Dom Joly: Trigger Happy TV, Conspiracy Theories, and Surviving Bear Grylls

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Screen Rats.

Here we are with another episode of the podcast, all about television.

And this one really is all about television, one particular program.

And if you were around the turn of the millennium, the one we just had, I say just had, you would have popped on your telly in the early days of the new century millennium, whatever, and you would have heard this song.

And it was like Trigger Happy TV came out.

And he's like, who is this guy?

He's walking around screaming into a phone, doing pranks, dressing up as animals.

It was fucking hilarious.

I'd never seen anything like it before.

There were those sort of naff grandma ones that were knocking about like, you know, candy camera from the seventies and all that sort of shit.

But this was different.

This was edgy.

And it rode on that sort of wave from Britpop, called Britannia right into 2000s.

And I kind of think of it as a 90s show.

And, you know, obviously today's guest is Dom Joly.

He was up here on tour with his show, which was hilarious, all about The Conspiracy Tourist book that he was promoting as well.

And yeah, it was really, really funny.

And I really enjoyed meeting up with him and talking to him.

And I was sent the book by his publicist and she arranged the whole thing.

And it was lovely to speak to him.

And I'll be honest, I didn't think I was going to get that long with him because he didn't have a lot of time.

He had half an hour and we were even running late by the time he started.

But he got into it and you're here.

He enjoyed it.

And so we went longer and longer and longer.

And actually got, you know, I think about 50 minutes.

50 minutes with him, which was amazing because I was not expecting to have that kind of time with him.

In the middle of the interview, I'm talking to Dom and I sort of start asking him format questions about, you know, whatever the fuck, the stuff I do on every podcast.

And then I realized, oh, I've killed it.

I've killed this conversation.

I took it off track.

We were doing a lot of stuff about Trigger Happy TV and he was enjoying that part.

And you know, he doesn't get to speak about it very often.

So we went straight back, straight back to it.

And we talked extensively about it, about the making of it.

I mean, you're here, the American version and loads of stuff is really, really good.

I was so thrilled to talk to him and he was really, really giving and really lovely.

And you know, this one is all about Dom Joly and Trigger Happy TV.

There's a few bits about other stuff, but you know, that's predominantly what this one's about.

So think of it as a bit of a special and you don't need to hear anything from me this week.

Let's just get in and listen to Dom, cause he's brilliant.

And this was a fun one for me and a real like, you know, it's a, I'm not gonna say a hero, I'm not American, but like it's someone I looked up to.

It's someone I watched on telly every week.

There's bits of his comedy that I've shown my kids.

I didn't know I was gonna meet him.

I show my son clips of Trigger Happy TV all the time.

I've been doing it for about two years, I think, since I realized he was old enough.

And we look at it all the time.

There's always little bits that I go to like, I mean, I think the funniest thing, I don't know if I've said other things, but you know, one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television is where Dom Joly is dressed as the Cold War spy and he gets on the London Underground.

He sits right next to an old man to his left.

And he's dressed in, you know, the trench coat and the glasses and everything.

And he says to him, are you White Bear?

And the guy's really confused.

And he says the code, something to do with Leningrad.

It's really funny.

And the old guy's really confused.

So Dom Joly passes him to his left and gets off out of the double doors of the underground.

Now while the guy's watching him leave through the single door, just up the carriage, which he can't see yet, a guy walks in wearing a bear head and sits right down next to him.

And I don't know what it is about it, but for some reason that cracked me up more than anything ever has on television.

It was just absolute fucking genius.

And so I get now to talk to the man behind that.

So this is me chatting to the brilliant, wonderful, talented Mr.

Dom Joly.

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 10 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.

That's all right, no worries.

Well, nice for you.

So don't say anything else.

I used to be a sound engineer years ago.

Well, no wonder then, it's all that shit.

Yeah, yeah.

Hence, I know your pain in traveling from, would you come to Strewsbury?

Is that what it was today?

Yeah, fuck yeah.

I can't remember.

We went to Sleep in Chester and then came here.

Yeah, it's just nonstop.

Then we're back to fucking Chester tonight.

I saw your schedule here.

I used to go up and down from Aberdeen to Eastbourne to.

I know, and you just think, why the fuck can't we just go next door, but it's because when theaters are available.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there you go.

This podcast is all about TV, Dom.

I watch a lot of TV.

You do?

I will ask you some questions about your likes and dislikes, but if I don't talk about Trigger Happy TV for at least 10 minutes of this, it will be.

Are you okay with that?

Actually, because I didn't talk about it at all on this tour, so it's quite nice to talk about it.

Is that all right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's nice not to talk about Conspiracy Squad.

And you can swear, so it's all good.

You can say whatever you like.

I was quite surprised today, because I've been doing, like, the last few days, I was doing a little bit of research.

For me, Trigger Happy TV is very 90s, but it's actually the year 2000.

Yeah.

And I had to check that.

I was like, oh, they've got that wrong.

It actually really pisses me off.

Very first Trigger Happy TV was the 14th of January, 2000.

And I know that, because Victor Lewis Smith, who was my absolute, I mean, it was just my favorite TV critic, literally gave us a page on the Standard, which was the greatest TV review I've ever had.

I can remember it now.

It turns the humble, practical joke into an art form.

And he actually said, without doubt, the greatest comedy of this millennium so far.

Now, fair enough, we were 14 days in, but I took it.

Yeah.

So yeah, it always was to me.

But then it was 90s because actually the sort of birthing process of it was late 90s and sort of coming off Britpop.

So that music was all that area.

And I'd done a lot of stuff sort of before.

And obviously the first series was all filmed in about 1999.

Oh yeah, of course.

So you're straddling that whole.

Yeah, it was straddling the millennium.

Straddling the millennium.

I mean, I've got things here, I've got things written down, but I mean, I just, it blows me away.

Like to me, I still talk, I might talk about this.

I didn't even realize I've got an episode out today with Olga Cock and I'm discussing Trigger Happy TV.

Olga Cock.

The comedian.

I'm talking about it on there.

I'm always talking about it.

Because to me, like the funny, and I looked at it again today, I am 54.

I see.

