11.820 a huge democratic mandate was a problem.

00:06:15.340 At the same time, as Tim Farron was sort of revealing

00:06:18.180 that he didn't agree with gay people having sex,

00:06:21.780 I thought, well, you're sort of a lot of liberal or democratic, really.

00:06:25.440 I don't know what you are.

00:06:27.180 I mean, I've got some sympathy for the liberal.

00:06:29.320 My mum was a liberal.

00:06:30.880 My dad was a Labour voter and stuff.

00:06:32.940 So maybe there was a part of me that was just making up, you know,

00:06:35.420 the trio of very politically motivated people.

00:06:37.820 It's an interesting thing where you touch on Corbyn,

00:06:39.620 and you talk about aspirational working class people

00:06:43.340 because the thing that strikes me about the hard left,

00:06:46.180 whether that's Corbyn or people in America,

00:06:48.700 is the sense of victimhood that is being spread so much within that ideology,

00:06:53.240 this mentality that people who are working class

00:06:55.680 or people who are ethnic minorities or whatever,

00:06:58.020 they're victims of life.

00:06:59.420 They need help from the government.

00:07:01.320 Yeah, I mean, for me, some of that gets in the way of what I'm able to achieve.

00:07:05.480 Now, I'm a white working class male,

00:07:07.420 lived on a council estate for a bit of my life.

00:07:09.620 The problem is, from my point of view, there are opportunities that perhaps, you know, a lot of people would see me, you know, relatively high up that pyramid.

00:07:17.160 You know, some people, you know, compared to would you rather be like a posh woman or a working class man, you know, it gets, it does get complicated.

00:07:24.180 But the amount of time, all the time you spend worrying about that, you're not actually achieving the things that you want to achieve, you know, and you could, I think mostly the things that I've wanted, if I've wanted them enough and I've worked hard enough, I've got.

00:07:35.180 Now, I know people right now watching that would be going,

00:07:37.500 what are you saying as a white man?

00:07:39.760 But there's no doubt that the more time you spend chasing a goal,

00:07:43.600 you know, to use a phrase on the left, I can't be what I can't see.

00:07:46.880 So, you know, it's better to spend that time going for it.

00:07:49.440 You know, some people obviously have to protest, but that's not my style.

00:07:52.660 I'd just rather go and do it, do you know what I mean?

00:07:55.120 I mean, there was no real precedent for, or certainly modern precedent,

00:07:58.660 for being a Tory comedian.

00:08:00.920 But I thought rather than moaning about, like, why are there no Tory comedians on,

00:08:04.160 I thought I'd just see

00:08:04.760 if I could write

00:08:05.120 some decent jokes

00:08:05.980 you know first up

00:08:06.840 and then make it

00:08:07.800 to that point

00:08:08.240 where you've put yourself

00:08:09.740 in a position

00:08:10.360 to get some of those

00:08:12.040 things that you want

00:08:12.800 I remember

00:08:13.580 when you first came out

00:08:15.200 as a Tory

00:08:15.740 it sounds ridiculous

00:08:16.920 came out as a Tory

00:08:18.100 it sounds ridiculous

00:08:19.600 well it wasn't

00:08:20.160 totally dissent

00:08:20.720 I mean the old man

00:08:21.460 was disappointed

00:08:22.040 yeah

00:08:22.560 I mean not on the gay thing

00:08:24.840 but as a Tory

00:08:25.460 he's like

00:08:26.700 I thought I'd raise you

00:08:28.080 I'd rather you were gay

00:08:29.100 yeah

00:08:29.620 I thought I'd raise you

00:08:30.940 better than this son

00:08:31.820 scorecard

00:08:32.400 yeah it is

00:08:33.080 I mean you know

00:08:33.560 that phrase

00:08:33.980 has been used before.

00:08:36.280 But I suppose that's the context

00:08:37.460 of the stand-up scene, isn't it?

00:08:39.480 It's how it identifies itself.

00:08:41.600 But going back to what I was going to say,

00:08:44.400 the moment you came out as a Tory

00:08:46.600 and I saw it on Facebook,

00:08:48.580 I thought, well, Jeff's career's fucked.

00:08:50.620 Yeah.

00:08:50.940 And that was my initial impulse,

00:08:54.220 my initial thought,

00:08:55.060 that actually you've sabotaged your career

00:08:57.240 by saying that you're all right of centre.

00:09:00.280 What was it like the first time you did...

00:09:02.920 Well, at the time I did it, I didn't really have any profile or anything like that.

00:09:06.060 So it was more like an anomaly, do you know what I mean?

00:09:07.900 I wrote a couple of bits on Chortle and stuff like that.

00:09:10.340 People were like, oh, all right.

00:09:11.240 Like I say, it's easy to forget that it wasn't as toxic then, perhaps, you know, with the

00:09:15.420 passage of time and, you know, certain things that have happened.

00:09:17.960 It's seen as more toxic now.

00:09:19.980 I think perhaps the, in a way, coming out as a Leave voter, I felt more like that.

00:09:25.860 Really?

00:09:26.140 Yeah, the morning after the referendum, you know, because I voted Leave, I believed, you

00:09:30.000 know, I still believe that in the long run it's the right thing for this country.

00:09:32.920 But I didn't expect them to win.

00:09:35.380 So when I voted, I was like,

00:09:36.860 and I had a very young son at this point.

00:09:39.420 And I was like, well, I don't, do you know what I mean?

00:09:41.520 Because obviously I looked at Facebook

00:09:42.900 and it's a decent sort of focus group

00:09:45.760 for how the industry sees something.

00:09:47.060 And it was like stupid, fucking racist.

00:09:49.580 And I thought, well, you know,

00:09:50.880 I might have overdone it, you know,

00:09:52.760 just in terms of my own sort of, you know,

00:09:55.280 career and stuff like that.

00:09:56.280 And I was very worried about not being able to provide

00:09:58.060 for my son on this basis.

00:09:59.460 Because there was that couple of weeks, wasn't there,

00:10:00.940 afterwards where everyone lost their fucking minds for a minute uh well a couple of weeks

00:10:04.600 every time there's a bit of negotiation yeah we're all gonna be eating rats all that yeah

00:10:09.500 um but yeah um i that was more perhaps um a time and and it's funny how people sort of

00:10:15.840 misremember what happened because i've also been like accused of of like cynicism as well like so

00:10:20.480 the opposite of what you're saying was i only said it to get myself a career now what happened was i

00:10:26.280 just did off my own back there was no real dialogue in 2013 about the absence of right

00:10:30.560 voices and i did a show it was uh february at the leicester square uh the leicester comedy festival

00:10:36.180 and it got nominated for best uh new show and then i think it was in the march uh caroline

00:10:41.940 rafael who was head of uh comedy at bbc radio 4 said why we're all the right-wing comedians

00:10:47.240 i was like um so i got my agent to send her you know an email and try and get on her radar but

00:10:52.400 i think what happened because those two things were quite close together everyone thought i read

00:10:55.660 that article

00:10:56.160 and was like

00:10:56.620 oh I'm going to

00:10:57.060 become a Tory

00:10:57.660 because

00:10:58.980 it's a character act

00:11:00.200 except the character

00:11:01.820 has my name

00:11:02.740 beliefs

00:11:03.120 way of speaking

00:11:04.600 opinions

00:11:05.520 but

00:11:06.580 do you ever find

00:11:07.880 when you're talking

00:11:08.960 about Brexit

00:11:09.900 in a comedy club

00:11:11.060 where everybody

00:11:11.640 goes on

00:11:12.260 goes you know

00:11:12.940 believers are scum

00:11:14.900 Tories are scum

00:11:15.940 in fairness

00:11:16.540 I think that that period

00:11:17.800 I think things have

00:11:18.520 changed now

00:11:19.040 I think that there was

00:11:19.720 a period where

00:11:20.820 a lot of comics

00:11:21.720 did do that

00:11:22.500 it's been a while

00:11:23.260 since I've heard that

00:11:24.060 but I think that

00:11:24.780 yeah people might

00:11:25.640 I've misjudged the mood.

00:11:27.560 All right.

00:11:27.980 And you've never felt like you do pro-Brexit material,

00:11:31.820 especially in Zone 1 in London, and just feel you're losing.

00:11:34.800 But wherever you go, there were a lot of people that voted leave.

00:11:37.740 I mean, this is one of the weird things about it,

00:11:39.440 you know, with the sheer numbers game.

00:11:41.400 You know, you talk about in London, what was it, 37% voted leave?

00:11:44.680 I mean, if you was in a room of 100 people, right,

00:11:47.380 and 37 of them voted leave, 63 of them voted,

00:11:50.480 that would feel like a lot of people.

00:11:51.640 I mean, in some ways, at times,

00:11:52.880 you wouldn't be able to tell the difference of, you know,

00:11:54.400 just looking around on a pure optics level who's in the majority here so there's always

00:11:58.560 a lot of people that most of them don't give as much of a shit as we do you know in the comedy

00:12:02.580 game a lot of them are most people are reasonable people you know the remainers that you hear online

00:12:07.700 moan the ultra remainers are exactly that most people are happy to have the piss taken out of

00:12:12.800 them and the other thing is is it's not pro brexit material as such i think that it's very hard to do

00:12:18.020 any comedy about something where you're saying i really believe in this man and here's some jokes

00:12:21.760 about what I believe in.

00:12:22.800 I mean, comedy almost exclusively

00:12:24.480 comes from what you think is shit, you know.

00:12:26.840 So it's aiming the satirical fire back at

00:12:30.000 the Remain way of thinking.

00:12:33.240 And I think that, I mean, the simple rule I have

00:12:35.720 is like, satire is always possible

00:12:37.660 as if it's the three H's, right?

00:12:40.480 Hysteria, hypocrisy and hyperbole, right?

00:12:43.340 Now, if you think about all those things

00:12:44.540 and you look at, you know,

00:12:45.700 some wings of the Remain camp,

00:12:47.180 hysteria, hyperbole,

00:12:49.120 yeah, I think we'll still have sandwiches.

00:12:50.580 you know hypocrisy you know so that's the big one hypocrisy there's so much so much of that flying

00:12:55.500 on both sides yeah yeah oh yeah yeah totally and they're all they've become like each other that's

00:13:00.100 what's so odd you know i think ultra remainers have become exactly and maybe that's what you

00:13:04.440 sometimes they say to defeat something you have to become the beast in order to beat it but you

00:13:08.960 sometimes think do you realize what what you're saying here do you realize how fucking mental

00:13:14.260 it sounds to me and i think that i think the one bit of project fear that has worked actually

00:13:19.200 I think a lot of it failed miserably, but I think the thing of making it seem like a no-deal Brexit is actually the cliff edge.

00:13:26.100 I think that that's actually worked for most people, you know, for the Remain camp.

