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In this episode of Full Disclosure, James O’Brien sits down with the comedian, writer and performer to explore the experiences that shaped him: boarding school at seven, a damaging relationship with food from childhood, and the compulsive behaviours that would later give way to alcohol, drugs and despair while he was still in his teens. This episode includes discussion of sensitive topics, including addiction, that some listeners may find distressing. Please take care while listening, and feel free to pause or step away if you need to. 00:00 – Coming up 01:00 – Welcome Marcus Brigstocke 03:30 - How Marcus Builds a Stand-Up Show 07:06 - The Producer Note That Changed His Comedy 09:44 - Banned Comedy, Radio Influences and Early Imitations 15:40 - Food Addiction, Shame and the Start of Self-Destruction 18:58 - Being Funny at School When Everything Else Was Falling Apart 23:17 - Shoplifting, Drinking and Losing Control 28:49 - Extreme Weight Loss, Bad Treatment and Hidden Addiction 31:24 - The “Other Marcus” and How Addiction Takes Over 35:33 - Hitting Bottom, Rehab at 17 and Losing 13 Stone 37:27 - Recovery, Total Honesty and the Trauma of Starting Again 40:55 -From Surviving to Performing: Comedy, Clubbing and the Ministry of Sound 45:21- College, Oil Rigs and Finding a Way Forward 48:39 - Why He Believed He Could Make It in Comedy 53:43 - Saying “Well, Yes” to Everything 57:50 - The New Show: Tech, Attention and Why Things Keep Getting Worse #jamesobrien #marcusbrigstocke #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
This is a Global Player original podcast
0:05
This episode contains discussion of some very sensitive topics, including addiction and some of the ramifications thereof
0:14
You may find elements of it distressing, so please do take care while listening
0:19
and feel free to pause or indeed step away if you feel that you need to
0:24
I went to school with a relationship with eating that was already a mess
0:29
I didn't feel sad. I should have. That would have been an honest response
0:34
So you were already bolting on the armour. Yeah. By the time I was old enough to find drugs and alcohol
0:39
they were a blessed relief from the pain that I was in
0:43
from the eating, which was so out of control. Addiction, for me, was absolutely baked into who I was
0:50
by the time I was 10. Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project conceived entirely to let me interview interesting people in a rather larger space than would ever be available on the radio
1:11
Marcus Briggs, welcome. Thanks, man. Renaissance man. Ha! Is it? I don't know
1:17
I'll take it. Yeah, okay. Instantly recognisable, busy, and I have to confess that the culmination of a much more traumatic life
1:29
than I had previously realised, or at least early life. Yeah. Yeah, it was a mess
1:34
About which you have spoken at length, but we will dive into shortly
1:40
Just for people who don't know, there are many, many strings to your bow, aren't there
1:45
Yeah, yeah. More and more. I mean, the main string always is comedy
1:49
Is it? It stand-up's absolutely the backbone of it because it's the one thing that you can just self-generate
1:57
You know, you can just go, yes, here's the idea and then go and do it
2:03
And the feedback on it is instant. If it's no good, they will
2:07
You know, you know, in that moment that it's no good and then you change it and you make it better until it's great
2:13
And then it's a tour show. And I love that. I like the I like the absolute honesty of it
2:18
And that then makes working with producers and actors, comedians, whoever else, improv shows, stuff like that, that makes those thrilling because they're the rarity
2:29
And also they're a lot less lonely than stand up. Yeah, of course
2:34
It is. I mean, it took me a long time. But stand up is actually bad for you
2:40
I mean, you've spoken to loads of us. So you may well have arrived at a similar conclusion
2:45
but the actual act of doing it is pretty bad for you i think you have to do quite a lot of other
2:51
stuff to make sure you stay okay because it could send you potty yeah i mean you know you're in this
2:58
relationship with the audience where they are every few seconds going yeah we like that we
3:05
understand you yeah brilliant that's great and then when you're done after 90 minutes or so of
3:11
that they go can we have more of that right which is lovely don't get me wrong it's fabulous but
3:17
then you step off and you're on your own often for the next 22 hours until the next tour show right
3:25
so if you don't watch yourself that is bad for you when you find yourself in the foothills of a
3:31
new show how tell me about the moment when you become when when when what it's going to be about
3:38
begins to crystallize well so i've i've sort of changed how i do it now it used to be all the
3:45
funny ideas i had got put down in a book until a show was there i'm now uh sort of ted talk approach
3:53
subject first and beat the living daylights out of it until it's funny and the rules are still
4:00
the rules right so if it isn't funny it can't become a ted talk then if it isn't funny that
4:05
bit has to go but i've just found over the last sort of i don't know maybe 15 years it's the last
4:16
15 years particularly if i don't feel like i'm saying saying something then i in the end i find
4:24
it a bit unsatisfying a bit empty why do you think that changed what do you think did something
4:29
happen or did yeah i just think by i just think the other for me suffered by comparison i much
4:35
prefer by the way other people's work when it's saying nothing at all absolutely hilarious yeah i
4:42
mean with the festival uh the altitude festival i do in uh in meyerhoff and i set up a festival so i
4:49
could go skiing and snowboarding for free and uh except it wasn't for free no it was really not
4:56
but you know we had last year we had tim vine out there and i used to gig with tim a lot you know
5:02
and he was always great always really funny but i watched the audience who vary between about sort
5:08
of 14 years old at the lower end up through people who are now in their 80s have been coming to the
5:12
festival and everyone every generation helpless with laughter at tim's absolute just just the
5:20
total abandon of of logic and everything oh it's great just wonderful and so i that's sort of what
5:27
I like more. But I guess what happened for me is I started doing a lot of Radio 4 stuff
5:34
where I was helped, enormously helped by good producers to make comedy where I was actually saying something
5:43
started talking about something that I cared about. And it just struck a chord in me
5:47
The Now Show would be quite a significant part of that process. The Now Show was massive
5:52
The first one I ever did, I showed up with a thing I'd been doing
5:55
in fact that became another Radio 4 show the Giles Wembley Hog Goes Off
6:00
which was very much me I'd been posh kid, went on a gap year
6:04
and genuinely spent time walking around London in a sarong with no shoes on often
6:10
just walking around in no shoes going yeah no I've really seen poverty
6:15
and I've got a lot of it on video actually you know just awful
6:19
but I thought well I knew I didn't mean any harm when I was being that person
6:24
and so it struck me a really good-natured posh. Like Giles Wembley Hogg meant, he always meant well
6:32
He wasn't Tim Nice, but dim. No, clearly. He always really, really meant well
