Danny Robins: From Comedy to the Paranormal - The 'Uncanny' Journey

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Screen Rats, and welcome to the Halloween edition of Television Times.

I have a hell of a guest for you.

I have the perfect guest.

I can't wait to share it with you, but first, let me tell you how this came about.

So this person, I contacted them, and I didn't think it would happen, actually, and somehow, you know, I noticed that they were, you know, going on tour, and then they were in my town, Newcastle, and I thought, ooh, I wonder if I can convince them to meet up and do something backstage at the theatre, and they said, yes, I couldn't believe it.

Couldn't believe my luck, and the guys backstage at the theatre, well, he did a grand job in accommodating us in a very spooky subterranean, probably haunted room under the stage, but my guest arrived in the city, and I got a text from him on WhatsApp, and he said, you know, I'm going to town, and I'll meet you at this time, so I left my house, I shut the door, I stepped out, and I walked towards the bus stop, where I caught a bus, and I got that bus into town, didn't I?

And when I got into town, I walked through the busy city center and made my way to the theater, and I set everything up nicely, but then a rainstorm happened, so my guest texted me and said, they're running late, they just got to the hotel from the station, and you know, in this torrential rain, and me and the crew were watching this terrible, like, you know, rainstorm kicking off, and I thought, this is not going to work, plus he wanted to watch the football game that was going to happen, so I could see my time ebbing away, Okay, but after a while, he arrived through the stage door, and he came wearing his signature red Mac.

Yes, today, people, you are going to hear me talk to Danny Robins of the Uncanny podcast on television show on the BBC.

Danny Robins, the perfect guest for Halloween, right?

And I was so impressed that he spent time with me, and we had this lovely chat in the basement, like I said, and once the microphones were off, we had this really personal chat actually about sort of family and sons and fathers and all this stuff, and it was really different to the podcast, and we really sort of gelled and got on, and he was so lovely.

Actually, right at the beginning of the podcast, you'll hear probably that I spilt water, spilt water everywhere, fucking everywhere.

And Danny just immediately just darted off and got some tissues, and we sort of cleaned it up as the water crept towards my MacBook.

So yeah, he was very lovely, and also after our chat, I was setting up my show for Edinburgh, and I thought, you know what?

Working on all the spooky stuff I have, like Woman in Black and That, wouldn't it be great to have like a scream and a kind of spooky story in my show?

So I did.

I added it into Steve Otis Gunn is Uncomfortable, and Danny was really kind enough to record this little voice note for me.

One of the uncanny episodes that's very, very popular, there's an episode where the catchphrase is basically, bloody hell, Ken.

So he did a bloody hell Steve for me, and I put it in my show, and I played it every night, and it really added to it, and I loved that.

It was really nice of him.

And today, instead of a song at the end, you're going to get another treat.

Listen to this.

For keen listeners to the podcast, you may remember that Alex Lowe was a guest earlier this year, and he plays the character Clinton Baptiste, a sort of comedy, fake, medium, and he's hilarious, right?

And after our interview, we did a little recording for his podcast, his Paranormal Podcast.

I don't know if it's been out yet, I don't know, but I thought I'd pop it on here as well, because it's just funny, it's hilarious.

It's backstage at the time, and he's fully in character, ribbing me.

And so you can look forward to that at the end of this podcast as a little Halloween treat for you all.

Now, I don't know if you're a team believer, or if you're team skeptic, but whatever you are, you're going to love this.

This is me talking to the brilliant and amazing Danny Robins.

If there's something strange happening in your neighborhood, who you're going to call?

I'm going to call Danny Robins.

If you feel comfy, I'll just move it to you.

Oh my god, I'm not alone.

Watch out, you're...

Danny's gone off to get me some...

We've dropped some water all over the table, immediately as we came in, and I'm pretty sure it was a part of guys, not him.

I was working a lot the week and I once spilled an enormous amount of, I think it was Coke actually, all over the laptop with the entire face.

Right, that looks right, doesn't it?

Your job is not to come and clean up the area, right?

So, I mean, normally we do a comedy podcast, and I know you started in comedy.

I did, I did.

I just started in comedy around here, so yeah.

Yeah, that's kind of wild, like looking at your history, the one thing that jumped out to me was Basil Brush, because that was like my favorite TV show as a kid, I don't know about you.

So what was it like getting on that, and what did you do on it?

So yeah, that was a real pleasure, and I spent a few years of my life being essentially the voice of Basil Brush.

Not literally the voice, as in I wasn't making sounds out of his fox-like mouth, but I was writing everything for him.

So we wrote the pilot of the show that relaunched him, and then we went on and wrote quite a few scripts of the series as well.

But I found myself writing all his press interviews at a certain point.

It was quite a strange job, really.

I would be there doing an interview with The Guardian.

One of the weirdest moments I remember was doing some sort of live question-and-answer session where not all these questions are coming in, I was responding as Basil.

You felt like you were channeling the fox.

But yeah, it was a real pleasure.

He's such a great character.

I remember all the conversations around that time, around the time of relaunching him, because he'd been this iconic institution for decades, really, wasn't he?

I mean, he was such a fixture of British television.

And the company that owned the rights to him wanted to make him modern and rebrand him for kids.

And they were talking about putting him in Ali G outfits and ditching the catchphrase.

They were saying, well, maybe we should lose Boom Boom and I Say, and all those kind of things that he was so famous for.

And we really argued against that.

And our argument was that kids don't need characters that speak exactly like them.

They can relate to other things.

Kids watch Dad's Army, kids watch all sorts of things that are not the way kids speak.

And I'm so glad we won that battle because I think he was such a distinctive character and to dilute him or to change him would have been a real shame.

And it was massively popular when it came back.

Did you watch the old ones as a kid?

Did you look at them when you were re-launching them?

I have vague memories.

I don't remember.

I mean, I definitely remember him as a thing.

I think his peak was a little bit before I was watching Kelly.

I showed one to my son, well, I showed it to him about a year ago when he was nine, 1976 or something like that.

