Russell Kane: How To Build Confidence & Stay Young

My guest this week is Russell Kane, a Multi-award-winning comedian, presenter, actor, author and scriptwriter. Russell Kane is best known for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Evil Genius, which has become a flagship show and was the best performing original podcast on the BBC Sounds platform. Russell's other podcast, Boys Don't Cry, also features regularly on the iTunes podcast chart. Kane is also the author of two books, “The Humorist” and the very well-received memoir about his father “Son of a Silverback: Growing Up in the Shadow of an Alpha Male”. Russell went on to make history as the first comedian to win both the Edinburgh Award and Melbourne Comedy Festival's Barry Award in one year. In this conversation you see the less funny side of Russell, it is however one of the most informative, fascinating and mind-boggling conversations I've ever had on this podcast. This guy has more knowledge than you could ever imagine and I think you’re really going to enjoy this chat. Follow Russell: Twitter - https://twitter.com/russell_kane Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/russell_kane Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  Russell Kane, he's known as a multi-award winning comedian, presenter, actor, author and scriptwriter, but man, this guy is so much more.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I started doing all this biohacking to survive on less sleep, to not lose your hair, or to slow down the aging process. It fucked my life in the proper sense. Everything fell apart like a junkie. How can I get more of that? My relationship with my girlfriend fell apart. My bills started to not be paid. I started to look thin. It's the closest thing to a drug addiction I've ever experienced.

• 0:45Steven Bartlett?

  Russell Kane, he's known as a multi-award winning comedian, presenter, actor, author and scriptwriter, but man, this guy is so much more. He's genuinely deeply intellectually curious, something that honestly surprised me. And this sounds like it might be offensive or a weird thing to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. I didn't realise how smart this guy is, remarkably self-aware. And to top it all off, brutally honest, he says it how it is. He has an ability to point out things that I think most of us muggles miss, and he's also genuinely just a really nice and hilarious human being. Today, you won't hear many jokes. This is the more serious side of Russell Kane, and a side of him

• 1:30Steven Bartlett?

  that I did not know and would not have guessed before speaking to him. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:49Steven Bartlett?

  Russell.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 1:52Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things I read when I was reading about your story was a quote, and I'm going to read the quote to you. You said, "I remained a boy while he was alive, even when I was 18 and I needed to be a man to tell these stories."

• 2:10Speaker 01

  What were you talking about when you said that? Well, I don't think that's true of just me. I think any boy or probably girl who has a reasonably overbearing and dominant father, you sort of remain a child. Now that I'm a father myself, I can see that's true. So when my daughter Mina is 40, she's still going to be my baby. So that's the positive side of it. The negative side of it is if it's quite an overbearing masculine energy, you sort, I felt sometimes a bit like a bonsai, like I kept nearly growing and then the roots were trimmed. So I was fully grown but small. So if my dad was in the room, you know, I was instantly childlike, I would say, inside. So he's just a very dominating figure. And I

• 2:52Speaker 01

  think that would have been the same had my dad not dropped down dead from a heart attack years ago. I think that would have been the same when I'd been 40, 50, 60. If my dad had been a 90 year old shouting in the corner, I probably still would have been like that. Even if he wasn't in the room? No, no. When, as soon as, what, in his presence, I think. But so far as that, I think that quote might be talking about stand up. Yeah. I wouldn't have dared to tell the funny stories about him while he was alive, I don't think, just on the risk he was offended or, you know, there'd be consequences. What was he like for anybody that hasn't read about your story? Steroid taking, shaven headed, silverback, doorman, right wing, angry, councillor state,

• 3:35Speaker 01

  working class, barbell curl, semi-professional bodybuilder, lifeguard, sheet metal worker, lager, nutter. By lager, I don't mean someone who gets on it. I mean, someone who puts the insulation on the outside of pipes, the hardest job you can imagine, crawling in boilers, ripping out asbestos, fiberglass, cut hands, white transit van, get out of the way, just massive. Shirts tailored, this is when he's taking steroids, that was before I was born, shirts tailored, trousers splitting, Hulk like at the thigh, just a force of meat called Dave. Wow. That was my dad. Actually called Dave? Dave, actually called Dave from Essex. So yeah, he was just very old school. So even

• 4:17Speaker 01

  though he's like, more like someone who was born in about 1920, he had sort of the politics and the attitude, very unreconstructed masculinity, quite knuckle draggy, but.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Just would, worked himself to death to provide, barely raised his voice at me, certainly never laid a finger at me, but didn't, didn't need to. I find the truly terrifying Cockney can just give you some, are you fucking getting near now? And you're done. I, I, I actually piss came out of my body once when he spoke to me like that.

