Andrew O’Connor: The Creative Mastermind behind Derren Brown and Peep Show

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Screen Rats, and welcome to another episode of Television Times podcast.

Now today, I've got a corker.

I've got a really, really influential person on here, like one of the most prolific, important people in British television of the last 20 odd years, for sure, easily.

So depending on your age, you may know Andrew as a magician.

He was on television, he was a quiz show host in the 90s.

He was an impressionist in the 80s.

After working on children's TV, hosting on The Word, hosting on The Big Breakfast, he then went on to star on loads of musicals that toured the country before setting up his production company, Objective, which was responsible for things like Derren Brown and Peep Show, which he was the co-creator of.

Unbelievable.

He produced loads of shows, things like the Reggie Perrin reboot.

He also did the Ricky Gervais Meets, where Ricky Gervais basically met all of his comedy heroes.

He was behind The Real Hustle, the TV show Grace, which is on TV right now, starring John Sim.

He directed the film called Magicians, starring Mitchell and Webb.

He also directed a couple of other movies in America, one starring Zac Efron.

I mean, this guy, I mean, seriously, I don't know what to say really.

And I think I mentioned it during the chat, but like when my wife first moved to England, the first two things I showed her were Derren Brown's specials and Peep Show.

It was kind of our show, if you like.

And, you know, Andrew O'Connor was basically at the helm of both of those shows.

Now, those of you who are bored with my clanging name drop of Derren Brown every other bloody episode, I can't help it.

I work with Guy.

What can I say?

So obviously, I've met Andrew.

Andrew directed shows that I've worked on, but we never really sat down and had a good chat, you know?

I can't even remember when I first met him.

I've met him a number of times, but it's always been, you know, in the foyer of a hotel while he's talking to Derren about things that need to be changed in the show or things that didn't work or things that did or whatever, you know, and he's currently directing the new show, which is called Only Human, which is on tour.

So we should all go and see that because apparently it's unbelievable.

I cannot wait to see it.

I'm probably going to wait until next year until it does its second UK tour and hits my city.

But yeah, I mean, Andrew is like, you know, he's the dude and we bring it up quite early or I bring it up quite early.

I thought he didn't like me.

I always think everyone fucking hates me.

I don't know.

I just we never really gelled.

We never really talked and it was really nice to do that finally.

And I think it's really annoying because, you know, there's lots we could have been talking about the whole time.

And I didn't make the connection that the Andrew O'Connor I knew was the same one from the 80s on TV.

I just didn't I mean, I don't know, just for some reason, it just didn't click with me.

I don't really get it.

And the weird thing is, I really do remember him taking over on the Big Breakfast for that week because it was before Johnny Vaughan.

And you know, I just remember that.

And I was like, Oh, shit, of course, that's him.

Me and my face blindness or my partial face blindness.

I don't know what I have.

I say I'm blind in one eye.

I'm apparently not, even though I can't see out of it.

And I don't have face blindness, even though I can never fucking tell if my own children are walking out of the school.

But there we are.

Oh, yes, a little caveat here.

I bring up a couple of names.

I just want to explain who they are.

When I refer to Andy or we talk about Andy, that's Andy Nyman, the actor, magician.

And also, I reference Coops, who is a friend who used to be Derren Brown's, well, who used to be his neighbor and eventually turned into his cameraman.

He was the guy on stage with him.

So yeah, just want to clear that up.

Anyway, should we list all these attributes?

So this is me talking to the writer, director, actor, comedian, impressionist, presenter, TV producer and magician, Andrew O'Connor.

Here we go.

Can Andrew O'Connor please make his way to the stage, please?

Thank you.

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host, me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be.

But it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

Do you remember my face?

Of course.

All right, cool.

How many years ago was it?

Which show was it?

I can't remember which ones are which.

You didn't do Swain Garlick, did you, back in the day?

I came back and fixed it, but I wasn't there for the rehearsals or the tech.

I came back to Oxford and rewrote it.

Okay.

So you were around then because I remember, because I did the second one of those and then Underground.

We'll get on to all that anyway.

Yeah.

I'm like proper excited for this one.

You know, like sometimes I get embarrassed and I get sort of like, some people I don't know who I talked to and some people I sort of have met.

It's really weird.

Like it's a weird thing to say to you.

But like when I first met you, I don't think I clicked who you were.

You know what I mean?

I knew you as you now and working on Derren shows and stuff like that.

And then at some point somebody said, oh, he's the magician guy on the TV and copycats and the impressions.

I was like, that's him?

I didn't make the connection until ages afterwards.

And I also thought, because you know when you're like busy in like directing mode and you know, I think there was a time in Northampton or something and you looked over at me and you were like, you looked at me kind of funny and I thought, does he think I'm a prick?

I think he doesn't like me.

I hope you're recording because this is great stuff.

We shouldn't be wasting this.

No, I'm not wasting it.

All right.

Good.

I never, I mean, there's a guy called Jonathan Goodwin.

Did you know Jonathan Goodwin?

No, I did not.

There was a point in British television where I could sort of get any magic show made post Derren.

And I made a service called Monkey Magic for channel five.

And I basically got four or five other coming musicians.

We made like a team, like a jackass magic show.

That was the premise.

And Jonathan Goodwin was a young, he was like 21.

He just left drama school.

And he wanted to have a phenomenal career as like a daredevil escape artist guy, tragically, not tragically, he's handled it brilliantly, but he had a very bad fall on America's Got Talent.

Like they were doing like this show that was like, America's Got Talent danger thing.

And he fell and almost died.

And he's now in a wheelchair.

He's brilliant the way he's handled it.

He's changed his career.

And he's sort of brilliant, Jonathan.

He toured with The Illusionist in America and England, had his own specials on television.

I sort of love him.

And he wrote a book about his life and his methods that he's come up with methods that no one else has ever done before.

And in it, he talks about meeting Derren and meeting me.

He knew Derren pre-Derren being famous, I think, or just after.

He called Derren probably the greatest magician who ever lived.

He calls Andy a magical genius.

And here's what he says about me.

He says that he was once told that when I used to go into Channel 4 and pitch, as I walked past them, people would sing the Darth Vader theme tune.

Really?

Da, da, da, da, da, da.

Of course, my kids love that story.

So I think your thing about it doesn't become a prick.

I think I may in those days have carried myself with a certain air of that.

There may have been a little bit of that.

No, I think it's just everyone feels a bit of imposter stuff, right?

There was a time in about 2009 when I was working on Pantos and stuff, and my wife moved over from Canada, and we watched two shows.

Like, literally, the two shows we watched were whatever Derren had made on Channel 4.

We just watched them one after the other.

I showed, it was like, look at all this British stuff I can show you.