They're quite risque jokes.

And there's cigarettes involved.

Like Basil was smoking a cigarette at one point.

They really didn't care.

We definitely don't smoke in the new version.

But no, I mean, I think the risque nature was fun.

Kids love that.

Kids love something that feels a little bit edgy, a little bit dangerous, the sort of thing that maybe your parents would disapprove of.

And Basil embodied that in a really kind of safe and lovely and funny way, I think.

Yeah.

Obviously, you started with your comedy with Marcus Brickstock, who I used to go and watch all the time.

So I wonder if I even saw you at some point, because I used to go to literally everything in around the early 2000s.

And you did Edinburgh quite a few times.

Yeah.

My comedy roots started even before that, actually.

I started, I mean, we're chatting in Newcastle right now.

And I started here in the North East.

And I had a really kind of precocious desire, I guess, to get up on stage and tell jokes.

And it was forged in a place called the People's Theatre, which is...

Yeah, yeah.

I was here the other night watching my son, D.

Shakespeare.

Well, there you go.

Yeah.

Really one of the, I think, one of the biggest amateur theatre groups in the country, actually.

And a lot of people come through.

I read recently that Neil Tennant, the Pet Shop Boys, he's been in my UFIT many years before me.

And I think Kevin Waitley had come through it.

And I don't know, Robson Green, maybe like, lots of people had gone through it.

And so I started doing that.

And I made friends with somebody who I met through that group, Ross Noble, who will be familiar to everyone listening, I'm sure.

And Ross was this kind of like Mozart of comedy.

He was like this kind of wunderkind, who was going around playing the clubs of the Northeast and just absolutely storming it in places that he wasn't legally allowed to drink in because he was so young.

And so I sort of tagged on his coattails really.

And I would travel around with him and one or two other people.

And we'd do, I'd sort of do support slots for him when he was going and playing places.

And I was pretty terrible.

I was like just a kid trying to be funny and people, very tolerant audiences generally kind of putting up with me.

But it did give me a taste, I think, for the buzz of it.

And that mercurial high when you did get a laugh.

And when I went to university, I came with a very strong desire to do comedy.

I went to Bristol University and I met Marcus Brickstock and a guy called Dan Tetzel, who we worked together as a trio after that.

And Marcus and I did lots of gigs in Bristol and then all over the place.

And then the three of us did Edinburgh festivals.

And we had the TV show, right?

Yeah, which is on YouTube.

I was just trying to see you in it.

There was one I watched.

What's it called?

We Are History.

We Are History.

Yeah, yeah.

I saw a video of you.

I was like, which one is he?

And you don't look like yourself, really.

Like, it's hard to spot you.

I was so young.

I mean, it was mad.

We basically, I think, you know, I'd only just left university when we got that commission.

It was one of those crazy right place, right time moments that we happened to know.

It was a friend of a friend who had just got a job as a runner at BBC Bristol, I think, and he mentioned us to his boss.

And somehow or other, you know, through some sort of mad series of circumstances, this guy who was the boss of BBC Bristol at the time went into the BBC two commissions office and went, this is a great idea.

I'm not leaving your office until you commission this.

And we somehow walked away with this series and it was the lowest budget you could imagine.

It was just a tiny, tiny, tiny budget.

I mean, we were barely paid to make it, but it was this fantastic chance to make a program.

The BBC too, it was incredible.

You know, age, what was I?

It would have been like 21 or something like that, you know, 21, 22.

And we made two series of this thing.

It was a kind of spoof history program.

It was inspired by watching things like Time Team and, you know, there was Michael Wood, all these kind of TV historians around at that time.

And we created this character called David Oxley, who was this kind of pompous, bombastic, kind of quite ill-informed historian played by Marcus Brigstocke.

And Dan Lye cropped up as his researchers in the background and wrote it.

But yeah, it was just, you know, it was amazing.

And I'm still, you know, proud of it.

And I think you can find episodes of it on YouTube.

Every episode I saw, it looks like you're on a windy beach or in a windy field.

His hair's going mad.

Yeah, we were always somewhere trying to, you know, cook up some sort of mad scheme on a tiny budget.

But it was, you know, what a way to cut your teeth.

I mean, I felt very lucky to do it.

You know, that was an era, you know, shame my age, but that was an era before YouTube and before the kind of democratization of making telly.

You know, when you watch YouTube now, and essentially you're watching lots and lots of people making TV programs.

In some instances, quite high-end TV programs and putting it out and controlling their, you know, controlling, you know, having your for real control, controlling the monetary stream from it, you know, all that sort of thing.

It's like inventing your own channel, obviously now.

And I look at like Mr.

Beast, who my kids are obsessed with.

And, you know, I'm watching someone who's making relatively sophisticated television programs and becoming a billionaire in the process, you know.

But none of that was open to us, but both the riches and the opportunities.

So we were just very lucky to get on actual telly.

Forgive me if you've been asked this a million times, but how did you make that leap from comedy into, you know, the paranormal?

Were you always interested in it as a kid?

TV shows you watched, like The Influenster?

I was definitely always fascinated by the paranormal.

I was that kid who sat in the school library, poring over, you know, The Osborne World, The Unknown and all those kind of different books about the paranormal.

I was very intrigued by it.

And I think a lot of that for me came from an absence of belief in my household, my life.

My mum was a really ardent atheist, had been brought up a Catholic and was very anti-religion as a result.

And I think, you know, I just always had this overwhelming sense of, were we missing out?

You know, was there something out there that I wasn't getting?

Was there a club I wasn't part of?

And, you know, at times in my life, I've been fascinated by religion, but the thing that I really gravitated towards I think was the paranormal.

Something about the, maybe, maybe the kind of theatricality of it appealed to me.

Maybe the kind of, the stories.

I've always loved storytelling.

You know, something about ghost stories just grabbed me.

But yeah, so I mean, you know, things like, obviously, Ghost Watch in terms of talking about television or Gems, you know, 1992, that would have been a real important memory for me.

That was something that really sort of-

Did you see it?

