Mark Nelson: Generational Labels, Ghostwatch & the Ethics of Parenthood

Hello, screen rats, couch potatoes.

This is the episode I've been talking about, the one that was recorded outside with a load of noise, birds, trains, cars, drunk Jordies, all manner of shit.

It was a great chat, probably one of the funniest ones I've had so far.

It's me and Mark Nelson chatting in a beer garden about all things to do with telly, and it takes a little political swerve at one point as well.

Anyway, let's get straight into it.

You think I'm gonna listen to this, silly old bollocks?

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 ten years, even what's on right now.

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

He's got loads and loads.

If I'd have just known, I would have fucking tore his ears off.

I'm sort of annoyed at the stuff I missed out on.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially like the comedy store.

He's sort of good-tamed, to be honest.

I was talking about this with my wife today, that I don't think...

I have three kids, and if they wanted to move to any major city, really, not just London or something, I hope they don't.

But if they did, they would never have the opportunity I had to just go and stay in some cheap room.

No, that's true, actually.

You need to be like a Chinese diplomat or Russian or something.

Yeah, you do.

That's absolutely true.

You could just bomb a bout.

Yeah You're a young man, you're...

I'm 42.

42?

You're the exact same age as my wife.

This is something I wanted to ask you, actually.

So, she does not consider herself a millennial.

Do you?

Well, see, I didn't.

I wouldn't have.

But then, apparently, the parameters dictate that we are millennials.

Because you were a teenager at the time.

Yeah.

So, but no, was I?

Well, so, no, I wouldn't have been.

Oh, no, I would have been.

I would have been 19.

I would have been 19.

I was born 1980.

1980?

Oh, so I would have been.

Oh, you don't count, because if you do the 20th century as it should be, 2001.

But then I would have been.

So, are you talking turn of the new year?

I guess I would have been 19.

The original parameters were if you were born from 1984 to 2004?

No, yeah, 21 year gap, I think, not 2005.

And then they changed it, and then they went a couple of years later, they went, oh no, it's anyone that was a teenager at the turn of the century.

Yeah, so you, because I've seen you, I rewatched your special from last year.

Oh, it's that kid, the one you had at Monkey Barrel.

Fantastic, so funny, so good, I loved it.

But there was stuff in there which made me think that man is not a millennial.

What's the generation before, then?

That's me, Generation X, which I don't mind.

Which meant a long, long, old time.

So which Generation Z, then?

I don't know when it starts, but it's on this side of 2000.

Yeah, it's on this side of 2000, and I'm wondering what the next one is.

I mean, I don't know if they're gonna call it Gen A, they're gonna call it Gen A.

Gen non-Gen, right?

We've got a Greek alphabet.

Yeah, my kids, two of my, I've got twins born in 2017, and I don't know what the fuck, but I haven't decided what that generation is yet.

Have you got kids?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nine and a seven-year-old.

Oh, my boy's nine as well.

So I don't, I'd hate all that shit, though.

And it's always after the facts, so you don't even know what you are at the time.

Yeah, I know, I know.

So is your, it's not parenting podcast, is your kid into, like, the same shit mine is, coming home, talking about Mr.

Beast and Roblox and stuff like that?

Roblox, yes.

Although we only got a, so they got a Switch.

From Santa at Christmas.

Was it from Santa?

Yes, it was.

But I don't think they've got Roblox on it, actually.

FIFA's a big one.

Yeah.

FIFA's huge.

Mario Kart was big.

Harry Potter, that's my girl's main obsession, Harry Potter.

And how old is she?

She's nine.

She's nine.

And has she seen all the films?

She's seen all the films.

And I don't know how many of the books she's made her way through yet.

I think she's been, she's sitting there reading.

Yeah, my son read those, but I don't know if he read them or he just followed the words and just said he read them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's some fucker rattling out in the background.

This is an outside recording.

You can consider this an OB.

I know.

So I was, I don't know why I'm bothering now with this one, but I've been really worried about buses going by, flat where the studio is, all this kind of stuff.

And then my friend, you know Kev, Kev F.

Sutherland?

Yes, yes, yes.

He told me a thing about Frank Sinatra when they were recording an orchestra in the late 60s and the engineer stopped everything and just said, stop, stop, stop, there's a plane going over.

And then Frank apparently turned to everyone and said, they know there's planes.

And ever since he told me that, I'm like, fuck it, there's trains, there's buses, there's cuts in the background.

It's just the way it is.

Exactly, I know.

The weather's nice, so that's why we can do it outside now.

So Mark Nelson, obviously, I know who you are, but do you want to, just for those out there that might not know who you are, which I do not think is many, do you want to tell them?

I'll tell you a little bit.

He's the Comedian's Comedian of the Year 2021, and the Scottish Comedian of 2006, I mean, one year into your career.

There's probably less than one year, actually.

Less than a year?

I think it was about six months or something into it.

And I mean, it's like one of those titles that I was lovely to have at the time, because it certainly got me fired up the ladder a bit, but it's a ridiculous Scottish Comedian of the year.

It was a condition that anyone was eligible to enter.

If you were Scottish.

Technically.

Did you have to be Scottish or was it just?

Well, see, then, I don't know where it was with my year, but then the rules changed.

The rules were so ambiguous at certain points where it was, there was a kind of nationalities rule as well.

Like if you'd been gigging in Scotland for more than a year, you could go in, and then there was a grandparent's rule, that kind of Jack Charmin grandparent's kind of rule.

