Ben Clover: Comedy, Culture, and the TV Shows That Shaped Us

Good afternoon, good morning, guten tag, bonsoir, oyasumi nasai.

Depending on where you are in the world, you'll understand what I just said.

Now today, we have a great podcast episode for you.

It's the wonderful Ben Clover.

Now, Ben Clover is a comedian who I bumped into in Edinburgh during The Fringe.

He's someone I went to see just completely on a whim.

I just saw that he was fliering around while I was trying to go and see someone else, and I decided, actually, I'm going to go and see him instead.

So he came on the pod and gave us a full episode, basically, which I was not expecting.

He was also, at one point, just going to come on the Edinburgh Fringe special and just do a little bit, but we decided to go for it.

It was a bit of a noisy day in Edinburgh.

There's a lot of background noise.

I can get rid of as much of it as I can, but you want to hear the festival in the background, don't you?

You want to hear that vibe.

You don't need to cut it all out and make it all sound like it's in the toilet.

Of course not.

So don't complain about the noise quality, please, with these Edinburgh ones.

There's a few more to come in the future.

So we'll make them as good as we can.

But it's all part of it, isn't it?

Now, this week, I don't have much to rant about like last week, but I do want to say something positive about our company.

And this company is Riverside FM.

Now, I don't know why it's called FM because it's not a radio station.

It's an alternative to Zoom.

It's what I use for remote records.

I was using one the other day for a future guest and it all went wrong.

In other words, I only had my side of the conversation and there was no sign of the file, no sign of it and they couldn't find it on the person's computer.

It wasn't showing up.

So I sort of freaked out and thought, fuck it, another company I'm going to have to diss and get my money back from and move.

But man, I don't know what they did overnight, but they found the file, they joined it together, they sent it to me in the morning and it was the best customer service I've received in a very, very long time.

Maybe that's because it seemed to me that this customer service was in America, which of course has way better customer service than we have here in the UK, without a doubt.

I want to give a sort of a go fuck yourself and a positive shout out at the same time to Moose Coffee in Manchester.

We had a pretty awful experience there.

I used to love going there.

I will probably go there again after this experience and try and check out if it's changed.

They apparently had a manager they didn't like and the quality of everything went down.

So we went there with the kids and it was just a shitty meal in Manchester.

Everything was kind of cold, overpriced and just nonsense really.

Felt like we were eating garbage.

So I got in contact via Company's House.

I found out who owned it, found his Instagram and just basically contacted him directly.

And it was a little bit awkward, but eventually pretty sharpish, I got a full refund for that meal.

So, you know, in that way, I've got to congratulate them for coming through and apologizing and explaining why the meal was bad.

And they just gave us all the money back, which I didn't want.

I don't want all this money back from them and fucking holiday in.

I want to have nice experiences.

I want you to keep your money and give me what I asked for.

I don't want refunds because that's like a fuck about it.

It's like I'm in America taking clothes back to the store every five minutes.

I hate all that.

I want to pay the money.

The money's gone.

I want to have a nice experience.

But if it's shit, I will fight for it back.

And I guess that's why I'm sort of stuck in this mindset when the recording went wrong the other day.

I thought, oh, here we go again.

But luckily, they came through and I'm pretty impressed and I'm moving because those guys did a fantastic job in retrieving that file.

If that's boring for you, I do apologize.

Just saying my piece.

The only other thing I wanted to say is thank you to my friend.

I'm not going to put names on here.

But you know, she sort of bigs me up now and again when I'm feeling a bit sort of like, oh my god, there's like a million podcasts.

Who's listening?

Why am I doing this?

Who am I?

Who fucking cares?

And you know, I had a quite good conversation this week about a adaptation of my book, should I say, into something else with somebody.

And that spurred me forward to start work on that project soon as well.

So I can't really talk about that yet.

But yeah, stay tuned for that.

So anyway, I want to get straight on to Ben Clover.

He was a fantastic act to see in Edinburgh.

It was the first act I saw when in the room.

He just commanded the room, had everyone laughing.

It was just brilliant.

It was like being stuck in a room with a really funny guy for an hour.

And then he sort of came over and sat at a table and we did this record.

So this is Ben Clover, wonderful comedian.

He used to work in the medical field, albeit as a journalist, thus proving the trifecta of previous jobs of comedians to be true yet again.

The old lawyer, teacher, or working in some way in the medical profession as Ben does.

And here he is.

Eight pounds for the fucking toaster.

Are you joking, mate?

Welcome to Television Times, a weekly podcast with your host me, Steve Otis Gunn.

We'll be discussing television in all its glorious forms.

From my childhood, your childhood, the last ten years, even what's on right now.

So join me as I talk to people you do know and people you don't about what scared them, what inspired them and what made them laugh and cry here on Television Times.

You went full time comedy in 2020, is that true?

Mild exaggeration.

I went part time.

So my day job is I'm a journalist covering the healthcare sector and so early March 2020 was a weird time to swap some healthcare reporting for some live stand up comedy work.

It really was like, yeah, it really showed up the dichotomy in my working life.

Yeah, so that is you because I searched you on Google and it came up and there was some medical stuff and I thought, oh maybe that's, you know how they sometimes get the photo wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, there's still quite old pictures of me from like bylines and stuff where I look much less like a homeless free musketeer than I do now.

Yes, I've seen a few photos.

But yeah, that's my, this is my COVID look and like I say, I'm sticking to it.

I'm doing my recording of my show on Thursday.

Yeah.

