Paul Critoph: From Kinky Boots to The Krankies (In An Era of Nuclear Dread)

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, screen rats, watches of the screen, couch potatoes.

You join me here on a Sunday afternoon, as I get ready to drop this one on Tuesday.

This episode of Television Times features a fantastic actor called Paul Critoph.

Now, I first met Paul back in about 2009, working on a couple of pantos with him, three or four actually, and we've become friends, and I've kept in contact with him ever since then.

He's a really funny guy.

He's just got this thing.

I can't explain it.

I can't put my finger on it.

It's just everything he says in response to the questions on this pod just makes me laugh.

I don't know what it is, but when I was recording it, I was laughing.

When I was editing it, I was laughing.

And when I played it back, I was laughing.

And I found it hard to cut a lot of this.

Usually in the episodes, I trim them quite extensively.

There's a little bit of dark stuff in here now and again about when he works for the army, for instance, does these acting things.

And I just didn't want to cut it.

It's a longer one than normal.

But everything is, you know, as it should be.

I did have to trim some stuff about the royal family at the end, which is, I guess, something I can talk about just briefly on here.

So I do...

This is a subject.

People have asked me to sort of say more about myself, my own life, have a little chat with you, because you don't know who I am.

You're going to have to find that out slowly.

All you know is that I was a sound engineer and I have all these links to people in theater and entertainment, however tenuous.

Now, for me, I have always been an anti-monarchist.

I mean, I guess you'd call it that.

Republicans are a weird word to use over here, considering the connotations for America.

But I just don't think it has any place in the modern day.

Now, I'm happy to have conversations with people, and I'm not militant about it anymore.

But we do sort of touch on it on this episode, and I have left it in.

And it might be sound a little bit harsh, and I do wonder about future guests coming on.

Are they going to be like, oh, man, he said that thing, and, you know, I've got an MBE, what am I, I can't go on there?

But I'm not willing to edit myself that much to pretend that I don't think a certain thing in the chance of getting a guest that might have an opposite point of view in the future.

So I'm going to take those risks, yeah?

So I do have very strong views against Disney, very strong views against the royal family, very strong views against the Conservative Party and Republicans in America, but it doesn't mean I can't talk to people who have opposing views, because there's always common ground.

So I'll happily sit down with a royalist, a right-winger.

I'm fine with it, you know, as long as we can find common ground to talk about, and there always is something to find in those conversations that is useful.

But I don't feel like I should edit my own beliefs, you know, wandering into the future.

Like, in ten years' time, will that come back to bite me in the ass sort of thing?

So the royal conversation at the end of this has been edited slightly.

But I mean, we still say what we think, you know, and I've checked with Paul, you're okay to say that, and he said, absolutely.

So, you know, it is what it is.

I hope it doesn't affect things too much.

So if you're a massive royalist, don't worry.

We just say a couple of funny things.

It's not the end of the world, you know, just keep listening.

You'll find stuff you like.

We're not going to bang on about these things.

This isn't some kind of political and imomikist left-wing podcast about nonsense.

This is just a chat between various people.

In entertainment, we tend to be on that side of the fence, generally.

There are exceptions like Jeff Norcott and people.

But, you know, and I'll tell you something about him, okay?

I worked in Edinburgh in 2018 with Jeff Norcott's show, and a lot of people, I remember saying, you're going to go watch that?

And I can tell you, hands down, it was the funniest, most brilliant show I saw, the entire Fringe, and I'll say that out loud.

And, you know, that just proves it, right?

You know, and he's a conservative.

It was fucking hilarious.

And he was right about so many things, and it was spot on.

And I don't share his politics more on IOTA.

So, you know, there we are.

That's what this is about.

This is about honesty, truth, having a conversation with people and not over-editing yourself and worrying about the future too much.

Anyway, let's get on with it.

Here's our guest, Paul Critoph.

He's a really funny fucker.

He makes me giggle so much.

This is episode 10.

I said we weren't going to do numbers anymore, but this is episode 10, can you believe it, already, of Television Times Podcast.

I hope you like it.

What do you think you're doing, you knobhead?

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.

You'll never guess who I'm messaging right now.

It's really funny.

My guest list is weird.

You won't pull it out, you can't.

Think something really weird.

Somebody really weird, Harry Hill.

Tenuous, tenuous link.

No, trying to get on the pod.

My word.

That would be, yeah, very bizarre, I guess.

That would be a real coup, wouldn't it?

It would.

Anyway, how are you man?

I'm all right, I'm all right.

Still, you know, struggling on, still plugging away with the self-tapes.

That's the thing, self-tapes these days.

That's the new thing.

Yeah, if you can get in a room with someone, it's so much easier to sway them with what limited charm I have at my disposal.

Don't be silly Paul, you're very charmed.

But yeah, self-tapes, they can't redirect you.

They basically kind of put it on for a second, and that's that.

But I always get good feedback, but feedback don't pay the bills.

No, I know.

Well, we've started, I didn't realize we were starting, but there we are, we've started.

So Paul, what I say at the beginning of all of these things is I know you, obviously, having worked with you on, well, I consider Paul a friend these days, but I first met him in 2009, I want to say.

I directed that panto in Greenwich.

I was the sound engineer on the panto 2009, 10, 11 and 12 from my own, and you were in every single one of those, right?

I didn't imagine that.

Damn straight.

He was a fine, fine figure of a man on stage, being funny as fuck and doing lots of weird, like you and Andy doing those, how would I say it, those really complicated scenes where you were like hitting something, banging something, falling something, and I'd have to hit those cues.

Oh, God, yeah, the number of sound effects you had to hit.

I think they were insane at one point.

There might have been like one scene with like 60 in a row or something and I had to get it right.

And I honestly, I'm good.

And I did not get it right.

But it would give you gags.

I would give you gags when it were a bit of fuel to the fire.

I don't think it was even a computer in the first time.

I think there was this sort of like a drum machine to my left.

You'd program all the sound effects onto certain pads.

So I'd have to remember which pad to hit while mixing your voices and the singing and everything else.

It was quite something.

Very impressive.

Yeah.

I'm not saying it in that way.

No, I am.

It's more impressive that you were able to do all those things on stage to match it as well and catch up with me sometimes.

Absolutely.

Pretty much just mugging to the back of the room.

The Crystal Maze Master, the Crystal Maze live experience in London.

I do do that, I do do that.

Not as much as I did.

The real life Richard Ayoade.

Well, exactly, we're always up for the same roles.

It's uncanny just how much we resemble each other in many, many ways.

Yes, it's the matching call-drawer outfits.

Exactly, exactly.

I'm never out of mine.

I cry for the army, for money.

The army makes me cry for money.

Tell me that.

What's that?

Oh, it's role play.

I mean, it's pretty dark.

Go on, because I have a friend who does the medical versions.

He sort of does the videos where you have to pretend to give people like cancer diagnosis.

Yeah, the army version, we go out to an army base and it's called visiting officer training.

Now, visiting officers are the people who have to not break the news of soldiers' deaths, but guide a family who are grieving through the process.

They will be the second person from the army who a grieving family will deal with.

So, previously, someone will turn up on the door and say, we're very sorry to inform you that your son has been killed.

And then they go.

Then the visiting officer turns up.

And so these role plays, you have to basically pretend that your brother or son or somebody has been killed in action.