• 4:49Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  I literally pissed myself. I was, I'd thrown my brother on the bed and he was crying. And there's nothing scarier than hearing those doon, doon, doon on the stairs. If you've done something to your brother or sister and you know your dad's coming up the stairs. And he's like, what happened? What have you done to your brother? And I just pissed myself. And that guy never laid a finger on me. That's power.

• 5:10Steven Bartlett?

  My, my mum definitely laid a finger on me. I didn't think I would have been scared of her if she didn't. But I was fucking terrified of my mum. Like, but she, but she would beat me like, but my, but I couldn't imagine how she could have achieved that same objective without hitting me with something.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it would be analogous of the nuclear deterrent threat. If you know I've got nuclear weapons, I don't need to fire them for you not to attack me. So I know, I knew my dad had nuclear, whereas, this sounds incredibly sexist, but reality is, once you're a fourteen, fifteen year old lad, you're the same size as your mum.

• 5:41Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  There are no, you know, where are the nuclear weapons? She's going to have to put her money where her mouth is and.

• 5:46Steven Bartlett?

  But haven't you got to know how nuclear weapons work to, to know that they're.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  I just need to, you just needed to look at my, you know, to be honest with you, my dad's given me so many positive things. It's just that the negative things are funny. So that's why I talk about them disproportionately. But to teach someone, I'm five foot ten, like a pepper army with hair on. But when I stand on stage, I don't need to hit people or shout. They, they sit in their seats and some of them in the front row shit themselves if I even look at them. So who have I learned that from? It's partly my craft, but it's partly also what a good teacher has. Uh, what a good dad has, like my dad, and what a good stand-up has, male or female. That authority to stand there and hold a room with a reasonable tone in the voice, pin drop.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  It's, it's powerful. It's harder for a, a mum to do that, particularly where I grew up, there's a lot of single mums. Um, when you've got teenage lads that are sort of thinking, what are you going to do? She's, it becomes like an arms race where the mum starts hitting the legs and hitting the face. And it's needed because that's what the mum's got to work with, I suppose. That's why, that's why I do believe this is so sexist and old school, but I do believe if not a man. Two parental figures in in place, one who can play the badass. Doesn't matter if it's two women, two men, whatever. I think if you've got two, it's double the force raising a child.

• 7:08Steven Bartlett?

  Takes a village. You, I remember, you know, the the way you've described your dad is um is quite different from who you are today and who you were over the last 10 years. I mean,

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:17Steven Bartlett?

  in almost the antithesis. And I remember reading about the the fact that you took a DNA test at some point.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  No, I took a DNA test just out of curiosity because I'm big into science. I wanted to know what diseases I was carrying. I'm always been fascinated about my ethnic makeup because my family history starts in living memory. I'm obviously a little bit darker than I should be to be a Brit. So I was sort of one, I'm one, I was interested to know what was in there. But a part of me did go with what if this is the moment I discover my dad's not my my dad. It did cross my mind, which is totally absurd. Sorry, mum, if you're watching. Because he was blonde hair, blonde curly hair, blue eyes, very wide. It's just that we're just nothing in

• 8:03Speaker 01

  common. My brother is the spit of my dad, but I'm like, I'm like my mum, just energetic pepperami with hair on, running around, bouncing out of bed, stick first thing in the morning.

• 8:13Steven Bartlett?

  And like, in terms of like generational cycles, where did y- your dad get it from?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  So he always used to say to me, I never had a dad.

• 8:22Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  So and then my mum would, my mum would say, so you've got to understand your dad didn't get taught how to be at my mum's gay man. Your mum didn't get taught how, your mum, your dad didn't get taught how to be a dad. So he just know, he didn't know how to be around babies. He'd never learned that sort of thing. He never, he didn't have anyone to guide him. So he had quite a rough childhood. His, his dad walked out on him when he was about, I think he was about two. And my dad's mum, hard as nails, East, East End Essex, well, it's Essex back then, Barking. And it was just a tough childhood, you know, tough East London Essex childhood where you, you just survived, basically. And

