Harry Enfield

Harry Enfield comes clean about Mandelson and Farage, and what became of Loadsamoney and the Slobs. (Not that clean.)

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Transcript

Speaker 2 0:15

You know what goes through your mind when you see somebody you haven't seen for half a lifetime? Actually, more in my case. And you think, well, they're they look older. And you think, how much water has gone under the bridge since then? That's how I feel right now. Hello, good afternoon. It's so good to see you, Harry Enfield. Thank you very much, Dennis Nordon.

Speaker 3 0:43

That was a very good impression of Dennis Nordon.

Speaker 2 0:46

I do my only one, actually.

Speaker 3 0:48

You haven't seen someone for half a lifetime. It's very good to see you, Jeremy Lee. How lovely to see you. Half a lifetime, Blimey. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:00

I want to start. Not that this is particularly planned, but I want to start with. Don't bash your microphone with your glasses. It's a very useful tip. I want to start with my not my first memory of you. Really? But one of the first. Yeah. Because we should tell our solitary listener that we happened to go to college together in York. Yes. To university. To university as they would now say. Yes. And so this story dates by I was thinking about this last night, and it is true. However contrived this sounds. Well, it really is 40 to 45 years. 40 to 5 years. Goodness me, is it there? Yes, it's not. Y So we just left. And I was booking talent for a large leisure organisation. And I took a call from a music promoter. And I was very, very, very, very green. You know where this is going?

Speaker 3 1:56

You look a bit green now, Jeremy.

Speaker 2 1:58

Thank you very much. But that's just illness. And this pain bad food and not sleeping and puppy and whatever. Anyway, we're going off the point, even for me. I had a call from a music promoter asking for a support act for the stranglers who were going on tour. And I gave you a call and I said, Would you and Brian, for that is what you were in those days, a double act called Dusty and Dick. We was. And I said, Do you fancy touring the land supporting The Stranglers? Jeremy, you've got a very good memory. Well, I carried this with me for a long time because I have owed you an apology. Why? For 40, 45 years. Five and a half years, yeah. Forty years.

Speaker 3 2:47

Because actually 41 years, I think. About 1984.

Speaker 2 2:51

My my brain doesn't work that greatly. So I went to see the show at The Dominion. Oh, yeah. And I sat in the stores. I think I was the only one sitting. Almost everybody else by then had risen. Such was their excitement. And you came on, and the audience didn't stop shouting abuse. And and gobbing. Gobbing. It was it was just horrible. And then after about an hour, as it seemed, you and Brian turned your backs, and you'd had stitched to the back of your jackets the immortal words fuck off back, you wankers.

Speaker 3 3:36

Yes, that's almost correct.

Speaker 2 3:38

It was, isn't it? I thought it was in the back.

Speaker 3 3:42

Yep. Right, okay. Because the first night we'd done it, everyone just went, fuck off, and we couldn't, and gobbled us, so we couldn't do our act. And we went, haha. And I just started doing spitting image. So it was actually 85, yes, 41. So I went to the art department there and said, Could you get us a big piece of card, like man size, but five foot by eight foot or something, and write fuck off yourselves in big print on their back. And they went, Yeah, great. So we come on with this white card and everyone would get up. Support bands for punk bands, you know, everyone just went fuck. So we let them do that for a few minutes, and then we turned it round and it went, fuck off yourselves. That sort of got their attention, and then we made them sing far arc off, you're fucking wankers, which was this Strangler's tune. So we we'd sort of divide them up and say, Now, you in the stalls here, you're far hark off. Okay, you're fucking wankers, you're on the right. So we do all that until they did it properly. So we treated them like kindergarten kids, and uh in the end they'd get it right, and then we would fuck off. And then this was the great thing, pretty much every night we'd get an uncle, which no punk band ever got. So we'd fuck off, and then you'd hear more, more, and then we go out and they go, fuck off, and go up, go, go, go, go, go, and that was that. Which is funny. Um I actually tell that story on my tour. Oh, too, your tour. Yeah, I didn't realise it came through you, Jeremy, the gig. I've forgot that bit. That's what obviously that's not going to be in the tour because no one knows who the fuck you are except for me. No, good point. Good point, good point. Um what it was was because I remember Brian and I had this place called the Tunnel Club down in Deptford, and we played there a bit, and one night Jet Black was there, the drummer of The Stranglers. And he was like very friendly to us, and I remember it happened after that, quite soon after that. Maybe they rang you up, the music promoter, and said, Do you know get us just in there? No, it wasn't like that.

