Dom Joly on 25 Years of Trigger Happy TV

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Trigger Happy TV became a cultural phenomenon when it hit screens 25 years ago, introducing a new style of anarchic, surreal hidden-camera comedy that still resonates today. In this special episode of TellyCast, Dom Joly joins Justin Crosby to look back at the madness of making the show, the secrets behind its success, and why you can’t make comedy by committee.

With Trigger Happy TV hitting the road for the first time ever, Dom reveals how he’s bringing hidden-camera chaos to a live audience and whether prank comedy still has the same bite in a world of social media and viral video. He also shares behind-the-scenes stories from his career, including encounters with the police, near-missed sketches, and why people still misquote his most famous moment.

Plus, Dom talks about his second career as a travel writer, his dream TV project, and why he’s still waiting for a commissioner to call.

🎧 Listen now for a no-holds-barred deep dive into one of TV’s most innovative and rebellious comedy shows.

🔗 Tickets for the Trigger Happy TV live tour available at www.domjoly.tv

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Transcript

Welcome to TellyCast, the podcast that dives deep into the people and stories shaping the content industry. I'm Justin Crosby and today we're celebrating 25 years of one of the most iconic and anarchic comedy shows of all time, Trigger Happy TV. For videos featuring movers and shakers of the content industry, just search Telecast TV on YouTube and hit that subscribe button.

So back in 1999, Dom Jolly burst onto our screens. with giant mobile phones, surreal sketches, and some of the most brilliantly bizarre public pranks ever seen. The show became a cultural phenomenon, influencing comedy for decades and giving us some truly unforgettable TV moments. Now, a quarter of a century later, Dom is taking Trigger Happy TV on the road for the first time ever with a brand new live tour.

But how does a show built on hidden camera chaos translate to the stage? And in a world of smartphone, social media, and viral video, Does prank comedy still have the same bite? And in this episode, we'll look back at the madness making Trigger Happy TV and what fans can expect from that live tour. Plus, we'll ask if Trigger Happy TV were made today, how would it look?

So get ready to relive the chaos Dom Jolly welcome to telecast. Thank you very much Oh, it was 2000. It first came on 

was it 2000? I know it was because it was 14th of January 2000 right Victor Smith Gave honestly the most glowing review ever written about it in the Evening Standard and he said that we'd turned The, uh, humble practical joke into an art form.

And he said, without doubt the best comedy show of the millennium, which was great, but we were only 14 days into the millennium. So it was good, but I took it, but yeah, now we made a little pilot in 1999, but I think really it happened. It was 14th of January, 2000, which is why we're doing the 25th anniversary.

Of course. Of 

course. Yeah. I need to get my maths in order. So how does it feel then to, to look back 25 years later, look at the impact that Trigger Happy TV had and revisit it. Uh, on, on, on stage 

when it feels very old for a start, I feel very old. It's just odd. I had, I actually got all the people that, uh, made it with me.

We all went to the pub, uh, which where we used to have a lot of the ideas of Charing Cross road. We went there on the 14th of January this year for a reunion. And I hadn't seen a lot of them since. And it was crazy. Like all my runners and now BAFTA award winning directors and stuff. I would say almost everyone that worked on Trigger.

Uh, I was done really well, uh, which is great, uh, and they're all lovely. So that was really nice, but it was just, it was just so odd. I just remembered so many things that I'd forgotten about and looking back on trigger. I, you know, one of the things, one of the reasons why I'm doing this 25th anniversary is firstly, cause I'll be dead soon.

So you might as well, but also. I didn't really enjoy it at the time. I did enjoy it. Like I'm immensely proud of trigger happy. And it was just a work of total love and passion and devotion. And just for two and a half years, Sam and I, who I made it with, we just, we had control of everything of it. And it was one of those great moments when no one knows who you are.

No one cares. So you just totally get left alone. And I think that was one of its secrets. The moment you become a hit, everyone gets involved. And the one thing I've learned was lots of things I've learned, but the one thing I've learned is you can't make comedy by committee. Uh, and so this really, this is a quite a selfish opportunity, really this 25th anniversary for me to actually look back and.

You know, I've always thought, well, that was brilliant, but I'll move on and I wanna do other stuff and I've done other things and I just wanna sit there and go, you know what, I'm really proud of that. Yeah. So that's really what it's about. 

Yeah. Um, well we're gonna touch on the live tune in a second. Yeah.

But, um, well, I'm glad 'cause I have no idea what it's gonna 

be. Yeah. , I mean, I kind of 

do, but Yeah. But you 

did 

pick out a problem. Yeah. , but let, let, going back to, uh, 25 years ago. Yeah. Or, or slightly more. How did he get commissioned? Can you take us through the process that led up to, to the commission? 

Yeah, so I was working at Paramount Comedy Channel, which at the time was a really weird place to be working because it was a cable channel primarily showing American imports, Frasier, Friends, that kind of stuff, but it had this kind of weird little life in what was called the interstitials, which is a word I'd never really known, but you know, in between in the breaks and and it was Pretty much the brainchild of a woman called Mifanwy Maw, uh, who I'm a big fan of, and she was like a real nurturer for me.

And I got a job on there as an AP, uh, with a jo with a a show which was, uh, presented by Dominic Diamond at the Games Master, and it was a kind of rubbish. Sort of satirical look at the week and it wasn't very good But that got me into paramount comedy channel and I started Basically, there was a guy who'd taken over as the head of marketing and advertising there and he had an advertising budget And you know He had a certain amount of money to spend to promote a comedy channel And I went to him and I said rather than just Putting an ad out saying Paramount comedy channel were funny I'm starting to do these because I was I'd come from a political background.