You're not like, you know, because normally like it's, like a 35 year old is kind of peak, because they'd have been like 15 when it was going out.

But that's not, I'm glad you're my age.

I was on the first tour I ever did was the year 2000.

I've had Darren Brown on here as well.

So I think it was you and him literally was dominating television as far as I was concerned.

What's weird is what people used to watch on tour, I was really into the Jerky Boys who did these amazing, I don't know if you know them, amazing prank calls.

They used to work in the MTV office and they used to do these DVDs of prank calls and all bands when you weren't watching DVD would listen to those.

In fact, Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey, is named after a Jerky Boys thing.

Oh really?

Yeah, so I love that.

So if you knew that you were being watched or listened to by bands, you kind of thought, oh, I'm in the zeitgeist.

Well, that's the funny thing, like your show, in a way, I know some, I remember like really getting into Embrace around the time that you...

I figured it was all over your show.

But like, you were kind of, not like TFI Friday, TFI Friday introduced me to like, you know, Divine Comedy, Ben Fowl, things like that, Jack Doty as well.

But like your show as well also was like a stage for bands and music, wasn't it?

It was that you had soundtracks.

Well, I mean, for me, like the music honestly was more important because I'm a frustrated, I'm not a musician, but I was in a band.

And I love music.

And so really, the music was much more exciting for me than the comedy.

Like the comedy on its own, you know, bits of it were great, but some bits pretty ordinary.

But actually, when he put it, Trigger Happy was all about the edit.

And I lived in the edit.

Weirdly, the editor was Dave, who was my drummer in my band.

And so one of the great things about that was when you're with an editor, if they're noodling away, you kind of, you know, and then they finish and you can't say, well, that's a bit shit.

But actually, I could just tell Dave, that's shit or whatever.

And Dave like absolutely understood rhythm.

And it was all, I didn't think I didn't realize it.

I wasn't consciously trying to do it.

But all of Trigger Happy was about not letting it stop.

It was just like fucking go.

I wanted it to be like a beautifully produced album, which you just couldn't turn off.

Thank you And weirdly, when we handed it in, I realized, I think, were the first, they said, were the first comedy show with a soundtrack, because it didn't come with soundtracks.

And they were so freaked out by it, we had to go to a focus group.

I'd never done a focus group.

And it is what you imagine.

You're looking through a mirror, and you're seeing these people watching it.

And literally, I remember people saying, oh, the music's a bit sad.

And then someone said, why don't they have cartoon music?

I was like, no, you can't!

Oh my God, it's not Benny Hill.

Anyway, thank God that we didn't.

That was the best thing.

And so my favorite thing on that, like I had, you know, I met a lot of bands through it because I then went on and did this spoof show, which completely tanked on BBC Three.

But because no one understood what I was doing, probably me including, but I had all my favorite bands on it and The Cure and I had Ian Brown and all these kinds of stuff.

But I've had bands get back together.

There was a band called The Honey Smugglers, who I think had only released a couple of singles and they got back together because they were on the Trigger Happy soundtrack.

Really?

And then there's a band now called Soggy Chimps after one of my things.

So do you know what those things mean the most to me?

If I had to sum up one thing about Trigger Happy TV, I think it would be the album Deserter Songs because it literally came out probably a year before Trigger Happy and that album just soundtracks those three years.

And it's got everything kind of weird, melancholy beauty, which is what I wanted Trigger Happy to be in a Ponzi way.

What do you think people's favorite sketches are, do you think?

Would you call them sketches?

Would you rather call them pieces?

I'm glad you asked actually because people never ask that.

But yeah, no, there weren't sketches because sketches to me implies that they're scripted, which they're not.

But I hate that word bits because that sounds like sort of in comedy speak, which I'm not.

I don't know, hits we used to call them actually, but even that's wrong.

Episodes, I don't know.

But I don't know, it really annoys me because obviously Trigger Happy TV is known for the big mobile phone and then the big mobile phone was interesting.

That's not why, that's not my favorite.

Well, no, it's not my favorite at all.

I mean, it's my raw talent.

It's great.

What I don't like about it, it was all right once, but what was interesting about it in so many ways was firstly, if you'd never seen Trigger Happy, you knew about the big mobile phone.

And it was so different because the big mobile is now seen as a loud person making a statement about mobile phones.

It wasn't, it was just a way of interrupting things that I found dull originally, like restaurants and things.

But it turned into something else.

And so I always put it before the title.

So it was separate because most of Trigger Happy, most of Trigger Happy is me having a nervous breakdown and running away.

That's what it's about with sad music.

You know, like that's what I love about it.

And this was so different.

But what was odd was because we chose, I chose a thing called Grand Vals, which was like just a ringtone I hated.

And then just as Trigger Happy happened, that became the Nokia thing.

So every time that went off, it was like a sort of, it was a viral, it was a guerrilla marketing for Trigger Happy.

So it was genius for that.

But it wasn't intentional.

Did anybody ever fall for it?

Did anyone think it was a real fan?

Like the other bit in Paris where you're saying it's rubbish, which I love.

Yeah, yeah.

People are looking like, is that...

Well, yeah, no, but they're just confused.

Actually, when I took it to the States, they asked me to turn it on.

This was just after 9-11, so it was like, okay, but they asked me to actually turn it on in security and stuff.

But my favourite, my favourite, I don't know what other people's favourites, I think if I had to sum up Trigger Happy TV, it would be The Snail because it's sort of perfect in every way because it's something I literally, I was sitting in the pub, I can remember where it was, the Cock and Bottle in Notting Hill and I was talking to Sam and I suddenly went, fuck, a snail.

We just go to a fucking zebra crossing, everyone stops and you walk in, I remember thinking what the joke was and I've just got to walk very normally and then the moment everyone stops, I've then got to crawl really slowly across.

And everything happened brilliantly.

In America, people would have just got out and beaten me to death thinking I was a Mexican snail.

Now when I look at it, I see that there's a motorcycle coming up in the middle, so I could have died there.

It's almost perfect.

The only thing I would have changed now is if I could have done, I would have just had like a little bit of slime to have come out at the back of the thing.

But what I loved is I was in a situation where I was in a pub, pissed, and I go, fuck, yes.