00:13:29.360 The language is stuck, isn't it? You know, a cliff edge Brexit crashing out of the EU.

00:13:34.120 There was an interesting stat about, you know, they talk about the reduction in GDP against,

00:13:40.520 because it's not actually a reduction in GDP, is it? It's against what Britain would have otherwise had.

00:13:44.280 So the worst case scenario, right, was over 15 years.

00:13:47.520 This is Mark Carney's prediction, so you know this was pessimistic.

00:13:50.320 I mean, if that gives us to you, it was raining, you go, hang on, I'll just check out the window.

00:13:55.300 But he said it would be 7.7% lower over 15 years.

00:13:58.960 Now, that roughly works out at about half a percent of GDP a year.

00:14:03.020 Now, you think that's not obviously, that's a big sum of money that could build hospitals and schools.

00:14:06.740 Would the average punter recognise that year in, year out?

00:14:09.440 I don't know, you know, but they've been quite successful in creating that sort of environment and that sense of fear.

00:14:14.960 Well, actually, the stats show that about 70% of Leave voters would happily sacrifice a chunk of their income if it meant, for example, reducing immigration.

00:14:22.780 Yes, yeah, and then taking back.

00:14:24.360 Well, I mean, the top thing in the Lord Ashcroft poll was sovereignty, wasn't it, right?

00:14:27.680 Self-determination in a pure sense.

00:14:29.800 But that is one thing, right?

00:14:31.240 And I had this chat with the producer of the Mash Report, Chris Stott, who's a ardent remainer.

00:14:35.280 A really good bloke.

00:14:36.000 And, you know, we just accept it's the one thing, like, he doesn't understand, you know?

00:14:40.740 And at least he's honest about it.

00:14:42.160 They just don't get it.

00:14:44.060 They just don't get it as a principle.

00:14:45.560 And you think, in a way, you have to respect that.

00:14:47.980 Two years on, if people don't understand

00:14:50.100 sort of total self-determination now, they never will.

00:14:54.380 And I think that, you know, they'll say things like,

00:14:56.360 oh, but we do, we don't,

00:14:57.840 because there's things that we can't do as a country.

00:15:00.960 And I think that immigration was interesting

00:15:03.700 because it's always perceived that if you was against freedom and movement,

00:15:07.920 that's because you wanted really low immigration.

00:15:09.720 It's not, for a lot of people, certainly myself, it wasn't that.

00:15:12.240 It just seemed quite an absolutism, you know, freedom of movement in perpetuity for all time.

00:15:17.400 You think that, you know, any nation state shouldn't be allowed to, you know, sort of appropriate their needs based on what was happening in their country at that point.

00:15:24.240 I just thought it was strange that that was decided centrally, you know.

00:15:28.740 And also, you know, when it comes to immigration, sometimes for a long time now in Britain, people have been able to, successive governments have been able to go, well, you know, it makes it a negative thing, doesn't it?

00:15:38.800 We go, well, you know, the EU is better for us, freedom of movement is just one of those things that comes with, you know, goes with the territory.

00:15:44.640 Whereas if you actually take responsibility for the amount of migrants coming here, you actually have to sell it to the public in a positive way.

00:15:50.780 You know, one of the reasons that the Windrush scandal had broad sort of sympathy from the public is that was how that was sold to the British people at the time.

00:15:58.220 People are coming to Britain because we need these people to come and do our jobs.

00:16:01.060 Whereas for too long now, it's just been seen as one of these unfortunate byproducts of being part of the EU.

00:16:06.420 Well, that's what I was going to say.

00:16:07.700 I'm an immigrant here, right?

00:16:08.940 You know, France's mother came here as well to this country.

00:16:11.640 I don't understand how they've created this cultural meme in society

00:16:16.340 that if you want to control or reduce immigration, that's racist.

00:16:20.540 I don't understand how that came to be.

00:16:23.920 I mean, there's no doubt there's some people that want to end it that are racist.

00:16:28.280 But I think there was that watershed moment, wasn't there?

00:16:31.460 Do you remember Gordon Brown?

00:16:32.860 And there was that woman who...

00:16:35.000 Gillian Duffy.

00:16:35.560 Yeah, Gillian Duffin, right. She spoke to him about a lot of different things, you know, a lot of stuff that was very pro-NHS. And then she ended it by saying something about immigration. They called her an awful woman. And I think it was like, you know, things were changing very fast. You know, the Labour government had sort of underestimated, you know, the impact of it. And I don't think it necessarily comes from a place of total cynicism, but they just hadn't legislated.

00:16:57.560 it's a way of filing it away isn't it

00:16:59.360 well if you've got any concerns about migration

00:17:01.780 whatsoever then you're

00:17:03.580 a racist and you know the problem is

00:17:05.900 it just breeds

00:17:07.320 a backlash right

00:17:09.480 and I think that

00:17:11.400 you know I think that for this economy

00:17:13.480 of this country to be successful

00:17:15.260 there will need to be you know of course there will need

00:17:17.400 like no one ever said migration

00:17:19.660 was ending but again

00:17:21.340 I suppose that's one of the remain bits of hyperbole

00:17:23.740 that has stuck

00:17:25.220 the idea that you know people will say

00:17:27.120 oh, well, I won't be able to go and work in Europe now.

00:17:29.400 You go, you know that relative of yours

00:17:31.140 that worked in the United States, right?

00:17:32.580 That's not part of, you know, the EU.

00:17:34.840 So these things will be possible.

00:17:36.120 Admittedly, there might be slightly more.

00:17:37.700 There will be more forms to fill out and stuff

00:17:40.120 and it won't be as guaranteed.

00:17:42.240 But yeah, the absolutism has been quite jarring.

00:17:46.340 And there's a people's,

00:17:48.720 well, there's a march for a people's vote on Brexit.

00:17:51.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:17:52.160 Do you agree with that?

00:17:52.980 Well, I don't agree in calling it a people's vote.

00:17:54.920 Right.

00:17:55.460 I just don't.

00:17:56.040 I feel like, you know, because I'm an AFC Wimbledon fan,

00:17:58.140 it's like I won't call that football team in Milton Keynes,

00:18:00.880 you know, I won't use that, because it's not, is it?

00:18:02.740 It's not, they are not the MK, I can't say it.

00:18:06.560 I still can't say it, and it's not a people's vote, is it?

00:18:08.440 It's a second referendum, and I think that in some ways

00:18:11.500 what that betrays is like, you know, people like Andrew Adonis

00:18:14.600 who just, they think they understand the public.

00:18:17.480 They've got, you know, they've got this arrogance

00:18:18.880 that was perhaps born of the Blair years,

00:18:20.400 where they perhaps were on the public's pulse a little bit more,

00:18:22.980 where they say, oh, you know what, what are people like?

00:18:24.840 people like people

00:18:25.600 for the many

00:18:26.680 not the few

00:18:27.160 we call it

00:18:28.280 a people's vote

00:18:28.960 and then it was

00:18:30.000 immediately

00:18:30.580 massively

00:18:31.120 patronising

00:18:32.400 but it's gaining

00:18:34.800 traction at the

00:18:35.520 moment

00:18:35.820 there's probably

00:18:36.620 more people in

00:18:37.360 favour of the

00:18:37.900 second referendum

00:18:38.360 now

00:18:38.860 but I think

00:18:39.680 that was inevitable

00:18:40.420 as you got to

00:18:41.200 the crunch point

00:18:41.880 what has been

00:18:42.960 interesting about

00:18:43.560 this process

00:18:44.020 is that some

00:18:44.820 people seem

00:18:45.340 surprised

00:18:45.960 that a

00:18:46.640 negotiation

00:18:47.040 is like a

00:18:47.780 negotiation

00:18:48.400 this is what

00:18:51.220 happens right

00:18:51.920 and the stakes

00:18:53.540 are incredibly

00:18:54.340 high

00:18:54.660 So it's always going to come to this, right?

00:18:56.800 But, yeah, the way that the markets get spooked and stuff.

00:19:01.320 I'd love to be a currency trader at this point.

00:19:03.720 It must be the easiest job.

00:19:04.640 You're just sitting there, just watching Guy Verhofstadt's Twitter feed.

00:19:08.620 They're going, well, he says we're in trouble.

00:19:10.520 Pound goes down.

00:19:11.920 There's going to be a deal.

00:19:13.000 Pound goes up.

00:19:14.440 It's amazing how these words...

00:19:17.600 You know, remember right at the beginning,

00:19:18.900 Theresa May was saying, like,

00:19:19.920 oh, we're not going to provide a running commentary on Brexit.

00:19:24.660 and everyone said

00:19:26.680 well we should know

00:19:27.380 I bet you even

00:19:28.040 some Remainers are going

00:19:28.900 do you know what

00:19:29.260 it would have actually been better

00:19:30.100 if they'd have just

00:19:30.800 you know fucked off

00:19:31.540 and just come back

00:19:32.300 said this is where we're at

00:19:33.200 and then we could have

00:19:33.800 made the decision then

00:19:34.680 do you know what

00:19:35.420 that would be a great sketch

00:19:36.600 actually if you just saw

00:19:37.760 like it was like

00:19:38.740 a horse race

00:19:39.540 you know the Remain campaign

00:19:41.300 the Leave campaign

00:19:42.220 and there's negotiations

00:19:43.380 of Brexit

00:19:43.960 and then there's a

00:19:44.880 running commentary

00:19:45.520 about the fall of the pound

00:19:46.520 and whatever else

00:19:47.360 yeah yeah

00:19:48.540 I mean because

00:19:49.820 go on you do it

00:19:51.020 I've done a lot of driving

00:19:53.520 I really like the idea

00:19:54.580 and I went to run with it

00:19:56.180 but my brain was going

00:19:57.120 you've got to fuck all today

00:19:58.000 but I think the issue is

00:20:01.140 right now

00:20:01.980 I have just got

00:20:02.900 and I've voted Remain

00:20:03.920 and I've just got sick

00:20:05.340 of the scaremongering

00:20:06.340 I can't be bothered

00:20:07.500 with it anymore

00:20:08.100 I'm now at the point

00:20:09.420 where I want to leave

00:20:10.560 because I just think

00:20:12.040 that the scaremongering

00:20:13.180 you know

00:20:13.700 every time you pick

00:20:14.740 a paper up

00:20:15.480 you just say

00:20:16.040 that the entire country

00:20:17.160 is going to collapse

00:20:17.900 people don't believe it

00:20:19.260 I suppose

00:20:19.620 I think that's the problem

00:20:20.820 is if you pitch

00:20:21.960 your fears

00:20:22.700 in a reasonable way

00:20:23.700 you know like

00:20:24.680 stuff like data roaming

00:20:25.780 and stuff

00:20:26.220 I swear to god

00:20:27.120 if Romain had just mentioned

00:20:28.180 data roaming

00:20:28.860 in the campaign

00:20:29.660 they might have won

00:20:30.400 you know

00:20:31.120 if they'd have said

00:20:31.900 these are the material things

00:20:33.120 that will definitely change

00:20:34.280 as a result of leave

00:20:35.640 but they had to go

00:20:36.300 they have to go for the

00:20:37.140 and this is one problem

00:20:38.140 with like liberal

00:20:38.880 and progressive politics

00:20:39.840 they're bound up

00:20:40.580 in dystopian thinking

00:20:41.720 they're the pessimists

00:20:42.940 do you know what I mean

00:20:43.400 they're the Cassandras

00:20:44.220 all the time

00:20:44.860 and maybe that's what happens

00:20:45.980 when you're not in power

00:20:46.960 but they're always the one

00:20:48.100 oh the world's coming to an end

00:20:49.200 the world

00:20:49.740 you know

00:20:50.140 you often hear this thing about

00:20:51.280 well you know

00:20:52.120 the world's such a dark place

00:20:53.320 right now, you know, we're going to hell in a handbasket.