I'd worked in Parliament I've been a diplomat and I was really interested in cool Britannia was happening and I was really interested in Taking the mickey out of that and I said to him why don't we do funny stuff that gets in the news? And you won't have to say paramount's funny because the funny stuff will be there and he said what do you mean?

I said, well, let give me an opportunity to do something So anyway, the first thing we ever did peter mandelson, you know our current, uh ambassador in washington at the time was the New labor spin lord and he was the prince of darkness was his name And so I thought well a prince of darkness would have to have An underworld fan club.

So I made up a fan club of, uh, me dressed as a vampire. There was a skull, there was Frankenstein, a couple of other ghouls. And we just, we found out from my news contacts where he's going to be one day. And we just followed him around all day and everywhere we went, which is like, we love you, Peter, like this.

And, and the secret we brought our own paparazzi with us. So we knew we had those photos. And the next day front cover of the guardian was this picture of a startled Peter Mandelson, getting out of a Jaguar surrounded by this. Bunch of freaks who loved him and it just said everything and then underneath it said paramount comedy channel explaining it It was perfect, you know, and and so that was it really this guy said great go and do that because that's amazing And so I spent about a year doing a lot of trigger happy type hits, but political so we would put we really targeted Peter Manson we put we put a Um, Millennium Dome in his garden, uh, we, there was an election going on where there were lots of fluffies doing stuff.

There was a Tory chicken who was following people around, telling people, uh, goading one of the politicians into a debate. So we kidnapped that chicken. We did lots of stuff like that. And anyway, this slowly got. To Channel 4's attention, uh, because this stuff was, we called it War of the Flea, uh, because War of the Flea is a great expression about guerrilla warfare.

If there's a dog and a flea bites the dog, nothing. But if a thousand fleas bite the dog, it dies. And so we were like this little flea, just doing stuff, uh, to the establishment, really, and having a lot of fun. Uh, long story short, it started to get quite cult, uh, And, uh, put it out a lot and people like Noel Gallagher and Liam used to watch it and told me they used to watch it.

It got quite cult and I put lots of cool music in it as well and it was just a really great thing. And then we made it into a little show and someone took over Paramount and just looked at this and said, Have you got consents to do all this? And I said, No, not at all. And he said, You can never show this.

So I had to steal it out of Paramount comedic channel. I went into there. Whatever their documents, their tape lab. And I nicked all my brushes and I went to channel four and I said, look, this is what I'm doing at the moment. And so they, uh, there's a woman called Caroline Leddy who was in charge. She was the commissioning editor and she looked at it and she said, I really love this, uh, what you're doing.

She goes, but I think she'd just finished doing brass. I, and I think she just didn't want to have any more legal problems. She said, can you do what you're doing? But can you just make it funny? Like don't make it satirical. And that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, because I think I would always probably being me try to prove to people, look, I'm so smart.

I'm doing satire. Cause that's what you're supposed to do if you're smart. And actually this gave me just freedom just to make stupid, like, and, and really the only rule, two rules in trigger happy was I called it television verite. It all had to happen in one frame because so that people believed what they're seeing, uh, and it was funny.

And so, uh, there was a thing called. Comedy lab and channel 4 were basically giving first people who'd never had a show before The opportunity to do a pilot which would go on air So we got given one of those as trig happy and then I think the second thing I did that was quite smart if I may Say so because it was the first time I had a proper show We were offered half an hour and I said, I don't want half an hour I want 15 minutes and so they gave the other 15 minutes to someone else Which is suicide really?

I mean, why would you do that? But I just knew That half an hour would probably at the stage we were at be a bit flabby and I wanted to make a really tight Just unstoppable 15 minutes and I did and I was so proud of it. And then that's how it happened 

Right, and so how did you produce it? Because was it was it a really low budget that you were working to right work right from day one or was it?

I mean presumably it was the first budget you proper budget you working to so it probably felt like a lot 

Well, I mean weirdly paramount we had quite a decent budget in a sense because we had an advertising budget, you know Like so advertising is way more than telly, but it wasn't crazy But we had enough money paramount to make big props and stuff like that.

And then the actual comedy lab, uh one I think was pretty minimal, uh the budget but then the first trigger happy budget I think was pretty big really. I mean, I know what it was. Uh, I mean it was amazing to me. Yeah, uh, and basically A lot of stuff happened just around the time, 1999 2000, so 1999 when we were filming, that made Trigger Happy possible, that wouldn't have made it happen before.

And I always equate it a bit to punk, in the sense that people used to watch professional musicians play, and suddenly someone said, just go into your garage. Play three chords and you can do it. And what happened was just at that moment uh A camera came out called the sony vx1000 And it was probably the first thing it was a i'm not technical But I think it was a three chip or something So it meant I mean if you look at the quality now, it's shocking But it was just good enough that you could film stuff and put it out on the telly just broadcast 

quality enough enough Yeah, whereas 

before like two years before if i'd been making trigger happy, I would have had to hire And nothing wrong with hiring people, but you know, we'd have to hire a proper cameraman, proper sound man.

They would be of a certain age. They would want their breaks. They would cost us a fortune. Whereas actually we just bought this camera for, I think, a thousand pounds. We then rented it back to the production and we just filmed and we filmed, we filmed insane amounts and we learn on the go because most people's first show.

Is that it's you know, it's their time constraints and they get the best of what they can We just felt there was no filler in trigger happy We just filmed and filmed and filmed till every moment was something we wanted to do So we filmed for about eight months, I think and that's one of the reasons trigger happy I think really stands the test of time along with the edit.