And I make a call and someone starts making me a snail costume because we all have ideas like that, I think, in the pub, but we just forget about it.

And I just, for a period, I could just make that happen.

That was amazing.

Did that come before the sitting down at the table and eating food?

Which one?

The road works.

So that was brilliant.

So I was obsessed with those.

We were obsessed, Sam, who I made Trigger Happy with, was obsessed with road works.

The double stop sign.

Yeah, yeah, all that.

We were obsessed with that because he's very OCD and he was like, they're wasting their time.

Very weirdly, the guy I'm sitting, when we have the silver, we have all the napkin, you know, the white tablecloth and stuff.

That guy's called Al Campbell.

He then became Barry Shippey's on Charlie Brooker.

And he's now very well known director.

He's done all sorts of stuff.

And literally one of the nicest people ever.

But he was my runner then.

And he was in a lot of those.

I used to love those.

There's one, the three I'm proudest of, I think.

I mean, I love the snail because it's everything.

It's like, it's got Bowie originally on top.

It's got my favorite Bowie.

It's just a beautiful thing.

It's a joke that people will understand all around the world.

That's what's amazing about it.

I wasn't thinking about it.

And it's just so odd because people say to me constantly, aren't you embarrassed to be doing that?

And I'm like, no, there's a big difference.

Like, if I just decided right now to put on a snail costume and crawl out along the dock in South Shields, you'd think I'm having a nervous breakdown.

It would be terrible.

But I knew why I was doing that.

So even though people look at me going, you're mental, I knew what I was doing.

It's just perfect.

I also love, there's one where I'm dressed as a construction guy and I've got a stop sign and just the physical comedy of it.

Again, I don't think I'm a physical comedian, but that bit is just perfect.

As a car waiting and I flip it around and the car just moves and then stops.

And then I do this weird shaking of the arm and then I do a weird comedy run.

I don't know where that's from.

I'm really into comedy runs.

And that was really, I just loved that.

We actually did a follow up to The Snail, which when I put on TikTok is my biggest TikTok hit, which is basically the snail is going across, although we didn't use the original snail.

We used a really, no, we used a turtle.

A turtle's going across really slowly and then suddenly a hare just zooms past.

And it's a shit jade, but it was quite funny.

Do you think you get away with that now, like on the Roadworks ones, people would drive us get out and shout at you?

Well, I know they did then.

Sam's big thing, it was Sam's idea of the Roadworks.

He was obsessed with Roadworks.

His dream, he just thought anyone could put a bib on and do what the fuck you want and no one ever asked.

So his dream was just to get in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, start digging a hole and just see how big a hole we could make till someone checked.

I've started showing my son clips because he's about 10, and he actually has a question for you, which I'll ask at the end.

Excellent.

But the one that we both die at is the white bear.

It's the guy on the tube, the old man.

Are you white bear?

Are you white bear?

I can't remember.

There are very beautiful moments in Trigger Happy, which because we're very disorganized, and we were quite excited about that because it meant having to get on a train, and Sam had to, it was a bit of, we had to organize it.

And what I love is, because obviously there's always someone that doesn't know what the fuck's going on, there's sometimes beautiful symmetry that happens weird.

It makes you sound very poncy, but it was just beautiful.

So yeah, I love that.

I'm just gonna point out my other favorite thing of all time, which is not in Trigger Happy, actually.

It's in Well, Shut Your Mouth.

And it sums up everything that makes me laugh, which is to travel vast distances, make a massive effort to do something totally pointless.

That to me is what really makes me laugh.

I had a post-it note that just said, frighten an Eskimo.

I know you're not allowed to say Eskimo now, but that's what it said.

So I went to Newfoundland.

I persuaded the BBC to let me go to Newfoundland with a crew, got there, discovered there weren't any Eskimos in Newfoundland, but never mind, cracked on, drove six hours out of St.

John's, the capital looking for someone, looked like an Eskimo, came over a hill and there was this massive frozen lake.

And right in the middle was a gentleman wearing a hoodie looking a bit like Kenny from South Park.

And he's ice fishing.

And I'm like, this is it.

So we stop, camera gets out, everyone gets ready.

And then I take out a massive pair of cymbals and I creep up behind him, I crash him, he jumps.

I run away and he stares as we all jump back in the van.

We drive the six house back to St.

John's and fly home.

We did nothing else for it to be funny.

It was like, right, again, you found them, film lots of stuff.

It was like, no, it had to be pure.

So that made me laugh.

That's brilliant.

What a waste of taxpayers money.

Yeah, it wasn't taxpayers license fee.

The Daily Mail actually called it the single greatest waste.

I purposefully turned the Daily Mail around in St.

Spies.

I just can't help it.

I have to turn them over or put a different newspaper.

I actually take the most of people's shopping trolleys and I drop in other things.

I do this thing called shop putting, not lifting.

Yeah, and I drop random things in people's stuff.

Really?

In real life?

Yeah, all the time.

For real life?

Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of a sort of OCD thing.

I don't know why.

That's hilarious.

I like that.

When Trigger Happy was on sale with DVDs, Sam and I would go to Tesco's where it was on sale and we would just drop Trigger Happy DVDs into people's baskets.

It was great.

And I'd always go, whenever I go into a shop, I get my books and I put them number one in the chart, like all the way across, always.

That's brilliant.

And I love it when people spot me.

I go, what am I going to do?

Like these charts are all fucking made up anyway.

I wrote a book called You Shot My Dog and I Love You and I started guerrilla putting them into waterstones.

I'd go in with 10, find an empty shelf, just put them down and walk out.

I also, you know they have that thing where they're paid, they're told by management to write a handwritten note.

I write a beautiful handwritten notes about my own books.

Suggestions, stuff suggestions.

That's fucking amazing.

No one else is going to do it, is there?

I've started to read your book.

That's obviously, I thought, oh, if I read all this, maybe this is all in the show, so maybe I should pace it.

It kind of is, but I think you'll enjoy it anyway.

But you'll probably enjoy the show more if you haven't read it, but yeah, it's kind of, it's an accompaniment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I have a real problem with the show and I'm aware of it because I think I have very odd fan base if that can be called that.