00:20:55.360 And, you know, obviously there are certain personalities,

00:20:57.400 certain things happening.

00:20:59.420 But, you know, overall, you know,

00:21:01.280 and often it's quite parochial to just judge

00:21:03.380 that on a Western sort of metric as well,

00:21:05.300 just because we feel a bit uncertain in Britain.

00:21:07.320 You know, they've got a slightly, you know,

00:21:08.940 a very unsettling president at the moment.

00:21:11.940 You can't just say the world's going to hell

00:21:13.300 in a handbasket, just because you're going through

00:21:15.060 some political rocks and rules.

00:21:16.160 Well, that's crazy, isn't it? Like, if someone comes from Russia,

00:21:18.560 I've travelled all over the force, so...

00:21:20.320 I mean, we talk about how things are terrible.

00:21:23.000 there's never been a better time to be alive

00:21:25.200 well I mean there's that thing isn't there

00:21:26.800 that a lot of people on the left often dismiss

00:21:28.880 is that global poverty is halved in the last

00:21:31.140 20 years, they cannot accept it

00:21:33.060 they're like no, but it just

00:21:34.900 fucking has, you know

00:21:35.640 every metric of life, less wars, less pollution

00:21:38.680 less famine, but they're just like no

00:21:40.820 no no, and it's one of those, you know there's

00:21:42.900 the information gap

00:21:44.640 I can't remember what it's called, but like, and it works

00:21:46.920 on the right as well, so if you ask people in Britain

00:21:48.900 you know what percentage of Britain do you think is

00:21:50.680 Muslim, you know a lot of people, I think a lot of

00:21:52.900 People think it's 28%, which it's not.

00:21:54.640 It's like about 5%, right?

00:21:56.220 But equally, there's a lot of people on the left that think that, you know,

00:21:58.520 the global poverty has doubled in the last 20 years.

00:22:01.700 And I guess it comes down to a way that you wish to see the world almost.

00:22:05.280 No, completely.

00:22:06.300 Well, Francis was concerned about your career when you came out.

00:22:10.140 Yeah.

00:22:10.420 But actually, his concerns were unfounded.

00:22:12.540 You've done very, very well.

00:22:13.640 You've been on the Apollo, the Mass Report, et cetera.

00:22:16.500 Why do you think that is?

00:22:17.780 Because I'm a fucking shit.

00:22:19.300 Smash the shit off of me.

00:22:20.400 I mean, great to work with, very professional.

00:22:24.480 No, I think that, look, I've been around a while as well.

00:22:27.080 That's the other thing.

00:22:27.780 You know, I've done the circus since 2001.

00:22:29.980 So when, and this is the weird thing for me in a way,

00:22:32.860 is like, you know, people on the right would often

00:22:35.180 kind of speak out against diversity and stuff like that.

00:22:37.620 And I could, I suppose,

00:22:38.880 but I'm also like quite a big beneficiary of it.

00:22:41.360 I'd like to think that, you know,

00:22:42.320 once the opportunities came,

00:22:43.380 I was at a point where I could take them.

00:22:45.080 But it'd be factious not to acknowledge

00:22:47.080 that if I hadn't had my politics,

00:22:49.460 it would have been hard for a man of my age to get on those shows, you know.

00:22:53.820 It took me a while to work out, you know, how to do it as well.

00:22:57.260 It's hard, you know.

00:22:58.240 I think the thing with Right of Scent of Comedy

00:23:00.160 is that there are less subjects, right?

00:23:02.440 There are a lot less that lend itself, you know, to comedy.

00:23:05.900 But once you land on one, it's great

00:23:07.680 because it's almost a low-hanging fruit

00:23:09.600 because no one else is talking about it, you know.

00:23:11.760 You get first bite at a lot of those cherries.

00:23:14.540 And you also benefit, I think, from one thing that comedy always needs,

00:23:18.360 which is misdirection you know what what what was the audience's expectation and what did you say

00:23:23.880 now if they're all thinking you're going to say that you're probably remain and a labor voter

00:23:27.420 and you do the opposite straight away you've subverted that expectation so you know and I've

00:23:32.280 been learning and even even this tour that I'm doing at the moment and traditionalism it started

00:23:36.760 off it started off at the Edinburgh Festival last year and you know I had to make certain

00:23:41.320 adjustments there and then took it out on tour early this year uh a spring tour and then took

00:23:46.760 get back to Edinburgh for a run. It's been changing all the while. Right now, I feel

00:23:50.660 like it's closer to what I want to be doing, you know, than I ever have been. And it's

00:23:55.720 a mix, I suppose, of hard P political stuff, social commentary, and then, you know, some

00:24:00.380 of it's just observational comedy. Because believe it or not, I don't want to stand up

00:24:03.800 there the whole time for a whole hour wanging on about politics. And I don't think many

00:24:07.280 audience members want to hear it, really.

00:24:09.180 And do you sometimes feel that more kind of middle class or upper middle class audiences,

00:24:13.940 they sort of

00:24:15.280 the moment you come out

00:24:17.080 and say right

00:24:18.080 you know

00:24:18.700 and you talk about

00:24:19.440 this right

00:24:20.160 right wing

00:24:21.020 well not right wing

00:24:21.840 but right of centre politics

00:24:23.120 they immediately go

00:24:23.980 racist

00:24:24.600 bigot

00:24:25.160 all the rest of them

00:24:25.740 I think that

00:24:26.300 less so

00:24:27.040 I think that

00:24:27.620 I think that

00:24:28.200 the time when that was

00:24:29.840 most febrile

00:24:30.740 was maybe

00:24:31.540 2017

00:24:32.660 I suppose

00:24:33.720 when I went up to

00:24:34.420 Edinburgh Fringe

00:24:35.100 it was post Grenfell

00:24:37.080 and stuff

00:24:37.540 and you know

00:24:38.020 there was a lot

00:24:38.860 it was

00:24:39.320 it was a difficult time

00:24:41.560 you know

00:24:42.040 to have these views

00:24:43.040 I remember I did

00:24:43.980 idiotically

00:24:44.900 I did a Facebook campaign

00:24:46.140 advertising campaign

00:24:47.100 and you guys

00:24:48.000 are very tech savvy

00:24:48.700 and stuff

00:24:48.960 so you tick certain boxes

00:24:49.960 about whether you do

00:24:50.820 a bit of targeted

00:24:51.440 or generalised

00:24:52.120 and I was like

00:24:53.020 people who are interested

00:24:53.880 in stand-up comedy

00:24:54.800 and I meant it

00:24:55.380 people who are interested

00:24:56.860 in like

00:24:57.660 I often use a newspaper

00:24:59.080 like the Times

00:25:00.000 or something

00:25:00.280 and I didn't tick that

00:25:01.200 so it just went out

00:25:01.880 generally

00:25:02.240 so I paid money

00:25:03.520 for the best part

00:25:04.380 of two of you

00:25:04.860 fucking talking

00:25:05.740 and it's funny

00:25:08.540 the way that they

00:25:09.100 perceive you

00:25:09.640 if they've never

00:25:10.200 met you

00:25:11.620 they always make

00:25:12.200 oh, you posh boy, you know, you Tory boy,

00:25:14.800 why don't you go back to your, you know,

00:25:16.620 your landlord with your portfolio?

00:25:19.080 And they basically ended up describing a lot of things

00:25:21.320 that I wish I was, you know.

00:25:23.160 And it actually made me annoyed where I was thinking,

00:25:25.800 I wish I was a successful, they've pissed me off now

00:25:28.440 because I feel like I'm not doing well enough.

00:25:30.720 But yeah, I think what's happened as well

00:25:34.000 is with, you know, Labour's trouble with anti-Semitism

00:25:37.580 and stuff like that, I think that the idea

00:25:39.560 that one side has this kind of total monopoly on virtue.

00:25:43.380 I think a lot of people are getting clued up

00:25:44.600 to some of the more unpleasant politics on the hard left,

00:25:47.440 so it's harder to just say.

00:25:48.920 It's not like Jedi versus Sith anymore.

00:25:51.300 It never was, but some people like to see it that way.

00:25:54.420 You know, I'm a good guy because, you know,

00:25:56.580 every five years I tick a certain box and you tick a...

00:25:59.840 It's just... I mean, it's still...

00:26:01.180 I mean, I've been thinking about this for years

00:26:03.020 and it still blows my mind that people think

00:26:04.860 that there's just one way to be a good person, you know,

00:26:07.400 or one way for a government to help people.

00:26:09.560 No, absolutely. And that's one of the things that blows my mind about the, you know, like you said about the left is they've got this belief that they're in the right. Like you look at Corbyn, they go, yes, Corbyn is the messiah. And you go, but what about Venezuela? What about what's happening? Oh, no, no, no, it doesn't. And it's this complete.

00:26:26.680 Well, they often say about Venezuela, they say that, you know, socialism's never been properly tried in any country.

00:26:32.340 I'd argue that capitalism's never been fully tried.

00:26:34.920 You know what I mean?

00:26:35.400 You look at any, you know, perhaps the sort of paragons of capitalist virtues, which is Britain and the US.

00:26:40.540 Still, you know, they've still got state institutions, right?

00:26:42.840 There's still a lot of, you know, interference in the market.

00:26:46.100 I'm not saying I disagree with all of it, but, you know, that hasn't been tried at either end.

00:26:50.320 And I think that if you look at both experiments that have happened...

00:26:55.320 Not that hard.

00:26:56.880 Yeah, one of them tends to end up with higher inflation,

00:26:59.440 let's put it that way.

00:27:00.540 Yeah.

00:27:01.420 And so coming back to comedy,

00:27:03.460 you were talking about how the atmosphere was very febrile in 2017.

00:27:06.640 My sense of it now is with people like yourself coming through.