Yeah, I remember watching it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I definitely remember finding that very exciting.

And, you know, and things like the woman in black going to see stage versions of that.

I used to work on that.

Oh yeah, well, there you go, okay.

Seven tours or something.

Oh wow, that was good.

I was the guy that pressed the screen.

Really, I love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Spoiler alert.

No, no, no, no screen.

Is it still touring?

I think it is.

I think it is, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, I can't laugh.

So I just loved Ghost and it's something I kept coming back to.

I did an Edinburgh Show, which was like a kind of comedy sort of parody version of Most Faunted called Alive Ghost Hunt with Dan Tetzel.

I did various talks about it.

I just kept coming back to it, kept coming back to it.

And just, I think there was a certain point a few years ago and I just felt very unfulfilled by what I was doing in terms of the comedy writing.

And I felt like I'd hit a little bit of a wall and I'd sort of grown a bit jaded with the kind of stuff I was doing and I just wanted to sort of say something more about the world and life and the universe and all those sort of things.

And I found myself, you know, kind of moving into writing a bit of drama.

It was, I wrote a stage version of Rudy's Rare Records, which was a series I'd done with Lenny Henry for the radio and I did a stage version of that.

And that was the kind of thing that allowed me to move into something a little bit more dramatic, a bit more heartfelt.

And I think I'd been experimenting with things that felt more dramatic within my comedy.

And then, yeah, and I had this idea for a play, 222 A Ghost Story, and it was just a friend of mine told me that she'd seen a ghost.

And I remember thinking, wow, this felt more real and more compelling than anybody who'd ever told me they'd seen a ghost before.

There was something about it that just really grabbed me.

And I remember thinking, everybody we knew would react to her in very different and conflicting ways.

And some people would be quite irritated by her going like, why do you say that ghosts don't exist?

And some people might even question her mental health and some people would believe her and it was a spectrum.

And I thought if you could put that into a couple, then that's this huge Molotov cocktail to throw into a relationship.

And so 222, a ghost story is born from that idea of this couple who disagreed about whether their house was haunted.

And researching that, I just started coming across all these amazing ghost stories from my friends.

I was like, has anybody out there had an experience?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that's what led me to making the podcast.

I was suddenly in possession of this treasure trove of stories that people were telling me.

And it kind of spread from friends to friends of friends to strangers.

You'll never run out.

I know, and it just kind of went from there.

It's a moment.

It was a real road to Damascus conversion moment where I just was like, this is what you've been wanting to do your whole life.

This is what your life's been leading towards.

It's something that you've always been fascinated by, something that excites you.

And I just felt this amazing sense of purpose, I guess.

And it was the first time in my life, I think, when I was making, particularly when I was making Battersea Poltergeist for the BBC.

It was the first time in my life that I was making and listening to something where I just thought, this is exactly how I wanted.

I'm not compromising and I'm not trying to be someone or something to tick a box for a channel or to kind of impress somebody or to hit a particular target or quota for the channel.

Sometimes you feel like you're trying to sound like a BBC One thing or a Radio 4 thing, you're trying to fit into a certain slot, all these kind of things.

I was just doing the thing I wanted to listen to and it felt so empowering.

Obviously Uncanny is massive, but I didn't know about the Haunted podcast that you did before.

Are you okay to talk about that?

For me it was like, oh more!

That was the prototype of Uncanny, that really was the show that was spawned from my research for 222.

All of those stories pretty much came from me asking around for research purposes, going, I want to hear some ghost stories, I want to try and shape my play into something that felt authentic and real.

Most of the people in that series were people I knew or friends of friends.

And yeah, the stories are amazing in that series.

And I think when I listen to myself, the kind of production and the way I do it is a little bit rougher and rorer than uncanny.

But they're enjoyable to listen to, I think.

And yeah, and then whilst I was making that, somebody came to me and said, I've got this story to tell you.

It's an amazing story.

It's about a woman who lives in Battersea who had a poltergeist experience in the 1950s.

And I listened and I realized it wasn't just an episode.

And that's where Battersea Poltergeist came from.

I read.

I mean, is it OK to say that that is being made into a film with Blumhouse?

I wish it was.

Is it not true?

It's been stuck in development hell for a long time.

So I had an incredibly exciting experience where I suddenly found myself deluged by people wanting to make TV or film versions of it and had a bidding war around it.

I had Jason Blum of Blumhouse fame on the phone to me on a Sunday afternoon trying to persuade me to sign with him.

And I went to lunch at his house in California.

I mean, it was very exciting.

And it was this entree into the world of Hollywood.

And I met lots of brilliant people, him included, lots of really fascinating, inspiring people in Hollywood.

It just kind of got stuck in this development hell for various reasons to do all sorts of frustrations, contractual stuff and just the kind of rail politic of television and budgets and that sort of thing.

So I hope it will happen at some point.

It hasn't happened yet.

And it's sort of in that kind of holding pattern at the moment.

But I think that, you know, I'd love to think it will happen in the not too distant future.

So do you yourself watch horror?

Do you like horror?

Is that something you enjoy?

I do.

I do enjoy horror a lot.

I mean, my horror watching has been curbed by having a wife and children who are appalled by the scary and just do not want to go near it.

And so my opportunities are limited now.

But I've always enjoyed horror and some of my favorite films are horror.

You know, I definitely cite Don't Look Now, Scream, you know, Get Out, It Follows, you know, lots of films that I just love and find inspiring.

The Exorcist.

I like to think that what I make is horror for people that think they don't like horror.

I think with 222 and Battersea Poltergeist and Uncanny even really, there's something about them that make them accessible to people who think I don't normally like that kind of stuff.

You know, it draws you in, I think, through history and science and social stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I got my wife, she hates horror, but I got her in to, I made her watch Miss Howard, just because she does a lot of construction-y type stuff and I wanted to tell her about the mold thing.

So, you've got to watch this, you have to watch this.

So, that's how she got into it.

I think there's definitely a point where some people in their lives hit a certain threshold where they can't do horror anymore.