You could get in as well.

So I think by the end, it was...

The Irish passport of comedy, essentially.

Yeah, if you'd never eaten shortbread, you could have fucking eaten it by the end.

Yeah, and tried pizza even though no one eats it.

Obviously, Mark is an established comedian, does the Fringe very, very often.

Yeah, you were there last year at Monkey Battle.

And you're embarking on your first national tour.

First national tour, yeah, starting in November.

November.

It's quite exciting.

It's taken ages to put it together.

Why so long?

I don't know, I just never, I think the pandemic didn't help.

Like with most things, that kind of put a lot of stuff on hold.

And then it's just a kind of, I don't know, just various situations in terms of agents.

The agents I was with and my own confidence, to be honest, in doing a national tour.

And I think it's, I think what happened, what's happened since the pandemic is previously you could only really tour if you'd done really Apollo.

That was one of the, if you'd done Apollo in walks a week, you could tour.

And without that, you never really had any selling point.

Whereas since the pandemic, there's been so many people that are able to tour off the back of stuff they've put out online themselves.

That's true.

That it's a lot more, I think there's a lot fairer system.

Like people like Manya Chihuahua and even John Cairns obviously asked us to help them.

I mean, there's just so many people that can do it now.

And podcasts as well help.

And it's, people just, I mean, people can do it off the back.

It's made it a lot more, a lot more open because people are now able to find their own audiences without, because it's a good thing.

It's a thing I hate.

I hate the lack of attention span of people now.

Yeah.

But it also helps because clips are very-

Have you been flipped up, have you been chopped up and thrown all over TikTok?

Do you know what?

TikTok's the one, I've tried TikTok a couple of times.

And it's the one I don't, I fucking hate it because I hate it because you're-

You make me feel like I'm going fucking mad.

But it's because you're like, you're trying to impress a computer algorithm that no one knows apart from maybe like three people.

Yeah.

And you don't know how it works.

So it can get very frustrating, something like TikTok.

Instagram's kind of like that, but Twitter's always been my favorite-

Yeah, your quite vocal on Twitter.

Yeah.

Yeah, I haven't done any of this.

There's no Television Times TikTok account as yet.

I don't want more work.

Oh dear, since the recording of this episode, I have actually set up a TV Times pod account at TikTok.

Whoops, links at the bottom of this episode.

I went for the first time, I went for a period of that.

Because with each and every one of these, I don't really understand how it works.

Yeah.

And then once you got on that kind of scrolling at night, and you're just scrolling through anything.

And you can totally see it.

When I get frustrated, because you look at people aren't watching your clip, and you go, well, you've watched maybe three full clips in the past hour.

Whereas if it doesn't immediately catch your attention, you're fucking flipping away as well.

I just don't like the way it watches your eyes.

Right, so it looks what you're looking at.

And really, well, I don't know if this is true.

Tell me if this is true.

Apparently it knows what you're looking at and for how long.

So like, if it flashes you, a woman with big breasts, and you look at it too long, you're gonna get harassed quite fast with very similar videos or anything like that.

Like I left it on once in some, you know, I put my phone down and it was one of those, you know, I know somewhere in China, a thousand people falling down an escalator and it's going too fast or something.

And the kiss I got after that, it was like, but you've been framed as well.

Yeah, but you've been framed, but not funny, like really bad things happening.

For our American listeners, you've been framed with the UK version of America's Funniest Home Videos.

I'm just gonna jump straight in here because we're doing an outside recording.

It's not great.

It's very noisy.

It's in a pub beer garden and Mark has got to do a set in less than a couple hours.

Beer garden's generous.

The word garden's doing a lot of heavy lifting.

There's no garden, but they have these weird, like, what would you even call them?

Like what you get changed into at the seaside?

Yeah, they're these shades.

Yeah, little tiny shades.

MDF shades, which are.

Yeah, at least yeah.

It's nice, though.

Do you remember who or what the first thing was on television that gave you a kind of fuzzy feeling in your loins?

Oh, no, right.

It was, no, I'm trying to think what age this would be.

It might not be sexual, it's just gonna be, yeah.

No, I tell you who it was, right?

Because, like, I initially immediately went to, like, Saturday evenings when Gladiators and Baywatch and then Gladiators was on.

Right, right, you're double whammy.

Yeah, but that was a teenage thing, that was very much.

The first girl I remember having a massive crush on was the teenage daughter in the Australian show Round the Twist.

Round the Twist.

I don't know if you remember, an excellent theme tune.

It was like, have you ever felt like this?

How strange things happen.

How you go in round the twist.

What's the premise of it?

It was a bizarre thing, it was a family, an Australian family that lived, I don't know if they'd moved, they'd moved to move into a lighthouse.

And it was in this small, bizarre Australian town and just mental shit happened.

Not sometimes supernatural, but just weird stuff would happen around a bit of town.

And they would never have to solve anything.

It would just then just resolve itself.

But it was really good.

And I really, really enjoyed it.

It was a bizarre thing.

So what time would this have been on?

Children's Telly or?

Yeah, this would be on like, this would be like the kind of last thing.

Before News Round.

Before News Round, yeah.

So yeah, so yeah, that was the first time that I remember seeing a girl on TV and going, ah.

Oh, there you go.

How old were you, do you reckon?

Oh, I'd be about eight.

So, yeah, I think she'd maybe be about 14, 15, I would say.