Speaker 2 5:53

No, you just recommended they were looking for an act to die. Yeah. And that's where my being Green comes from. They got one. Because I didn't realise that's what you do. Yeah. We really enjoyed it. I went back at the half and I was really feeling horrible. And I said, I want to apologise. I'm I'm so sorry that I put you through this. It's just horrible. And I can't remember it was you or Brian who turned around and said, So, what do we mean? It's far and away the best show we've done so far.

Speaker 3 6:20

You know, it was like 2,000 people. Yeah. Before that, we'd only played a hundred. So now it was like, wow, and we were getting these on calls, even though the only thing that happened that was a bit sad, I think it was about 2030 dates or something, and they were pretty much night after night. And I had this suit that my dad had made for me by a tailor in Chichester in Sussex in the hope that one day I'd get a proper job. So he'd like spent all this money on this suit, and I just wore it on stage. And by the end of 30 days on tour, it was standing up in the phlegm of 30,000 wannabe punks. Because it was years after punk, so these were people who'd missed punk, and you know, their big brothers had done punk and everything, and so they were so excited, and they thought punk was all about copying. So I'm afraid that suit. Well, I sent it to Wuhan, and I don't know what happened to it after that. That's very funny.

Speaker 2 7:19

So, um I suppose the question is, what have you been up to since?

Speaker 3 7:23

Yes, I don't know.

Speaker 2 7:25

It's all a blur.

Speaker 3 7:26

What have I been up to? I've had a varied career. I'm quite lazy, Jeremy. Are you? Yeah, so I had quite a lot of success early on, and then I thought, hmm, okay, I'm just gonna settle down and then I had kids and I didn't want them involved in it all. Oh, it's all very shady and shabby, isn't it? Yeah. I didn't want them really to know what I did. In fact, that happened well, I think my son was about five, six, and he'd gone to school, then he was looking through the video cupboard. We had a cupboard with all these videos, and he went, Daddy, what's this? It was a video of Harry Enfield. And I said, Oh, that's me. He said, That's not you. It was like Kevin, the teenager on the front. Can we watch it? And I went, uh yeah. I said I asked his mum, yeah, I suppose so. Put it on. So he and his sister, and his my youngest, who was then about two, they're sitting in front of the telly watching these characters, really shocked. They're like absolute look of horror on their face that this is their dad. What the hell is happening? So then the doorbell goes, right? Open the door, it's the police. They say, Have you got this silver bike? I said, Yeah. They said, Well, it's just been nicked. I said, Oh, oh, you better come in. So they're in the hall going about the bike, and they can hear this noise of sort of you don't want to do that. Hollow, I'm Tim nice but dim with him. And I see them sort of look and see these three children in front of the telly at five in the afternoon going, looking really shocked. And I couldn't say, Look, it's the first time they've ever known what I've done. I couldn't say anything. You know, I just carried on talking about the bike, and they obviously thought that's what I did every night. You sit there and you watch me. Well, that's my excuse anyway.

Speaker 2 9:17

Let's talk about some of these characters that made you let's talk about Brian. Okay, we could talk about Brian because you've got back together with him, didn't you? In a word. Yeah. Yeah, and we're still very good friends. Because Brian, I should say.

Speaker 3 9:30

Brian Ellsley, and he was the guy. So I was at university, I was doing politics at the University of York. I had no interest in theatre. But I had a few this friend called Brian who liked theatre, and he was friends with people like Jane and Jeremy, who liked theatre. And one night this girl Jane, who I was going out with, said, Do you want to come and see a play? Oh, yes, I'd love to. I said, it was a lie, but I hated it. We went, and it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. What was it? National Theatre of Brent. Oh yeah. And it was uh Patrick Barlow and Bob Goody at the time, uh, late Bob Goody, who died a couple of years ago. And it was these two people on stage being so funny, as funny as Monty Python. And for me, nothing, you know, not nine o'clock news didn't come close, nothing came close to Python, and there they were in front of us, and it was like a punk moment. It was like, wow, they're doing this to sort of 80 people in the York Art Centre. What a fun thing! And a few weeks later, Brian said to me, Do you fancy writing a play? And I went, Yeah, because I didn't know what I was going to do after university. He said, If it works here, we'll take it to Edinburgh, and that's what happened. So Brian and I then became a double act for about three years, and then I got sort of successful doing things like spitting image, and he got a baby, and he was knackered all the time, so I chucked him. And then 20 years later, he and that baby who was born the last summer we worked together, Jamie, came up with this series called Skins, which you appeared in, yeah. And in fact, directed. I directed some, yeah, and I appeared as as Tony and and Effie's dad. And uh the first episode I had to look under the sink. It's one of my most famous moments. You can tell people's ages by what you've been in, you know, and I had to go under the sink, you know, there was a leak or something, and I was losing it. I said, Can I have my builder's ass? When I do it, they said, Yeah, and I said to make up, can you paint a really big livid boil on the top of my builder's ass? She did this amazing job, you know, had my pants half down. It took about half an hour doing all the lovely colours and livid. So I did the scene, didn't think anything else, just fun afternoon. And then the amount of people I've gone, you know, do you really have of that age, you know, who are now like in their early 30s, I suppose. Have you got still got that boil on your ass? I'll just say something else about Brian. So Brian discovered me. He said, Do you want to do that? Right? Then he did Skins. So Tony from Skins, you know, Nick Hul Nick Holt. Okay, he'd done a film, but only as a kid, and then Nick is now, you know, one of the biggest film stars in the world. Dan Kaluya, he got into write and then put him in the series, but he thought he was really, and he was such a good writer and really intelligent. And he was like 18. Dan's now got an Oscar, Dev Patel, Oscar, Joe Dempsey, Game of Thrones, you know. What's her name? Effie, my the girl who played my daughter in it, Kaya, you know, she'd um what you call it, Pirates of the Caribbean and all that. It's not a bad track record, is it, Brian Scott? It's incredible. And are we grateful to him? No.