• 9:01Speaker 01

  He he had a lot of dreams. I think he would have liked to have gone the same way I did. He was quite a good looking bloke. So he got scouted for modeling and things like that. He pursued that for a bit. He pursued the professional bodybuilding. He even tried stand up, I think like a Pontins or a Butlins. He tried a little bit of acting, only for a couple of years. And then he went into the hardest, I think of all the manual labour you can do, which is sheet metal and insulation. So that, like I say, crawling along pipes and all that. So there's a lot of bitterness, a lot of unrealised dreams, a lot of abandoned by your dad, a lot of hardness and negativity there from the childhood. And that plagued him his whole life. So if we were on a beautiful four star holiday to Menorca and the sun shining, part of him would be thinking about the five star holiday he could have.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I'm not like that at all. How did you know? How did you know he was thinking that? Well, he would voice it half the time. How? What would he say? Uh, yeah, it's all right. Imagine, if I get the big job, imagine if we would come back. He'd be quite positive on holiday, actually. But he was like, just imagine Julie, if we if we had more, that's my mum, of course, Julie and Dave, if we had more money. That house we could have. And my mum would be like, Dave, we bought our own council house. Thanks Thatcher. It's a big house, the biggest house in the street. We've got pillars out the front. Yes, it's a former council house. We've got pillars, we've got a swimming pool in the garden. Three beautiful bedrooms, lovely bathroom, massive house, dining room, front room. Two healthy sons at the point. My brother's very unwell by the time he was seventeen. But at that point, what was there to be negative about? It's a hard job my dad did, but good money.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  But he couldn't see that. He could just see his mate who started a glass company and now his son drove a Lambo and he lived in Chigwell and I don't. And when my dad passed away, we were going through the shed at the bottom of the garden and I found his diary. And it was lit. Honestly, it was one of the few things that made me cry when he died because I sort of toughened up to help with the funeral and all that because my brother was ill by then. And it's just rain today, didn't get the job, shit day, James being a, can I swear? Yeah. James being a cunt, that's my brother, shit day, fucking add a curry. It was like the diary of someone in prison. That's what it was like. It's so weird that someone could be rich and not know it.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  I'm I love making money, don't get me wrong, but I'm really good at enjoying what I've got. So I've enjoyed every level of my comedy journey and have never been bothered about whether I go further or not. Because I feel like if you can have two banging holidays a year and you love the house you're living in and your family's healthy, done.

• 11:31Steven Bartlett?

  He was engaging in upward social comparisons, right, the whole time. And if you do that, you're never gonna be happy.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you see that with people in my profession that are earning a million pounds a year, two million pounds a year and are in debt. Cause they're buying an A P watch every week and they're going to the Maldives four times a year and they've got the, they're in a ten million pound house. They should be in a five million pound house. It's ridiculous. That's consumerism, but it worked on a more micro level. So we would, if we're going to Stansted Airport to fly to Manorca. Traffic's probably gonna be shit on the way to the airport. I bet you the traffic will be shit. So we're already, he's pre imagining the traffic jam will be in. If we hit a traffic jam, fucking knew it, holiday, we'll probably miss the flight. Holidays, fuck Julie. I fucking told you we should have gone for. I fucking told you. He didn't shout at me, but he would shout to himself, sort of thing.

• 12:19Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ever figure out where he learnt that behaviour, where that came from?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  No idea. Like I say, it was just all the bitterness and negativity and expecting things to go wrong. That was his tape, his script. So if we were in a restaurant and I'd be seven years old and I'd spill a glass of water, not Coke or anything, so he's not gonna get sticky legs. He'd be like, water everywhere, fucking meal ruined. I've got to sit here like I pissed myself for the entire. He'd be like, the worst thing in the world has happened. Like someone at that moment's probably found a lump on their body, but to my dad, the worst thing that can happen. So he, I felt sorry. Looking back now, you've got, you've got to feel compassion and love because it was just a constant tide of self-hating negativity, basically.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  And imagining if we go and buy something from Ikea that needs putting up, you know a squirrel will be missing and it's because I'm me, because I'm cursed. A fucking squirrel will be missing. You can guarantee it.

• 13:12Steven Bartlett?

  Fucking hell.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  That all the time. So for a little boy growing up, you've got to work really hard not to absorb that.

• 13:18Steven Bartlett?