Jesus.

And make it as authentic as possible and just knock down your face for a day.

Where did you dig that shit up from?

While making squaddies feel incredibly uncomfortable, which, you know, live in the dreams, frankly.

I didn't know this about you.

I had no idea that you were in Dr Who.

Who did you play in Dr Who, and who was your doctor?

I played Charles II, Matt Smith was my doctor.

It was, let me see, it was the opening of his second season.

Yeah.

And it was brief, Steve.

Oh, it was brief, but important, I like to think.

It was like a fake out for the start of the season.

The episode's called The Impossible Astronaut.

You can probably look it up on iPlayer if you want to.

Yeah, it'll take maybe 45 seconds out of your day to see my full Dr Who oeuvre.

Basically, the doctor is cucking me with my wife.

That's implied, he's hiding under her skirts.

And I'm striding through a palace and I shout, and I'm gonna pop the mic now.

Doctor, doctor!

Doctor, doctor!

Warned Yogg, just lean back.

Doctor, where's the doctor?

Exactly like that.

And the wife says, oh, Dr Who.

Everyone laughs.

You're joking.

It's a hilarious gag.

She says, doctor who.

That's like school.

They did.

And then there's a little sneeze that comes from under her skirts.

And with my sword, I lift up the skirts and Matt Smith's head pops out and he says something along the lines of, it's not what it looks like.

And then it cuts away to something else.

A lot more interesting than me.

I'm not sure why that reminds me, but it reminds me immediately.

Do you know R.

Kelly's in the closet or whatever it was called?

Do you remember that where?

I'm trapped in the closet.

And Bridget, Bridget.

And Bridget's hiding the midget in the kitchen.

Yes.

And it was a midget, midget, midget.

It turns out not the most questionable thing that R.

Kelly got up to.

No, I mean, that wasn't television.

Was that television?

I don't know what that was.

YouTube, it was a YouTube release.

Like one of the early YouTube things, like 20 parts or something.

Might have been genius.

I'm not massively sure.

I mean, you know, the story needed to be told and it took that many episodes, clearly.

I mean, anyone with a brother called Tron has got a story to tell.

Is his brother actually called Tron?

He was called Tron.

Yeah, it was actually called Tron.

It's like they really, they just pulled these names out.

It was like sort of, I don't know, from the Stephen Toast's list of like how to make, you know, comedy names.

Like, what do they do?

It's a name and then a thing, right?

So like Tony Avocado or, is that how you make stupid names?

Do you know?

I mean, that was certainly a stupid name, Tony Avocado.

Tony Avocado is a good one.

And the other thing, see, this is a weird one.

We never talked about this before.

Were you in Kinky Boots?

The film?

I was in Kinky Boots.

Yeah, the original before the musical and everything.

The original?

Chiwetel Ejiofor, yeah.

I actually went to his leaving, I met him.

I've had dinner with him back in the day, like 2001.

I went, I was on, was I working on A Woman in Black in the West End.

And the guy who was playing the younger lead in that show, his friend was Andrew Lincoln, you know, who from teachers who went on to be, you know, massive in America with that.

Walking Dead and such.

And he was in a play called Blue, was it called Blue Orange?

Something like that, something orange.

And it was him, Chiwetel, and him.

The name you are looking for is Bill Nye.

Anyway, and the three of them were in this play.

And he left to go to Hollywood essentially.

And I went to his leaving dinner and it was like, oh, he's going to be really big in America.

And everyone, he's really, really like, you know, humble about it.

No, I don't think so.

And my friend, whose friend was Andrew Lincoln, he was going out with Sally Hawkins at the time.

And she got an audition for a Woody Allen movie and off she went.

And then it just became like these mega famous stars.

You know, this was just like people we used to go to the pub with every night.

And so like, that's my link to your co-star, Kinky Boots.

Yeah, I mean, he was very nice.

Lovely guy, total gent.

I chased him down an alleyway and that was my role in that.

I was, I believe, lad one in Kinky Boots.

Lad one, it does say that.

Lad one, yeah.

Very unflattering names of your characters in certain things.

I must admit, like, I found another one here.

I did watch it.

I watched it today because it was very short.

A little place off the Edgeware Road.

Your character is called Cinema Large Man.

Yeah.

Would you know, it's catchy.

I'd tell him to fuck up.

The name's Large Man, Cinema Large Man, Care of Spotlight, lovely.

Did you not have a word afterwards to go, hang on a minute, this is very offensive.

They could have called him something else, like Simon.

What's wrong with Simon?

They could have called him Tony Avocado, they could have called him anything.

And in Phone Shop, thinking of Tony's, I was Tony the Toucher.

That was the name of my character.

No, no, Tony the Toucher.

That was nice.

And it was what it sounded like, was it?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Oh, very much so.

He tried to touch the lads up.

Touch the lads up while they were fiddling with the knockers.

It was a training.

The episode was called, I believe, It's Training Men.

And again, kind of a cameo, at the end of the episode, they're talking about how they're frightened of going to training, staff training, because Tony the Toucher's on.

But then they hear he's been in a car accident, so he can't be there.

And an attractive woman comes in, hilarity ensues.

And then at the end of the episode, Tony the Toucher turns up.

And I think I did him as a kind of camp northerner.

I think it was.

It was.

Is it allowed anymore?

Probably.

When my kid came home and he said, Dada, do you know the song Mr.

Bumbastic?

And he started singing it, like full on.

And I was like, no, no, no, we can't do that, anyone.

This is not okay.

Pull up.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

So Paul, you have a rating system that always makes me giggle, and you do have fantastic reviews of movies.

I mean, it's better than reading Empire.

Does Empire still exist?

It does, I believe.

You're always kind of right.

So I sort of, I usually like a rock star myself.

So it will be interesting to use.

Can you explain your system?

My system, it's in depth based on various sliding scales, of course, but at the end of the day, it comes down to Paul's out of Critoph, because my name is Paul Critoph.

So it's very technical.

It's very technical.

What's the top numbers?

Oh, 10.

10, it's a 10 system.

It's quite a unique system, I like to think.

Yeah, yeah.

One to 10, one to 10.

One to 10.

So we're gonna jump in and do some, some podding.

Let's do some podding.

Yeah, pod me up, baby.

I wonder which one we'll go for first.

I think I'm gonna go with the sexy one first.

Let's do the sexy one first.

So when you were young, it could be a children's TV show, could be something you shouldn't have seen.

Do you remember the first time you felt any kind of attraction to somebody on the screen or a character on the screen that gave you that kind of fuzzy feeling inside, in your loins?

Well, well, Steve, I do.

And to be honest, I couldn't remember what the name of the TV show was, so I had to do a bit of research on the old internet.

And I can tell you with some authority, the first time I felt a minor juvenile stirring in my loins, must have been around the age of five or six, watching.

Yeah, but, I mean, I don't remember.

There wasn't any kind of tingling in the old genitalia, nothing like that.

Sometimes it's just a face that you're attracted to.

Something on the screen that I just thought, oh, well, she's nice, isn't she?

Exactly.

And it was in a cartoon, which I have looked up, was called Biscuits and is about tiny medieval puppies.

That was a solid round for you.

Yeah, yeah.

Basically, and I looked it up, it ran for one season and one season only.

It was made in 1983, but because, you know, in the 80s, I think they just repeated what they had.