Speaker 2 12:58

No, I mean, do you ever thank him? Do you ever Never Never.

Speaker 3 13:01

No.

Speaker 2 13:02

Well, that will be a lot.

Speaker 3 13:03

None of us do. We all get together, but we don't invite Brian because he couldn't afford his bit of the bill where we go.

Speaker 2 13:09

But he would get to hear about it.

Speaker 3 13:11

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's not true. And then he's slightly hurt.

Speaker 2 13:14

Let's talk about these um The thing is he's Scottish, Brian. The rest of us are English, you know? It's always there, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things you just can't really imagine. Third attempt. Let's talk about these early characters, shall we? The Saturday Night Live type stuff.

Speaker 3 13:31

Oh, yeah, Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 2 13:32

Because I um I was living at the bottom of Green Lanes at the time, albeit a Turkish area rather than a Greek one. But Stavros was very, very, very important to me.

Speaker 1 13:42

Was it?

Speaker 2 13:43

And yeah, more so than loads of money, actually. Yeah. Because I had lots of kebabs and no money. Maybe that was the reason. Brent all on kebabs. For the for those because I think you are welcoming him back in this tour thing of this.

Speaker 3 13:59

Yeah, I'm not really doing a routine, I'm just talking about Adam, who I got him from. But they're all, you're right, the Turkish, they're all from Cyprus, they're all Cypriots. So they all had the same accent at the time. That's what worked from, so I happened to go to school with a lot of Turkish Cypriots.

Speaker 2 14:15

Did you? I did, yeah. And um maybe that's why it resonated. Loads of money. I mean, for those who aren't familiar with loads of money, yeah. What was it all about? Money. Shall I ask that question again?

Speaker 3 14:29

It was just Paul and I used to go to a pub, right, where we all looked a bit like post-punk, like NME journalists, you know, long coats, dark hair, glum faces. And everyone else in there were working class. This is in Hackney, it's been knocked down now, that the Brunswick on Morning Lane. Everyone else had that peroxide hair, and all the girls had perms and snow washed jeans, just like Logan's money. Yeah. And they all fucking wads out. You know, looking at us, and they used to call us the student hippie squatting wankers, and we were not students or hippies or squatters. They didn't really, they got right, mate, but that was sort of it. And their girlfriends were gorgeous, whereas ours had sort of short hair and dull faces like this. And uh, you know, they were all like politically correct, whereas theirs all looked like Bo Derrick, you know. So they had quite a lot to swank about, and it was partly that, partly another couple of things, and yeah, he developed from that really.

Speaker 2 15:33

But did it get to you? That that's the point I'm really trying to make. Uh were you rallying against money?

Speaker 3 15:39

Yeah, and I still am. I'm doing him on this tour. Hey, he's even better than ever now because you know the rich are richer than ever, and the poor are poorer than ever. Uh which he thinks is absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 2 15:52

Well, he would, he would.

Speaker 1 15:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:53

He did turn down quite a lot of money, by the way. From you. From you? Yeah. Did I? He did. I'd rather not personalize it. Oh yes. Yeah, he did. And your agent was almost in tears on the phone. It was very funny, actually. I said, would he do a little tour of kind of nightclubs and things in character? And Nick, I think it was Nick, he said, no. And I said, even if even if it's really an indecent amount of money. And he said, no. How much? The way you do. And I told him, and he went, I can't, it's like there's no point even saying it to him. Peter, actually, not Nick. Was it? Okay. Yeah. Well, it's 40, 45 years ago. 45 years ago.