I mean, I just spent eight The edit was all about it for me. I had my best friend as the editor by chance I used to be a runner in an edit facility And he started with me and then he went on to be an editor where I went off and did weird stuff and then came back to Dregappy. So again, even that, you know, when you're sitting with an editor and you don't really know what you're doing because you don't and you don't want to say, oh, do you mind doing that?

And then they noodle away for half an hour and then You look at it and go, it's a bit rubbish, but because it's my mate, I can just say, no, that's rubbish. And we just could talk really. And he and I used to be in a band together. So it was all about music. So trigger happy was all about the music as well.

So we, uh, I chose the, you know, every track with love. I was more into the music and the comedy and I cut it. I'd cut the music first before the joke sometimes, whereas often you, you know, you cut your show and then drop the music on. I didn't, I knew the bit of music I wanted to use. And I'd stretch jokes to do that.

I wanted trigger happy. Sorry, I just got to get this off my chest because I love all this but I just growing up I used to watch hidden camera all the time very early candid camera stuff like that was very surreal And then things like beetles about and game for a laugh. I'm sure they were brilliantly made but it was so naff Comedy and I think I always felt hidden camera and I don't call it pranking because I'm a ponce I think it's hidden camera.

I felt it was like the lowest rung in TV comedy If you were smart, you'd do screenplays or you'd write sitcoms and I thought why why should it be? This is an art form And it's sort of unacknowledged art form. So I always wants to make it really Cool, I think I wanted to make something beautiful. I wanted to make it a bit arty But all that sounds like there was this great plan It wasn't it just it sort of happened organically, but it was all about just there were no rules really So I don't think we had it.

It was a bit like and again I'm absolutely not comparing myself to the beatles But it's the same way that always I just watched that amazing peter jackson thing about the beatles And it's the fact that they weren't formally trained. They weren't Proper musicians. So they meant they could break rules and I wasn't a stand up.

I'd never done comedy before So I don't think I knew that you weren't supposed to do things. That's why 

it was no convention, right? No convention, 

but on the flip side there was no one to ask Uh, you know advice for certainly after it got big. I longed for someone to go. What the hell do I do now? You know did channel four just kind of let you alone with it.

Yes, it was extraordinary So we went it really was I mean I now You know, this is why I don't appreciate you. It's only now I appreciate it It was the first proper show i'd done and they just said yep, right You can go make six half hours and like fine and then literally that was it We just went off and we filmed as I said for seven eight months, I think and then we went into an edit Probably four months and then that was probably the first time channel four saw anything was pretty much the finished product Uh, and we were incredibly lucky that channel four had a blanket agreement for music because music was so important.

So we didn't have to pay anything that became a problem when I didn't realize but it sold abroad Well, and suddenly you had to have a sounder like because it cost us it would cost a fortune to license the music Yeah, but I remember bring literally handing it in to channel four And there was a long silence, well, a week or so.

And then they came back. Well, two things. They came back firstly saying, are you sure about the music? And I was like, I don't think I've ever been more sure about anything in my life, but they made us go to a focus group because we found out. And I think this is true that we were the first comedy show ever with a soundtrack.

It seems like a weird thing, but we just were, and I don't think they were. They knew what that was about. I don't know why because Karen leddy had exceptional music taste and stuff But anyway, we went to a focus group and I remember looking through a sort of mirror There's like 10 essex housewives watched it and laughed but they went.

Oh the music's sad, isn't it? It'd be better with like cartoon music. I go what? So i'm so glad I didn't do that But anyway, so after we got through that and then they said it's going out on friday nights between friends and frasier And I remember thinking even then I was naive. I thought, okay, well, that's you make a TV show and that's what happened I didn't realize how amazing that was.

Yeah But yeah, it really was that and then it just it went crazy and I had no idea, you know It's only now I talk to people and they go all Monday morning. We still talk about it. And yeah, it was a point I didn't you don't know that when you're stuck in the maelstrom The only reason I knew something weird had happened was it went out on the Friday on that Monday Next Monday, I was on a train, uh, and no one knew who I was, and that ringtone went off, and even that ringtone, I'd chosen, it was called Grand Valse, and I chose it because I hated it, and I wanted it to be annoying, but between us filming and it going out, Nokia just made it the default Nokia tune, not do anything to do with us, so it became this subliminal guerrilla ad for us, but anyway, that ringtone went off, and three people on the carriage, not knowing I was there, stood up, and went, hello, I'm on the train, and I was like, and I just, honestly, that very moment, I thought, Whoa, but something something shifted here like 

something extraordinary.

Yeah, it seems like lots of Different things shifted into, you know, planets aligned or whatever. I cannot 

tell you the amount of sliding doors, you know, the, the, the moments, for instance, when, when the guy, uh, Paramount said to me, you know, fine, I've got this advertising budget. Go and do you want to go make this stuff?

I thought, great. But who do I make it with? And I went back, saw my girlfriend and I said, it's so unbelievable that this guy's like going to pay for me to go off and harass the government and stuff. And, but I, I need a kind of. You know, I need, I need someone who's can do the filming for me. And we're in this pub called the engineer in primrose Hill.

And the barman is sitting there drying the drying the pint. I can remember it now. And he's listening. I can see him listening. I don't piss off. And then he just leans in. He goes, I can do that. He goes, I can do that. I'm a cameraman. I go, what you've heard what I'm doing. He goes, yeah, I'd love to do that. I go, really?

He goes, yeah. I go, well, can you come in and I'll introduce you to people at Paramount on Monday? And that was Sam who was an artist. He'd never done any filming for his life, but he's completely on the spectrum. And when he decides to do something, so he just read the leaflet, the booklet, VX 1000, and then came in on that day.