Oh, and the 70s, everything.

It wasn't the backlog of telly, so they had to keep playing the same things, yeah.

And yeah, there was a little puppy, and I just have flashes of memory of this.

She wore a kind of pink, not dress, because their tails and legs were out the whole time.

Very sexy.

And she had one of those kind of conical princess hats, also in pink.

And I just remember watching it as a child and just thinking, oh, she seems nice.

Doesn't she?

She seems nice.

Looking at it now, because it is on YouTube, Biscuits with a K, I think it is.

It's Biscuits.

She ain't all that, Steve.

She ain't all that.

She really isn't.

She's kind of got a strange, boss-eyed squint.

They didn't spend a lot of time animating it.

Right.

It doesn't do much for me these days.

But yeah, I don't know what it was about it.

Oh, there is another one as well, also a cartoon.

Do you remember, and it might have been a bit after your time, but I'm sure you do.

It was in the cultural zeitgeist, She-Ra Princess of Power.

Of course.

Yeah, I used to babysit my younger cousin, and he would watch that around the same time as He-Man, right?

It would have been around that time.

Yeah, yeah.

I think just a bit after because it was a spin-off.

So it's ThunderCats, He-Man.

But there was a specific, oh, and Chitara.

Lots of people like Chitara in ThunderCats.

Not for me, not for me.

I just need to shout at my cat, Dumpling.

Dumpling, you prick, get down.

Mm-hmm.

You mentioned ThunderCats and then you shout at a cat.

That's great.

Yeah, my cat is an idiot.

He's not supposed to go behind the television.

Bear with me.

I've just got to, I mean, leave the mic running, of course.

Yeah, yeah, he's probably chewing on HDMI 2 this week.

I mean, I don't even know how to get him out from up here.

You prick, come on.

Oh, you are a naughty boy, aren't you?

Very naughty boy.

He's passive.

He's passive.

He does have claws, but he never uses them, because I'm his father, you see.

Yes.

And he knows not to hurt daddy.

I remember the sequence when She-Ra turned from, I don't remember what her name was, Princess Jane, maybe.

I don't know, probably not that.

When she transformed into She-Ra, there was a kind of swirling mist that kind of enveloped her and tornado ground her.

And there was a split second as it went past her crotch height, where it looked a bit like you could see her knickers.

And that, that was very hot to young Paul.

Very hot indeed.

And you...

I mean, and I feel I should reiterate, I'm not into hentai or anything like that.

I mean, you do spend quite a lot of time in Asia, but it's unrelated at this point.

Yeah, completely unrelated.

I was just slipping that in there.

Speaking of the Bill, the Bill, I think, was one of my first jobs out of drama school.

It's another thing that I'm not sure would fly these days.

Who were you in?

Tachi McFeely?

What was your name in this one?

Um, I can't remember the name of the character.

It's something incredibly dull, Derek Barnes, or I don't know.

But he was a chap who was suffering from various mental disabilities.

And his story line was he had run away from home, where he was looked after by his sister, and he had stolen a pig from a city farm.

I'm not laughing.

And line-wise, no lines as such, but there was a lot of grunting.

It was odd.

And there was a bit, they had me in this kind of disused basement, and they just gave me a lot of knackered old plastic toys.

And they said, just improvise, just have a little play with them.

And I was just there in the corner, whilst, it doesn't hold up, Steve.

It doesn't hold up.

But I remember giving the director at the time some bullshit kind of justification for the choices I had made, because I'd done kind of various theater and education tours in such a drama school, and I'd been to various schools for people with various issues.

And I had genuinely tried to come at it in a progressive way of actually trying to embody some of these conditions.

I'm not sure how well that came across.

And this was how long ago?

This must have been 2002.

2002, that was.

2002 is officially back in the day.

Oh, I do have one more childhood.

Oh, please.

Have we got a human coming?

A natural...

Well, this is a lady, a human lady.

She still graces our screens to an extent.

Michaela Strachan.

I know the Michaela Strachan vibe, because my best friend when I was a kid was mad on Michaela Strachan.

She did the animal shows and...

She did the really wild show.

The really wild show, yeah.

With Chris Packham, possibly, and Terry Nutkins, of course.

Terry Nutkins.

Hey, Nutkins, leave those otters alone.

I mean, it was not an attractive television.

It was a big brown thing.

In my memory, it was just covered in dust.

Probably wasn't, it was just the early 80s.

I mean, I remember our first VHS machine was pretty clunky.

Top-loader?

No, it wasn't.

I had to really think about it.

Front-loading, straight to the top.

But it did have, it had a button that you pressed, and a kind of little ledge opened 45 degrees.

And then you could remove a remote by pressing another button in it.

And this kind of really long thin thing, like, clicked out.

Oh, right, yeah.

They loved doing things like that.

I remember someone had a laser disc like that.

They had a, I guess it was probably some fancy Bang & Olufsen type thing.

Not that, because it was a laser disc, but they had the controls on it, but you could also click it out and then walk across the room and control it.

And they were like, oh my God, look how fancy I am with my laser disc.

A film that you have to turn over halfway.

Living in the future.

I've come from the future to tell you what it's come to be like.

It's going to be lots of gardening, lots of cooking, lots of people changing their clothes and houses and their life and an awful lot of home videos.

Chopped up small.

So Paul, was there a TV show that you saw as a child that scared the living daylights out of you?

There is, as it goes.

Now, I was a child.

I don't think I was a young child, maybe 10 or 11.

Do you remember a show, it was a mini-series and it was called Chimera.

Chimera.

I do not.

I think it was on Channel 4.

Only three episodes.

It was based around, I think, a research facility in the Lake District.

The first episode, you weren't really sure what was going on, but you knew that there were experiments being conducted to someone called Chad.

And then Chad got out and Chad was some kind of enhanced chimp-human hybrid that basically slaughtered everyone there and then fled into the countryside.

And it was absolutely horrific.

There were, I think, in perhaps the second episode, two children were brought into it who lived on the windswept hills up in Lancashire.

And they had an imaginary friend called Mr.

Scarecrow.

And these kids were creeping in themselves.

I remember the boy just had one of those kind of voices that you don't really hear from children anymore.

It just kind of sounded a bit like that.

And this Chad.

Yeah, I'm looking at him right now.

The chimera of the title.

Look at that thing.

Look at the face.

Idiots.

I'm not sure whether to recommend looking this up or not.

I mean, it's actually pretty horrific.

Oh, there it is.

That takes me back.

I know.

Does it still scare you?

It does.

It does.

These things never leave.

They never leave.

I mean, that looks a little bit Planet of the Apes, a little bit Chucky.

Yeah.

And a little bit like, do you remember the old Time Machine?

Yes, I love that.

The Moorlocks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Moorlocks.

Looks a bit like those.

It's got some kind of really creepy sort of round mouth that looks like it's kind of, I don't know, like bitten a bottle off or something.

It's horrible.

Yeah, it's kind of protruding out.

It has a kind of strange, aggressive pout.

Yeah, it's disgusting.

And that was a Channel 4 thing, eh?

My gosh.

I think it was Channel 4.

Yeah, this beast stole the clothes from the Scarecrow.

And I just remember the children, maybe at the end of the episode, going into a barn and just seeing the back of this thing there and just the little boy with the weird voice just going, Mr Scarecrow.