The other was Peep Show, and they were the two things we watched.

She says, it would be great if you could work with him one day.

I guess, well, that would be great.

Three years later, absolutely am in the room.

There was a point even with Derren where he said something to me in rehearsal in South London somewhere.

He did something in the rehearsal room and he said, have you got that?

I went, yeah, yeah, I got it.

He goes, no, no, but have you really got it?

I went, no, no, I have.

I thought, oh, he's quite serious.

So everyone has that air and obviously, you want to be professional in the thing you're doing.

The thing about Derren is, there's like three modes of Derren, maybe four modes.

There's the guy who's on telly and on stage, there's that Derren, isn't there?

Yeah.

Then there's the off stage social Derren that could not be more different to the guy on stage in Telly and White.

He's hilarious, sweet, you know, often forgotten his bag, you know, a slight air of chaos about him.

And he's just, you cannot believe the difference.

My view on him always is that he's one of the world's greatest actors.

He's playing Hamlet, and at the same time, he's juggling eight balls, and you can't see that he's juggling the balls.

He's doing all the stuff that you don't know.

On the new show that I've just, it's the first show that I've done with, well, second show that I've done with Andy.

Andy wasn't involved in Spangali, and he wasn't involved in this, and it's harder without Andy.

And the thing about Derren Brown Show is that, you know, we're setting it up, and it's taking ten weeks to get it right, is the truth.

And that's because when you're changing it, you're rewriting the script, and then the lighting and the sound and all that stuff.

But you've also got to rewrite the method.

There's two shows going on.

There's the show that everyone sees, and then there's underneath all the stuff that's going on to make the magic work, and you've got to rewrite both.

So you're rewriting two shows, not one show.

So there's the Derren that's sweet and lovely and charming and funny.

Then there's the Derren that you work with, that you write and direct with, and that's my favorite Derren.

My favorite Derren is the guy that I'm sitting down writing with and or rehearsing and making things.

That's my favorite Derren.

I love all of them, but that's my favorite.

But there's also that Derren that you talked about, and then no, that didn't work.

We need to find out what happened.

You know, not that you did anything wrong, but do you really understand what I'm saying?

Because I'm going to be out there, 1200 people looking at me.

If it doesn't work, I look like a dick.

No one's turning around looking at you at the back of this, causing a thing.

It's literally me when a thing doesn't work.

That's the thing.

I mean, when I used to do like sound and any kind of theater job I've ever had, I have actually had that rule.

Like I've never understood people that don't.

It's like that person on stage needs to know you got their back and they don't need to worry about you.

That's always been my thing.

Like don't worry about what I'm doing.

I've got it.

You do your thing.

I'll do mine.

And talking about theater stuff, I'm really excited to see Only Human.

I just heard really good things about it.

I'm from Coop's actually.

He texted me and he said you'd gone down and rejigged the show and he said it's incredible.

He can't wait for me to see it, which I cannot.

Right.

We'll enjoy it.

Yeah, there's some really, really lovely stuff on it.

But look, I mean, the truth is, for all the writing and the directing, anybody else doing that show wouldn't do the show.

You know what I mean?

It's just that he's got every single skill.

He's got balls of steel.

Anything, you know, you've thrown, you know, anything can go wrong, nothing will throw in.

And he's just incredibly in control, isn't he?

And charismatic.

And I was, I think he's one of the world's greatest performers in any genre.

Yeah.

And people don't realize how funny he is.

I always get, people always imagined, I think people must have thought, it's me and him, Derren, writing a show, that, you know, they're doing the magic and I'm coming in with jokes.

No, I'm the least funny person in the room.

Nymans absolutely hilarious.

And Derren is proper, proper laugh out loud funny.

And I'll often go, that thing he said last night was hilarious, keep that in.

What was it?

I have to remind him.

And that's how the show builds, of course.

He's absolutely extraordinary.

Do you think there's always been that connection between comedy and magic?

Because obviously how you started, you know, you were a kid in TV shows and then you were in that show.

I've talked to Bobby D'Avro, believe it or not.

But you were in that show, Copycats.

Did my name come up?

Did my name come up?

He did.

Yeah.

He said, I can't remember what he said.

He said they used to have a nickname for you.

I can't remember what it was.

But I've seen clips of that because they're on YouTube.

Do you know that?

They're on YouTube with the original adverts from 1985.

I mean, the show does not hold up.

It's so funny, like sitting on stalls in the V formation, popping on a wig, doing an impression.

Well, forget that.

What about blacking up?

What about, you know, there's one episode where the first seven performers have all blacked up.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

And they go, and Wilmot was in the show.

What were we thinking?

But they used to use that as a measure, right?

That's, they used to do that with Lenny Henry, right?

If you have a black guy and he's OK with it.

That's like the Chris Sturley thing in Australia.

But the show does not hold up on any level.

The material is terrible.

And we're all just very young.

When you think of what Rory Bramley did.

Yeah, Dabra, what a character.

I mean, the truth is, I was a kid actor.

Then I was a young magician.

Then I was an impressionist.

Then I was a game show host.

I was in musical theaters.

And then my early 30s, I switched to producing.

But you did it all before.

I mean, that's the thing that sort of comedian hosts in the game show thing.

You did it like 20 years before anyone else.

Well, Monk House, right?

Monk House and Forsythe.

I mean, I took over Bob Soil House and destroyed it.

Myself, he left.

I took over and it was a disaster.

Monk House was very, very sweet to me, Monk House.

Although he once told me off for keep changing what I was doing.

Anyway, he left me a lovely message on my answering machine.

It shows how long ago it was that I sort of saved and sent a little message.

He was gorgeous to me.

But he kept going to me, what's the matter with you?

Are you an actor or are you an impressionist?

Or are you a comedian?

Well, you need to decide what you want and stick to it.

Then I made some TV shows with him as a producer.

He was again, absolutely lovely to me.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Yeah, I've heard only good things about him.

People have really nice things to say about him.

I just want to talk briefly about The Big Breakfast because I remember you guest hosting on there for a week because I was an avid viewer at the time.

I lived in Hackney, really close to those cottages.

And yeah, I remember that.

I was the first guest host.

And then it was like Take That and then some others.

And yeah, it was in the early, early bit, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was his first holiday.

And the reason I got it was Charlie Parsons.

So you know, you'd forget me and Tony.

Charlie Parsons, that's who you want to get on the show.

He's an absolute genius.

You know, network seven, big breakfast and survivor.

Survivor?

Charlie Parsons sold Planet 24, his production company and kept Survivor.

Wow, cash cow.

How do you do that?

Anyway, I was a guest on the word doing something.