So if we chop this up incorrectly, we could get a sound bite there.

Please don't.

And I thought with the internet and everything, they'd be like sneaking my phone into their room or whatever, you know.

Yeah, I don't know.

Leave it as long as it needs to be long.

Like, God, you're fucking so happy I wasn't around when the internet was around.

I would have seen everything.

What was mine?

I would have seen it all.

It would have been like one of those fucking boots in Amsterdam who just put in the arrows up and down.

I would have seen everything.

Such utter and deborgeable filth.

Get on with the podcast.

If we're in children's television then, was there a show that you used to sort of run home to see apart from Round the Twist?

Was there like a, obviously that's...

Um, no.

Would there be?

I remember your TV, you know, in those days, you can't shoot because you have to be there.

I remember the first time, I remember the first time Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started and loving that.

Absolutely loving that.

No, I'll tell you what it was.

Hold on.

The cartoon version of the X-Men.

No.

I absolutely adored that.

I remember I've always been quite kind of obsessive with recording things, like having collections of things.

And I remember I used to go down and stay with, my grandparents used to take me down to stay with an uncle and auntie who lived in London.

And my uncle had like literally like three bookshelves full of VCR videotapes.

And he'd have a massive tome, huge, big binder and just films he'd recorded off TV.

But then he'd have them numbered.

Oh, right, he had it all organized.

VCRs had like long play and short play.

So you could get, it'd be the worst quality, but you could get like two films on one tape.

And I remember being obsessed with this.

I was like, right, when I go home, I'm gonna get one of them.

So I got like an A4 pad and a stick and I started getting videotapes and I got my dad to give me videotapes.

And I would record things and I remember that.

Did you catalog them as well?

Oh yeah, cataloged them massively.

And I remember that was one of the first TV shows that I made sure I could record in every single episode.

And I would watch them as well, like I'd watch them back.

And rewatch and rewatch.

I remember those walls of, you go in people's houses.

Some people would have like the soaps.

They'd have like Eastenders and Coronation Street.

I mean, it's hoarding.

It's a digital form of hoarding.

Yeah, I believe in digital hoarding.

Yeah, I think we all do it now.

Yeah, go ahead.

When you download an album, you pop it on.

You didn't even listen to it for like a week maybe.

Before I would, like I've had albums come out by people I love, like Ben Folds or someone, and I've waited a week.

I would not have waited a week.

20 years ago, I'd have got the thing out, the inlay card, I'd have been reading it.

Absolutely.

You listen to it, but 90 times a first day, you got it.

Yeah.

Really, not anymore.

Yeah.

It is a problem and I think my kids, my kids definitely suffer from overabundance.

And I always thought the things I would feel old when I had kids about would be arguments about trainers and I'd feel really old that they wanted to wear weird space-saved shoes or fucking tinfoil clothes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What it actually is, is their abundance of choice.

Yeah.

And I find myself almost sounding like my own grandfather and go, when I was a kid, you had to walk across the room, press the button.

They're like, I want to watch Cars 2.

Oh, do you now?

Do you have to go to the cinema?

Do you have to get on the fucking bus?

No, you just passed it to some thing in the Google Chrome and HDMI 2 and B.

We had a, I remember a massive argument in my house when Disney Plus released Cruella.

And that was during lockdown.

It's dark film, isn't it?

Yeah, and my kids were desperate to watch it, but Disney Plus, it was going to cost 20 quid on Disney Plus.

Oh.

And at that time, it was like, well, does it, I mean, 20 quid.

Do they still do that?

Do they charge for a set of releases?

They still do it, yeah, yeah, but at this point, and this was one of the first ones they did.

And now, if it was on the cinema, 20 quid, 20 quid is barely touching the signs if you did the kids.

If you take two kids to the cinema, you're fucked.

But just something stuck in me where I went, I'm not, I'm already paying a subscription to Disney Plus.

I'm not giving them another 20 quid for us to watch something that will be available for free in six weeks' time.

But you know how far my arguments go, eventually.

You have to take them and make all my ethics are gone.

I'm like, I don't even know where to begin when it comes to Disney.

I'm pretty anti-Disney always happened, didn't like the movies, don't like much of their TV.

They sort of seem to just buy everything, like they bought Star Wars, they buying Doctor Who, you know.

Yeah, they buy everything.

They're buying Doctor Who, are they?

Well, it's on Doctor Who as a co-release.

So, yeah.

And I just, you know, cut this.

So, I paid the subscription, and when I see that 7.99 go out every month, it hurts me.

Oh, yeah.

Because I'm giving it to what I consider to be cunts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I don't like it, but it's like, what am I gonna do?

I'm a vegetarian, I have to buy my kids meat.

It's just the way it is, all my ethics are gone.

At this point, I'm gonna end up with a conservative child.

My dad is not a very nice man, he's an Irish man who is quite rough.

And he once said to me, I don't know if it was a joke or not, he said, the worst thing for an Irishman is to know that he's made an Englishman.

Do you know what I mean?

Whoa, that's like, Christ, why didn't that choose me?

Once a therapy going, I'm pecking that soon, but Jesus Christ.

It's completely true, I swear, absolutely swear.

Talking of horrific things, what is something you saw on television that maybe you shouldn't have because you were too young that shits the life out of you and stayed with you?

There was a thing, and I hope no one else has said this because it's quite a popular answer whenever you see those things like TV shows that were too far gone for TV and stuff like that.