And then it just starting to turn around.

And my God, I shut my young pants.

God, awful, awful stuff.

This wasn't a...

I'm getting this wrong.

This was not a children's show.

You shouldn't have been watching this thing, clearly.

Clearly not.

How were you watching it?

To be honest, my parents, they weren't strict.

When it came to violence and adult themes, it was kind of anything goes.

Certainly when it came to films, we were in the 80s, big proponents of Robocop and any Arnie film.

Robocop is fantastic, obviously.

It's a great film, but it's so violent.

So violent.

I think it has one of the highest...

Apart from Die Hard 3, it only has it because whichever one the plane blows up in has the biggest body count of any movie.

I think the second one is Robocop, which is more realistic because it just goes around...

They're just killing everyone.

Yeah, I mean, Murphy has his arm exploded with a shotgun, like in the first 20 minutes, and yeah.

The guy gets dunked in acid.

Did you see that on TV?

No, video.

That fits into this because Television Times, by the way, does cover films watched at home in the 80s and 90s because that's how we watch films quite a lot.

So it's still on the television, not on the cinema screen.

Come on.

I remember one time we were being babysat, my brother and I, by a lovely neighbor of ours.

I won't say her surname in case, you know, everyone looks her up to find out.

We'll beep over that.

And she was an amateur painter, not a terribly gifted one, if I'm being perfectly frank.

She wanted to paint my brother and me whilst we watched a film.

So she took us to the video shop, and we got The Running Man, which, are you a fan of The Running Man?

I know The Running Man, and I talk about it often because I think we're about 15, 20 years away from it actually being on Channel 4.

Pretty much.

Pretty much.

Prisoners or not prisoners?

Yeah, they are criminals who are put to this game show to basically be killed for entertainment.

I mean, if you filmed what Russia's doing with their prisoners and turned that into a TV show, you'd literally have The Running Man.

Pretty similar.

Get them all out of jail, send them with no training, give them a gun, send them to Ukraine.

Just film that, and you've got The Running Man, essentially.

It probably wouldn't be as filled with hilarious puns as The Running Man is, though.

He had to split.

And other classics.

He's done some TV show on Arnie called...

Arnie?

Foo Bar or Foo Boo or something, something like that.

I don't...

Some huge multi...

Oh, yeah.

On Netflix.

Is it a TV show?

I thought it was a film.

A CI operative on the verge of retirement discovers a family secret and is forced to go back into the field for one last job.

Oh, Netflix.

Classic.

Where did you find such an original idea?

I can't see what it is, what is it?

That's Watership Down.

Watership Down.

I remember that being on television.

Yeah, that's the only time.

Yeah, I loved it as a kid.

We taped it off the TV one Christmas.

It was event television, wasn't it?

It was like you had to be home to watch it, and it was a big deal, and you'd get home to watch.

And I actually remember, before Watership Down came on, on our VHS recording, we captured maybe five minutes of whatever was on beforehand.

And I think we'd still have the tape somewhere.

It was The Krankies Electronic Comic, which was The Krankies, of course.

And they did a wonderful routine.

They were all dressed as Mexicans.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, it was wonderful.

They were doing a routine.

And Paul Cranky, is it?

The elder Cranky?

The gentleman.

The husband.

Not young Jimmy Cranky.

The husband.

The husband who's married to the small boy.

Yep.

It's not a small boy.

He said to Jimmy Cranky, Oh, Jimmy, you look like a wally with your hat hanging over your head.

Do you think that I look like a bandit?

And Jimmy said, You look more like a cat instead.

And everyone laughed.

And then they did a routine.

They put lots of sombreros on.

Yeah.

And everyone laughed.

Fell about, they did.

And that was prime time.

Prime time.

I literally thought when you said there was going to be room at the end of the tape, it was for something else.

I thought you were going to accidentally like stumble upon, I don't know, like fucking The Day After or one of those nuclear films, some horrible imagery that you shouldn't be seeing as a child.

Did you ever see any of those?

God.

Yeah.

Well, the one that really got me was When the Wind Blows.

Do you remember that?

Yeah, Bowie did the song for that.

Yeah.

And Raymond Briggs, I think.

Horrid.

Sweet Jesus.

Because obviously I'd seen The Snowman.

So I was like, well, this is the same art style.

Great.

This will be fun.

Popcorn, hunker down.

Yeah, it wasn't.

It wasn't fun at all.

This poor elderly couple slowly dying from radiation poisoning, you know, in the nuclear winter.

Great.

Fantastic.

I just remember their teeth falling out and her like crying because there's a rat in the toilet and her going, I'm too young for this.

I have not seen it since.

I haven't seen this.

I saw it at the time and I can't watch any of that.

I can barely watch the scene in Terminator 2 at the playground.

Just all of that.

I honestly have, I've had nightmares my whole life about nuclear war because of growing up in that era.

Likewise.

I remember, I talk about dreams, it's boring to talk about dreams, but I remember having a dream so vivid about seven or eight years ago where I sort of saw the heat come towards me and I died like a fly dies on one of those lights that they go and melt on, like a big red light.

And I just felt myself, and I felt myself sort of fry and make the noise and I just woke up and I was like, fucking hell, I'm still having them now.

I mean, they don't leave.

Cold War dreams do not leave.

Yeah, they really don't.

Strangely enough, I'm not sure if we have discussed this just in our own personal lives in the past.

Yeah, my teen years were spent fretting about nuclear extinction on a regular basis.

And I also, I would have dreams that didn't start off as being about an apocalypse.

But halfway through, I would just see a wave of fire on the distance getting closer and closer until it blasted me.

And yeah, like that scene in Terminator 2 where she's against the fence and all of her flesh is blasted off.

And it just seemed like a possibility at any moment that it could happen.

It did feel like that with the three-minute warning and films like War Games and television shows.

It was just a theme that you...

I mean, I remember there were two moments for me.

It's a television reference, actually.

I was about 10, and there was a show on called Nationwide, I think.

It was like a news TV show around 6 o'clock.

And they showed this sort of...

I mean, it must have been very crude now.

It's not like how the Koreans do it in the news.

But they showed some kind of graphic that showed that London could flood.

They were proposing to build the barrier to stop it.

And I, you know, I was, what, 8, 9, 10, whatever.

I had no idea that was a possibility that London could flood.

So I spent weeks thinking I was going to wake up in the water and drown in my bedroom or whatever.

And then on top of that, they were talking about this 3-minute warning thing that we would...

or 4-minute, I don't know which one it was, about how we would get this warning system was in place, that we would have 3 or 4 minutes to live if we were under attack from Russian nuclear missiles.

Which, it turns out, are probably fucking empty.

I mean, they were never there in the first place.

But anyway, that's us, neither here nor there.

But I've been worried about Russia my entire life.

I know it's not political, but...

or any country really, America and Russia going at it, us getting caught in the middle, and the fallout.

I mean, it was just all I thought about as well.

But a little earlier, maybe 12, 13, and I thought about it all the time.

And I was convinced that that was like a given that that's how we were all gonna die.

We weren't sure when.

I wasn't gonna die of cancer, age 70 or whatever.

I was going to die in a nuclear annihilation.

And we all were.

It was just when.

I mean, maybe cancer from the fallout, you know, five, 10 years after the Big Bang.

Well, I never wanted to survive either.