And I think my wife saw that, like, since we had kids, like, she's found her appetite or her ability to watch scary stuff really, really diminished, you know, like she can't cope with even mild peril now.

But yeah, but I mean, I think, you know, horror can be a young person's medium.

I think particularly the kind of gory horror and the kind of real sort of, you know, jumpscare, adrenaline-fueled horror.

But I love kind of an emotionally driven horror.

I love horror driven by character and story.

And I always think that the things that affect me most are the things that feel most real.

If I watch something and feel that it's somebody like me and their predicament feels like one I could imagine myself in, it just feels much more terrifying.

And I think I would cite The Babadook as a great example of something where you're plunged into a situation where you're not sure if it's in the protagonist's head or if it's really paranormal and that feels terrifying, that sort of uncertainty between is this a breakdown or is this something that could actually kill you.

So yes, but I rewatched Don't Look Now recently and that is an important film to me actually and sort of inspired the whole uncanny look, my red coat that I wear is a little nod to Don't Look Now.

Is that what it is?

That's why I wear the red coat on Uncanny.

It's largely because that's my coat.

And it was just my coat, that's what I wore and I did the photoshoot in my coat.

But there's definitely a kind of little conscious nod to Don't Look Now there.

I think there's something so iconic and so unsettling about the way the red coat is used in that movie.

For me, it's sort of such a horror color red, it pops in this amazing way and leaps out of any landscape.

Aren't you concerned about being bothered by the public a lot?

Because if you wear that coat, you literally look like you do on television, so you're going to get hassled.

I'm going to try and hide it a bit.

Well, that's actually my other red coat I wore today.

I've got two red Macs.

I've got the stage red Mac, which is just I'm trying to preserve and keep going now.

It's quite an aging red Mac now.

And then this is a kind of alternative red Mac that I came in today, which is my street wear.

But I don't know, I love people coming up to me and chatting about the show on the street.

And it certainly hasn't got to the point where it's annoying at all.

I love it and welcome it.

And having spent a lot of my life as a jobbing comedy writer banging out jokes in the back rooms of various production company offices, the fact that people now want to come and watch me on stage talking about ghosts and come and get a signature and meet me and say hello afterwards is just delightful and you know I love it, I love it.

Is it like a doctor when they're constantly asked by people, what's this rash?

Yes.

Do people just come up to you now and just constantly tell you, I mean I want to tell you some stuff but I feel like I'm re-entered.

It's like he's probably heard a million of these today.

It's very true, it really is.

And I do feel like as a doctor I have to provide some sort of kind of some verdict or some sort of reassurance, you know.

I think people not only tell me that sorry, they also sort of look at me and they go like, so is it real?

You know, what do you think?

You know, and I think...

You don't really give that away, do you?

You don't say what you say at the beginning you didn't believe, but you don't say now if you've been, if your mind's been changed.

If I've drunk the kool-aid, yeah.

I mean, I find myself torn always.

I mean, the way I describe myself is a skeptic who wants to believe and that sort of might sound a bit glib, but I am really torn and I kind of, you know, I'm an agnostic in all things.

I think I would absolutely love to believe more than anything else in the world, really.

And I think for me, it's the optimism it presents.

I love the idea that death is not the end and that there is some greater meaning to life.

I think the saddest and scariest thing I can think of is the idea that we just stop being.

And, you know, all of this amazing work of building up experiences and communicating and living and loving and sharing your life with people, that it just stops is such a horrible idea.

So I would love it to be true.

I haven't had an experience, people always say that, have you seen a ghost to be an experience?

And that's a big resounding no from me.

I've never.

Not even a creepy feeling, nothing.

Not really.

Not that I would ascribe to being paranormal, but I find myself living vicariously through the stories I'm told and I don't have answers for those.

And I guess that's the closest I come to saying I believe that I'm in a state of uncertainty and I think uncertainty frightens human beings.

The reason we fear these stories, why they scare us, why they affect us on an emotional level is because of that uncertainty it plunges us into.

And we'd like to know the ending.

We like to know how things finish.

And this is the greatest mystery of all.

I've always found myself attracted to detective stories, both reading them, watching them on TV.

I love a detective story.

So many of the things I enjoyed watching as I grew up, but detective things, you know, Poirot, Sherlock Holmes.

It is detective.

Yeah, and again, these are the detective stories without the end.

You never get to find out who done it.

I've got a little favour to ask you.

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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 podcast.

When I moved into a new house about six months ago, I played all the uncanny episodes pretty much in order as I unpacked.

And one night, I walked up my stairs and I went for a wee.

And as I was standing there, I heard footsteps on every single step behind me.

I was alone, everyone else was asleep.

And I literally nearly shit myself.

And I actually thought, this is it.

I'm gonna open this door and there's gonna be a ghost.

This is the moment.

Get ready, open the door.

Nothing there.

And then I'm told later, well, when a house hasn't had anyone in it for a while, sometimes the steps settle after you.

But they were just, it was just so many of them.

And your podcast made me scared.

But I knew it wasn't true.

It's still, it's still the fear I had in that moment of opening that door.

I have to tell you, it's been a while since I was that scared.

Well, yeah, and fear is an incredible thing, isn't it?

And I wonder if a lot of our early experiences of, the things we viewed, the things we read, the things we saw in theatres, it's the fear that is most lasting, you know?

I remember being scared watching Doctor Who or, you know, or Ghostwatch or, you know, the woman in black in the theatre, you know, those moments really stick with us.

And I find that, you know, I'm sent many, many emails with people describing what they think are paranormal experiences.

And, you know, many of them are things that I think I can explain, you know, many of them are linked to, you know, sleep-related hallucinations, dreamlike states.

That's my stock answer for every time I'm on a sleep paralysis.

Yeah, absolutely.

But that state between sleep and waking and, you know, but that doesn't make them any less powerful for those people, you know, and the profundity of having on those experiences where you think there is a figure in your room, terrifying and you will never forget that, you know.

So I think fear, yeah, fear is this thing that resonates across the years.