6:37
and always sort of tried to help and stuff. He was a sweet boy. He was genuinely a really sweet boy
6:42
and there were often moments that were profoundly emotional. I remember doing scenes, we were so lucky
6:49
David Tyler got such good people, doing a scene with Doon McKeegan
6:53
and she nudged the sarong aside and exposed me. And I went, oh, just ignore it
7:00
It'll be like that for a while now. And just, so that was all very silly
7:05
But anyway, so I did Jarsimbley Hog on the Now Show and it was great because they could sell it as a kind of
7:12
at this time of year, lots of people are setting off on their gap year thing
7:17
And then I came and did it again. And the next one I did was not very good
7:21
And I don't think I even made the edit. But then I had the thing that just has changed my life I worked with good producers And particularly ones who disagreed with me They were the best About what was funny Yes and about politics especially
7:36
I had one very difficult producer, a guy called Adam Bromley. I'm not sure he likes me
7:41
and I'll happily say here, I don't particularly like him. However, cracking good producer
7:47
Interesting. He used to listen to my script in rehearsal, and he'd go, blah, blah, blah
7:52
and he'd go, just so you know, that bit there, that's only funny if we agree with you see if you can make it funny for everyone
8:00
which is a really good note isn't it because that's very hard and by the way sometimes you
8:06
can't do that and it's fine sure it's fine but i don't mind but if you can you should try to
8:11
especially on radio four suddenly it will make sense actually the idea of it being a lonely
8:16
business but being a business that can be transformed when there is a off stage there's
8:21
a collegiate atmosphere or and you have to be prepared to be wrong exactly and david tyler who's
8:28
made loads of my stuff with me did all the jars wimbley hogs stuff and the brig society and all
8:33
of that i mean he'd be in my house until sort of half 12 one in the morning the night before a
8:39
record going oh it's nearly there it's nearly there and you're sort of climbing the walls but
8:44
come the next day when you've given it that extra bit uh you're so glad of it especially because
8:51
you know radio is such an intimate it's such an intimate way to communicate with people it's
8:57
usually just you and them and david always used to say um if i pitched a joke that was a bit spicy
9:04
he'd pause and he'd go i can't write the letter and i went what and he said well what i do when
9:13
we have a joke like that is i try to imagine writing the letter to the person who's complained
9:18
that says this joke was worth it because and if i can't write the letter the joke doesn't go in
9:24
again like these are smart people who have improved how i do comedy occasionally i'll
9:31
leave a joke in my own shows that i know perfectly well i cannot justify and why should i but it's a
9:37
different medium isn't it yeah what did you listen to did you listen to the radio growing up no not really not really i mean we
9:50
didn't listen to radio four but i did listen to a fair bit of comedy when i could find it i mean my
9:57
mum had my mum had some good stuff she had the some goons and she had and i've still got it the
10:04
seven inch of Peter Cook doing um I could have been a judge which is just it's heavenly and he
10:12
so I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin never had the Latin so I couldn't be a judge
10:17
instead I become a minor and actually on the seven inch there's an extra bit that very rarely gets
10:23
paid about he's I sought solace in the printed page and it's a lovely thing about reading about
10:28
Theseus and us great so good so I did grow up with that and then years later I found out my mum had
10:35
been to the establishment club and had sort of draped herself over Dudley Moore's piano one
10:41
evening good lord I don't think anything had happened but um but yeah so she was mum was always
10:47
sort of I don't know dad was really into comedy and we grew up watching the two Ronnies that was
10:52
our that was our house and then when things like not the nine o'clock news came along and uh the
10:59
young ones my mum and dad did they gave me the greatest gift on earth which is they banned me
11:06
from watching them and that meant that when i watched them yeah they were mine they belonged
11:11
to me they were truly subversive not just because of what i was seeing but because it had to be a
11:17
secret and that's so important you know i love that i love yeah um let's get back to guilford
11:23
then yeah in in the family home your dad was a stockbroker yeah in the city and your mom i think
11:28
was a teacher who became a head mistress in the end so outwardly very i mean very straight laced
11:34
really yeah yeah yeah um and then they sent you away to school and i we've got quite a lot of
11:40
crossover in our lives marcus we're only we're only a year apart and i never know what language
11:44
to use because I didn't feel did you feel like you were sent away I was a bit older than you when I
11:49
went but but I was seven and you know my mum had been five when she went because she was military
11:57
family yeah yeah and my dad had been seven and went to the same school that my granddad had been
12:02
to so there was a lot of sort of there's that um no I didn't feel like I'd been sent away and I
12:09
I didn't, worryingly, I didn't feel sad. I should have. Had I felt sad, I'd have not had a lot of the problems that then came along afterwards
12:20
Why do you say that? Because that would have been an honest response to what was happening
12:25
So you were already bolting on the armour. Yeah, and what happened for me was I'd had suspected celiac disease when I was very, very young
12:34
And the test in those days for celiac was they had to force a tube down your throat
12:39
and lower a sort of device into your gut to cut a piece of the stomach lining out
12:45
which they could then test. That was all there was for seeing that. I couldn't digest anything, basically
12:50
And so I had these very traumatic spells in hospital. And when I came out, I had a very restrictive diet, very restrictive
12:59
I could only eat a few things. And when I ate and kept the food down, that was greeted with huge fanfare
13:06
and so everybody went oh brilliant oh that's wonderful so food and i had this magic relationship
13:14
if you eat well you that's your approval right there and actually everybody has that weaning
13:20
will do that for everybody you know right that's good boy well done if you then you can have right
13:27
all of it perfectly normal so mom and dad did nothing wrong it's important to to say that but
13:32
I went to school with a relationship with eating that was already a mess
13:38
And so instantly, food was a massive comfort. And in my mind's eye, for years, I thought I was fat forever
13:47
And I looked back at the pictures when I started at boarding school when I was seven
13:51
I was just a normal looking kid. And then by the end of year one, you can see it starting
13:57
By the end of the second year there, I was the fattest kid in every school picture
14:01
from three years on you'd look at that picture you'd see me because i was taking up twice the
14:08
space of any other kid and and the truth is and not just at boarding schools you just can't be
14:15