I mean, I always thought, even when I was younger, I was like, well, I don't want to live in that.

Like, we have all these TV shows now about, you know, a race of humans that survived the apocalypse or whatever.

It's like he looks...

Maybe even then, things like Mad Max were still there, dripping what it was going to be like afterwards, and it didn't look great.

No, there's so many TV shows now set in some kind of future where everyone doesn't know what happened in the past, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's all a little bit done, really.

Well, at least now, we know that the end of humanity will come at the hand of AI instead.

So that's good.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, Terminator is still correct.

We are still going to get exterminated by the robots.

I mean, can we not just turn it off?

Is that too stupid?

Oh, no.

No, well, it makes cheating at your homework a little bit easier, doesn't it?

So, it's fine.

I mean, the news story yesterday, this will be old by the time this comes out.

This will come out in July.

There was a story yesterday, which I think has already been savaged as not true, but it came out yesterday and it said something about the US military used AI to operate a drone.

And the first thing that the AI did was take over all commands of the drone, change its plan and kill its operator.

It didn't happen in real life, but that was the test.

It was like, fucking hell.

Stop putting guns on robot dogs and giving AI access to drones, please.

I used to be excited every time there was a video of a new Boston Dynamics robot hopping about.

But these days, I just think, stop, please just slow down.

So let's move on from all this pressing, going to die.

Let's talk about the grave some more, eh?

Let's think about the grave.

So, I mean, linked to it a little bit, I mean, it sounds like your parents were quite, well, it doesn't sound like they were very strict about what you saw.

Were there TV shows that you were exposed to that you think, I shouldn't really have known about that, I shouldn't really have seen that?

Doesn't have to be sexy or crime or?

Yeah, how about, well, Twin Peaks, I think was probably a big one, because I must have been 10 years old, I think, when Twin Peaks came out, something like that.

I think it was probably-

Yeah, I think they had a 30-something.

And there was a lot of hype before Twin Peaks was released.

My brother was interested in it, my brother's a couple of years older than me.

And he had asked if he could watch it with my parents, they said yes.

And I think just because they didn't want to leave me out, I was allowed to watch it as well.

And I loved it, I absolutely loved it.

But content wise, there is a lot in there that perhaps looking back on it is not suitable for a 10 year old.

No, and you wouldn't have got a lot of it, I would imagine.

Yeah, you wouldn't have got a lot of the subtext and the whole thing.

Oh no, certainly not.

Perhaps thinking about it, I watched quite a lot of Dennis Potter dramas when I was a kid.

All right.

I mean, things like, I guess Penny's From Heaven, Singing Detective, it wasn't it?

And there was the one with Ewan McGregor in.

Oh yeah, I do know that.

Lipstick on Your Collar, I think it was.

Yes.

And also Blue Remembered Hills.

It was a drama, it was a one-off drama.

I don't think it was, but it was filmed for television.

There were, I think Michael Elphick.

Michael Elphick, I know Michael Elphick.

I believe so, I think he was in it.

Helen Mirren was in it.

But they were all playing children, children in Gloucestershire, in the past at some, I think maybe Second World War.

And they were all playing kids and it ended up with them burning alive their friend Donald, who they bullied and called Donald Duck.

And they burned him alive in a barn, the way that kids do.

Yeah, I think that was quite traumatic.

But I must have been allowed to watch it because I remember watching it.

And Dennis Potter was slightly different because there was a sexual element to it, which I didn't really get at the time.

Yeah, it goes over kids' heads, doesn't it?

I'm finding that with my son, like I can watch things.

I don't like the violence or the gore or the scary, a little bit of innuendo, a little bit of stuff about sex that he doesn't know.

It just goes over his head.

He can watch Taskmaster and not know what the hell they're talking about when they bring up dildos or whatever.

We do watch it with him because I just don't care about that bit.

Taskmaster's excellent.

It's excellent.

It's good for him.

And he feels like he's getting something his friends don't.

And we're in that whole world anyway.

We want him to be around that.

He'll hear cock and balls or something.

Sexual stuff is fine, right?

You're going to find out about it anyway.

And if you don't know, it just goes over your head.

Yeah, I mean, I suppose thinking about Dennis Potter and the kind of sexual stuff there is, I don't remember if it was...

Was it Pennies From Heaven, where it's either Michael Gambon or Albert Finney, one of those kind of the chaps who's lying in bed covered with sores and...

Is it Singing Detective?

I think it might be.

And he's having a bed bath from the nurse, and he ends up getting overexcited and...

Oh, right.

I mean, how to put it in a pod-friendly way?

He empties his pods.

There we go.

He empties his pods.

That's actually in there, is it?

Yeah, that's in there.

And how do they show that happening?

I think they probably had her doing whatever she's doing, and then they're like, oh, and him apologizing.

And so you never actually saw a big ward of staff.

She's like mopping up the wallpaper post.

Yes, exactly.

Jesus.

Disgusting.

But yeah, somehow, there I was as a youngster, wrapping that up, I mean, not lapping that up.

I mean, there's one for me that you've just reminded me of, which I used to watch when I was in my mind.

It must have been when I was off sick from school, there's something called Crown Court.

And it was just like, I think, I might be wrong, but I think it was like based on real cases at a magistrate's court.

And it was a half hour drama, and it was on around, I was gonna say like, after the news at one o'clock, maybe half one, some of that.

And I used to love watching Crown Court.

And I remember saying to my nan, like, I want to watch Crown Court.

It would have been like 10 or 11.

I wonder what I want to watch that for.

It was like just boring, you know, I put it to you, sir, overruled.

And I bet it had everyone in it.

I bet if you look now, every actor that you've ever heard of would have been in Crown Court, because it would have been that late 70s, early 80s time where it would have been the bill of its time, I think.

I loved that show.

Had nothing in it for me.

Nothing.

So for you, I was going to ask, is there a specific TV performance that influenced your acting style, your comedic acting style?

Oh, bloody hell.

I mean, there is clearly one that people always say.

What's that?

Whenever I do kind of a relatively posh, abrasive character, it's always, and I've had this since I was a child, it's like, oh, bit like Stephen Fry.

Isn't he a bit like Stephen Fry?

And I mean, there is an element to that, because I was a huge fan of Blackadder growing up, and Lord Melchit was a huge influence, I suppose.

It's very easy to do a Stephen Fry for me.

And it's something that I really kind of tried to rail against when I started becoming an actor professionally, and distinctly try to distance myself from that kind of thing, try and resurrect whatever remained of a Midlands accent, because I grew up in the Midlands.

But there wasn't much there anyway.

Both of my parents are from London.

So yeah, Stephen Fry, I would imagine, in the Blackadders had quite an impact on me.

So where did you grow up, Paul?

I might not actually know that.

I grew up, well, it's a bone of contention.

I would say I grew up in Coventry.

That's where I went to school.

I grew up in the outskirts of Coventry.

My wife gets annoyed when I say I grew up in Coventry because it is a shithole.

Apologies to anyone who's living in Coventry because you live in Coventry.

It ain't great.

Yeah, it is not, but my parents still are there.

But yeah, I went to school in Coventry, but I went to Youth Theatre in Kenilworth and Warwick and stuff.

So I had kind of a Warwickshire countryside bringing in my, in my spare time, and then I went to the big smoke of Cov to hate my life at school.

