Paul Foot: The Enigma of Angela Lansbury, An Earth-Orbiting Judy Murray, and the Ghost of Keith Chegwin

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, screen rats, oh, creaky chair, creaky chair.

That's the new chair in the studio.

Now, here we go.

We're going up a couple of notches here, I think, this week.

We have such a great guest on the podcast this week.

It's the wonderful, you're not gonna believe it, he is here, it's the amazing Paul Foot.

Now, you know Paul Foot.

If you watch any kind of comedy in the UK, Australia, places like that, you're gonna know who this guy is.

He's got quite the personality, he's absolutely hilarious, and I was lucky enough to meet up with him when he was here on tour last year, at the end of last year, and we had a lovely little chat.

He didn't have much time, but we got to it.

We got to it straight away.

Weirdly, it starts off with a little bit of food chat, which is kind of fun, and it leads this way into television, you'll see.

And of course, go see Paul.

He's on tour right now with Dissolve.

The reason we held this episode back is because we want to have a big old February full of nice names for you guys, but also his tour resumes next week, in early February, and go to paulfoot.tv to get tickets to see that show.

That's Paul's new show, Dissolve.

Now, I'm not going to moan about anything.

I'm not going to talk about anything else.

I just want to get into this episode.

I'm sure you don't want to hear me whittle on today.

Let's get straight into it.

It was recorded at the Motel One, next to the stand in Newcastle a few months ago.

So here I am talking to the amazing and hilarious Paul Foot.

It's Paul Foot.

Welcome to Television Times, a weekly podcast with your host, me, Stingo Tisgunn.

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 are Television Times.

I like that, yes, I love it.

Nice ambience.

It turned the music off for us anyway.

So, yeah, we've met before, but you won't remember, because I think I've heard you say you got face blindness, which I sometimes get, but there was a night out in Edinburgh in 2017.

I just remember you jumping over my friend Coop's, doing sort of these weird, some sorts in Bristol Square at like three in the morning.

So you've come from a Premier Inn?

Yes.

Yeah, I love a Premier Inn.

Yeah, I love it.

We always go to a Premier Inn.

Do you?

You're a fan of it?

I'm in one tomorrow and I live here.

Premier Inn, where everybody gets a great night's sleep.

We're not smothered by them, I'm just joking.

But you know, I do love a Premier Inn, so you know what I mean.

Call me.

Thank you for my juice.

Oh, you're more than welcome.

That's Evianne as well.

Oh, thank you.

So this podcast is all about television, Paul.

Yes.

So you're a similar age to me.

I think you're about to be 15.

Yeah, about to be, Christmas, yes.

It's your birthday?

Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve?

Wow, that must have been a...

I quite liked it here, really.

Because I got separate presents for my birthday, and it was all mixed in with Christmas.

It was sort of fun, you know.

Double presents.

It didn't end up with like...

No, it's got double.

Oh, that's nice.

My grandad was actually a Christmas day birthday, and my brother's New Year's Eve.

Yes.

I always thought that wouldn't be something that people would want.

It's a brilliant time.

I've got a friend whose birthday's on New Year's Day.

No one really bothers for that, you know.

No one's got money left.

That's when they release the shit films, isn't it?

Oh, if I say films, or we bring up a film accident, it's a...

Oh, I see.

Well, you can.

But I'll just do that this time.

Beep, beep.

Well, obviously, you've mentioned it a few times, but you call yourself a little bit of a vegetarian.

Are you a flexitarian, or...?

Well, that was a long time ago, actually.

I did think I didn't want to hurt the animals, you know.

Yeah.

So I think I went just pescatarian.

Yeah, that's me.

With just fish, but I became quite unwell.

I became very thin.

And constantly had colds all the time.

So you needed the protein and the B12.

And then I found that if I had red meat, even if it was just once or twice a week, I was much healthier.

And that's why you eat like less fatty meat and just like the lean sort of proteiny kick for your body, basically.

Well, yeah, I mean, I did, that's, it doesn't matter what meat it is, I think that helps my health.

Yeah.

But I tend to eat the lean meat because I don't like all the gristle and fat.

Do you remember like in pork, there was this little bit of, my grandad used to pull it out and make me chew it.