There was a thing they did on, I think it was ITV, Michael Parkinson was one of the presenters and I think Sarah Green and Mike Smith, I think.

Mike Smith, I can see him, yeah.

I think we used to be married, maybe.

They did a thing called, I think it was called Ghostwatch.

I've heard about this.

It was like Blair Witch.

It was a spoof thing where they would send folk into a haunted house and then they pretended that, it was very, very, very kind of inside number nine, when you actually think about it, years ago.

I think that they mentioned that they did an episode that was highly influenced by it, that live Halloween one.

Yes, yes.

It was highly influenced by it.

Very, very similar.

But it was presented in a completely straight way that as far as they were concerned, this reporter came in as a haunted house, Michael Parkinson was in the studio, Sarah Green was in, I think she was on set and in this obviously built house.

We didn't know that.

And then, weird, very much like, like the film Porterguys, normal things, not normal things, but like, harmless things would happen, like glasses would fall over, or chairs would rise up, and everyone would kind of go on that.

And this shit started to get really serious.

And then, it ended up with people running around screaming, like blood-curdling screams, and the camera being dropped.

So you don't, you had that Blair Witch thing where you don't see what's going on.

And then the footage just cut.

And this is live, a live TV show?

Parkinson played it straight, straight all the way through, never let on at all.

And then it just finished, with nobody knowing.

What year was this?

Early, early 90s, I think.

And there was no explanation.

There was no title card at the end where they said, this was obviously a spoof, but based on real events or anything like that.

Or if you've been affected by anything in this show, please phone this number.

There was nothing like that.

It just ended.

Credits, very few credits, end, done.

So nobody knew about it at all.

A similar thing happened.

I didn't see this live, but I read about it.

When Paul Daniels was massive on TV, and he used to have a Saturday night TV show on BBC One.

Massive, massive Saturday night entertainment.

There was a week where he did, I think it's a Houdini trick, where he was putting a box and chained up, and then it would slam shut, but it had spikes on one side of the...

I think I remember this.

And they made out that it went wrong.

Yeah.

And then ended it.

It just faded to black.

There was nothing.

And then the continuity announcer came on and sounded flustered, and then introduced whatever the next show was.

And nobody found out, because at that point, there was no internet, there was no Twitter, there was no anything like that.

The papers didn't have anything in it the next day, so the only way people knew that Paul Daniels was still alive was the week after.

And it's fucking genius now.

I love those.

I love the majority of the internet and social media and stuff, but I think it's taken away being able to do that kind of thing.

Yes.

Inside Number Nine did it a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, on the bus.

That got me.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was looking for it again.

There's a seventh episode now.

And it's absolute genius the way they did it.

And how they managed to keep that a secret is incredible.

And there was no explanation of it at all.

No, you had to go online to find out.

And what's lovely about it is, and it's again a thing you very rarely get now, is event television because of streaming and stuff like that.

I think Succession is one of the only shows that's managed to keep it.

They're the only, if it's good TV, I've mentioned this before, if something needs to be savored, like really good television that you don't want, I wouldn't want to binge Succession.

I kind of need to watch it around the time because unfortunately the UK news streaming services and newspapers give everything away.

So if you don't watch it on the day, the next day you're going to find out.

You know, reality TV, you find out stuff you don't even know about, because it's just in the news.

Who won The Apprentice, whatever.

They announce it.

But yeah, I mean, I have a big clunky name drop here.

I have worked with Darren Brown a few times.

I do consider him.

Hopefully Darren, you consider me too, a friend.

And as far as I can make out, he is probably, I'll have to talk to him actually, because what you just mentioned about that Ghostwatch one, it does remind me of some of his events here.

Because he was the last person to do anything even vaguely like that.

Yeah.

Especially with the Russian Roulette.

Yeah.

Even the obviously later ones, he got people and sort of fucked with them.

But when he was fucking with the UK populace through television, that stuff was great.

But you must have to have such a closed community of people working on the show.

Yeah.

That you trust implicitly for none of this to get leaked.

And I miss that.

I miss that event.

Me too.

Because there is something lovely about, what I love about that Inside No.

9 is, you had to be there at the time because if you go on, if you go on iPlayer tonight, if you heard this and go, oh, go and see what that was about.

Yeah.

All the show is the game show episodes with Lee Mack.

Which is so good.

It's so good.

I was like, oh, that is better than my...

It's better than most game shows.

And he was great in it.

And I was watching the people playing the contestants.

And they nailed it.

They looked like contestants.

It was so good.

But when you go and watch it in iPlayer, there's no explanation of, oh, they're supposed to be this episode, that they have massively trailerd.

And it was part of all the publicity photos of them doing this spoof of On The Buses.

They got the fuck exactly who to get him from.

And everybody was looking forward to it.

And then all that happened, because the announcer doesn't come on in the iPlayer.

It doesn't come on and say, and I changed the tonight schedule.

Instead of that, we're going to be showing this.

So you'd have no clue that that ever happened.

I can't remember the last time anyone did anything like that.

Because they did a Christmas special, and it was kind of put in the same season originally.

So it looked like there were seven.

I was thinking, oh, they've done eight then.

Why would they suddenly do eight after doing six for like seven years?

Those guys, I mean, it comes up a lot inside number nine.

It's top television.

It's amazing.

It's absolutely genius.

There were so many episodes, and they throw stuff away.

Like that quiz show one.