And I was thinking like, sorry, the recording was, well, multiple cameras all look real nice.

I think you basically, you need lots of viral little TikTok clips these days.

So I was thinking of doing a comedian destroys heckler five second clip, right?

But when you click it, it will just be me in a headlock, someone holding me in a headlock and someone just shaving my head and then it will cut.

And I thought like, ah, it'll be quite funny.

Everyone was told the other day, it was like, ah, it'll be quite funny.

It was like, but this did take me four years to grow.

Then you got to shave your head.

Yeah.

And like, is it worth it for a five second joke?

Is there a way of doing it fake?

Like, put a skull cap on and do it?

A dummy or something?

Yeah, because shaving, I mean, I shaved my head in lockdown and I don't look good with shit.

I mean, I look alright, but I look like a thug.

Will people leave you alone a bit?

I look like an orphan.

So people don't leave you alone when you're an orphan.

Well, your parents did.

Well, yeah, it's all in on that.

I wanted to call my show, sorry, this is really not going to come across in an oral, in a non-visual format, but I wanted to call my show Shipwrecked Twink, because I am fairly skinny, but I do look like I've been trapped on a desert island for some 15 years.

But people are like, nah, I don't know.

I've been told, no, no, ottery.

Anyway, yeah, so.

When I saw your picture of you with short hair, it was like, oh, that doesn't even look like you.

It's like, no, this doesn't work.

I can't stand that guy, although he did put the house in.

To be fair, he did put the house in.

And it's nice to sort of reinvent yourself.

Who's this brand new guy who seems strangely assured, but looks very different?

Yeah, quite a lot of people.

When you first came back over, when we all did, after lockdown, people would be like, oh, it's Ben.

Oh, hi.

So are you into television in any way, form, or?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bad choice, if not.

Strictly theatre.

Strictly theatre.

Only straight plays.

Basically, people disagree about whether we are still in or are long since past the golden age of TV drama.

Right.

But kind of, some people go like, ah, yeah, it's all gone.

Kind of, you know, The Wire was 15 years ago.

But like, I thought like, all right, let's finally watch The Deuce.

You know, The Deuce?

It's on my list.

That's the David Simon TV show.

David Simon, you think like, you'll take the pun on David Simon, right?

That would be like, yeah, it would be great.

Because I missed out on Tremé.

Yeah, I think he even did a version of the plot against America, like the Philip Roth novel.

He talks about, oh, I didn't see, he kind of goes like, ah, so he finally got into, this is when Philip Roth was still alive.

Kind of going like, yeah, okay, yeah, David Simon can do it.

And he's like, this is amazing.

I thought like, I'm going to, he said, I'll drive you around New Jersey.

Yeah.

Right, and you'll get, you'll get like the Philip Roth tour.

The fucking New Jersey, you know?

And he died, and he didn't get it.

But no, I'd love to, I'd love to have seen it.

But no, I thought I'd give The Juice a go.

Yeah.

Really, really good.

And then somehow, I just couldn't, I've not watched all of it, basically.

It should really have kept going.

I don't know, I don't know why, maybe.

But it's about sex industry, is it like being nice, sexual, or is it more?

Yeah, it's sort of, it's very, like, like I think a lot of David Simon stuff, it's very much, he's a journalist, former journalist as well.

And he's all about the detail, and the detail is where the fun is, where the interesting stuff is.

And they, so it's broadly about the sex trade in New York and sort of the birth of the modern pornography industry.

I always think, like, the closest equivalent, in British terms, to the really great David Simon stuff is, it's like Ireland Wild Productions.

It's a guy called Tony Garnett.

I'm thinking, like, sort of naughty stuff, really, sort of like cops.

They did one, like, it's basically hyper-realistic, cardiac arrest, 90s even.

And this one, the most recent one was called...

Well, no, he's by the same guy that did Line of Duty.

But he used to be a doctor, so he did this absolutely terrifying one.

It's all about a maternity unit, about a dysfunctional maternity unit, and, like, the absolute commitment to DIY.

And it's one of his things, so he did one about the police, a couple about hospitals, and you can tell when something is accurate, when it's the actual truth, because the professional bodies, so the Police Federation, British Medical Association, World College of Medicine, they all come bang on and go like, oh, this is completely inaccurate.

You've depicted the way the health service works.

I was like, why is Line of Duty so wordy?

Just because it's bang on, like, procedural.

Right, yeah, yeah, very.

When you actually speak to, like, doctors or police officers, kind of like, you go like, so is it realistic, actually, or like, it's the most realistic show you've ever seen in your life?

Totally glad it's dead now, but he did all this amazing stuff.

He did Between the Lines, the classic police corruption drama.

And he was quite honest about it.

He sort of pioneered what people now think of as, like, the Game of Thrones approach.

Going to go, look, this is quite heavy stuff, stuff about, you know, police corruption and all of the social issues that it exposes.

So it can be a bit heavy.

So throw some sex in there.

So there'd be, like, loads of, and they were very upfront about it, kind of like, it's quite gratuitous.

They're kind of like, so, like, yeah, he's a flawed police corruption investigator, but he shags loads of people.

And like, the Game of Thrones people, I think, refined this to the point where they called it sex position.

I don't really think it's good that there was a guy and his job was to kind of go, hey, can we throw in some community here?

He was like the consultant, the sort of like the mammary's consultant.

And then as time goes on, it just sort of, like, it takes off, like, I only started reading the books because I couldn't wait to find out what the next thing to happen was.