And then I went back, was a guest host on the word knees are coming to the big breakfasts.

And I did that for a week in 1993.

And then they asked me to be the regular host, be the regular guest host whenever he was off.

But I signed for Me and My Girl.

Yeah, you were in the musicals.

Which I wanted to do my whole life.

So did you prefer being the star of a touring theatre show or being on television?

Me and My Girl was the happiest professional experience.

So I'd seen it when I was 18.

My girlfriend went to university in Leicester.

I was a magic bag walking around the clubs.

My girlfriend was studying law and I went to see her.

There was this show in the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester.

I was like, let's go see it.

Well, it was just bobbling.

It was extraordinary.

I often think if I went back and watched it now, what would I think?

I loved that.

I loved Crawford and Barnum.

I loved Tommy Stem and Singing in the Rain and how would I feel about it now?

But at the time, I was in love with it.

So I thought he was phenomenal.

Anyway, saw it and then from about four years later after Lindsay left, I auditioned for it every year and never got it.

Then Willmott went into it and Gary Willmott sort of, they went actors, they went Bob Lindsay, Enrightale, Karl Hamm and they went loads of actors.

Karl Hamm and Brush Strikes.

Yeah.

Then Willmott went into it and after Willmott, they only went comics ever again.

They just stayed with comics.

I kept auditioning, never got it.

One year it was between me and Les Dennis and Les Dennis got it.

That was pretty tough.

Oh my God, I'm very upset.

Anyway, eventually I was offered it and did it.

And it was the most brilliant show and I was so happy.

I loved it.

It was tough being away from home, I just had a kid.

And touring was tough, but I loved it.

I did Barnum for 18 months and that's a great part, but not a great show and I was just tired all the time.

Greatest showman.

Did you adapt to that life though?

I mean, how was it like going from like working on, had you done theater before then?

Because you were an actor as a kid, so you could remember all the lines and the songs and everything.

Yeah, and also I remember I was a variety old fashioned turn, so summer season panto, yeah, a big panto, Bristol Hippodrome, isn't a million miles away from Me and My Girl or Barnum.

You're not doing Chekhov, you're not playing Hamlet or Macbeth, you know, it's not that big.

I mean, I think I was a performer, not an actor really.

I mean, Nyman obviously is a brilliant actor, and he and I talk a lot about the difference between being a performer and being an actor.

I think I offended him once as well.

Is this show just you trying to vent your spleen about how you upset people and try to make people laugh?

No, just to follow up, I need to apologize.

Now, all it was, all I said was, it was about 2018, we were in Birmingham, no, Liverpool, and I'd just seen the film.

Is it a train film, some kind of train film with him and Liam Neeson?

Oh yeah, I know exactly the one.

I can't remember the fucking name of it.

And I went in the next day and I said, I saw you in a film last night, and then I followed it stupidly with this line.

How did you get that?

And you went, oh, it's like I'm a proper actor or something.

And I was like, fucking hell, Steve, what did you just say?

I didn't mean it like that.

I meant like, wow, that's amazing that you're in this big Hollywood film.

No, that is not right.

That's not good, is it?

How do you get that with your talent?

I'm really surprised.

How did you get that?

Honestly, I've seen you act a lot, I'm not really impressed with it.

Of course, people who don't know, I offered Nyman the job of being Derren.

I'm sure you know that.

Is that common knowledge?

I mean, I think.

It's a weird thing to say you offered him to be Derren.

You might have to explain that a bit more.

So, the first magic show we made, because obviously, you know, we're from Objective, we're trying to get shows away.

The first thing they made was a hidden camera show starring Ainsley Harriot called The Hidden Camera Show.

Oh my God.

Sorry, Andrew.

I was working a venue called The Fashion Cafe as technical manager in 1998, and you came down to film with Ainsley Harriot.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was the sound guy on that.

Isn't that weird?

In the venue.

That is amazing.

That is weird, isn't it?

I knew what it was, but I never ever saw the show in the end.

The show was not successful.

The first show we made on Objective was a show that I hosted called The Alphabet Game, which was a game show.

Yeah.

And I decided that I wasn't going to perform anymore.

And there was a BBC thing.

They did like mini pilots of six game shows and they chose ours.

And I did the run through in the room.

There's a bloody commission if you host it.

So I hosted it for a bit.

The show had a big life elsewhere.

In fact, it plays in Spanish television.

It's very rare.

It plays five days a week on Spanish television.

And that's for like 20 years.

Anyway, so we did that.

Then we made a magic show called Extreme Magic, Extreme Danger for ITV, a special like a stunt magic show.

Didn't really work.

Then we made a kids magic show called The Quick Truth Show.

Stephen Mohan.

Exactly.

And that one of After.

So that really gave us a little bit of credibility.

And then Blaine broke.

The first Blaine special broke.

1999, 1998, maybe.

And just sort of transformed magic because he made it.

People were watching the magic rather than the person who was doing the magic.

It was street magic, wasn't it?

Blaine just transformed the experience from me watching a trick to me watching someone watch a trick.

So a guy called Kevin Leiker was the head of entertainment at Channel 4.

And I said to him, and he wasn't a mate, but I'd met him three or four times and I pitched to him.

And this is, I think Peep Show is in development, but not in production.

And I go to Kevin, if I brought you a mind reading David Blaine, would you be up for that?

And he said, definitely.

And the idea of a mind reader came from Michael Vine, my ex-manager at Business Bar.

You know Michael very well, the extraordinary Michael Vine.

We'd always thought there was room for a mind reader, because I hadn't really been one in the UK since Coran, or Creskin, I suppose, I'm telling you a little bit, the Canadian, maybe your wife will know who he is.

So he said yes, then it was go find the guy.

And I auditioned and went around the world and saw people.

No one seemed right.

And then Ali Bongo said to me, you should go to Andrew Niman.

I went to see Andrew Niman doing Monday Night Magic in Highgate.

I was blown away by him.

Took him out for a coffee and he said, I don't want to do it.

I'm an actor.

I don't want to do it.

And we sort of gave up.

And then we met a pilot with Jerry Sadowitz for Channel 5 called Jerry Atrick Show, I think it was.

We did not go on to make the series, but Jerry went, Oh, you should go to Derren.

There's a guy in Bristol called Derren Brown.

That's how we found Derren.

So is my perception of the first, what was the first, was it trick or treat?

What was the first TV show called, Derren's?

Derren Brown, Mind Control.

Mind Control.

Yeah.

My perception of that is I was on tour that year.

So it's 2000, right?

What were you touring?

And Inspector Calls.

It was the tour of Inspector.

The famous one, the famous production.

Yeah, with the house.

Yeah.

Stunning.

Yeah.

Stunning.