that fat it doesn't matter if everyone around you is really kind and they weren't you just can't be
14:22
that fat you can't it's it feels dreadful you're wearing shame you're literally wearing this
14:31
great big wobbly ugly heavy slowing thing that you just carry around with you and the reason I
14:40
say you're wearing shame is not that anybody else was shaming me but because I knew it wasn't right
14:45
what was happening and so at night alone I would think whatever I'd said during the day I would
14:52
think well that I mean that it now I I am done now with that because today I ate from a bin or I ate someone else food without asking them And you know like I really it was all that bad
15:06
That's that's the end. Now, thank I'm glad that happened because that's the end
15:10
But I woke up the next morning with no more ability to stop that behavior than I'd had the night before
15:17
The night before I was alone and maybe could make sense of it
15:21
But I had no tools. right so i'd wake up and the cycle would begin again and so addiction for me
15:29
uh was absolutely baked into who i was by the time i was 10 it's an absurdly early age
15:36
it is and yet it's not that uncommon i mean interestingly if as i have you talk to people
15:44
who've had a problematic relationship with drugs alcohol any other substance or process
15:49
ask them about their eating if they can remember a great many of them will tell you yeah yeah I had
15:56
long periods of really uncontrolled eating or periods of of absolute control or purging
16:03
really really normal for addicts to find food first and that's what happened for me and then
16:09
of course by the time I was old enough to find drugs and alcohol they were a blessed relief from
16:15
the emotional pain that I was in from the eating which was so out of control and did people see
16:24
the pain or did they just see the size um no they did I mean bless them you know like mum and dad
16:31
they they never gave up I think that the thing with boarding school is is hard because I think
16:38
people outside and even people inside you know look at it and go what yeah and certainly when
16:44
my eldest son turned seven i had a really tough time with my parents i was i was like wait a
16:50
minute that i what i was that so so small yeah but it's just like literally physically small teeny
16:56
tiny little people what were you doing yeah but what they were doing was absolutely the best thing
17:02
they could think of the best thing that had been shown to them and and well in my case it was better
17:08
than anything that had been shown yes they were they were giving me the golden ticket that my dad
17:12
a mum never had yeah and they'd you know they'd act with with kindness i mean those visits um
17:18
you know i don't want to paint a sort of dave pelzer version of my uh well you know i say things
17:25
like that sometimes and i didn't go through what you went through but you you're a kid
17:29
and you're in agony so it doesn't matter whether you're in a you know an orphanage in in kiev
17:34
yes whether you're in a private school in sorry it's agony agony's agony yeah it's true and the
17:39
The thing that happened really quickly, actually, was because I was fat, I was no good at any of the sports
17:47
I could swim. I was pretty good at swimming, but I really was no good at any of the sports
17:52
They'd sort of lean me against people in rugby, and I was helpful then, apart from that
17:57
But the only visit was then. It was Saturday afternoon. A mum and dad would come and see you do sport, right
18:06
And that was quite fun for most of the kids, not all. But when you're sort of huge and you're having to squeeze into these little shorts and waddle around after a ball and no one wanted me, you know, they'd pick the team and I'm the last one because I was fat and hopeless
18:23
And so mum and dad would watch me fail. And I knew. And of course I knew
18:27
And then because I was unhappy and it was unaddressed because I just was hiding it with everything, all the academics had gone to shit as well
18:36
so then they'd sort of come in the classroom and see the board with my name on it with all these
18:41
marks saying how badly i was so their visits became this sort of well you know dude you know
18:49
do do your best boy and you know they would they try they kept trying to help but the central thing
18:55
was unaddressed because no one knew how to fix it were there any with any relief i mean yes what
19:03
were you good tons loads of mates oh good yeah tons of mates good good friends and i had a
19:09
we laughed we laughed so much and did silly funny stuff and i was already funny they liked you know
19:20
there was a science teacher who had a particular rhythm to his um to his speech and he would say
19:28
and absolute exasperation. Big stock, will you listen? And that became a thing that myself and my friends would do
19:36
as we walked around the school. Big stock, will you listen? And stuff like that
19:41
And I could, you know, it's fairly standard for people like me
19:45
but I could do most of the teachers. And if I couldn't do them, if I couldn't do their accent
19:50
I could do something physical about them. I could see all those things
19:55
Comes up quite a bit, this. so mimicry before you've developed your comedy bones mimicry is funny in and of itself people
20:02
love it especially i guess because you talk about it being a normal gift but for those of us who
20:07
don't have it it's like alchemy yeah it's magic it is magic and it felt it felt so good it always
20:15
felt like the best thing i could do and you know i was i think that that instant feedback thing i
20:24
mentioned stand up before when you feel very ashamed all the time and you feel all the things
20:30
i was feeling about being so not just fat but so out of control with food which involved a lot of
20:36
stealing and stuff which is really shameful whether you sort of morally connect with it or
20:40
not it's really shameful that instant feedback of i've done this and you have laughed i know you get
20:47
me i know you understand who i'm being right now i love that straight away and actually that a lot
20:54
of the teachers liked it i had a headmaster who one of the punishments he brought to bear against me
21:01
was that he prevented me from being in the school plays as a punishment and with hindsight i mean at
21:09
the time i thought yeah well you know i've been caught and i've done this this is but with hindsight
21:13
fairly soon afterwards i was like oh man that was the only thing that was the one thing i was really
21:20
good at there wasn't anything else you know um that's a cruel and unusual punishment yeah yeah
21:27
i think i yeah i don't know i try more and more i mean nothing nothing will make you
21:33
forgiving and empathetic which i think is a very good thing uh more quickly than raising kids into
21:41
adulthood yeah just realizing this is a this is always a series of of joyful managed failures you
21:50
Were you beaten? I don't think you were beaten. I was beaten. Oh, you were beaten. I was beaten
21:54
By him? But, no, because the ban on staff beating kids had come in about a year before I started
22:03
but there was no ban on senior boys beating younger boys. I was still getting beaten by the headmaster
22:09
I'm only a year older than you. Yeah, well, but that can't have gone on for much longer
22:13
It went on until about 80... Well, this is not really the thrust of the year. No, sure, but it's interesting to get..