When I read the books, I was like, like, no offense to the guy, because in one way, he's a great writer, but kind of like, the prose is awful.

Like a lot of the time.

There's one chapter, one of it, where they repeat the phrase, extremely strong cider, like 15 times in one chapter.

It's like, is this a joke?

I'm just like, terrible prose, but, like, Jesus Christ.

Go back and use a different word, dude.

Yeah, yeah, like, get a fess-er-ous, dude, but, but, full credit to him, the man can plot the shit out of something, because, like, I remember, like, being on Guildford train station and having to close book and going, no fucking way, man, because, like, yeah, the man can twist something.

Certainly, my point was that, kind of, like, I think they retired the, um, uh, Dr.

Juggs, the script guy, because the rest of the plotting was starting to, kind of, really click into gear, so people didn't need to be enticed by flesh.

Pay phones in the first series of The Wire, it's surreal.

That's what it's about, isn't it?

There's a whole pay phone thing.

But they still have those in America, don't they?

They still have the Bell Telephone Corporation.

I feel like they've always been a little bit behind.

You know, we had texts in 1993, I think, and America got texts in 2000 and something.

They never did Chip and Pin or something.

Fuck no, I was there not that long ago, 2018 or something.

I tried to buy something in Arizona with a chip and pin, and then they were like, I said, can I chip and pin it?

They must think we're very lordly for kind of just going like ding, kind of tap it like a wand.

You're like, buddy, you need to write out a...

Yeah, well, my wife bought something.

She had to slide her card and sign.

I mean, it's still quite, I guess, modernish.

She had to sign on that fucking tablet.

I'm not getting married.

I just want some gum.

Exactly.

I remember when I was a local newspaper reporter, there was like, pay phones were dead, but they were of a lot of use to drug dealers because you can't be got on CCTV, where you kind of have some bits of bricks in where you go into the pay phone and go like, you know, can't actually get me on your CCTV.

So the council like, right, we've got to get rid of these pay phones.

No one uses them.

And BT were like, the fuck you will, right?

Because we make loads of money from just putting advertising on the side of it.

This free flow chat is all very well.

Let's get on with the question.

What's the first thing that scared him?

That's what I want to know.

Well, in a cliché term, it might have been Doctor Who.

So this is Sylvester McCoy era.

I'm a huge Doctor Who fan.

But I've sort of not really kept up with all of the most recent stuff.

Well, he was when I was a kid.

Although we were fortunate enough to be middle class enough that dad bought us loads of, just for birthdays and Christmas as you go and buy the really nicely packaged DVC VHSs.

Which was a lot of Tom Baker about.

Oh my god, yeah, he used to get, and they'd spell the...

What I'm saying here is that when you lined up all the VHSs in the line, it would spell out the Doctor Who logo.

Oh, really?

Oh, I never...

I'd just stack them in the piles.

I know, I remember my Red Dwarf ones, you'd have to buy one every like three months or something, and then there'd be two on each and they'd be like, you'd get all six of them and it takes up a lot of real estate in your house.

And they were absolutely lovely.

But like, I don't know, that might not have been the earliest one because I, see, I'd only dimly remember this, and memory is a tricky thing.

It might just be that I've now imagined the story my dad told me, but apparently when I was very young, I watched Top of the Pops and the Human League were singing, Don't You Want Me Baby.

And apparently this scared slash upset me to the point that I tearfully complained to my parents that that was a man on TV who didn't want his baby.

And that's what a pussy I've always been.

Now let's jump a few minutes ahead where we actually remembered the singer's name.

Phil Oakley.

Phil Oakley.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He had the hair.

I guess that could also look a bit scary as a kid.

Yeah, maybe I thought it was Hitler.

I don't know.

He doesn't look like that now.

Does he not?

No, no.

Well, it'd be a very cruel trick to go completely bald but still have the Hitler.

I think he might be able to just grow the one hair maybe.

Just the one strand.

You'd be surprised.

Yeah, I remember sort of pop styles and stuff like, I remember because I grew up in the 70s and 80s.

So I still sort of have slight visions of like, glam rock kind of creepiness.

Probably around like the presenters on Top of the Pops.

I was never really asked to watch it.

But it was always someone fucking creepy on there.

I was probably just have my like, you know, pervert radar up.

And I was probably right about all of them.

Could you imagine all the people that were on there?

All either dead or in jail or...

I think there's a great show in this, right?

Kind of like someone discovers that this child has a magical power to just tell a wrong and...

It would be like Doogie Howser, but with pedos.

Like a sort of sniffer dog, sniffing out pedos.

No, not now, not ever.

Pedo Patrol.

It was really good in the 70s, nonsiness.

One of the things I did watch in the...

I saw someone writing about it and I was like, yeah, I remember enjoying Life on Mars.

Let's have a little look at Life on Mars.

And it was surreal because it was 2020 and you're watching a show made in the noughties about the 70s.

And what I found funny about it was that I think it was before all the uterary stuff were kind of broken.

So this guy's gone back in time and he's just missed having all this crucial knowledge to bust all of these people.

He could have changed the course of history, but he's just missed having that knowledge.

Even though I think the various inquiries said lots of CD people were aware of all this shit.

But one of the things I found really interesting was like with a 20-20 lens, sorry, from watching it in 2020, not a powerful...

Anyway, he comes back from the noughties, right?

But it's interesting to see what's now sort of unacceptable now in the noughties, right?

Because there's a bit where...

