Paul Savage: How Comedy Sets Evolve and Why 90s TV Made Us Anxious

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, Screen Rats, and welcome to another episode of Television Times.

I have another great guest for you today.

His name is Paul Savage.

He's a comedian.

He's done sellout runs all over the world, especially Melbourne, actually.

He's an English guy.

And I met Paul through quite odd circumstances.

Before my Edinburgh show this year, he posted online, if anyone wanted their gear or set or suitcases, whatever, taken up to Edinburgh early, if they were living in a number of towns, one of them being Newcastle where I live, he would come pick up the bag for a fee and carry it all the way to Edinburgh.

And then you could collect it.

And I thought, fucking hell, that's a great idea.

So I took up a bunch of my books and this was a massive Samsonite, big red case, really, really heavy.

And I thought he was like bringing a van or something.

And he turned up with a little hatchback car outside my house.

So I fucking am.

And I don't even think I paid him that much, like 30 quid or something.

And he took it all the way to Edinburgh.

And when I went to collect it, he was like in a tenement block, about five stories up with no lift.

And he carried this thing into his digs, which was incredible.

It was an absolute fucking bugger to get down the stairs.

And I can't express how heavy it was.

I think it actually pulled my back out.

But when I got it to my digs, the wheel was a bit wobbly.

That suitcase never came home.

Let's just say that.

And once the festival was in full swing, we met up for a couple of beers, which was really, really nice.

And then I asked him if he wanted to come on to this podcast, and he agreed.

It also transpired that we had a couple of mutual friends, some of which have been on this actual podcast.

So that was nice.

And yeah, we had a pretty good chat.

So I'm not going to mess around this week.

Let's just get straight into it.

This is me talking to the very funny Paul Savage.

He never says pardon, he ain't no fork.

He's got a savage garden and his name is Paul.

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be, but it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

Okay, do you want phone?

Phone charger.

That's the things I say to myself as I leave.

Mantra.

So you've left your wallet.

I have a thing.

I have a piece of paper.

I'm a very overly organized person, so I have a little piece of card at my door and it just has a list of all the things I should take out because otherwise I'll fucking forget.

Or sometimes I'll pack the bag the night before.

I left, I was going to sit and staple things to things.

I left the stapler, so I had to go and I now bought two.

And you're like, just wow.

I didn't want to buy any staplers.

I don't need a stapler in my day to day existence apart from at the fringe.

Do you need one right now?

No, I don't.

There's someone over the road for $1.99.

Well, I went to Fringe Central the other day and there was a guy hogging the guillotine.

I've never wanted to hurt someone so much.

He was such a fucking arrogant prick.

He was there for like two hours with it.

I was like, I guess I'll just use fucking scissors then.

You just make sure that you're cutting those perfect little things.

Fucking dickhead.

I'm sure it was just a mid-fringe funk, but you know.

How's your show going?

My show is good, broadly.

By the time this goes out, it will have finished probably.

So I can be honest.

I don't have to be like, no, it's going so great.

And everyone like, I can tell you, the show itself is good.

The reviews have been really lovely.

The numbers have been tricky this year.

I don't know if it's the venue that I'm in, the sort of times that I'm at.

I've heard this a lot, you've got an 80s show as well.

Yeah, it's 10 past 8 shows.

And it's in a reasonably central one.

It's in Caves on the Cagate.

I've just found it a struggle to get like...

Why do you think that is?

I think that we fucked the Fringe.

Too many people, too many shows.

We fucked the Fringe.

You coming back to Fringe before you say your piece?

I probably will, but like, I think it needs significant changes.

And it's basically the accommodation prices need to...

They need to do half.

Oh, at least?

At least.

And it's the people who used to come where...

So I started in 2010 at the Fringe.

The people who used to come for the whole three weeks come for a week.

The people who used to come for a week come for a weekend, and the people who used to come for a weekend don't come.

And it's like...

It's just a cross.

So why are we here so long?

Well, if you do those...

So I've been out and done the Australian festivals and loads of them fly in for a week.

Aussie comics will fly in to Perth for a week.

They'll do three, four shows and then they'll go home.

And then they'll fly into Adelaide for a week and they'll do that.

And it's just an accepted part of the Fringe there.

It's that you don't have to...

Part time.