00:27:09.420 We talked about Finn Taylor,

00:27:10.780 who's, I don't know whether he's right off centre or not,

00:27:13.080 but he's someone who does satire in a kind of...

00:27:15.120 Yeah, contrarian sort of, yeah.

00:27:16.820 Exactly.

00:27:17.580 So I start to see people like you coming through.

00:27:20.560 Do you think that people in Channel 4 and the BBC

00:27:23.680 and the people who control comedy on television

00:27:25.720 are starting to wake up to the fact

00:27:27.820 that half the country doesn't actually want

00:27:29.640 to be constantly bombarded with these

00:27:31.580 same, same, same messages.

00:27:33.380 I think definitely at the BBC, you know, it's interesting for me

00:27:35.760 because, you know, I...

00:27:37.540 Even people that follow me seem to think I'm being

00:27:39.740 like excluded. I'm like, well, I've done live at the Apollo

00:27:41.880 in one week, Mass Report and

00:27:43.620 Question Time. So, things take time

00:27:45.880 as well. I think that maybe

00:27:47.220 there was a period where things would let slide

00:27:49.620 and it became... Because there was always balance in political

00:27:51.600 comedy once upon a time, wasn't there, you know?

00:27:53.680 I grew up like probably myself, like Spitting Image, you know, they always went for Kinnock.

00:27:57.740 So that was how my political comedy psyche was formed.

00:28:01.300 I think something happened somewhere along the line where that just ceased to exist.

00:28:05.080 I don't know why that was, but something changed.

00:28:08.280 And I think that what happened with the Brexit vote was it was like Avengers Infinity War.

00:28:14.460 Everyone was fighting each other, you know.

00:28:16.040 It was all kicking off and you had, you know, you had Metropolitan Tories who were slating, you know,

00:28:21.540 kind of rural Tories

00:28:22.840 that had voted Leave

00:28:23.640 you had liberal Labour voters

00:28:25.380 slaying sort of socialists

00:28:26.900 that voted Leave

00:28:27.520 and I think it was a real reset

00:28:28.880 in politics

00:28:30.020 and the idea that you could still

00:28:31.680 I think most people accepted

00:28:33.080 that comedians

00:28:34.000 were probably Labour voters

00:28:35.160 for whatever reason

00:28:35.840 they just did

00:28:36.440 I think Brexit was different

00:28:37.660 and I think it took the industry

00:28:38.980 a while to kind of

00:28:40.300 come round to that

00:28:40.920 but trust me

00:28:41.980 they're conscious of this fact

00:28:44.060 and they want to

00:28:44.620 and I have meetings

00:28:45.920 all the time with people

00:28:46.740 that don't agree

00:28:47.760 with my views and stuff

00:28:48.580 but are

00:28:49.060 the producer of the

00:28:50.640 mash report would be one example that if anything pushes me you know to be more honest and stuff

00:28:56.520 and and you know there was that clip recently about uh breaking up with the roommate ramona

00:29:01.560 yeah did like half a million views and you know you know the other thing is you know numbers talk

00:29:05.860 and bullshit walks and i think that would have raised some eyebrows really yes and you know when

00:29:11.320 you were talking about so being like so being pro-brexit being tory and the abuse you get

00:29:16.700 I sometimes feel like

00:29:18.600 especially when it comes

00:29:19.600 from the left

00:29:20.080 like they think

00:29:21.220 that they're actually

00:29:22.080 persuading people

00:29:23.540 that you know

00:29:24.600 oh you know what

00:29:25.500 if I say enough

00:29:26.860 horrible things

00:29:28.080 about somebody

00:29:28.760 that they're going to go

00:29:29.620 actually

00:29:30.160 here's my epiphany

00:29:31.360 you were right all along

00:29:32.340 I will join your side

00:29:33.540 yeah I think

00:29:34.980 it's just a way of

00:29:36.140 like patting yourself

00:29:36.840 on the back isn't it

00:29:37.880 yeah

00:29:38.100 I don't know what

00:29:38.980 the emphasis was

00:29:40.480 and I think you know

00:29:41.340 it's like

00:29:41.720 I think it's like

00:29:42.380 being a tough guy

00:29:43.500 right

00:29:43.840 you know guys

00:29:44.500 who can really fight

00:29:45.220 they rarely need to tell you

00:29:46.420 that they're tough

00:29:47.700 it's the same

00:29:48.380 that's what I do mate

00:29:48.920 yeah

00:29:49.300 I've seen the tattoos

00:29:50.960 but they are flowers

00:29:51.840 so

00:29:52.080 just see that right hander

00:29:54.800 coming in

00:29:55.220 and a weird little face stroke

00:29:56.860 you know

00:29:57.240 but

00:29:58.580 I think it's the same

00:29:59.820 as if you're a good human being

00:30:01.100 you know

00:30:01.580 like

00:30:01.980 if you really

00:30:03.000 felt confident

00:30:03.860 that you're a good human being

00:30:04.840 would you need to keep going around

00:30:05.960 saying that

00:30:07.400 you know

00:30:08.880 I think

00:30:09.500 I'm a fantastic bloke

00:30:11.060 you know what I mean

00:30:11.500 I'm just fucking lovely really

00:30:12.980 but

00:30:13.320 I

00:30:14.000 what I kind of

00:30:14.960 I think what I do

00:30:16.020 in comedy sometimes

00:30:17.360 is everything you do

00:30:18.780 in comedy

00:30:19.080 is a slight amplification

00:30:20.260 of a part of you

00:30:21.080 and what I got asked

00:30:22.820 when I did Mash Report

00:30:23.500 particularly the first episode

00:30:24.640 was like

00:30:25.000 are you making it up

00:30:25.920 or do you really think

00:30:27.160 these things

00:30:27.580 do you think

00:30:27.860 well I might

00:30:28.560 like if you have a conceit

00:30:30.000 right

00:30:30.240 or a hyperbolic thought

00:30:31.860 you might not think it

00:30:32.640 all the time

00:30:33.120 but you certainly

00:30:33.620 had the thought once

00:30:34.620 so not in terms

00:30:36.420 of my overall politics

00:30:37.300 but just like

00:30:37.980 I had this idea

00:30:38.880 for the Mash Report

00:30:39.400 basically

00:30:39.780 which was

00:30:40.260 people over the age of 80

00:30:42.080 shouldn't get NHS treatment

00:30:43.400 because I just thought

00:30:44.200 they're just

00:30:45.300 they're just taking the piss

00:30:46.680 and

00:30:46.960 and you know

00:30:48.560 I still

00:30:48.920 even as I say it

00:30:49.860 I'm like

00:30:50.300 you know

00:30:51.000 it is a sledgehammer

00:30:52.100 cracking up

00:30:52.720 but

00:30:52.960 like

00:30:53.860 I just don't

00:30:54.600 you know

00:30:55.260 why are you still

00:30:55.960 knocking around for

00:30:56.980 you know

00:30:57.440 it's one way

00:30:58.060 I'm not saying

00:30:59.180 I don't know

00:31:00.100 the logistics

00:31:00.940 that they would just be

00:31:01.860 but maybe they'd be

00:31:02.500 a bit more careful

00:31:03.180 I don't know

00:31:03.940 I don't know

00:31:04.560 I'm sort of appalling

00:31:06.460 myself as I say it

00:31:07.340 but this was the point

00:31:08.320 I did have the thought

00:31:09.640 right

00:31:09.920 so I thought

00:31:10.200 that's funny

00:31:10.700 it's funny that I thought

00:31:11.580 that right

00:31:12.040 and so

00:31:12.760 sometimes with my comedy

00:31:13.920 it's like

00:31:14.300 you give

00:31:14.800 you give the inner bastard a little bit of a run around right you know it's not it's not a fake

00:31:19.620 part of you it might not be the total part of you but what happens when you get critiqued by people

00:31:24.160 especially if they're not disposed to your comedy they'll they'll they'll point out that fact well

00:31:28.280 you don't really think that so you know you're a fake or something you think well on the left

00:31:32.300 commit i mean if you look at like stewart lee and frankie boyer who don't get me wrong i think

00:31:35.940 they're brilliant you know i mean brilliant political comics but they so much of it is

00:31:39.720 hyperbole right but if you already agree with that point of view so if somebody's talking about

00:31:44.640 Like, you know, post-Brexit, we'll all be eating rats.

00:31:47.040 You're like, yeah, fucking stick it to them.

00:31:48.600 You go, well, no one really thinks we're going to be eating rats, right?

00:31:51.300 But that's just a way of making a point.

00:31:53.440 But that's comedy.

00:31:54.260 You have to exaggerate to make things funny, right?

00:31:56.600 Yeah, sometimes.

00:31:57.700 Yeah, sometimes.

00:31:58.520 And the funny thing about that routine was my wife's granddad,

00:32:02.580 who's still about, he was like, you know, he's like,

00:32:04.600 yeah, I don't know why I'm still fucking...

00:32:06.100 You know what I mean?

00:32:06.820 He goes, it's just boring.

00:32:08.180 And he goes, you know.

00:32:09.140 And then we got chatting, and that was where the line went.

00:32:10.920 You know, I think there was a line I said about, you know,

00:32:12.560 sitting around for another golden year in the day room

00:32:15.300 watching Cash in the Attic

00:32:16.340 when actually we want your cash that's in the Attic.

00:32:19.020 That's the idea.

00:32:20.820 But yeah, mostly people get it.

00:32:24.440 I do think that there is this thing that I have had

00:32:26.660 whereas if people just don't like the idea of me,

00:32:29.680 it's like, because I'm working class as well

00:32:31.500 because of the way I communicate,

00:32:32.800 some people see it as a bit aggressive.

00:32:34.420 I just see it as I grew up in South London.

00:32:37.260 Well, you had to have a little bit of an age

00:32:39.740 so you didn't get decked at school.

00:32:41.280 yeah I did get

00:32:42.180 decked at school

00:32:42.880 a lot

00:32:43.640 so did I mate

00:32:44.440 often by

00:32:45.200 often by girls actually

00:32:46.360 I went to school in

00:32:47.060 I went to school in

00:32:49.180 Wandsworth for a while

00:32:50.160 called Southfields

00:32:50.940 did you know that

00:32:51.580 yeah yeah

00:32:51.760 my mate taught

00:32:52.340 I don't know what it's like now

00:32:53.380 problem with schools these days

00:32:54.480 if you don't mention them

00:32:55.160 for 20 years

00:32:55.660 someone will go

00:32:55.960 yeah that's a really good school now

00:32:57.020 so all your war stories

00:32:58.080 are fucked off out of it

00:32:59.060 and you're like

00:32:59.960 yeah and then I'll tell you

00:33:00.840 another story about

00:33:01.780 getting beat up by girls

00:33:02.860 and you'll be like

00:33:03.500 no no it's a really respected

00:33:04.540 you know faith school now

00:33:06.100 and uh

00:33:06.580 but um

00:33:07.980 but yeah

00:33:08.760 so I'm just

00:33:09.240 I don't know what we're talking about

00:33:10.340 I've lurched back into the memories of,

00:33:12.460 I can't remember, her name's Lorraine something.