He said it was nature's chewing gum, it was in the pork chop.

It was horrible.

You know that bit in the middle?

And you just sit there and go...

That's...

If I put that in my mouth, it makes me want to be, you know, to throw up.

It's so disgusting.

That's what, when I was a child, that's what made me hate meat.

Yeah, yeah.

Those chewy bits.

Me too.

And the gristly bits.

And what I kind of call fat gristle, but it's obviously slightly different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But those big bits of fat, they're just great big bits that you just chew round and round.

It's like a bit of duck breast, and you get that little bit of fat round it, and it's all cooked nicely, and it goes, that's nice.

I've never eaten a duck.

Oh, lovely.

But those great big bits of gristle, I can't stand it.

Gristle.

Gristle, that's absolutely fab.

All the pork chops, lamb, lamb.

And you know, and one thing I vowed never to have again is a pork pie.

I love pork pie.

Do you?

Because I like the meat, and I like the...

I love the jelly.

You love the jelly?

Any kind of jelly, including savoury.

I love jelly.

Do you do jellied eels in London?

Do you have that?

I don't like jellied eels.

It's full of bones and stuff.

It's always very unpleasant.

I've never had eels.

My nan took me to a butcher once and she ordered eels and they were swimming around, and this guy just went chop, chop, chop with this big...

What are they called?

The big squire?

Like a butcher's cleaver?

Cleaver, yeah.

Is it a cleaver?

It just went like that, and then all the bits swam to the corners covered in blood, and I was like, I'm all right.

Yeah, well, that's a bit...

But I have had eel, like in posh restaurants, like a little bit of eel served with something, or in Japanese restaurants.

Yes.

That's nice.

Is that what they call it?

Yeah, I think it's unagi.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I like that.

I found it by accident, I think.

Sea snake.

Sea snake, and...

But there's other things I don't like to eat, octopus.

No.

Because I think they're a beautiful creature.

Well, it's clever, isn't it?

Yes, and I don't like to eat...

The other ones, I don't like to eat lobster.

I've never had that.

I do sometimes have had lobster.

All of these things, unless one is completely meat free, it's all very hypocritical.

Yeah, that's what I think.

All of these things one says, unless you've really, really thought it through, it's all based on emotions and sort of misconceptions and preconceptions about things.

Oh, I wouldn't eat...

I hate this bit of...

Who knows what happens to that cow or pig or horse?

I think when you eat fish, it's like, why can I eat fish but I couldn't eat meat?

I don't have the same connection to it.

But it looks the same when you've got the blood coming out of the salmon or whatever.

That's disgusting.

There must be some things that are objectively less cruel.

I don't know.

For example, eating mussels.

I don't think they have a big thought.

And I think it's actually very...

Some things are really bad for the environment in certain fishing.

I think mussels is really good for the environment, the actual process of growing them and then farming them.

And I think it's actually really good.

So that must be objectively less cruel than eating foie gras, which I would never eat foie gras.

You mentioned octopus and what that always reminds me of.

Do you remember those bath mats you used to have when we were kids and they stick into the bottom of the bath to stop you slipping?

They had the sappers on the bottom.

That's what octopus looks like to me.

It's like a rubber bath mat from the 70s.

It's like a big moving bath mat.

That's why it never slips.

Those ads for Finder's Crispy Pancakes, for instance.

Was there anything that you saw on telly that you never got it, like?

Well, I think some of the things that influenced me were things like Heinz means beans, and things like that, and other.

Because I would think, okay, so they're advertising Heinz, and they're saying beans.

And then I thought, well, there's other places that make beans.

Surely they're just as good.

So that always made me never want to buy Heinz.

Really?

Because I always thought, well, why should I buy Heinz when I could buy other beans?

So it advertised beans to me.

All right, so it didn't work on you.

It didn't work on me at all.

It would be the opposite effect.

When I do stand up, I've literally got five minutes on Heinz.

Yes.

The price of their soup blows me mind right now.

I'm down 60 for 70 vegetables.

Why don't you just buy one of the Sainsbury's ones?

I do, I do.

My wife says it doesn't taste the same, but I think it does.