22:19
Let's get the numbers right. If he was breaking the law. So you're talking about prep school still
22:23
Prep school, yeah. So seven to 13 So I was there 85 I was still getting 84 Really I was still getting B in 84 My understanding was that it was illegal in state schools but that private schools weren regulated by the legislation Yes that might be right Which is insane
22:39
right? That is, that's really crazy. And I would say, I mean, the version that I had
22:44
which was 13 year old boys beating me when I was eight. No, I never had that, that's
22:50
insane while a teacher watched oh has a dimension to it that i think is is very grim and very bleak
22:59
yeah awful that's explored i'm slightly older but the but the dynamic is explored in if
23:05
the lindsey anderson film that i suspect resonates with you in all sorts of ways
23:09
it does i when i watched that film for the first time i was like yeah that's it absolutely identical
23:16
absolutely identical you weren't exaggerating because i mean you i think you were expelled
23:20
from three schools but but when you say originally for burning down goalposts which makes perfect
23:25
sense in the context of one of the things you've just explained but um you say when you were old
23:31
enough to discover alcohol and drugs i mean that's an arguable to a phrase you were quite precocious
23:38
yeah yeah i started drinking started drinking when i could which is very very infrequently
23:44
but at about 12 and then drinking a lot as soon as I went to senior school because at 13 it was
23:52
not hard for me to get alcohol right uh by stealing it I was really really good at shoplifting by then
23:58
really good at it uh so much so that as an amends yeah I made a very very significant
24:06
uh I won't tell you the figure but I made a very significant contribution to the independent
24:13
shopkeepers association charity uh as an adult because i could i mean i couldn't quantify how
24:19
much i'd stolen or from where sure um but i uh i there was an amazing story so i hosted um an
24:29
awards ceremony as a stand-up many many years later uh for the independent shopkeepers and i
24:36
talked about shoplifting and i said you know blah blah blah this happens this happens this happens
24:41
it was getting good laughs and then i said yeah there was a there was a londis on the bridge at
24:45
bruton in somerset and this bloke stood up went that's my shop no and i was able in front of all
24:51
of these people to apologize to him in person and say man i am so sorry for what i did good so sorry
24:58
it hadn't been his shop when i looked after when i looked after it there you go when i when i uh
25:03
used to steal from it but um nonetheless the apology was in the right place and were you i
25:10
I mean, did the stealing itself provide an addictive adrenaline rush or were you simply stealing to get drunk
25:16
No, I didn't like it. I didn't like stealing. So more shame then
25:21
More shame and it's terrifying. It's really scary to steal. I mean, there is, being as honest as I can be about it
25:31
there is a rush when you've got away with it of like, wow, you know
25:37
I beat the system, but not one that I identified clearly enough to make me go, I want to ever steal for my own sake
25:45
I stole because I was out of control. And how drunk would you get
25:51
As drunk as I could. So I either ran out of booze or passed out
25:56
There was no, it was exactly the same as food. As soon as I found it, alcohol, I mean, as soon as I found it, I used it to its capacity
26:08
And it was the same with eating. And no teachers, no one kind of noticed or
26:12
Yeah, very occasionally. But you became a master of hiding. Very occasionally they'd spot it
26:17
Like I wasn't habitually drunk because it was hard enough to get alcohol
26:22
But, you know, I mean, yeah, when I did, I really went for it
26:29
And actually, the friends who sort of came with me on it
26:33
were the ones I think it caused much more immediate damage to
26:37
because I'd become very used to being drunk. By the time I was 14, 15, I was used to it
26:43
I could do all sorts of things whilst drunk. Right. As in, get through school
26:48
Just carry on. I mean, you could get your homework done. Yeah, I could have a conversation with you
26:52
Gosh. And then drugs, or around the same time, proper drugs as well. Yeah
26:57
Not just smoking a bit of weed. Well, weed was sort of the main thing, and then solvents were free, effectively
27:06
Other drugs were complicated to get. Sure. Not necessarily that hard, especially when I lived in Devon
27:13
It was weirdly easy. I have no idea why Exeter did what it did, but I don't know
27:20
But, yeah, solvents, which, I mean, I'm lucky. I'm incredibly lucky in so many respects in my life
27:26
I've had so much help from so many people, but I'm lucky to be able to do what I do and have coherent thoughts because I abused solvents for quite a long time
27:34
That's no fun. And until I passed out, too. I mean, it's the death of however many million brain cells in a single go
27:42
So I don't have much experience of that. And the experience I do have is secondhand
27:46
And I remember seeing people in, I mean, in quite a seriously
27:52
already a seriously bad condition, using plastic bags to sniff glue in bus shelters and things like that
27:59
And I can't quite conceive of it in a middle-class environment. I can't quite, where would you do it
28:06
Would people see you do it? Would you hide when you do it? I tried to bring a few mates along with me with that
28:15
and they didn't, because it's grim. That's what I mean, really. It doesn't feel good
28:19
I mean, it's a big rush, and if you're in the sort of mess I was in
28:25
then it works, and it works very quickly. As in oblivion? As in oblivion
28:30
Oblivion comes really quickly with it. But I'm just trying to think if I was secretive about it
28:38
I suppose I was a little bit secretive about that, just because no one really wanted to come with me, you know
28:50
So, I mean, you're now an alcoholic, effectively, and you're taking drugs, solvents
28:58
You've hit 20 stone by the time you're 14, I think. So the eating never stopped, even as all the other stuff
29:04
No, I had one intervention from one of these. then they now do terribly well online um a sort of wellness an early version of one of these
29:14
wellness hucksters who did a thing called applied kinesiology i think it's called that where you
29:20
hold a a test tube with an amount of lemon in it and then you sort of arm wrestle with them and
29:26
they say you're allergic to lemons right and then you have another one with chocolate in it and then
29:30
this so you're allergic to chocolate and it's absolute dangerous hokum. And so when I was about 14, before the last expulsion
29:42
I had about, I think, about a six stone weight loss. So I went close to being a normal weight
29:51
and was much celebrated around the school. These kids were amazingly supportive and sort of prefect
29:59
would go uh go that thing you're doing um that's well done that's good and it was a my god it was
30:07
amazing and of course completely unsustainable because i had this brand new diet which was me
30:13
down to about sort of six things that i could eat and it worked for a spell and then it then when it
30:19
stopped working it it stopped so badly and the weight went back on dangerously fast and yeah but
30:26
that was the only interruption and mum and dad were trying the whole time to help i mean they
30:32
took me to great ormond street to this awful guy awful awful he put me on lithium age 14 which
30:39
you know these days they prescribe lithium reluctantly for people with very severe depression
30:46
he put me on it and he would take it in turns he'd either send my parents out of the room or me
30:52
and off across two occasions i think there were the last two times we saw him uh he threatened to