They threw more stuff away in 28 minutes than it is in like 10 years with the television sometimes.

I can't wait for the final season.

That's going to be outstanding.

I do think there is a great joy in watching a show and then almost cursing the fact that you've got to wait a week for the next episode.

I mean, I suppose you will still kind of get it with streaming series when a series finishes on a cliffhanger, and then you know you've got another six months or a year, or in some case two years to wait till you find out what happened.

But to have that on a cliffhanger show every single week was amazing.

Yeah, that is.

Big shout out to Taboo by Tom Hardy there that fucking did a season about five years ago and it's been teasing season two ever since.

Now I'm going to have to rewatch the whole goddamn thing, because I can't remember anything.

That was for Game of Thrones, folks.

I remember starting some series of Game of Thrones and going, I've got no fucking idea how these people are, because they haven't appeared since the first series.

So you're like, they went off on some quest, and suddenly these people turn up and you're like, I can't fuck with these people, why are they doing that?

I had that last night watching Silo, we were watching Silo, there's a friend of mine's in it, and we watched the episode he was in, and then me and Mark, this point where I'm not slagging the show off, it's brilliant, don't get annoyed, Apple TV, but the point where the sheriff actually goes to like open a door and she hasn't got the key, so she gets her badge off, and she just jimmies it with the, and we're like, fuck it, I'm out.

That is so stupid, come on, that's really stupid, because that's how leavers in locks work, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I'm gonna be like fuck off.

Everything we were watching started with Apple TV Lego.

I was like, we've really been sucked in there.

We're really in.

Going back to Event TV, you reminded me of something I want to bring up, which I haven't thought about since we started this podcast.

I'm completely reminded of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush by Chris Evans.

Yes.

That was Event TV.

Flick them in the TV lights in the house, and then people will come and knock on the door and give them prizes, money, something like that.

Yeah, see, that's, for me, that's golden era of television.

Channel 4 from about 92 onwards.

The words, starting with the words, and then Home Improvement was on.

Roseanne was still on at that point.

The Girlie Show.

Girlie Show, and then TFI Friday started.

And Friends as well, and it was just like, you can sit and watch Channel 4 from six o'clock onwards.

And then, and it was like I grew up with that because.

I'll be there in a bit.

But I remember, I mean, I remember, I remember what like even when I started going out, drinking with friends, we'd watch TFI at six o'clock while we're getting ready and having pints and stuff before we go out.

And then we'd watch it again.

Oh, really?

At the half eleven again.

Oh, right.

I used to love it.

And I don't understand.

I mean, I used to get all my music, I think all my musical tastes are from TFI.

I swear I first saw Divine Comedy, everything I loved was like on there.

I saw Neil Hannan doing Frog Princess.

I was like, who the fuck is that guy?

This is awesome.

And they did one, I think they did one New Year's special five years ago or something like that.

And my wife turned to me, she's Canadian.

She wasn't here in the 90s for that stuff.

And she turned to me and went, this is absolutely brilliant.

Why is this not on every year?

And I was like, yeah, why isn't it on every year?

Why have I got to watch Craig David or Alicia Keys, Bore Me to Death or Jules?

I mean, Jules is all right, but come on, dude.

I don't need to hear Nigerian music at 11.59.

I want TFI.

I want a TFI, New Year's special every fucking year after Graham Norton.

That is because it's too unpredictable.

It's too uncontrollable, though.

Which they wouldn't be able to...

I mean, it's an annoying kind of trope and thing where people go, oh, you couldn't make that now.

You change it.

You don't even freak the week or anything like that.

I don't mean that kind of stuff.

I just mean the actual format.

I think they probably tried it, but it was a very specific capsule in time because that type of music lent itself to...

I don't even know who you'd have as a band on this now.

But at the time, it was just...

It's just one after the other.

I mean, I talk about this often.

For me, I mean, I liked a bit of Oasis, but I was a bit of a blur guy more because the songwriting was better.

For me, it's just like that mid-90s bit to the end, to 1999, I think it might be the best five years I've ever witnessed.

Oh, easily.

All of it.

I'm obsessed with the 90s.

I get very, very nostalgic about it all.

If I put on Pulp different class, I could get transported straight back into the absolute...

That's one thing I've done quite a lot of today, is watch clips of people that went to see Pulp.

The first informed gig the other night.

I've watched a lot of clips of people have taken from the phones and the crowd.

I was lucky enough to go and see them on that different class tour, at the time, I think it was 1997.

I used to go and see everything.

I remember going to see Blur in Southend at a secret gig, where Damon came on stage and went, OK, now we're going to play a new song.

We haven't played before.

It's called Song 2.

And I was like, fucking hell, this is rock, man.

This is the weird thing, because I had a job.

Everyone knows I worked in theatre and entertainment.

And it was only about four or five years ago, I was at that venue in Southend.

I didn't recognize the room I was in, and I'd been there for days.

I was mixing Darren's show, and I was in the circle looking down, and I went, hang on, is this where I saw Blur?

And it was.

I'd been there two days.

I had no fucking idea that's where it was, because at the time I just got in a mate's car and went to Southend and went in the room and left at midnight, you know.

So yeah, I do prefer The Last Century, if I'm honest with you.

This one's a bit shit.

Oh, God, yeah, fuck.

I'll just ask you this, Mark.

Have you been behind the curve on any TV, like the obvious ones, The Wire, The Sopranos, West Wing, something you didn't watch till about 20 years after?

