Rob Rouse: Unpacking Sitcoms, Stand-Up & TK Maxx Underpants

Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, screen rats.

I have a cold, as you can probably tell.

It just won't budge.

I feel like I've been sniffing for a month now.

So obviously, I'm not going to put you through too much of me talking with a blocked nose.

Today's guest on Television Times is a really great guest.

It's so much fun.

I was having a bit of a sort of down period after the Derren Brown episode dropped, because we got a lot of bites on social media, a lot of bites, a lot of views of the audiogram video.

I mean, we're talking tens of thousands, but that does not equate to downloads, people.

I cannot tell how many of you are listening, but I can see how many of you are downloading, and the sort of click rate from watching a post to actually engaging with it and then actually listening to the podcast is pretty low.

So I was a bit down, and I was thinking that whole thing that I think sometimes, like who the hell is listening?

Why should I keep going with this?

Even though I've got loads of great episodes coming up, and I just had Derren Brown on, for goodness sakes.

But yeah, I was just feeling a bit low.

And then I thought, you know what?

I'll start doing the next episode.

And so I started editing this episode, and it just gave me all the energy and all the sort of positivity back, because Rob Rouse is our guest this week.

He is just so fucking funny.

Like in the recording, because it was an online recording, I missed a lot of the gags that he was doing.

And I picked them up while I was playing them back.

And it was just like, oh my God, I couldn't even hear half of that because of the bad connection.

But my God, he's so funny and so engaging.

And this just put all the life back into me that I needed to sort of carry on with this podcast.

It's a very positive episode for me.

Rob's brilliant.

You know him from so many things, I'm sure.

Just IMDB him.

But in the UK, he's probably quite well known for playing Bottom in Upstart Crow, for instance.

But yeah, I mean, what a guy.

He does edema shows all the time.

He's a very funny comedian and then just all around hilarious man.

So I think we got on pretty well.

I worked on a show of his.

Well, I didn't work on a show of his.

I helped move some props around on a show of his back in Edinburgh about five years ago or so.

Or maybe it's eight years.

I don't know.

Fucking what year is this?

It's 2025 next year apparently, which blows my mind.

Anyway, so I don't want to go on too much about things.

I can't talk for long anyway, because I'm expecting some builders to come allegedly to fix a garage door that fell off in a storm the moment we moved into this house.

And it's still not been fixed.

And I'm waiting for the property company to actually send someone around.

And I'm expecting someone to turn up with a garage door under their arm.

But they're probably going to end up turning up with a piece of A4 and a pencil.

So anyway, without further ado, let's just get into it.

It's a funny episode.

I really love Rob.

He's great.

He's just a fucking all-round great guy.

Check him out.

Loads of comedy online on YouTube.

Go to his website for more information.

But you know, here we go.

This is me talking to the brilliant and hilarious Rob Rouse.

Whether you're out walking or sitting in your house, here's me talking to somebody.

This time it's Rob Rouse.

A weekly podcast with your host, me, Sting 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've got longer hair than me.

Similar colour.

Well, isn't it?

Well, mine's probably a bit greyer than yours, Steve.

I should think now, yeah, well, especially at the sides here.

Look, these white areas, like a human button bug.

Thank you very much.

How are you?

I'm good, yeah.

We have met, you might not remember.

My brain, though, at nearly 50 is, are we recording yet?

Are we on?

My brain at nearly 50 is, I mean, it's not what it, I mean, it was never that sharp, Steve.

I love you, but bits of information fall out now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm trying to work out because it was at the Guild of Balloon, wasn't it?

Yes, I was masquerading as a production manager and you were there.

I think the last time I saw you, you were doing the ladder with your wife, I believe.

Yes, there we go.

Yeah, that was great fun in the dining room, yeah.

I used to help you move, I'd come in and I'd see that the people that should be helping you weren't fast enough so then I'd get in and we'd move all those props really fast.

I remember, and oh my God, what a difference you made there because the, yes.

Well, you picked up the slack and, but that's the joy and the reality of a festival, isn't it?

Like everyone's got to kind of muck in and do, just do what needs to be done, I always think.

Yeah, I think I had a bit of an OCD about the, you know, shows going up on time.

Well, that was my thing.

I was like, I want this show up on time.

Well, otherwise the world goes to shit, Steve, let's be honest.

And a festival falls apart.

Absolutely.

What time was that on?

Do you remember?

We were on at 11.15, I remember.

Because we did 11.15 the next year as well with our follow-up show, Funny In Real Life.

Where the conceit being that I was meant to be doing a stand-up show as me that I thought I'd booked in at 11:15 p.m.

but didn't have my reading glasses to hand when I filled in the forms.

So I was, and it was an earthy show about childbirth and the kind of the grittier end of life.

So the conceit being I was on the back foot doing it at 11:15 a.m.

but making the best of it.

That's great.

I wish I saw that.

And Helen, my wife was in the audience and she'd started chipping in in sort of the first five minutes.

To give your own heckler.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was great because it sowed an absolute seed of chaos at the start of the show.

And it was one week, one week over Jade Adams was in with a few mates and she started telling Helen to shut up in the audience.

She goes, shut the fuck up.

The guy's trying to do his show.

And she was mortified and pissed herself when she found out what was going on.

And then basically I bring the lights up and then go, oh, you know, it's realized it's my wife who's heckling, contesting the truth of veracity of what I'm saying.

And then the show spirals into this double act about what, you know, whose story is whose to tell.

And I think it was one of the best things I've ever done on the stage.

It was great.

It was brilliant.

You've done a lot in that room because I was talking to Andre Vincent.

He said he did a show with you in that room as well, the dining room.

Yeah, that was in 2000, I'm going to say 2001 or 2002.

I think it was the big enough Christmas show we did.

Yeah, summertime Christmas show.

And he played a kind of a sort of broken, dirty Santa Claus in it.

I can see that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, typecast, typecast again.