I have people that know me for Trigger Happy TV.

They see that I'm on in South Shields and they think, oh great, I'll go and see the bloke dressed as a squirrel shouting to my mobile phone.

And they get there and there's nothing of that in the show at all.

And so they're pissed off because it's all, it's not serious, it is funny, but it's serious.

And then I have the book readers who really like my books and they turn up and I'm quite funny and not very factual in it.

There's not a deep research show.

It's fun and they're pissed off.

So I've managed to piss everyone off really, so it's quite odd.

But if I can get the two, that's what I'm really aiming at because my books are all really about how funny travel is and I love travel.

One day my audiences will blend and I'll be able to sell out somewhere, but until then.

I mean, you've talked about the animal costume.

Did I not talk about that already?

Well, yeah, I'll jump to my son's question.

I'll just do it now.

Okay, see, here's a question for you.

He's 10 years old.

I'm enjoying this so you can have lots of time.

I haven't talked about trigger phrases.

Oh good, I'll do it all.

Question from my 10 year old son.

Did the guy know he was going to be attacked by squirrels?

So the rule in Trigger Happy, sometimes you can't just smash, beat someone up on a bicycle.

So the rule always was, we tried to do everything in one frame.

We called it Poncelli, television verite.

And the idea is that within the frame of a joke, someone in there has to have no idea what's going on.

So it was the family on Lucas.

With that one in the thing, it was the family.

And what I remember is Sam hid up in the tree because we'd set our guy on the picnic and there was a family.

And then the moment he went up there, family fucked off and we had to wait.

He was up in that tree for four hours waiting for someone else to sit there, which is lucky.

And then there was a guy we beat up with a bike.

We threw his bike in.

Again, it was just people we hated, picnickers, bikers, stuff like that.

And we did really, I think, push someone into a lake because I think there was a mistake.

I think we thought it was our guy and it wasn't.

So we pushed someone real hard, but he thought it was hilarious.

Signed off on it.

Yeah, there's lots of that, yeah.

But there's a little kid in that one, isn't there?

There's a little kid that looks on going, what just happened?

That kind of thing.

I wonder what happened to that kid.

Well, I always like that.

It's very weird.

Sometimes I meet people who were new people that were in my, because they all had to sign consent forms, but you never know who they are.

My favorite one is I was by Great Portland Tube Station and I had my dead stuffed dog that I'd take for a walk around London.

And I asked this guy, can you look after the dog while I go into the shop?

And he does.

He just sits there and he pats it twice and then looks and he goes, and I come back out and say, thank you very much.

I dragged the dog away.

And then I met this guy's grandson ages ago and he was a lecturer in nuclear physics at King's College.

And I'm like, fucking hell, but he didn't know the dog was dead.

Oh, the ice cream van, where people come up, they order an ice cream.

You go to the back and you just fuck off.

Well, we did loads of that.

So we had an ice cream van outside the Tate.

So the first one is like, what do you want?

Orange disco, and then I slam the door, turn on a smoke machine and start dancing.

Another one, I just take the ice cream and shove it in my face.

Another one, I go, yeah, whatever you want, buddy, whatever you want, and the ice cream van just drives off.

And then my favorite one is there's a long queue, and I say, yeah, one moment, and I get out, walk around the back and just stand in the queue and start shouting, come on, we just made those up all the time.

Like, just every time someone came, I'd try and do something different and a bit nuts.

And I love that.

And the people in the queue, they're just looking at you, aren't they?

And they just stand there for quite a while.

I think they probably were, I think now with the advent of so many, like, even their shit makes them, there are some brilliant pranksters around, but a lot of them are really crap.

But I think people are just aware of it all now.

I think people were still a little more innocent back then.

Because it was so odd as well, Trigger.

What were your influences, like Candy Camera and things like that, or?

Well, the first thing I remember was a thing called Funny People, which was like, it was a South African candy camera.

And looking back on it now, it was actually very racist.

It was some Afrikaans guy doing jokes on people in townships.

They were funny, but he was definitely, like, being a bit patronising.

But I remember that.

And then early Candy Camera, I hated the English one.

The American one, once the son of Funt took over, he got into golf and it was very boring.

But the early Candy Camera, yeah, I remember watching that, the most famous one.

Like, you sort of think people weren't funny about them, but there's a black and white one where they take the engine out of a car.

And so there's nothing under the hood.

And then they just roll it down a hill and the guy drives into a gas station and says, it's not working.

And the guy opens the engine and there's nothing there.

You know, I remember thinking, that's just amazing.

Because Hidden Camera really fascinated me.

Because it was the first reality TV.

You know, it was the first time a member of the public was the star.

Before that, you had to be very rarefied to be on TV.

And they did that very, very early.

But I've always been into reality.

I've never been into drama.

I've never been into, you know, I like film.

But I was always in, you know, I love documentaries.

And I love reality TV.

I love real things.

I hate fakery.

I hate drama.

So you can't watch things with people jumping around in costumes.

No, I'm caused by this hell, yeah.

I just, you know, narrative arcs, fuck that.

Just, you know, let's have an argument.

That's what I like.

Below Deck is the greatest show on television.

Ramesh keeps talking about that on his podcast.

Is it really good?

Below Deck is...

How is it good?

It's just people on a boat.

Oh, no, fuck me.

Just so wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, every season is a completely different, like, just pornographic tour place, you know, like, somewhere beautiful you want to be.

You've got this amazing fucking boat and you just want to be in this boat.

But what's brilliant about it is the crew are beautifully cast, so they're all going to fuck and fight and they're just awful.

But what's brilliant is the douchebags who hire this boat for, like, 200 grand a week, you know that they've been given a big discount because they're going to be filmed.

Like, who wants to be filmed when you have that?

And obviously they choose the worst people in the world.

And so the irony is that the very rich people are the douchebag.

So they're just being lambasted.

And then the captains are fantastic.

It's on every level, it's the greatest.

Which is the best version?

Because I know there's different versions.

Well, it depends who you like.

Well, you like Captain Lee, who's a sort of crusty old sea dog.

Well, Captain Sandy Yawn is my favorite.

I like this Sailing Bay ones.

I'd say Sandy Yawn Mediterranean is the ones you want, really.