Is there anything like that?

Yeah, I mean, none of those.

Because at that point, when The Wire and Sopranos, Breaking Bad, stuff like that, I was still pre-kits, so I had time to watch TV.

But now, I mean, now I am well behind at most stuff.

Like, there's very rare that they will watch stuff as it's going on.

Like, I've not seen Beyond's, I think, the second episode of the second series of Succession.

Beyond the Road, I mean, obviously, it's harder to do that.

Yeah, but it's gotten to, because...

But I think it's hard not to be, because there's an over-saturation with it, which is good.

Yeah.

But sometimes I feel...

It doesn't make me depressed, but it gives me quite a lot of stress by...

Because I feel like I'm missing out on something.

The fear of missing out.

There must be something that I've not seen yet, that I might never see, that I might enjoy more than anything.

Yeah.

But the lack of time and the sheer amount there is in this year, choice and quality, that most stuff is at, it would be impossible to...

No, you can't watch everything.

It's absolutely impossible.

But you can't read every good book that's ever been written.

You can't listen to every good album.

I can't even read the books I've got at home that are good books.

So it's...

But I think with TV, because people talk about it and people kind of calmed down now, but there was a period where people would tell you, oh, you have to see it.

You have, have you not seen that yet?

Oh my God, you've not seen that.

Yeah, but that's annoying, isn't it?

They'd almost, they'd be derogatory towards you, but you've not seen that, my God.

Like, as if you're a lesser person, you go, well, fucking shit to do.

No, I mean, you mentioned Game of Thrones.

I've seen episode one, and then I remember watching it and going, oh, this just doesn't seem like my bag.

But it doesn't mean it isn't, it just means at the time.

Like, when I watched the first episode of The Last of Us, I gave up on it, and then we watched it a bit later.

But there is stuff that I'm already like, almost like bagging for when I'm 70, do you know what I mean?

I like, I watch that when I'm 70.

Yeah, yeah.

When I'm fucking bored.

See, that's a beautiful, yes.

Yeah, I watch that then, because I watch Game of Thrones, and I'll get a tattoo, and I'll take cocaine, and when I'm 70, that's what I'm gonna do, because these are, and I'll eat a steak.

Fuck it, I'll eat a steak, I've said it.

Just coked off your head, watching the second episode of Game of Thrones.

In my mind, when I'm watching a lot of things, I do think, I'll watch this later, I'll enjoy it.

And if it's in the zeitgeist, if people are banging on at you, you must see this now, because this is all about now.

It's like, well, you know what?

I watched The West Wing 10 years out of date.

I watched The Wire in 2017, The Sopranos in 2017, 18, and it still held up, because it's good telly.

Of course, so if it's good telly, it will hold up in 15, 20 years, and I can get fucking around to it.

If it ain't, it'll be shit and dated, and I just won't watch it, all right?

I mean, I'm not going to watch Buffy, am I?

What's that one that went on forever?

Supernatural.

Supernatural, I've never seen an episode of that.

It was on every night when I was in Australia on a tour, and we'd go home, and it was like, it was Will and Grace and Supernatural, and that's all they showed, like three hours of each, and I was like, is there anything else on in Australia apart from these two fucking shows?

Because it didn't seem like that.

It's madness.

Anyway, you'll get around to it all, eventually.

You're a young man, you got a good, well, we've all got about 50, 60 years, haven't we?

God, that's depressing.

That's what.

Your lungs are giving up, you've got the 3D printer out.

Someone pops around, it's not even someone, it's a robot.

Everyone's dead apart from you, and you're sitting there watching Sopranos for like the eighth time, because you can't remember it.

Are you going to Edinburgh Fringe this year?

Yes.

You are?

Yeah.

Where are you at?

Monkey Barrel again.

Monkey Barrel?

Yeah, same room, same time, exactly.

What time are you on?

Five past seven.

Which is quite a nice time, because it gives people time to go home and get dressed and get a drink.

But you're not competing with the huge shows.

You're doing the whole four weeks or two weeks?

Doing a full run.

But what's nice about the Monkey Barrel is you can take as many days off as you...

I mean, you could literally do four days if you want me to.

So I've managed to take more days off than...

That means I don't need to do any of the shitty Mondays.

Just go on Mondays.

Go on Mondays.

OK, just for one episode only, we're going to take a little delve into politics, mostly Scottish, and discuss the Royal Family.

So there goes the knighthood, any cross-border escape, should the UK go wrong, and any sponsorship deal with Disney, all in one simple fucking episode.

Bye-bye to all that.

Whoops.

And do you remember that time when Nicola Sturgeon went on the tally?

It was after Brexit, and she went on TV, and she did this big speech about, like, if people were feeling like they needed somewhere to go to escape England.

Oh yeah.

And their families and progressives, and if you want somewhere to go, then come to Scotland.

And me and my wife saw it on TV in Budapest, and we both looked at each other and went, she's talking to us, you know?

She was talking to us.

Yeah, yeah.

And I liked her.

And we were like, we've got to go and live in Scotland.

We have to go and live in Scotland.

So like, getting to the point now where they're like cordoning off our house, it's a real fucking downer, do you know what I mean?

It's a real downer.

I don't know what to think about it.

Because as a Brit, I'm also half Irish, so I want a United Island and I do want Scotland to have its independence.

I'd be sad about the breakup of the UK, I guess, but we can still be close.

But I mean, just politically, it's a nightmare now, right?