Well, at least that room, because that room was for me that when I used to do that kind of work, that room was the cursed room.

And luckily you were in it earlier.

Why was it cursed?

It used to just get hotter and hotter and hotter.

Do you remember the noise from those fucking aircon units under the seats?

It's like a jet engine.

Yeah.

We'd have to turn them off.

I don't know if we turned them off for you, but we might have done.

I remember, I remember realizing that was one of the boons that being on in the morning.

There was a chance that the building had sort of slightly cooled down after all the late night shenanigans.

And there'd been to a degree, some form of an air change.

And the earlier you got on, the better.

And I remember going to try and see shows on in that venue at night.

Yeah, yeah.

I just, I've been crippled by it.

Absolutely.

Well, they've sorted it, I think, because I went to see Jack Doherty this year and that was quite late, probably around nine o'clock.

It was lovely and cool in there.

So I don't know what they've done.

They must have, I don't know.

I mean, there must, there've been times, I remember doing the Pleasants either upstairs or above or maybe both of them at different times and them being so hot.

I remember in 2000 and, I'm gonna say three, doing the upstairs one in the courtyard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And handing out ice pops at half time, which I get from some, what's it called?

Summer Foods on Nicholson Street.

Just because it just felt, it felt almost insulting to the audience to ask them to sit there in that heat.

And I bought four pedestal fans from B&Q and then handed out ice pops.

You had to do it yourself.

Yeah, because it was insane.

And then when I did 2009, did the other one, The Pleasants.

Me, Simon Brodkin, Shappi and I think Des Clark went four ways, spent a grand on an aircon for the month.

And The Pleasants gave a shit about having to remove a small window pane to vent it out.

And genuinely, if Deffra had come in and someone had been trying to keep chickens in there, they would have been prosecuted.

Were you up there this year?

I wasn't there this year because you had your entry.

Operation on me foot, yeah.

So what happened there?

Well, I got this cool thing that all the young trendy comics have got called arthritis.

I'm predicting now a spate of arthritis based shows coming in from all the trendy young comics.

They'll drop it at about 45, bring everyone down and bring them back up with a recovery story.

But yeah, I just had to have the joint of my big toe fused basically, because all the cartilage has gone to it.

And I do, I'm quite busy on stage and it's bone on bone.

And how does that occur?

Is it just, what is the thing that causes it?

Who knows?

My wife thinks it's because I got flat feet and I walk around like a duck.

The doctor says it could be genetic and it could be every single thing under the sun.

And it's not in the other joints in the toes mercifully, it's just the big toe joint.

So now that's fused, I can run again.

There's no pain in that one, but the other one's screaming and we get that done just before Christmas.

But then next year, I'll be back.

I'll be back sprinting and bouncing around again.

I played a lot of guitar when I was younger and I think it might be in my head, but sometimes you get like a shooting pain or something in your arm.

I just think, oh, my arms hurt a little bit.

Sometimes I'll, it's ridiculous.

Sometimes I'll treat myself, go to a Premier Inn, buy like four wrist supports from Poundland and some deep heat and I'll just put them on my wrists and my feet.

And it's like a little sort of, it's like going to a sort of spa, just sort of relaxes me.

Yeah, like a budget spa at a Premier.

Although actually, you're probably cheaper going to a spa at a Premier Inn.

They could be upwards of a hundred quid, can't they, to book, Steve?

I mean, they can.

You want to treat yourself to a real spa, mate?

Yeah, so they're doing it on the show.

I love them for doing it and I want them to be a sponsor of this podcast.

I love them.

You've made that quite clear.

When me and my missus are sort of tired or the kids have driven us mad, one of us will just go to a premium for a night in our own city.

Yeah.

Although, I mean, that's something you have to learn, you know, as a new parent, is sometimes the greatest birthday present you can give your partner is a night alone in a hotel without you there.

That's exactly what I asked for.

It's my birthday very soon.

So that's exactly what I asked for.

Two nights in a premium, please.

What's for me?

With unfettered access to the vending machine.

I don't think I've ever used a vending machine in a premium.

I do a thing where I take Tupperware.

God, I sound like such a cheapskate.

I take Tupperware, a tin of noodles, a tin of tuna and I make sort of a meal in my room.

Incredible.

Well, I do find, I mean, like as a comedian, when you're on the road, when you are at the behest of what's available at a hotel, you can very quickly feel institutionized.

So, you know, within two or three days, I'll be boiling eggs in the kettle.

Have you done that?

Have you actually done that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You just, you have to be careful lowering them in.

And you've got to, you know, obviously, stay open to the possibility that the eggs could fracture at some point and then you've either got to, you've got to fess up to housekeeping.

I've boiled mushrooms in there.

You've boiled mushrooms?

I have boiled mushrooms, but it makes the rim smell.

But because I know I've done that, I now pre-boil the kettle when I check in.

I'm like, okay, I'll throw that away because apparently people do their pants.

Whoa!

I've never stayed in a hotel ever again.

And I take my own remote control because the remote control is most definitely contaminated.

But does yours work?

Yeah, I've got a Samsung.

I've learnt the unlock codes for the telly so I can turn them all up and make them work properly.

My godfathers, I dread to think what else you've hacked into.

Thank you.

I find that's something about you today that I didn't know.

The warm up for the TV show Coupling.

Yeah, someone's been on Wikipedia.

Well, I didn't know that, and I just look out for things that I actually watched and loved, and I did love that.

I love that show.

It's mad, I remember it was made by, is it Hartswood Films, Beryl and Sue Virtue, who were two absolute titans of the worlds of studio sitcoms.

And I remember they were brilliant because it was fairly early on in my sort of career as a standup.

And I was quite good at freewheeling and just kind of going with the flow and making things up.

And anyone who's ever been to a sitcom recording will know that they go on for far too long, at the best of times.

Hours and hours.

And what I really loved about Beryl and Sue was they were always completely pragmatic about that reality of keeping people there for as long as it would take to record a sitcom.