Speaker 3 16:38

Peter Nick. I don't know. No one's called that anymore. They're all called Darren and Finn. And what? Finn. Finn, yes. Sorry about that. Training down an indecent amount of money. No, no, no. But the idea of being in character going around talking to people, no. Hideous. You've only got one life. My thing about money has always been on my deathbed, am I going to be thinking, if only I hadn't spent that £1,000, or if only I'd taken that money from Jeremy. And I know that's not. Because I'm going to get run over on my moped on the way out. By me. My last thing's if only I hadn't turned left.

Speaker 2 17:19

Without looking. I mean it when I say it was the right decision. I'm pleased you did. And because I mean I might not have felt like that at the time. But it was so obviously the right decision. Um so then you go on with Paul Whitehouse. And Charles Murray Hickson. Charles Murray Hickson.

Speaker 3 17:36

Well switch, as he was known at that time.

Speaker 2 17:38

And you get your own shows up, plural. And suddenly. Suddenly, who who thought you were a genius as well, by the way. Well, he was a genius. Well, no, he thought you were a genius.

Speaker 3 17:51

Oh, yeah, I thought he was a genius.

Speaker 2 17:53

Well, John Lloyd, I think, thinks you're both geniuses. And he said so on a certain point.

Speaker 3 17:57

Well, I think John Lloyd's a genius. I think you're a genius, yeah, man. Might be overplaying itself.

Speaker 2 18:04

So, anyway, you bring us this cast of characters, which has it stood the test of time? I think it has, in the sense that anybody who was exposed to them then will remember them. Yeah. Um, and we won't remember many other gags or sketches or characters from that long ago. We just won't. So, characters that most people from that time will remember. Tory Boy, Tim, Nice, but Dim. Smiley and and uh Smashy and Dicey.

Speaker 3 18:35

Smashy and Icy, that's what I mean. Nicey, who is the uh Peter Bandle sort of pop. Smashy was the Peter Powder pop. Nicey's the Peter Bandle sort of pop. If you keeps our covered back. I gave him a lift home once. Did you really? Yeah, from a pub in we're in this pub in the East End. I said, Where do you live? I live in Regents Park. I said, Well, I'm going that way. I'm going to West London. I'll give you a lift. He said, Okay, but drop me off before the house. I don't want you knowing where I live.

unknown 19:05

Oh God.

Speaker 3 19:06

And I went, Oh, yeah, okay, so we get there. And I said, So do you want me to go right or left? No, just drop me here. And he scuttled off. It was probably midnight. He scuttled off into the middle of Regents Park, the the Lord of Darkness himself on his own. Little Peter.

Speaker 2 19:24

Do you know Little Peter is the only person with whom I have ever had a stand-up row on the telephone? Yeah? Well, you stood up. Yeah, so we were having this conversation because there was a bit of annoying press or something, something he was doing for us. He was doing something for you. Yeah, because we we got very political. I've looked after a lot of politicians in my time.

Speaker 1 19:47

Gosh.

Speaker 2 19:48

And he was complaining. And I was saying, really, it wasn't our fault, Peter. And he then he just carried on and launched into me. By which time I got so angry, I stood up behind my desk and I started banging my finger on the desk in anger. And it's the last time I ever spoke to him. A long time ago.

Speaker 3 20:08

Yeah. Well, I hope I hope it was a picture of Peter Mandelson's bottom that you were banging your finger into. Actually, he would have quite liked that, Peter. Yeah, let's not go there. So I had um, do you know my claim to fame about Peter? Tell me. Well, after the election in you know when they did all that Cool Britannia shit and all that, and we got invited to one of those parties. So I go to this party, I hadn't met any of them before. But that day in The Guardian, there'd been a thing, they'd been in power, I don't know, four months or something. There'd been a thing in The Guardian saying um they'd done a poll of all the new ministers, the Labour ministers, and the least popular was Peter Mandelson on like 20% or something. So he was there and I said to him, So you're credited with getting Labour into power because you've gone for popularity. You know, you've got your finger on the button of what people want, and what people seem to want is not you. So by your own logic, surely you should fall on your own sword. And he said, Why don't you go and tell that theory to Tony? So I went so I went over to Tony Bland and said, Do you need to sack him? And he said, Right. I said, because there was a polling The Guardian today, and then Ben Elton came up and said, When Tony, sorry, is Harry bothering you? That was that. Anyway, a month later, he was sacked. Well, he had to resign. He had to fall on his sort, literally a month later. Yeah. And then a couple of months he came back, retired again, came back.