We'll never forget it.

Have you ever tried to make it happen?

I try to sort of trick myself when I fall asleep into that halfway point.

I close my eyes and imagine the room and then I open and I can make that happen.

I can make a figure.

Oh really?

That's like lucid dreaming.

A little bit, like because I worked on Woman in Black, I can't really abide a coat on a door or a rocking chair.

I once went to some digs in Manchester and I went, is this room okay?

And there was a rocking chair and I went, you've got to move that.

Oh wow.

I'm going to wake up in the night and see some woman.

So what working on Woman in Black is really kind of, that did scare you, that kind of unsettled you.

It just made it difficult to sort of deal with certain things like I would be on tour with that show.

And one time I woke up in the night in a start from a bad dream and the kettle turned on and I was like, it's just got to be the show I'm working on or something.

And you know, there were instances when we put that show on where actors on stage saw things they thought they saw in the wings and stuff like that.

Yeah, there's a lot of that going on.

Well, Theatre Ghost, that's a whole other conversation.

I've spent a lot of time collecting Theatre Ghost stories as we've gone on our tour.

By the end of the uncanny tour, we will have done 78 shows around the country.

And almost every single theatre we've been to, with very, very few exceptions, has had a Theatre Ghost story or several Theatre Ghost stories attached to it.

Nottingham, you've done Nottingham, haven't you?

Yeah.

That's one where.

Some guy asked me who I was talking to, the old guy, and I was like, there's no old guy.

He goes, no, you saw him, he was standing next to you.

I was like, come on.

But like two people said they saw him, and I don't know who that was.

I don't like stuff like that.

No, I'm quite fascinated by it.

I think that so many Theatre Ghost stories seem to be about sad failure.

Like, you know, actor managers who went bankrupt or, you know, playwrights whose plays failed or doomed love affairs between wardrobe mistresses or actresses, lots of kind of people failing and then killing themselves or dying sadly.

And I think, you know, our greatest fear when we step out on stage or, you know, when we perform in any capacity, whether it's television, radio, whatever, is failure, you know, you're terrified that it won't work and if you've got the ghost who's done it for you already, it sort of takes the sting out of it, you know, there's someone's been there and done that already and I think it takes the pressure off you.

So maybe there's something that we kind of need, something, a sort of deep psychological need for performers in having these stories.

I ain't afraid of no ghost.

You don't, I'm Kenny USA., very popular, great episodes, loved them all.

The one that got me the most, I guess, was Bigfoot.

Okay.

Because I'll be frank, I thought that was one of the mad ones.

I thought that was one of the more out there theories.

And I thought, it's always kind of with conspiracy theories and people like that.

And you know, there's a lot of, when I was a kid, I used to get that magazine, The Unexplained, that's a man in a monkey suit.

Maybe that one was, but when I listened to that, I did actually sort of think, huh, maybe it is true because they don't know what's in the Mariana Trench.

There could be something in Loch Ness as a crack in the ocean floor.

I mean, you just don't know, right?

And it made me, I know there's been a lot of really in-depth American podcasts about Bigfoot, but I wonder, did that one sway you?

It really did, I think.

And I think it's the one that will probably live longest in my memory probably from that series.

I was like you.

I thought Bigfoot was the stuff of urban legends and fairy tales.

And I think, you know, yeah, it was interesting.

The response to that episode before it went out, when people heard we were doing Bigfoot, there was a lot of people going like, oh, I don't think I'll listen to this one.

Oh, Bigfoot, I can't believe you're doing that.

Oh, and I was like, just listen, listen to it and judge once you listen.

And then I saw so many people going like, oh, yeah, okay, right.

I get it now.

And it basically, it felt like a ghost story.

It was about somebody in a situation, you know, kind of a shack in the middle of nowhere in the woods and experiencing something truly terrifying that felt just as haunting as any ghost story really.

And it felt haunting because it felt real, you know, and I think that, yes, was I swayed?

Absolutely.

I went out to Northern California to wilderness, you know, to this part of California where, you know, there are stretches of land where apparently no human being has ever been.

These huge dense forests and mountains and, you know, just incredibly inaccessible.

There was one part where we drove past a road sign that had a few place names listed and the final place name was End of the Road.

And that was literally the end of the road.

That was where civilization petered out and gave back to nature.

And, you know, there was stretches there where just you couldn't get to, you couldn't access them.

And suddenly the idea of something remaining hidden there for years and centuries actually didn't feel that implausible.

And the thing that really struck me was just talking to people there for whom this was totally normalized.

It wasn't a question of belief.

They weren't talking about, do you believe in Bigfoot?

Any more than we would talk about, you know, do you believe in this table sitting here between us?

You know, it was just a statement of facts of them that Bigfoot was out there.

And, you know, I'm talking particularly here about Native American people who...

Yeah, that's what swayed me, I think...

.

lived there.

And, you know, really sensible professional people.

One was a lawyer, one was a law enforcement officer.

And they just, you know, everybody they knew had Bigfoot experience, really.

And they, you know, they'd seen things themselves.

And certainly, you know, it just, yeah, it felt very plausible.

But I have one question, which always comes up with this kind of thing.

I mean, I'm not saying that you are a true believer anyway, but what do you think when people say, with everyone walking around with a mobile phone, with a camera and a video, how come we don't have footage of ghosts, UFOs, even Bigfoot?

What's your answer to that?

Well, I would say that maybe we do.

I mean, I think if you look on the internet, there are loads of videos and photographs, purportedly of paranormal activity.

I just think we live in an era where we distrust everything.

You know, we live in an era of fake news and bots and AI, and so you're not going to believe any of this stuff.

You know, I mean, I look at stuff and I've seen some stuff that feels incredibly convincing, quite amazing, actually.

And those spheres that fly around, it looks real, doesn't it?

The metallic spheres that they keep filming from planes.

Oh, no, I haven't seen those.

You haven't seen those?

It just shoots across the...

And I just think, oh, someone's made that up.

