JACK WHITEHALL: Why I Owed Jamie Big Time | GREAT MOMENTS

Usually, Great Moments is all about the advice and takeaways from our amazing guests. But this week it's a little different… I wanted to share part of my conversation with a good friend of mine, Jack Whitehall. Jack didn’t come on Great Company because he wanted to… in fact, he only agreed to do it because he owed me a BIG favour. In this Great Moment, Jack reveals exactly what that favour was and what it’s really like to work with his father, the unintentionally hilarious, Michael Whitehall. Listen to the full episode HERE https://open.spotify.com/episode/3mXw5IFaP40g9TEqkDxq1O?si=qm6Kmx3HSA6QuyEFod55qA! If you enjoyed the show, you can also follow us: Instagram-@greatcompanypodcast https://www.instagram.com/greatcompanypodcast/# TikTok -@greatcompanypodcast https://open.acast.com/networks/611e511b4ec6dc00134bced2/shows/65d737dfdc02e00016c413b2/episodes/www.tiktok.com/@greatcompanypodcast And if you've got thoughts, questions and comments, you can email us at: [email protected] THE CREDITS Producer: Helen Burke Assistant Producer: Issy Weeks-Hankins Video: Josh Bennett Social Media: Laura Coughlan Exec Producer: Ewan Newbigging-Lister & Jemima Rathbone Great Company is an original podcast from JamPot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:20Jamie Laing?

  Hello, everyone. I'm Jamie Laing and this is Great Moments.

• 2:26Jamie Laing?

  Hey, guys. Welcome back to Great Moments. Now, usually, Great Moments is an opportunity for us to give you guys a piece of advice, something to take away from the conversation I've had with so many of our amazing guests. But this week is a little bit different. I wanted to share a little bit of my conversation with my great friend, Jack Whitehall. Now, when Jack came on Great Company, he told me he only agreed to do it because he owed me a favor. So in this great moment, you'll find out what that favor was and why it's still one of my favorite stories from the show. Now, if you like what you hear, you can check out the full episode. All you've got to do is click on the show notes and it'll take you to it. So here it is. Great Moments with Jack Whitehall.

• 3:05Jamie Laing?

  So the reason why, for people who don't know, why Jack is doing this podcast, isn't because your PR team emailed or anything like that. The reason is, is because you owe me a favor.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  I do. I hear you're a solid.

• 3:18Jamie Laing?

  You owe me a big solid.

• 3:20Speaker 05

  A really big solid.

• 3:21Jamie Laing?

  So what happened?

• 3:24Speaker 05

  We were at Glastonbury Festival, having a merry old time. And it was one of my sort of first weekends away from my wonderful partner, Roxy, and my beautiful baby, Elsie. And because I was away at a music festival, having a jolly old time, I decided that I would organize them a nice weekend with her sister, who also has a baby, and some of her other family, and arrange for them to have a lovely weekend at Centre Parks. So they were there, going to Centre Parks, they would have a lovely weekend, I would be at Glastonbury in a muddy field, having a merry old time. And it was the perfect plan, until

• 4:07Speaker 05

  Saturday afternoon, when they were in the car on the way down to Centre Parks, and I was in a field, sort of two days into Glastonbury, very merry, and started getting some text messages and phone calls, and looked down at my phone, and I called her back, and she answered. And it turned out that she had arrived at Centre Parks and I'd booked Centre Parks for the wrong weekend. And she had driven for two and a half hours with her, my baby, and her niece as well, a newborn baby, and they were stood in a car park of Centre Parks. They wouldn't let them onto the property. They had nowhere to stay, no

• 4:50Speaker 05

  shelter for the night. This was at about 5:30 in the afternoon. And it was, I would say, one of the bleaker moments of my life. Like, I saw everything flash before my eyes. It was like muck, sweat, panic. I was not necessarily in the best state of mind to deal with such a crisis. And I went into full crisis mode. At a bar at Glastonbury, there was a, like, a huddle called, like, what do we do? I am the worst parent and indeed human being ever. My, my partner and family are stranded in a, in a car park at Centre Parks. They may, they may perish this evening, and how, how do I rescue them?

• 5:32Jamie Laing?

  No shelter. So, so what happened next is I, I come back and I, and I realize there's a big kerfuffle.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. You sort of swan in.

• 5:40Jamie Laing?

  I swan in and I'm realizing that there's a big kerfuffle going on. I'm just thinking, right, I can obviously help this. I mean, I've never seen so many people just panic in every single situation.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  No, I know. It was, was proper panic stations. Initially, I would say you were very unhelpful for the situation, because it was a very, because it was a very grave situation. And I don't think you understood the sort of severity of it, because we were all there, like, seriously, on our phones, like, trying to find somewhere that, you know, a hotel or anywhere that we could, an Airbnb. And then you sort of, like, rock in with a big shit-eating grin on your face, and...