Yeah.

And I was touring that in Milton Keynes.

And I remember us all sort of watching this TV show after we got back.

It was on repeat or someone had recorded it or whatever.

And we watched it.

And I just remember all our jaws like falling open and going, who the fuck is this guy?

And then it was immediately, immediately something we needed to see every Saturday.

Was it Saturday?

Every week, whenever?

No, you massively misremember me.

There was only one special.

There was one special.

It was just a one-off special.

And then there was Mind Control 2 there, Mind Control 3.

Then it became Mind Control.

That was a series.

And that was six half hours.

There was bits of the special, chopped up with some new material.

So my guess is that's what you saw.

And I think it was Friday night at 10.30.

Right.

Okay.

Well, that makes more sense.

That's after the show, then.

Yeah, that would make sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But anyway, I remember it being like everyone that watched it was just suddenly hooked.

But now, like, I mean, you can spill the beans, but is Derren going to do any more TV?

I know he's like he much prefers the live stuff.

Is there any more TV in the horizon?

We are talking to Channel 4 about something actually.

It's interesting, isn't it?

I mean, both of the TV shows and the stage shows, the bars are set so high.

He always wants to reinvent it and not.

He sort of created a genre of telly, didn't he?

With the specials, you know, apocalypse and the push, you know, it's extraordinary telly.

So I think we are talking to Channel 4 about anything now, actually, that may or may not happen.

But we're in this really weird thing that this current tour is basically sold out and has been since before we opened.

So he doesn't need the telly.

No.

So it's about, which most people do, most people need the television at all.

It's sort of in this position where it's like a national treasuries and people who couldn't get into Wolverhampton or Woking this time, when he comes back in four years' time with a new show, I assume they'll come and see it again, because people bring their kids now and all that.

And the kids have got no idea who he is, but the parents have been, because Derren hasn't been on telly for a while.

That's true, yeah, of course.

Also, he doesn't like being famous, remember?

He's no interest in that.

He's just interested in doing work that he likes and that he thinks is not important to the moment, but that's worth doing, that has value.

Yeah, you say that, but when you're on tour with him, there's always a really famous person coming to see him in the dressing room, like you can't quite believe he's in there half the time.

And of course, that was magnified enormously on Broadway.

Oh, in New York, yeah, what was that like?

I mean, that was extraordinary, obviously.

That's major film stars and major film directors knocking on the door and pop stars and all that.

You know, I won't name names, but for Thanksgiving, when he was in Broadway, he spent it at an ex-president's house.

Oh, I know that story, yeah.

He didn't say it on here, but he's told me.

Yeah, yeah, so, you know, so it's pretty extraordinary.

And your thing about, how do you get that?

It's got to be, he said something stupid to the ex-president's wife and totally regretted it.

So, you know, we're all battling those demons, aren't we?

I think it's just nerves half the time with those things when you, you know, I remember it was underground and it was in whatever theater that is down the embankment, kind of remember the name, Playhouse.

And I walked in and Stephen Merchant was in there.

And I just watched his fantastic American TV show.

Hello Ladies.

And I just could not stop fawning over him.

And I was like, I just have to tell you, I think it's the funniest sitcom I know it's been canceled, but it's fucking brilliant.

I loved it.

And he said, Oh, thanks, thanks very much.

And then I didn't realize that he was with his girlfriend who was out of episodes and I didn't even recognize her for the first five minutes.

And I thought, Oh, now is she going to think I'm a dick because I've been weird and I haven't referenced episodes, which I also love.

Fuck this, I'm getting out of here.

What made you go, okay, I'm going to make my own TV.

I thought I wasn't having the career that I wanted.

If I had the performance career, you know, I wanted to be Thomas Steele or Crawford.

Or at one point, I wanted, you know, I wanted that.

I wanted world domination as a performer.

And I really wasn't getting it.

And two things happened.

I piloted my own sitcom for the BBC that I'd co-written, that didn't get picked up.

I'd worked very hard on a musical called Where's Charlie, which is a musical version of Charlie's Arms.

And I've got the rights to it.

We'd sell it up.

We tried to put it all together and that fell apart and didn't happen.

And I thought, well, if I can't do that and I can't have my own sitcom, I guess I was 32.

And of course, with my kids who find it hilarious, my early performance stuff, we often play the game about, you know, what would my career have been?

Well, I'd definitely have been in the jungle, right?

My kids go, you've been in the jungle and you're the one that really hated.

Oh, thanks a lot.

Thanks, children.

They say that.

So I think I'd definitely been that guy.

But of course, the reason you do I'm a celebrity, old big brother, is because you put your money out the panto.

It doubles your panto money.

That's why you do it.

So is Mickey Rourke going to be in the Greenwich Panto or something?

That's exactly what it is.

But I was going to go, I kept not saying it, but a little bit of me, I don't miss performing, but I miss the sort of old fashioned seediness of show business that I was in.

Well, you've straddled both worlds.

You know, you were young enough to be in like Copycats and things like that.

It was the end of Vaudra on TV right before alternative comedy comes.

And then you wait a little while, it seems.

And then there you are with Objective with all this new comedy content for the Noughties, which you're basically the helm of.

Well, I would like to have been in alternative comic, of course.

When Derren opened Showman at Plymouth, sitting behind me was Dawn French.

Hello, hello, little chat.

And I went, I was doing Copycats, I would be doing, you would be doing Sam, you know what I mean?

And I wanted to do Sam, you know what I mean?

I was doing impressions of Rick Ganaid and Brian Atkinson and I wanted to be doing what you're doing.

And she went, well, look, we're all doing Panto now.

She went, yeah.

So I think I wanted to be in that world.

But I was, you know, the enormous difference, obviously, between Malcolm Wise, Freddie Starr, Mike Yellwood, Forsythe, Monkhouse, through to Mike, we were the last generation, Joe Pasquale, Gary Willem, like Shane Ritchie, Bobby Dabrow, and then Rick and the Abe and Ben and Stephen Fry.

The enormous difference is a little class thing, but it's predominantly about education.

Pre those guys, there was, of course, The Goons, and there was not a lot of news.

And there was, that was the week that was.

There was always alternative comedy.

But in terms of that existed, but in terms of the switch, the switch was one of them, education.

Because Freddie Starr and Northampton Wise, it all came from the gut.

Their comedy was not intellectual.

I mean, a well-known comedian once said to me, I mean, the thing, the nickname, the whole difference between me and the other Copycats on Copycats was, we finished rehearsals, they would go out to the pub and they would go out to a nightclub in the pool of, that's their thing, right?

In that old fashioned thing.

And I would go from rehearsals back to LWT, and I'd be there when the scripts came in, and I'd be there opening the scripts and the writers and being part of the writing process.