But they're all good, yeah.

And there's amazing characters on it, like just awful people on every level.

It's fantastic.

So, I mean, it's a weird question to ask you because you've already been on Bear Grylls, but if there was another reality TV show that you would like to go on, what would that be?

Well, I find it very difficult to say no to reality TV because weirdly, I think for most people, like for stand-ups, they freeze.

I was on, I'm a celeb with Jenny Clare and I remember Jenny freezing because their specialty, I used to think stand-ups rift.

They don't, you know, to be a good stand-up, you have to look like you're riffing, but it's a very carefully crafted thing.

I do riff, like everything's rifted.

Actually, this, finally I've realized you don't have to riff, try and have a plan.

But I riff, like all Trigger Happy is made up on the spot.

And so actually, I really love reality TV because I love being thrown in somewhere trying to be funny.

And I always was obsessed with Big Brother.

And I would have done like the first Celeb Big Brother.

I was obsessed with it.

I remember we stopped filming Trigger Happy TV.

We're in the middle.

I remember where we were.

I was being kidnapped by clowns in front of Ian McCaskill, the weatherman.

And we'd just done that.

And I'd met him to talk to him about an interview.

And then a van drives up, door slides open, six clowns just grabbed me and we go.

And then we literally just drove straight into London because the whole Nick in the first Big Brother was happening.

And we just went to Channel 4 and watched it there.

So I would have done Big Brother.

Bear Grylls, the island is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

I mean, it was utterly insane.

It's more real than you can imagine.

So firstly, so I was on the island for three weeks.

The crew are embedded with you.

And so not only do they have to film the thing, but they're part of your team, which is lucky because crew tend to be quite practical.

But again, it gets very, no one comes on the island.

Unless literally someone's dead and there's a satellite phone.

I lost three stone in three weeks.

Sand flies buried eggs in my leg that still come out occasionally.

I mean, fuck me.

But the worst thing about that was, to be honest, the people on it were not my favorites.

They were a bit thick.

And so it was a bit disappointing in that sense.

They were nice, but...

You're okay to leave that in.

I'd have far preferred it with some slightly higher IQs, but there you go.

Gogglebox, I think, is probably the single best work of TV genius in the last 20 years.

I think it's so insanely brilliant on every level.

Just the fact, imagine saying, we're going to make a show about people watching TV, you think, fuck off, it's TV will eat itself.

But actually, if you watch Gogglebox every week, the choice, like you long, it is, it absolutely gets the temperature of the nation.

If you choose the right clip, you hope when something happens that week that Gogglebox talk about it, it's brilliant.

I kind of watch a lot of TV through Gogglebox that I don't want to watch the whole thing.

It's kind of like a review of the week, yeah.

So, review of this week, here we go.

It's linked to your show tonight.

What's your view on this Kate photo then and the conspiracies all around that?

That's going to be a hot topic.

Well, it's kind of mental, isn't it?

Because, I mean, I don't, I mean, I think she was probably, well, you know, if you want the conspiracy behind it, it's that this is the launch in the same way that Diana, once she was firmly ensconced and had the kids, then Camilla was brought onto the scene.

So obviously the conspiracy, and it's true, is that Prince William's been having an affair with the Marquis of Chomley, I think she's called, and Rose Hambry, I think she's called.

But that's an open secret, like, they've been shagging.

And so the conspiracy is that, you know, she's on the way out and that Rose Hambry's been slowly introduced.

But I don't understand the whole, I mean, I edit my photos in the sense that I'm just taking a photo, I do one in the dressing room mirror every night just to say, show 19, and I'll change the brightness and, you know, make it look a bit better.

But I'm not going into Photoshop, moving my hands around and stuff.

So that whole thing is very fucking strange.

I don't understand that.

I don't know what the fuck it's about.

But what I'm saying is it doesn't help people.

When you don't want people to do conspiracies, then you're not helping yourself at all.

I did not knock it on the head at all.

I mean, I'm on TikTok for this podcast.

Are you on TikTok?

I am on TikTok.

It's quite the hole, isn't it?

It is a hole.

There's not as big a hole as Twitter, so...

Yeah.

Twitter is just a fucking...

It's the death of civilisation there.

You know, I've got my most followers on Twitter cos that's what I used to live on.

But I barely go on it now.

It's just so awful.

I'm going to ask you some television questions, some format points, but I've adjusted them to Trigger Happy TV questions, if that's OK.

Whatever you want.

If you're enjoying talking about it.

I love TV.

I did want to ask you one thing, and that was...

Might be awkward.

There was a remake, a US remake of Trigger Happy TV?

Yes, that's a really interesting story.

So Trigger Happy, when it finished, I'd done two series, and I don't think people realised how unbelievably stressful...

I had a nervous breakdown during the making of the first Trigger Happy.

I always had panic attacks.

And actually, I wasn't stressed, but I must have been so tired.

And I literally just had to...

We had to stop filming for three weeks, and I was really bad.

I couldn't get out of bed, and we nearly...

They rang me and said, if you don't come back, we're going to have to can the whole thing.

And I remember thinking, fuck, I finally got to this situation.

But anyway, it was fine.

But the stress, and this is what I didn't realise, because it's constantly...

It's little adrenaline bursts.

It's going up to people, trying to be funny.

Sometimes it isn't, sometimes...

And it just killed me.

And so at the end of A Trigger Happy, it took a year to make, you know, and then I'm in the edit for four months.

I just collapsed.

And then I did another one.

And so when I finished the second one, it's the thing I've learnt, the most valuable thing in the world, never make any massive decision when you've just finished coming off something.

I should have taken four months and just gone on holiday and then thought about it.

And then in hindsight, probably made a trigger happy every three years.

As it was, I treated it like a band.

It was like, right, you've done that.

I've made a couple of classic albums.

Fuck that, I want to do something else.

Channel 4 said, we just want you to make more trigger hapies.

And they said, we'll pay you stupid amounts of money to make two Christmas specials.

So I said, yes.

And then the BBC came calling and I thought this is great.

I can go to the BBC, do a three series deal and make something completely different.

And I kind of killed the golden goose because I didn't realize how lucky I was to have made...