Speaker 2 21:42

Your part in his downfall.

Speaker 3 21:44

Well, it wasn't my part. I was just on my finger was on the pulse more than Tony Anthony Wedgewood Blair, as I said. So when you subsequently played Tony Blair.

Speaker 2 21:56

Yeah.

Speaker 3 21:57

Oh, I did, yeah.

Speaker 2 21:58

Do you want a copy of your C V I've got?

Speaker 3 22:00

One song. No. Did that inform it? No. All it was was Ian. That was Ian and Nick. Ian Hissed Up and Nick Newman. And it was their little ten-minute series. Which used to go on after the news on ITV. Funny, people in tele, isn't it? It was on after the news on Sunday on ITV, right? It was supposed to be on at 10.30, right? But quite often quite a lot had happened in the news, or they put more adverts on or something. So it was on at 10.40. If it was on at 1030, it got like three or four million people watching it. If it was on at 10.40, it got about two or three million people watching it. Because people had gone to bed. It was too late, right? Ian and I would say, ah, we'll be getting a letter from Andy Harris saying how much he liked the show today. And every next day there'd be the email. I thought it was a particularly strong show this week. That was when it was 10.30. And every time it was at 10.40, we never heard from Andy. And then he went on, he does the crown and all that stuff. What was funny was, you know, he he thought we couldn't see what he was doing.

Speaker 2 23:12

So silly. The um thing is about these characters, I've been watching them again. I've been doing quite a lot of watching old stuff recently. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on another occasion we could perhaps talk about why The Good Life was arguably the best sitcom of its time. Happy to have that conversation, probably not now. Yeah. So I was I used to like The Good Life. I was watching, I mean, he's playing Tony Hancock, playing Good. Who is? Richard Price.

Speaker 3 23:44

Yeah, he is, but also Felicity Kendall is so good. I I mean, sorry, young What's her name? Yes. Penelope Keith. Yes. Someone with no sense of humour. I mean, that's just uh price. It's the funniest character, isn't it?

Speaker 2 23:58

Anyway, so I've been watching all these old clips of the Harry Enfield show and chums or whatever. And thinking, which was my favourite. And then I chanced upon it and I just thought, yes. Yeah, this really is my favourite. Arguably. Well, it's my favourite life. My favourite. Do you want to guess who it is?

Speaker 3 24:15

Or shall I just tell you? No, you just tell me how. Okay.

Speaker 2 24:17

You called him Marcus.

Speaker 3 24:20

Not ringing a bell, I'm frowning on it.

Speaker 2 24:22

Marcus ran a shop.

Speaker 3 24:25

Oh, right, yeah. Called Wank Modern. Well, yeah, or um I saw you coming as the original. And then he had various other turned into quite naturally Wank. He had quite a lot of Modern Wank as.

Speaker 2 24:38

Modern Wank! God, I do know I'm not sure there has been Wank. A podcast which mentions the word Wank.

Speaker 3 24:44

There was lots and lots and lots of different shops. And he had an art shop with a great big pink, which this was really nice. He had an art shop, and there was a big pink fluffy thing on the wall with the word Banksy on it. And Kathleen Shepherd is fucking bigger. Is that a Banks there? And she said Banksar. And I said, Yup, uh, yeah, probably. Um, if Banksy was the washed up um, I mean, no one knows who Banksy is, but he's probably the washed-up drug addict I went to Eaton with, yeah. So who did this? She goes amazing, something like that. And the next like Katherine rang me after it had gone out a couple of weeks later, and Banksy put it, it was like the front page of his website. Oh wow. So that was quite nice.

Speaker 2 25:32

Well, I because I've bought this old house and you've filled it full of As we've discussed, don't have any children, no responsibilities. They saw Jeremy Lee coming. Absolutely, and the reason I so love it is I am that person who comes into the shop saying, Oh, what's that? Yeah. And then somebody says to me, Oh, you know, um 1970s Italian designer, quite of its type, you know, whatever the speech. And without hesitating, without challenging the price. Yeah. Yeah. I go, Oh, I really I'd rather like that.

Speaker 3 26:08

Because the ruder they are to you, the shorter they are with you, the more you want them to like you. You obviously think I'm an idiot, but look at this idiot with his great big check. Ha! I'm not an idiot. And then you pay the shit that you know that's what they do. That's the that's the spiel. It's the the opposite of being a salesman going, hi, do you need any help? It's just sitting there sneering, and then you say, How much is that? And they look at you and they, well, it's five thousand pounds.