So I was both ambitious to want to get the scripts, but also I wanted to learn that thing.

But that generation of comics never wrote their own material.

It was, communities were, in fact, Forsythe and Monk House, you know, and Monk House was a writer, but you had writers who wrote jokes for you.

So it was a real intellectual gap.

Did you ever see Bob Monk House's joke books?

I never saw them, no.

We were never friends.

I went to the house, but I never saw, I worked with him when he was very, very ill right towards the end and had a special friend.

But yeah, the intellect, that gap, the craving for own material.

I was in Panto, the Ashcroft Theater Croydon and Benny Hill came to see me in Panto.

And he went to me, and this is obviously pre-old stuff.

He went to me, Oh, I really thought you were excellent, Sam.

And if I was still working, I'd have stolen your opening routine with the juggling and I'd have stolen the song sheet.

And he thought it was a compliment because there was like a, in that world, there's like a big bin of jokes on comedians.

Just go and get the jokes they want out of the bin.

I'll do that one, you do this one, I'll do that one, you do that one.

Every single mainstream comedian, that's what the world was.

There's just these jokes.

And you think about impressionists, you know, often they would go out and they'd do, you know, they'd do a bit of John, a bit of Michael Barrymore, a bit of Bruce Forsythe, a bit of Monkhouse, whatever.

And not only would they do the voice, they'd do their material.

So you would do a bit of Monkhouse's act, a bit of Forsythe's act, a bit of Barrymore's act.

You'd literally do a chunk of their act.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah.

So that's, you know, that was the thing.

I mean, Rory, obviously, Brenner changed that.

Brenner made it about something, didn't he?

There was a purpose to it.

Impressions is a funny thing, isn't it?

Because I think everyone secretly likes impressions.

They sort of went out of favor, but even at Edinburgh, in edgy Edinburgh, if someone comes on and just does a little impression, the crowd loves it.

We secretly love impressions.

They can be cringe, but I mean, who's doing the impressions on TV in the UK?

No one.

No one does it.

Yeah, no one knows.

I love it.

I love it, too.

I love a good impressionist.

I love a singing impressionist.

Do you still do any impressions?

You get to belt one out.

When I tell a story, like I'm telling a story that I do Michael Vine, I'll do Michael Vine.

Yeah.

You know, we've got to think me, Andy and Derren, where I'll go, okay, they will have, which you won't even know who that is, and that's Brian Walden.

I do know who that is.

They just did the TV show, Maggie.

The Coogan thing, yeah.

Derren also an excellent impressionist.

Andy, great impressionist.

Well, it doesn't sound like you're gonna give me an impressionist, so let's get back to you.

I wanna talk about your career, okay?

So I wrote this down.

He has done so much with his life.

That's what I wrote down, looking at what you've done in your career.

It's just so wide and even things I didn't even know about, like I loved, absolutely loved, I know people didn't, I don't know why, the Reggie Perrin remake.

I thought that was hilarious.

I didn't know you had a hand in that.

I love both equally for different reasons, do you know what I mean?

I mean, I've got very strong views about that.

And my strong view on it is that it wasn't written as a studio set.

I wanted to do it not as a studio set.

I mean, Ben Farrell, who was the, I think he was the deputy head of comedy objective at that point, Phil Clark, who was obviously heavily involved in Peep Show.

Phil was the head of comedy, I think, and Ben was his like number two.

It was written by Simon Nye, member of the Hedging Baguette Brilliant Writer.

It wasn't my idea, by the way.

I don't know how it happened.

And they brought me this pilot script.

And I sat, I didn't have a desk objective.

I think I never had a desk.

I just were like hot desk and wandering around.

It was like right at the peak of Objective, there were like 150 people working for us.

We were in County Hall, third floor, amazing offices overlooking the Thames.

Slept down, put on to fuck off, leave me alone, read the script.

And it was the best first draft I'd ever read of anything.

I thought it was absolutely stunning.

Took it to BBC and sort of into it immediately.

It was a really, really easy commission.

Really easy commission.

Anyway, they commission it.

We're all gonna make it.

Marty came on board incredibly quickly, great class lined up.

And the BBC decided that we should do it in studio.

My views were shouldn't have.

And the reason for that is it just very subtly affects the performers.

Performers.

Because you can't not help but be affected by those huge laughs.

And I think if we hadn't had that, it would have separated it from the original a bit more.

And it would just have made it its own thing.

So I think that was the mistake.

Obviously, I made it completely wrong, but that's my take on it.

I spoke to James Friedman.

Did you produce The Real Hustle as well?

Yeah, The Real Hustle as, yeah.

Again, it was that period at Objective where we sort of owned magic and owned that world.

I mean, I was never that close on it.

I liked it.

I didn't love it.

It was one of my passion projects.

It was extraordinarily successful.

It was funny because it was almost like a companion piece for The Hustle, the TV show, wasn't it?

They were very pissed off.

Steven Garrett, who made The Hustle, is a mate of mine.

He was so pissed off with the group.

I think we were also the first.

Now, everyone does it.

The real gold, you can't move for it.

But I think we were the first, very cheeky, wasn't it?

The real hustle.

I remember thinking because I grew up with criminal parents and I spent my whole life trying not to steal.

And I'm just like, don't tell them how to steal from bags and cafes.

What the fuck are you doing?

Give them the information.

What are you doing here?

There was definitely an element of that, wasn't there?

Yeah.

But I mean, it was like a magic exposure show in some ways, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Like, here's the scam and here's how you do it and here's how you shouldn't do it.

True.

Yeah.

And those guys, it all gave them all really interesting careers.

But I also made loads of shows that didn't work.

We made hundreds of TV shows and really only four or five of them had any cultural resonance, really.

What was your favorite one that you hoped would work that didn't?

It was a show that we never got made.

It was a show called Space Basterds.

It was a sitcom set in space and we never got it away.

In fact, that was pre-Peep Show and that was my real saddening that got away that didn't really happen.

I'd love to have made that.

You can still dig it out.

I'm 62.

I don't think you could be taking a comedy into Channel 4 at 62.

There certainly shouldn't be a conditioning comedy of me at Channel 4.

There should be a conditioning of 20 and 30 year olds.

What was your hand in Star Stories?

And you did Kevin Bishop as well.

But Star Stories was just one of those shows that I don't understand how some people haven't seen it.

Some people have.

There's people like me who have seen it and love it and watch it over and over, especially George Brown.

And there's others that are like, what is that?

I don't know what you're talking about.

I never saw that.

It was really our peak objective of, because of Peep Show and Derren, people just sort of trusted us.

And I think it was Postballs that we just started in Balls of Steel.