So the John Sim character is like, I don't know, DCI or something, but he's having a relationship with one of the DCs, and he's like, you couldn't do that now, you know?

Kind of that sort of power imbalance is barely recently not allowed.

Also, you couldn't update Life on Mars past the 80s because there aren't any good David Bowie songs from the 90s.

Oh, that's a contest.

You could have one where someone gets back to the 90s and it's called Little Wonder or something.

Little Wonder, Little Wonder, you...

Hello, Space Boy.

Yeah, that could work.

You know the test card, the girl with the...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That freaked the fuck out of me as a child.

I hated it.

Apparently, I used to hide under the bed from it.

I was talking to my mum in around, what's that, early 2000s, she said 2001, 2003?

Yeah, around that, yeah, yeah.

I'm not talking about the year the test card came out.

I'm actually still talking about life on Mars.

And I remember asking my mum, did something terrible happen while the test card was on?

Because I'm sure if I was hypnotised, something's gonna flag up.

And she went, I'm not that I know of, and I'm like, why am I so fucking scared of it then?

I think lots of people will pretend to be afraid of clowns, but I think there is something, do you remember there was a phase of people going, I'm afraid of clowns, stop, he likes clowns.

For a little while, it was between new IBS, people kind of pretending, it was just an attempt to seem interesting, but I don't know, I don't doubt you, kind of, it seems like it took way before.

But his eyes were sort of crossed out.

And why would a smiling child be playing Noughts and Crosses on a blackboard with a best dead clown?

It was more like her kind of, I don't want to think about it.

Her turning towards the screen.

I don't think it was the puppet or the clown for me, it was the girl.

She looked fucking creepy, like that smile movie or something.

Because he's not sat up straight like he's alive, he's sat to the side like he's like, well, he's dead.

And who killed him?

There's literally one suspect.

And she's looking at you kind of like, you're next.

We're trying to watch the show Wolf, I guess we will continue with it.

Oh, we watched that, yeah.

At the time of recording, I had only seen one episode of Wolf, and I can tell you now, after seeing the whole thing, holy shit, what a show.

One of the best BBC things for years.

Have you seen all of it?

I've seen like the second half.

All right.

I was almost out.

It was brilliant.

It reminded me of Utopia, that Channel 4 show, the brutality of it.

I could talk about that for hours.

Now I've got kids, it's different.

Like, when Utopia was out, did I have kids?

Maybe not, or maybe just about.

And then when he went in and did that school shooting thing.

Yeah, well, that was like the very first scene of Utopia.

Has them go, sorry, did you do spoiler alerts or kind of?

Oh, no, no, this is a spoiler show.

We're talking about television.

We haven't seen it.

It's been, it's been gone.

Don't listen.

Not the Australian show about nation building Australia.

That's also called Utopia.

Oh, really?

Yeah, that's pretty ballsy.

No, the very first scene of the British Utopia has, there's a sort of comic book that's vital to the plot, you remember, like, and that amazing villain, and he's kind of like, where is Jessica Hyde?

He kind of comes in and like kills everyone in the shot.

And this like six year old boy is hiding under a thing.

And then you see him put the, and then it's always kind of like, it was a gas leak.

Kind of like, I remember like, I fucking loved Utopia.

It was a great, great show.

And I was trying to persuade my dad to watch it.

I was like, what do you think?

He was like, yeah, I turned it off.

I didn't, I don't like to see a child be killed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know, I know.

But yeah, I think it probably does change it.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I don't know if I'd look at that.

And I, weirdly, that guy, Neil Maskell, he still scares me because of that show.

So he turned up in like, he turned up in a comedy with, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dylan Moran.

And he was like, I can't, isn't he in King Gary as well?

I'm not sure.

I was meant to see that.

I didn't, I was a bit like, they sort of play with that at the start of the second season.

You see, actually his wife is Philomena Cunk.

But you see her kind of come in, I think maybe she's there with her kid or something and you see him come in and you're just going, oh my God, this guy's a murderer and a killer and you see him kind of come in with his bag.

And I think he pulls out some flowers or something because he has actually sort of changed.

One of the things I thought was amazing in Utopia, and also I can't believe it was the same guy that wrote Matilda or did the book for the stage show of Matilda.

Really?

Yeah, what's his name?

That's insane.

I bought a book of his plays.

Really interesting guy.

I love the musician who does all the music for it.

Mentioned.

Yeah, yeah.

Not your lookalike.

The music for Utopia was composed by Cristobal Tapia de Vier, who incidentally also did all the music for The White Lotus.

You know, like the villain speech theory?

Oh, you're talking about Utopia, sir?

Yeah, yeah.

So I think there's a thing, I read some bit of film criticism back in the day, always the most interesting bit of most Hollywood films is the villain's speech.

Because that's the bit that offers the critique of society, because the hero goes like, hey, I've got a really strong jaw and symmetrical features, and why are you being so awful, foreign-looking baddie?

It's funny you should ask that, Mr.

Whoever, because look around you.

So like, the amazing example is from The Third Man, when they're up in the big world, and he goes like, would you really care if any of those ants down there stopped moving?

It's kind of, you know, it sets out basically the critique of society, and the more powerful it is, the more dangerous and compelling the villain is normally.

The villain's just going like, you know why?

Because I'm a bad dude.

You know, that's just not that compelling.

But the villain's speech in Utopia is so good, it's so compelling, that an absolute key character, who you absolutely love, goes, no, he's got a point.

I'm on your side now.