I didn't even realize actually how good Trigger Happy was at the time.

Did you enjoy it at the time?

Did you enjoy being at the height you were at?

No, I hated the fame.

I loved aspects of fame.

I didn't realize how famous I was at that time.

I really didn't.

It was only later I kind of realized it opened so many doors to me.

Specifically, it allowed me to write for the Sunday Times and to write my first books, which has led to what I really love doing, which is writing.

But I wouldn't have been kept on if I couldn't write.

But no, I hated the whole, I couldn't deal with fame in that level and stuff.

So all that was very weird.

But I just got to the BBC.

And so we were offered to take it to America and I was going to go make it in America.

And then I just thought, I just had a kid.

I thought, I don't want to go to America.

I'm really happy here.

And then someone said, this company wants to make an American version.

So I said, okay.

I said, as long as I've got creative control, I said, I don't want to be in all of it, but if we make it carefully, I'll exact produce it.

Anyway, I went out to America and they said, we'd like you just to do a couple of sketches, topping and tailing.

And I was like, well, haven't you thought about what we're doing?

But we ended up in Miami and we're filming a couple of things, but I think fine, you know, this is how we're starting.

And then I remember we flew to New York and they said, we'd like you to see the first show.

It's going out tomorrow.

And I said, it's what?

And I was like, what?

I was supposed to be the executive producer.

I was supposed to be all over it.

And I mean, I, my agent, I'm sorry.

I'm not going to go into that, but people should have been controlling that.

I was like, what?

And I watched this thing and I nearly wept.

It was the worst thing I've ever seen.

It was like someone had made a spoof of Trigger Happy TV.

It was like, let's get some fluffy costumes, but let's have horses with big dicks and stuff like, I'd never do lowest hanging fruit.

And then let's put some random indie music on, like random.

It was so shit.

The only good thing about it was I think it made people realize how difficult it is to make Trigger Happy great.

But fuck me, that taught me the most important lesson, which is just keep complete control.

I thought I was just letting go a bit and like being cool, but no, you need to fucking hold on.

Because Trigger Happy was like a work of love.

Like every inch of it, I was all over it.

So that was a terrible move and it did me a lot of harm.

But I just had no idea what was going on.

There's no rule book for it.

I just had no idea.

And those days it was all about, you know, get that American money syndicate to America.

It wasn't for me.

I mean, MTV wants to buy Trigger Happy TV, but they wouldn't clear the music.

And the music was so important for it.

And it cost a fortune to clear the music.

You know, they said, oh, we'll just drop music on it.

I said, you must be joking.

I'd put it to the music.

Like you can't do that.

And so I said no to MTV.

And then a year later, no one was gonna, it was so prohibitively expensive.

Comedy Central came and they got a band to make a sound delight, which is better than just dropping random.

So I thought, well, I prefer America to see it than not.

But again, American never saw it as it should be.

So was it released and did it continue?

Or did you...

Well, my version went out with shit music.

So they never saw it as it should have been.

And then the American version went out for a season.

And I just hated it.

I said, I don't want anything to do with this.

I want my name off it.

And then I think they just stopped.

Yeah, it was terrible.

That's diabolical.

That's the worst version of a remake since Red Dwarf.

Oh my God, that sounds awful.

But it's kind of my fault.

I just didn't know what I was doing.

I mean, I had no fucking idea what I was doing.

And the maelstrom that happened, having been underdogs, making Trigger Happy, people, no one knew the fuck we were and just left us alone.

I'm not saying us in a royal way, me and Sam.

We just went off and did our thing and it was brilliant.

And then suddenly I went to the BBC and I remember things had changed when I got given this suite of offices in the BBC.

I didn't ask for it and I got it.

And then some guy came in and said, would you like your office decorated?

It's new office.

And I said, okay.

And they said, what color do you want it?

And I said, I don't know, red.

Next day in the Daily Mirror, it said, Trigger Happy star refuses to start work at the BBC until all his offices are painted red.

I was like, what?

And I suddenly realized we'd gone from being like punky underdogs to like, oh, now you're up.

We're going to knock you down.

I thought I fucking hate everything about this.

I tried to go more weird at the BBC.

I made this show called This is Dom Joly, and I thought the whole point of that was, I'm in every single shot in Trigger Happy, but you don't know who I am, because it's not me in that.

And I thought, what do people do when they have that success?

They have a chat show and they get very sycophantic.

So I thought, I'll have a chat show called This is Dom Joly, and I'll make it the worst chat show ever made.

And I thought it was so obvious, like I was wearing glasses, it wasn't me.

And I thought I wanted 20% of the people who watch it to just think this is a fucking car crash, and 80% to get it.

And I think 80% of the people who watch it thought, my God, this is him and he's a cunt.

And it wasn't me, he was like all made up.

But I even had the cure on, and I was just eating sandwiches while I was watching them play, and then I had cure fans saying I dare you disrespect.

But he came on again, because he was like, so I don't know, but I was very into-

Just trying to trash the format.

Well, I was almost trying to, you know what I call it?

I call it, there's two ways of dealing with success when you're British.

There's Coldplay and Radiohead, it's really interesting that.

And Coldplay got massive, and they somehow didn't have that middle-class guilt, the art school guilt of being successful.

They just thought, we're really good at what we do, let's just make it bigger and better.

And I've got a lot of respect for them.

I'm not part of the Coldplay haters.

I fucking love Coldplay and they're brilliant.

Radiohead, who I also love, have that art school thing.

And after OK Computer, they were like freaked out by their own success.

I'm not comparing myself in any way to OK Computer, but it was a level of success.

And then you try and destroy your own audience by becoming up by Kid A.

So, yeah, I kid-aid.

I was watching Trigger Happy TV, I bought your DVD when I bought Kid A.

So, I kid-aid for about six years.

I've never used that term, but that's a great term.

Going back to, like, you struggled with becoming famous, when did you realise that you were as famous as you were?

I remember the actual moment I realised I was famous.

It was so odd, I was on a train and it was ten days after the first Trigger Happy went out and no-one knew I was there.

And that ringtone went off and three people on the carriage all stood up and went, hello, I'm on a train.

And I was like, fuck.