00:33:13.860 Being beaten up by a girl, yeah.

00:33:15.340 It's so humiliating, because you know you're raised that way

00:33:17.340 by your parents who never hit a girl,

00:33:18.820 but it's really difficult when a girl's literally

00:33:20.620 kicking the shit out of you.

00:33:21.740 I'm not talking about slams,

00:33:22.980 I'm talking about actually landing shots,

00:33:24.820 do you know what I mean?

00:33:25.820 And at the point where she landed one of them,

00:33:27.300 I was like, that was a good punch.

00:33:28.540 It was really proper, like landed square on the jaw.

00:33:31.780 Yeah, it's gonna be...

00:33:32.980 You would get beaten up by a girl called Lorraine as well.

00:33:35.500 It's a good old fashioned South London woman.

00:33:37.460 Lorraine from Wandsworth.

00:33:38.540 Yeah.

00:33:40.340 Well, I was going to take you back to a more serious point

00:33:43.080 about voices like yours now being heard.

00:33:45.620 Leo Kearse, the bright-wing comedian,

00:33:47.400 is starting to get a bit of traction.

00:33:49.760 Do you think we're kind of past the point

00:33:52.380 where we were so polarised that we couldn't listen to the other side

00:33:55.160 and now voices like yours are going to start to lead to a bit of a rebalancing?

00:33:59.500 I think that for us, there's still, I would imagine,

00:34:03.160 the vast majority of people in this country,

00:34:05.200 because obviously most of them won't have heard of me,

00:34:06.720 if you say a Tory comedian, they'll go, what?

00:34:08.140 I mean, that's still be, you know, you still, I've seen like my, the flyering team that I have in Edinburgh when they're selling it to people.

00:34:13.320 That's still the reaction, you know, so I've, and also at the time that I'm, I'm getting on some of these shows, the overall audience for a lot of mainstream BBC comedies, you know, I mean, compared to the, I mean, a lot of the Apollo now gets what, just over a million, you know, a lot of comedy shows get around, the good ones get around that mark when they were clocking in at four or six million once upon a time.

00:34:32.000 So, you know, the idea that you can completely change people's opinions with one...

00:34:36.880 You know, stuff sitting around online actually surprised me.

00:34:39.460 That actually, just getting your clips up there, you know, on my YouTube channel.

00:34:44.620 But, you know, just leaving it there and letting that stuff grow as well.

00:34:48.880 And I think that for the average punter in the public, you know, balance is a part of life.

00:34:53.600 It's only within our world that the idea of somebody having right of centre views

00:34:56.900 or being a leave vote in comedy was weird.

00:34:59.060 And that's what I found, actually.

00:35:00.260 After the leave vote, I was doing the cutting edge two nights later at the comedy store.

00:35:04.120 And obviously, the majority of that panel were sort of left-leaning, remain voters.

00:35:08.100 And we got well with us.

00:35:08.980 You know, we had a good conversation backstage.

00:35:11.500 And they were like, right, we're going to go out there and we're going to hammer you and stuff.

00:35:14.120 So they did.

00:35:15.080 But what happened was the audience was like, well, quite a lot of us voted leave.

00:35:18.520 So straight away.

00:35:20.200 And also, it worked for me because it looked like I was getting bullied.

00:35:24.380 Back to the playground with Lorraine.

00:35:25.880 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:26.800 And, yeah, so it was an early sort of, like, reminder of the sheer scale of the numbers involved.

00:35:34.540 And even if there was a room of 70 people that, you know, 70% voted Remain, maybe,

00:35:39.060 all of those people have got relatives that voted Leave as well.

00:35:42.160 And they'll probably know that, you know, in the most part, they're not evil as well.

00:35:45.720 So I think that that's what's happened.

00:35:48.380 We're still in a phase of just getting to grips with this absolute reset, you know,

00:35:53.400 that's happened politically in British public life.

00:35:55.700 I think one of the great things about your voice is that, like, a lot of people in comedy just don't seem to acknowledge that your voice exists.

00:36:06.220 And especially when, you know, the echo chambers of Facebook, I thought we were going to storm it with Remain.

00:36:12.220 Yeah, well, the first one was 2015, actually, when that happened.

00:36:14.780 People were like, I can't believe that the powerful, charismatic leadership figure, Ed Miliband, isn't Prime Minister of Britain.

00:36:21.080 I always thought with Miliband, it was him that was, you know,

00:36:23.280 right from when he got the job.

00:36:25.020 In any culture, in any civilised society,

00:36:28.040 leadership is something you expect, you know,

00:36:30.240 whether it's irrational or not.

00:36:31.840 And he just wasn't the guy.

00:36:33.580 I mean, in so many elections, being prime ministerial is a big deal.

00:36:39.320 Part of the reason that Theresa May didn't get a majority last year

00:36:42.300 was because she didn't seem prime ministerial.

00:36:44.180 So, like a lot of things, I wasn't shocked that the Tories won a majority.

00:36:48.760 I think the echo chamber thing

00:36:50.820 I think the people

00:36:51.760 are conscious of it now more

00:36:53.100 although I've actually

00:36:54.540 started to like

00:36:55.120 the echo chamber thing

00:36:55.900 I think

00:36:56.140 I've started to create

00:36:57.660 one of my own

00:36:58.200 and I've sort of thought

00:36:58.700 you know

00:36:58.900 it took me a while

00:37:00.940 but when you've got one

00:37:01.880 I mean this is nice

00:37:02.720 it is very nice

00:37:03.660 like with the show

00:37:04.400 that we do

00:37:04.880 we have a lot of people

00:37:05.780 who think in a similar way

00:37:06.960 yeah it's lovely

00:37:07.620 and it's very nice

00:37:08.600 and you can see

00:37:09.160 why it's so comforting

00:37:10.040 but actually I was thinking

00:37:11.740 Ed Miliband

00:37:12.280 is exactly the kind of guy

00:37:13.460 you see on the playground

00:37:14.280 beaten up by a girl

00:37:15.340 yes

00:37:16.720 he's quite tall though

00:37:18.700 Ed, quite rangy.

00:37:20.300 If he just sticks them,

00:37:22.040 I'm not, by the way,

00:37:22.940 suggesting...

00:37:23.560 Is that what you're saying?

00:37:24.260 No, no, I'm not suggesting

00:37:25.220 the strategy is to...

00:37:26.760 We're going to clip that

00:37:27.360 by the way,

00:37:27.940 that's going to go viral.

00:37:28.700 Jeff Norcott says

00:37:29.660 Ed Miliband beats up

00:37:30.840 young girls.

00:37:31.500 Yes, I'm saying he could.

00:37:37.080 Oh, man.

00:37:37.960 You know what struck me?

00:37:38.900 I remember watching you

00:37:39.900 on Live at the Apollo

00:37:40.740 and this is the shy

00:37:42.340 Tory phenomenon.

00:37:43.300 You go,

00:37:43.860 how many people in here

00:37:44.660 voted,

00:37:45.260 I can't remember

00:37:45.740 whether it was voted Tory

00:37:46.620 or voted Lee.

00:37:47.260 Yeah, voted Tory.

00:37:48.100 Voted Tory.

00:37:48.700 And in a room of, what, how many thousand people?

00:37:50.940 3,000.

00:37:51.300 3,000 people, you've got, like, three cheers or something.

00:37:53.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:54.400 You know, I've got to be honest, I suppose, for me, that's great for me.

00:37:57.160 Of course.

00:37:57.520 Because it makes it look, you know...

00:37:59.000 I did say to them beforehand, if loads of people cheer, can you edit that out?

00:38:02.840 Because I'm going to act.

00:38:03.920 But it's true, no, in that room, yeah, there wasn't, like, a big...

00:38:07.500 And that was, you know, last year, and that was why things were so tense.

00:38:10.620 And it's not...

00:38:11.500 It's weird, because somebody said to me about, the other day,

00:38:13.160 about, like, a kind of, like, a balls-out manoeuvre.

00:38:15.980 I didn't...

00:38:16.340 I don't know why.

00:38:16.880 I didn't really think of it at the time as being like that

00:38:19.820 because I'd just been saying that at the Edinburgh Fringe and stuff.

00:38:22.060 But when I look back on it, in a room that size,

00:38:24.600 and the gig, you know, it's live at the Apollo,

00:38:25.940 biggest gig, closest thing,

00:38:27.820 any comic gets to playing in an FA Cup final, right?

00:38:30.280 Yeah.

00:38:30.600 And then I did the equivalent of like a half-time

00:38:33.680 just bringing on the tricky little winger,

00:38:35.300 you know, while it's still, you know,

00:38:36.900 while the game was still close.

00:38:38.280 But the audience, I think most of it, right,

00:38:41.220 and this is true of all comedy,

00:38:42.340 the audience are looking for a sense of who you are.

00:38:44.780 Is this person a bad person?

00:38:46.880 you know a nasty person you know what's the tone of this comedy i don't want to get into this whole

00:38:50.920 punching up or punching down thing because i think we've got too locked into the idea that

00:38:55.100 again like it's a binary thing i think it's far more complicated than that and to be honest i'd

00:38:59.100 rather like punch you know sort of sideways 360 yeah you know i think it's possible to play with

00:39:05.160 those boundaries but i think if they get the sense of you that you're not an arsehole some of them

00:39:09.900 would have thought i was an arsehole do you know what the funny thing about that live of the apollo