And, and we just. Different and it's very a tricky relationship, but that's what makes the friction and makes it amazing Was 

he fronting up to you then? I mean the fact that he'd never really You know, I think he was camera work under 

any camera Any I mean we found out at the end of the first trigger happy we used to have a thing called a beach box which we'd attach to the camera and that then linked us link the camera to our Basic radio mics.

We didn't know what we were doing. Cameron, he'd never done sound. We found out at the end of the first series of Trigger Happy that Sam had put it on a setting that the radio mic just expanded until it heard a sound, you know, which is a thing you can have. Normally, you just have it like this. I don't even know what I'm telling you now.

Yeah, you know and we made the whole series like that. We had no idea what we're doing and there was part of that. Was we sort of loved it. Like that's why I talk about punk. Like when we got costumes, we wouldn't get a costume made. We'd get an escapade in Camden and try and rent them. And occasionally we'd want the fighting dogs and they weren't there.

They'd be out on a stag party or something. We were, we didn't know what we were doing. And it was, I think that was kind of our defense because we did feel like imposters. Like we hadn't done telly, you know, we didn't know what to do, but then no one had. So I don't know. 

There's a certain element of this thinking, you know, about today's, uh, content industry and people going digital first and, you know, YouTube and being able to create your own content and push to get out on YouTube.

There's a, there's a bit of a parallel really, isn't there? I mean, if you, I mean. 

You know, in a funny way, I think we were the, the fulcrum, if you want me to be a ponce between, you know, old school telly and YouTube in a sense, uh, because, you know, if Trigger Happy had been invented or we'd come up with it four years later, we would have probably just made it all ourselves.

Now it would have lacked a lot of things because of that. Um, I mean, we'd have probably got a more global audience immediately. But we'd have lacked a lot of things. I mean, just that water cooler moment, that moment when in 2000, there still really were only five channels, four channels, and you did, you could grab people and it grabbed a moment and trig happy is very much of a moment.

If you watch it. You know, I got approached by the Soho Society the other day who were thinking of giving us a memorial not a memorial monument Because we'd captured this because we filmed in almost every street in Soho We'd sort of captured that turn of the millennium moment and like yeah, I was just in fact just before here I was having lunch with Sam who I made it with because we're doing the 25th show together And we're just howling with laughter, which is awful for other people to watch.

But, but we just are, and I remember why we loved making Trick Happy. And, and we were talking about every time I come to London now. Another building has just disappeared and a lot of them are sort of, we always used to think if we film something for trigger happy, we might as well film it in front of something iconic.

And so we'd find ourselves battling with Banksy right at the time when Banksy was just coming out, we'd, we'd, I'd think, Oh, I want to go down on the South bank and let's, you know, if we're going to talk to a random person, let's do it with Westminster in the background and we get there and there'd be a Banksy stencil saying not another bloody photo opportunity.

So I always felt that Banksy and I, cause we, the whole concept of trigger, we were a sort of. We were sort of just, it was a bit like, um, we were a sort of a parallel universe to be Ponzi, but just slightly under the norm. And we'd occasionally just burst out into real life of these surreal moments. And that's what we wanted to do with 

people.

And tell us about the how the giant mobile phone came about then what's well again That was 

just nothing was planned. Everything looks like it was a massive plan. Sam and I went to the pub It was an edge where road I think it was and I went to Marouche which is my favorite Lebanese restaurant and we were walking out and we'd had a couple of beers and we walked past a mobile phone display store and outside was a Model displaying this cool new phone and it wasn't a Nokia as everyone thinks it is It was actually what was called a Sony Mars bath people.

Remember I had one it was so cool And it was a sort of two and a half foot plastic really heavy display model and I just Picked it up and then started sort of talking into it and Sam took a photo of me and then yeah, I nicked it We just got on a bus and then we were just looking at it and playing with it and we got to Oxford Street And when we got off Oxford Street to go towards our offices, there's a DJ called Jono Coleman He was an Australian DJ and he was being filmed live on Oxford Street in an interview TV interview And I had the phone and I just went up behind and I went, and so somewhere in the ether, there is the moment the joke was born, whether, you know, that's a big deal or not, but it's quite interesting.

And that made Sam laugh, which is all trigger happy was about me trying to make Sam laugh. And then we went back to the office and it sat on the windowsill for a year, year and a half while we were making trigger happy. And then I remembered it and I looked at it and I thought actually, and it wasn't when we started doing it, it wasn't a comment.

On mobile phone culture. We, I used it to interrupt things. I hate it like opera and theater and just poncy things. And that's what it was about really. When it started, I kind of didn't like the big mobile in the end because it did me in massive service because people that hadn't seen trigger happy would probably know about the big mobile phone.

So it was a great advert for trigger happy. Every time that ring phone ringtone went off, it was great. But on the flip side. It was kind of dominated the show whereas actually was very different from the rest of the show So I used to put it before the before the title sequence because the rest of the show is essentially me Dressed as a squirrel having a shower shattering nervous breakdown to Jacques Brel.

Whereas the bit, you know, that was a bit shouty They were very different. Yeah sort of mindsets. 

Yeah, the snail is one of my favorite It's my 

all time favorite and the snail we were just discussing this Sam and I actually Because the snail I remember exactly how that happened and you know I always say everyone goes to the pub probably not everyone goes to the pub gets drunk and then says Let's dress up as a snail, but everyone has stupid ideas.

Yeah, but we're you just once you're doing that show You're just thinking all the time Miltman, you know, you're looking like that and I was in the pub was called the cock and bottle I remember it and we were sitting in there and I suddenly went Sam snail He went and he got what I was saying. Oh my god, and I go I just walk up dressed as a snail And you know, it's Britain, everyone will stop.