Like, yeah, I remember, I went back to rewatch parts, because they did-

I think I will have to rewatch it now.

Was it 10 years ago, or something?

Well, yeah, at least.

Two seasons, right?

Two seasons.

Two seasons, yeah, and then they're really wrapped up, and an American remake.

Oh, yeah, did you watch that?

I watched the first episode and was like, you've bulled this right from the off.

Although, when I went back to rewatch Utopia, I think they had it on Amazon Prime or something, they'd cut this scene that appalled my dad.

It went straight in on something else.

He's like, oh, you pussies.

What else have you kept from us, Amazon Prime?

There are loads of Orc breasts in the Rings of Power that you cut.

They do it all the time, like Netflix has cut-

No, but I wanted to see Orc breasts to be clear, but I was just like-

I love Always Sunny in Philadelphia and there's like five episodes missing from Netflix because they won't-

I'm surprised they got that many through.

Yeah, exactly.

I loved Utopia.

I loved the color of it and the yellowness, the contrast.

The music's so important.

The music was fucking absolutely bang on.

Every single performance absolutely slapped.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember that was my favorite TV show for a very long time.

Me too.

But it's a weird thing to go around and say, my favorite TV show is this horrible thing with, you know, it's brutal.

It's just unyielding, it's just like unsparing, right?

So kind of like, and again, you know, there's no spoilers, spoilers and shit, but the, I was about to say, best man's speech, the villain's speech is when he goes, look, a hundred years ago, there were less than a billion people on the planet.

Kind of in like, in 1977, still less than two billion, which now 7.5 and we're going to smash through 10.

How good do you think people are at sharing, right?

This is the humane thing to do, is to release the virus that stops everyone, like, brings everyone's number of kids down to, kind of like, because like, there's a bit, like, where the guy who comes up with the virus kind of goes, I think he's from the Balkans, and he says, like, I saw him in the 90s and kind of like, and like, I've seen what people like when they think they're going to lose everything.

So it's the best villain's speech ever because it makes fucking sense, like, this is the humane thing to do.

It involves doing some fucking awful things in the meantime.

And it comes right down to, I can't remember the name of the guy, but, like, he's sort of the main character, the glasses guy.

And the baddie is going to release the gas, and he's never killed anyone.

And he's a normal person who would find the idea of killing someone a porrn, you know, because he's not doctrinaire at all.

And it's just kind of like, look, what do you believe?

What are your responsibilities to other people?

Because all of the baddies sort of have a kind of defensible, or at least logical, moral code, as does he.

And when he does have to off this guy, he is...

Like, it doesn't sort of...

People say in, like, The Wire and stuff, they show the consequences of violence.

They show sort of like...

They don't sugarcoat it.

I think it's one of the most responsible things that entertainment does.

It's like sort of the cowboy style, like...

And he just clutches his stomach and kind of like...

It doesn't show him...

Someone like shot from the neck and wheezing his last for 50 minutes.

The most horrible thing I ever saw, I think, probably was...

Did you see Deadwood?

Yeah.

You love Deadwood?

Yeah, yeah.

The fight with, like, the enormous guy and, like, the fight with Dan Kuzminski.

I don't know why I remember that.

But anyway, this fight was like...

It was so powerful.

And powerful in the sense of, like, a corrective in terms of, like...

That's what real life fights to the death are.

I mean, I was in the SAS.

Rage.

I've killed dozens of guys.

I could say that from position.

No, like, you know, it really...

I've shown it to some people specifically to go, kind of, like, that's what it's like.

Like, kind of, from what you read, anyway.

And it's sort of irresponsible to show kind of, like, easy or quick.

And the guy that's done it, he has to then sit in the bath for two days solid and is never the same.

Yeah, I'm interested to see how the show Wolf will go because that left me feeling a little bit unnerved.

And I did feel like it had Utopia vibes.

So I guess maybe I'll keep watching.

I missed the first half and I got quite into it.

And I loved that you must have met them at this point in it.

So I don't mean I'm spoiling it for you, but, like, D.I.'s Molina and...

Oh, I knew they weren't police immediately because they didn't show their badge.

But that's one of the great villains from Game of Thrones and one of the great villains from Doctor Who.

Like, that was the guy who was the master.

And those are both fucking star charisma villain terms.

What is the TV show you would erase from the past so nobody on earth ever knew it existed and they'd forget the memory, Men in Black Star, and one that you'd bring back from the dead?

Oh, so something that I consider so abhorrent that I would remove it from the record.

Yeah, and everyone will forget it tomorrow.

The News.

And then I'd be the only person that had lots of information and could make a more fortune on the stock market.

No, something that I hate, that I consider an active blot on the body politic.

That's a good question.

It could be obvious, like the black and white minstrels.

Things that have made us more stupid.

What I was curious about in the black and white minstrel show was like, was it after you mentioned Colour TV?

I know this because it's come out before and I'm absolutely appalled at how long it went.

The last black and white minstrel's Christmas show on ITV was in 1981 and Colour TV came in this country in 1970.

The fucking Star Wars had already happened.

Raiders of Lost Ark was the big box off his drawer that summer.

I was going to say, is that...

No, Temple of Doom is the more problematic Indiana Jones.

I forgot a few of those things.

It's weird when you think of the formula for...

I know this is a TV, but when you think of the formula for Indiana Jones and his name, it's kind of like, take an American state and then a Welsh surname.

Yeah, it's a bit Stephen Toast these days.

Can you go, like, Rhode Island Smith or whatever?