Because what's gonna happen?

It is, but it's that kind of way that I don't think anyone, certainly not politicians, should ever be kind of deified in the way that Nicola Sturgeon was at one point.

Jeremy Corbyn style.

Corbyn was as well, yeah.

Regardless of what you think of them, they are still politicians.

And this idea that some people have that politicians genuinely give a shit about, they generally give a shit about normal people, they don't.

The entire reason for being a politician, it's self-serving, that's all it is.

Self-preservation, that's what it's about.

She's not a bad guy though, I can't see it.

She's not bad, but she's not...

It all adds to it.

She's not this incredible person that deeply, deeply cares about the electorate, because if she did, then her constituency wouldn't be one of the poorest in Scotland.

Do you know what I mean?

There's that kind of thing that you have to be able to see faults in politicians to make things better.

And a lot of people get fanatical about one side, because there are absolutely people that don't see anything that the Tories or Johnson did wrong in Covid.

People that will genuinely feel sorry for Boris Johnson.

They'll see it as a witch hunt and they'll see it as people coming after him now, because he's just a guy that did his best and all that's going to sit.

So the majority of people know that's utter fucking bullshit.

He couldn't have given a shit about what he was doing.

But at the same time, there will be people that will not hear a bad word said against Keir Starmer, people who won't hear a bad word said against Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon.

You see, I'm happy to hear a bad word against Keir Starmer.

I will be voting Labour down here, obviously.

This is a Labour area, so it's my best shot anyway.

And I know Keir Starmer's faults.

I am not holding him up to any kind of high regard.

And that's good.

That's what any report should be.

And that's also good.

I don't want pop star Tony Blair or Boris fucking Twan.

Absolutely not.

The country needs a dull as fuck party and Prime Minister for a good four year period.

Because that's what stability is.

When they always go on about this calamity that the Labour Party would have.

And I don't really support anyone now.

When they go on about this calamitous Labour Party that would be, you want that Labour Party.

You want a party where nobody really, nobody's exciting.

They said the same thing about Ed Miliband, redhead and all that shit.

Yeah, politicians should be dull.

Because they're so few.

There's not many JFKs.

There's not many Obamas.

JFKs are corrupt.

Corrupt as fuck.

Do you know what I mean?

And even like Obama, you can't go for fuck's sake.

The man killed a bunch of people.

The man killed more.

The man drone shriked more people than Bush ever did.

Nobody's perfect.

The fact is, if you are Prime Minister or President, you have to literally take the job that means you kill someone.

You are going to be a murderer.

That's just the way it is.

And they do, oh, Tony Blair is a murderer.

Yeah, he is.

But so is Gordon Brown.

So is every single one of them.

And I love Gordon Brown.

He was one of the top guys.

But you also have to take the job knowing that you don't really control much.

You're a tail being wagged here by the people that got you into power.

And if you want to stay there, and you've also managed to get into power by promising us shitloads.

Like the way any politician in every single party will have broken manifesto promises.

Because the public are much easier to lie to and break promises on.

The people that got you in there, and the people that the money paid for your campaign, you're not breaking any of the promises you made to them.

Because once that money disappears, you're gone.

I've never seen promises broken so quickly as like Rishi Sunak.

He's literally breaking one from last autumn.

I have one positive thing to say about him, and I'm sorry I have to say this because I don't believe I'm saying something positive about anyone.

But compared to Liz Truss and Boris, I do feel ever so slightly safer in the hands of someone that understands maths.

That's as much as I'll say.

That's as much as I'll say.

It's the only plus thing.

He's got a lot of money.

He knows what to do with it.

It's safe pair of hands till he gets chucked the fuck out.

With the SNP, I am slightly saddened because I feel like there was an opportunity lost.

It got so close.

And the referendum, there was obviously going to be another one.

And I feel now that it might be ruined.

Yeah, I think it probably is.

But it's their own doing.

They've got no one else to blame but themselves because they've had years of building up this almost, I don't want to say dictatorship, but this almost lack of transparency that there was because you couldn't question it.

And Westminster gets blamed for everything.

And for a good majority of time, it is Westminster's fault because it made such a mess of everything.

But it can't be blamed for everything.

But Scottish people do it quite a lot.

It would have been interesting if we had, because that was a massive supporter of independence, and it would have been interesting to see if we had got independence, how we'd have stood on our own two feet when we didn't have anyone else to blame.

It's really hard to read about the corruption and stuff.

It just makes me a bit sad.

But if Labour pick up some votes, then I'm happy, I guess.

What I've said about it is the most Scottish corruption story ever.

When you look at how other huge regimes have fallen, like Trump brought down by massive scandal, paying off a porn star, pissing on Russian prostitutes.

That all brought Trump down.

Other regimes have been brought down by military coups, and ours is a fucking caravan.

It's like Father Ted or something.

PowerFest.

Bye.

Just leave me, I guess, we can just do this, a little side swipe.

Was there a moment where you saw something on television that was political?

Let's say a political moment witnessed on television that maybe changed the way you felt about something?

Oh, that's an interesting question.

Let me think, when I was...

I mean, I remember New Labour coming to power, and I remember that being a big, big deal.

Things can only get better.

Yeah, and I remember the excitement around the country about that.

I remember the sheer joy in people when Thatcher was voted out.

I didn't really understand...

Turns out he was actually not that bad a guy.

Yeah, no, God, he's so...