Whereas in America, people would just run me over or beat me up. And then I'll just crawl really slowly across. And then when I get up, I'll walk off again. And what was amazing was normally you'd have that idea, but then you forget about it. But I literally just made a call. And I had someone ready, and three days later we had this amazing snail costume.

And five days later, I was crawling across Redcliffe Gardens, you know. I loved it. 

I tell you what, you're referencing some of the best pubs in London, by the way. Yeah, it's all about pubs. Cock and Bottle is also one of those. Cock and Bottle 

was my, you know, my local for a long time. And then Redcliffe Gardens, weirdly.

I don't know if, a lot of Trigger Happy, a lot of the celebs we did, was about me wanting to meet people. And a lot of the places we filmed was sort of a, some sort of subconscious history through my mind. A sort of ride through my history of London because I mean the snail was right outside Café Redcliffe Gardens, which is where I used to go.

My band played there and stuff. So in a way, I think I've sort of shoehorned a video tour of my life into Trigger. 

Coming back to Channel 4 then, and you know, all the stuff that you did was either in parks, on the streets, or on zebra crossings, and uh, public places, as you say, iconic places. Did you ever get the permission?

Or was it completely guerrilla? Never, it was totally guerrilla, and 

that was an issue for us actually, so, because obviously we had to get, we had to get, uh, consents afterwards. Uh, and a consent form is so, I don't know why anyone would ever sign a consent form, especially when someone's just approached them dressed as a squirrel or something like that.

But we had very good, I had a very, very, uh, Are two very good runners, uh, one of whom al campbell then became barry shit peas in uh in uh, What's he called in screen wipe and is now just an amazing director and stuff But and al was just charming and really sweet so we'd send him in if it was like someone that he could charm and we also had a A girl runner who was also very charming.

So depending who they were we'd go in and and talk to them but permission wise I mean, God, we, I mean, I've, it's probably quite, I don't know if I can say now, but there were probably quite a few faked permissions in the sense of channel forward. Occasionally you've got permission to film like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And actually I have a character. In trig happy if I have a fake name, it's mr. Gund, you know, I'd always say mr Gund is here and mr. Gund came because whenever anyone asked us if if someone had you know, we asked mission to film in there Okay. Yeah, who do you speak to mr. Gund? We'd always just say mr. Gund, but of course we learned later on because what we wanted We just didn't Everything had to be real and it was rift But it meant it was so tiring because you do something and then you'd never be able to get permission No one would sign so we got a bit better towards the end of series two We realized that there might be a bit there might be a halfway house So sometimes if we were doing something in say in a shop We would try and contact The owner of the shop or the manager of the shop and say look we'd like to do something in your shop But we're not gonna tell you what or who to, and then at least if we had permission from them, then afterwards that made getting permission a lot easier and stuff.

But no, I think we, yeah, we, it was seat of the pants stuff. There was quite a lot. Yeah. There was a strange man called Michel Suri signed a lot of consent forms as well, but we won't go into that. Michael Mouse. 

So tell us about the life tour then. How are you going to make this work? I have no idea. I have no idea whatsoever.

Originally. 

The idea of the live thing came from, you know, I'm not like, you know, it used to annoy me that people would go to Edinburgh and get stand ups and then put them on telly because that's a completely different skill set in the same way that I think comedians were probably a bit irritated by me for many reasons.

But when I just popped up on Trigger Happy, I hadn't paid my dues, I hadn't been a stand up, hadn't been to Edinburgh, I wasn't in the footlights, all that crap. And, uh, I just thought, no, this is my skill, I'm good at telly, and you're good at that, you know, and don't mix. But in the last, and genuinely, for a man that can crawl across the street dressed as a snail, I was terrified about live appearances, like, coming as me, uh, was just, I couldn't do it.

It would just fill me with fear. And then, you know, I write travel books now, I've written a lot of travel books, and every time I finish my book, I do a tour with it. And I have paid my, I've done my 10, 000 hours now, and I've learnt. I think to be good on stage, certainly with the stuff I'm doing there. And I feel a lot more comfortable on stage and I've learned how to work an audience to an extent I've learned about, I've learned a lot of stuff, which is going to come very useful.

And so when I was talking to Sam about the 25th, meanwhile, he's gone off to America and be an advertising director and he's learned. So both of us knew nothing at the beginning and now we have certain tangible skills. So we were talking about what we could do with the trigger happy tool. And there were two issues, really.

One is, You know, if we have the fast show and I think they're doing this, you'd just get your, I went to see Monty Python. You just get your classic sketches and you do them. And if it's a nostalgia fest, everyone's just pleased to see this a 

sketch show. Basically, it is a sketch show. Yeah, 

but also it's about whether you're doing something different or whether you're celebrating it and what?

It came what really happened to us is is the hummingbird cinema in birmingham had a retrospective on trigger happy And they invited me and sam and they got they asked us our favorite episode and then they basically Showed it on a big screen with loud music because the music's all about it and we watched it with a whole lot of Trigger Happy fans and firstly it really stood the test of time and secondly I Still would put an episode of Trigger Happy up against anything else in front of an audience and think you get more laughs I would say that but I genuinely it's it still gets it and I thought there's something about this because when you watch Trigger Happy originally You would have watched it on your own or with a friend or whatever, or at home.

But there's something about a communal setting that is kind of interesting anyway, because it's a different dynamic, and people are laughing. Well, there's 

no laughter tracks, obviously, on the original, you God, of course not. No, no. 

I went to ITV and they forced me to have a laughter track. Let's not get into that.

But, uh, no, why would you? You know, I mean, firstly, laughter tracks, you know what they are, don't you? Most laughter tracks are recording of audiences from the 1960s or the 1970s. So you're listening to dead people laughing. I mean, God. But no. And so Uh, I just thought it was an incredible thing to see people doing it and so we suddenly thought well firstly it's the 25th So we can be a bit nostalgic.