• 6:12Jamie Laing?

  I was ready to putty.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  A pint of warm beer.

• 6:16Jamie Laing?

  A pint of empathy. I had a pint of, I had a pint of empathy and charisma in my hand. That's what I had. That's what I had.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  And you were like, I'll just start calling around hotels. I was like, I don't think that's going to be how, you, but you did, and you were very good. You found a couple of hotels, some of which were, like, in Scotland. And we were like, no, Jamie, that's not going to work.

• 6:35Jamie Laing?

  So then what happened was, is I said, okay, well, where are they? And you said where they were. And I said, well, I have a mutual friend.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:43Jamie Laing?

  Who...

• 6:44Speaker 05

  There's no route through this part of the story that doesn't suddenly get really, like, disgustingly privileged. So...

• 6:51Jamie Laing?

  So you just, you just go on Dart, go straight, straight for the bullseye.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Just go straight for it?

• 6:55Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, go straight for it.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  You were like, I think I know the owner of Longleat. I'm like, oh, of course you do. Of course you do. Probably wanked off his uncle at Charterhouse. And you were like, no, no, it's not actually that. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's, I did Strictly Come Dancing with Lady Emma Waymouth.

• 7:21Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  And I believe she is the...

• 7:25Jamie Laing?

  The Countess?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  The Countess.

• 7:27Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, I think she's the Countess of Longleat.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  Of Longleat.

• 7:30Jamie Laing?

  So...

• 7:31Speaker 05

  So the count called the Countess.

• 7:33Jamie Laing?

  I, I, I, and also, you at this time, you were thinking, there's no way this is going to work.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:38Jamie Laing?

  You were thinking, there's no way this is going to work.

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:41Jamie Laing?

  I, I phone her, she, I speak to her, we message each other. She comes to the rescue in the most brilliant way and then sets you guys up. Well, not you, but Roxy and everyone.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:53Jamie Laing?

  All up for the weekend. And I'm...

• 7:56Speaker 05

  I had a night...

• 7:56Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  In a manger with some giraffes.

• 8:00Jamie Laing?

  Longleat, what is Longleat?

• 8:01Speaker 05

  It was like the Christmas story.

• 8:03Jamie Laing?

  What, when they knocked on the inn?

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Knocked on the inn, and they had no room. But Lady Emma Waymouth said, there is a place where we keep the giraffes. It's a sort of manger, and you can stay there for the evening.

• 8:15Jamie Laing?

  Longleat is like, what, a safari park in, in, near, I would say, sort of near the Cotswolds?

• 8:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:21Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  So I left, so I left Glastonbury immediately, got in a car.

• 8:25Jamie Laing?

  No, you didn't.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  Shut up. And I drove there, and I took them from the car park, and I drove them to Longleat, where they stayed in the safari park. And we all had a lovely weekend, and I sacrificed the rest of my time at Glastonbury because I'm a good dad and a good partner.

• 8:38Jamie Laing?

  It's actually, it's, it's, it's the complete opposite to that. Do, when I walked into the scenario in this sort of caravan...

• 8:44Speaker 05

  I had to leave on the Sunday because I couldn't bear to be there while Shania Twain was on stage, and you endlessly went on.

• 8:50Jamie Laing?

  You had to be dragged.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  There's my mate. Hey, Shania, do you remember coming on the podcast?

• 8:56Jamie Laing?

  And she'd have been like, yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  You literally, I think Shania Twain's name came out of your mouth maybe a thousand times on that weekend.

• 9:04Jamie Laing?

  Because I know her. And, and everyone else there. Everyone, everyone...

• 9:07Speaker 05

  At one point, you were going to call her and ask whether Roxy and Elsie could stay with her for the rest of the weekend in whatever accommodation Glastonbury had laid on for her. Yeah, I would just call Shania.

• 9:17Jamie Laing?

  You said this to me. You said, we're in the caravan. And I said, I think I can sort this out for you.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:22Jamie Laing?

  You said to me, I will do anything.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:25Jamie Laing?

  I will do anything.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  I think I actually said something a bit more graphic at the time.

• 9:29Jamie Laing?

  I think you said, I'll give you a blowjob.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  No. I wasn't going to say. Maybe I would have done that anecdote back in the day with you and Franny Bull on the Private Parts podcast. But not now, not on this.

• 9:42Jamie Laing?

  Not now, not on this. But, um...

• 9:44Speaker 05

  I did maybe say I'd go down on you.

• 9:45Jamie Laing?

  You did say, you did say something.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  And you said, well, instead of that...

• 9:49Jamie Laing?

  Yeah. I've got something worse than that. I've got something worse than that. Will you come on my podcast?

• 9:55Speaker 05

  Similar experience to going down on you.

• 9:58Jamie Laing?