They never overdid it, you know, but they supported me in my quest to support the recording.

So occasionally, of course, you would get some people complaining about the warmup and what the warmup had said.

And Beryl always used to bring me, and Sue used to bring me the letters and we'd read them out together.

And they'd obviously say, well, obviously, you know, they can go fuck themselves on this one.

But, and it was great.

It was really funny because, yeah, they were a nice bunch to work for.

They were really good, really good.

How was it doing that?

Like, do you have to come out full of energy?

Because I've been to some recordings and I just, for some reason, I can remember the ones I saw in America.

And they always come out like 100% energy.

And I can't remember who, I used to go and watch So Graham Norton, like years ago.

Yeah, yeah.

And the warmup there was good.

Probably someone famous.

Joe Caulfield probably used to do them back in those days.

Yeah, she was doing a lot of Graham's stuff.

She was brilliant.

Still is.

But yeah, I find it quite interesting.

Like, it's a weird thing.

Now, it's funny, as we were talking about TV.

I find it very interesting.

I was watching some very old episodes of, obviously not very old, but they are old, aren't they?

Episodes of Faulty Towers.

And it's quite clear when you watch it now that they didn't have a studio warmup as such.

Maybe John Cleese came out and said, you know, this is what was going to happen in the episode.

Oh, these are the characters, there's everyone.

Let's do it.

Because when you listen to them, you can feel the audience always build.

So now when you have a warmup, come out and do a sitcom.

So when we did Upstart Crow, we had Jarlath Regan did some and Laura Lex did them.

And they both did incredible jobs.

But it would always be that then when you watch it back, the first thing that happens is that is, you know, is a funny moment in the script.

We'll get a full laugh from the audience.

And that I'd noticed did cause people to go, I was coming in bloody candle after that show.

You know, all the amateur experts come out.

But the reality is it's definitely filmed in front of the studio audience.

We were there.

It's an immutable fact.

But I can also understand how sometimes I, it's a very interesting question.

Is it, does a laughter track on a sitcom?

If you watch them very passively, I think it helps people get into it.

If you watch it really actively, I think it can sometimes, potentially, depending on the person, get in the way of your own experience of it.

So what I find is, I don't know what the answer is, somewhere in the middle, but what I found fascinating while watching early episodes of Faulty Towers, if you watch them, there's bits at the start that are funny, classic lines that go pretty much for nout and it slowly builds up.

And as the tension ratchets up in the episode, you get, you know, because there's so much kind of drama, there's so much action, kinetic stuff happening and plot all twisting tighter and tighter.

The laughter gets more intense, but if you go back and watch them, it's fascinating.

Really?

Things going literally for zip.

I'm just thinking like the audience that would be in that, in the auditorium in 1970, what was it, 1975, something like that.

If you think about it, there are people born in the 30s and 40s and they may not have seen anything before, they wouldn't know what the show is because in two seasons, they've probably not even seen it.

They're all smoking pipes.

All smoking pipes, all BBC people, probably all sitting around thinking, what is this?

Is this funny?

What is this?

Is this a play?

Yeah, I mean, it's not going to be like...

What's Cleve up to now?

I remember him from university.

What's happening now?

Exactly.

I thought a very similar thing actually in the studio parts of Reggie Perrin, the original Reggie Perrin.

Similar thing, very like little titters.

Yeah, absolutely.

Brilliant stuff.

Much more like you're watching a theatrical, a lot more theatrical.

And then if you watch like, you know, classic episodes of Friends, first thing, hey, raaah!

Yeah, I hate all that though.

Or Big Bang Theory.

Or then, and then it's funny watching my kids grow up.

And my little girl watching kind of, you know, kind of modern sitcoms with kids in them.

Yeah.

And just someone raising an eyebrow and getting a full audience laugh.

Sort of Nickelodeon kid sitcom thing.

Exactly, it's really weird.

It's almost like, yeah, totally.

But it kind of, it's like the sitcom on steroids.

Isn't it?

Those dynamics on steroids.

I find it really interesting.

I agree.

I mean, for me, the laughter track is key.

And I do hear it, especially if someone has a very specific laugh.

Yeah.

There's a show on currently that I don't want to diss because I like it and I watch every episode, but the reboot of Nevermind the Buzzcocks.

Right.

I've not seen it yet.

That's on Sky, isn't it?

It's on Sky.

I watch it and I really enjoy it.

And this week we've watched an episode almost every night because I didn't know it was on.

I'd missed most of it, but I can't bear the fucking American style laughter track they've got going on or they're editing it in a way that something has happened that we're not privy to and everyone's laughing way too much for things.

And I just think, what's going on?

Is that fake?

Is that added later?

It feels sort of added.

It feels like that is-

Right.

It just feels a bit too elevated.

Like it's not that funny what I just heard, you know?

It's the weirdest thing.

I think, you know, the mic placement, all that stuff.

So I'm sort of into recording bits of music for amateur purposes and for, you know, for doing shows and things.

Yeah.

And it is fascinating where mics are, how they're mixed.

All that stuff can have a real massive impact.

Oh yeah.

And I think there can be a drive to make everything sound as funny as it is.

But if you drill into it, it's about the content at the end of the day, isn't it?

It's really interesting.

It is interesting.

Well, I'll try not to make too much noise.

You're in a musical room.

You've got Hummingbird.

We've got all kinds of things in here.

Nice.

I also, for this podcast, make all my own music.

Because I don't want to pay anybody.

Well, I mean, you also take Tupperware to Premier Edge and make your own salad nicoise in the kitchen.

I've made a salad this once in a Tupperware.

So I was born in 74, so I grew up in the late 70s and early 80s as a kid.

And it would be fair to say, and there's no judgment on a younger generation now, and it would have been exactly how the generation before us viewed us, but we lived in a state of, a sort of benign neglect was the general approach to parenting.