Speaker 2 26:39

Not the first time this this conversation is is in danger of turning into therapy. Um, can I tell you another one? I'm £5,000 an hour. Is that all? That's five. I was chuckling away last night. Watching the Before Your Cry. Watch Before You Cried yourself to sleep, Jeremy. Watch on your own. How could you know about it? In your great. Without technology hidden in my house, how could you know that? I know. I was watching the South African pharmacist. Oh, yeah. He was quite popular. I must do him on tour actually.

Speaker 3 27:11

You're doing a tour. I'm doing a tour. I didn't do an Australia and New Zealand, and then when I did, uh they went mental.

Speaker 2 27:19

I really was going to, and I'm going to ask you about that. Because you are doing this this tour, which we might have time to get on to in a minute. But you already started it in Australia and New Zealand.

Speaker 1 27:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:31

And so the question is, do your characters travel?

Speaker 3 27:35

Well, I don't know. I think it was a bit like a an Oasis tour. Because most people there that in New Zealand they used to get my show, but not in Australia, so it's mainly expats, I think. You know, so if I said, Are there any expats here tonight? They'd all go, hooray. Just about everyone, and then I'd be rude about expats for a bit. So it was like a mini Oasis tour. You know, it's like, right, oh, we loved our childhood. We remember watching Harry Enfield, we've moved to Australia, we associate him with our nice childhood, so they come and see me. Yeah, it was fun. So I didn't have to work very hard. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. They were great audiences, but not as good as they'll be in Yorkshire, yeah. Oh well, I think you're opening, aren't you?

Speaker 2 28:22

I am in York, in our old place. At the end. In York. In York. I never met anyone with a Yorkshire accent in my three years after. Didn't you? No, they're all Sabatina for your room. No, she might have been. No, she might have been. Otherwise. I did.

Speaker 3 28:36

Yvonne. I've soiled my sheets. Changed them. You horrible little I feel I had an orgy last night. Soiled my sheets, fight for you. You beastly goes, Yvonne. So come back in an hour, will you? Because I'm rather tired, and then change my soil sheets. And she goes, Oh yes, certainly, sir. I'll do that. I'll come back in an hour. I'm sorry, I didn't hear a word there. I couldn't catch a word of it.

unknown 29:05

Yeah.

Speaker 3 29:06

So you did.

Speaker 2 29:07

Are you taking Yvonne on tour? Is she sadly not?

Speaker 3 29:11

No. Those days are over.

Speaker 2 29:15

Tell me. Rather than who you're taking on tour, which we'll come on to, I promise. If you were starting now and thinking about new characters, you might or might not do for the tour, I don't know. But who would you have in mind?

Speaker 3 29:31

Well Peter Mandelson. It's about time you had a stabbed, Peter. One of the things about Peter I've always loved is the fact that he looks just like the childcatcher. The childcatcher's got a longer nose. But other than that, he's got the same eyes, and you know, you see the childcatcher, you go, Oh my god, that's Peter Mandelson. Anyway, no, not him. Trump. There's nothing funny about Trump to me. So pathetic. I just find him so nauseous. Fairly recently, someone came up to me and said, You Harry Enfield? I said, Yes. He said, I thought you did. And uh I said, Oh, well, I'm sorry to disappoint you. He said, All right, mate, don't get clever. And walked away. And then I sort of imagined him that night going, Yeah, I met that Harry Enfield, you know, it turns out he's a white Cuntingville, right? Do you know what I mean? And that sort of got me going, you know, that David Attenborough, you know, turns out he's a white Cuntingville, right? You know. Various people like that, you know, nice people. What about Farage? Michael Paling.

Speaker 2 30:46

We seem to be leading towards no Farage.