That's a very sort of Marmite show, Balls of Steel.

You know, you love it or hate it.

Yeah, I know Mark Dolan.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

It's a very, very, yeah.

But yeah, Marmite, it's a Marmite show.

It's a Marmite show.

The truth is I pitched the Higgin Cameron Show to Kevin Ligo and Andrew Newman.

Newman's sort of a genius.

Kevin had a thing about that you should trust a producer more than an idea.

There's a producer who you like, who you think is good.

Then you should trust them because they'll have other good ideas.

That was his philosophy.

It's really interesting, isn't it?

So I pitched the Higgin Cameron Show and I went in and I took this idea in one piece of paper.

And in half an hour meeting, they turned it into something else that was better.

And that show became Balls of Steel.

And Newman had done Allergy and Brass Eye.

Newman had done.

He was now working at Channel 4.

And so we worked the show.

And then a guy called Lee Hupfield came in.

And Lee was like the head of Higgin Cameron, and dark and funny.

And we made that.

That was like three or four, maybe five series.

And then he pitched me Star Stories.

And the pitch was a spoof version of those TV reenactments of famous people's lives and just go really big and broad on it.

So that really reflected Lee's taste.

You know, take that.

And you know, Robert being Norman Wisdom, what's name being Chewbacca.

So that was really sort of his brilliant.

And then then Peep vs.

Life came from that.

I remember Phil Clark, who joined us as a Phil Clark left TORQ back and became the head of comedy.

This was like series one of Peep Show, maybe season two of Peep Show.

And he went to me, what you want is you want to become a planet for other talent wants to come and join and think you can get the shows away.

And that's what happened.

For you, it might feel like all these things are just sort of happening and you do that and it comes this, but like you're in this nucleus of everything that's going on in television in that period.

And you know, you're basically making history, whether you know it or not.

And I know you say you have some failures and whatever, but like Peep Show, I mean, you're listed as a creator on there.

What was your role in that?

You literally came up with it with the other two.

I'll tell you the story.

I've got a little favor to ask you.

Could you please follow us on social media?

And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

It all helps drive traffic back to the podcast.

But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television Times.

I hadn't made a comedy for Channel 4.

And I guess I felt because of my history, I could make magic shows and I could make comedy.

The kernel of the idea was a real life Beavis and Butthead.

So two guys watching television, sort of commenting on it and doing jokes.

That was the kernel of it.

And I went to Liger, who at that point was the head of entertainment and comedy at Channel 4.

I got this idea.

That's interesting.

I may do that.

It's not expensive.

You know, it'd be quite fun.

And I went to, but who should be in it?

And he said to me, you should look at MichelinWeb.

And his expression was, I've never known them not be funny.

So I chatted to them, or maybe at the same time, looking for a writers.

And I read hundreds, hundreds of scripts.

And there's one script, a spec script called Political Animals, written by Sam Bain, Jesse Armstrong.

And I thought it was my favorite script.

I just loved it.

And really interesting when you look at Jesse's career afterwards about the politics and you really see it.

And he worked, Jesse, as an assistant to a politician in the Labour Party.

He had done that.

Their first breakthrough show was, they wrote on the first series, which was the only series at the time that had to be, of the English remake of The Golden Girls.

Whoa.

Yeah.

What was that?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

They weren't in Right As Hell, because that's not really how it works, but they were sort of, you know, trying to find the next thing.

So I met them.

They knew Robert and David and had written some sketches for them.

So that was very fortuitous.

So that means they got their voice straight away.

Then the three of us, me, Sam and Jesse, maybe Robert and David, I can't remember, talked about what the show should be.

I remember Sam and Jesse sent me a list of things that we could add to it.

There's going to be watching clips and talking about it.

And if you remember, in the early series, with the painting, with the commenting on The Guy Painting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they're talking about, oh, he's got lovely brushstrokes and all that American.

That really comes back from how it was.

And the big telly in the flat of the something, that telly really was the telly in that flat in Croydon, weirdly.

We didn't bring that in.

And then they did a list of things.

What came out of it was the interior monologue and the point of view shooting.

So Channel 4 gave me £11,000 to shoot 11 minutes.

It was just nothing.

Even then, whatever it was, 2001, 2002, said we shot it all on location.

Jeremy Wooding, who directed the first Derren's, directed the pilot, the first 11 minutes.

We went and produced it.

We just rented someone's flat in Croydon.

We all went there.

We filmed for, I guess, a day, two days and went to an edit.

The edit was enormously challenging.

And my son, who's 33 now, who's a writer and performer, lives in New York.

Last time I saw him, he tells me, he said that he remembers the edit, that he came with me to work.

Everybody left and I stayed with the editor and we just worked over the weekend trying to make sense of the edit.

Because we had to create the grammar of the point of view shooting.

You know, if you and I were in the room now, if we were in the same room and we were covering this in the normal TV show, there'd be a wide establishing shot that shows the two of us.

And there'd be an over the shoulder of me of you, over the shoulder of you, and then you've got, well, you can't do any of that.

In Peep Show, all you got is me looking at you, you looking at me.

And as well as the interior monologues, we also in the pilots, they'll have their own theme tune, like music that accompanied them and their thoughts.

Yeah.

In the pilot, when he leaves the note for Olivia Coleman on the post-it note, that was like a Nazi thing, he goes.

Over that, we had, dinga, dinga, dinga, ding, dinga, ding, ding, which is the take part theme tune.

So it was just like this weird, bizarre, what is this?

But eventually we nailed all that.

But you know, series one is a hard watch.

It's a real barrier in terms of the shooting style.

We really smoothed it all out.

It got better and more professional.

So that's how it started.

It's funny you say kids, like, I try and introduce my son, who's now 11, to certain things.

I'm still, okay, that's too, he's too young for that.

But I wouldn't do a series with all of these.

No, no, not yet.

It starts with Pido.

It's almost immediate.

My kids are 33, 28, 26 and 21.

And, you know, they're all in the arts or at least involved somewhere in the arts.

And, you know, they are raw.

It's if they're very different world, and they go, daddy, he's dating that young girl.

And how old is she having sex with the show king?

I'm going, different time, different time.

Different time, different time.

Don't watch Copycats.

Yeah, so, and also the show was never a ratings hit really.

We were always about one and a half million.

And what happened was all the ratings came down and got less and less and less and less and less.

And the show could have been canceled many, many times.

Ian Morris also, you know, Ian Morris in between us.

Ian Morris was also a very important part of the show.

He doesn't get quite the credit he deserves.

You know, many, many episodes just based on Ian's life.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, he's an extraordinary character.