  I, I see hints of that in my dad, especially as he got older, a little bit more negative about everything, moods, you know, seemed to be irritable at a lot of things. And one of the things that crossed my mind was, I hope this isn't genetic. Like, how do I avoid becoming this guy when I get to that age? Has that crossed your mind that the generational cycle might? Continue to some degree without you noticing.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Obviously, yeah, I mean, see, so my brother, I don't, I can't really go into my brother's illness because he's literally not well enough to consent for me to talk about it. Otherwise, I would happily discuss it because it's an important subject to talk about. But he's got some severe mental health issues, let's just leave it there. So my brother's really sort of unrefreshingly unaware of his mannerisms and gestures and postures, if you like, and it's just like my, he's like my old man. So how can your, you know, the way, your voice and the cadence of a sentence and the glances and the way you, you say, no, I mean, and stuff like that, he is my old man. So I mean, on some genetic level, there are copies of how we express ourselves, there must be.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  But apart from maybe your height, I can't think of anything you can't change with loads of, loads of ways, education, cognitive behavioural therapy, if you need it, I never have, but you can, you can work on the way you eat, your diet, your lifestyle, all of those, you know, genetics is not destiny. One of the most fascinating things you can look up is identical twin studies over and over again. You get one twin that's two inches taller than the other, where he's had a more successful, not two inches, but it might be an inch taller, where he's had a more successful life, eating better food. So you can literally grow taller, they're genetically identical. So you can't tell me I'm destined to suddenly be negative about traffic jams.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  If two identical twins can be different in height, you must be able to push against behaviour.

• 15:12Steven Bartlett?

  You've seen that film, Three Identical Strangers?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yes, fantastic.

• 15:15Steven Bartlett?

  Amazing.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely fantastic, yeah, yeah.

• 15:17Steven Bartlett?

  Made me upset.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:19Steven Bartlett?

  It's inspired, you know, the ending's obviously tragic, but yeah, really powerful film. And I think that shines a light on how.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  It does, it gives hope for all of us that you're not, you're only 50% of your dad and 50% of your mum. And although you're actually slightly more of your mum, I've learnt how anyway. But so you don't, you're not, if you're only 50%, if twins aren't destined to be the same, you're not destined to be the same as a parent. It's, it's, it's bad, it's a bad way to think, particularly if it's a negative. It's a good way to think if there's something you want to copy, tell yourself it, chant it. I want to be more like my mum, she's such a cool cat or whatever.

• 15:54Steven Bartlett?

  We have also grown up in a slightly different culture, especially in the last sort of ten, twenty years, where we're much more aware of our psychology, right? And our, and our, and how trauma and childhood experiences have shaped us as adults. Whereas I think my dad probably didn't know. So it was like someone back there in the control room, running the show without him. And he was just a puppet to the shit he'd been through. Whereas we are kind of a bit more open as a society now, so.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that's my biggest learning. Mental, mental health comes on a spectrum. It doesn't mean mentally, we have mental health. Everyone has, we have physical health, we have mental health. Even if you have no issues, that's good. You are mental health. So mental health runs on, on a spectrum to people that are cooking on four hobs, like me and you, hopefully. All the way down to people like my brother, who are severely, severely ill with cognition issues. And people who are severely ill or people who are trapped in time, like our dads before an awakening. They don't have insight into their current state. If you do not have insight into your condition, you are screwed.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Because if you're, let's say, for example, schizophrenic, without insight into the fact you have schizophrenia, you will not take the medicine. You just won't take it. You'll look at the pill and go, well, I don't, I'm not ill. So you'll, you'll be in assisted accommodation your entire life. If you're schizophrenic, but know you have schizophrenia, chances are you can have a relatively normal life because you know, I'm ill, I need to take my medicine. And that, but you can translate that thinking to any aspect of business or commerce, to stand ups, to entrepreneurs. Because I've noticed, I call it black box thinking from the Matthew Said book. The moment you can have insight into a stand up routine, into a business proposition in a proper way, where you can look at it and go, that doesn't work, you're going to be successful.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  People that don't have insight into themselves in their personal lives, they end up single, they end up in unhappy relationships because they can't see their own faults, they can't insight into themselves and go this.

• 17:52Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, this is just an impossibly tough question.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:54Steven Bartlett?

  Because we're talking about self-awareness, really, right? So like, how does, and people, people have asked me this question for the last five years, and I really don't have a great answer still. How does one become more self-aware?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Well, I, it was literally part of my degree. So I, I'm very lucky.

• 18:08Steven Bartlett?