Yeah, part time is good.

And there should just be more stuff where a big act can come in and just be like, I'm going to do my tour show that I would do for 60 quid in an arena.

I should do it for 20 quid here.

But still the same quality.

The life cycle of a show now, you can do like new material, work in progress, do a work in progress Fringe run, take it out on tour and never actually do a solid show at a Fringe or like hone it in the clubs.

There are people who actively avoid ever doing any of that material in club nights because they don't see themselves as club comedians.

But although it just isn't financially sensible for them to do it that way, 20 years ago, you'd have like the stuff that would be honed in quite difficult clubs.

And now it's like, you can literally only place your audience if you so wish.

So when I did a show called All the Jokes in the Bible, which is my second show, that was such a tricky show to put together because it was straight stand up.

Once I got the opening bit, the explaining the show, that was five minutes.

So if you're doing ten minutes of new material at a new material night, and you're doing a five minute bit that you know works, and then you've only got like three to four minutes to be able to go, right, does any of this work?

Any of this other stuff?

So you couldn't do it outside of that ecosystem.

Because it's a context that makes no sense.

There's no beginning, middle or end.

Yeah, and I had this at a couple of gigs where it was like, you know, go in and explain it.

And like, someone being very useful and kind, but it didn't help, if you know what I mean, was saying, oh yeah, like we've got a middle 10 on our show that's normally like a paid thing for a new act of like 20, 30 quid.

We'll give you that.

You just run out new material.

And that's fine when it's a show that's just straight stand up.

But when it's like straight stand up on a theme that the theme needs explaining, it's quite a complicated thing.

And what if you've got like, I don't know, a call back half an hour later?

Yes.

How are you supposed to check that?

One of the interesting things I was finding is trying to write a new opening joke is tremendously difficult because if it's one that can only go at the start, you know, you can't walk out on stage, drop in 40 minutes in going, I know what you're thinking.

The two people I look a bit like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll just go.

Yeah, I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't put too much stock in your opening joke as a bellwether thought, but like we do and it's natural and saying like, if they don't go with this, they're going to.

I remember years ago when I was flying for Paul Sinner.

So this would have been either 2010 or 2011 and he was just like massive room, like 200 people.

I just said, oh, how did the show go last night?

He went, ah, they didn't like the opening joke and I knew it was going to struggle.

I was like, but you're a storytelling comedian and you've got a one-liner.

It's a nice one-liner, but it's like, and he's a brilliant writer of jokes, but I was like, it's the layered stories in callbacks and all the stuff that he's really brilliant at.

I was just like, and I didn't want to say as a much younger, much less experienced, much less accomplished comedian, but just like, no, snap out of that.

I get quite a lot of, I've been getting a lot of old people, a young guy I was talking to earlier, he's like 31, he's got his show, he's been getting a lot of old people as well.

I don't really, I'm not saying anything against it, it's just, I'm surprised.

Sometimes it is just the demographic you're going to force by tickets, you know?

And so you're like, okay, well, I'm not changing the stuff of the content, you can have what you...

Oh, I have, I had to the other night, I had three Chinese tourists in, and I was like, ah, probably won't say cunt twice then.

Yeah, yeah, my Joe, so I think it was my second show, two Canadian women and three Swiss lads, and that was it.

And you're just like, okay.

My tech was like, oh, it was a completely different show to last night, and I was like, yeah, because they don't get the references.

So like, there was a lot of old gear in that show that like is more universal.

No one's checking.

I went to see Scott Bennett's show yesterday, and it's an amazing show.

Even though it's a work in progress, he's like, it is punchy, it's very funny.

And we had sat and had a lime and soda afterwards, because we're rock stars.

And he was like, he'd stumbled on the word of the last joke.

He'd said, solicitor and meant lawyer, and he immediately corrected himself.

So like, everyone goes around, boy, everyone goes around, and he was beating himself up.

He'd been like, it would have been so much better.

I don't think it would have been.

I think it was great.

I don't think anyone noticed apart from you.

And again, no one's checking.

I know several people who have written a show where the title is a word or a phrase.

Oh, I mean, the famous examples are Nanette, which she actively admits.

She cut that story.

She met a woman called Nanette, thought that was going to be the show.

It wasn't, but she paid for the money, and the title was the title.

And she was like, now it's winning things.

Cold Lasagna, James A.

Castor, he said, that started as a bit about Cold Lasagna, and then that was the title.

It doesn't matter, it's just the sort of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

It's just the meaning, it's just the line, right?

It becomes the thing.

It was one of the things that...

So, Drop the Dead Donkey, the TV series, is a deliberately nonsense phrase that sounds like it's newsy, but you will get people who are newspaper professionals who are like, oh, yeah, no, it means this, it means...

It is literally a nonsense, it is a literal nonsense phrase that they invented, because it sounded enough like newsy stuff.

Drop the Dead Donkey, go full of that and yes, they're coming back or something.

I thought that guy was old at the time, but they never are.

No, there's a lot like that.

Have you seen the one of the first series of Cheers?

No.

So it's the picture of all of them in the first series of Cheers.

The coach, the old guy.

The coach, yeah.

But Norm is 33 and Cliff is 35.

And Woody Harrelson is 28 or something.

But they all look mid 40s.

Like Frasier is 32 or something and you're like...

Yeah, Frasier always surprised me that he was as young as he was.

Because I think when it was big, he was in his 40s, right?

Yeah.

And I thought, what?

Yeah, yeah.

It cannot be true.

Also, Frasier is such a funny one because it's about a neurotic guy.

But because it ran for so long and because they had so many guest stars and because they wanted to get...

You know, they had our storyline going through it.

But like that dude, he has more sexual partners than Joey from Friends.

Yeah, more than Shanna.

Yeah, just every other day.

Yeah, yeah.

But like Joey from Friends is like, he's a player.

He's out having one nightstands.

You don't always see them all the time, you just hear about them.

But like, of the ones that you hear about, and then you see that Frazier is like, oh, he's a complicated man, he can't sort his life out.

And he's having a parade of women.

It's just, it's such a funny sort of thing when they're like, same with Seinfeld as well, where you're like, Seinfeld, every other day he's going out with a different woman.

George Costanza as well, who was like, He was only 20 something at the beginning of that.

Yeah, yeah.

28 I think.

Yeah, it's mad.

It's fucking nuts.

Just people age differently in the 80s.

Have you seen the excellent Twitter account, Footballers Aging Badly?

No.

So it's football stickers from the 70s and 80s.

Nice to collect those.

Yeah, at the ages that they would have been.

And then it'll just be this guy, and it'll be someone like bold with a comb over, bags under the eyes, blood blisters on the nose.

It'll just say, Plymouth Argyle, 24.

Really?

Yeah, and they are all like, there was just something in the age.

Yeah, my granddad when I was born was 50.

He had a flat cap and he was an old hovis man.

That's what he looked like.

It's unbelievable how they looked.

They have this all the time.

I think they do it with Timothy Chalamet.

I think that's actually might be Jason Alexander.

And they say like 28 in the 80s and 28 in the 2020s.

And Chalamet looks about 12, and Costando looks about 55.

Yeah, and it can't just be like, oh, we're having a bit of kale, or like there's airbrushing in the things.

No, people just act.

It's how you act and what you do with your life.

People were finished with their lives earlier.

They were done.

Like even in Friends, the common thread that goes through is, because there was a thing in the 90s of having your shit together by 28.

And they're roughly 28 in the first couple of seasons.

And it's all about like, you must find the partner.

If you're going to have a baby, you must find the person to have that with.

You got to have it all down by 28.

And now, of course, we all know that 28 is basically 15.

I mean, what are you talking about?

38 even is questionable.

I met my wife at 38.

I find the interesting thing of some of the material that I used to do still work, or still should work, but doesn't work, because it was written by a 28-year-old to come out of a 28-year-old's face.

And I always looked younger than I was until the pandemic hit.

I just aged about three years overnight.

I couldn't even age you, I have no idea how old you are.

I'm going to guess.

Go on, have a guess.

I don't know, 41 or something like that?

I'm 40.

So, yeah, about right.

But yeah, so first six months of the pandemic, I was nanny to my sister's kids.

And just like the three years, I always looked younger than I was, caught back up.

But I was like, okay, and now look at the age I am.

But yeah, when you're like 28 and look 25, doing life jokes, oh, shit with jobs, I'm shit with women, oh.

And they're funny jokes.

But like, if I tried to do them now, everyone would be like, get a job.

Yeah, it's not cute anymore.

Sort your bloody life out.

It's not cute anymore.

Yeah, it's that sort of...

I'll give you an age one that blows my mind.

I went to see Joe Thomas the other day from In Between Us.

Oh yeah.

He is 40.

Yeah.

And I couldn't get my head around that because they seem eternally young.

I think even Simon Burr is 41 or something.

Yeah.

It's mad to me that they're obviously to you.

That makes sense because you're probably the same age as you.

But to me, they seem like kid kids, but they were older.

They were all like when they were playing 16, 17, 18 year olds in In Between Us, they were already 23.

It was just they looked younger because they both don the Cambridge Footlines.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he still looks the same.

He's standing there and he's saying, I'm 49.

How can you be 40?

It just doesn't work, man.

Or someone else was, I can't remember, I was watching a film and someone was, oh, I'll tell you who it is.

It's Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are doing a movie together and they're both 40.

And I see those dudes as young.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, Eisenberg, that's a change in 15 years.

It's the same face.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Sometimes it's weird.

It is.

Look at your own granddad at 40, see what he looked like.

Well, we found a lot of pictures of my...

When my parents were moving house, we found a lot of photos.

We were going through them.

I looked at one of my dad's.

And this is going back about three years.

And I was like, he's got me, my brother and my sister on, like, he's pictures all up in a face.

It's a very lovely, sweet photo.

And, God, doesn't he look young there?

And it's because he's three years younger than I was at the time.

But he's got, like, a full family and would have been working in a proper, you know, four-bedroom house with a mortgage.

Had a job as a manager director.

Like, he had all of that at that age.

And you'd...

And they'd just go, well, I had six Edinburgh shows.

So, like, meh, meh, meh.

I think that's the thing that keeps us younger by having these ambitions that are, you know, somewhat questionable.

But, you know.

I think it's also good that there's much more honesty these days about having a portfolio career of, like, I do this and this and this and this.

Of, like, when I started doing stand-up, if a stand-up comedian talked about their job, it was the job they used to do.

It was when I worked in an office.

Now, or, like, when I worked on the trucks, when I worked as a doctor, or whatever they did.

And then their stories would be about, as a comedian, I do this and I get into trouble because of...

And now, it's sort of like, no one would bat an eyelid if you say, so I work three days a week as a...

Doing this.

Doctor, sort of doctor.

Well, no, but, like, I worked in this and this and this, and these are my stories from the office that I still work at, and, like, I won't be quitting because comedy doesn't pay enough, and the audiences aren't being like, you're not a professional.

They're like...

It's more realistic.

It's more realistic that...

Well, there couldn't be six million comedians all being paid well, could there?

There's too many of them.

No, no, no, we do need a coal, but unfortunately, if you are, oh, there needs to be a coal, they'll be like, you might be on the list.

So what were your jobs before?

Do you still do a different job as well?

I still do lots of various things.

I mean, most of them are sort of comedic sort of things where you're, like, hosting and...

Did you have, like, a career before comedy of any kind?

I was a youth worker for a bit.

And then the Tories got in.

And as the year that I qualified in, I spent a year doing 160 application forms.

That's sending off your CV.

I'm saying, yeah, okay, fill in this application form.

And being at the time where you couldn't just copy and paste because all the boxes were...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's all typey typey, send up and cover that up.

Making a CV into an application form.

Yeah, yeah.

Is there anything so tedious?

My details.

I know, it's frustrating.

I had an idea, got like two interviews and did go out there with the jobs.

And I just went, I was coming up to the Fringe, actually, it was my first ever one.

And went to the, because I was on JobSeekers at the Benefits for the Dome.

And I was like, I'm going away for three weeks, I won't be able to come in and sign on, but I'm going there to work, but it is a limited term thing.

It's not like it can be a full-time job.

Even if I'm great at this, this is just what that is for.

And he went, oh, what is it?

And I was like, I was doing comedy and stuff.

And he was like, do you make any money from it?

And I was like, a little.

And he was like, just if you go self-employed, we will pay you to go self-employed for six months.

And it was like 10 quid less a week than they were paying me on JobSeekers.

And I was just like, I will pay a tenner not to come every two weeks to sit there with a, I've done 90 application forms and no one talks to me.

So they're the most depressing place in the world.

So I was just like, yep, absolutely.

And that was my, that was my origin story of just being like, that's when I made the jump to pro.

And it was difficult.

I've got a little favour to ask you.

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But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television Times podcast.

I'll ask you this one first.

What's your favourite jingle?

There's a really specific one.

When we had a video recorder, there was a Christmas special of like a bunch of Christmas cartoons.

Your Looney Tunes, your Bugs Bunny ones, those sort of ones.

And they were all on a block.

And in between that block was a other for TC.

Harrison.

Who's that?

It's a, like, I think, local to the Midlands.

Forklift and sort of like Cementix are a higher company.

And they had a jingle that goes TCH.

It's TC.

Harrison.

TCH.

There's no comparison.

TCH.

It's TC.

Harrison.

TCH.

But it went on for like three minutes.

But it was in the breaks in the adverts in the Christmas tape, because it wasn't...

And so I now think of that as a like forklifts.

They're for Christmas.

That's like one of those ones where it's just in the thing.

Like there's a bunch of songs that I had on CD compilation tapes.

You record sets, you're on...

I'll never forget sets.

I only had like a few.

And this would be during my GCSEs or whatever, where you're pretending you're revising, you're just listening to music or just go in my brain without actually me having to do anything.

What did I just read?

Yeah, yeah.

And there's loads that when I hear one of those songs out, out and about, I mean, you expect it to go straight into that.

And you're like, no, that's where that goes.

It goes from that into that.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever had like...

I can give you an example of that.

What is it?

Oh yes, I was traveling in Vietnam when the Killers album Hot Fluss came out.

Oh yeah.

And I bought a bootleg copy, sorry guys.

I did buy the original when I got home.

But I decided it was weird because I had a mini-display at the time, hung over from the 90s.

And I made all these mini-displays, but I thought, well, how do I listen to new music though?

So I'll have to get these CDs.

So I bought a CD Walkman with me as well.

Of course I did.

And I bought the album and I loved it.

And I remember thinking at the time that fucking track order of this album is phenomenal.

The way it goes in from that song to this song to that one, it's incredible.

And I loved it.

Came home, bought the album, completely different order.

They took it in alphabetical order and you're like, it's bad, it's bad.

I'm like, this is rubbish.

And I don't like the order it's in now.

I can't remember what it was.

But it just started in a different way.

And I was really impressed with like the sort of side one end.

It didn't exist.

It was all in my head.

Interesting those sort of things, isn't it?

It's like the sort of timing of one thing into another.

And you're like, no, that's the correct way.

Yeah, I used to be a musician.

I make albums and I would spend fucking hours working out the tempo and the key change.

Is that too dramatic?

That's too slow to go and that now sounds too slow.

Oh, we need a fast one there.

So I used to sort of spend hours on that shit.

And that's why it annoys me when people hit shuffle.

I'm like, you don't understand that you're jumping over someone's craft there.

You know what I mean?

There's a lot of shit music.

Anyway, it's not music.

Oh, that was what I was going to say.

Sometimes online, like I talked to Terry Christian the other day, and he came on and he was talking about The Word.

And we found some clips online.

They've got compilation shows on YouTube.

But it comes with the ads of the time.

Oh, yeah.

So you've got all the ads, the 90s ads.

They look like they're from the fucking 70s, the state of these things.

And they're all like, you know, women with big hair being seduced over a fucking Cabbage Flake or something.

It's really funny to watch them.

Yeah, there's some years that are like up until 1994.

It's still the 80s.

And then, like...

Shoulder pads.

Yeah, like the horrible jumpers and tracks.

Those 90s patchy fucking fresh prints clothes.

Yeah, and you'd think they're 80s, but they bled right into the 90s, like well into the 90s.

It looks like the early 80s looks like the 70s is fun.

Yeah, it doesn't have this...

And yet the 90s really does end quite hard as an aesthetic.

When do you think it ended, ended straight away?

My specific one was 9-11.

Yeah, I think so too.

I think the 90s ends 9-11.

Everyone goes, okay, it's completely different.

You can get ball game from here on.

And there was quite, because I'm not a big fan of the conservatives, but it's quite a big surprise how much of the 90s and how much of the Britpop and all of that stuff and all the films were under a sort of John Major time, the old gray period.

Because the whole like, you know, cool Britannia shit and old Gallagher going around Downing Street and all that.

That was a very short lived period.

Very short, incredibly short.

COVID is longer ago than that lasted.

Yeah, Frank Skinner has a bit in his book where on the election night, he was a roving reporter in a helicopter going around on the election broadcast.

So it's like 5am and the light starts to come up.

And he says to, just him and the helicopter pilot, just goes, the day dawns on Blair's Britain.

And the helicopter pilot nods to him and they both think it's quite profound.

And then he said, in two weeks, it was back to the same old shit.

Boring.

Well, a few, a couple of weeks ago, I was in the company of Liz Truss.

Oh, wow.

I went to that stupid thing she did at that meeting.

Was that the one that was where the lettuce?

No, that was a few days later.

I wish it was that one.

But we did, we were, all our bags were searched and we were supposed to like, you know, not take, I did take in some mixed leaves, which I was going to eat in the front row, but I didn't.

I kept my shit together.

But the whole point was, I heard there was going to be roving mics.

So I thought I'll come up with a really good question for her.

So my question was going to be, because my show school's uncomfortable.

So I thought it was more comfortable than standing with that lunatic.

Unless you're a fan, of course.

And I had this great line, well I thought it was a great line, was something like, I voted for Blair in 97, and now John Major is actually seen as quite an insensible, elder statesman.

Do you think that in the future, you'll be seen as something of a little gem?

Which I thought was funny.

But I didn't get to say it, which was really annoying.

So instead, what happened was, she kept saying like, fucking, it wasn't my fault, none of it was my fault.

And then this bloke shouted, just apologize.

And she went, it wasn't my fault.

The economic crash was, it wasn't me.

And then I just found myself speaking.

I'm in the front row, and I just shouted at her.

I go, so why did you sack Quasi-Quarteng then?

She looked straight at me, and she went, read my book.

And I went, never.

And they laughed.

But then even with that, You can't make me read.

I'm going to read your fucking ghost written lie book.

Joking.

But then she still took a picture with me.

Which was like, really weird.

So she's got, the woman has got some stones, I'll tell you that.

Ah, yeah.

My cousin worked in politicsy stuff, and we did a fundraising gig for Tessa Jowell Foundation, because he knows people in politics.

We were like, oh, we'll have a raffle table, we'll do loads of bits and bobs, and we'll get local business to give stuff.

Because that really does make such a difference fundraising wise.

So I think we made about a grand on the ticket sales, and I think we made two grand on the raffle.

But one of them was a water bottle that said, In Liz, we trust.

And my girlfriend at the time came to the show, won the raffle.

It was just pick whichever thing you want.

And so picked up the Liz Trust water bottle, because she was like, oh, that's funny.

And then she was like, it's actually quite a good water bottle.

And she was working out in France.

And so she was taking on the Eurostar with her water bottle, because it says, in Liz we trust.

And getting such weird looks, because this was well after that she'd been kicked out of.

Yeah, because if you don't know, it's sort of ironic, then it seems pro, right?

And that's, when I put my photo up, I was thinking, you know, I don't like her, right?

Yeah.

Is this a picture with me and Hitler?

You know, am I going to regret this in the future?

Because I wouldn't do one with Viraj or Reese Mogg.

I just wouldn't.

But with her, it was just like, well, you know, that's fucking mad.

I'll ask you one more question, because we're running out of time.

Give me a number between one and 22.

Let's say 17.

17.

What was the biggest change you witnessed television-wise?

That's interesting.

I would probably say Sky Plus.

So the ability to pause...

Pause live TV.

Pause live TV and live record stuff.

Pause two live TVs in different rooms.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, that never actually worked.

But yeah.

I mean, not with the package.

Maybe they used to bang on about it.

Maybe.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe we didn't have the package.

We had the little one sensor that you could use.

It went to the other box.

I've never had Sky because I just don't want to give Murdoch money, but I'll probably end up getting it at some point.

Fair enough, innit?

But the ability to pause stuff was brilliant and also bad.

Because...

So you can skip through the adverts.

Amazing.

I've got ADHD.

I will sometimes pause a thing.

But I'm watching and enjoying to just check a thing.

To, you know, something pop up on the thing, you go, oh, that's a text message I needed to send to someone else.

The phone's open, the thing is gone, and you're just like, my flatmate would come in and just...

It has a little thing that says, like, how long it's been paused.

And it's just sort of like, it's been paused for 35 minutes and you are just staring at your phone, and you're like, yeah, this was the little bit that I had to...

You know, I had half an hour off to watch a program during my lunch break.

Or like, you know, you got a couple of hours to kill in the evening, but you want to put something, you know, oh, if I've got two hours, then I can watch a movie.

And then you're like, you've watched 30 minutes of a movie and you're now going to have to go to bed.

And you're like, oh, it's great in one way, but also bad in another.

There was stuff on TV when I was a kid that we never even knew what it was.

I remember seeing Brass Eye and just stumbling across it because it looked so much like the news, wasn't even sure it was a thing.

And it was the one where they were doing ram-raiding with pensioners.

They'll just throw an elderly person through the window.

And it's all CCTV, so it looks really real.

And I was like, and then I think I was like sent to bed.

I was just like, no, come on, too late.

You go, oh, okay.

And then no idea what it was.

And I'd ask my friends at school, did you see that thing last night?

And they go, no.

You can't just watch it again.

It's nowhere.

You can't watch it again.

It's gone.

Wouldn't have even been able to like you've maybe had the TV listing magazine to like go through.

Did you print it?

No, probably not.

Probably not.

A year.

You couldn't Google that.

Well, before Google, we didn't have the internet, even if we did.

And so you're just like, oh, so there was a thing on it and I saw it and then I don't know what it was.

Yeah.

And then like, there was a bunch of stuff years later, really good pop culture websites.

They had a load of pop culture experts and you could write in and just go, I saw this thing.

It was 15 minutes of film.

I am going to describe it from memory.

And they go, I think it might be this.

And that was it.

That's cool.

Yeah.

But yeah, because just some of the stuff we like, no, it wasn't that you're thinking of two separate things that you've contemplated in your mind and that sort of stuff.

Like now that you can just know, you can just be like, what is this?

All right.

And that's also not helpful because sometimes you're watching something like, where have I seen that fucker before?

Pause it.

Hang on.

Let me just look.

And again, 30 minutes later.

Yeah, there was one that they did a while back.

It was Greg Wallace Britain's New Meat.

And it's an incredible program.

About meat?

About meat.

And so he's done all the things of like going inside the factory, seeing all these things.

And it is, spoiler, I think it's called Britain's Mystery Meat or something like that.

And it was using human cloning from poor people to take cells to turn into fake meat.

They're turning into burgers.

But also these people are just like, we're saving money for the NHS, blah, blah, blah.

And it's much more easy to...

I vaguely heard about this.

It was such...

It was because he plays it so straight.

And because the graphics and the tone and the music are all correct.

Like he's in the factory episode.

It's like an in the factory episode.

And like it is such a well done piece of satire.

I'm going to have to watch it.

That I really was really annoyed that I missed it going out first time.

But I would never have stumbled upon it.

And be someone wasn't able to like put it in front of me and just go, just watch this.

Without knowing.

Without knowing.

As soon as you know, like it's...

Yes, the immediate information now is...

Yeah, you would find that retroactively now.

You'd be like, oh, they've made this show about that, that way around.

Yeah.

But it was very clever and very well done.

Because it is much more difficult to do satire now, just because the rules have gone a bit of like...

The real stuff sounds fake anyway.

The real stuff sounds fake.

There was a bit when Trump got shot in the ear, where I heard about it through jokes first, and then had to work backwards.

And then everyone was like, he's a WWE Hall of Fame member.

Like, he knows absolutely how to go down, blade his ear, come back up.

So without getting yourself in trouble, you think it's not...

What do you think?

Yeah, like, it would not surprise me.

It would surprise me, but usually the simplest answer is the correct one.

So it's probably the bullet.

I saw the conspiracy theory before I saw the news.

And I saw the joke about it before I saw the horror about it.

And that's an interesting thing nowadays.

So just like you get in the backlash before the lash, if you know what I mean.

Where do you sit on this whole?

Because I do sort of think that when I was younger, there were things I questioned that I did have questions about moon stuff just because of political stuff.

And I didn't believe every bit of footage is correct.

I do believe they went.

But I think some of the footage is very fucking questionable.

And the JFK thing, obviously, and John Lennon, it all seemed a bit connected.

But now they've all been they've been put in the same bucket as all this other crazy shit, so now I want nothing to do with it.

Do you know what I mean?

But it makes any, what I would say, legitimate concerns that might have been real, have now just been put in with these other flat earth fucking maniacs.

The QAnon stuff is incredible because, so I worked in youth work, I worked in safeguarding, I worked with child protection sort of stuff in that.

And then you go, are we expected to believe that, because QAnon started from a thing called Pizzagate, which was that they were ordering child sex slaves under the cover of a pizza parlor.

That's what Pizzagate was already, and that spread into, there's a deep state.

And you go, yeah, that's mental, but it's not like there aren't high ranking paedophiles who get into a position of power.

There's a documentary about the whip system in the UK.

So if the foreign listeners, basically there are MPs whose specific job is to tell other MPs how to vote.

And sometimes they will vote with their conscience, and then the whip will be like, no, no, you've got to vote to the party line.

And there's a whip who's literally, I think this documentary came out in 1992, 1993.

He just says, yes, if the, we would go and find out stuff about them, if they've got problems with their gambling debts, or they're into small boys.

And he doesn't change one iota of his voice.

He is not doing a joke.

He is like saying, we would find out if they are a paedophile and we would use that to our advantage.

And it's so brazen that no one at the time said anything.

I mean, it's mad.

One of the things I brought up in the show a couple of years ago, which was about this, was when the whole Jimmy Sample thing kicked off, when all of the allegations came out.

But when nothing had yet been properly proven.

So BBC Four pulled all of the top of the pops, all the episodes that had been playing out, that had Jimmy Savile in.

And one of them they replaced with an episode of Whatever Happens to the Likely Lads, the charming sitcom from the 70s.

Family friendly fun, in which that particular episode, the two men in their 30s talked about how fit schoolgirls were.

And it was just, it's in.

Yeah, but it's one of those things where you're just, oh, that'll be fun.

And loads of stuff is in the culture.

So yeah, I think it's a weird thing with the conspiracy stuff because you're like, oh yeah, but I don't believe in that madness.

And you're like, Jeffrey Epstein was a proven paedophile and has all of these links to all of these things.

Stephen Hawking was there.

I feel like we've gone into a different fucking, like, realm.

Yeah, like a parallel universe.

Weirdly, I'm not going to say anything libelous, but like the allegations of Hugh Edwards, that was like, okay, enough with this.

I'm living in a fucking dream, right?

Well, yeah, it's like, but like, oh, yeah.

And it is weird.

It's weird.

Yeah.

Without libeling anyone further, I think it's very, very weird.

Right, so final question.

Who's your favorite paedophile on TV?

It's Russell Brand.

It's Russell Brand.

Russell Brand is not my favorite anything.

No, he's not.

He's not.

He's not.

Well, thank you, Paul, for coming on to Television Times.

We talked about some television and a lot of paedophiles.

So thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, fam.

That was me talking to Paul Savage up at the Edinburgh Fringe months and months and months ago.

Check him out online if you enjoyed our chat, I hope you did.

And he's a very funny man, he's always on tour, and he's always at the festivals in England, Scotland, and of course Australia, where he's had sellout runs at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

So I hope you like the chat.

And now to today's outro track.

Right, today's outro track is called Waiting For The Bus.

It's a song I wrote on bass.

I didn't write a lot of songs on bass, but I had one around the time I wrote this, about 20 years ago.

And I was living in London at the time.

And I remember just sort of being really, really frustrated around the Victoria Station area of London, never being able to get a bus home when I lived in Streatham.

So yeah, I wrote that song around then, recorded it in a batch of songs that you've been listening to in the previous few episodes.

And yeah, it's always in my head.

I really love the bass line.

It's my only kind of reggae-ish kind of, you know, madness-y, whatever, I don't know.

Anyway, heavily influenced, obviously.

But yes, I love this song, it's catchy.

It's rough around the edges, but try to enjoy it.

This is Waiting For The Bus.

I hope you really enjoyed that song and my interview with Paul Savage.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes.

Tell all your friends about this podcast.