It's made by the same factory, isn't it?

I think it is.

Some stuff is, like wheatabix and stuff like that.

Yes, because Tesco and Sainsbury and all the other supermarkets, they obviously don't have their own, all the separate Sainsbury's factories where they're making all the beans.

So it must be made in the same place.

Yeah, I think so.

People say Heinz has like a tang to the ketchup, their beans, the stuff like that, that is just not in something else.

They say that with the Heinz tomato ketchup, so I saw a program about it once, and all these people, and they were all tasting it.

They were like experts who would taste the ketchup, like five of them in a panel, and they would say, slight adjustment is needed to this batch and all this.

And it all tastes the same to me.

Yeah, Sandra's one tastes the same to me.

I suppose obviously that is going to be better than the sort of cheap, I wouldn't buy the sort of the value ketchup, because that's not going to be very good.

But if you buy a proper owned brand, decent, you know, level ketchup, I can't see it's going to be that different to the Heinz ketchup.

Although actually, I do have some Heinz ketchup in my fridge because I was in the supermarket and then it was actually reduced and it was cheaper than the owned brand one.

So it's about the only time I've ever bought it.

Well, I'll admit on here, what I do is I have one Heinz, just sort of as a mind trick, I have an empty Heinz one we must have bought about a year ago and I just fill it with Sainsbury's and in my mind, it tastes like Heinz that way.

Yes.

Another thing you can do is save money on not getting the Heinz thing, you know, just get the own brand and then eat caviar.

I don't mean like the real posh caviar.

I just mean get the...

I like to have, you know, there's like the lump fish caviar, salmon roe caviar, just have that.

I love having those.

So you like the disparity between the cheap and the expensive?

Well, I mean, I have had the proper caviar a few times.

On a Jacob's Crane cracker.

No, sorry.

Or you have to have it on a little blini, don't you?

Or a little bit of Melbourne toast.

Melbourne toast.

They're all very delicate flavours.

But yes, I think there is a middle ground.

You can also have the other caviar.

So I like to have the other caviar as often as possible.

I still remember word for word certain jingles from my childhood.

Did you have a favourite jingle from TV?

I can't think of one like that, from an advert, but I can think of…

LWT.

It was such a good one.

And it had that xylophone at the beginning…

And then It had the brass came in.

It's such a good tune.

Yeah, I like that.

I like that.

And that sort of…

they should bring back that jingle, because it was such a good one.

Is that the Thames one?

Yeah, I think it was either London Weekend Television or Thames, I can confuse.

Yeah, they're very similar.

That one was before Rainbow, in my mind.

But that was a good, that was a nice one.

Nice jingle, wasn't it?

That's like potato waffles, you know that one?

Potato waffles, waffles, waffles, waffles.

I think there's a big difference, Steve, between our childhoods.

I think you sat there watching the adverts while I just went out.

You did, I went out as well.

Yeah, I probably went in the garden and did something when the adverts were on.

Yeah, I'm eating them now.

Do you eat them now?

Well, I suppose so.

I don't have a television.

Don't have a television.

Okay, this is over.

I watch things on YouTube, and I find it hilarious that you could get someone watching it.

If someone puts a drama on it, it might be like something from...

There's some really good things on YouTube.

People upload stuff, something that was made 25 years ago that no one ever watched at the time.

It's really good.

So I love that.

I much prefer it to having a television.

So anyway, I put that on.

And then you get all the people writing in and saying, it's a disgrace.

There's so many adverts.

And then they say, well, who would put an advert right in the middle at this particular point?

They seem to be oblivious to two things.

One, well, three things.

One, what they're watching is free.

Free.

So if they don't like it, you can get Netflix and other things or buy a television set or whatever you want to do to watch television.

There's other ways of doing it.

So A, what they're getting is for free and as a bonus.

B, the person who put the thing up didn't decide where the adverts go.

That's YouTube doing that.

Three, you can easily get an ad blocker, which costs no money at all.

And it goes on and blocks all the adverts out.

Some of them, it doesn't quite manage to block.

Or what it will sometimes do is it will, like an advert will try to come on, but it doesn't really start, but there's no sound.

And so there's just a slight delay.

So if you're playing a piece of music, you might have to wait for 20 seconds before it starts.

Well, it sort of holds back an advert.

And of course, if you do have to wait 20 seconds for the piece of music to play or the drama to start, you can remind yourself that it is a free service.

And also remind yourself, you can use those 20 seconds to remind yourself that we're all on this planet once and you just got to make the most of it and just be in the present and enjoy every moment of our lives and not moan all the time.

I want to, at the moment, with my show Dissolve, which is all about big change that happened in my life.

Last year, I'm really enjoying touring it around the country, in other countries.

And it's a show that's obviously funny, it's a comedy show, but it's a show that also, I think, touches a lot of people about all sorts of things, about mental health and mental illness struggles.

And I think it's a show that people will find very uplifting.

People come up afterwards, and I'm used to them saying that's funny, and lots of people still say it's funny, of course, but they also say that they were affected in a positive way by it and that they were touched by some of the ways I describe the things.

Yeah, you're showing a different side to yourself as well, so the public that have this perception of you is important to...

Yes, well, I've never done that before in a show.

I've never talked about anything that was remotely personal or autobiographical.

So, yes, it's a whole...

It's a different sort of show.

It still has, obviously, all the surreal flights of fantasy and ridiculous things that I'm known for, but it has other...

another string to the bow as well.

Yeah, your line is that you said, you now feel joy and the secrets of life have been revealed to you.

Yes, that's right, yes, I...

So you now see the world in a very different way.

I do see the world in a different way since what happened to me last year.

In the show, I tell everyone what happened to me last year.

On the 20th of March, 2022, at 4:59 p.m.

That's all revealed in the show.

So go and see him live to find out what that is.

Because you're not going to find out on here.

I love that you have this fascination with Angela Lansbury.

It just keeps coming up as a reference.

I don't know why, she's always become some sort of focal point.

She's mentioned in a couple of different bits of comedy, bits I've done recently on Australian TV.

And also, at Christmas time, I do secret shows.

Yeah.

Secret, because there are many, just to people, connoisseurs, members of my fan club who are on my mailing list sort of thing.

And I do these secret shows to them.

And traditionally, there's always an Angela Lansbury story about someone who wants to meet Angela Lansbury in some sort of bizarre thing has happened.

And another person who features heavily in secret shows and also in other bits of my comedy, Judy Murray.

Judy Murray.

He also features, is often mentioned in secret shows.

I had a whole secret show recently based on Scottish themes that was almost entirely based around Judy Murray taking a bus in Suffolk.

And also I have had comedy in the past that I've done on stage about Judy Murray being fired into space.

As a sort of astronaut.

Okay.

So sort of permanently in orbit on the earth.

That's how I like.

I like the, I always think that the idea of Judy Murray orbiting the earth is something comforting about it.

In the same way I've also got, I was talking about it on stage yesterday and in my show I have a piece of art that I show the audience based on the ghost of Keith Chegwin past.

And I always like to...

Forget he's dead.

Yeah, he is dead, but you know...

Blah, blah, blah.

I don't like to, you know, I think a lot of people don't like to accept that Keith is completely gone.

I think a lot of people feel that Keith Chegwin is here with us.

And so many times I might be, I don't know, at the train station showing some problem, fiddling around trying to find the right ticket.

And I just think, help me Keith.

Murder She Wrote is the most illerious program.

It's all, I find those murder mysteries on TV all, and there's, of course, there's so many versions of them.

Now, it's a massive trope.

I mean, it's everything's a whodunit.

Everything's a whodunit, and they're all sort of much more modern now and kind of gritty.

And you get those as some Scandinavian ones where they're all speaking in Danish with subtitles, all that sort of stuff.

And you get all of those, but they all have the same, well, Agatha Christie is a bit different.

Agatha Christie works by, on a technical level, I think she worked out that the brain can only follow about three or four subplots properly.

So if she had about nine or 10 characters, you soon get confused about who it was, and you can actually bamboozle people.

So that's sort of her method.

But then you get most of the murder mysteries.

It's all done by the same method.

It's a very simple, straightforward story that is told sort of back to front and with things that come out much later.

Like, you know, like for example, you might watch, and they all use the same technique, and it's absolutely ridiculous when you watch it.

So you may be watching some murder mystery, and you've been watching, it might be several episodes, and you've watched episode one, and it's all big mystery, how did this body end up in this, in this, in this, in this, a disused warehouse, and they can't identify, and then episode two, there's more revelations, and there's some subplot to do something, and they put in some subplot, which are always the same tropes, like it's always an unconventional detective who bends the rules, but gets results, and it's always the boss of the detective who just wants to sign off the case, and he says, you're off the case, you're not doing a good job, but the detective decides to go behind their back and carry on with the investigation.

It's always the same thing.

And the DA is on his arse if it's American.

And all that stuff, yeah, and the DA is on him.

And then there will be something like, the person who killed was Emily Frog, and there was some other character, it will be like a name like, it will be Annabelle Jacobs, and then there will be, but then they will say, Froggy, whatever it was, I've forgotten the name of the person who died.

Stephen, Emily Frog, or whatever it was, Emily Frog.

Was in an affair with Bella something.

This will go on, you'll be watching several episodes of it, and then suddenly someone will say, oh, oh, that's right, and then they'll say, on the, in blood, on the wall will be written BF, or something, and then there's all this talk about Annabelle so-and-so, and then later they'll say, hang on, Annabelle's maiden name was Fletcher, it begins with an F, and then they'll say, hang on, Annabelle can also be shortened to Bella, then they'll say BF, oh my God, Annabelle Smith was Bella Fletcher all along, we've been looking at the wrong place, and they could have just, they could have worked that out within minutes of the start of the episode.

It's really not that complicated.

It's so simple, but for some reason, they took them all those episodes to find out when it could all have been wrapped up literally within 10 minutes.

It's a very simple story.

I like things where you see things all in different, I love the story of the Titanic, Titanic's such a brilliant, it's not just a story actually, it's like a tragedy, an actual human being died and stuff, but it's a lot of time ago.

It's got all the ingredients, hasn't it?

Yes, and I've seen the Titanic when it's told from, you see the same story every time because you know what's going to happen.

But each time it's told from a different, first you see it from the point of view of this first class passenger, and then you see it from the point of view of a maid who's in the third class, but you see all the same scenes, but sort of filmed from a different direction, you see the same dialogue.

Yeah, I like that.

And I like all that, it's very clever.

Yeah, did you ever watch The Affair, the show The Affair?

That was very good, you should check it out.

It's exactly that.

It's about a guy who basically has a fair, it's more than that because it goes over a number of seasons, but whatever happens, you see every show is sort of split in half and you see it from two different perspectives.

It's pretty good, and they even have different dialogue because people have interpreted it differently and all of that.

Oh, that's clever.

And I always used to like Hustle.

I loved Hustle.

Because it was so well cleverly done.

And then there would always be, you'd see it, but you'd never be able to guess it.

Yeah.

Because there were loads of things they kept back from us.

Yeah, till the end.

Until the very end, when it would be revealed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You could sort of guess roughly what it was.

Well, you always knew there was going to be some massive twist.

Yeah.

And so it was sort of very lighthearted because you were never too concerned that anything terrible was going to happen.

Yeah.

But you always knew that there was going to be some twist.

And you always thought, how can there be?

Because they would make it look as if there was no possible way that they could possibly succeed or get out of this scrape.

Yeah.

But you knew that they would do somehow.

Yeah.

And there would be some unbelievable reveal.

It was marvelous.

It was great.

I loved it.

It was like a sexy show, wasn't it?

It was a fun sexy show.

They don't really do those anymore.

Fun caper sexy shows.

Yes.

And of course, the only thing, well, I don't know, you might disagree with me on this, Steve, but the only thing is I was fine in these programs, whether it's murder mystery, whether it's hustle or whatever it is.

These subplots, which is all about some sort of sexual tension between two characters building up over several episodes, I find it really boring.

You can see it a mile away these days, I think.

You can see it a mile away.

They had it in Hustle.

There was a man and a woman and they were both thieves, you know?

I saw it the other day in Boiling Point, the new TV show with Stephen Graham.

It was a fantastic TV show version of the film.

But in it, the lead woman who's basically running the restaurant, she just looked a little bit funny at the girl that was doing the dishwashing, and I went, they're gonna fuck.

Spoilers here, don't listen.

They literally get off with each other at the end, and it's like, well, I saw that.

I saw the bit where you sowed that seed, it was boring.

It was spoon-fed, you know?

A friend of mine, he did film studies at university, so he has a much better eye than me.

So we were watching some murder mystery or something, and he'll see things and he'll say, oh, there was that obvious shot when it was through the window and you saw someone in the background.

Because that's the other thing.

And so he'll know from within five minutes who was the murderer, because it's nearly always, it's so predictable.

They all do the same thing, don't they?

They always initially say, oh, they're suspects.

It's clearly so-and-so.

He's got loads of convictions, and he was on the scene, and it's obviously not him.

Or is it?

The double bluff?

Well, occasionally it is, but not normally.

That's boring.

What's the guy?

It normally isn't.

Normally they just arrest him, and he's very uncooperative and says things like, I know my rights, and they say...

It's always, there's some bit when they're interviewing someone, when the police go and talk to someone, and then there's always some bit when maybe there's like a housewife in the background who's just doing the table, and it's her, and then later at the end.

And you know also, because the person playing the housewife is quite a good actor, and you think, oh, I've seen her in loads of stuff, she's a real good one.

And you know there's going to be a scene later where they find out it was her, and then they bring her to the police station, and then she breaks down and says, you must understand why I did it, and all that.

And then she does lots of crying and stuff, and you just think, yeah, they're finally getting their money's worth.

Yeah.

She has to do the washing up for six episodes.

She's a top actress, and you can't just have her in the background doing a table.

And you know anyway, because even when she's laying the table, she's giving little glances over, you know, when they're asking questions like, where were you that night?

And you can see, she knows.

She slows down, drawing a plate slowly.

Yes.

It's funny you mentioned the editing, being able to see who the murderer is, because you reminded me of how I feel when I watch something like, say I watch The Apprentice or something like that, one of those kinds of shows, I do watch it occasionally.

I can always tell who's about to get fired immediately by the editing of whatever they're showing you, because they focus too much on that person, or they don't, or they do something, and I always call it right.

But I stopped watching The Apprentice because it became so predictable, because every single time, they would have the two teams, and it's all set up anyway.

They don't actually have three choices.

They have to choose between two binary things that are given to them, and they're set up to fail in many ways.

But they would always make it look like one team is a total disaster, and the other team, not going so well, but seems all right.

And every single time, they would flip it around.

The team that looked like a disaster actually won, and the other team hadn't.

And it was always the same.

You could always tell it a mile off.

Yeah, that's true.

And every single episode was the same.

And I used to think, how stupid do they think we are?

I mean, do they think that we don't have any memory at all?

Do they think we're goldfish?

So I stopped watching it then.

And you can't believe in any of those companies.

He invests in some botox injection clinic or something, whatever he's doing there.

But you could go, you're big in Australia, you could go on the celebrity one in Australia.

Apprentice, they do one there, don't they?

Ross Noble was on it.

Oh, was he?

That sounds fun.

What do you think will be the top TV show on television in 2050?

2050, right, in about 30 years.

Yeah, what's on?

What are people watching?

Well, I think I'll have to work by processes of elimination.

I don't think it's going to be reality TV.

I mean, that reality TV sort of had its day, isn't it, sort of on the way down?

It's becoming a bit more like adventure TV, like SAS and things like that.

Yes, and everything's got to be glitzy over and more and more twists.

Yeah, shiny.

All right, will they still be making murder mysteries with the same?

Maybe they'll do real murder mysteries, but actually they do kill someone.

Channel four, dear.

Yes, maybe, yes.

I think I can see what it will be.

Go on.

Because of course, got married at first sight.

A prisoner, a murderer.

Killed at first light.

Killed at first light.

All right, you should pattern that immediately.

Yeah, so each day someone is murdered.

First thing, they wake up in the morning.

Right.

And there's someone over them with a big knife and they say, you're going to be famous, but dead famous, you know?

And then they're murdered and then...

They'll have to sort of have like, not like the apprentice, but there'll be teams who decide on the method of death, depending on what the crime was, maybe.

Yeah, I think...

Ant and Dec will host it, obviously.

Yeah, Ant and Dec.

And occasionally the twist will be that they were the actual murderers.

Yeah, I like that.

I think that will be...

So you say, death at first light.

Death at first light.

That's brilliant, Paul.

So what will happen is, this is my prediction on the back of that, so the Tories will surprisingly win the 2024 election.

So Ella Braven will bring in, what's it called, death penalty, and then Channel 4 will pitch this and then it will happen.

Yeah, so what you're saying, of course, you're saying is that it's a funny idea, but it's painfully possible.

Possible and therefore not very funny at all.

Well, Naked Attraction got on telly, so everything is possible now.

Yeah, I have seen Naked Attraction.

What do you think of that?

Just a quick sound bite, because we talk about it a lot, but it's fucking mental, isn't it?

Well, it is madness, isn't it?

But I always think that, I always think, of course, in the case of, I don't want to get too much drawn into this sort of discussion, but in the case of the men, it's obviously for legal reasons, the flaccid penis.

Oh, yes.

But you can't really judge a penis by the flaccid state.

I mean.

So maybe by 2050, they'll have the late night version, which will be Naked Attraction erect.

Yeah, I've seen so few.

In fact, I think I've seen most of them on that television program.

Yes.

You know how, well, you probably don't know because you're, I think, married to a woman.

Yes, but still the women look nothing that's good when it's like that.

But it's obviously slightly different to the male thing where there was a binary up or down state.

Nobody wants to look at any of it really that close up.

I know, but sometimes I've been going out with a gentleman and then it could be several months in and then you see the flaccid penis.

It's something like we've got to get ready for a train or something.

And then you just think, what's that?

I've never seen that before.

So in fact, really, I mean, that would be the last thing you'd want to see, wouldn't it?

So if I was, I mean, it would run a mile off if you see that.

It's a frightening sight.

A flaccid penis is an absolutely...

In a glass box.

Oh, it's shocking.

Six flaccid penises sometimes.

Yeah, six of them, yes.

I suppose you'd choose the one that you would think, well, if I were to see that six months into the relationship, that would be the one would shot me.

Jilted Maggot and I Love You, Jilted Maggot and A joke OK?

Jilted Maggot and I Love You, Jilted Maggot and a joke OK?

Jilted Maggot and I Love You, Jilted Maggot and a joke OK?

Jilted Maggot and I Tomorrow.

Time for one more, you've got three minutes.

One more, okay, here we go.

Yes, a character from TV.

Cause I, I've always thought I'd love to-

Love Rent-A-Ghost.

And I watched it as a child, but I found it also deeply disturbing.

It was weird.

Yes.

It was kind of creepy.

It definitely got into your dreams and stuff.

It was really frightening.

And a horse, dobing the horse.

I'd like to be a ghost.

I'd love to be able to waft around and just, and be all invisible.

Yeah.

I'd love to be invisible.

That was my answer.

My answer is David McCallum in The Invisible Man, the 70s one.

It's the same answer.

Same kind of idea, yeah.

Yeah, I'd love to be invisible and just to be able to go and like maybe if people are having a meal in a restaurant, just be standing there and hear what they're all saying.

It would be so fascinating.

I mean, people probably think this is awful, what I'm saying.

No, I think it's exactly what most people would want.

Is it?

It's like the terrible part of human nature.

But I'd love to be able to just waft around and observe people.

Yeah.

And see what they're doing.

And like just move their things on their place.

Yeah, that would be really fun.

Because if I was, I'd have to be really confident I was truly invisible.

Yeah.

But I'd want to know that I was invisible, but also I wouldn't want to have an invisibility cloak on me whereby I was still physically there and they could then grab me and I'd be a bit scared.

So no physical form.

No, that's why I want to be a ghost.

Yeah.

So I could still move things.

With your mind.

Yeah, and sort of, or maybe, I don't know, my hands sort of move things even though they're not real.

I don't know how it works exactly, but it would be fun, wouldn't it?

But I wouldn't want to really scare people.

No, it'd be nice to steal, like to go around stealing as well as a ghost or.

Yes, it would be.

I'd like to, I wouldn't want to steal exactly, but I would like to, and I wouldn't want to scare people, but I'd like to do things where I felt like I was writing a wrong, like maybe taking something back to its rightful owner, because I could observe things, you see.

I could see someone doing a burglary and then I could see where they went.

Yeah.

And then I could take the things back.

And if there was something where I felt someone had done a bad thing, I might do things just to unsettle their mind a bit by moving things around.

Yeah, making them annoyed or all that, they've stolen something and then it goes missing and then they're all annoyed.

That's a great answer.

Yeah, that's what I would, that's what I'd like to do for 24 hours.

Not very much time, is it?

No.

Do I sleep in that time?

No, no, no, you can't sleep, you can enjoy every minute of it, haven't you?

Yeah, yeah, so I'm awake.

Like you say, you enjoy every moment of your life.

Enjoy every moment of your death.

Well, as a ghost, you don't need to sleep, do you?

You just be a ghost all the time 24-7.

That sounds exhausting.

Yeah, we don't need to sleep, do you?

Because you haven't got any...

Do you sleep well?

Are you a good sleeper?

Yeah, I do sleep well.

I go into the bed and sleep at night.

That's a mad answer, but I love it.

OK, Paul, I'm going to let you go, because I know you're busy.

You've got to get yourself to Aberdeen.

Aberdeen?

Aberdeen.

Lots of whisky.

Do you drink whisky?

You don't drink?

Yeah, I like whisky, yeah.

All right, well, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Oh, thanks, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

It's been a really fun chat.

Sorry, it's been so short.

Unless you want to do one more.

You want to do one more?

Do one more?

Very quick.

One very quick, yes.

Very quick question.

What's the funniest thing you ever saw on TV?

The funniest thing?

Well, I always think that funniest things, I mean, you know, nothing is funnier than people falling over and stuff, like you've been framed.

Yeah.

In a way, one thinks, well, why are there comedians?

Because no one laughs more than watching someone fall over.

Or a cat jump on them.

Comedians are there, I suppose, because they make people laugh, but also think about things in a different way.

It's a different sort of laughter.

But nothing is funnier than, I don't know, a load of...

I love anything to do with weddings, where the wedding cake falls down, or when they're all in their wedding outfit, standing on some sort of jetty, and then the jetty falls in the water.

But it's awful if you think about what's happening to those people.

And there was one, once it was like a student in a student house, and he had a plate of baked beans in his hand, and he sat down, and the baked beans went all over him.

Were they Heinz?

Probably.

Good callback.

And I've never found that clip again, I've searched for it.

Baked beans in a lap?

Baked beans in a lap.

And it's the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Really?

And I can't find that clip.

I mourn not being able to see that clip.

Okay, so if anyone knows where that clip is or finds a link to it, Instagram or…

Yes, please.

Alright, thanks for coming onto Television Times!

Thanks, Steve.

That was Paul Foot, Paul Foot.

Hilarious comedian, brilliant guy, really fun.

You gotta go check him out, man, he's so funny.

If you don't know him, check all this stuff out online.

Clips, specials, it's all there.

He's on all the panel shows in the UK and Australia as well.

He's just a fucking funny guy.

And it was great to meet him and catch up, that was so, so cool.

I just wanna interject here, just in case you don't stick around for the song.

Next week's guest, you're not gonna believe who we've got.

You are not going to believe it, so please come back.

And thanks for sticking with me so far.

So to our outro track today, it is a song called Ghosts of the Sidewalk.

It is one of my favorite songs I ever wrote.

I wrote it, started writing in about 2004 and finally recorded it in Japan in 2006.

So this version was recorded in Tokyo.

So here we go, this is Ghosts of the Sidewalk.

And that was Ghost of the Sidewalk from the album We Are Animals, written by myself, and recorded in Japan in 2006.

Now, come back next week, because if you thought today's episode was incredible, next week's is also incredible.

I'm not taking anything away from them either, but they're both fucking amazing.

Next week's guest is awesome.

Please come back.

Thank you for tuning in.

See you next time.