It's okay because I'm such a indie kid The way I look at it is there's two types of people there's in in show business This is what I've learned and I always do musical stuff There's Coldplay and Radiohead. Radiohead get massively successful, but then get all embarrassed and indie angsty about it art school Yeah, and then they try Spend the next seven albums trying to alienate their whole audience.

Whereas Coldplay just think, well, these are great. Let's just do bigger and better. And I'm very much radio head. Uh, and so that's what, that's what we did. And so I sort of felt embarrassed about looking back at it. The tour is about saying, you know what? It's I'm proud of it. People seem to really have a love for it.

So let's enjoy it. And if we're going to enjoy it, let's do that. And so originally the tour was going to be me showing. And me saying, look, here's explaining what went wrong, how clips came apart, all the things you probably didn't spot, maybe some bloopers and outtakes and then talking about it and then showing it to people, which would have been okay.

It'd been fine. It may be a Q and a, and then I just thought, no, we've got to do something more interesting than that. And so we have, so we've got three elements now. One is that, which there will be a big screen and I will be showing footage, some unseen Sam just found all the rushes from our. Uh, our pilot, which is insane.

And there are people I don't remember doing like Kate Adie and stuff. So we'll be showing stuff like that. Uh, and then there are going to be, uh, appearances by some of the, uh, some of the characters themselves, which is obviously me, uh, 25 years later, like what they've been up to. So they will come on and interact.

And then thirdly, obviously it's trigger happy. I think people will expect it, and this is what's interesting, because it's not like they don't know that we're going to do something to them, but we're going to play with the audience and have fun with the audience. But I think it's just always done very straight, but obviously, unless they're really thick, they will know what's going on.

So it's a sort of suspend your disbelief. But I just want people to think. Yeah, we still got an idea for a trig happy film and the idea was if you liked watching trig happy come and be in The film and in a sense, that's what this show is Like if you loved watching trig happy will come and be in in an app, you know Like who knows you might have the you know, the park warden sitting next to you or stuff like that I don't really know to be honest Yeah so I think it still feels a bit seat of the pants and I still think I don't really know what the rules are because There are no rules for making a hidden camera show a live show because half the stars in the hidden camera show Are people on the street?

So maybe the rule is we'll make the audience the other half. I don't know It could be a massive disaster, but that's my life really 

Just interesting what you were saying about music and and looking back 25 years And it was really at the time of cool britannia, wasn't it? I mean it was really 

just on the yeah But I think we were just getting Sick of Cool Britannia, but yeah, Cool Britannia was 97 really and yeah, yeah Yeah, I think 

it was the honeymoon was over really but there was there's a certain element of during that time You know comedy and music went really really hand in hand didn't it went really well together and and interesting I don't think it did.

I mean, I like to think we did something about that There definitely was a moment after trigger When, you know, you had Ali G and you had, uh, maybe even Little Britain and people started appearing in pop videos and stuff like that, but I kind of think we were, uh, uh, we were the first sort of real mashup.

I mean, it's interesting. So we were really influenced by, uh, People called the jerky boys and they were two guys who did a whole lot of Uh funny phone call cds and they worked the mtv press office early 90s And they really influenced bands bands would listen to these cds when they're touring radioheads first album Pablo honey is named after a jerky boy sketch and stuff.

So there was this kind of yeah cross thing But I I still felt comedy was common. There was alternative comedy and there was comedy You know and I didn't feel part of that comedy world. I felt much more part i'd been in a band I felt much more like an indie person than a comedy person Yeah, and that's where I think we slightly changed but yes suddenly everything exploded around then and it was like channel four was a You know, goldmine, it was just making great, interesting, it was making stuff that I wanted to watch, which, you know, doesn't happen now, but that's probably because I'm 25 years older and they don't want me to watch, you know, but I'm, I've always only ever tried to make, whether it's books or what I'm doing, what I want to watch and that's all you can do really.

If you could go back and speak to Dom Jolly in 1998. Yeah Would there be any advice that 

you would give much advice? Weirdly? I just had to do a thing for the big issue I had to write a letter to my 16 year old self, which mainly involved buying Bitcoin. That was it really but So what would I say? I think the most valuable thing I've ever learned is never make a massive decision Certainly a sort of career Changing decision right off on the back of finishing something So, you know whether you're making an album or you're making a TV show or you know It's like all those people that have sort of spent five months in Barbados making an album and then they just never want to see each Other again and the band breaks up.

I think I didn't realize I think I never took trigger happy Quite seriously enough. I never thought it was a fine. It was a proper skill I just thought we were really lucky and we were lucky in a lot of ways But in hindsight, I didn't realize how lucky you are to find a format that just suits everything You're good at and i've been struggling since i've never found anything That's as perfect as that and and I kind of just said right that's it.

I finished trigger happy I'm doing something else and in hindsight, I would have probably said You know, why don't you why don't we do a deal? I'll do you a trigger happy every four years and in between I can get all the weird stuff out of my system But I kind of did it like I'm leaving the band. I'm going off to do something else So I think that would be one I think But yeah, I don't know advice but apart from that.

I've had I mean my career has been absolutely Shambolic, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've gone all over the shop. It looks It just looks mental. It really does but I've had the best if you if The, the way I always look at it is if you'd have told me in 1998, these are the things you will have done for the next 25 years.

I'd have bitten your hand off. I've had the craziest, most amazing life. Um, but yeah, I don't know. So no, not really 

changed much. So you've also, you mentioned earlier on about your travel books and, uh, and you've done a lot of travel and that's, that's your passion, right? So tell us about that. You know, what, what's, uh, it's almost been a sort of a second career.