But you know, if you look back at the commissioning editing team in the comedy department that Kevin was running, you know, it was Andrew Newman, Ian Morris, Robert Popper, Caroline Leddy, people who are absolutely, it's all about me making this group.

They were all, you know, a terrible part of British comedy at that point.

It's Peep Show Friday Night Dinner, Red Dwarf for me.

I think they're the best three comedies pretty much out of this country.

What's your favorite series of, have you got a favorite series of Peep Show?

I think it's Three, if I'm thinking correctly.

I think that's when I really got into it.

Series Three is always a good time, isn't it, for a show that's been up a little while.

That's usually like Peep, everyone's enjoying it, they know what they're doing.

Yeah, right.

You know, there's probably another season.

It was doing well on the DVDs by then, right?

Yeah, yeah, it was all great.

For me, it's Four.

It's the Wedding Series is my favorite.

Do you want me to work myself?

Do you want me to work myself?

Is that what you want?

All that.

And then you've got to be eating the dog and all that.

Oh, yeah, that is awesome.

No one dies in Southern England, Jeremy.

Is that the line?

It's one of the best lines of all time.

I mean, the truth is, you know, the credit I can take is having the initial spark of the idea, casting Robert and David, casting Sam and Jesse, selling it and then overseeing the pilot, those first two pilots.

Then from series one, Phil Clark came in.

And the company was getting bigger from that point.

The minute I got Phil, I knew it was going to be fine.

And I would, of course, I'd go to the script read throughs, which was just wonderful.

And I'll give notes on the other.

I remember on the read through of the series four, you know, he's going to move out.

We're doing the read through and it's the odd got Brown for starters and White Toast for dessert.

And that was in the very first pilot, that joke.

They sort of really, they put it back.

And I looked across at Sam and Jesse, and we'll sort of have a little bit of a tear in our eye going, that was the first joke.

And now look, it's become this big thing.

And it's that he's moving out.

It's sort of, that's one of my favorite moments and telly ever that, sharing that with Sam and Jesse, that moment of, look what we did.

And what about the, not a rumor per se, but I've heard David Mitchell mention that he would like to revisit it when he's quite old.

Whatever happened to Peep Show, I'm in for whatever happened to Peep Show.

I don't know why you wouldn't do that.

Work with the likely lads, why wouldn't we go and do that?

Because, you know, Robert and David aren't any less funny.

Sam and Jesse aren't any less funny.

So why wouldn't we do that?

A lot of their clips like the Mitchell and Webb look and a lot of stuff from the mid 2000s is doing the rounds on YouTube and TikTok.

I've noticed there's a lot of Armstrong and Miller.

Oh, really?

A lot of Sarah Fenowitch, all that stuff.

I think it's because it isn't on now.

That stuff is not on TV.

So you got to dig it out.

I mean, I get quoted, are we the baddies?

I get quoted that all the time.

We the baddies?

It's a big one.

Yeah.

My absolute favorite is, I have to say, is when they're doing the Sherlock Holmes and they're swapping parts.

Every time they go through the door, so fucking clever and funny.

Yeah, they're great.

And of course, their huge influence was, you know, Fry and Laurie.

They were enormously influenced by her.

Yeah, Fry and Laurie.

What's your favorite Fry and Laurie?

Really early, it was on your toes, on your toes.

It was laughing the joke in, laughing the joke out.

Because the famous story of, they did it on Life and Her Majesty's or Life and the Palladium with Tarbuck hosting it.

And if you haven't seen the sketch, the sketch is someone teaching another person how to be a stand-up comedian, which is laugh the joke, laugh the joke.

You laugh on the start of the joke.

So I go into the pub, you do that and the tongue and you look left and right.

And it's like taking the piss out of mainstream comics.

Apparently, Tarbuck turned to the production and said, are they taking the piss out of it?

I'm realizing that I'm taking quite a lot of your time, but I did want to just touch upon your LA years.

When did you go out there?

Because you started making American films.

2010, I was there till 2018.

2018, how was that?

I had always wanted to go and have the experience of living in LA.

I felt that I'd done the TV thing, I'd sold the company, someone else was running it, and just felt like, oh, let's go and give it a go.

So it was like this big, extraordinary adventure.

Basically, I did a movie called Magician, I directed a movie called Magician.

I love that film.

Thank you.

It was not successful here, but it got a lot of traction in America, and I was offered a lot of work when it came out, including directing entourage.

But I got an agent and come out and have a little play, come and play in our sandbox, the agent said.

Really?

We all went out, had this big American adventure, lived in Brentwood, which is the most expensive bit of LA, where all the billionaires.

I went out to have the experience of working in the movies, and I had every single experience you can imagine.

I made two movies, one of which cost $7 million and then made $100 million worldwide, and I'll never see a penny of that money.

Oh, really?

Is that the awkward moment?

It is.

I made a movie that NGM got excited about and were going to release, and then the boss of the company changed and the film never got released.

Wow, the classic stories.

But my favorite story is this.

I've really got to be careful about disguising names and sexes of stars.

I co-wrote a script with someone.

I wanted to make big, broad comedy movies, so I wanted to make The Hanged Over.

So I had this one very high concept, big, broad, romantic, X-rated comedy.

And it was written with the lead role being one sex, right?

The co-producer was the one working and he says, look, I sent the script to you, blah, blah, blah.

They love it and they want to know, will you rewrite it to switch the sex of the lead?

And I go, oh, it's a lot of work.

But this person is a major A-list film star.

So I guess, well, do we go and do it?

No, I think I better meet them first.

Let me meet them.

Look, the wife arrives and do you really want to do this?

I go to the manager's office who represents this A-list film.

The film starts a bit late and the manager comes out, go, we love the script, you're brilliant, very excited, but you've co-written, you've been directed by the whole team.

This is amazing.

We can finance this right between 15 and 20 million.

We can get funds immediately.

Blah, blah, blah.

They start back, back, back.

The star eventually arrives and I start talking about it.

I go, look, look, you know, I'm really happy if you want to bring other writers in.

No, no, you're the person, you've made this thing happen, it's yours, you're the rewrite.

Okay, well, what do you think?

What would you change?

What would you do if you also start talking?

It became really clear in the meeting that not only had the A-list star never wrote the script, neither had the manager.

They just read the coverage and the high concept and the title.

I went along with it, did the rewrite, this, that, nine, 12 months working on it.

I'm back to deliver the final rewrite when I read in Deadline that the star is about to start in another movie they've committed to, which is basically the same idea.

Come on.

Have you seen the TV show The Studio?

Yeah, of course.

How real is that?

I mean, in one sense, it's absolutely real.

You never have a bad meeting.

Every meeting is brilliant.

They all love you.

The script's great.

You're brilliant.