  Here we go.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I started, I started doing English literature because I wanted to do the most show-off, uncounsellor, state posh subject possible. I mean, I was going to get a first, or I was, I don't know what was going to happen. So I told myself I'm going to get a first no matter what. That was preordained. So I did two years of showing off about, you know, Roland Bart's and Jane Austen and all that. And there was an opportunity in the last year to cross over into creative writing. And the reason I did that is, again, goes back to my dad. It's not very practical to be absolutely badass on Jane Austen unless you're going to want to be a lecturer or an academic. Whereas creative writing is a practical profession. You can go into advertising, you can go into journalism, you can try and write books, you can, as it turns out, go into stand-up. I didn't know that yet.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  There's loads of places where you can go, look, I'm not just got a first in English, I've got a first in, in writing. I can take body copy and make your brand pop.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  So how do you do a dissertation in creative writing? There's only one way. You have to submit 10,000 words, normal academic ponting about, and you have to submit 10,000 word short story play, but you have to run through your own work and criticize it and say what you got right and what you got wrong. Once you've been through that and done it loads of times, it just becomes natural to bring it to your life. A copywriter in an advertising agency has to be able to really hate his own work he just created and find the faults in it because that will lift it above Ogilvy's copywriter and you'll win the pitch. It's, it's as simple as that. The person, the man who cannot realize he's domineering or jealous and work on that will

• 19:49Speaker 01

  not have a fruitful. Relationship.

• 19:52Steven Bartlett?

  In order to.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  A woman or a man indeed.

• 19:54Steven Bartlett?

  In order to do that with your life or with your copy or with your work, whatever in marketing, you have to have a certain level of self-esteem and personal security to be, to allow yourself to rise above your work and look back down on it in a critical way. A lot of people's self-esteem is so fragile.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:10Steven Bartlett?

  That the prospect of being critical is, ah, it's just unthinkable. Like, you know, and this is why people get, from my experience, why people get so defensive and cause they're, cause they're so, if you, one shot to their self-esteem will take the whole house down. So that they immediately go like this, like.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  So you could look at it that way. So I would say that person needs to learn not self-esteem, because self-esteem is a totally separate conversation. They need to learn objectivity. A piece of writing is a thing. A relationship is a thing that you've built with someone. A comedy routine is a thing, a poem is a thing. The things over there, that's not you. You have to practise being able to take the piss out of the thing, criticise the thing. No, someone's not coming up to you and going, you're ugly, you're unlovable. You've got a big nose, you're not tall enough. Stuff like that is gonna hurt and there's no way of getting objective. But if you can't look at a poem you've written and someone goes, I really love the meter, but the adjective there's a bit obvious, then you should be able to thank that person.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  They're giving you a gift if they know their shit. But you're the one that should be saying that first. Eminem style, Eight Mile, seize the bars and turn them on yourself first.

• 21:23Steven Bartlett?

  Hard to do.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Because everything is like. It makes better work, it makes better humans.

• 21:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I completely agree. It's just really tough to do, like.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Practice, it's practise. I get a lot of, this is the message I get most often, sent to me via my agent or on Instagram, and it drives me fucking nuts. I had one the other week. Oh my God, I love what you do. I'm, I'm a really funny person. This is how it was phrased the other week. How, how many gigs would I have to do before I could like open for you on tour? Can you have a look at some stuff I filmed on my phone? And I'm, I give them an answer that I never get a reply to this answer. I say, okay, it's quite simple. Lucky for you, there is a really simple model to follow. You need to work unpaid for three years in the clubs, three times a week. I wouldn't recommend a relationship and just warn your friends, you're not going to see them.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  I started to earn about two, three hundred pounds a week after five years. At that point, you're ready to give up your day job. On about the eighth or ninth year, you're going to be ready to do a support slot. I never, yeah. People don't want to hear it, but you, if you went up to the guy in the gym, who's sixteen stone and five percent body fat and go, can you tell me how I can get like that? He'd say, the machines are over there, dickhead, just get going. The machines are there. You cannot skip the machine. You cannot skip the tricep station. If you want triceps, you can't just go, it's going to hurt. It's too much work to get a tricep, then just don't get triceps. Don't moan if you don't have triceps. Head to the dip station and see you in four years.

• 22:55Steven Bartlett?

  I, yeah, I, no, I, I wrote about this. My book came out last week and I wrote about it in my book. I remember someone turning to me, it was actually the CEO of my company now, company I've just left. And he said to me, Steve, you know, this personal brand stuff and this like speaking you do on stage. He was like, how long did it like, how do, he was like, how do I, how do I do it? And in your, your brain immediately scrambles around looking for like three tips, right? Three tips to describe like a deck. I remember my first talk in school at fourteen years old, my hands shaking.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:19Steven Bartlett?