Kind of...

Or Gwifford.

You might say there's a pizza place I saw here, say Tony Macaroni.

Oh, they make me laugh when I saw that.

Is that real?

I don't.

I think...

That's not going to make it, is it?

There's this Mexican place near us.

It's really good, really, really good Mexican food.

It's called Cheeky Cheekos, as in, like, cheeky boys.

And the food's really good, but I thought we'd move past the thing with, like, Mexican food.

I remember I've always liked Mexican food.

But all the places, all the restaurants are always called thing like, El Loco, Bang, Bang, Bang, Balagun in the air.

I've never been to Mexico, but I imagine that's a flat-out racist description.

Pretty much, you know?

And I always felt a bit surprising with, like, maybe it's just something about Elephant and Castle, because, like, this was a really good pizza place, but, like, I can't remember, a pizza pappagoni, but, like, all of the decor is real kind of, like, super-ripe Italian stereotypes, if I could go going, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like an Irish pub of Italian pizza drinks.

And, like, pictures of Frank Sinatra and the godfather and all.

This is like, dude, come on.

Like, maybe it turns out there is no bamboo in Vietnam, and, like, the Vietnamese restaurants are also leaning in really...

And anyway, some of the things about...

I think about, like, the legacies of British and French colonialism, which obviously have a checkered and often bloody past, well, almost entirely bloody, throughout the 20th century.

You kind of think, like, well, if you're going to choose which kind of power to be colonised by, at least France is going to leave you a bit more of a food culture.

Oh, yeah.

It's all...

When I was a kid, we went to Europe and all I remember was having baguettes with laughing cow cheese, and when I went to Vietnam, they had these little, like, carts selling laughing cow, exact laughing cow, in baguettes, and they call it France pan, in Vietnamese.

France pan, I like that word.

There was a bit during the mad cow crisis where they had to change the packaging of the laughing cow.

Was it normally pasteurised or...?

No, it's just because they said the French were concerned that people would see the laughing cow and think she was laughing not because she was happy, but because she was mad.

So they had to change it.

It started Brexit, that did, so that's what happened.

Hang on, I'm trying to think of what I would have erased, I'm trying to think of what had a particularly deleterious effect on...

Just something that I hated, or maybe something that I've watched loads of and always start having, so I'm going to have that time.

Oh, the waste of time thing.

But, do you know what, do you know, yeah, the West win.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Because maybe I just never put the time in, right?

This is contentious.

But there's a great Amy Schumer sketch, which is like a fucking bang on parody.

Have you seen this?

Yeah, yeah.

They're like, oh, for you to listen, it's kind of like, you've got to check out.

But it ends with, it's like a perfect parody of his style.

And I do like some of his stuff.

I love Stalker, yeah.

But I very much do not like all of his stuff.

Because I remember reading this article when Studio 60 on the Sunset shit heap came out at the same time as 30 Rock.

They were going like, oh, which one of these behind the scenes looks at a US talk show will be best?

And it's pretty clear what won that contest, right?

Because 30 Rock is now Simpson's Esk in its canon status.

But it was just so pompous.

And the end of the Ames Schumer sketch goes like, this serial has been bestowed upon you by Aron Sorkin.

And it's like, I think it probably influenced a load of people to do, and I say this with zero examples, to do super talky, people walk down corridor being super erudite.

And it makes sense that he wrote the first season in a hotel room in Vegas, like, off his nut on cocaine.

Because that is, it's very, it's just so like...

It's a lot of words.

My missus can't stand Sorkin.

And every time I try and say, you know, you'll like this one.

I really liked his film about the US sitcom in the 50s.

You know, the really big one, Desi...

Lucille Ball.

Yeah, Lucille Ball.

It's a film all about the making of that.

And he did that.

That was great.

I haven't seen that.

But Studio 60, fuck me.

And the West Wing, I think what was actually fucking damaging the West Wing is it gives people this sort of ludicrous...

It really reinforces American exceptionalism, where somehow you could be left thinking that the people that run the world's biggest empire are at heart.

You know, even though they can be a bit cynical about the media and occasionally there's a snappy rejoinder from, I don't know, the Iranian ambassador.

But mainly they're a bunch of great guys and girls doing their absolute best, good for them.

It's aged poorly, I think.

Bye What's the one that you would bring back?

Oh, bring back, so something that already exists, sorry, that did exist, got cancelled, and then...

Yeah, you can either bring back something recently that got cancelled you like, or something from your childhood that you think could do with a reboot.

There was a show I really liked when I was a kid called Archer's Goon, right?

And it was quite surreal.

And it was all, it was about this, I think, kid, in the, I remember doing this playwriting course once, and the teacher explained that you can do stuff, you can set your play over like hundreds of years if you want, you know, different scenes happening in different centuries, and you can set it over thousands of different continents, you know, lots of different locations.

Sounds like the film The Fountain.

And it can work great, you know, or you can do something where you have it all set in one location, but over hundreds of different years.

It could be super exciting.

You're like, oh, look, the examiner's a changing role of a church, and we're like, glory, but whatever.

Or basically, you have a really powerful example where it's all in real time.

It's all in one location.

And there are no cuts.

I'm not just going...

All that boring preamble was just by way of saying it was all set, I think, in one summer holidays.

And it was all a kid, maybe like 10 or something.

And so it had that sort of otherworldly feel that a summer holiday can have, where it's sort of a time outside of time, you know?

So it has sort of this very heightened consequence, but also somehow detached from everything else.