  And you said, um, yes.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  That would have been over a lot quicker.

• 10:02Jamie Laing?

  No, it wouldn't. I'd have made you suffer.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  I thought this was the highbrow one. You've got all these books.

• 10:12Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, I've got...

• 10:12Speaker 05

  Tell me about these books.

• 10:13Jamie Laing?

  Well, these are all the books. So Jack is pointing at the, our sort of room that we're filming in, the set. And there's loads of books behind you.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:20Jamie Laing?

  Have you, have you ever read?

• 10:22Speaker 05

  A book?

• 10:22Jamie Laing?

  Have you ever read my, have you ever read my autobiography?

• 10:25Speaker 05

  No, but that's presumably not on there.

• 10:27Jamie Laing?

  It's actually not up there for some reason.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Like, just buy all of these books at the same time? Or do they come from someone else's house?

• 10:33Jamie Laing?

  No, this is what the books I've read.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  We want a set that has loads of books on it, so it looks like it's a proper...

• 10:39Jamie Laing?

  Producer Jemima says that we had to buy them by the kilo.

• 10:46Jamie Laing?

  Oh, that's amazing. When you.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  How many times have you used the sentence, I know the owner of Longley? How often have you used that flex? You've been using it probably all weekend and finally it came good.

• 11:02Jamie Laing?

  When you.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  Swanning into Shangri-La at four AM in the morning.

• 11:07Jamie Laing?

  I know.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Seeing someone with a tiger painted on their face. Oh, like animals, I know the owner of Longley. Fuck off, mate.

• 11:17Jamie Laing?

  Can I ask questions? Cause I obviously do stuff with Sophie and who anyone doesn't know is my wife. And look, there's, there's really great things about it, right? Because you know each other so well and it's fun and you can riff with each other. And that's a really great thing. The negative is that we're married.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:39Jamie Laing?

  And that's a lot because you're then working together. You're living together, it's everything together. And then politics come into play in lots of different spaces. I don't think Sophie and I really speak about that that much, but it, you know, that does have its difficulties. And it's definitely had that in the past a lot more than it does now. You work with your dad and then your mum and Barney, your brother helps you, you know, managing you in lots of ways. And so it's, you know, it's, it's become over the course of, you know, how many years you've been doing comedy now? Fifteen years that it's become a family affair in lots of ways. What are the negatives of that?

• 12:14Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, with my, with my father definitely feeling sometimes like, you know, I need to sort of protect him. And he is so much, you know, older than he was when we started doing this. And his sort of energy levels and just his health, you know, I, I, I'm very keen not to push him too far. And so that's always a concern of mine. And, uh, you know, unlike any other show, you have to be really careful with how you schedule it. And, and I'm always like, oh, we can film, you know, keep going and film day after day and travel and all of these things. And so it has to be very, very carefully managed for his welfare. So that, that, that can be quite hard.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  And on the occasions where I feel like I've sort of pushed him a little bit too far, or he's so far out of his comfort zone that he's feeling uncomfortable, then you feel a little bit guilty. So that, that element of it is hard.

• 13:09Jamie Laing?

  I suppose with family, it means that you can like lean into stuff much easier. But then you would probably have more arguments.

• 13:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, we don't really have arguments, but you certainly end up stressing about things that you would never stress about. Where you're filming a normal show with a fellow professional. You know, the whole filming process of doing stuff with my dad is all about like where he's going to be able to have lunch. And like, that will be the whole focus of the day is not, not the content or the person we're interviewing or researching any of it, or worrying about like how a scene is going to work. It will all be about like whether we can finish in time to get him to a restaurant at one o'clock where he can eat some decent food and have a glass of wine and then have an hour off. And if he's had a decent enough lunch and has been given some alcohol, then he might be willing to do a couple of hours

• 14:00Speaker 05

  in the afternoon before he then finishes at five and returns to a hotel, which again, there will have been extensive discussions about the quality of the hotel and whether it is gonna be up to scratch. Cause if it isn't, then you might as well write off the following day because the whole day will be spent complaining about the hotel that he's had to sleep in and the lack of a decent lunch the day before. And that whole thing is that.

• 14:22Jamie Laing?

  And you've got to, cause I know Michael very well as well. That is actually what he's like. What, what you see on the show and typically with like, I know, reality shows or, or entertainment shows or shows which sort of show your person. They're kind of sort of volumed up in some sort of ways. Michael is, is pretty similar.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's very similar.

• 14:40Jamie Laing?

  He's very similar to what he's portrayed on the show.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  And sometimes you get that sweet spot. Have you ever seen the footage of like those Russian bear tamers? You know, like it, it feels like that, it feels like very high stakes and sometimes they get.

• 14:52Jamie Laing?

  He's the bear.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  I'm the tamer.

• 14:54Jamie Laing?