Now parents go along to everything their kids do, everything is celebrated generally, I mean, I don't know if my parents knew half of the stuff that you were doing or you were up to or, and they certainly came along to some things.

I don't know if my, I went to parents' evening last night and I'm just thinking, I don't remember any of my parents come, or grandparents come into my parents' evenings.

I don't remember it being a thing.

And if it was, I wasn't aware of it.

Yeah, but I mean, we grew up in an era of no seat belts, people smoking in pubs, in cinemas, in, you know, kids on the parcel shelf on holiday without going to...

You remember the 70s?

Hey, do you remember when, do you remember Kaplunk?

Well, Kaplunk was made of wood and not made of plastic.

Exactly.

It was time, it was a hugely, hugely different time.

It really was.

My nan used to make me get in the smoking carriage of the fucking Northern line on the tube with her.

Yeah, it was astonishing.

It was astonishing.

I remember the horrific tragedy of the King's Crossfire.

I wasn't...

Oh, yeah.

What year it was?

1987.

87.

And I remember when I first moved down to London in sort of what, 97 or something, there was still some of the escalators were made out of wood.

Yeah, I used to go to school on the tube when I was about 12.

I used to live in Deptford on an estate and go to school in St.

John's Wood, which sounds posh apart from it was the roughest school I've ever attended.

And I would come up at St.

John's Wood and they had the wooden escalator with the sort of old round kind of candle holder lights.

That's right, yeah.

They were all still there.

And what wasn't, I mean, I could be wrong.

Wasn't that what happened at King's Cross?

It was a wooden escalator.

Cigarettes underneath.

With loads of rubbish and cigarettes on it.

You just think like that, like the fact that that was, that was like kind of no one said, this is absolutely an absolute powder cake.

It's crazy, isn't it?

Yeah, that'd be fine, yeah, because you need to get into the meat of what your podcast is about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's just see where this all goes.

We'll get into television.

Maybe I'll do the number thing.

Shall I just ask you to pick a number?

Do whatever you want, I'm an open book.

Okay, let's pick a number between one and 20.

15.

Go on to your head, which reality TV show could you stand to be on?

Oh, Christ.

None of them.

Bear Grylls Island.

I think I could be on that one.

I think I could be on, I mean, I know I could be on all of them.

I could survive on all of them.

Whether I would be anything like what the producers wanted me to do on the show is another matter, but I could go on all of them.

I'm a fucking grown up.

You could go on, name one and I'll tell you what I'd do.

Okay, SAS.

SAS, I'd probably cry quite a lot and maybe get sent home for falling over too much with my arthritic foot, but I'd give it a go.

So at Middleton, we'll just get you to withdraw for medical reasons.

Yeah, something like that.

I'd shit myself and leave.

Celebrity Apprentice.

Celebrity Apprentice, yep.

I could do that.

It never fails to amaze me.

I'd come up with, yeah, I'd come up with really generic titles for the team, like Team Orbit or Oscillate or something like that.

They come up with things like that, don't they?

Synergy, yeah.

Synergy, they've definitely done synergy.

Synergy, but I think Bear Grylls Island, I could go on that one because the basics of survival I think would be, I could enjoy that and it would be a good challenge.

Yeah.

And there'd be enough going on just staying alive, I think.

And it'd be you and Bear just there and then you zoom out and there's 40 other guys.

Yeah, well, isn't it the one where there's a group of people in there?

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

There's a group of people in there.

So I watched it when Shazzy Merzer was on and she fell over when she was fishing and knocked herself out cold on a rock.

Oh, I didn't see that.

And then just got up and carried on.

Really?

Like Shazzy is rock hard, absolutely hard.

And Mark Watson went home, couldn't hack it.

Oh, I'll have to watch that.

Shazzy knocked herself out cold and then just cracked on with it.

Amazing, incredible, yeah.

Is it a similar show to the one he did where he used to take like Obama salmon fishing in Alaska?

That's the one where he does the one-on-ones and tip.

Yeah.

Where he gets people to cry.

Yeah, and he goes, oh, it'd be terrible if I fell in this water.

I've fallen in the water, and the cameraman's fallen in the water as well, and he's filming it perfectly.

I might die, but does a cameraman film it carrying a camera?

I don't quite understand how that works.

I don't doubt he could survive, you know, but...

You don't come across as a religious man yourself.

But Bear Grylls thinks to wedge that in.

He's alpha course, isn't he?

Which is, I think that's like Action Church, isn't it?

I went to Budapest and they have this...

It's a church with pull-ups.

Yeah, they have this big church, this big, beautiful Hungarian church.

And on it, almost like when you wrap a car, what's that called, when you wrap an advert on a car, it was like that.

There was the wraparound of the church.

Bear Grylls.

Bear Grylls something academy, I don't know.

Yeah, it's interesting.

He always has a bit of hair that just pokes over the top of his ears, doesn't he?

I think that's his shtick.

It's like it's a grown out shaved look, but a bit of it sticks out over the top of his ears.

Because he wants to look a bit messy.

He doesn't want to look...

Yeah, he's just going about his business.

I'd quite like to be on Stacey Solomon's Sort Your F***ing House Out, whatever it's called.

It's brilliant, isn't it?

Let's talk.

I love that f***ing show.

Where they get everyone's stuff and then put it in an aircraft hangar.

Everyone goes, oh Christ, I'm a hoarder.

Where did I get all this stuff from?

How much money have you f***ing wasted on all this sht that you don't know you have?

All those clothes they have.

I do think she's brilliant.

She is great.

She's so nice and so warm.

She's nicer than I'd be.

Yeah, she basically is able to say, I mean, you're in a real f***ing mess.

You made a real f***ing mess, haven't you?

And she helps him clear it up.

It's brilliant.

I think she's great.

I think her and Joe Swash must be one of the most genuine and very happy TV couples.

Do you know what I mean?

They're as happy as their Instagram looks, you think?

I should think so, yeah.

I don't look at them on Instagram, but I trust that they're...