And I just, literally, I was like, and I remember being really freaked, thinking, this is insane and I've no idea how to deal with it.

But actually, I was just, I took it for, I just went with it and it was all fine and I said yes to too many things.

What I hated, I loved the freedom that fame gave me because I'm a goth and I'm quite awkward socially, I'm better now, but fame just cuts out small chat, small, you know, you just got people come up and start talking to you.

And I didn't have to talk to anyone, so it was great and I like that.

Power social relationship, yeah.

And it meant I could meet a lot of people that I was really into and I got invited to interesting things, but I just didn't know how to behave and I'm very defensive, so I don't know, the whole thing was fucking odd.

I'm really happy as a sort of punky outsider snapping at the heels.

I'm not made to be a mainstream famer.

Like a sycophant.

No, I just can't do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that on your social media channels daily.

I'm an indie kid, you know, like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can tell.

I was just thinking, were there any dangerous situations where you actually got scared when you were pulling these pranks?

Well, in America, really, always.

I mean, my epitaph was always going to be, you know, Trigger Happy style gunned down, dressed as a squirrel in Arizona, because they really are Trigger Happy there.

You know, and like, if, you know, even when I went to New York, we did the big mobile.

Like in England, we just fear embarrassment, so we just don't react, you know.

And the whole, I remember when Trigger Happy first came out, people looked at it and said, but no one reacts.

And I go, but that's what's funny to me.

Because we were used to hidden camera things where we zoom in on their faces and then go, look at your reaction.

To me, it was like everyone was just trying to not be stabbed.

You know, that's what it was about.

In America, you did a big mobile on the subway.

And we go, shut the fuck up, buddy.

You know, it's fair enough.

And yeah, there were lots of weird moments.

So I always used to get arrested abroad.

I got arrested on the Empire State Building dressed as a spy and got put in...

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

And there's a little prison in the Empire State Building, so I got arrested there because they thought...

It was after 9-11, so security is quite dense.

You were dressed up as like the Cold War spy in a Mac.

And then where else was I arrested?

I was arrested in Belgium dressed as a policeman.

Was I scared ever?

No, I never was.

The closest we ever got to violence was in a Nyssa, as in, I don't remember, a supermarket called Nyssa in Notting Hill.

We'd taken over the Tannoy and it was quite a good joke.

Basically, people came in, I'd point at someone in the Tannoy and go, yeah, gentleman in red trousers in the household goods.

I think he's nicking stuff.

And I'd come around the corner dressed as a security guard just staring at them.

And a nun walks in and we're all like, fuck, should we?

And of course we should.

So off it goes, like, yeah, there's a nun, she's back, she's by the yogurts, looks shifty.

I come around the corner and this nun takes one look at me and she's got a broad Irish accent.

She's screaming at me, I'm no fucking thief when you're fucking, fucking.

And I was like, fuck, is this a nun or a strippagram?

I didn't know.

And then she picked up a cans of beans and started hurling out.

I mean, that was the closest I came to physical danger, yeah.

From a nun.

From a nun.

Yeah, nun more dangerous.

The funniest thing you ever saw on TV?

Single funniest thing I ever saw on TV, and this is a film, but I did see it on TV.

That's right.

And it was a trailer for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which I think is my favorite film of all time, with Michael Caine and Steve Martin.

But the trailer is a bit that never showed in the film, and it's such genius, and it's set in the south of France, and they're just walking, Michael Caine and Steve Martin.

It's very Trigger Happy-esque, actually, and there's an old lady just peering at a boat, and as Steve Martin walks past, he just yawns and pushes her.

She gets flying into the thing, and they just walk on as though nothing's happened, howling with laughter.

I think that's so part of my humour.

I don't know why.

And it was never in the film.

It was just made as a separate thing.

Well, I don't know, or maybe it was a scene in the film that didn't show.

I don't know what it was, but it was brilliant.

I loved that, yeah.

So that's the single funniest thing I've ever seen, yeah.

Beep, beep.

What's a television show that you would erase from history?

The Men In Blacket, no one would remember it, it would be gone from the public consciousness.

There's so many, it's very difficult.

I think it would be Country File.

Country File, what's wrong with Country File?

It just irritates me, I don't know why.

It's just too much tweed.

Boring.

Sunday, right?

Deeply, deeply dull, yeah.

No, Coast, that's it.

What's Coast?

So Coast is that show that that guy who's now a sort of right-wing fascist on GB News, the long hair, used to just walk around the coast of Britain, just looking at the coast.

And actually, when we filmed Trigger Happy TV, the worst thing when you're making TV shows, people always come up to you, hey, what you're filming?

What you're filming?

So we would always say Coast, even if we were like in the middle of the thing.

The moment you said Coast, they lost all interest and walked away.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

While I was asking these general format questions, I kind of realized that I'd sort of ruined the flow a little bit.

So we're going to go back to basically Trigger Happy TV and conspiracies and whatnot.

But just one last little bit about TV in Lebanon when Dom was growing up, and then we'll get back to Trigger Happy.

All Lebanese TV was translated into Arabic and French in the subtitles below.

And whoever did the French subtitles, whoever did the Arabic subtitles were completely different people and often didn't speak English.

So I watched Benny Hill and the Arabic subtitles had absolutely fuck all to do.

What was going on?

Was there any pranks you made for Trigger Happy TV that Channel 4 refused to air, and are you allowed to speak about it?

No, there weren't, but there were so many that I couldn't air, but legally.

A couple of my favorites.

So we were walking down Kings Road once, and we saw a really posh drinks party going on in the Duke of York barracks.

And Sam had his camera, like a little VX 1000, like a handheld camera, and we just burst in.

We just went in, and it was a drinks party.

And the first person I spotted in there was Fergie, but Sarah Ferguson, and I was like, fuck.

So I just went straight up, and she was just leaving talking to someone.

And Sam just followed me, we were so in tune, and I just grabbed her, and I just said, I said, Your Royal Highness, you're live on Good Morning Mexico.

I said, I just made it up.

I said, Your Royal Highness, you're live on Good Morning Mexico.

Please, do you have a message for the people of Mexico?

And she just went absolutely, um, well, yes.