And it's sort of that the whole town is run by these different kind of mythic entities that are sort of a little bit like crime families, so the water board is sort of all-powerful and controls all water and everything it can do.

I don't honestly remember it very well, but I remember great performances, I think it's probably based on a book, so that's probably why I didn't do more than one series, but kind of like it was quite spooky for a kid, not like it's scary, but sort of unsettling.

It was a bit like Utopia, but for kids, where you'd be like, oh, what if that thing was a thing?

It made you look at everything that you thought you knew again, you know, I thought that was great.

Harchers Gunn.

Never heard of it, let's talk about BBC Archive instead.

Probably loads of stuff from that era that, well it's probably preserved now, but you know, I can't remember who gave the order to burn so much of the BBC Archive.

I do love stories when...

They're all gone but we've got a million pictures of coffee.

They release some, you know, when BBC releases something, you get all these memos and that very distinctive font that they had of these public school dickheads.

It's like I think there's no future for these The Beatles, a vulgar quartet, who are surely not going to...

It's all people trying to waft their classical educations in the face of the proles.

I don't know what's best for them.

What would Lord Reith say?

Yeah, I love that stuff when those stories come out.

See ya, I'll stay in.

So we're on the deck of a sailing ship.

What is the worst shit that you like?

That's a good question.

The worst shit that I like.

You know it's trash, but...

I'm aware I'm coming across as a really pretentious guy in this, by the way.

I'm not gonna own it.

I'm gonna own that.

See, the bits of Gogglebox I saw are quite light.

I didn't like the celebrity one because they...

And my girlfriend watched that because you can't trust it.

Kind of like, you know, it was...

No offence, but he's on at the same time as me, this Fringe, and he's absolutely slaughtered me for taking a passing trait.

No, I'm sure he's a lovely man, but he and his wife will watch something moving.

Are they really wiping away...

Oh, is he not?

But, like...

I definitely was in a podcast, it was called, like, Here's a List of Who's a T...

And you get people on and they talk about who's a T...

And then the fool goes to the guest episode, guest host is going like, Well, here's why you're...

I say that, I can give you a list after this of every single comedian that's given me a fucking hard time.

And who hasn't?

And ones that haven't, ones like Mark Dolan, who was just so nice when he was here with me.

Such a nice guy.

Lovely guy.

I don't get it, I don't know what's happening, it's blowing my mind.

He's always been...

He's the nicest man to deal with.

Like, I've just been in ages, so lots of people are sort of coming out a bit sad.

It's an act, it's an act.

It's a coin act, right?

I suggest we swerve this particular question and get back to the subject in hand.

So what's the worst TV show that you actually like?

I think the worst TV show that I actually like.

Again, the news, terrible production values.

If I'd been fucking...

If I'd been done over by Chris Morris and Amanda Iannucci twice.

If I was in an institution and I'd been for day-to-day and then brassed out, it'd be like, well, the whole industry must have gathered around and coming on that.

Well, we've been fucking done here, lads.

Kind of like, from the style to the content to everything.

Should we improve our game?

Keep that music from the year 2000 going.

Fuckin 23 years.

I remember when that first came out and I said, oh, it really does feel like we're in the future now, doesn't it?

BBC News 24, just in time for Iraq.

It's the worst trash that I've watched.

For me, it would be Married at First Night Australia.

It's awful.

It's shit.

It's terrible.

Do you know me and my wife get hooked on it every fucking year like morons.

That's a brilliant example because I've heard so much about that.

If you're prepared to suspend your moral compass for three months, absolutely, then you will be entertained.

I think my answer is, and I can't distinguish all the different Gordon Ramsay products, but it's one of the American ones, and it's really compelling, but I think hugely damaging to the human mind, because they just...

You know that thing, the Spice of Civil, the Native American tribes, yes, they would hunt, but they would use every single part of the buffalo carcass and kind of like, they've gone in there to like...

Spurring's OK on the podcast, right?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

He's gone in there to cut off a family business who are kind of like, who are struggling, right?

It's kitchen nightmares you're saying.

That's the one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Something will happen, like Gordon says, this is unfucking acceptable, or it's fuck-unceptable fuck, or he has to do little variations.

Yeah, yeah.

But they just ring so much out of the carcass of every tiny incident where they're kind of like, oh, so it'll come to someone who's you kind of go like, I couldn't believe what was about to happen next.

And Gordon's going like, I was about to go crazy.

And he sometimes goes like, oof, Gordon sure did get crazy.

And then it actually shows a finger, it takes four seconds and it's like a pan falls on the floor.

Gordon goes, fuck sticks.

And he goes, I couldn't believe it.

He said, fuck sticks, so just this one tiny instant, they do a little kernel.

They blow into like 20 minutes.

They do it like it's fucking Rashomon, where you get it from 18 different angles.

I saw an interview with a fucking pan, kind of going like, oh, and I was like, I couldn't believe Gordon said fuck sticks, but I am a pan.

They extrapolate out this giant thing.

Do you ever see that sketch by Mitchell and Webb called I've come for a present from my aunt.

He's come for a present from his aunt.

What will he buy?

I've come for a present from my aunt.

And now they're going to cut to the guy, Vinnie, who works in a sanitation plant that's cleaned up some of the shit that came through the system from someone who ate some of the food that was prepared in that pan.

And Vinnie's like, this is the first time I'm hearing of this, but it sounds unbelievable.

This is the worst fucking kitchen I've ever been in.