Even the convincing stuff, I look at it and I go, you know, it's probably been photoshopped, it's probably been AI generated.

So I think it's tricky and I actually, most of the cases that we look at are things from the past, often kind of pre-smartphone era, when you don't get into bogged down all those kind of things.

And I do find that, you know, the cases we've done where we have, you know, shown bits of kind of photographic evidence or video evidence, it almost has the opposite effect.

It doesn't help convince people.

So I sort of think sometimes be careful what you wish for.

You know, people are always saying we want more proof, we want more proof, but then when they get it, they don't, you know, they weren't accepted.

I don't know.

I mean, I think the other thing I would say is that, I think, think about all the times that you have not captured that moment where you've not captured the smile on your kid's face or the perfect lovely thing that your partner said to you.

I mean, I think often in these moments, you just don't capture.

And so particularly when you're terrified and when your stuff is happening to you, you don't get that moment when the ghost appears to you, you don't suddenly manage to whip out your phone and just capture it in that moment.

But yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I think it's a valid argument, asking for why we haven't captured that kind of elusive proof.

But then I think many people would push back and say it's there, it's out there if you want it.

No one would believe it even if he did capture it.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

When you're using photography, especially in that Miss Howard episode where you show, I just don't like looking at the photos, you know what I mean?

Because it's creepier because it's from Victorian Times, number one.

And looking at those black and white images, I think if you were to show me a ghost from like 1991, I wouldn't be as scared as seeing those old black and white ones.

So you know you're doing something.

It's very interesting, isn't it?

Yeah.

You're scaring us.

Yes.

I mean, you know, but and yet, you know, if ghosts are real, then there must be modern ghosts appearing all the time.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think, look, whether we believe in the paranormal or not, we are haunted by our predecessors and particularly haunted by the Victorians.

We all either live in Victorian houses or know people who live in Victorian houses.

We're surrounded by them, you know, in any city, you are surrounded by Victorian houses.

And so you're very aware of them.

They're very present and they, you know, haunt you through their kind of building choices, their design choices, their decor choices, all those kind of things.

So, you know, it was interesting for me making Uncanny USA in juxtaposition to doing stuff here in the UK, because I think in the UK, it's possible to be haunted in quite a benign way by, you know, that, you know, on a kind of sceptical level, just literally haunted by the house you're in, the kind of layers of people who have been there before.

On a believer level, you know, literally you could have the ghost of somebody lived in your house just kind of deciding to linger there, you know, it's kind of benign, it's not that terrifying, you know, but American hauntings seem to all be much more scary and violent and kind of often linked to murders and serial killers and penitentiaries and asylums.

And I wonder if that's because they lack that kind of reservoir of these old buildings that we have, you know, they're mostly living in more modern places.

And, you know, they don't have that kind of just casual link to that Victorian past that we have, you know, and, you know, maybe that's a factor.

Are you going to do Uncanny Australia?

I'd love to.

That must be it, that's got to be one.

I'd love to think, you know, I mean, Uncanny feels like it has become international now and I get messages from all over the world and people send me stories from all over the world.

And I know that there was again, you know, like I was saying, it was a resistance to Bigfoot.

I think there was a little bit of resistance from a small minority of people before Uncanny USA going, Oh, but we like the British stories and we don't want you to go abroad.

But actually, you know, with Uncanny USA, we found brilliantly eloquent, fantastic storytellers who felt to me just like any of the British ones we had, but just with a different accent, you know, and I think, you know, there's all around the world.

There are people having these kinds of experiences, and I'd love to think that we could, you know, embrace that.

And I think also it really intrigues me the way we interpret the paranormal in different parts of the world.

I think, you know, some parts of the world have a very different idea of ghosts and a very different relationship with ghosts to us.

I think in America and in Britain, we generally generate quite scary hauntings.

I think it's because we're scared of death.

I think we have a real problem with death in our countries.

We are frightened of it, and we don't quite know how to cope with it or process it.

We don't like people talking about it.

But I think in other countries and other cultures, that there is much more of a kind of acceptance of death as a part of life.

And I think, you know, sort of, you know, a relationship with the paranormal, which is about kind of staying in tune with your ancestors and embracing that link with the past.

Like laying a plate for your ancestors at the Day of the Dead festivals and, you know, that kind of thing.

Bowls of rice in Vietnam.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Spooky.

Well, I know you want to watch the football, so I'll end with one format question, if that's okay.

What's your favorite jingle, Danny?

My favorite jingle?

Gosh, that is a really good question.

So many of them have been stuck in my head over the years.

I don't know.

I find myself singing, I Feel Like Chicken Tonight.

Do you want to sing it?

I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight.

Now I feel like I'll be judged by that, though.

I don't want to be the guy who remembers I Feel Like Chicken Tonight.

I don't want to have an eclipse.

I'm a vegetarian.

Cooler one.

Oh, body for harm, body for harm for you.

I met the woman who sang that.

You did not.

Yeah.

And she actually sang a jingle for us.

I had a show on Bristol student radio with Marcus Briggstock and Dan Tetzel.

And I'm pretty sure she sang a jingle for us, the Bristol University Radio.

I don't even...

Is she big hair like I imagine?

She was quite Viking, I think.

She was quite, you know, an Amazonian kind of figure.

And yeah, I think she might have sung with Meat Loaf or something like that.

But she was the, ooh, body form.

Body form for you.

Would you know that Mr.

Bean sketch where he's trying to get to sleep and he's counting the sheep.

He counts the sheep and then he has this big broom and he's sort of touching his television.

Do you remember seeing that?

And then he sort of falls asleep and he falls asleep and then body form advert comes on.

He wakes straight up and then he shoots the TV.

So I'm always reminded of that.

Anyway, thank you, Danny.

An absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for coming to Television Times and thank you for mopping up my water.

Oh no, thank you, thank you.

Well, what do we think about that?

Any minds changed?

That was me talking to Danny Robins backstage at The Theatre Royal in Newcastle back in the summer.

I was really chuffed to get to speak to him, and he was lovely, right?