30:59
have my jaw wired shut and he'd say my parents they'd say you know they can do that we they can
31:04
literally wire your jaw shut if you don't stop this and i mean i don't know maybe he's someone
31:10
who felt he was out of options and i needed a scary threat or something but i mean it didn't
31:16
work no and it scared me and made me sad and resentful and angry and all of those sorts of
31:22
things um but it didn't work was there a how conscious were you of of the other you how
31:30
conscious were you of the you who was not plagued by these compulsions and these addictions and these
31:36
abuses that's such a that's such a kind question actually that's really the idea because i i i
31:44
I suppose I haven't really thought about that, but I was really conscious that there was somebody else that wasn't that
31:54
wasn't lying to everybody every day and failing to do the thing I promised myself
32:00
the night before every day. You know, I knew I also, like, I knew I wasn't thick
32:07
but I hadn't been, I hadn't managed to achieve anything because everything was in the way
32:11
every day I was I and my behavior was in the way of achieving the even basic academic stuff but I
32:19
sort of knew um and I knew that stealing wasn't something you know like I think when I got caught
32:29
they always thought oh it must be because you don't care or you're so arrogant that you think
32:34
that you can have something that doesn't belong to you but it wasn't true I didn't I didn't think
32:40
I can just have that and screw you I just thought in that locked addict mindset I have to have that
32:48
the desire for that is so powerful that everything else is secondary I was talking to a friend about
32:57
this just recently and I was saying the curious thing and I've seen it represented in film and
33:04
sometimes in literature about an addict who's got the compulsion on them that it's represented
33:11
as something really loud that there's this loud hunger sort of madness it's so quiet yeah it's so
33:18
quiet and you just go quiet and very focused and the voices that say not today don't do it
33:26
come on don't steal don't use act out eat whatever it may be they just go even quieter it's like this
33:36
stillness very focused pure flow activities why so many addicts struggle when they get into
33:41
recovery is that they don't find a flow activity to to make use of that those skills they've learned
33:49
you must if anyone going into recovery drugs alcohol food porn anything find shit you are
33:58
good at and do that thing a lot because addicts are really good at doing the thing we do so good
34:05
at it focused laser sharp yeah activity you know there's a sort of physical manifestation of that
34:13
that you see sometimes when you can tell that somebody is going to score you can see an addict
34:18
is going to score and the way that they move is extraordinary it's like mercury there's a there's
34:24
a liquidity to their movements it's almost as if they're on rails their feet are barely touching
34:29
the ground because and they're in some space i've never been in where they are because i know
34:34
there's like a local addict or something like that and you can tell because the rest of the time
34:37
they're completely chaotic and they're a complete mess but if they're going to score they've got
34:42
the money in their pocket and they know it's at the end of the journey there's an extraordinary physical difference in the way it's so practiced yeah and yeah and those other voices are so
34:51
quiet in that moment you know so yeah so so there was all sorts of help offered and and you know
34:59
people trying and then i ended up in this school in in devon there's been an interesting thing
35:05
where that's concerned so this was a school where they sent kids the local education authority would
35:11
send kids who couldn't get a place anywhere else okay right and for the benefit of local schools
35:17
these were usually kids who sort of did need to be somewhere else yeah but it was also an absolute
35:22
dumping ground of people with really complex trauma and um undiagnosed you know nowadays
35:30
uh it would be very easy to see oh there's this this and this happening for these traumatized um
35:36
kids but very little help was given to us but the reason i say it's interesting is in the last
35:41
couple of years i've made contact with some people who were at that school and you know
35:46
some have been exactly the tragedy you might expect but the ones i've managed to make contact
35:53
with have all said the same thing to me and it's been really helpful they've all said yeah in the
35:57
best place for me and at the time i was so angry and so like every day was this painful mess
36:05
and then realizing okay well what were the other options and there really weren't any yeah there
36:11
really weren't any so that's been an interesting sort of change of of of focus and then a guy
36:18
a guy who my parents knew saw me when i was about 15 and he said to my mom he'd been in 12-step
36:27
recovery and he said to my mom i don't think he's ready yet but when marcus is ready here's my
36:32
number give me a call 15 yeah when I was about 15 and she was like yeah all right and then about
36:40
two and a half years later when all of the wheels had come off everything she thought well I better
36:48
I better give this bloke a ring and she described what was happening and she said is that what you
36:53
meant and he went yeah yeah yeah is that and then and that was that and uh you know the next thing I
36:59
I had to be sectioned because they couldn't get me into the recovery center that I needed to be in
37:04
because I was still under 18. So I had lawyers had to get involved to get me in there
37:12
And then at 17, I went for I was about 24 stone then
37:17
And I went to 11 stone in about nine months. I lost 13 stone
37:25
That change you Yes it will change you But healthily Yes very healthily I went to three meals a day no sugar no white flour I was too rigid with it
37:35
This is partly rehab, begins in rehab. Yeah. And, you know, it was very, very rigid, and I would not
37:42
I still do three meals a day, and I don't snack and stuff, you know, just to keep my life simple
37:47
And I don't eat sugar because the effect is so immediate, you know
37:53
So, but yeah, I mean, it was really quick and I was helped a lot and I addressed lots and lots and lots of the painful stuff that had been going on for me and also got honest about all of the things I'd done
38:10
I mean, there was not a single secret left, which is the way. Which is part of the top 12 steps, isn't it
38:14
That is the way. If you are trying to get well from a cycle of addiction
38:20
and you have any secrets from anybody that matters in your life
38:24
you won't get through it. It all has to go out there
38:30
I don't know that I've ever met anyone who has been through this so early in life
38:34
I've met people who've been through this, but not in such a sort of fast forward and junior version
38:40
It was amazing and it definitely saved my life. Literally? yeah it literally saved my life i mean not not just because i'd had a couple of
38:49
somewhat half-hearted attempts to take my own life but they were you know like all of those they were a bit of sort of luck luck versus design kind of thing um
39:02
but i mean just what i was doing would have killed me there's no doubt but i did i did
39:09
realize um a lot of years later that it i have to be careful how i phrase this but in its way
39:19
it's a little bit like chemotherapy in that it get the the that chemotherapy and radiotherapy
39:27
will get rid of the thing that's attacking you right but they do have side effects and the side
39:35
effects for me of needing to do so dramatically what I did were that once again the entire world
39:42