Almost it is my second career. I mean for the last 12 years, that's what I've done since 2010 I've written this will be my sixth proper travel book coming out that I'm writing at the moment on the pursuit of happiness I've just been in Rishikesh trying to get into yoga and I can tell you it was a strong No, but I ended up on the ashram that the Beatles went to in 68 and you know, which basically kick started Western attitudes to religion and stuff.

And that was like, honestly, like a pilgrimage to me. It was amazing. It's where they wrote the white album and stuff. Um, but yeah, I wrote my first travel book. Cause basically growing up, I grew up in Lebanon, a very weird place. In the middle of a war, which probably explains my odd take on humor and stuff.

But growing up in Lebanon, there were four things you really career wise people. I was looking around diplomats, foreign correspondents, travel, writers, and spies, and I might've been all four. I might have not, but I've certainly been a diplomat. It was definitely a foreign correspondent. I was a spy in trigger happy and travel writer was always something I wanted to be.

And so, uh, I just, the one thing that Trigger Happy did for me was open doors, and it allowed me to try things. And the Sunday Times approached me and asked me if I'd like to write something for them. And I knew they were approaching me because I was Trigger Happy guy, but I also knew they wouldn't keep me writing if I wasn't any good.

And so I started writing stuff for them. And I just, it's what I was born to do. I just loved it. And then I finally came out. I thought, what is my USP in travel? And I realized what it was. It was this thing. I read this thing in the Guardian. It was basically in 1977, there was a thing called the Jonestown massacre in Guyana, and it was where Jim Jones took his cult of 800 people to this jungle place.

And in the end made them drink. The cool aid and they all committed mass suicide and Guyana is widely seen as the most inhospitable country on earth. It's insane. It's got nothing there. It's jungles and crocodiles and swamps and the minister of tourism for Guyana, uh, had quite a difficult job and he set up someone in London whose job was to encourage tourism and the guardian wrote about this and said, the guy.

He's desperate. What he's trying to do now is turn Jonestown into a hotel and they said this is an incredible example of what has been called dark tourism. And I thought, that's it. That's what I am, a dark tourist. So I wrote a book called The Dark Tourist, which Netflix then weirdly borrowed, uh, after I pitched it to them and called it Dark Tourist, not The Dark Tourist.

Uh, and in that I went to North Korea on a, on a coach holiday. I went skiing in Iran. I weekended in Chernobyl. Uh, I drove into Syria and I went on an assassination vacation around America and I just thought this is it. This is what I love doing and it's still to this day what I love doing and since then I've been to 108 countries.

Uh, my next book was called Scary Monsters and I went around the world. Sort of looking for legendary monsters, but more looking at the people that are obsessed with them So I went to the congo after this thing called the michaelian bambi I went to the himalayas to look for the yeti and thought I was tintin went to japan to look at a radioactive Monster then I wrote 

bigfoot.

I did bigfoot. I mean bigfoot was where 

it started because I'm When I was a kid, I read, I watched and read Arthur C. Clarke. And there's that famous 16 mil footage of him walking. I went to notice Creek and the best, the best, uh, thing I've ever brought back from any of my travels is I have one of the original plaster casts of Bigfoot from notice Creek, which is amazing.

And then I wrote a book where I walked across Lebanon, where I grew up. Uh, I walked from the Israeli border to the Syrian border. Took me 27 days, and I walked across that. Uh, I did a road trip around England, called Such Miserable Weather. Uh, and then my last book was The Conspiracy Theory, uh, Conspiracy Tourist, where I went around the world hanging out with conspiracy theorists because it just seems to me conspiracies have gone from being fun and eccentric to really dangerous.

I took a flat earther to the edge. Of supposedly the square flat earth on an island called Fogo in Newfoundland. There's a theory that Finland doesn't exist. So I went there. It does, uh, lots of stuff like that. And, and don't get me on Denver International Airport. It's the greatest conspiracy theory ever.

And then my new book's on happiness because I need to get away from conspiracy theory. But it just irritates me. This is what I want to do. I love writing more than anything in the world. And I, if I'd have to kill Bill Bryson, a couple of other people, but if I could just make my living from writing, that's all I do.

But I just long to make proper travel shows that I want to make which are they don't seem to exist anymore I made a series called happy hour for spark of a sky and it was the wrong channel because really happy I was a sort of satire of It was an early idiot abroad really it was like it was a it was a mickey take of all those travel shows because it Was a serious travel show But we were looking into alcohol and we were taking the mickey out of all the tropes in travel shows of you know The fact that you only ever travel, arrive, or leave anywhere at sunset, or, you know, that magic hour.

Just all those things. And I loved that show. I thought it was brilliant. So I really, really, I know the show I want to make. I want to make a A hybrid between people that like my humor and people that enjoy my books and that's really what all my tours have been because half the people come to my tours people read my books other half a trigger happy fans and all I'm saying is if you like one you'll like the other but I want to be able to combine them both.

That's what I want to do. All right, so get on with 

it. Yeah. Great opportunity. I'll be dead soon. Any commissioners out there? There you go. Hello. Don Jolly. 1L. All right. To finish, Dom, I've got five quickfire questions for you. Alright, so here we go. What's the closest you ever came to getting arrested filming Trigger Happy?

Closest I got arrested loads of times. 

Uh, I tend to get arrest arrested a lot abroad british police were rubbish We once I did a sketch in in a place called brockhampton in uh, In the cotswolds near where I live now actually dressed as a burglar where I was asking an old lady Whether a house was unoccupied because I was interested in the architecture And she answered quite nicely and then signed a consent form.