And she, I'd like to say hello to everyone in Mexico, and all the people around her were a bit freaked out, but we were live.

And then I say, everyone in Mexico, big, big fan of Sara Faiz and he's nine.

So she starts talking and then Sam taps me and I go, sorry, Your Highness, we go for advertising break.

Please do not move one inch.

And so we go for this break and she just stands there in the middle of this drinks party, completely frozen.

And we wait for two minutes.

And then I go, okay, we're coming back.

Tres, dos, uno, and we are back alive.

And she goes back in and then they start coming around us, like thinking there's something shit going on.

So I go, okay, we have to go, adios.

And we leave, we get out of there.

They try and talk to us, we leave.

We get on the bus, then the tube.

By the time, and this is incredible, before Trigger Happy went out, they didn't know the fuck we were.

By the time we got back to our office, there was a fax from a lawyer called Mishkon Roy Rea, who are the most top-notch lawyers, saying, we know you're filming for Channel 4.

This can never be shown.

I was like, how the fuck do they know that?

And then Kate Aidy refused.

We went and interviewed Kate Aidy outside the Foreign Correspondence Club.

And the joke was so stupid.

So we were chatting away and I was talking to her about, do you get trauma like PTSD when you're a foreign correspondent?

And suddenly someone I'd got on the side shouted, incoming!

And me and Sam just hit the floor.

And then I got up and she just lost her shit.

She was not happy at all.

So I just ran away.

And poor Sam, one of the great things about it was always I'd leave Sam and we'd leave the video recording.

We got lots of footage of Sam pretending to have phone conversations going, well, I don't know.

No, I'm just being hired by this guy.

And he shouts, incoming.

And Miss AD here is very unhappy.

She tried to confiscate our fucking tape.

This is the woman that was in Tiananmen Square.

So we had a lot of celebs kicked off big time.

But the only time we really had things that we couldn't air was not because we never tried to be nasty.

That was the whole point.

It wasn't about that.

The biggest thing was that there were a shitload of people wandering around who are with people they shouldn't be with.

And when they realized they're being filmed, they go, Oh my God, I'm not with my wife.

And we'd never show that.

I would always say, don't worry about it.

It's fine.

You talk to every single person in the background.

No, if you're walking in public, you've got no expectation of privacy.

But anyone we interacted with, which is fair enough.

We did a great one in Prince Charles Cinema.

And I was filming out from the screen.

And the joke was, I can't remember what the joke was, but basically it was on people watching the film.

And then we filmed the prank.

And then we came out and we hadn't started the film.

It was the trailers.

And I said, ladies and gentlemen, just let you know, we've been filming you with an infrared camera.

That was a joke.

We'll pay for all your cinema tickets.

Really sorry.

And this is Tuesday afternoon.

And there's about 80 people in there.

But obviously, anyone doesn't want to be on it, please let us know.

Nine couples all stand up.

They're all there with people you shouldn't be with.

So there's a lot of that.

Peep, peep.

Because you're doing a show at tour to promote your book and also, you know, all about conspiracies.

Yeah.

Is there a conspiracy you sort of believe in before this particular mad period of, you know, everyone believing in flowers and this crazy stuff?

I had a few.

I had a few.

We all had a few, right?

A little bit suspicious about the moon as a kid because of the politics around it and stuff like that.

So, well, actually, if you see the show tonight, I tell you the one that I...

Oh, you do?

Okay, well, don't give that away.

But I'm not going to talk about that one.

But actually, the one that is interesting is the moon one because the moon landing makes sense because, you know, Kennedy at the beginning of the 60s announces, we have to land on the moon for the end of the decade.

And it's in a race to show that better than the Russians.

And suddenly, fucking hell, we're running out of time.

And they managed to do it.

And you know, looking at it, you know, they're doing it with, you know, my MacBook has more technology.

I do think they did it.

But the thing that I do think is possible is some of the footage was filmed in a studio in case they had to do it.

Because, you know, all the things about those stars and the wind and I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, they can make mistakes, but it's the fact that there's cars there.

So the only thing I can't get my head around is...

I can get that.

My main thing against almost all conspiracies is the amount of people that must be in on that.

Yeah.

And the fact that they've kept their...

And it's always the simplest explanation.

Yeah, and the fact they've kept their secret.

So no, you know, I just think people aren't very good at conspiracies, so no.

And the idea, if Donald Trump knew anything, he'd have told us all, you know what I mean?

So...

That's true.

That's a pretty good point, actually.

Yeah, I choose to believe these days because I just don't want to be associated with lunatics.

Well, that, again, you'll see, is exactly my point at the end of my show.

Are you coming to the show?

Yes, I'm coming to the show right now.

Then I don't want to waste...

But that is exactly my point.

We are so polarised now.

Most of us are in the middle, and I'd like to believe little things, but certainly if Donald Trump says something, I'm directly on the other side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, that's a great way to end it.

Thank you, Dom, for coming on Television Times.

I really love talking to you, especially about Trigger Happy TV.

Not too much, and I don't know me.

That was Dom Joly talking to me, mostly, about Trigger Happy TV.

That was a real treat for me.

Oh my god, I was so chuffed to talk to him.

He was so generous with his time.

You know, he gave me a lot longer than he originally was going to.

And like he said, he doesn't normally like talking about it that much.

And for some reason, I got lucky.

And that day he did, which worked out very well for me.

So now to today's outro track.

So today's song is called What Are We Waiting For?

I originally wrote it in South America and recorded it in Japan as part of the album Fear Of Flying.

It was the opening track and that was recorded in 2003 in Tokyo.

After my Trans-Siberian journey, I went to Hiroshima and I bought a Yamaha silent guitar, which is kind of acoustic guitar that's also electric.

Anyway, so that sort of inspired me to do this song.

It's a bit of a punchy one.

It's the album opener.

Like I said, it's going to have oomph.

So here we go.

This is What Are We Waiting For?

That was What Are We Waiting For by Me, written in 2002-3 and recorded in Japan as part of the album Fear Of Flying.

Thank you for listening this week, and I hope you enjoyed my chat with Dom Joly.

Come back soon for another episode, whenever it may drop.

Thanks again.

See you soon.