We want to work with you.

You can get a meeting with anybody.

Questions, can you get a second meeting?

In England, I saw hundreds of TV shows, never use an agent.

In America, you can't get a meeting without an agent.

You can't get any room without an agent.

The big thing I often say about it, I haven't talked about it a lot for ages, the thing that I always tell is that there was a guy who I was developing the movie with, a quite successful producer and this guy was telling me it's going to be great.

We do this and that and the optimism.

I suddenly had this like the clouds part and the light came from showing my face.

I suddenly realized in Los Angeles, people who are telling me how great things are, they aren't lying to you, they're lying to themselves because you're all just one brass ring away from being a billionaire and having a house on Clifford Avenue in Brentwood that's worth $25 million.

Everyone's one step away from that.

And so it's really only the optimism.

It's so ephemeral.

I know a guy who became a multi-millionaire, maybe even a billionaire.

And the thing he did was put an A-list star into a sitcom.

And that's all he had anything to do with the whole show ever.

And he's never got to work again.

The difference between my work that's been successful and not successful, a big part of that is the quality of my collaborators.

Also, you didn't black up on Copycats, which is really important.

I didn't black up on Copycats.

You've got no apologies to make.

I didn't black up on Copycats.

And I may have done a couple of jokes that belonged to Rowan Atkinson.

That may be true.

If you'd call me up and discuss that with me.

Really?

I was in my granddad's front room at Blackpool and Rowan said to me, I wanted the voice.

He said to me, Do the voice.

We need one impression on this.

He went to me.

I hear that a couple of my lines that are similar to mine.

And I'm worried that perhaps it's quasi-plagiarism, an expression at 22 living in Blackpool.

I did not know what that meant.

He's a very serious man.

I did not know what quasi-plagiarism meant.

If he said to me, you're nicking my fucking jokes, I'd go, I don't want to do that.

What's that plagiarism?

Well, I think that's enough chat.

I don't want to keep you much longer.

I just want to ask really quickly, how involved were you in that Gervais chandling chat?

So, I mean, because that's fucking incredible.

If you ask me, what's my favorite TV show I've ever made?

It's absolutely Gervais and Chandling.

For me, it's above any other TV show.

So, I'm absolutely in love with it.

I'm more proud of that than anything else in my career.

It was fucking great, wasn't it?

Two titans in a room.

That was incredible.

Jesus Christ.

And talk about the awkwardness, and he was pissed off.

He was, so the story of that is, I mean, you talk about the comedy, I mean, for me, the office, the English office is, you know, because for our modern news, over the medium, it's Porridge, Step Down Son, Hancock, and the office probably.

Oh, I did miss out.

I missed out Larry Sanders, which I shouldn't have.

Oh yeah, and of course, That's American.

And of course Sanders, I mean, of course.

I mean, sort of everything, because there wouldn't be any of that stuff without Sanders.

Yeah, of course.

I think I cast really well, I think I cast really well.

Mitchel and Webb, Olivia Colvin, Derren Brown.

Yeah.

I'm fucking gonna cast him.

I'm an amateur competitor, which is a phenomenal cast.

Anyway, so I got lunch with him, right?

And I sort of fawned, I fawned.

I said, is there anything you want to do?

Mitchel, I'm a comedy hero, who are they?

And he went, well, I suppose Gary Shandling, Larry David.

I said, okay, if I can get you a documentary where you meet them, will you do it?

He said, yeah, but I'll never do it.

So I really want to do it.

So the reason that Shandling did it was that he wanted Ricky to do a thing for his DVD about Sanders.

So that was like a swap.

I'll do your stupid chat show if you do like a thing for my DVD.

They got to the house before he was back and they went in.

So when Shandling walked in, it was few as they had gone to his house already.

And then that set the tone for the rest of the app.

Oh my God, I absolutely love it.

When he brings out the banana splits picture.

It's really tense.

Oh my God, I love it.

I know that is my favorite show I made.

I love it.

Well, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on to this little podcast.

Pleasure.

I really do appreciate you coming on because I know we haven't really chatted ever.

Never know.

It's mental the way.

If I'd known what a comedy fan you were, we could have done it earlier.

It all happens in the bar afterwards, doesn't it?

Yeah.

I avoid that.

Yeah.

I'm an avoider of the bar.

Do you miss touring at all or not?

I miss touring with Derren.

I do miss it.

Yeah, I loved to tour with him.

It's just hanging out with him.

It's the hotels.

It's the bloody shows.

Great.

Everyone's there to see it.

Everyone's there to have a good time.

It's not like theater where some people like, oh, entertain me.

Also, they're not a theater audience often, right?

I mean, the Opera House Blackpool, it's like there's a party going on.

It's so much fun.

It's the best show I have.

It's the best shows I've ever worked on.

All of them, the three I did or whatever it was.

It was just great.

I loved it.

I do miss being on the road, but I don't miss being away from my family or the expensive take away foods and all of that.

And your health.

There's a health thing, isn't it?

Yeah, it's so bad for you.

It really is.

Now, you want to be doing your 20s, but not your 30s.

No, I didn't even start till I was 30.

Oh, didn't you?

Well, thank you so much.

Oh, pleasure.

Love, love.

Really enjoyed it.

Me too.

All right, mate.

Take care.

That was me talking to Andrew O'Connor.

What a chat, what a lot of information.

Wow, that was something, that was one of the greats.

That was one of the greats.

I really loved talking to him, that was good fun.

Far more revealing than I would have thought, you know?

Got a lot of information there.

He was very, very candid.

Anyway, keep an eye on what he's up to, because he has fingers in all the pies.

Now to today's outro track.

Let me transport you back to the early days of the millennium.

2003 to be exact.

I was on tour, I was in Brighton.

I came downstairs and in the lounge, there was a piano of the digs I was staying in.

I started plinking, plunking about on it.

And I came up with the verses of this song.

Now this song's called The Fear of Flying, which is the title track of the album I recorded in Japan in 2003.

And it's like, you know, Fear of Flying was kind of that, but it's also about like, you know, fear of taking a chance, fear of like making a mistake, all those sorts of things that, you know, people with any kind of creativity wonders if they're doing the right thing, that kind of stuff.

But really, it's about being scared.

And where more so would someone be scared if they got a fear of flying than in the sky?

Up, up, up, as the chorus says.

Anyway, I hope you like it.

It's a fun song.

I really like this one.

This is the title track of the album.

This is called The Fear of Flying.

That was the fear of flying.

I hope you enjoyed that song.

I hope you enjoyed my chat with Andrew O'Connor.

Come back next week for another episode of Television Times.

Until then, thanks for listening.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes.

Tell your friends about this podcast.