So we thought she knew what was going on But then we drove off She then rang the police and said there was a black man wandering around the village Brandishing a shotgun and threatening to take out the post office So the cotswold flying squad was sent out to look for us. We didn't know this we were driving around.

We were in a van we had a We had a dog and a false turd on the roof rack. We were not difficult to spot in the end. We had to hand ourselves in. We got a call from our production manager saying they're looking for us. So we had to hand ourselves in at the board and on the water. Uh police station, but I also I got arrested a lot abroad.

I got arrested on the empire state building I did a thing as the spy where we were doing a an exchange And I got arrested there and actually put in they have they have their own little prison cell In the empire state building, which was quite good. I got arrested in bruges dressed as an english policeman.

I don't really know why Whenever we went abroad, we'd get arrested, which was good. 

Okay, what's the one prank, and I know you don't like the word prank, but, uh, Hidden camera 

artwork. 

But what's the one hidden camera artwork you never got away with, but you wish you had? Oh, 

okay, well that's so good. Well, I mean, there's the, the one I love the most.

You mean the one that we haven't done or the one that we couldn't show? 

The what? Well, the one that you wanted to get you, you know, you wanted to do, but you just couldn't get away with it. You couldn't make it work for whatever reason, or you, you know. Yeah. Or it didn't happen. 

Yeah. Well there, well there were so many of those.

So there's one, well there's two. I mean, one I did, but I could never show, and it was, we were walking past a garden party once we'd just finished filming on the Kings Road and we were walking down and there was this. Big barracks called the Duke of York barracks and the gates were open. There was a big garden party going on So Sam and I just walked in blagging free drink He had the camera on him and I was had a mic and suddenly in the far corner We spotted Fergie like Sarah Ferguson.

So we just thought sod it. Let's do it. So we just made a beeline for it She was on her own and I didn't know what I was gonna do I just stuck a microphone in her face Sam puts camera up and I go Buenos dias your highness you are live on good morning, Mexico. Do you have anything to say to the people of Mexico?

And she just started waffling on to this tiny camera as though she was talking to Mexico live and And then we went to an ad break where we told her to freeze So that when we came back we'd be in the same place so there was these two minutes where me sam and ferguson was just like Completely frozen and then her people came and took us Took her away and stuff and we got a fax from mish conraya by the time we'd come back It was that that was a nightmare, but the one I really wanted to do and I don't know what I ever did it And it was such a stupid joke, but it still makes me laugh was I wanted to go to one of those seafood caravan stalls where, you know, there's just a shelf and people they're selling caravan stalls and the joke I was basically, I'd go up and they could just see the top of me.

And I'd say, do you have any crab claws? And they go, no. And then I would just lift my hands and I would have massive crab claws. And I go, well, I do. That's really all Tregappy is. And we had the crab claws made. And then we filmed it, I think we tried it four times, and every time, something went wrong, like just as we were about to do it, the caravan would close, and we never got to do it.

Now, I don't think the world of comedy is the worst for me, not having done it, but it was something I longed to do. 

Well, it sounds like you're pretty good at PR, Dom, and I'm sure you'll be doing lots of stunts around your live tour, so there might be Oh, you've missed it then. Yeah. Okay, so what's the most outrageous reaction you've ever had from somebody?

Well, 

we didn't really have outrageous reactions because I think one of the whole points of trigger happy One of the things that annoyed me about old hidden camera was that it was about making people angry the beadle method and that's easy It was for me. It wasn't about if someone went away from us filming them angry.

We hadn't done it, right? I wanted them to be confused and then to be Quite relieved when they found out I think what's interesting and getting back to consents Is one of the main reasons people didn't sign consent forms might be a surprise to people It's because there's a vast amount of people wandering around in public with someone that's either not their husband or their wife And that was probably the main reason people would not sign consent forms So I've had I mean there was Boughton on the water And we did a joke and then, uh, he didn't recognize me.

And then the guy went up afterwards to get the consent. And when he found out he went, Oh my God, trigger happy. I love trigger happy. Was that dumb Johnny? Oh my God. I can't believe it. And then suddenly it clicked and he went, what you're filming? We go, well, yeah, that's how it works. He goes, Oh no, you could, you could, and he wasn't with his wife.

Like he was with his mistress. And he, we said, of course we weren't going to do, we weren't going to show it if, if he didn't want us to, but he, he contacted us 40 times, like he was, I mean, if you're listening, you know who you are, but he was terrified that we were going to reveal it all. So we saved a lot of marriages.

And finally, what's the one thing about Trigger Happy TV that fans always get wrong? That I 

said, I'm on the phone. I never said that. I've never shouted. I'm on the phone in my life. It's really funny. I mean, I get every single day, people go to me and 25 years later, I still don't really have an answer. I go, hello.

But the other thing I get shouts that is I'm on the phone and I've never shouted that, like that's literally not my catchphrase. I never said that. It's not a big deal, but it's just weird. 

Dom, it's been brilliant speaking to you. 

for coming on. Where should commissioners who want to commission a travel show off me, uh, contact me?

That's a good question. 

Yeah, well, exactly. Why don't they contact me and I'll put them on to you? How about that? Come on, guys, please. So, how do you get tickets then, Dom? 

It's very easy. So, there are four big shows we're doing. One in London. Uh, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, they're all in October, uh, and they're going to be amazing.

So if you want tickets, probably easiest thing at the moment is go to my website, www. domjolly1l. tv. Uh, or just look up Cuff Taylor or Live Nation or whatever, but they're going to be brilliant. All right, as I told you, I've really planned it. Can't wait, 

I can't wait. Dom, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks very much. Well, that's about it for this week's show. Telecast was produced by Spirit Studios and recorded in London. We'll be back again with another show next week. Until then, stay safe.