Absolutely lovely.

Go listen to Uncanny, watch Uncanny, buy the books, buy the merch, all the links are at the bottom of this episode, and you know, check him out online.

And as we mentioned, there's a new season out in January, which will be on the BBC, no doubt, so you can all look forward to that.

Okay, as promised, no song this week, but you do get this little Halloween treat.

This is me backstage with the character, Clinton Baptiste, recorded in a dressing room at the TyneTheatre earlier this year.

This is a little treat for you guys.

I'm here with Steve Gunn.

Is it working?

Yeah.

I'm here with Steve Gunn.

He is a writer, he's a stand-up comic, and he's a sound man.

Technica, what would you call him?

I used to be a sound up, yeah, yeah.

A sound up, okay.

I wanted to talk to you about something that you eluded to.

Yeah.

A very scary story.

Very.

You are a believer, am I correct?

I am.

In the studio, put on the spooky music, please, Linda.

I don't want you fucking laughing at me.

Right, now turn the music off, Linda.

You can do this properly, Steve.

Apologies, apologies.

In the studio, please, could you put the spooky...

Why are you smirking?

I'm doing the fucking story.

Go on, go on, go on.

I'll stop.

Jesus Christ.

In the studio, will you please put on the spooky music, Steve Regalus, with this story?

Right, so I was working...

Well, are you just going to laugh?

No, no, I'm not laughing.

It's a true story.

So I was working on Woman in Black in the West End at the Fortune Theatre, the year is 2001.

It was just before 9-11, so things were better.

And I come up the stairs and I got this spooky feeling because the sound app position was at the top on the right of the balcony.

So often, there would be no one there.

And one day, when I was walking up, this is an addition to what I told you before.

Somebody saw a hand in the Royal Box, a green sort of velvety glove on...

You're joking.

No, no, they say they saw it while I was up there because somebody then said, Who's that up there with you, Steve?

Oh, my God, I've just thought of another story I should tell you after this.

Never mind.

Oh, there's two.

Steve.

Oh, we've got to do this quick.

Right, go on.

So I go up there.

I'm pressing all the mini-disks as you used to.

Yeah.

And then one of the actors, basically, is on stage and he's got a spooky feeling.

He keeps talking about how he thinks stage right is haunted and how can stage right be haunted?

It's impossible.

It was a touring show, so he couldn't talk.

So you were setting up sort of thing for the show?

Yeah.

And then when the show happened that night after someone saw this hand, the actor, I believe his name is Sebastian Harkham.

She could ask him.

It's all been in the press.

Okay.

So there's a big spoiler for people who haven't seen Woman in Black.

There is an actress who comes down the middle of the aisle, goes up on the stairs, comes in and basically walks on stage really quickly.

And the first interaction with the character Mr.

Kips.

This guy is looking into the wing stage right.

And not only is he looking at the Woman in Black on stage, he sees another woman dressed as a Woman in Black in the backstage area.

Bloody hell.

And he shits himself.

So much so that the next day people come in with, you know, equipment to check for psychic, whatever, and we did a whole thing.

And they didn't find anything, but he swears he saw that.

And other people said they saw someone in that box while I was up there as well.

So every time I walked by, I got a little shivers feeling.

Which theatre was this again?

This was the Fortune Theatre where it was for years.

It couldn't be a royal, I mean, Fergie with the green glove.

No, no, she wasn't dead.

No, no, it was definitely just a hand, I think.

Bloody hell.

Yeah, there was a lot of that.

There was a lot of that.

Really?

Because there's a school of thought that says that that is a haunted show.

No, I don't think so.

We've had experiences with that.

I did that show, I used to do two shows for the same company.

The other one was called An Inspector Calls.

I used to do that.

And I just wanted to say what happened on that one, which was the same...

Go on, is this another set?

Well, yeah, yeah, but it was the same group of people.

We used to sort of go from one to the other.

Yeah.

And in the Theatre Royal in Nottingham, which is also green, weirdly, I was setting up the sound desk.

Yeah.

And as I was doing it, I didn't feel anything.

I didn't have any vibe.

Afterwards, my friend on stage said, Who was that guy you were talking to?

I was like, What guy?

What are you talking about?

He was a guy with a hat.

Of course, he had a hat on.

But anyway, well, I have to swear.

Of course, he had a hat on.

No, it's disgusting.

But go on.

So I thought nothing of that.

Nothing of that.

Yeah.

And then during the show that night, there was this big scene, there's a big scene in that where the house collapses and there's all these sad effects go off and there's a creak and there's a bang and there's a bit of music from Stephen Warwick and all this stuff.

And I had this big stack of big old go buttons on the right hand side.

So I set up, move all the faders, move all the pans, go over here to the right, un-port some stuff, boring stuff, boring technical stuff.

But when I look back, every fader has moved to a different position, right there in the middle of the show.

Oh my God.

And I cannot explain that.

And it wasn't me and no one was around me because I was at the back and that was weird.

This is a very un-technical question.

But do you know when you see, have you ever seen when they do sort of old runs of, you know, old rock music and they go in there and they say, oh, this is the drum track and they say, oh, it's the studio.

Sometimes someone presses a button and all the dials go to a certain...

Yeah, that's an automated desk.

We didn't have one of those.

This was an analog desk.

I insisted on having actual buttons and...

Did you shit your pants?

I didn't shit my pants.

I just, at the time, thought, well, that's weird and immediately fixed it all in time.

And then over the course of the rest of the show, I remembered that someone had mentioned the old man in the hat.

Who was the man with the hat?

You don't know.

You had been speaking to him or they heard you or they heard two people talking or they...

There was a scene you stood next to someone.

Apparently, he was standing next to me talking to me and I was giving the illusion...

They had the illusion that I was talking to him as well.

Bloody hell.

So I don't know.

That's really...

You've given me the heebie-jeebies.

Was that the story you wanted to tell?

Yeah, it is that one and I can give you the other one as well.

Very quickly.

I've got to do a sound check.

I know.

You want the Chipshop one?