Speaker 3 30:48

What about Farage? Wait, no, no, no, no. No, I mean surely, surely. You know, we work with Farage. I did a sketch with him. Did you? Yeah, when he was a joke. You can look it up if you like. It's a Harry and Paul sketch, and I guess it was quite soon after Extras we were doing it. And Paul and I were trying to be more like Ricky Gervais. So it's like, alright, hey, yeah. Paul comes around like a white. He goes, Hello, Stavros. Not funny, racist, yeah, and all that. And he comes into the house, and then the doorbell goes, and I sort of go, Oh, Aylis celebrity friend, you know, because he'd had he McKellen and David Bowie and Harry Potter and all those people, Ricky had. Go, Ailis celebrity friend. I go, come in, Nigel. And Nigel Farage comes in Alice Celebrity. Yeah. It's like that's the best we could do. And he goes, now listen here, Enfield, you haven't done anything funny since Lotabally. And Paul looks at the camera with that embarrassing, you know, ooh. Looks at you. It's very funny. And of course, at the time, Nigel was a joke. He was a harmless piece of fluff. And a few years later, we were on tour and we were staying in this hotel, and there were some sort of younger comedians. Paul knew who they were. I didn't know. I'm not interested in comedy, but they were younger ones. And suddenly this voice comes out and goes, Harry! Paul! It's fucking Nigel Farage. And he was up there for a by-election in some heavy Indian-based community where he was trying to get all the white people to vote for him. Sorry, can't say that. Absolutely not true. That he was being racist. He was just there with his great policies. So of course we had to buy him a drink, because he'd done this thing for us for nothing. I don't mind. I come to it. He didn't even have any lunch sandwich, didn't want a a seat. He just came in, did it, went. Very sweet of him. And talked about fishing a bit, you know, and that was that. Well now he's turned into this sort of ridiculous Trump-loving monster. Yeah. Yeah, terrible. And I feel I feel very, very bad. I don't feel bad that we used him. He was a different person at the time. But you know, there's no future for this country with him. What I don't understand, I'm probably not going to do it on tour, but loads of money don't like him. Because he wants to send all the foreigners back. And loads of money, his company, Pimlico Plasters. They used to employ lots of English people, but I'm sorry about you, English. You're lazy. You know, you want holidays and sick pay and shit like that. Whereas all the people who I employ now, you know, all their families have been bombed to fuck by us in Iraq or Afghanistan. They'll work for fuck all. So it's not good for business having Nigel Fuar, because he'll get rid of them all.

Speaker 2 33:49

If you're wondering, by the way, why I burst out laughing at the mention of Pimlico Pimlico plasters, then just Google it. What Jeremy Lee? No, no, no, no, no, no. No, I mean there's a company Pimlico Plumber. Vaguely similar sounding name. Exactly.

Speaker 3 34:02

Run by somebody who's vaguely pro-Farrot. Yes, who's now said ah that's a coincidence? He's gone to gone to live in Dubai. Charlie.

Speaker 2 34:10

Has he? With with lots of others.

Speaker 3 34:13

What a lovely place to live. I'm so looking forward to going living. I did do a bit of that on tour, but it didn't go very well. It was weird about like considerably richer than yo bloke. Yes, yes. Yeah, we live in Jobai now. Oh yeah. Everyone's so good looking in Jobai. If you're ugly, you get your head chopped off. And nobody laughed. Sorry, did you do that in Dubai? Is that what you're saying? No, in in Australia with New Zealand. Maybe they don't know about Jobai there, but we're lucky though. Anyway, I cut it.

Speaker 2 34:46

Anyway, before we talk about this little tour thing you've been to be doing, you mentioned Paul Whitehouse quite a lot, and you just you just mentioned fishing by coincidence, which you know these days everybody knows about. Yes.

Speaker 3 35:01

Paul and his fishing. Do you know what I call it? Last of the summer line. Yeah. Two silly little old people falling over. For fuck's sake. How warming. How far from the punk of comedy has Paul and Paul and Bob become fallen?

Speaker 2 35:26

Would you do it? Have you ever have you ever been fishing? Never be nice, love.

Speaker 3 35:29

Never be nasty. No, I haven't been asked. I have been fishing about ten times on the spay, and I've caught one salmon. Oh hello. Oh well, so you can't get into it. I hate it. I'm so bad at it. Ten times. It's like golf, or I'm physically rubbish. I can't kick a ball in the right direction. Yeah. I can't hit a ball on a golf course, and I can't cast. I mean, I can cast one in ten. You go, oh my god, that's great. And then the next one it ends up in a puddle. Do you still occasionally try and hit a ball on a golf course? No, no, I don't do it. I never do that. I'm doing a tour, Jeremy. I might play golf when I'm doing a tour. I'm going all the way around the country. Sadly, we don't on tour.

Speaker 2 36:15

Unfortunately, I have any time to talk about it. So, this tour, I believe, you're doing. Yeah. First of all, it's from March to November. It's going all over the country. All over the country. Not Berris and Urban's, which I'm personally a little bit affronted by. Sorry about that. It's Cambridge and which is near enough. And absolutely all over.