00:39:13.080 appearance and in some ways like

00:39:15.000 an indication of the age that we live in

00:39:16.820 the biggest push back I got off that

00:39:18.640 online, so I mentioned

00:39:21.040 I did a joke about concentration camps

00:39:22.940 as well, I talked

00:39:25.040 about being a Tory and stuff

00:39:26.200 I did a routine, a really innocuous routine

00:39:29.220 about my wife taking shoes on holiday

00:39:31.060 and there was

00:39:32.660 I got these responses quite standard

00:39:34.900 was about you can't say that about women

00:39:36.480 I'm not saying that about women, I'm saying that

00:39:38.960 about my wife, you know I've become quite

00:39:40.820 cautious, one thing I did listen to from Feminist

00:39:42.920 was like you extrapolate about all women

00:39:45.040 sometimes you lose people

00:39:46.000 because they think well that's not me

00:39:46.920 so I thought alright

00:39:47.440 if I talk about my experience

00:39:48.840 no one can ever tell me

00:39:50.180 that I'm wrong about my own relationship

00:39:52.760 as long as I know I'm being honest

00:39:54.000 you're so naive

00:39:55.000 yeah yeah

00:39:55.540 no you're wrong about this

00:39:57.160 you're such a whore

00:39:58.700 and then the thing is

00:39:59.580 I think like now you're slating my missus

00:40:01.020 because you're going like

00:40:01.700 you're saying oh this is a whorey concept

00:40:03.460 of what a woman is

00:40:04.220 I'm going this is how my marriage is

00:40:06.660 it might just be that you know

00:40:08.700 and you know yeah

00:40:09.880 a controversial concept

00:40:11.200 that broadly speaking

00:40:12.900 there are quite a lot of women

00:40:14.500 that like shoes

00:40:15.480 this is the problem

00:40:17.440 with like the modern

00:40:18.100 online communities

00:40:18.760 they make it easy

00:40:19.560 for me to seem controversial

00:40:20.760 they make it way too easy

00:40:22.200 because I'm not controversial

00:40:23.540 I don't think

00:40:24.320 you know I've got like

00:40:25.340 you know my views are

00:40:26.020 more or less

00:40:26.580 if you look at the Overton window

00:40:27.660 like I'm almost bang

00:40:29.020 in the middle of it right

00:40:29.860 and yet

00:40:31.420 I come off like

00:40:32.480 some sort of edgelord

00:40:33.600 for saying

00:40:35.600 and this is what I say

00:40:36.540 to them sometimes

00:40:37.160 because when I was

00:40:38.260 on Mock the Week

00:40:38.760 the other week

00:40:39.160 so I did a few jokes

00:40:40.080 about Remainers

00:40:41.240 and they all made the edit right

00:40:42.260 So when it went out, obviously, there was a certain kind of person

00:40:45.340 that was a bit surprised, a bit triggered, a bit shocked.

00:40:48.880 And then so, like, I was just having a chat with somebody,

00:40:50.940 and they were saying, yeah, when I read the Twitter stuff,

00:40:52.380 I went on it thinking, what did he say?

00:40:54.600 And, of course, what I said wasn't that, you know, sort of adversarial.

00:40:58.240 It was just a couple of jokes about the idea of a second referendum.

00:41:01.800 But what happens is people, so if, like, a tweet about me, you know,

00:41:06.020 like, gets a lot of likes, then people will see that.

00:41:08.040 Then they'll think, fuck, who is this guy?

00:41:09.800 This guy's out there.

00:41:11.420 He's mental.

00:41:12.260 And then the only thing that annoys me about it is the idea that they come to my shows

00:41:17.760 and they're expecting me to talk about, you know, sort of dropkicking a toddler or something.

00:41:21.680 And the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, I see myself as, you know,

00:41:26.220 with reasonably familiar opinions, you know?

00:41:31.100 But ultimately it's the age we're living in, isn't it?

00:41:33.400 Where, you know, you can say, like, the amount of things, like, I'm pro-fascist apparently

00:41:39.320 because of this podcast.

00:41:41.000 you can say something

00:41:42.500 that

00:41:42.760 you see the way

00:41:43.660 I just checked you out

00:41:44.440 this is how it works

00:41:45.720 you said pro-fascist

00:41:46.560 I went like

00:41:47.120 yeah

00:41:49.360 but that's the way

00:41:51.600 that's the way

00:41:52.420 it's gone

00:41:52.740 on what base

00:41:54.240 I'm just interested

00:41:54.820 on what base

00:41:55.360 is you pro-fascist

00:41:56.220 well I just got like

00:41:57.180 a few Hitler posters mate

00:41:58.400 but no

00:41:58.860 yeah a bit of

00:41:59.660 second world war

00:42:00.420 memorabilia

00:42:01.100 yeah marching up

00:42:01.960 and down with my

00:42:02.660 big helmets

00:42:03.780 MG42

00:42:05.840 yeah

00:42:06.420 but I just think

00:42:08.780 it's when you

00:42:09.880 say something

00:42:10.860 like for instance

00:42:11.700 I don't agree with Corbyn

00:42:12.980 I would never vote for Corbyn

00:42:14.500 I'm not hard left

00:42:16.200 I'm sort of left centre

00:42:17.460 centre left

00:42:18.080 soft left

00:42:18.580 and because I disagree

00:42:20.040 and say I would never vote

00:42:21.500 for somebody like Jeremy Corbyn

00:42:23.800 all of a sudden

00:42:24.820 that means you're not part of my camp

00:42:26.340 you are the enemy

00:42:27.460 therefore you are a fascist

00:42:29.020 I actually don't think

00:42:30.340 it's about that at all

00:42:31.400 I think the reason that

00:42:32.640 we get called

00:42:33.740 a right wing podcast

00:42:35.000 or a fascist

00:42:36.000 or Nazi apologist

00:42:37.040 is not because of what you say

00:42:38.660 or because of what I say

00:42:39.620 is because we talk to people from both sides.

00:42:42.300 Yes, yeah.

00:42:42.800 That's why.

00:42:43.700 So if we have someone who's a little bit controversial...

00:42:46.720 Well, you talk to people from both sides of the Nazi debate.

00:42:49.020 Yeah, the Nazi debate, yeah.

00:42:50.620 There's only one side to that debate, and one side won't.

00:42:53.760 But no, we talk to people on the right, we talk to people on the left,

00:42:56.820 and I think it's that, it's the fact that we talk about free speech a lot.

00:43:01.860 Yeah.

00:43:02.280 I think that's the number one issue that makes you a fascist now.

00:43:04.940 That is a problem, and I think, you know,

00:43:06.220 we talk about the tone of the debate on the hard left

00:43:08.820 is some of these terms like fascist, racist and stuff

00:43:11.560 is that they seem to think that they're like,

00:43:14.780 you know in Karate Kid, the crane kick.

00:43:16.680 They seem to think that that's always going to be

00:43:18.360 the conversation ender.

00:43:19.460 And once upon a time, possibly it was.

00:43:21.440 Problem is, you keep rolling it out every single day

00:43:24.100 on Twitter, every single day online

00:43:26.700 for people that patently aren't.

00:43:28.580 It's such serious words.

00:43:29.740 It's such an awful thing to be,

00:43:31.580 like a genuine biological racist.

00:43:34.040 It's just probably the worst sort of view

00:43:35.700 that you could hold.

00:43:36.800 So once people see that applied to people that patently aren't,

00:43:41.000 then the word has already lost its power.

00:43:43.440 And that's what I think that they're running up against now.

00:43:45.140 And in a way, and this is a problem for the left,

00:43:47.800 is that some legitimate...

00:43:50.140 I mean, it is very much the boy who cried wolf, isn't it?

00:43:53.100 Some legitimate criticisms of people,

00:43:55.580 and now people are able to sort of shrug them off

00:43:57.280 because they're now looking at it in a litany of things

00:43:59.760 where people have...

00:44:00.560 Again, it's this thing hyperbole.

00:44:02.160 People have tried to get an idea across the line with emotion

00:44:05.940 and guilt trips rather than with reason and it's a good example of what you're talking about because

00:44:11.840 like every time francis calls tommy robinson far right on our show we get a bunch of people going

00:44:17.360 he's not far right he's just a you know a normal guy and you go well i mean if he's not far right

00:44:21.960 what right and i think the reason people now think that way is because that label of racist

00:44:29.260 fascist has been so debased that no one really knows what a racist is anymore yes you know i

00:44:35.460 Yeah, and I think as well, like,

00:44:37.780 and this is one of the problems in public life,

00:44:39.820 is like, do you remember when people get accused of being racist?

00:44:42.200 No one ever owned it either, you know,

00:44:44.200 and I'm not, this is not a proven of racism,

00:44:45.980 but people say that things that are patently fucking racist, right,

00:44:50.540 or being caught saying stuff that's racist,

00:44:52.820 like, you know, Mel Gibson, I mean, those phone calls,

00:44:54.740 if you've never, I mean, they're just mind-blowing, right?

00:44:57.860 But if someone just come out and just said, you know,

00:45:00.700 yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they never say it,

00:45:02.860 and not only that, they always go to the opposite of saying,

00:45:05.220 I'm the least racist person

00:45:06.460 you ain't the least

00:45:08.280 you know what I mean

00:45:09.720 you don't use those words Mel

00:45:11.100 if you're not a little bit

00:45:12.540 you know

00:45:12.940 I'm just saying

00:45:13.520 it's a spectrum

00:45:14.180 and you know

00:45:14.720 you're closer to that end

00:45:15.540 than you are to that end

00:45:17.180 so I think on both sides

00:45:18.700 it's been fudged right

00:45:19.720 you get the people

00:45:20.360 that are calling people

00:45:20.900 who are racist

00:45:21.300 that possibly aren't racist

00:45:22.280 and then people

00:45:22.980 who are clearly racist

00:45:23.900 like you say

00:45:24.620 going

00:45:25.260 no no

00:45:26.260 me

00:45:26.640 me

00:45:27.480 you ask anyone

00:45:28.640 in the tiny community

00:45:29.780 of my wife

00:45:31.200 right

00:45:31.480 and they'll tell you

00:45:33.820 I'm a lovely bloke

00:45:35.140 You know, a person that possibly depends on me being in work,

00:45:38.420 weirdly, they will support, you know, my character.

00:45:42.140 Now, where we are politically,

00:45:44.780 and with Corbyn so far to the left,

00:45:47.720 and I'll be honest with you, the Tories, where they are,

00:45:51.340 do you think the Tories are going to win the next election?

00:45:53.380 And do you think, more importantly,

00:45:54.600 do you think they're missing a trick with voters like me

00:45:57.260 who are drifting around in the centre going,

00:45:59.380 I've got no political home to go to?

00:46:01.140 Well, they are trying to pitch for you.