Every time he goes to the freezer, it's the most disgusting one they've ever seen.

For me, it's when you see him walking away from the restaurant, but you know it can't leave because it's only ten minutes in.

I wish after he left each one, it just exploded behind him.

I'm like, oh, you kill these people.

No, there's a tweet I love, I can't remember if it did, and they described it beautifully about like, Gordon sat in the restaurant, he sees Bigfoot walk into the kitchen.

Fucking hell.

Darling, darling, calls over watches, darling, is Bigfoot the chef in this restaurant?

And she goes, ah, I need to check.

And then, yeah, but you know if Bigfoot was the chef in the restaurant, they'd spin that out for a thousand years.

So they're actually interviewing like someone, a Nepalese herder, kind of going like, Bigfoot is now running a family trattoria in New Jersey, Syracuse, New Jersey.

That's actually where a character in a Philip North model was tossed off under a table.

It was a deeply moving moment in the scheme of the things and it's in the alternative history where the Nazis won.

There you go.

That was great.

That's a novelistic flourish.

Loved it.

That's brilliant, man.

Well, thank you for doing this part.

It's a bit weird, I mean, just me.

Thanks so much.

No, lovely.

Thanks for having me.

No worries, man.

See you later, Ben.

See you.

Bye.

You need to check him out, find out where he's playing online and go and see him.

And I hope to see his show again next year in Edinburgh.

If I get up there, of course I'm getting up there.

I'm going to be maybe doing something quite special, but we'll talk about that later.

We'll talk about that later.

So let's get on to our outro track.

Now, because last week I played the song Lost in the Game, which featured e-finale on Back in Vocals, I mentioned that we did an album called 1117 later in that same year.

I think it was 2009.

Now, this song comes with a story.

This is one of the songs from that album.

It's called Roxy's Vamp.

All the lyrics are written by Aoife, not written by me, but all the music is written by me.

And I say written by me in the slightest way because it is clearly a massive James Bond ripoff.

The whole point was I wanted to turn a song into a kind of 40s, kind of, I don't know, like a club song.

And then as we were making it, I realized, oh, this would make a great Bond song.

So it's kind of like a demo for a Bond song.

I think it needs more to it.

But the point was, once we realized that, I thought, right, I am going to get this to those people.

Somehow by hook or by crook, I'm getting this to Barbara Broccoli.

Now, my initial plan was to meet with whoever I could get that was associated with Bond.

And luckily, I was on tour with a show, and that show's wardrobe mistress knew the wardrobe mistress of whatever show Judy Dench was doing in The West End.

So one afternoon between shows, it was a matinee, I got on my motorbike from Woking, and I zoomed into The West End, and I met Judy Dench in her dressing room.

And I played the song for her, and I gave her a CD single to give to Barbara.

And she said, well, I can't promise anything, darling, but you seem like a nice boy.

And apparently she played it in her open top car on the way home, which, well, whatever that means, but apparently she loved the song.

Anyway, nothing happened with that.

So it got closer and closer to another Bond film being made, whichever one it was.

And I thought, well, I've got to get it to this broccoli lot, right?

So where do they film?

Pinewood.

So at the time, I had been a delivery driver, pizzas, I'd done, you know, career work and stuff like that.

So I knew how to sort of dress for the role.

So I got a hold of a high vis tabard.

I put that on.

I made a clipboard of various deliveries around London, which I hadn't been doing, which we're all signed for in different signatures.

And I looked on whatever it was online, not IMDB, but I was trying to work out what was being filmed there.

And at the time, it was one of the Captain Americas.

And I found a name of someone in production and I made a pretend delivery to that person.

And I said, it has to be signed for by them.

So I got waved in at the gate, parked my bike at the studio car park and wandered straight into Pinewood.

That person's, wherever they were, didn't matter because I was never delivering that.

Inside was a CD for Barbara Broccoli.

So after a wander around, I did actually come across her parking space and it clearly said her name, Barbara Broccoli, on a post.

So I inserted the package into the top of that in hope that she would find it.

Of course it did nothing at all, but I had a lovely day wandering around, spotted a few actors filming stuff.

It was really, really fun.

Saw one of the Pirates of the Caribbean films being made, whichever one that was.

And I had a lovely day just wandering around and I didn't want to leave.

I stayed in the canteen for a while.

I sat on the steps from extras.

I just had a really nice time.

And, you know, I definitely overstayed my welcome, but I zoomed home thinking, you never know what's going to happen with the song.

Nothing happened with the song, nothing at all.

Brilliant lyrics by Aoife.

Pretty good music by me, I guess.

It's a production.

It's like clearly a demo for a Bond song.

And you never know.

Maybe someone will hear this and will get commissioned because they've had some fucking stinkers over the years.

Anyway, so this is my big Bond pitch.

There's about three I've had so far in my life, but this was the big one.

This is called Roxy's Vamp.

Lyrics by finale, music by Steve Otis Gunn.

Wow, that really couldn't be for anything else other than a Bond movie, right?

I remember doing two more in the sort of 90s, maybe I'll dig them out and let you hear them at some point, but that's the best version of any kind of Bond song that I ever was involved in.

Anyway, thank you so much for listening this week, and next week, we'll have another guest, and please follow the show.

Leave a lovely review if you can be bothered, but tell people about it.

I need the listeners.

Come on.

We're going to be starting a tip jar next week so people can leave a price of a coffee for every time they listen.

That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

I'll be coffeeed out of my mind, hopefully.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

See you next week.