Coventry is, it's a weird one because, yeah, I mean, I first went there in 2000.

I'll be honest with you.

The only memory I have is of buying Kid A from like HMV or Virgin and thinking why is this town so strange in the, it's got like a essentially a central part with a ring road around the middle, like almost like a giant estate shops, like what you'd have in an estate in South London or something.

And then around it, obviously very nice areas actually, like quite nice, what's that area?

I can't remember anyway, but lovely brick houses.

Elstin's nice.

Elstin's nice.

I always stayed in Elstin.

That's correct.

It was Elstin.

Lots of Lebanese restaurants and things like that.

Very, very nice.

And then I went back there in 2015 with my first born son and wife.

And we started a show there at the Belgrade.

And I sort of was apologizing for it.

Like, oh, sorry Coventry.

She loved it because of all the museums, all the stuff that they had for kids to do.

It was actually pretty decent.

Oh really?

And they had a really, really good time.

And she only remembers it fondly.

How strange.

I remember going in the museum and seeing, and they had like the bikes from Long Way Round in one of the museums.

Oh really?

You and McGregor and Charlie Borman.

Oh yeah.

Coventry Motor Museum, I suppose.

Yes, that's what I probably want to walk through.

All the history of car making, yeah.

I think it might get a bad rap.

I mean, yes, the central shopping area is, I mean, it's shocking really.

It's just shocking.

I know it's not its fault.

Well, I mean, it's the town planners of the 50s and 60s, I suppose, who rebuilt using concrete blocks after the war.

There's a lot of towns like that.

And I mean, it inspired the specials to Right Goes Town.

Yes, a great song.

So that's something.

Some of the things I've done, like working in theater and stuff that I've really enjoyed is, I remember playing Ghost Town really loud at a sound check in Coventry, and that felt good.

I remember playing Bill Hicks live at the Oxford Playhouse in the Oxford Playhouse between shows and listening to it as if he was there.

I've had these lovely experiences like that, that I really get a little kick out of, do you know what I mean?

So yeah, I think Coventry's all right.

Wouldn't want to live there, but it's okay.

And when I used to go on tour, we stay somewhere completely.

Wolverhampton, I think we stayed last time, which was a shocker.

It's like, why are we staying there?

To enjoy the accents, I would imagine.

I think it sounds like what you did was exactly what I did in Ireland, which was just learn it for fun, but not actually implement it into my own speech.

Yeah, of course, I'm Irish now.

I don't know if you know that.

Yes, we are Irish passport twins.

We are indeed.

So if it all goes wrong for everyone else, we'll, well, you know, good luck guys.

We're out of here.

Damn straight.

Well, not my favorite moment of television.

The Queen's Funeral.

No.

I had, I've never been on the Daily Express website or whatever paper it was that did the letters.

It was them, or Daily Star, sorry.

Never been on the Daily Star's website.

But I was watching politics live when I got wind that Trust would be resigning.

So I had one computer, I had two computers.

Yes, I've got two computers.

One is really old, okay?

I've got the old computer on the Daily Star.

I've got the new computer on Daily Politics.

And I'm watching it.

And the minute that she resigns, she brings out that 23,000 pounds fucking lectern with the twisted wood.

I look over there and the lettuce just suddenly, a glitter ball comes down and a party thing goes off in the booth.

Like you hear them, and then there's some confetti, some confetti launches over the top of the lettuce.

And it was just, I have to say, it might have been one of my favorite television moments of the year.

Because it was just so funny.

I mean, not funny because it destroyed people's livelihoods and wiped billions off of the markets and made everyone's mortgages dearer.

But I mean, they bought that fucking stupid plinth out and everyone went, what the fuck is that?

And she went, I'm now in charge.

And everyone, are you though?

Wooden spoon goes back in.

Nine days later or whatever it is, she comes back out, 23,000 pound lecterns back out.

Everyone's going, what's happening now?

And she goes, I resigned.

I mean, I'll never forget where I was for that.

I mean, people will forget that she was ever promised or I won't.

And now for our almost weekly dose of Are You On TikTok?

You don't go on TikTok, do you?

I don't go on TikTok.

I mean, although I am very young, I haven't embraced the old TikTok.

It feels like the death of humanity as much as anything.

And also the, I'm sure you're fully aware that how TikTok in China is vastly different from TikTok in the West.

Yes, they have restrictions on their own people.

That we don't have on our own.

Because they know it's fucking bad.

Yeah, and it's more of kind of an educational thing in many ways for the betterment of people as opposed to yikes what we have here.

And I think the biggest problems with TikTok is that it has convinced jocks, excuse the American vernacular, that they are funny.

It is full of sporty lads doing skits and pulling pranks with not a comedic bone in their body.

No.

And yet presumably because they're aesthetically pleasing hunks, they get likes and follows and...

But also on YouTube, this happens on YouTube.

My son follows, it's heavily, heavily restricted, but I do let him look at real YouTube on occasion and he goes to like all those people, all those big YouTubers that...

It's exactly that and it's all about, you know, if you hold on to this, hold your hand on to this car, this Tesla, the last person to win it gets a million dollars.

And it's all about money and like fucking wealth and like abundance of shit.

And I just don't want him to look up to that stuff, you know?

You know, he comes in and says things like, can I get a hire?

And I'm like, I need to turn off the router, you know?

No, you can't.

You can get to your bedroom, young man.

You can get to your bedroom.

I think the biggest one, Come Fly With Me.

Did you see that?

Yes, that's the one, that's the worst one.

And it wasn't funny.

It wasn't funny at all.

No, awful, and Matt Lucas properly blacking up to play a West Indian lady whose main characteristic is she's lazy.

It's like, I'm sorry, where has this come from?

And that was like 2010.

See, but I'm also sort of, I'm guilty of it myself because I used to really love Chris Lilley's show Summer Heights High and the things he's doing in there and then his subsequent show, whichever one it was, where he had Smouse, the LA rapper.

I remember laughing at that, slapping my elbow and all that.

And, or even just Jonah dressing up as a Pacific Islander, you know, and all of this.

And you sort of thought it was okay because he was surrounded by other actors who were of that nationality.

Yeah, and there's the conversation, is the humor coming from the fact that he is playing a Pacific Islander, or is it from the situation that he's in?

And is it okay to laugh?

It's just an actor acting, but yeah, it's the change in the color of the skin, or it does sort of change that.

And I think he even did an Asian character, which I didn't like.

Yeah, who had a gay son.

Yeah, I can't really remember, but yeah, it did start to stink a little bit.

And I did find that funny.

I'll admit that.

I thought it was great.

I used to love watching it.

It made me laugh my ass off.

But now I'd look at it in a very different way, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of things in my house that...

Darren used to...

You've seen the show where he does the painting at the end, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So we have an original of one of those from 2012 that he did in the rehearsal room.

And it's of Woody Allen, and it's Pride of Place on our staircase.

I still haven't taken it down.

And I'm like, I guess it should come down.

And so the Walliams books need to go.

And, you know, God, are we going to...

You know, I don't know, roll down...

I heard a thing about Dr Zeus being a racist.

I'm like, I mean, is there anything in this house that I can keep?

Yeah, yeah.

It is.

It's a minefield.

And it should be a minefield.

That's an important thing to say.

I'd be very interested to read some modern children's books.