Speaker 3 36:34

Are you terrified or excited? No, I'm not. I'm too old to be terrified. You know, when you're young, you think, oh my god, if this goes wrong, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? Well, I know what I'm going to do for the rest of my life if it goes wrong, but it won't go wrong. I I actually really enjoyed it out in the Antipodes. Yes. And I mean, you know, it's actually quite fun. When you're young, you kind of do things and then you move on to the next thing, move on, think, great, that worked. Let's go on. What am I doing? So I haven't seen all that stuff for so many years. And then, like you, I I was watching some recently. I thought this is really funny. Some of it's really funny. Mainly the jokes written by Paul and Charlie. And uh, but we don't we don't know what they're responsible for and what you're responsible for. No, and nor do I. I don't really remember, but I think, my God, that's a clever joke. Um, I can't have come up with that because I couldn't now. My brain's so and uh so then they asked me if I I thought, well, that would be fun, actually.

Speaker 2 37:35

Yeah, so apart from loads of money, who else are you taking with you? It is a solo showing you and characters.

Speaker 3 37:42

I do a bit of the slobs, I talk about Tim, pharmacist, people like that. I do quite a lot of Nicy, he's got his own podcast. Yeah, called The Truth Hurts. Yeah.

Speaker 37:56

He likes Nigel Garage, which is a shock jock, the shop jock who likes to rock.

Speaker 3 38:04

Yeah, so it's about five minutes of savage savaging, except for the adverts. That's what I love about these shows. You know, when you've got Rory Stewart and thing, and then they do their own adverts, so he does his own adverts. Of course he does, yes. For things like this great new book by the uh Reverend Russell Bland, who uh wonderful uplifting really he was uh caught doing some naughty business uh with ladies, but then he discovered Jesus, and Jesus told him that he was his voice on earth and uh that kind of stuff. And that uh Jesus really loves billionaires more than poor people. It's a great read. Russell Bland.

Speaker 2 38:50

What about what about the slobs? What what happened to them?

Speaker 3 38:53

Well, they're I yeah, I do. Well they're still together. Oh yeah, they're they're great-great-great-grandparents now because 40 years. Of course, yeah. You know. So you add three fifteen's together, you get 45, so there you go. So they got kids called things like yeah, great-great-great grandchildren. Things like Tawel, named after a Tow. Towell, come here You know, it's quite fun thinking of names. It's so many things, aren't there, that actually sound a bit like a name. Well, anything could be a name now, couldn't you? Yeah, absolutely anything. Everything is a name. Yes. But they're Towel, I think, is probably spelt with a Y somewhere because it's exotic. You know? Could be one of the Beckham.

Speaker 2 39:41

Have you checked that the Beckons don't have a child called Towel?

Speaker 3 39:44

They might do. They might not. Yeah. Yeah. So the media, come here. The surgeons, I love the surgeons. I don't know if you've seen the surgeons. I I haven't did. Are they still? 4045 then. Are they still going? Well, I just do a thing about me, my surgeon, Charles, just talking about his life. Right. Which is really tragic. Oh my god, I did this like this guy. And every time something happens, like one of his children dies, he goes a boohoo and carries on. Unfortunately, he went straight under a lorry and was decapitated. Um a boo-hoo. But uh and then he moves on because you know he went to a prep school. Oh, of course, that would make sense. You know, you got beaten if you if you blubbed. Yes. That was quite fun doing that, and you could hear the audience going, oh no, and then I go to boo-hoo and they kind of laugh. So it's kind of nice doing that kind of stuff as well. Anyway, I'll be doing all that on tour. A boohoo. A boo hoo-hoo.

Speaker 2 40:50

I can't wait to.

Speaker 3 40:51

I mean, the tour isn't quite sold out yet, but a lot of venues are sold out. Well, when you look at the ones that say they're not sold out, you look, and there's hardly any, because of course that makes me panic. Except Glasgow, apparently. Is not sold out? Not sold out. Really? Interesting. Well, I'm not slapping all the way to Glasgow to see you. I don't want you to. Actually, the ones later in the year. Right. So please come and see me later in the year. No, no, no. Please. No, I I will. I'm talking to your many viewers. Oh, sorry, I'll get out of the way. I'm talking to your listener.

Speaker 2 41:24

Yes, yes. Not to you. No, I he'd love to come. I think he might live in somewhere like Kazakhstan, but um listen, I'm Shut up. I need to wrap this up. Goodbye. I have to say to our listener that if Oh yeah, because we've run out of time. Okay, all right. I know, but I feel I've got to say this. Say it. If, listener, you've been offended by any of the language in today's program. You I can. I suggest you go for a long walk. I can almost hear the outro music now. Thank you very much for listening.