  Okay, got it.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, again, ethical questions about whether I should be taming a bear. But as, um, as the bear, you know, sometimes, you know, he, he performs and, but there's always the fear that he's gonna turn on his tamer and rip him to shreds at any moment.

• 15:10Jamie Laing?

  And still, one of the scenes that lives completely rent free in my mind is when you're on a train.

• 15:19Jamie Laing?

  The steward.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  Steward.

• 15:25Jamie Laing?

  And what, will you explain it?

• 15:28Speaker 05

  What, he comes in and he introduces himself.

• 15:31Jamie Laing?

  As the steward.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  The steward and Michael goes, oh, thank you very much, Stuart. No, no, no, no, he's not called Stuart. We're in Vietnam. Does he look like Stuart? Oh, I thought he'd introduced himself and he was called Stuart. He was called Stuart. And then that's again, like a classic moment of my dad's where then for the rest of the eight hour train journey, he keeps calling him Stuart.

• 15:56Jamie Laing?

  But the, but then there's a, and I don't know if you can say this, cause you, maybe you told it to me in private once, but there was a, and maybe you can't, if you can't, that's fine. But there was this, there was a scenario that happened in Chernobyl, wasn't there with your dad? Was there, was there?

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that was one of those moments where I did feel like I'd pushed him too far and he'd been travelling for hours. And it was a really hot day and he was very dehydrated. And he had a sort of bit of a medical emergency at Chernobyl. In like the, in like the, the forest, like woodlands of, of Chernobyl as well. We were in a van and he had to pull over and had a bit of, uh, an explosive diarrhea situation, which culminated in me and Michael in the woods and me having to hold him as well. Cause you can't lean on anything in Chernobyl, cause everything's radioactive. And they keep telling you that when you enter, don't touch anything. So I had to hold his hands and cradle him in my arms as he shat onto the forest floor.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  And so, yeah, that, that was, that was the moment where I was like, I think this is, this has gone too far now.

• 17:02Jamie Laing?

  This is the greatest.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  I know, where it's scarred onto my memory. This is so undignified. That's what he said. I always remember it. This is so undignified. And there was a dog as well, cause there's feral dogs at Chernobyl. So there was a dog trying to get at the shit. I was genuinely, I'm holding him.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  A, a situation is happening and I'm also trying to shoo a dog away.

• 17:30Jamie Laing?

  Out of all of you guys, you, why do you laugh at that?

• 17:33Speaker 05

  I just thought of something that he did, um, on Friday that made me laugh. Cause he, he does make, he cracks me up and, and we do share a very, very good sense of humour. I would say, you know, as you've met him, his sense of humour is, um, is quite, uh, is dry. It's quite, uh, at times quite caustic. It's probably not particularly politically correct as well. So there's always the slight fear, um, not with a Netflix show, because you can edit the Netflix show. But once he's then sort of let loose into the world, there is the fear that because he's an 84 year old man, that there is a gun like with a loaded chamber that could go off at any moment.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  So he's pretty good and he, I think he gets it enough to know that he needs to have some kind of a filter. But he, you know, is definitely capable of making some pretty rogue comments. And we were on the one show on Friday and he sat there basically in silence. And I was like, okay, so we're gonna get the sort of Joe Biden, Michael Whitehall just freezing up on live television, which is fine. I can take that. That's, that's absolutely fine. Cause we're safe when he drifts off and he's not even like engaged in it. But then we were on with the, uh, the women's, um, uh, football manager, Emma Hayes, who's the coach of the US. She's amazing. And she was there talking about her book at seven o'clock on the one show.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  And at one point she started talking about a study that she'd done into women's health, uh, within, um, sport. And she said, I did a whole, um, a whole, uh, uh, study into, uh, the effective menstruation on, uh, female athletes and how their periods affect their performance on the pitch. And I don't know whether it was deliberate, but I then felt Michael just tapping me on the leg. And I just felt him just nudge me with his knee. And I was just like, no, no, whatever it is, whatever the thought is, whatever you're gonna, just don't say it. There is nothing that you can add to this conversation. There's no funny comment, just sit there and just, just shush, stay quiet.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  But like that, like I honestly like heart in mouth going, what, what was he gonna say? Like, what was he gonna say on the one show? Having said nothing on the entire show, but the one time he wants to pipe up is when Emma Hayes is talking about menstruation in women's sport. No one wants to hear your opinion on that. I like, I wish I had that Graham Norton lever to just like tip him back on the sofa.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  Amid the chaos of a medieval battlefield, one man raises the crown. But out of the carnage, Henry Tudor plans to give the realm he's conquered, hope. A new king, a new era, a new dynasty. England is about to fall under the spell of the Tudors. Join me, Dan Jones, for the unmissable story of a family you'll never forget. This is history, the Tudors. Watch on Spotify, YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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