I just get a vibe off of them that they're really happy.

Because I've met both of them over the years, just little TV bits and jobs and stuff, and they were both really, really sweet, and exactly as you'd imagine they would be.

I think I did a few panel shows that he was on a while ago, years and years ago.

Very, very Essex.

I mean, that action is...

But super sweet.

And it's not put on.

Totally lovely.

And now he helps as well.

He helps on the show.

Yeah, exactly.

Joe's going to help you take all that stuff.

That's the fucking tip.

I forget his name, but the guy who does all the cleaning.

And I do watch those and try and remember how he does it.

He's so happy cleaning like shit off a toilet.

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you've got to find these things in meditation, one way or another.

I think my wife is a bit of a collector.

She's a carpenter, a joiner, and she'll go around the back lanes and she'll fucking find like an old, you know, park bench made out of like wagon wheels or something.

Yeah, put it in the yard.

She'll go, look what I found.

She's a Womble.

She's a Womble, isn't she?

Which was a great TV show.

That was a kid.

I mean, to any younger people listening, if you've not seen the Wombles, that was a great show, wasn't it?

It was basically, I mean, it was in many ways, it was a sort of, sort your shit out of its time, wasn't it?

It was a kids program, an animation with these Wombles that basically, they were ahead of their time.

They were like the Greta Thunberg of our generation.

They were recycling, reusing, sharing, helping on Wimbledon Common and an absolute rocking theme tune as well.

Yeah.

It's heavy, Remember You're A Wumble, isn't it?

There was more than one song, though, because I remember having an album.

Yeah, there's Wombling Christmas, Wombling Free, Remember You're A Wumble.

There was a bunch of them.

Mike Batt, wasn't it?

Yeah.

But there's a drive in the rhythm section that I think the Queens of the Stone Age would be happy with.

There is a real weight to it.

I remember having it on 45 and I thought, this really, this is hardcore, this song.

It's great.

Yeah, it's very 70s.

I loved it.

I think I kind of forget that I had the toys.

I had some of them.

I think I had Uncle Bulgaria.

What a tune!

So you've answered a question there, which was, what was the TV show you think you'd want to bring back from the dead?

So you've answered that.

Yeah, I just-

The Wombles.

The Wombles, and kind of bring out the flumps.

Can the flumps tag along as well?

The flumps, everyone talks about the flumps, and I can't remember what they look like.

I didn't mean to look it up.

Jamie and His Magic Torch, that was a banging theme.

That was a cracker.

So you were into your themes.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you remember Rhubarb and Custard?

That was psychedelic.

That was like dropping acid, the whole thing.

Also Bernard Cribbins.

Was that Cribbins?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that whole thing was an acid trip.

Yeah, yeah.

That was my favorite.

Cribbins was scraped off the ceiling for that.

Do you remember Fred Bassett?

Remember Fred Bassett, yeah.

Do you remember, there was another one called Aubrey, which I remember, I think it was on ITV, and he was like an orange sort of egg-shaped bloke with a big long nose who just put his hands in his pockets, but they were his sides.

No.

And that's all I can remember.

That's weird, that one.

Don't like that.

I was probably really high on tartrazine at the time.

Yeah, everyone was.

Was there a kids TV show that you would like run home to see from school?

Something you just didn't want to miss in the days of terrestrial television and no pausing?

God.

All TV was that, because there was literally just a short section of programs that were aimed vaguely at children amongst really, really dull, boring, tedious, boring, shite, wasn't it?

News at 5.45, I remember getting in the way of things.

It always reminds me of that brilliant Norm MacDonald joke, though, that remember when the news was on once a day for about half an hour?

I think that was enough.

Yeah.

And it was.

There was the news was on once and there wasn't this kind of rolling cycle of it.

But amidst, you know, shit like Pebble Mill.

What was Pebble Mill at one with?

Pebble Mill was a lunchtime thing from Birmingham studio show of, you know, just...

I don't remember what it was about.

Was it like the one show?

Was it kind of like that?

It's like a prototype one show, but even slower.

And more anodyne.

Or maybe it wasn't.

Maybe like kind of if you went back and watched it, it was more chaotic than you remember, because I remember TV was generally live as well, wasn't it?

Yeah, tiny two minute delay, I think.

Yeah.

I just remember watching like Saturday morning things and someone said, fuck off to Phillip Schofield and put the phone down.

That's why they put the delay in.

It was amazing.

A pre-delay TV was exceptional.

It was brilliant because, and it was that kind of thing where, I always think that's the best bits of TV when there's a news report and then two kids screech up on bikes behind and just start staring down the lens and say, can we be on it?

We should be on it.

I just think that that edge of TV doesn't exist anymore.

Yeah, maybe not.

And it's looked for in different ways.

They fake it now on YouTube.

Yeah, they fake it and try and wind people up rather than actually just letting kind of a bit of chaos happen.

I'm very sorry about the language that just happened there.

Yeah.

It's one of the things that happens when you do a live outside broadcast.

Podcast over to you Judith Chalmers.

Well, you could argue that so much of the speed of everything on YouTube and videos, it's almost like a selection of cum shots, isn't it?

There's no build up.

Like all of the subtlety and nuance has been taken out of stuff, like the delayed gratification.

No foreplay.

And absolutely, I mean, I can't think of a better metaphor, but actually that seems to be, I don't know, and maybe I'm just showing the age that I am.

It's just that I find that intensity of stuff and a forever like one arm bandit of, here's another mad thing.

Here's another mad thing.

Here's another mad thing.

It's kind of like the antithesis of every piece of brilliant art there's ever been.

You're right.

That reminds me for some reason of like American versions of reality TV.

Say, Pick Your Gordon Ramsay, whatever kitchen like this over here is a bit of music in the background.

He's going around saying, fuck this, fuck that to everybody.

In America, they bleep it and it's just like daggers.

Boop, boop, boop, boop.

We've built your restaurant.

Diggity, done.

Just like, hey, slow down.