Now he's a fucking legend.

Tony Blair's a bad guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's up to Tony.

I don't know, I think.

I don't know, can you have 9-11?

You can have 9-11, it's definitely a political play.

Because that was, like that changed the world overnight.

And it's never really been...

I think that, because Diana died four years just before that.

Yeah, she died on the end of August the 31st, 1997.

So those two were big, big, big moments on TV, especially because by that point Sky News and 24-hour Rolling News was just...

I remember watching 9-11 coverage for...

I mean, I've been 20 years old.

So watching that for days upon days upon days.

Yeah, I remember buying the Sunday newspaper a few days ago.

Was it a Friday, a Thursday?

Tuesday, oh, I think it was a Tuesday.

But I remember buying, for me, this is not a film podcast, but the night before I was in Sheffield and I went to the Odeon to see Moulin Rouge.

And I went home and I was like, oh, I feel great.

Oh, dancing around, you know, to Moulin Rouge.

Got up the next day.

The life is all right.

So I always assume, I always connect that movie with like the last great day, you know?

After that, it was like walking around Sheffield going, oh, I think we're all gonna die.

Yeah.

Who the fuck is this guy?

Yeah, he's hardly a know-what.

Who was that?

Came out of nowhere.

It was terrible.

It's terrible.

It's not nothing.

Is it too soon?

Yeah, I mean, that was a very big television event.

I had the space shuttle explosion myself.

Which was the one I remember.

First thing I remember on telly that was like that.

And yeah, there's been loads of subsequently, isn't there?

But 9-11's got to be at JFK, isn't it?

Oh yeah, definitely.

It's never gonna get.

No, I don't think there will ever be anything bigger than that.

Well, it feels like they're sort of warming us up for that information, don't you feel?

I don't believe it, but I don't not believe it.

I don't know what to fucking believe anymore, but anything.

Thanks for The fucking rolling coverage, and everything was off.

Luckily Liz Truss didn't have to do any work for nine of her 12 days, or whatever it was.

But there was nothing on that now.

24 hours a year, just royals.

And it's hard to master be for 24 hours.

I think Prince Andrew had managed.

Do you know what I actually thought when she died?

I was watching, I think, Politics Live or something, and then Lindsay Hoyle, is that his name?

Lindsay Hoyle came on and said something about the Queen, and we're gonna suspend what we're doing, because I thought, fuck, the kids are gonna be off again.

That's what I thought, because they're always off.

They're in a fucking strike, there's teacher training, there's COVID, they're never at school.

They're never in, they're never in.

Bank holiday for this, bank holiday for that, bank holiday for Charles.

Take in the piss, mate.

I don't wanna look after my own kids that much, do you know what I mean?

It's too much.

I will ask you one final question.

Is there anything you would like to plug, obviously, your tour?

Yeah, so my tour starts in November, but there's only like, I think there's four dates in Scotland in November, and then the majority of it starts next February.

And it's pretty much everywhere.

I think there's 25 dates in total.

I've had to say everywhere, there's 25 dates.

It's all in big places.

Yeah, it's all over the UK and Ireland.

You're in Ireland?

Yeah, in Ireland, yeah.

I'm in Cork in Dublin.

Ah, lovely.

I'm doing Belfast as well.

And yeah, so if you go into my...

I've got the link tree.

She's just Mark Nelson comic.

And if you go in there, and there's two specials on there that I recorded.

One just after the pandemic at the stand in Glasgow and one of my Edinburgh show last year.

And they're both completely free to watch.

And the French tickets are on there as well.

So everything's on there.

I might come and see you, actually, because I'm coming.

Tic-tacs and everything.

All right, Mark, thanks so much.

Thank you.

And thanks again to the Television Times Podcast.

Cheers.

What a weird recording, eh?

That was me and Mark Nelson, sitting in a beer garden at the Chillingham here in Newcastle upon Tyne, sitting out in a beer garden surrounded by music and drunk people and all kinds of malarkey.

Had a really good chat with him, went to see him live up in the room above that same night.

It's a fantastic show, really, really good.

If you're up in Edinburgh during the Fringe, be sure to see Mark, because he is an outstanding comedian and an absolutely brilliant performer.

And now to this week's outro song, We've Killed The Bees, a slightly prophetic song written in Scotland.

Probably the only reason it's attached to this podcast episode in the same way that Rob Walkins had a song that I wrote in Australia.

This podcast has got a song that I wrote in Scotland.

I used to sort of hang around under the stages of various theatres around the UK in my downtime.

And I remember finding this very old rickety sort of honky tonk piano in the basement of the Aberdeen His Majesty's Theatre, which is where I wrote this song, in one go.

It's got some great themes to it, and the lyrics sort of signify loneliness, hanging out in Amsterdam on my own, for instance.

Amsterdam was also mentioned in this pod, so it all kind of makes sense.

Nice full circle situation.

I love the recording.

It's quite spooky and weird, something about it.

If I re-recorded it, it just wouldn't sound the same.

So I hope you enjoy it.

We've killed the beast.

Peace.

And there we are, We've Killed the Bees.

I didn't mention it was actually recorded in Japan on a real piano.

No computers were used in that recording, just a hard disk recorder, so everything was just played into it and mastered later.

Okay, if you liked this episode of the pod, you're gonna like next week's as well.

So keep listening people and subscribe to the show.

Follow us wherever you get podcasts, and we'll see you again next week.

Stay tuned.