I inhabited all of my friends that had to finish I had to not see any of those people anymore I had
39:49
to move house again I had to keep company really only with people who were much much older than me
39:55
whose lives were very different I was 17 18 years old you know and I had to watch every part of my
40:03
behavior to look out for shortcomings in decision making and be accountable for all of those things
40:12
because to not do that as an addict in early recovery especially is so dangerous if you you
40:19
know if you allow your your human shortcomings to get the better of you you'll end up in a
40:24
spiral of shame and all of that and you will act out again and you know where that leads
40:30
You just do. So I had to have this super accountable, very adult life. And a lot of it was fun still. Sure. But it took me years. I mean, a couple of decades to to realize, oh, yeah, that even even that wonderful thing that happened was in and of itself another trauma. It was another thing that was really difficult for me
40:54
um none of which really strikes people listening as the most obvious apprenticeship for a career
41:01
in comedy and yet it definitely is yes it definitely is man i mean yeah just the honesty
41:07
and the um that thing that's that all the stand-ups who i love have which is uh skin as thick as a
41:17
rhinoceros and also at the same time absolute vulnerability yes both things are true at once
41:23
It's the same with status as a comedian. You are always the highest status person in the room and the lowest at the same time
41:31
You're the clown on the floor, rolling around, making silly noises, begging them to laugh at you
41:38
And you're also up there going, listen to me and pay attention. I've thought about this more than any of you have
41:45
There is a little hiatus here, though, which I've mentioned a couple of times in recent interviews
41:50
because you have to rely on AI has made things worse, not better
41:54
If a lie about you or a falsehood about you gets into the official version
41:58
Oh, yeah, yeah. I could easily end up presenting it during this interview as one of the nuggets of my extensive, extensive research
42:05
I don't think that's the case here. But I also mentioned that there are quite a few crossover points in our lives, just sort of biographically
42:14
I think I was at the Ministry of Sound at about the same time that you were there, but I wasn't on a bloody podium
42:19
Ah, yes. well uh yes or if i was i was soon pushed off it so the ministry of sound when it first opened
42:28
yeah i was had no liquor license remember yeah and those were i mean that's really because
42:33
everybody bar me and my best pal who had heart condition everyone else was on drugs as far as i
42:38
knew uh but it was a particularly good place for me because no liquor license i liked that
42:46
and also I'd just lost 13 stone so my body was this brand new thing brand new and I'd never felt
42:56
like that before when I was 18 19 years old and so dancing felt it didn't just feel like oh this
43:03
feels good because I like this music for me it was a state of pure ecstasy weirdly and everyone
43:10
else was like yeah with a couple of pills I can get there I was like yes from the moment I walked
43:16
in and eyes wide like I looked absolutely like I was off my nut and I would dance and dance and
43:24
dance with huge exuberance I took up a lot of space hence climbing up onto the podium
43:33
and I liked how showy offy that was because I was not drunk and I was not high I was not even
43:39
particularly interested in meeting anybody I just liked moving and being on a podium meant I could
43:44
do it more and then i got uh one of the dance crew at ministry came up and said you want to be
43:52
want to be one of our dancers and i was like um yeah obviously yes yeah straight away yes
43:58
so then i was that and i danced there and limelight and equinox and a few other places
44:04
did you feel beautiful uh did i feel beautiful yes i think i did i
44:13
yeah I mean I was still I was still kind of I had a really complicated relationship with my body
44:24
so I wouldn't go top off very much not least because I still had a lot of loose skin right you
44:29
know uh I mean I was lucky I was young enough that there was some elasticity there um so I
44:37
can go completely top off but yes I think I did feel beautiful I certainly I certainly felt
44:44
something I hadn't really felt before which was a really pure state of of joy and it that did seem
44:53
to go hand in hand with um with what the people taking MDMA particularly yeah were experiencing and so I found it very easy just to be amongst them
45:05
To uninhibited join. Yeah, and the few that I would speak to could never believe that I hadn't taken anything
45:11
But I'd stay. I'd stay till it shut at 8 in the morning, you know
45:21
And what was happening here? was this here I am finally this is who I've always been and now I'm free or was it more complicated
45:29
than that it was a bit complicated because uh you know I'd left school with nothing I had no
45:38
qualifications but it didn't take me very long to go okay oh that one's fixing right and I went off
45:46
um there's an amazing red brick college as you leave London on the A4 uh opposite the beautiful
45:52
artist studios on the talgarth road there's a red brick college there and i went and you know
45:56
their artist studios because of the windows the amazing windows beautiful beautiful windows that
46:01
look out across six lanes of the a4 nonetheless the light the light streams in and they're still
46:07
artist studios um so i went to that college and i i thought well i better i did a performing arts
46:14
course i thought i better do an a level at night school just so i've got one bit of paper that will
46:19
show look if pushed I can do this and um and that was sort of the beginnings of a plan I'd been
46:28
I'd been dancing I'd been I'd done a year at drama school and I'd worked on an oil rig as well for a
46:35
bit um just sort of the opportunity came up so I went and did it and it was a good way of making
46:41
money and then I was so mad what were you doing on an oil rig well uh this features in in my most
46:48
recent show actually i was officially a deckhand right uh so i the rig was in the cromity firth
46:56
they pulled the exploration rigs in and they fix them up when they've been knackered out in the
47:00
north sea and they fix them up and then when they're all fixed up they tow them back out to
47:04
sea but it won't surprise you to learn that everyone who works on an oil rig much prefers
47:09
being in a firth than they do being in the north sea so one of my jobs was banging i was sent out
47:16
with a length of metal pipe to bang things during the day for a couple of hours at a time
47:20
so that the port authority would believe we were still working on our rig
47:25
and needed to be within range of the land. Meanwhile, presumably, there were other rigs queued up outside
47:32
waiting to be towed in. So I genuinely, I was sent out banging
47:36
But I sort of came into my own when they sent me ashore to do the shopping
47:41
that i was i was i was exactly as good at working on an oil rig as you'd expect from my tone of voice
47:49
okay not great yes however when they put me in charge of the domestic uh dealings of the rig
47:57
i excelled because they you know the guys on the rig we were down to a fairly minimal
48:02
crew and they were used to crew food out at sea but the budget for an oil rig to buy food remains
48:09
the same whether there's half a crew or a full crew so i took the credit card and the boat and
48:16
went ashore and did the shopping and instead of coming back with the cheapest mince you could turn
48:21
into mince and tatties for everyone i bought best end of scotch beef and an entire wheel of smoked
48:27