The old theatre in Darlington?

This is a Chipshop story.

So the theatre in Darlington, I don't know what it's called, but the dressing rooms, some of the dressing rooms are above the theatre and to the right, which were above, originally, a Chipshop.

I was there on tour.

I had a dressing room far away from the cast and I was up there and I had a horrible feeling and there were these mirrors and I could have sworn I saw something move out the corner of my eye, you know, like a head, but I don't know.

A head?

In my mind, it was like a head moving.

Right.

Which is why this, you know, became more scary.

And suddenly there was a knock on the door, sound effect.

And this guy said, oh, you don't mind if we come in.

This is the ghost tour.

And there was like 12 or 12 or so people.

I know, I know, yeah.

And they came in and I was like, what do you mean a ghost tour?

I'm having my lunch and I've got my M&S.

And the guy walks in and he says, oh, right, so this used to be a chip shop and there was a fire.

And in the fire, this was the little boy's bedroom and he died.

And he's often seen running around in here.

I was like, right, get me the fuck out of here.

So I packed everything up and I literally did leave as quick as they left.

I never went back in that room.

So that was another one.

And there wasn't a ghostly Savileye floating in the...

I don't want to take the piss, I believe all this stuff.

I don't know if I do.

I never seen anything like definitely in front of me, but people have seen things around me.

There's little flickers of light, there's things that have happened.

But also in theatre, you know, there's probably one in here.

Well, I very much hope there isn't.

I've got a thousand people in tonight, Steve.

So let's just hope the ghosties don't make an appearance because I haven't got time to deal with them and an audience tonight.

Only the girls who I invite on stage.

Steve, thank you very much.

Steve Gunn, ladies and gentlemen.

You're welcome.

Have you finished laughing at the serious nature of this podcast now?

Yeah, well I have.

Cheeky sod.

Okay.

Now, as if that wasn't enough of a Halloween treat, for those of you still listening, what we've got now is a little excerpt from my Edinburgh show, Steve Otis Gunn is Uncomfortable.

And what I'm popping on here is the spooky story that I told near the end of my show every night in Edinburgh.

And at the end of that, you will hear Danny Robins' little voice note that he made for me, as I mentioned in the beginning.

And I should mention, this is recorded live.

This was my final performance of Steve Otis Gunn as Uncomfortable at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

So that's why you can hear the audience and stuff.

So here it is.

Have a listen.

Who wants a spooky story?

Spooky story?

Yeah.

Anyone seen a ghost?

No, you know why?

Because it doesn't exist.

Right.

When I was about 16, I was living in another beautiful part of the country.

Peterborough.

Another shithole.

Another shithole.

I only lived in shitholes with my nan and grandad.

And I made a Ouija board with my friend.

Has anyone made a Ouija board?

I don't believe in any of that stuff, but weird stuff did start happening.

One time I came home and my nan and grandad was standing at the bottom of the stairs and they looked really, really scared.

And they were like, have you been home?

I went, no, I haven't been home.

They go, well, we were stomping around in your bedroom then.

I'm like, yeah, good one.

Well done.

I didn't believe it because they were into that stuff.

When I was about 10 or 11, they took me to psychic meetings where there'd be someone, there'd be a medium there, extra large.

And they'd be like, they'd be going, oh, this spirit here, name begins with a letter from the alphabet and they're male or female.

And my nan would be like, that's your dad.

To my grandad.

I used to have to deliver the psychic times to my own house in my own paper room.

It was so embarrassing.

And this is true.

I read last week that they finally gone bankrupt.

Yeah, they didn't see it coming.

So I get in and we're walking up the stairs and I'm thinking, they're putting on a pretty good act if this is true.

I can see that my nan is gripping my grandad's arm so much that it's distorting his war tattoos on his biceps.

So I'm thinking, maybe that's it.

So we open the door and all my cassettes are smashed to pieces on the floor, completely broken.

Some of them have gone so far they've hit the back wall.

I thought, wow, my grandad must really hate my music.

So in order to find out what was going on, I decided, well, the obvious thing to do is to tape the night, right?

So I get a cassette and I put it on and I do the timer for 3am, the witching hour, yeah?

Doesn't allow for time zones, that, does it?

Next morning I get the cassette, I put it in my walker and I walk to school.

And at first it's nothing on there, it's just like kind of...

So I forward wind a little bit, right?

So I re-wind a little bit.

Now that I can do without.

It was really scary and it's weird to be scared in the daytime, it's like being in a Japanese horror film.

But I think it was the dog, it has to be the dog, it's always the dog, right?

So I figured the dog must have somehow learnt to open the door, come over, done a little...

With its snout or something, it's got to be, it has to be, everything's explainable, right?

But then things escalated.

My grandad woke up in the night to this huge cloud, allegedly, above his bed, with these sort of little electrons and sperm shaped things going in and out of them.

I think he found my dad's canvas there.

He swears this is true and he was really really really scared.

So much so that he said, I want to swap rooms with you.

And I was like, oh well yeah we can do that, you've got a fucking massive double bed and a double room and I've got this box room that is not conducive to sleep.

Let's go.

I should explain the reason that my grandad slept separately from my nan is that she snored like a fucking train and he liked to sort of stay up late and go downstairs and watch porn.

So I moved into his room, he moved into mine and I got all my stuff out, the bed was massive, I was able to do a sort of star jump shape in the bed, it was so big.

But then that night as I was lying in there, I was falling asleep a little bit, I noticed that my own sort of breath was really loud in my own ear.

And then I noticed it was slightly out of sync even.

So I thought, huh, that's pretty weird.

So I held my breath and the breathing continued.

Bloody hell, Danny Robins, thank you Danny Robins.

Well, that's it guys, I hope you enjoyed the Halloween episode.

Me chatting to Danny, that was fantastic.

And that little Clinton Baptiste moment, I hope you liked that.

And hopefully you didn't mind me playing a bit of my show because no one's probably gonna hear that for a long time, if ever again.

Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes, tell all your friends about this podcast.