00:46:02.840 I mean like

00:46:03.400 Theresa May

00:46:04.460 did that one recently

00:46:05.320 where she said

00:46:05.900 you know

00:46:06.120 Labour voters

00:46:06.720 if you're not happy

00:46:07.480 with Corbyn and stuff

00:46:08.320 I think that

00:46:09.260 before anything

00:46:10.560 is known about Brexit

00:46:11.500 it's going to be hard

00:46:12.160 to make a real

00:46:12.820 land grab

00:46:13.660 for those voters

00:46:14.480 because people are

00:46:15.080 it just feels like

00:46:15.900 we're treading water

00:46:16.540 towards something

00:46:17.240 I think post that

00:46:18.120 and I think

00:46:18.800 if Brexit isn't

00:46:20.360 as bad as people

00:46:21.140 think it's going to be

00:46:21.780 and I don't think

00:46:22.340 it's even possible

00:46:23.600 that it could be

00:46:24.740 this sort of

00:46:25.300 I keep thinking

00:46:26.940 it's like

00:46:27.240 you know that

00:46:27.580 cartoon

00:46:28.260 When the Wind Blows

00:46:29.240 you know like

00:46:30.180 the one we had

00:46:30.980 about nuclear holocaust

00:46:31.980 where we go

00:46:32.400 the problem with the main cap

00:46:33.680 is if you set that there

00:46:34.680 if it comes in

00:46:35.300 anything above

00:46:36.220 this sort of like

00:46:37.860 you know

00:46:38.120 Mad Max territory

00:46:39.180 you could claim it

00:46:39.920 as a success

00:46:40.600 go well you said

00:46:42.260 we'd be eating rats

00:46:43.040 and actually

00:46:43.920 we're eating pigeons

00:46:44.800 so Brexit wins right

00:46:47.340 but once we get

00:46:48.760 beyond that point

00:46:49.420 I think that there is

00:46:50.520 and I do think

00:46:52.240 that the Tories

00:46:52.800 have a few tricks

00:46:53.720 that they can play

00:46:54.320 I think the next generation

00:46:55.340 of politicians

00:46:56.000 that they've got

00:46:56.720 are actually

00:46:57.400 will surprise people

00:46:58.300 you know

00:46:58.560 they're probably

00:46:59.320 they do need to look

00:47:00.640 at the diversity

00:47:01.300 in their own ranks

00:47:02.420 because ultimately

00:47:03.540 young voters value that

00:47:05.560 but luckily for them

00:47:07.440 they've got talented politicians

00:47:08.800 like James Cleverley

00:47:09.740 you know a lot of people

00:47:10.340 like Ruth Davidson

00:47:11.080 they've got Sajid Javid

00:47:12.640 you know

00:47:13.200 Sean Bailey Am

00:47:14.860 who's the London mayoral candidate

00:47:16.880 so I think that

00:47:18.180 the tough thing for Labour

00:47:19.780 at that point

00:47:20.400 is once you get

00:47:21.440 a more diverse

00:47:22.360 Tory front bench

00:47:23.400 some of the old cliches

00:47:24.700 aren't going to stick

00:47:25.400 you know

00:47:26.000 I mean it's like

00:47:26.760 you know if Ruth Davidson

00:47:28.420 is the leader of the Tories

00:47:29.540 what

00:47:29.800 I mean, you're a working-class lesbian.

00:47:32.120 Yeah.

00:47:32.600 What are you going to say?

00:47:33.400 Well, you were a part of the Bullingdon...

00:47:34.660 I mean, you've eaten...

00:47:35.540 Nothing.

00:47:38.400 So I think that, yeah, going forward,

00:47:40.340 I think that if the Tories can get some sort of Brexit deal

00:47:43.600 that isn't quite as catastrophic as people think,

00:47:45.640 I think that it's easier for them.

00:47:47.220 Because I don't see how Labour can get rid of Corbyn

00:47:49.520 for the next two or three years.

00:47:51.000 And while he's in power...

00:47:52.640 I mean, you know, I've been doing this tour and stuff,

00:47:54.100 and you go up to the North West,

00:47:55.320 there's a lot of Labour voters,

00:47:56.480 socialists that just don't like the man.

00:47:57.900 so he is

00:47:59.660 a toxic figure

00:48:00.620 you know

00:48:00.980 to some people

00:48:01.700 but it's very hard

00:48:02.900 for them to get rid of it

00:48:03.800 so I think

00:48:04.420 the Tories have got a chance

00:48:05.480 to pivot

00:48:05.980 sooner than Labour have

00:48:07.580 we talk about the left a lot

00:48:09.060 and we

00:48:09.380 you know

00:48:10.080 a lot of our guests

00:48:10.740 will criticise the far left

00:48:11.980 and you've done

00:48:12.740 and we do

00:48:13.320 because it's fun

00:48:14.960 and they're nuts

00:48:16.220 and they're fucking mental

00:48:17.240 some of them

00:48:17.700 the far left

00:48:18.340 you can't say mental

00:48:19.200 that's offensive

00:48:19.800 oh right

00:48:21.120 I forgot about that

00:48:22.200 yeah

00:48:22.460 suffering from severe

00:48:24.540 mental health issues

00:48:25.360 well mate

00:48:25.700 both our comedy careers

00:48:26.820 are pretty much over

00:48:27.460 on the basis of this show, so that's fine.

00:48:29.940 I was going to ask about the right, though,

00:48:32.900 because the far left has gone mental,

00:48:35.400 but the far right is gaining traction.

00:48:38.640 It certainly feels like it.

00:48:39.900 I mean, we mentioned Tommy Robinson.

00:48:41.840 The guy's got a million subscribers on YouTube.

00:48:44.320 He's all over, everywhere.

00:48:46.680 The UKIP are talking about bringing him into the party.

00:48:49.580 So there does seem to be that movement that is picking up.

00:48:54.240 And I imagine someone like you who's centre-right

00:48:56.160 would be quite concerned.

00:48:57.460 Of course, of course.

00:48:58.200 And in many ways, like, there's one of my big concerns about a second referendum

00:49:02.700 and about the need for there to be a meaningful Brexit

00:49:05.920 is because if there's not, the narrative for the far right becomes so easy, doesn't it?

00:49:11.060 I mean, like, in terms of a pitch that this affected you, say,

00:49:13.800 it's simply this, like, they didn't listen to you, we will.

00:49:16.400 That's all they have to say, you know?

00:49:17.740 You told them what you wanted, right?

00:49:20.120 You know, there was a vote, you know, and it hasn't been actioned.

00:49:24.000 You know, especially, I mean, like, you know, it's one thing of fudging Brexit,

00:49:26.460 but some people

00:49:27.020 I mean this is just

00:49:27.620 I find amazing people

00:49:28.400 I just think we should

00:49:29.280 just stop it

00:49:29.940 just stop it

00:49:30.960 it's like you know

00:49:32.300 when there's people

00:49:32.740 like

00:49:32.920 just like a really

00:49:35.380 harassed mother

00:49:36.080 with a headache

00:49:36.700 you know

00:49:36.980 just Nicholas stop it

00:49:38.200 with all the Brexit

00:49:39.300 it's giving mother a headache

00:49:40.140 just

00:49:40.400 it's like it's this bad thing

00:49:41.960 like getting passed over

00:49:43.060 for a promotion

00:49:43.700 that they can just make

00:49:44.520 go away

00:49:45.040 you can't

00:49:46.500 you have to deal with

00:49:47.560 this hot potato

00:49:48.220 and if you don't

00:49:49.360 that is the problem

00:49:50.700 and you look

00:49:51.160 it's scary

00:49:51.740 like I watched that

00:49:52.460 I watched that film yesterday

00:49:54.380 by Paul Greengrass

00:49:55.600 22nd of July about Anders Breivik

00:49:58.360 and you think this is going back to 2011

00:49:59.980 and this is broadly a factually

00:50:02.260 based film and about that

00:50:04.140 rise you know and it

00:50:05.780 would have only carried on

00:50:08.020 and

00:50:08.960 the need to engage with those concerns

00:50:12.340 at the very least because

00:50:13.740 there's a lot of people

00:50:15.780 that feel that way and

00:50:17.920 if you literally ignore

00:50:19.720 a democratic mandate I don't know what

00:50:22.140 happens next genuinely and I think

00:50:23.960 know what people could end up with you know people on the center left and left thinking that you know

00:50:28.360 and people like myself um thinking that ukip then we think oh ukip were the good old days of you know

00:50:34.220 at least ukip were embarrassed about their racism at least at least they would pretend that they

00:50:38.040 didn't say stuff you know what i mean they'd be you know you know when people there was a difference

00:50:41.340 between like the ira and al-qaeda and then people say oh the ira were the gentleman bombers right

00:50:45.760 so ukip would have been the racist that would phone in a warning yeah um whereas you might end

00:50:51.900 up with something you know and people express a lot of people left you know they they're worried

00:50:56.260 by somebody like tommy robinson but you know in the future it alarms me the idea that there could

00:51:01.520 be people actually maybe not mps but there could be people sitting on councils and stuff like you

00:51:08.120 know i mean it happened and the idea as well like the sort of brexit started racism in this country

00:51:14.020 i think that it's so it's so ignorant because if you look at like but you know back into the

00:51:19.440 noughties we had didn't we have a bmp councillor we did in burnley yeah you know in the early part

00:51:24.300 of this decade the edl were formed and there were there were marches so and this was before a

00:51:29.100 referendum was even on the table so yeah it may have brought some and there's no doubt that you

00:51:33.780 know there is a branch of brexit thinking that comes from that but the idea that this is where

00:51:37.580 it began i i think is is is is another way of ignoring a really tricky issue i agree and do

00:51:43.880 Do you think, just to finish up on Brexit,

00:51:47.280 but do you think when you have people like Katie Hopkins

00:51:49.760 coming out and peeing bro Brexit,

00:51:52.000 what it actually did was taint and diminish

00:51:54.000 what the movement was about?

00:51:56.040 Yeah, well, I mean, one of the tricky things

00:51:58.380 for everybody about Brexit

00:51:59.400 is you end up standing on a really long platform

00:52:02.160 waiting for a train with, like, you know,

00:52:04.240 in any pack train there's going to be some pricks on it, right?

00:52:06.620 Yeah.

00:52:06.740 And, you know, so, but that doesn't mean, like,

00:52:10.480 you still believe in the destination.

00:52:12.480 And it's true for, you know, and I know for a fact there were some people that were nodding along to David Cameron during the, you know, the referendum campaign.

00:52:21.060 Some people who've despised Tony Blair for years, but, you know, he's a leading light.

00:52:24.740 It's made us, it's forced us all into some really quite uncomfortable alliances, but that's because it's a binary idea.

00:52:31.140 It was always going to do that.

00:52:32.740 And, yeah, there are, you know, but there are plenty of personalities involved in the remote.

00:52:37.820 I mean, Andrew Adonis.

00:52:38.940 I don't want to keep going.

00:52:40.500 I cannot believe he's a real person.

00:52:43.060 I don't know if you saw he did this video, right?

00:52:44.920 He said, like, you know, we've got to get out of the metropolitan bubble,

00:52:47.700 you know, and I want to get some answers and stuff.

00:52:50.480 So he goes to this video, right?

00:52:51.840 And he literally speaks to, like, two lead votes for a minute.

00:52:54.080 He goes, hmm, hmm.

00:52:54.960 And then he's, like, hanging around with these really young people

00:52:56.940 in a playground, and they're, like, going,

00:52:58.660 I think Brexit's going to ruin my life.

00:53:00.160 He's like, yeah.