scottish cheese so so they were like right that's it you don't work outside anymore you do the
48:33
shopping me and the cooking i went okay fine fine um and things move quite quickly now don't they
48:40
so um you went to bristol but i think it was there that that a friend said you're funny you've
48:46
obviously got the performance thing as we've established what one of the some of the moments
48:51
of joy in your early life were when you made other boys laugh and your friendships clearly
48:55
were built upon laughter even if there was so much misery elsewhere in your life so there is
48:59
for all the trauma that we've discussed there is a sort of inevitability to yeah to what happens
49:05
next and it needs a degree of self-belief which interests me because it's hard to know where that
49:09
would have come from given what you've been through well i think there's a combination probably of whether whether private boarding school works for you or not it gives you the
49:18
thing that goes in you yeah is the absolute certainty that the things you want to make
49:24
happen you just sort of probably can yeah i mean rachel uh my wife she even wrote a stand-up routine
49:30
about us trying to book a barging holiday and me saying yeah we'll do that we should do that
49:36
she said but but can you drive a barge and i and i said yes i should think so
49:42
which is exactly the attitude boris johnson adopted to be prime minister
49:48
this is precisely why people like me should not be in Westminster because you know it's a short
49:55
step from I imagine I can do that to uh yeah to Boris Johnson so yes so there's that but then
50:03
there's also the you know what rehab and all of what I'd had to do to do that which was I had to
50:12
work so hard and face down really difficult stuff and and so not a great deal has scared me since
50:21
then of course i knew like again you know i say this mindful that a great many people's lives are
50:28
infinitely more difficult than mine but i remember so well when i went into rehab i was good friends
50:34
with someone in there and she was told by one of the counsellors quite rightly by the way
50:40
look if you're not here to recover if you're not ready if you think you've more in you you've got
50:45
to go back out there and do it again that's how it works you can't have people who are not there
50:50
to do it of course and what that's meant to do is make you go no i'm done with it and i'll look at
50:56
all the reasons why i'm done with it and she went i'm not sure i am done with it and she was 31
51:03
and was dead within a week and you know she it just
51:11
yeah it just took no time for her and I was 17
51:17
and so I you know and she wasn't the only one one of my closest friends
51:23
relapsed and he'd bless him he'd been a drinker and drug taker for so long
51:29
and he went and got which is the a pill you can take that will make drinking very painful it'll make you very ill
51:38
if you drink and he was taking antibodies he knew it was coming and he was trying to stave it off
51:45
and he was taking antibodies and he arrived at my house and he was taking antibodies taking the pills
51:52
with whiskey oh god and when you see someone just that gone and that out of control i mean you know
52:00
that's what i mean about that time in my life being amazing transformative and i will forever
52:05
be grateful for it but also really traumatic and so i'd seen a lot of that stuff and so
52:11
to some degree the idea of i'm gonna make you laugh now and uh if you don't i sort of know i'm
52:20
gonna be okay yeah i will just be all right i have a different context for this from you what worst that can happen yeah yeah and and what that actually meant was they did laugh every time Because like an uncle at a wedding dancing if you having a good time you look great
52:37
It's infectious. You just look great, you know. It's fascinating to me
52:41
SNL just started as we record this. And I'm so excited. It's so great that this is happening
52:48
It's so brilliant. And when I look at the cast in that, doing this live show
52:53
I've just seen the first one. you can see the ones who've got the internal glee
52:58
They all will have. They're all brilliant, I think. But the ones who've got the internal glee that I had
53:03
the internal feeling of like, this is so great. And it was the same feeling as being on the podium
53:10
Just pure, the joy of it. And people can't take their eyes off you
53:15
And they can't take their eyes off you. That's the beauty of it. And that explains this momentum that kicks off pretty much
53:21
You haven't even finished your degree when you become a full-time comedian. You then move through all of the things that people will know you from, some of which we've touched on, the sort of staples of Radio 4, the Giles Wembley Hog, the late edition on BBC 4
53:34
I mean, you turn and doing some serious writing and doing some West End acting and some some serious acting and some comedy acting
53:43
I mean, do you just sort of exercise much editorial control in deciding what you're going to do next
53:49
Not not with regards to the stand up shows or do you just you're like a kid in a sweet shop
53:54
My mum got me a framed print that says, well, yes. And I opened it, and I was a bit quizzical
54:05
And she said, that's you on the phone to anyone. That's lovely
54:10
And I went, oh, yeah, it is, isn't it? They go, would you be interested in playing Barnum
54:16
Right. And I went, well, yes. And I did. so I had to do every night a 10 meter tightrope walk and I'm the wrong age, height, weight and all
54:28
those things but I did it because um well yes sure so now I don't exercise a great deal of
54:36
editorial control over it all not least because almost all of it I think are you kidding me yeah
54:45
yes please yeah i love it the stand-up always and the you know the sketch and character stuff that
54:52
i've always done with that that takes a lot of thought a lot of consideration yes and i'm in it
54:58
now i'm in the process the new show is called throwing sheep and it's about the beginnings
55:04
of attention economy and the beginnings of surveillance capitalism so you may remember
55:10
on facebook we could poke each other poking that was a thing you could also do you remember
55:16
throwing a sheep no i don't okay so before we all knew what the attention economy was
55:21
you could poke people on facebook and you could say why did you poke me and someone would say well
55:27
i don't know because you can i just wanted your attention you could also throw a sheep at someone
55:32
which was just a bit bigger than poking them and it was a cute sheep it wasn't we're not talking
55:37
about an act of violence here it was a cute sheep that went meh and you i threw a sheep at you i
55:42
vaguely remember and it was yeah it was before the developers of facebook knew what they were doing
55:50
they didn't know that we were about to move into the most valuable commodity on earth not being oil
55:57
even when there's a war being our attention yeah they didn't know but they figured out really
56:02
quickly that if i could poke you and you don't do anything and then throw a sheep at you then you'd
56:09
do something you go hey you threw a sheep at me now we're chatting now we're chatting that was as
56:13
far as i can tell the beginnings of a fascinating terrifying cycle and my belief is i love that
56:21
my belief is that with all the things everything because i'm still you know i don't i mercifully i
56:30
don't have to be as politically and news engaged as you have to be I choose to look away yeah quite
56:37
a lot of the time now because it's too much however I'm still at my heart in my heart a news
56:43
junkie really and my belief is until we regulate tech in a meaningful way things can only get worse
56:51
our democracy can only get worse until we have meaningful regulation of tech because it is
56:59
tearing at the absolute foundations of who we are to each other of what we are to facts of what our
57:08
children are capable of of being i have an adult son who's who's 23 who i know because i've checked
57:14
won't mind me telling you he's he's hot in generation one of the there you go there's a
57:21
smartphone kiddo yeah and then covid at exactly the age where you know um they might have been
57:28
doing other things and they are in the eye of a particular storm that without regulation attack
57:34
so that's the that's the focus and the fascination for the for the new show and i'm in the in the
57:41
research bit of it at the moment going sweet mercy how am i going to make this one funny
57:46
well that's a good feeling away that's a good it is a good feeling yeah i like it um are you still
57:51
touring vitruvian mango just right just yeah winding it down so that's so you're now on that
57:57
I don't know what the word would be. So you've got one just coming up and one just coming down
58:01
Yeah, yeah. So that's how it works. You know, as I can't do
58:06
Stuart Lee's always been amazing about writing the next show while he's doing the one he's doing
58:12
I don't. Yeah, I can't quite manage that. But yeah, Vitruvian Mango's been amazing
58:18
I mean, it's sort of the Louis Theroux documentary about the manosphere, which has caught so many people's attention
58:25
overlaps a lot with what I've been discussing not I haven't really looked very far at the
58:32
manosphere in my show but at what we as men might be for so all the nice people all the nice men I
58:41
know have a pretty comprehensive list of things we know not to do right lots of the sort of
58:49
inherited unhelpful patriarchal stuff you might throw it all under the umbrella of don't do much
58:55
for a woman unless she's asked you to uh that would be one thing um one way of looking at but
59:01
there's quite a list of what not to do as a man not much of a list of where are we helpful yeah
59:10
where are the things that make me a man not not being an ally to uh my feminist wife for example
59:17
which i happily am but what as a man that with the chemicals that swim around inside this body
59:24
what's useful and good for me. So that's what Vitruvia Mango has been all about
59:30
I'm so bad at making my show sound like anything other than a very tedious, lengthy TED talk
59:36
But I promise it's funny. It's really, really funny. Honest. Yeah. I mean, given what we said about how you pick and choose
59:44
or don't pick and choose what the next project is going to be, I like this idea of a parallel, two trains really
59:50
running down two different tracks. The stand-up, which you take, You mentioned Stuart, so you take it very seriously
59:56
Yes, I do. You have to. And Stuart is kind of the person that introduced me to that
1:00:00
and taking it very seriously while also being hilarious. But then you've got this other career, which is, you know, everything else in a way
1:00:06
Yeah. Have you ever had formal ambitions on either track? Have you ever thought, I want to do that or I want to get this
1:00:14
or I'd love to have a go at that? Like boxes that you want to tick or things that you want to try
1:00:21
Not so much in terms of a grand idea. But yes, in terms of individual projects
1:00:29
absolutely um so i mean i wrote a play that i was really proud of called the red about someone
1:00:37
in long-term recovery from alcoholism dealing with the inheritance of a magnificent wine cellar
1:00:45
from his father which is a bit close to home which is extremely close to home my dad who's
1:00:50
who's just a wonderful wonderful man really enjoys wine knows about it and one of the great
1:00:57
joys of my life has been seeing him express his boundless generosity to his friends and family
1:01:04
through wine and it is a joy it's a lovely lovely thing to see and i have only very occasionally
1:01:10
felt on the outside of it because of where i was yeah uh but it was an interesting thing because his cellar and he does literally have a cellar and it beautiful They terracotta wine bins with all of these wines And he will tell you with great enthusiasm about many of them
1:01:28
So I wrote a play about that, which I was really proud of
1:01:33
But all the writing that I do that isn't to be immediately performed is much more difficult
1:01:39
right because i if i if i left here now right and you said in three hours time you've got to come
1:01:47
back with something yeah to make you and everybody here at global laugh brand new thing i could go off
1:01:56
and do that wouldn't be long it might not be brilliant but i could go off and do it because
1:02:01
i know there's the deadline of me having to perform it and i just get that but having to
1:02:06
create outside of that is much more difficult much more difficult for me and that's how i've
1:02:12
always done it i book my tours my edinburgh shows and my other things long before i've finished the
1:02:18
show then you have to finish the show it's a perfectly reasonable trick um final question
1:02:24
can you think of a point during that just because it was relatively speedy doesn't i don't know
1:02:32
nobody listening is going to think that it was easy by any stretch of the imagination but i'm
1:02:36
We haven talked much about them You just brought your dad up at the end I was struck by the idea of your mum taking on board what her friend said about the 12 step programme and it still being in her mind two and a half years later
1:02:48
Was there a moment where you can remember your mum and dad relaxing and thinking he's OK now
1:02:56
yeah not yet yeah yeah yes i totally can i totally can i mean they when i was at bristol
1:03:02
uni so i'd gone to bristol and uh they'd said to me when i did my interview you won't get halfway
1:03:11
through your degree and quit will you because i'd said i really like comedy i'm really into comedy
1:03:15
and i went no and they went because we've just lost one to that you know this guy
1:03:20
matt lucas and i laughed and i went yeah but he's matt lucas right he's matt lucas he's brilliant
1:03:26
he's amazing two two years later i had a tv show and i was like i'm so sorry none of us could have
1:03:32
seen this happening however i had promised my parents when i went to bristol um that i would
1:03:39
get a job and actually i did i did get a job weirdly and i was sort of doing bits and pieces
1:03:46
but they wrote to me and they said, Oi, you, you said you'd get a job
1:03:51
and the support we're giving you is going to stop. And I wrote to them and I said
1:03:56
this comedy thing I promise you there something in it I promise you And just so you know I doing it in every waking moment that I have where I not doing my academic studies I was with Danny Robbins
1:04:11
and Dan Tetzel who again I mean you talk about luck I met two of the best writers and performers
1:04:19
too but particularly best writers far better than I've ever been able to and we as a as a team
1:04:24
started making stuff together so i wrote to mom and dad and i said this is a thing that's happening
1:04:29
and they said okay well if you say it's happening then fair enough and then i went to edinburgh at
1:04:34
the end of that first year and i won the bbc new comedy award and it was on it was live on tv
1:04:41
and then and then that was it and they went uh i think they genuinely went yeah that makes sense
1:04:49
I think that makes sense yeah yeah and bless them they love what I do
1:04:54
they love it unless they actually see it in which case they sort of go oh
1:05:00
oh right gosh well done darling splendid gosh how do you remember all that
1:05:05
no they loved actually they really loved Petruvia Manga they came to this show
1:05:10
and loved it so yeah Marcus Brickstock thank you thanks man so nice
1:05:15
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