I mean, I suppose, as you have, you know, a child, it makes a lot more sense for you to be able to do that.

Is there a big kind of difference between the content of...

Morally questionable past stuff and what they have today?

The funny thing is a lot of classics still make their way into the kids' books.

If you want to call it whatever you call it, basically the books that seem to go around, one that I don't like is The Tiger That Comes to Tea, which everyone seems to like.

And in that, it's very, I would call, sexist.

There's a line in there like, the tiger drank all of daddy's beer.

And she holds his little suitcase up like a Reggie Perrin or something, giving it to him on the way out to work and she's clearly at home.

It's just very 1950s, 1960s family unit.

It's not horrible.

It's just these little things that go in.

I find the problem with kids' stuff right up to now is the prince and princess stuff.

All of that shit, all looking up to aristocracy.

I don't like that and it's in everything.

It is in every story almost.

There's a dead parent and there's a looking up to aristocracy and I don't like it.

And it's even in new stuff.

And from what I can gather, that is not changing.

And I'm having to literally stand there and tell my child, don't look up to be in a princess.

Trust me, there's some real stories out there.

They're not good.

Always involves a car chase.

But I mean, that's the problem.

Living in a monarchy as we do, oh, God.

I've had many conversations with my parents about this.

And just saying, look, the queen seemed like a nice old lady, but we could have called it a day.

You know, when she popped her clogs, maybe we could then go, okay, that was fine.

And now we have this fat handed, mumbling old bastard kind of grimacing down at the nation.

As you would be, as a 73 year old man, suddenly having to do that.

And what are we expected to think when we look at him?

Are we supposed to be in war?

Is there supposed to be some kind of regal majesty radiating from him?

Because there ain't any of that.

And all of the people who say, oh, they bring a lot of money in, no doubt they in tourism, they bring a lot.

Do they?

How's France doing for tourism?

It's going all right.

I used to be quite a little bit militant about it.

But these days I'm like, just let them fuck off somewhere.

Isle of Man, whatever, I don't know, somewhere.

Give all that stuff back to where you nicked it.

Take your money.

So you got a billion quid, Charles.

Fine, take it.

We don't want it.

Tax free.

Fuck off.

Just go away.

Take your fancy biscuits and fuck off.

I used to love his bread.

His bread was so nice.

I did.

I really did.

I used to buy it all the time.

I'd be like this weird lefty on tour with like Dutchie of Cornwall bread.

It didn't make any sense.

It was like double think.

At least we live in a country where we can say these crazy things.

I'll cut that together in a nice way that doesn't get us sent to the tower.

I think we have to have you back for a What You're Watching Now episode.

Please do, I mean, there's a lot.

I think we'll have to do that.

So we'll just end with this one.

I'll ask you a question that I haven't asked anyone else.

So tell us about a show that you've seen that you think maybe most of us haven't that you could recommend.

Okay.

Have you seen Midnight Diner Tokyo Stories?

I have not, but I've heard a lot about it.

Have you?

Yeah, I have, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love it so much.

It's on Netflix, or at least I hope it is still on Netflix.

It's a Japanese show set in a cafe late night diner, as is implied by the title in Shinjuku in Tokyo.

Each episode, it's kind of, it's an anthology show where there is a different story every time based around the people who come into this diner late at night in Tokyo.

Yeah.

And the stories are small, self-contained, gentle, witty.

Just, there's something about this show that just makes me weep.

And much to the chagrin of my wife, I cry at anything.

I cry at music, I cry at video games, certainly films and television.

That started, does it?

Were you always like that?

Was that an age thing?

Because it does kick in in your 40s.

No, always, always.

Yeah, I just find that, yeah, there's something about media that just affects me and really kicks me right in my emotional balls.

And the theme tune of this show, it's kind of gentle acoustic guitar plucking with a fella singing in Japanese, I've no idea what he's singing about, over shots of Tokyo at nighttime.

It's the one show that made me more than any other excited to visit Tokyo.

And I've been to Tokyo twice now.

It's fantastic.

It's just like midnight diner.

Did you see this before you ever went?

I did.

I did.

Oh, that's cool.

That's cool.

Yeah, the episodes, they're funny, they're sweet, they're good-natured.

They have a variety of characters who all come into this diner.

There are certain recurring characters who are just sat there.

And there's also an element of food.

They come in and they generally end up asking the guy who runs the cafe if he could make something that they had from their childhood.

And then he'll go to the kitchen and you'll see him cooking it.

It's that kind of warm bath television that just...

Oh, it's just warm fingers down your back.

It's beautiful.

It's very hard for me to watch Japanese television and not want to be there and not want to be eating there, because I've spent, as I think you know, I've spent a lot of time in Japan.

I've been there over ten times.

I effectively sort of almost lived there for a year or so.

And I just, it's always the place I want to go.

I always want to go there.

I always want to eat there.

I always want to be there.

Well, I would thoroughly recommend watching Midnight Diner for you in that case.

Are you a crier?

Yeah, I try and hide it.

I'm the only one, I think.

I sit there and I do well up.

I well up when I'm watching Old Enough, the little Japanese kids show where the kids go out.

Oh, you watch Old Enough?

Yeah, I watch it with my kids.

We love Old Enough.

I make them watch it.

Even the ones that can't read.

We watch it all the time.

And they say, My little boy goes, He does that little bit.

I love it.

When just before Christmas, we were in Tokyo.

And just like seeing little Japanese kids running down the road, we just turned to each other, my wife and I just go, They've got these big back-breaking bags on their backs.

Huge concealed cameras, like bazookas.

Yeah, exactly.

That's another show for people to watch, definitely.

Yeah, I love Old Enough.

It's a definite recommendation.

I mean, the name of the show is maybe a little questionable to Western tastes.

Yeah, I don't think that's what it's called, is it?

Old Enough.

I love those episodes they did recently where they showed 20 years ago, kids going around it.

And what's really weird is it's like when I was there, because I first started going there in 2002, and they'll show some footage from 2003.

It's like 70s.

And then they'll do like, and there's like this little one year old kid walking around, and then they go back to now, and he's like, you know, 22 or something.

And it's kind of shocking to me.

It kind of blows me.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

But Midnight Diner, watch it, Steve, watch it and weep.

I will actually.

Well, since we've been talking, I've added it to my Netflix profile.

There's only two seasons available on Netflix, but there are five seasons available.

So I'm sure with my online skills and deep diving, I will be able to watch that in some way or form using.

Beep, beep, beep.

Amazing.

Cool, Paul.

So how many pulls out of Critophs would you give that?

Ooh, depending on the episode, between seven pulls out of Critoph to nine pulls out of Critoph.

Let's look at some other.

Let's just go back on a couple of things you mentioned.

So you mentioned, what was the horny show, Biscuits?

How many pulls have you given that?

I mean, it's going to be a four pulls out of Critoph.

Yeah.

Obviously for the hot puppy Smut, it would go up to a strong seven.

But yeah, looking back at it, probably a reason it only had one season.

And what on earth are we giving Chimera?

Is that what you say?

Yeah, Chimera.

Well, here's the thing.

In my mind, it was a piece of real, kind of a pinnacle of horror on television.

But no one remembers it, and it wasn't repeated, which makes me think that maybe that's me maybe bigging it up because it had an impact on me at the time, and it was actually shit.

I'll give it an eight.

Eight pulls out of Critoph for Chimera.

That's great.

Just one more then.

Singing Detective handshandy scene.

A steamy nine.

Definitely.

That's right.

Gambon.

Get your rocks off.

Nice.

If it was Gambon, could have been Sydney.

Yeah, it's one of them.

We'll edit that in in a high pitched voice too.

You were right all along Paul.

It was indeed Michael Gambon.

We didn't talk about your photography, which I'd like to just end on briefly.

You're a wonderful photographer.

Thank you.

And you know, I mean, is that something you're doing just for fun?

Just for fun, just for fun.

Because I mean, it's ridiculously good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, now I have various kind of little, I would hesitate to call them talents that I kind of go plodding along within the background and really remain underdeveloped in any useful way.

But I just enjoy taking pictures really.

I tend to let the photography kind of sleep when I'm not around.

When I'm not around, what does that even mean?

It means nothing, Steve.

It means I'm always around.

I don't leave my body at any point.

But no, I like taking pictures of kind of candid shots of people when they don't know I'm looking.

And that's all available on Instagram.

Under Your Bed 1.

Yeah, I should change that.

What's wrong with just my name?

Under Your Bed 1.

I mean, I think I had that name to try and big up somebody's band, a friend's band on a website where there could be no link a while ago.

It doesn't sound creepy.

Yeah, it's a bit creepy.

Unfortunately, there was a Michael Jackson song and probably one of his last albums where he actually says, Under Your Bed, Shimon, something like that.

I think he literally was.

Yeah, I mean, it's a bit literal.

Oh, Michael.

Oh, Michael, leave those kids alone.

Second, all reference.

Okay, Paul, well thanks for joining me on my podcast.

And I will actually try and get you back at some point.

I think you'd be the perfect guest for that.

And we'll do some more Paul's Out Of Cryoffs.

Glorious, thank you, mate.

Now, apparently, the audio that I originally put here was removed due to some kind of Matrix glitch.

But anyway, we were all set to leave it there, but then Paul had another thing he wanted to bring up, so he came back in the room and we continued for a bit.

That's alright man, I gotta go anyway.

We'll just have the quickest of chats about this because it's actually quite interesting.

You were mentioning Balls of Steel.

What did you want to say about that?

Balls of Steel is a program I cannot believe was commissioned.

I found it obnoxious at the time.

I find it even more obnoxious now.

I think it gave validity to small-minded bullies who think that they're comedians.

At the time, I think you remember, presented by Mark Dolan, who was a charisma vacuum of a host, I had thought at the time.

Sorry if you know him, and he's lovely.

He just had a completely smug air about him, and just nothing about him was entertaining or funny.

The skits themselves were borderline bullying.

There was someone who would jump on fat people and whoop and act like it was a rodeo, and then throw burgers at people.

There was a guy who I think he was called the Big Gay Following, and I don't think he was gay, but his whole prank was going up to people on the street going, fancy a bum, fancy a bum, and I don't know who that was supposed to appeal to.

Well, I do.

It was quite late.

I mean, it's 2005 to 2008.

I mean, that is post-Jackass kind of era.

I'm wondering if it's influenced by that.

They looked at Jackass and completely misinterpreted why it's funny, because in Jackass, it's well-meaning idiots and it's not vindictive.

With Balls of Steel, it was just making people feel bad and awkward, and it was scumbag telly.

And I see that Mark Dolan now hosts a show on GB News, doesn't he, which...

Yeah, I'm troubled by this so much because, I mean, I have spent a lot of time with Mark.

Oh, shit.

I mixed his show in Edinburgh for a month back in 2016, I think.

We became quite pally.

We used to go for drinks together.

I've got drunk with him and sung Life on Mars on the piano with him.

I've kept in contact.

He made a lovely tweet when my book came out.

I mean, in my mind, one of the sweetest, nicest people I've ever met.

So none of this makes sense to me, this terrible TV show he did in the past or this terrible TV show he did in the future.

So none of it makes any sense to me.

And I have to assume...

I mean, it's kind of tragic then if he is a genuinely nice guy.

Very sweet.

But I suppose he's made a living then out of mining the depths, which is sad.

Yeah, I don't know what this GB News thing and the mask cutting.

I mean, I really like him.

I don't want to say anything bad about him.

I'm just massively confused.

So I have to assume it is in some way a character, as in America on Fox News, all those Carlson Tucker people.

And Tucker himself was recorded saying how much he hates Trump and then is on the next evening.

Yeah, I don't think they believe in what they're saying.

All I'll say is I don't know about this whole GB News thing, but all I know is I've rarely met someone as nice as Mark Dolan.

I mean, sorry I so vehemently dissed him right to your face.

No, no, no.

You're a larger opinion.

I honestly only ever saw Balls of Steel out the corner of my eye, and it wasn't really my cup of tea.

I'm more of a trigger-happy kind of guy.

Drug Happy TV was my bag, my jam.

I would suggest just to kind of rile yourself up and just have a look at some of the highlights on YouTube.

It is just angering.

It really is.

I'm sure it hasn't dated well.

Stuff that you're talking about sounds awful.

No, but then again, it's the stuff that's now on TikTok with members of the public doing.

I could imagine them just walking into somebody's house and finding that hilarious on Balls of Steel, which...

If they did it in America, they'd get shot in the face.

That's a nice way to end it.

It's a little bonus for the Patreon.

Charlie Brook and You, I like to think.

He always fucking did.

He's got it all down.

Yeah, that's interesting about Mark.

I'll try and cut that together and make it usable, but...

It seems like less of a total character assassination on your friend.

No, no, it's fine.

I'm looking forward to finding out what the fuck it is all about.

I called him a charisma vacuum.

That wasn't, I think.

Yeah, that wasn't nice.

Called him Smug.

I mean, both of which I stand by, but that's just his TV persona.

I'm going to stop the recording.

There he is, Paul Critoph.

What a guy, fun man, great guy to chat to.

I really enjoyed that conversation.

It's one of my favorites.

And he will be back at the end of the year, beginning of next year, to do a little roundup of the best TV of 2023.

Beep, beep.

So to today's outro track, it's one of my favorites.

It's called Screensaver.

It was recorded in Ireland as part of the After The Fireworks album project.

I recorded it in Southern Ireland in the summer of 2008, and the album came out in 2009.

And hopefully, it will be remastered shortly with all the tracks from that album.

So around that time, I sort of swapped from doing kind of songs about observational stuff and started looking inside and started doing like what they would now call super personal material about how I felt.

So this is one of the few songs like that you'll ever hear from me.

This is called Screensaver.

Yes, you are not mistaken, that was lead guitar.

Unfortunately, not played unplugged from the top of a mountaintop in the late 80s, but nonetheless, quite something.

And nothing that I ever did before or ever did since.

I just did it the one time, not a lead guitar guy by any means.

Anyway, I hope you like that song, I hope you like the podcast.

I know it was a long one this week, but that's part of the thing of doing these things, right?

They don't always have to be under an hour or under 40 minutes.

I've sort of been deliberately making sure they're under an hour since the first one.

But sometimes they're going to go longer, and I listen to ones that are way longer.

So I hope you haven't been disappointed by the length.

That's what she said.

And on that Office classic, I will bid you farewell and we will speak again soon.

Remember, this week there's another episode on Friday.

Bye bye for now.