00:53:01.100 So in this two-and-a-half-minute video,

00:53:03.120 what he claims he's going to do on his kind of, like,

00:53:06.580 journey outside you know outside the metropolitan elite he does it for about four seconds

00:53:11.060 and he i think he's a divisive figure i mean yeah katie hopkins is divisive in

00:53:15.560 in a very obvious way i think something like andrew adonis is not not to that degree but

00:53:21.420 certainly you know some of the patronizing way that he talks about leave voters is uh he doesn't

00:53:27.800 you know maybe he doesn't realize how triggering that can be and i do get sometimes when i hear

00:53:33.080 remainers, especially in

00:53:34.840 metropolitan London

00:53:37.220 and the way they talk about

00:53:38.500 believe voters, they go, oh no, you just don't like

00:53:40.940 working class people, that's what it is

00:53:42.880 and that's a stereotype that they

00:53:45.160 like to conjure in their heads

00:53:47.160 sorry about that mate

00:53:48.100 it's just how I feel

00:53:51.060 there are, you know, it has

00:53:53.180 brought that issue, and this is one of the reasons

00:53:54.880 I always thought right from the beginning

00:53:56.680 I might be proved wrong because of the way that

00:53:58.620 negotiations have been handled by the Tories, but

00:54:00.780 But I always thought it would prove more of a problem for the Labour Party

00:54:03.440 because it would kind of lance this boil of what the party really is,

00:54:07.380 what the majority of their MPs are and how they feel about the world

00:54:10.900 and that other part of the Labour Party and bring it out into the open.

00:54:14.920 And certainly in the first six months after, it seemed to be, weirdly,

00:54:19.460 they were cast in the role of sort of left-wing patricians, weren't they?

00:54:23.000 Yeah.

00:54:23.460 Sort of saying, no, no, we shouldn't have had the vote.

00:54:26.020 You shouldn't have been allowed to vote. Leave it to us.

00:54:27.900 We'll sort of take care of stuff. You just return us to power.

00:54:30.780 And, you know, we'll take care of things.

00:54:33.340 And I think that a lot of people have evolved their thinking since.

00:54:36.040 A lot of people on the left, you know, there's, don't get me wrong,

00:54:38.600 there's plenty of old-fashioned, you know.

00:54:40.220 I mean, that was one of the interesting things about the vote

00:54:42.440 was that, you know, people like Dennis Skinner, you know,

00:54:45.620 Tony Benn and stuff, people just conveniently forgot

00:54:48.200 that there was plenty of very solid left-wing reasons for voting Leave.

00:54:52.880 Well, Corbyn himself probably would have wanted to vote.

00:54:57.100 It's so weird, isn't it?

00:54:58.460 I mean, it's such a simple thing, but to stop and think,

00:55:00.780 that you've got a prime minister who's a Remainer

00:55:03.520 that's trying to make leaders.

00:55:05.140 And you've got an opposition leader who is a lever

00:55:07.480 that's sort of being pulled towards.

00:55:08.980 It's so, in a weird way,

00:55:10.980 they're like the only two people in the world

00:55:12.400 that understand one another.

00:55:13.740 Yeah.

00:55:14.020 Like, do you ever think, like,

00:55:16.060 you know, like one of those old toy action men,

00:55:18.400 they just ring up and go,

00:55:19.640 oh my God, what a day we've had.

00:55:21.320 You know, they just get fucking hammered together,

00:55:23.100 like in secret.

00:55:24.460 It's very strange once you actually stop

00:55:26.600 and reflect on what's happening.

00:55:30.040 But you know what I do think as well, I do think that a deal will happen in the end.

00:55:34.800 And I think that what will happen then is the press will continually report on any evidence that things are going wrong or right.

00:55:42.500 I think most of British people will go, OK, I'd really like to talk about something else for a while.

00:55:47.740 I'd really like to give it a year or two and just see how it goes because we've done a lot of this.

00:55:54.120 And like a lot of lead voters, it's not like, I think I've softened my stance a little bit in the way.

00:55:58.780 You know, I was very, you know, because when you get represented in a certain way, you know, the natural thing is to either become that thing or to be, to be resentful.

00:56:06.300 But I sort of think like, you know, it was 52, yeah, it was a close vote, you know, and, you know, ultimately you've got to move forward at some point.

00:56:14.520 And I don't think that, as part of the reason, you know, in terms of the comedy that I do, I, it would be, I could probably get a bigger audience, right?

00:56:21.040 If I was like, yeah, you Romaniac pricks and, you know, stuff like that.

00:56:24.440 And it's just not, I don't think it's constructive.

00:56:27.260 Do you know what I mean?

00:56:27.780 And I think that in a way, it's a harder thing to do to get somebody to reluctantly, who started off maybe thinking that you're a stupid racist prick, to just end up thinking that you're a stupid prick.

00:56:38.360 Well, on that positive note, it's time for us to wrap up.

00:56:40.820 So the last question we always ask, Geoff, is what's the one thing that no one's talking about that we should be talking about?

00:56:46.280 I think the sexualisation, the representation of men and the way that women talk about men's bodies and looks and stuff.

00:56:54.280 Because obviously there has been...

00:56:56.280 I really didn't expect that.

00:56:58.280 I'm going to be honest with you.

00:57:00.280 So Jeff is with the Men's Rights Movement.

00:57:02.280 No, no, no.

00:57:04.280 Men in this is such a shit word.

00:57:06.280 But I think that what's been happening,

00:57:08.280 there's no doubt the objectification of women is still greater.

00:57:10.280 Yeah.

00:57:12.280 And men is still less.

00:57:14.280 But if you look at the direction of travel, right,

00:57:16.280 and I've noticed this a lot in social circles and stuff,

00:57:18.280 the women are quite bold in talking about what they like about the way the men look.

00:57:21.280 It's sort of like they're experimenting with a certain liberty,

00:57:24.280 like Poldark and stuff.

00:57:25.280 I even heard on Radio 5 Live, the film review programme,

00:57:29.900 and they were talking about Henry Cavill.

00:57:32.720 These were two female hosts and guests.

00:57:35.520 They were like, well, you know, Henry Cavill's there,

00:57:37.080 so that brightens up the place.

00:57:38.180 And I was thinking, that is literally the kind of stuff

00:57:40.820 that was said in the 70s by men, brightens up the place.

00:57:43.440 And I don't mind, because I've grown up in an age

00:57:46.160 where there probably was a massive imbalance.

00:57:48.300 But I do think that, you know, if we had my son,

00:57:50.440 who's two and a half now, he'll grow up in that age

00:57:53.020 where it would have gone full circle,

00:57:54.820 where he'll be doing a bit of weight instead of start, you know, work,

00:57:58.020 and then a woman will just smack him on the arse and he'll go, you know,

00:58:00.880 actually, I don't feel comfortable with that level of contact.

00:58:04.440 And I think that if you just look at the direction of travel,

00:58:06.960 I mean, I've done a couple of corporate gigs recently.

00:58:11.140 This is a bit tricky to talk about.

00:58:12.900 Where I was, you know, you get guidelines, right?

00:58:15.040 And, you know, just be careful around issues of Me Too and feminism

00:58:18.180 and stuff like that.

00:58:19.220 And then you're on stage posing for photos

00:58:21.060 and you've got a woman grabbing your arse.

00:58:22.460 and then you mention it afterwards

00:58:24.460 and everyone laughs

00:58:25.260 you know

00:58:25.840 that's fine

00:58:26.500 look I don't feel under threat

00:58:28.180 in that situation

00:58:29.300 but I think it's not an issue

00:58:30.260 perhaps for me

00:58:30.920 it's probably an issue

00:58:31.800 15-20 years down the line

00:58:33.240 where you know

00:58:34.160 it won't be

00:58:35.120 you know seen as quite

00:58:35.980 such a playful thing

00:58:36.880 well you'd be able to do

00:58:37.840 a social media update

00:58:38.860 20 years down the line

00:58:40.020 won't you

00:58:40.500 well I told you so

00:58:41.440 yeah

00:58:41.800 and on that note

00:58:44.960 it's been a lovely interview

00:58:46.120 Geoff

00:58:46.440 was there anything

00:58:47.060 that you'd like to plug

00:58:48.020 you got your tour

00:58:49.440 yeah so

00:58:50.160 Twitter

00:58:50.660 you know

00:58:51.160 come and say hello

00:58:52.060 What's your Twitter handle?

00:58:54.020 It is Jeff Norcott

00:58:54.900 Jeff with a G

00:58:55.540 Norcott N-O-R-C-O-T-T

00:58:57.240 Most things

00:58:57.760 That's where the biggest

00:58:58.440 sort of following is

00:58:59.240 So

00:59:00.060 YouTube channel

00:59:01.260 We've got a few more

00:59:02.220 subscribers there

00:59:02.900 I need to do

00:59:03.600 more on that

00:59:04.920 And then the main thing

00:59:05.760 obviously is I'm on tour

00:59:06.660 at the moment

00:59:07.660 and right through

00:59:08.460 till the last date

00:59:09.720 of the winter bit

00:59:10.220 is December the 7th

00:59:11.040 for the Leicester Square Theatre

00:59:12.040 all around the country

00:59:13.240 and then there's one

00:59:13.800 straight date in January

00:59:14.820 in Exeter

00:59:16.060 But yeah

00:59:16.500 it's been brilliant

00:59:17.000 doing the tour as well

00:59:17.820 I think one thing

00:59:18.780 that people sometimes

00:59:19.380 think about

00:59:19.840 coming to my shows

00:59:20.600 is it's going to be

00:59:21.140 this kind of echo chamber

00:59:22.580 of like meathead like levers

00:59:24.320 but so far

00:59:25.400 I've done five dates of this leg

00:59:26.780 and it's been a majority

00:59:27.860 of Remainers

00:59:29.540 it's been a slim majority

00:59:30.480 but sometimes a slim majority

00:59:32.660 is all you need right?

00:59:33.400 Yeah absolutely

00:59:34.120 Well fantastic

00:59:34.500 if you haven't seen Jeff before

00:59:36.060 he's absolutely a fantastic comedian

00:59:37.500 check him out

00:59:38.180 we'll put a clip

00:59:39.580 for your YouTube channel

00:59:40.960 we'll make sure to connect that

00:59:42.160 we'll be all over Twitter

00:59:43.100 and everything else

00:59:43.760 Jeff and I are both

00:59:45.080 actually performing

00:59:45.680 Comedy Unleashed

00:59:46.640 in London on November 13th

00:59:48.460 so come along to that

00:59:49.680 if you're free

00:59:50.300 and as always follow us on social media at TriggerPod,

00:59:54.580 subscribe to this YouTube channel if you enjoyed it

00:59:56.940 and we'll see you next week with another brilliant episode.

00:59:59.340 Absolutely guys, and also if you're on iTunes,

01:00:01.720 leave us a nice review, that'd be amazing.

01:00:03.360 See you next week, bye bye.

TRIGGERnometry - November 05, 2018

Geoff Norcott on Conservative Comedy, Brexit & Free Speech

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript