Jay Lafferty: From Pole Position to Punchlines (Not Sponsored By The Now-Defunct Blockbuster Video)

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, screen rats, couch potatoes,

Papa's a little angry today.

Papa's a little angry.

Just read a review online of the podcast.

Gave it four stars, said they were still listening.

Said, could be great, but the musical stings were annoying, too long, and my silly voices were pissing them off.

Well, guess what?

Don't fucking listen.

There you go.

Go listen to something else that doesn't have musical stings or funny voices.

I mean, it's pretty easy, right?

I mean, that's going to be my thing.

I like doing it and I like the silliness of it.

And also it's a way of chopping things up.

And sometimes the audio quality is not good, so I cover it up by rerecording silly, you know, Alvin type overdub.

That's what I do.

So if you don't like it, fuck off and listen to something else.

Get it off menu or something.

Listen to people talking about food.

I do listen to that once.

I'm not slacking it off.

Okay, so today we have a great guest.

Her name is Jay Lafferty.

She's a Scottish comedian.

We had a really good chat.

It didn't get to television to quite a long way into it, which is not a problem as far as I'm concerned.

We were talking about kids quite a lot.

There's a lot of chat about that.

It basically is kids and movies, this one.

Kids and movies.

I know, movies.

And for the critics out there, not only is there going to be some high pitch speaking, there's also going to be a little poem, a little rhyme, various bits that they're not going to like.

So as I said before.

Also, I'm under no illusion.

I don't think people are listening to this yet.

I think we have a small listenership and I'm trying to grow it slowly.

This is going to be an organic thing.

It's not something I'm expecting thousands and thousands of people to listen to.

Why would they?

Who am I?

How do they know what this is?

When I'm barely know what it is myself at this point.

This is a ever changing podcast, which I think will start to take shape in the next few months.

I have a format, I play with it, I change it.

Maybe the voices will go.

Maybe the interludes will stop.

Maybe there'll be less of them.

Maybe there'll be new ones.

I don't know.

I'm just playing it by ear.

Let's see how it goes.

But please don't complain yet.

It's a bit early to complain.

If you've got ideas, I'll take them on board.

My friend gave me an idea.

That's why I'm talking to you right now.

That's why I'm not going straight to the guest.

So don't get too upset.

Everything is fine.

Now, my chat with Jay Lafferty is coming up.

There's some triggering stuff in there, which I will mention again.

There are spoilers.

So if you don't like spoilers, I'm saying spoilers again.

When you hear the shows we talk about, there's going to be spoilers.

And there's talk about IVF treatment and pregnancy and birth and missing your kids.

And if people don't have kids and they have, you know, dogs and call themselves dog fathers and cat mothers and all that stuff, it's not the fucking same.

But, you know, keep listening.

Imagine it's your dog.

I don't know.

I don't know what people do.

So to Jay Lafferty, she's got a show called Bahookie at the Edinburgh Fringe at the Sportsman's at Gilded Balloon, which I'm going to see.

And I advise you to go and see as well.

It's going to be awesome in the true sense, not in that way that Americans band it about.

Sorry, Americans, you know you do it.

And yeah, I like this chat.

It was affable, a little bit awkward recording, sounded a bit like a phone at times.

It didn't sound like that when we were doing it, but I've done my best.

And I hope you enjoy this chat between me and Jay Lafferty.

Welcome to Television Times, a new 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.

How old's your baby?

Three.

My dad's just taken him out because he would just be running in and out.

Wanting to talk to you about Marvel.

Marvel?

That's early.

Yeah, oh, he's obsessed with Avengers and superheroes.

Did you buy Marvel bedding or something?

No, I think he just, Spidey and his amazing friends, it's like a kitsch version.

So he started on that and then he just, the more characters that they kind of introduced and then he was asking all his other characters and now he watches all the Lego versions of PC and Avengers and stuff.

So he knows all of the characters now.

He's never seen an actual Marvel movie.

He's never seen a real life one.

I think that's a bit young for that.

Yeah, a bit too much.

But he's got all of the heroes and all of the characters.

In Easter time, we bought an old doll's house off of Facebook Marketplace.

And we redecorated it and made it into a superhero lair.

So he has all that.

So yeah, so he's away out with his dad, much to his annoyance because he was like, I just want to sit in and play with my toys.

But he's away out.

It's funny what they get into sort of quickly.

I mean, you say he's not a baby, but because I have a nine year old, I still call the twins the babies all the time.

Like if I'm texting my wife, I'm like what time the baby's going to bed and they still up or, you know.

He's still our baby.

I've told him like, doesn't matter how old he gets, he'll be our baby.

But yeah, he's got a lot to look forward to with the extended Marvel Universe and all the TV shows and all that.

I haven't even seen them all.

I've kind of given up my son.

He wanted to go and see Spider-Man.

And then I think we went to see Thor, Love and Thunder at the Everyman, because he's suddenly become middle class.

He's like, I took him to the Everyman once and he saw the seats.

And then he goes, can we go to the Everyman again?

I'm like, that's not our normal cinema situation.

Yeah, yeah, that's a treat.

He's only really watched a few actual movies, like a few actual real life movies in the night at the museum.

I've only just seen them myself.

I had absolute disdain for those as an adult, and now I'm watching them going, oh, they're quite good.

The reason that we went with that is he's obsessed with the museum.

And so we decided to, that would be quite a good one to do.

And he's absolutely loved them.

He's watched all three and the cartoon version now.

But now he's really annoyed that there is no Teddy Roosevelt.

He's found all the other characters.

We can't find a Teddy Roosevelt.

And I have to kind of explain to him that, you know, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't really be in the Scottish Museum of History.

You don't want to hear about childbirth, not with anything graphic, and IDF treatment, and the general missing of your children when you have to go away.

So I gave birth in November 2019.

So it was just over three months when we went into lockdown.

So he's like a pandemic baby, but I didn't have to do all the horrible giving birth in the pandemic.

So that was quite lucky.

It was, yeah, I mean, it was a bit sad in some ways.

It kind of came as a perfect time for us because I stupidly have never given birth, but have gone through 10 years of IVF.

I think sometimes makes you feel like a superhero yourself.

And so I had decided that I was, because I had him in November.

And obviously, you know, like comedians busiest time is Christmas.

Yeah, I went back to work full time three weeks after having him.

And I worked right up to the night before I gave birth.

Then I worked the whole of like December and weirdly January, February and the start of March were really busy that year, which was great because then what ended up happening is we went into pandemic.

And I had decided that I wasn't going to go away to gig until he was four months old.

That's what had in my head.

I think the place I was supposed to go was the Birmingham Glee in the April.

And then obviously we went into lockdown.

And it was great because I had done all this.

I'd saved a lot of money as well because obviously you don't get maternity leave when you're self-employed.

Yeah, of course.

Because I've been a bit of an older mom.

I was really worried that something would happen and I'd end up in bed rest or something.

Saved up a lot of money.

So we still had all that.

We had the December gigs, January, February gigs.

And then we went into lockdown.

And it was just ideal because it was just like a perfect time.

Like I wasn't worried anymore.

I'd kind of established all the things that you have to establish when you're a new mom.

Everybody met them.

That was all good.

And then we went into lockdown.

And I just remember sitting like in April going, oh, I don't actually have to leave them.

Because I don't know how I would have done it.

Like I let you know how, because I was breastfeeding and stuff.

And I was like, how am I going to?

I couldn't take them with me.

I mean, I probably could have, but it would have been just stupid.

It was like financially wouldn't have probably made any sense.

But like, yeah, the whole thing just kind of properly worked out for us.

And it was only in that time that I kind of looked back and went, oh yeah, I really wasn't ready to go back to work three weeks after.

And I had like an emergency situation for my birth as well.

So I was in intensive care for 24 hours, as was he.

And so like, yeah, it was just at that point, we look back and you go, what was I doing?

I know, I know, it's crazy.

That kind of stuff is mad and I can only speak from the father's mind.

About 2019 for me as well, my wife decided to change career.

She was a graphic designer, she's now a carpenter.

And I decided to go into comedy and write.

And I wrote my book, You Shot My Dog and I Love You, which came out around the same time as your baby was born, just before pandemic, just in time for the publisher to almost go bankrupt and not push the book, which was perfect.

But around that time, that's when we sort of swapped our jobs and I ended up being basically the stay at home dad.

Yeah.

Since the pandemic, she's now the full time worker and I sort of do everything from home and I try and do all these things and do comedy at night and write and, you know, do podcasts.

And so it's, I do get to drop the kids at school, pick them up, do all the stuff.

Some of it's fun, some of it's not.

It just reminded me of something completely, which I haven't thought about for a long time.

That when my twins were born in November 2017, the boy twin, he was actually very small.

So he had to go back into hospital and he was going back into hospital around the same time I was supposed to be starting on a panto.

And I remember just getting off the bus, you know, sometimes if you've ever done this, you get off the bus and you go to walk towards a job, but you know you're not going in.

And I had this French music playing in my headphones and I sort of walked slowly, got myself a coffee and I thought, I'm not going in.

I don't think I'm doing this job because I had someone else as a backup anyway.

And I ended up phoning in and go, well, I think I just said, I can't come in because I'm worried about my kid.

And that night, my kid went into hospital for like, I don't know, five days or something with my wife and the other twin.

And so I couldn't have done it anyway.

And I realized I was not ready to go and be away from them for what, 14 hours a day for the entire, I'd already done it with my youngest when he was three months old.

I flew to China to do a touring show and he was like three months old and I had to get on a plane and fly to China.

And I just remember that feeling of like, there being a piece of string between my chest and him and it getting longer and longer and tighter and tighter.

And it was just, it felt fucking horrible.

Yeah, it's hard.

I mean, I still find it really hard to leave him.

I go now, obviously I go, we're kind of similar situation in that my partner was a stand up and he decided not really because of the birth, kind of more pandemic based, like when the pandemic happened, he didn't miss doing stand up whatsoever.

He was just like relieved that, you know, it was, he didn't have to do it anymore and didn't really miss it.

And just kind of felt that he was a satirist, a satirical, political comedian, and just was feeling like the world was in such a state that it was incredibly difficult to actually satirize the satire that was.

Yeah, of course.

And he's a full-time writer and that kind of work was keeping him really busy anyway.

So he just decided after when things opened up again, just was like, I'm not going to go back initially and then we'll see how it goes.

And we're now a couple of years down the road and he's like, yeah, I think I'm done with performance and just writing and really enjoying that.

But it does mean that I can do more of the going away type things because the wee one's got like a stable base and everything.

So that's grand.

But it is really difficult to be away, especially when it's like four days or whatever.

And you know yourself, the nights are fine.

The nights are absolutely fine.

You're busy.

You're gigging.

There's other comics.

You're having a laugh.

You know, sometimes you can have a drink with the audience members afterwards and it's all very social and fun.

During the days, that is when it's difficult.

I always do this thing.

I'll get loads of writing done.

I'll do a lot of writing.

I'll do a lot of admin and stuff.

But I don't know how much time you've spent doing admin in hotel rooms, but it's just really bleak.

No, it doesn't work.

I sit in the quietest.

I'll go out from a hotel to a coffee shop, and there'll be people there annoying me with all their business chat or whatever.

I think I've got a perfectly quiet hotel room I could do this in, but I just can't motivate myself to do anything apart from watch television or have a bath.

My friends who are mums are like, oh my gosh, you get a good sleep and everything.

I'm like, no, not really, because I'm on a body clock and we also have the camera things.

So I can look at the house and I can see, and I can watch him sleeping and things like that.

So if I wake up, I check on him.

I just still have that mental mum like, oh, is he okay?

Is he in his bed?

But yeah, so I don't, I still wake up at the crack of dawn and yeah, and then it's just quite lonely.

So, I mean, I enjoy it.

There's some gigs that I loved in the stand in Newcastle, obviously, I absolutely love that.

And all of the glee's are great at the comedy store in London, but gone are the days where I will go and do a gig for 150 pounds.

I mainly drive, obviously, London, either take the train or I fly.

In Cardiff, I usually fly to Bristol and then get a train.

But yeah, so I kind of I'll try and drive because the thing about driving is that you can get home quicker the next day.

So, you know, or even leaving at night and stuff as well is quite good.

So then you're there for them waking up in the morning.

And so it's really hard to have a late night life and then still having the is that's what I curse as well because I always wake up before my wife, which is insane because I always considered as soon as I left home, I started staying up to five in the morning, getting up at midday.

First thing I did immediately and then I found jobs that filled that gap that I could actually keep doing that for decades.

And then here I am now waking up at like five thirty going, I probably should get up.

I can get a wash on this sunny today.

It's fucking insane.

I know.

I actually did that this morning.

I was like, oh, my goodness, looks like good washing days, a good blow on it.

If you mention film, you get this new thing, which is a bit too loud at your end.

But there are obviously times when you've seen something on television that is a film, because back in the day, films were on TV, as we all know.

Video stores, blockbusters, things like that.

Oh, just going back to your pregnancy, just because you just made me think, because you said you're an older mum, you definitely don't seem like that.

But my wife had my twins when she was 35 or 36.

You know, the fact that it was called a geriatric pregnancy, I found hilarious.

No, I don't do it very much anymore, but I did have a joke about being a geriatric mother.

Yeah, because I was 38 or 37.

I was so young, so I had that word bandied about.

So I was 37, nearly 38 when I had them.

But we've been trying for 10 years.

So we've done 10 years fertility treatment, four rounds of, finally, eventually after a whole load of other things, we did four rounds of XEIVF, and he was like the absolute last round.

So when I started trying to get pregnant, and I was seeing a fertility doctor, because they knew that I would have problems, I'd had cervical, essentially, dramatically had cervical cancer.

I didn't, I had very early stages, but I'd had to have a lot of big operation.

So we knew that it would be a problem.

So I was seeing a fertility doctor from when I was like 27, 28.

And initially, they're like, you've got lots of time, you've got lots of time, why are you doing stress?

And it just felt like within like four years, they were like, oh my God, hurry up, you've got loads of time, this is working, try this.

And like, oh my God, it was just like being pounded with all this stuff.

And then so eventually, when we had them, we were just about to give up and it was the worst round we'd ever done.

It was dreadful.

Everything went, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

And I remember when they put me to sleep to do that, what they call the egg retrieval.

Yeah, the, no, not the egg retrieval.

Yes, the egg retrieval.

When they put me to sleep to do the egg retrieval, they were like, oh, we're not entirely sure that we're gonna get anything.

They brought the big guy down, like the head of the fertility place and everything.

He had a table bedside manner, but was very good at his job.

He said, yeah, don't, don't, you know, hope, which is a thing that when you do fertility treatment for that long, that's all you have.

Don't hope.

I think it's probably...

No, don't hope.

I think it's probably a cyst rather than an egg.

Anyway, long story short, it was one perfect little egg, which ended up turning into a perfect little boy in the end.

But yeah, they sent me a letter that told me that my ovarian reserve was suboptimal, which I thought was hilarious.

I thought it sounded like a shit transformer.

Suboptimal.

That's a very American term, isn't it?

Yes.

They use that all the time.

Oh my God, your attitude is so suboptimal.

It sounds like something they'd say in a coffee shop or something.

That's awful.

I'm sorry.

I spoke to Bee Babylon yesterday.

We actually had a backstage recording at the stand.

Obviously, you know her situation.

Yeah, she said, say hi.

She's actually happy that she beat you as the first woman on Television Times Podcast.

Because we had it all lined up.

And that's not the reason I'm talking to you, because as you know, you were one of my first asked anyway.

You were asking me, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can we start the year?

See you next week.

I have proof people.

Bye.

I'll hit some for them at that point, and if they turn into conversation, we'll turn into conversation.

But I do have to ask you first, obviously, about your Fringe show and this whole pole dancing, Lark.

What's that all about?

Yeah, so I decided that, I took last year off, I did the Fringe in 2021.

I was one of the only comics to do a full run in 2021, and I was the only female in the brochure doing the full run.

I'm sure I was the only female doing the full run in reality, but in the brochure, which I didn't know.

Loads of press got in touch and told me this.

So I did this show called Bleather, and that sort of kind of post-pandemic, first kind of toe in the water Fringe in 2021.

And I did the full run.

It was absolutely great.

It was all socially distanced, sold out, brilliant fab experience.

And last year I decided that, that had taken a lot out of me to do that, to write the full hour.

And I felt like last year was full of people who had been gunning for three years to do their shows and things.

So instead of doing stand-up show, I did a kid's theater piece, which I'd done before.

But I just thought it would be really fun because I'd found that with having a little one myself, there was very little for under fives.

So I did the show that we'd done before and just reproduced it and built new sets and everything.

So I did that alongside doing club set stuff and hosting late in lives.

Late in life on a kid's show.

That is a real each end of the spectrum situation.

Me in the morning and actually was at half 10 in the morning.

So yeah, it was insane.

So I did that in 2022 and then my whole reason for that.

So Karen Corrin is my producer, the Guild of Balloon, Karen and Kate Corrin.

And Karen was like, I was taking a year off and I had to say to her, I've got this big idea for 2023 and I just don't want to rush it and I want to like...

And then it came to this fringe to October 2022 and we're all getting talked about, talking about what we're doing and Karen was like, so what's this big idea?

I was like, crap, I didn't actually come up with this big idea.

So I'd had this vague notion that it would be really funny for a 40 year old woman who's never done any physical exercise to do something physical.

I wanted to do something to take me out of just stand and telling jokes.

I wanted to do something that would make me, just something to take me out of my comfort zone.

I'm too comfortable.

I've been doing this for 20 years.

I would never say it's easy.

It's not easy, but it's not as challenging as it was for me before.

And I'm more than capable of writing an error that makes people laugh, but I wanted to do something fun and silly and joyful.

And the only, I'm not a physical person.

I've never done really any form of exercise for any length of time.

And so I decided to take up pole dancing because I had to see it kept coming up in my algorithms.

I had a friend who was a professional, who's a professional pole dancer, an athlete.

And when you look at pole dancing, when amazing people do it, it's really easy.

I was looking at people doing like backflips and stuff, and I was like, that looks really easy.

So I decided to do pole dancing, wrote the blurb, pitched it to Karen.

She was like, amazing, this sounds fantastic.

It's really female and driven and exciting.

And at that point, I hadn't done any pole dancing.

And so then I found a pole dancing instructor called Dan, who's amazing from ClanFit in Edinburgh.

And he started to teach me how to pole dance.

And my body instantly tried to evict me from it.

It was just like, what are you doing?

Sit down, have a piece of cake, what's going on?

Pole dancing is one of the most difficult things that you can do.

It looks insanely hard.

It's like gymnasts or circus performers, you know, this is like my situation.

This is where Jay showed me her pole.

I have a stage pole in the back garden.

I have been full on for the last nine months learning how to pole dance.

I've broken ribs, I've torn muscles, I've broken toes.

What else have I done?

I've given myself a concussion, all in the name of comedy.

And it is very funny.

The show is funny.

So the show is just basically about that journey and it's about joy and how joy is a radical choice in this current climate that we're in, that you have to choose to be joyful because it's easy to not be.

It is very difficult, isn't it?

Don't look at the news.

Yeah, don't look today.

I am coming to see your show, as you know, so don't tell me too much, I'm looking forward to it immensely.

And the name of the show is?

You can say it.

It's called Jay Lafferty, Bahookie.

And that means?

I mean, I've looked at it myself.

Bahookie is your bottom.

It's the Scottish word for bottom.

And yeah, so I came up with the title, and I thought in my head, I said, oh, like, Bahookie, because it's like pole dancing, it's a little bit, you know, kind of provocative, and it's your bum.

It's more turned out that it's a good name for the show, because I've spent a lot of time falling on it.

So that's like the general term for it.

So yeah, all of my friend shows have been named after Scottish words.

So I had like Bism, Weasht, Jammy, Bleder and now Bahookie.

And what venue is it?

Just tell us about it.

It's in Gilded Balloon in Teviot and I'm in the Sportsman's at 6.20pm every day, 2nd to the 28th, not the 22nd, because my wee boy starts nursery that day.

So I pull that day off.

You get to escape into the lane afterwards.

Yeah, that is nice.

Yeah, I'm going to do that.

And I had one year because I was in the turret for a good few years, which is allegedly the hottest room in Edinburgh, the turret.

I think when you have 50 people in that tiny, what is essentially a cupboard for the rest of the year, the janitor keeps the chairs.

I used it at the halfway point in Weeshed.

I gave out a slow list.

Okay, Jay, do you remember who was the first character or person on television that gave you that fuzzy feeling inside, in your loins?

Like I was attracted to, is that what you mean?

I mean, yeah, I mean, but it's nothing sexual.

It's more like when you're a kid and you see something on telly, it could be anything.

And some people, it's like a cartoon of a horse.

Yeah, I think probably, I mean, I was like a teenager by the time, the first person I remember having, and it was like an insane crush, was there was a show called My So-Called Life, which had Claire Danes and Jared Leto in it.

But it had a character who was like one of our best friends, who was a gay character in the show.

He was very much, I think, looking back on it now as an adult, he was based on a boy, George, look, his name was Ricky.

And I loved Ricky.

I was a teenager, but I was so in love with the gay character in a TV show, which set me up for a failing life, because that did happen quite a few times where I was in love with gay people.

Really?

Yeah, with guys that I would never have a chance with because they didn't like women.

There he is, this guy, right?

Oh, yeah, that's him.

I absolutely loved him so much.

I've never seen it, but that sounds like a hell of a cast.

I've actually got it on box set, but it would get cancelled before the first season finished.

So I think there is only like 18 episodes or something like that.

Box sets, actual physical form.

Actual physical box set, which I bought in America and then had to buy a DVD player that could play it.

I've done that.

I've done that exact thing.

I bought Magnolia in New York and I bought it back and it didn't play.

And I was like, there's regions of fucking DVDs now.

Do you remember a TV performance you saw that directly influenced your comedy?

Oh, of course, Billy Connolly's Like An Evening With.

So, I used to watch, I've talked about this loads, just because Billy Connolly turned 80.

Was he 80 a couple of months ago?

So, all the Scottish news were like, speaking to comedians.

He's trending, I think, and I got worried.

Every time he's trending, I get worried.

I mean, David Attenborough, you're always got the fear to look.

Why is Billy trending?

So, I remember watching it with my dad.

So, it's like an audience with Billy Connolly, and it was like one of those old, everybody in the room is like a famous person.

Yeah, there's like, what's his name?

Manchester United old football manager, Alex Ferguson, and people like that, I think, are all there.

And I remember watching it with my dad, and I don't know how old I had been quite young, like 10 maybe.

And obviously like he swore, I had no swear word.

Like my dad's an electrician, grew up in the shipyards, like, you know, and my dad loves Billy Connolly and would just, you know, laugh so hard.

Yeah, that was probably the first time that I realized that you could make people laugh for money.

You know, that was a job.

1985, it came out apparently, this episode.

I remember seeing it.

I definitely remember watching that.

Yeah, I probably didn't watch it when it came out then because I would have been, that would have been four.

It was probably just that it was on TV, you know.

I think it was repeated.

Obviously, things were repeated and repeated.

Kind of vaguely remember it being like around Christmas time, like watching it and it being one of these things that was on at Christmas.

Yeah, they used to do that, didn't they?

They put a selective stand up on and eventually, like in the 90s, that became 80 years old.

Yeah, I do remember watching Billy Connolly myself.

I'm a bit older than you.

So Dave Allen, I remember seeing like Specials and The Two Ronnies and Welcome to My Wives, all that 70s stuff.

I do remember seeing that, Dick Henry, all these Christmas shows.

It was always about comedy, always.

And my family were never into any of that.

But at Christmas, we would all sit down and watch all of it and consume all of it.

Like you're saying about somebody that made me feel fuzzy.

I remember hugely the first time I've been scared of something on TV.

Oh yeah, that's one of the questions, let's go.

So there was like this sketch where they had, it was called The Phantom Raspberry Blower.

And basically it was just The Two Ronnies.

It was obviously quite slapstick.

And from my childhood memory, I've never seen it as an adult, The Phantom Raspberry Blower was kind of decked out in like a big hat and a cape, like kind of vampiric, right?

It would run around and would like go.

And if it raspberried you, you died.

And I remember being so scared of this and having nightmares for weeks and weeks and weeks about The Phantom Raspberry Blower.

And for quite a few years, just being absolutely terrified of this thing that's seen in the two Ronnies.

That is not Four Candles Down.

It's not about films, but Disney with all the dead parents, how are you dealing with that, with your kid?

Well, luckily, kind of, he's not really all that into Disney.

That's a good thing.

So it's all Marvel based, but he likes cars, which has no dead parents in it, so that's good.

We've not really had to deal with that, but I did have like, when the show that I did, the kids show that I did, it was initially, it was a poem, and it was an adult's poem and in the poem, Fergus and Kate commit suicide at the end, right?

And obviously when we changed it into a kids show from a poem, it was, they do, they disappear at the end, like, and they're kind of an allegory, like the whole thing is that, like, that Fergus and Kate come to teach the towns, people about tolerance, right?

So Fergus is a hunchback monster, and Kate is this little girl who meets him and makes friends with him, but it actually, Fergus is not a hunchback, he's a little boy.

And there was a line that was from the, so it's in rhyme, and there was a line that we ended up cutting because on the second or third day of the Fringe, this parent got up on stage at the end, like, to speak to me, which was just a bit much.

That's a major heckle.

Yeah, so they, it was like, how did the line used to go?

When Fergus was a little boy, just like some that you might know, but on his back he had a hump, where humps don't often grow, and which makes this even sadder still, as this lonely little lad grew up in an orphanage because he had no mum or dad.

Right?

And so, but Fergus, as it turns out, is not real.

Like, they're, well, they are real, but they're like, Fergus and Kate are both, they both disappeared at the end.

And, you know, the whole idea is that they go off to teach this lesson somewhere else.

Like, Kate is also not real.

And imaginary friends almost.

Imaginary people.

That's very obvious by the end of the show, but this parent had got up and she was like, you know, my little girl was adopted and you know, and that's really triggering.

And I was thinking, I remember, because I was quite taken aback, and I remember saying like, how do you cope with Disney movies?

So one of my best friends, Emma, she used to have sleepover parties when we were in primary school, right up until high school, actually.

She should probably still have them, if it wasn't for the fact she has three of her own kids now.

And her mom and dad were divorced, and she used to go to her dad's every second weekend.

Our brother lived with her dad, he was older, but we used to go and he used to get us scary movies, right?

From Blockbuster Video.

No need to get out your phone, for these videos were played at home.

And at the cinema, no money was spent, before they watched these films on a TV set.

Like, because our mom and dad were divorced, there was quite a lax, like, kind of, they would be off doing things.

You would never get this now, but like, I remember our brother looking after like five of us, you know, and he'd be like 14 and we were 10.

He'd be the only person there.

And I remember him getting us like scary movies, like It and The Lost Boys.

And this scene in The Lost Boys, it starts quite near the beginning where they're all on the tree.

And then they go down and they like attack all the people that are having the party and stuff.

And that stayed with me.

He used to get these like scary things for us.

And we would watch them, we'd be terrified.

And then one time he got, and I know this is movies, Nightmare on Elm Street 3.

I knew you were going to say Nightmare on Elm Street.

I just felt it.

I felt it was coming.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Dream Warriors, I think it was called.

And there was a scene where Freddie, the guy had fallen asleep and Freddie, Freddie was like a big puppet master and he pulled the guy's veins out and he walked him along, like with his veins along to the edge of a building and dropped him off.

And obviously in real life, he just walked to the edge of the building and fell off.

And I was like, I remember first time, I'd probably seen something that made me feel like sick, like I remember feeling like it freaked me out so much.

Queasy.

Queasy.

And I think that in the same one, there was another one where his fingers turned into needles and he injected like drugs into this girl and killed her that way.

Like when you think about the actual Freddie Krueger and the, I mean, I couldn't watch them now as an adult, I couldn't watch them, they're horrendous.

No, no, no, no.

I remember being so terrified by Freddie Krueger and there was the one, I think it's the first one, Nightmare on Elm Street, where Johnny Depp gets sucked through the thing.

Yes, I was just about to say the bed thing.

Yeah.

I'll never forget that, do you?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, some of those, and I don't know if it is your age or just like things were a little bit more, because I find now, like, I don't really watch horror movies anymore since I had, I loved horror movies, but since I've had a child, I find them really difficult.

Yeah, it's anything like, I do say this quite often is if I'm watching a TV show, add this with The Last of Us, and anything happens to a child, it's a hard out for me, because I just can't have that shit in my head.

It's bad enough the real world, you know.

And it's so funny that you're saying that right now, because my husband and I watched, so I'd given up on Black Mirror a couple of years ago, because it just gave me too much anxiety.

Like I just found watching it gave me too much anxiety.

But then I was asked by BBC Radio Scotland to do their culture show a couple of weeks ago.

And one of the things I had to review was the first episode of The Black Mirror.

The new one.

The new one.

And I watched it and it was really good.

And there were very few Black Mirrors that had like a happy ending.

And so the other night, my husband and I decided, oh, we'll watch like, we'll watch the second one.

And it was based in Scotland, which was why we thought, oh, we'll just watch the Scotland one.

And that was like, it was a, it was not a happy ending.

It was a bit freaky, but I quite enjoyed it because I'm very into it.

It was kind of satirizing and looking at our obsession with true crime.

And I love true crime podcasts and stuff like that.

So, yeah, I found that.

And then last night we watched the third one and I won't spoil it for anybody that's not seen it, but it was absolutely horrific.

Can you remind me which episode that is?

Just the title of it?

Spaceman one, when the two guys are in the spaceship and they're both-

The Vault, yes.

That one, that's the one I didn't enjoy either.

I thought it was-

Again, we just went, do you want me to put it there?

I was sort of sleepy that night because we had a really long day and it was the longest episode and it was like film length.

And I liked who was in it.

It seemed good.

It was a sci-fi vibe.

I thought, this is interesting.

And when they-

well, we'll spoil it.

It's fine.

We can just say, if you haven't seen it.

But just the way that they were transporting somehow their consciousness from space back to earth so quickly.

How come no one's come up with it?

Of course they haven't because it's in Charlie Brooker's head.

Brilliant.

But then when it took that dark turn, which we won't talk about, yeah, I was like, I went to bed after that.

Like I literally, the last thing I saw and then I went off to sleep.

I just said that to my husband this morning because I came in from a gig last night and like, so I got home at about half 10 and we were having a cup of tea and I was like, oh, should we just watch?

Should we sit in bed?

We've got a big show, ridiculous size telly in the bedroom.

Oh, nice.

Nothing wrong with that.

We sat and watched when it was a pandemic decision.

I've never had a television in my bedroom since I was a child.

I remember getting a television with a VCR in it for my 13th birthday.

You were one of those.

You were the TV in the bedroom people.

Yeah, I was.

That was my big present for my 13th birthday was a TV with a VCR.

My dad's an electrician.

I was well warned like if it wasn't off at 10 o'clock at night, then he would take the plug off of it.

So quite often it had the plug off of it because he would come and unscrew the plug and like take the fuse out and stuff.

Yeah.

So that's, yes.

So basically last night we watched that we had to sleep and I woke up this morning and I was like my dreams were absolutely horrendous last night and my husband's like yeah, so we're out.

We're not we've decided no more black mirrors.

Oh no, I think that I think that's the only one like that from what I remember from that season.

I love that season.

I was very surprised that it was even coming back.

They kept it under wraps, didn't they?

Really, really well.

And it's like shows like that.

And it's great that they stick with you like have the same thing with Inside Number Nine, like mostly I love them.

But sometimes because they're on at night, and often my wife will go to bed before me, it just seems to be something that happens now.

And then I'll squeeze something in that I know she doesn't want to watch something like that.

And then I'm the one going to bed dreaming of spiders or whatever it is.

You know what I mean?

And does it infiltrate your dreams then when you watch something before bed?

Yeah, oh, absolutely.

And I've always had like a really, I suppose probably comes from being a creative as well.

Like I've had a very vivid imagination.

So I know sometimes when I see things, particularly traumatizing things, that that's going to stick with me for like a long time.

That's going in tonight.

Yeah.

And I remember when I was a child, I'd seen like a casualty or something.

I wasn't even watching it.

It probably was just on in the background.

And I think I was maybe about eight or nine.

And casualty, like actually, I don't know what it's like now because I don't watch it.

But I remember it being quite gory casualty, like quite considering it was on like, you know, terrestrial TV.

And I remember one where they were playing squash and the racket broke and went in the guy's neck.

And my mum used to watch it and it was on.

And it was like, so anyway, there was this one and there was a car accident and this guy got run over.

And it was really graphic in my little young brain.

And for years afterwards, I mean, like years, I would have this nightmare that I ran over my dad.

And I had it so often that I actually when I turned 17, I put off learning to drive.

I put it off because I had this it started to feel like more like a premonition rather than a dream, you know, like, I had it probably by that point, I've probably been having it for 10 years.

And this dream.

So that and the Phantom Raspberry.

Well, I mean, the one that obviously like springs to mind, but I don't think it's, I think it's one of these things that's kind of acceptable at the moment.

But I love like, I'll go with Sailing Sunset.

No, I don't know.

I only know it because there was a guest from that show on Is It Cake, which my kids watch.

But apart from that, I don't know.

What is Sailing Sunset?

Sailing Sunset is reality, and I'm using that term, it's one of these scripted reality things about women, about this firm in Los Angeles where they sell houses to the rich and famous, like multi-million pound houses.

They are like, all these really unrealistically, amazingly beautiful women who are selling these houses for these two very unattractive twin men.

Okay, no one needs to see this, it's not the Property Brothers.

I'm trying to remember what their names are.

One's got Jason and something else, Oppenheim, I'm not sure if that is their second name, but that is the name of their company is Oppenheim, the Oppenheim Group.

They have one in LA and New York and I think there's one in Miami now as well.

It's all just about the women all hating each other and it's really patriarchal.

Considering it's being made now, it's one of the biggest reality TV shows in the current times.

It is, I'm not proud of myself because it's all about gorgeous women in tiny ridiculous dresses and huge massive heels, talking around, showing rich men houses and then being horrible bitches to each other.

But I just still like it even though it is against everything that I would be promoting.

That's why they're good.

That's why those things are good.

We watch, oh yeah, I'm looking at the faces of these people.

Oh, he's a queer hawk.

That's a strange looking face.

I'm not going to face shame people.

Oh, is that not Courtney Cox?

That's just what they all look like when they've done that to themselves, I guess.

I've not seen it.

Yeah, I can't.

That looks like one of those below deck type things.

Me and my wife got stuck in the old married at first sight Australia cycle of abuse.

I have done below decks.

My husband and I did that during the pandemic.

One of my best friends, she worked in a multimillion pounds chartered yacht.

She used to tell us stories before below decks was a thing.

She used to tell us ridiculous stories.

She once had to put on a party for a dog's birthday where they had a Michelin starred chef come to the yacht and make a cake for a dog's birthday.

That would make me throw up in my mouth.

There are children starving, stop giving dogs yacht birthdays.

That reminds me, did you see last season of Dragon's Den?

Do you watch Dragon's Den?

It's not, I don't watch it religiously, but if it pops on.

There was one where they did parties for dogs.

They were doing these like bespoke parties for dogs with yummy treats.

It was all vegan and whatever and it was like, it was like this is like the Kitty Stomper sketch with Harry Anfield.

This is unnecessary.

This is stupid.

And they didn't realize how pointless it was and they didn't have any sales really or whatever.

And then they nearly got investments from all of them or three or four of them.

And then they offered them the deal.

And then the wife said something like, the wife, that sounds bad, they were married.

The wife said, oh, could you do it for like 6% or something?

And she pissed them all off.

And then they all just went, they all pulled their bids.

And then they left.

And if you can find this clip, I'll try and find it and send it to you.

And in the lift afterwards, the fucking tension between this couple is palpable, is brilliant.

She's like, oh, I'm so sorry about that.

He goes, not a problem, darling.

Not a problem.

While just literally moving away from her.

And you can just feel the divorce papers getting filled in.

It's my favorite moment of TV of the year.

I mean, it's terrible.

Dog birthdays.

I mean, that's just it'll be fucking gender reveal for dogs soon.

I'm going to ask you one more thing, just because you are a comedian, and we will finish with this one.

Jay, what is the funniest thing you ever saw on TV?

The funniest thing I've ever seen on TV.

Put me on the spot, I should have prepped these questions.

Tell you mine quickly.

Mine, I believe, is the quickest, funniest thing I've ever seen in a sketch, which is Malcolm and Wise, where Ernie Wise comes, he takes his hat off, he goes, I'm from the BBC, Eric Malcolm puts a fiver, and he goes, sorry about that.

They could probably do with those fivers now.

I love things like, do you know, like I was a teenager when Friends was on, so I loved a lot of the humour in Friends and...

Have you got all the dialogue programmed in like I have?

Oh yeah, totally.

Oh, actually, probably one of the things that I remember laughing at so hard was Mike Myers.

So I married an axe murderer.

Yeah, that's a great film.

I can almost hear the keys tapping away as I get emails to say, why are they talking about so many films?

As the previously mentioned poem said, no money was spent in the cinema, it was a play at home on the TV set.

So I remember the first time I ever saw that, we were in Canada with my family.

So my dad's sisters, he's got two sisters and they both live in Canada and Ontario.

And my aunt Jean lives in Newmarket and I have two cousins that live there that I grew up with and really close.

They're more like sisters than cousins.

And they're quite a bit older than me.

And when we would go, they would take us to this really cool, like a video store to get videos.

And you could get popcorn.

I always remember that you would get popcorn while you went to look at the videos.

And I always think that's like a lost art now, that going to the video shop on a Friday was like such a big deal when I was a kid.

You spend like most of the, you spend two hours in the video shop looking for what you wanted.

And I remember we came back with this, So I Am Married and Axe Murderer, and we all sat down to watch it.

And when it gets to the, so his parents are Scottish, because obviously MacMurray's parents were Scottish.

That's where he first did the accent, isn't it?

When he first did the accent, the dad was so much like my dad.

He didn't look like my dad, but he was just that sort of deadpan Scottish, do you know, papal dune, we've got a papal dune.