I wanna know the story here.

Or could we have a show on TV with cooking where it's fairly amenable in the kitchen, everyone gets on and we work out actually how this works rather than someone go, get that done.

I'm fucking pissed over you.

What the fuck are you doing?

Dude, put that in the bin, fuck you, fuck off.

It's like that brilliant Mickey Flanagan line, isn't it?

Where he's in the bit where he go, calm down, Gordon, we're just doing a bit of dinner.

Exactly.

Who knew it was all gonna be cooking shows?

I reckon Delia and Madhur Jaffrey knew that was happening and that's why they got in at the ground floor.

I remember watching Madhur Jaffrey and again, she used to, and she show you how to cook rice well because it's harder than you think to get rice to be decent.

And she'd always wash the rice.

I mean, she washed the rice and she show you, it show you her washing the rice.

But now like cookery on YouTube is all, it's all the sound is really tight and close, isn't it?

Like, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, I.

Need to learn to fucking cook.

Yeah, you can go online afterwards and have a recap of some of these, transcribe the recipe.

I wash the rice three times.

What was that TV show where there was a man with a mustache and a beard, and he would paint?

It's around the pebble mealtime.

Bob Ross.

Is that what it was?

And he would paint with a fucking knife?

Oh, no, there was a few of them, there was a few of them, wasn't it?

It was painted with Nancy, it was an American lady painted with oils.

Yeah, I remember that one.

And then BBC, they're all on the iPlayer, paints along with Bob Ross.

God, that must have been so boring to watch.

He's the guy with the American guy with a big beard.

And he always gets and he gets his brush and then he kind of sort of flappy splats it on the leg of the chair to get the paint off it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then just take my brush and then I just beat the devil out of it.

How is that television?

He said beat the devil out of it.

The devil out of it.

Imagine that now.

I know.

People would be bored to death.

What do you think is the biggest TV change you've seen in your lifetime?

It would be, in my lifetime, it would be the absolute flood of reality stuff.

But then also actually what it would be surely would be the massive increase in channels.

Yes.

That would be it, wouldn't it?

Because originally there was there was BBC and ITV and then David Attenborough invented BBC Two.

Did he?

Yeah, he just sat there and he went, we could have BBC Two.

Is that true?

No one had thought of it.

They just had the BBC and he went, we could have BBC Two.

Apparently you could, I'm fairly confident he invented the concept of BBC Two.

That's mad.

That there could be a channel, another channel.

And then I can remember Channel Four coming in when I was a teenager, because they'd have the red triangle.

Oh, the red triangle, I know all about the red triangle.

Which as a teenager meant there might be a little bit of How's Your Father alluded to at least.

But it was very extreme, what they put on.

It wasn't just like soft, was it?

It was like, I remember coming down and seeing my granddad watching like some kind of Japanese rope torture.

Like, what is he watching?

Yeah, and then some Polish animation.

There was a period, wasn't there, where they didn't quite have a full program of shows.

And they'd bought in some, you know, some stuff like Polish anime, random things.

It's very odd.

And I think the other thing, the demise of live music shows as well.

So obviously, we had, you know, Top Of The Pops, Incarnations, The Tube on Channel 4, CD UK, I remember, on ITV, Saturday Morning, Chart Show, and then obviously, we've still got Jules Holland.

Thank God for that.

But you'd also have the other shows, like you'd have TFI Friday, which would, and I was talking to Jack Dougherty, his show.

I went to see that being filmed in the theatre.

Me too.

He gave Ben Folds Five like their first live performance.

Amazing.

Stuff like that.

So we don't really have that now apart from Graham Norton.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's quite heavily curated, isn't it?

Like one generally big star doing a song.

Yeah.

So the demise of music, but the explosion of channels, and maybe the only way to fill that many channels.

I remember there was a sketch in Fry and Lorry, I can't remember what it was, and it was about Stephen Fry was playing an angry waiter in a restaurant, and it was about having loads of choice, and he came out and poured a massive bin bag of plastic cutlery onto the table and said, it may all be a load of shit, but at least you've got the choice.

I end up going back to the Radio Times best films on Netflix this month.

Yeah, I just, well, you can lose the evening, can't you?

You can lose it.

And then other times, I'll just stick the telly on, like, and watch the iPlayer live if there's a film on, and just go, I'll just watch half of it.

Yeah, half of it.

I know, I know where we are.

Jaws, fantastic.

I could watch that from any point, Jaws, and watch it till the end.

I must admit, I do that now with films.

Where's the film thing?

Can we mention films?

The, sometimes we will watch half a film, I'll look over and my missus is getting tired.

I guess you watch your missus tomorrow.

You can, that's another great thing.

You can put a brilliant film on and you just go watch an hour, I'll go to bed and I'll watch an hour tomorrow, go to bed.

You can serialize your own film.

It's so simple to do.

I like that.

Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?

I mean, it's a tricky one.

Because on the flip side, there is the opportunity, isn't there, to watch all the brilliant stuff.

At your own beck and call in a way that we didn't have that control growing up.

And I bet there are loads of people who do absolutely wade in on that and make the most of it.

I bet there are.

But just life is so busy and distracting.

It's, and there's so much stuff competing all the time for our attention.

Yeah.

You can get paralyzed with indecision.

I mean, how much TV can you really watch and how many podcasts can you actually listen to?

I mean, it's a full time job keeping up with that stuff.

So, you know, how many hours do you really want to waste in an evening?

Yeah, and then there's the whole world outside.

Yeah.

You know, there's going outside and there's dogs to be walked and there's all sorts of things.

There's toilets to be cleaned as you flagged up earlier.

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

I wouldn't narrow it down to one specific thing, but I'd say the funniest thing I ever saw on TV throughout my life has been Vic and Bob.

I'd say Vic and Bob have been, reliably, have made me laugh in a way that other things can't.

Did you lock in straight away?

Right from the get-go.

I remember it just hit me at the perfect age.

I was about, maybe I was about 15.

I remember watching, I grew up in a little village, lovely but dull and as a teenager, I just needed a more world, if that makes sense.

And I loved Blackadder, I'd love Fry and Larry, I'd loved all that stuff.

And before that, with my dad watching Tommy Cooke with two Ronnies, all that kind of stuff, I had more common ways.

So it was a really good lineage, but that was the first comedy.

I remember that a trailer came on, I was watching Channel 4, probably waiting for a red triangle of some sort or a Polish animation.

There was a little, this guy in a white suit with a quiff popped up and said, watch me, Vickalese, Big Night Out, Friday night, Channel 4, 9 p.m.

And I thought, I'm there.

And I was there from the get go.

And I just, it just felt, it just, it was alive.

It was doing its own thing.

It was so different and so mad.

It was really funny, so different.

And it was on completely unpasteurized version of what, and I got to, lucky enough, when I was in, got into comedy, ended up working a little bit with Alan Mark, who produced it.

And just chatting to him about it.

And he'd just say, yeah, I just went down to the place in depth when I saw the show.

I just thought, right, how do we do that?

How do we do that in front of an audience on the telly?

And we just, we didn't, he just, he just did everything they could just to let it happen and got out of its way.

And I think, and just over the years where, you know, Bang Bang, Smell Of, Shooting Stars.

I mean, Shooting Star, I mean, God, and it's so good.

Just Bang Bang with the R&M.

So was that that one?

Bang Bang?

Was that the Smell Of?

I can't remember, I can't remember.

One that always started with a fucking brilliant song, like Trapped In My Flat or, you know.

Incredible.

And everything they've done, Catterick, Bob's Athletical Mints podcast.

Just absolutely brilliant.

The fecund reality of their creativity is amazing.

Families At War, which only did one series where they did a prime time Saturday night game show.

That was absolutely brilliant.

I remember me and my mate John were watching it in our shared house in Lewisham.

And there was the first challenge was this lad, a teenager, was into boxing.

And Vic said, and there was a shed and there was a stuffed Alsatian next to it.

And the challenge was this lad had to, just using his boxing gloves, punch the shed down to below the height of an Alsatian in under a minute.

How weird is that?

And he gave it a whack when the clock started and the shed looked like it wasn't gonna move.

And Vic, give it a few more.

And Vic just went, go on, son.

I remember he just started laying it and the shed started to go and we were jumping up and down in our seats in our living room.

And it was just really, really funny and really silly.

And I thought that could have been, it was fucking great.

It sounds like a great show to bring back.

I made one series of it.

Yeah, it was brilliant.

I don't think I saw that.

What year would that have been then?

Oh, late 90s, I think.

But yeah, but like just sort of be Vic and Bob, the funniest thing I've ever seen on television.

Obviously Bob is now just like turned into a national treasure.

Yeah.

I mean, me and my son, whenever he's on, Would I Lie To You, we tune in, obviously.

Yeah, I mean, you could put Bob's Chris Rhea egg in the bath story as one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television.

The dentistry one.

Incredible.

That can't be true.

It's true.

Absolutely brilliant.

Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, incredible.

Oh, I love it, I love it.

I think I can hold the, hold the, your casualty is still on, isn't it?

I've been on for years.

I love coming up with the opening titles for that.

I'm just going to hop on the roof, son, to do the drains.

Dad, you're wearing roller skates.

I know what I'm doing.

It's great, you can just do it.

I'm just going to uncouple this electric fire near this paddling pool.

Dad, what are you doing?

I know what I'm doing, son.

What have we got here?

Guy trying to put an electric fire near a paddling pool.

Give me 20 milligrams of OCG and we'll see if it stabilizes.

So you said you watched Blackadder as a kid.

So how was, that must have been mental, if I could still use that word, I'm not sure I'm allowed to, to then be in a Ben Elton TV show.

Yeah, they're insane, incredible.

Was that crazy for you?

Yeah, really crazy.

And also as well, working with Harry Enfield as well, who again, he was a massive influence because he was so, so naughty, it seemed like, and working with him, yes, working with him in Ben Elton was pretty, pretty insane.

What is the TV show you watch that you know it's shit but you watch it anyway?

Ah, the only one I've watched that I know is shit but watched anyway, was during lockdown, me and my dear lady wife plowed through, married at First Sight Australia.

I know a lot about this show, I've seen them all.

I can't remember what series we watched.

Now we're out of lockdown, I can't watch them anymore.

Because I realize, I can't watch reality TV generally full stop because I just think I haven't got enough hours in my life.

It's so many hours of television that show.

It's like you realize you haven't wasted 38 hours.

And I've still not watched The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Have you not?

No, I started watching it once and it was very long and I was tired and fell asleep and I'm like, it's a full working day, isn't it?

It's a flight to Japan or something and watch them on the way.

Yeah, but yeah, it would be that.

And we found ways of enjoying it because we sat next to each other in separate seats and every time the bell went ding, in the break we'd touch hands to remind ourselves that we were still there.

And I did like John, the Australian expert, who is a relationship expert.

It can't be said enough, him and the other experts, there's the intimacy expert and the other lady with the blonde hair, Mille, other expert, and I did some number crunching.

I think across the series I ended up, hundreds of people, couples, they'd matched the experts.

I think about two or three might have been still together.

I mean, that's a really high hit rate.

And I did think at some point they needed to rescind the word experts to maybe kind of keen amateur.

Every time I challenged John's expertise, I was drawn back in by the size of his watch.

It's a really, really big watch.

And the watch was so big, I thought, he's got to be on to something to have a watch that big.

The homestay, when they go to stay with the families and friends.

Yeah, all I did was straight up guys, Stevie, and any sheila who's going to be with my mate, needs to learn how to drink.

And kill fish with bare hands.

Otherwise, I'm going to break this relationship up.

Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?

And they also like, there's always one guy who's a real macho nightmare, who fucks the woman.

And then immediately after they have sex, just doesn't want anything to do with it.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's horrible.

It's a disgusting show.

It shouldn't really exist, to be fair.

A marriage, I mean, I'm married, but I mean, the whole concept of that is also silly.

Well, I mean, what we did also connect over is at the commitment ceremonies, when they decide to either recommit or not, that if one person says they want to stay in the relationship and the other person says they want to leave, under Australian law, they have to stay in the experiment.

Yeah.

So even if, which is a very strange message to send, albeit sent by experts in a relationship field, is if one person wants to be in it and the other person really, really wants to leave because it's damaging them, under Australian law, they have to remain in the experiment.

It's true.

Which actually, I do wonder whether in 10 years time, 5 years, possibly 60 seconds time, we might look back at that as being an absolutely justifiably, cancellably reason for everyone involved in that show potentially being prosecuted.

Yeah, and also for the current day, it's insanely heteronormative.

Coming from a straight white guy like me, I'm looking at it going, this is a bit straight white.

Yeah, yeah.

Welcome to Australia, potentially.

But yeah, so I've watched that and knew while I was watching it, it is absolute dog shit.

Can I also plug my podcast?

Of course.

I do a podcast with fellow comedian, Tom Rigglesworth.

It's called The Unlikely Weightlifters Podcast.

And what we started doing in lockdown was, I was started building an annex for my mother-in-law, who now lives in the garden, in the annex, not free range.

And I've had back problems in the past.

Tom was also a fairly new father to two twins.

And he took an online BMI medical test and found out that he was medically emaciated, like an extra from the TV show, Tenco.

So he took it upon himself to try and get a bit stronger.

But we found that weights and stuff got really expensive in lockdown.

So we cast our own in buckets, greased buckets and Haribo tins using concrete and stuff and built our own kind of Fred Flintstone type of gyms.

Basically, the whole thing is a ruse for once a week to spend time with one another and just talk absolute nonsense.

So the podcast itself contains only trace elements of weightlifting, occasional sounds of us being out of breath, but we just talk about life and nonsense.

And it's, I mean, I think the USP of it is it doesn't have a USP, if that makes sense.

And it's about friendship.

It's about friendship.

That's what it's about.

It's a very broad church.

And we're currently carrying out a survey called Pant Cage UK where we are trying to build up a picture of the pant cages at branches of TK Maxx across the British Isles.

I don't know if you've bought any pants from TK Maxx.

The guy's pants are served up in these kind of racks.

And we've, the ladies pants are vending in a more traditional hanger fashion, but the men's, they're all boxed up in these racks of pants, like a fish market or something.

Yes, yes, yes, of course, the Tokyo laundry.

Always someone's pulled them all out and changed the sizes.

Exactly, yeah, someone's inspected them.

So what we do is we analyze the pant racks for content.

Percentage of boxes opened, percentage of boxes destroyed.

And your general vibe, position in the store, you know, whether how far it was from household items, plates, that kind of stuff.

And also whether there are any packets of pants made by Jeff Banks, the British manufacturer, Jeff Banks from The Clown Show.

Because we finally, they seem to be dropping off.

So we're trying to get a Jeff Banks pant reading program back into TK Maxx.

Anyway, trying to build a picture, but that's the kind of nonsense we get.

And we get listeners submit them.

Men and women alike, we've had doing surreptitious recordings from different branches.

Someone sent one in from Wigan last week.

I know you did, it was brilliant.

That's really funny, because last year we went to London.

I'm from London, but I live in Newcastle, but we went to London, took the kids.

And I went out, and I always get very disheartened when I go clothes shopping, like I think many men do, but I ended up in TK Maxx in Camden Town.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Great, great punt right there.

It's a good one, a good one.

Found some Tokyo laundry, kind of annoyed me.

Bamboo fabrics, it wicks moisture away from your various clefts.

They were, what were they surrounded by?

I can still see them, it's a Hilfiger, Polo.

Yeah, probably a Lessee.

Cristiano Ronaldo's brought his own range of pants.

He's retailing in packs of six.

Champion, Farah.

JCB, they make diggers and pants.

Hell of a factory, that one.

Love it all.

And they've always got those beige kind of security tags.

They look like they're from the 80s, you know the ones?

Yeah, they're punched right through.

And they're pushed in and they make the packet bulge.

That's right, and if you're gonna try those ones on, you've got to, what we call a utility belt try on, where you have to unfold the pant, but try them on with the box still attached.

Have you tried them on?

Like Batman's utility belt.

Can't try them on pants.

Never been stopped.

I think so.

I mean, over the clothes.

Oh, over the clothes.

Or you can get them out for an offer up to check if they're vaguely the right size.

That's called a utility belt try on.

Gotcha, I like it.

But yes, PantKage UK, as far as we can tell, the largest census of pant cages in TK Maxx in the UK that's ever been undertaken.

So it really is, it's big data with Crunch.

All right, Rob, thanks for coming on Television Times.

Absolute pleasure.

Absolute pleasure.

Thanks for having me on.

Are you going up Fringe next year?

I intend to, fully intend to.

I'll see you there.

All right.

See you there.

Nice one, Steve.

Take care, lots of love.

See you soon.

There you go, that was Rob Rouse talking to me a couple of months ago.

What a funny guy.

I mean, the energy in that episode was just so great.

I loved it, I absolutely loved it.

It made me feel like this is what I want the podcast to be.

You know, just a fucking great laugh.

That's what it should be.

And that's Rob, check him out online, check out his specials and go and see him live.

He's brilliant.

And now to today's outro track.

Today's song is called The Slugs.

It's a song that I wrote during my Trans-Siberian trip, I believe, in 2003, and was recorded in Tokyo in the late summer of that same year.

It's the final track on my album, The Fear of Flying.

Well I hope you enjoyed the slugs, and I hope you enjoyed Rob Rouse.

If so, please come back next week for another episode of Television Times.

See you then, bye for now.