Oh, it's all right, he's just pished.

That sort of thing.

And there was this scene in it where his little brother, they all take the mickey out of him because he's got a massive head and they're all trying to watch the television and the mum is coming on to his best friends.

I remember this, like, you've turned into a sexy wee bastard, haven't you?

I still use that, like, you know.

But they were all sitting around the thing and the dad's, the youngest brother sits up and his entire head is like a football shape and it's like, it's blocking the telly and the dad's going, Kate, move, move.

He's like, look at that thing.

It's like an orange in the end of the toothpick.

It's like Sputnik, does he get his own radio channels?

Like, oh, listen.

And my dad would do this, like, he was ending himself.

We watched it, I think we watched it, like, four or five times over the course of that holiday.

And dad would just, throughout the whole holiday, he would just crack into, like, lines from the show.

I remember being, like, powerless, like, crying, laughing at the show, but also at my dad being the dad in the show.

And also, like, my cousin had gone to high school with Mike Myers and his dad was the janitor of the school, yeah.

So you went to Canada a lot as a kid, did you?

Yeah, yeah, we spent quite a lot of time, usually every second year.

Yeah, my wife's Canadian, I met her in Toronto, actually, at an open mic, a music open mic, we used to do music as well, because we're multi-talented people.

Because the connection between Scotland in the accent alone, the way they say a boot and things like that, there was such a big arc between Scotland and Canada, it's everywhere, isn't it?

It's in the names of everything, the streets, you must have felt quite a nice connection when you went there, and also to see a film like that there as well as well.

Yeah, absolutely loved it.

I remember I saw loads of films for the first time in Canada, just because they would be summer blockbusters, I saw Trainspotting in Canada.

That's a weird place to watch that.

I know.

I saw Blair Witch Project, saw that in Canada, and at the time when I saw the Blair Witch Project, everybody thought it was real, because it was before it...

Yeah, it was the first found footage, wasn't it?

They did that, they pretended, didn't they?

They didn't tell us it wasn't.

They didn't tell us, yeah, so by the time that it came over here, everybody knew it was fake.

Yeah, because there was a delay, wasn't there, between things coming up?

Yeah, but when I saw it, and my cousin was at uni at the time, and they had put the posters up all over her uni, like, oh, these kids, have you seen these kids?

These kids are missing from...

Yeah, with the advertising campaign in her university.

So we went thinking it had been like a real thing.

Yeah, it was really dark.

So when I first watched it, I was terrified by it, like absolutely terrified.

I remember coming out and talking about it.

But yeah, so I think I saw them, I think Trainspotting and...

I think that was the same year.

I might be wrong, you'd be able to google it.

Trainspotting is 96.

I think, I kind of think Blair Witch is 99.

Because I remember seeing it, I saw it in really weird circumstances because I didn't know much about it.

And I went to see it in a very old fashioned American cinema in San Francisco.

And from what I could tell, there were either people, homeless people sleeping in there, people sucking each other off in the back, whatever was going on in there.

There was a lot of movement, a lot of action going on.

I was sitting down the front with my then girlfriend, and they put it on this big screen, but they only showed it in like a slightly bigger overhead projector, you know, with the curved corners.

Yeah.

So it was only taking up about a ninth of the screen.

So you were watching it like it was a home movie.

They were basically showing it like that.

So you will, and it was even fucking creepier.

So most of the screen was dark.

And you're just watching this like overhead projector version of it.

And then when it all falls at the end and there's someone in the corner, I was like, go get the fuck out of here.

No, I don't think so.

Just come to the fringe.

I run a monthly night at the Stan Glasgow and the Stan Dedenbrickle Bonafide, which is where professional comedians come and I give them a subject, and they have to write material to that subject, so they won't have said it before, and some of it they'll say again type thing.

And it's like a really fun cult kind of night that's on every month in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

We'll put links to that at the bottom of the episode.

Thank you so much for doing this.

I really appreciate it.

I hope you had fun.

I did have fun.

I enjoyed it.

Great.

I'll see you in Edinburgh.

I'll come say hi.

Let me know what's coming.

All right.

Thanks, Jay.

See you later.

Bye.

Cheers.

There she is, Jay Lafferty.

What a lovely chat.

I don't really know her, and we had a really nice, convivial chat.

I've seen her on the stairs a few times in Edinburgh Fringe.

We've never really chatted till then, so that was a really nice talk.

Which brings us to today's outro track, which is my old song, All About Nothing, which I wrote in 2001.

I remember writing this, I wrote this in a flat in Stansfield Road in Brixton.

This is before I knew that David Bowie was born in that road.

I can't believe I lived in the same road as literally my idol, and I had no idea.

Anyway, when I wrote this one, I just felt that it was sort of special.

I was sure it was going to be a hit.

I thought, I've written a hit, it's so clear, it's a catchy song, might be my best song.

Felt like the best song I ever wrote at the time.

So I recorded it in Japan as part of an album called Fear of Flying in 2003.

Now, a good friend of mine has recently remixed this, but I just want to play the original at this point, because it sort of reignited my interest in the song.

And I just want to put the original version out first.

Maybe I'll put the remix up at a later date.

Maybe I'll talk to him and then we'll put it up.

Anyway, this is All About Nothing.

I consider this one of my best songs.

I hope you like it.

That's All About Nothing, which will be remastered with the entire album, The Fear of Flying, at some point in the not too distant future.

Come back next Wednesday for more of the same.

Please follow us wherever you get podcasts and leave a review, a good one though, and preferably one where you don't moan about the musical insludes or the funny voices.

See you again next time.