  The truth is like someone's seen you with a sharp sword and they've said, how do I get a sword that sharp? So well, start sharpening it now and then ten years' time. But people don't want that.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  No one wants to hear the answer is boring, repetitive practice. For most, most people that are absolutely fucking excellent at something, have done a lot of boring, repetitive practice that would be boring to the person asking the question, not to us. I loved every shit gig I did.

• 23:43Steven Bartlett?

  And that's the difference. That's what kept you doing it for ten years or two decades or whatever, is that you genuinely intrinsic loved it for its, and people want the rewards, right?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  But when they, if they started and genuinely wanted, they too would discover that love. If you, if you say, I want to be a dentist, I'd be a dentist. You start dental training and you're finding it boring and a slog. Newsflash, you don't actually want to be a dentist.

• 24:03Steven Bartlett?

  You'll be rich.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so find something else. Find something where you love the journey. That is the secret. So that's what my dad never found. He did, he didn't find a job he took pleasure in. It's got nothing to do with coin, although I'm into it. But if you love the outdoors, you're going to love landscaping, whether you're on seventeen grand a year or seventeen million a year, you're going to love it because that's what you were born to do.

• 24:24Steven Bartlett?

  It's such a counter narrative to the narrative that sells, which is like short investment, big returns. It's like seven days, six pack abs. That's everyone fucking signs up for that. Imagine, imagine it be like 10 years, maybe.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Maybe, that's true. And that's, and the problem is a lot of the T, the TV we make, I make, sells that X Factor spot, do one song, live the pimp lifestyle. Now, of course, that is what in the, all of the X Factor that's ever been on and all of Popstar, the rivals, how many of those people are now platinum selling artists living in mansions? What? Harry Styles, try and name some.

• 25:03Steven Bartlett?

  One Direction, that's it.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  That's out of every single Little Mix duo. That's out of every single one in a show that's designed to push people to the front in an artificial way. So if you think that's going to happen, if you're Russell from Essex, you're deluded. It's, but any business, if you're passionate, mixed with a little bit of luck, people, this is the other thing people like us don't like putting out there, but I'm afraid there is a bit of luck involved. And it sort of calls into, like, we always sat here going, I've worked so hard, oh, look at me with my, my work hard badge. But at some point, we had some luck as well, because we're in the right place, right time, mixed with the hard work. So some people are more lucky than others. Luck is a thing. And what luck is, not luck as in lottery number luck, but luck as in, oh my God, you've met the, you've met the

• 25:49Speaker 01

  perfect partner, you're, you've been the business. Oh, you, you were looking for a friend, a French bulldog breeder, and you found exactly the right one at the right time when you were looking for a puppy. Why are you so lucky? Why is my life so shit? So they tested this. They got a bunch of people together. Half people who say, my life's shit, I'm so unlucky. And half people like me who like, I've got to admit, I'm a bit, I'm blessed, I do have a lot of luck. And they run tests on them. And the test they run was very simple. The, the psychologist, I can't remember, it's the British Jewish guy, really funny, brings loads of books out, Richard something or other. He's written a book about it, about luck, look it up. They gave them a newspaper reach and they went in there, go into your separate rooms, and on a page is a picture you're looking

• 26:30Speaker 01

  for. Whoever finds that picture comes in first, gets a hundred pounds cash. That was the game. So everyone went in like that. On page two, the massive headlines was, it's a trick, stop turning. If you've read this headline, go and collect the money. That was on page two. All the unlucky people missed that. All the lucky people found it. You know why? Because lucky people are eyes are open. The hustlers. So it turns out you can make luck. You can practise that. You can hone it. That's something you can hone. Next time you walk into a meeting, just think, right, what's, what's that guy do for, for a living? Who's that? Is that a contact? That's not luck. If I sit down next to someone and he happens to be doing a comedy streaming service startup and he signs me up.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  That's me being a bit bold and striking up a conversation and looking at what he's wearing and having a think. You can learn these skills.

• 27:18Steven Bartlett?

  People don't like that because that shot puts the mirror on me and creates personal responsibility where I, you know what I mean? And I feel like in our society at the moment, this is just an observation I've had. Personal responsibility is people fucking hate that.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:31Steven Bartlett?

  I did a, I remember doing a tweet about, um, because, okay, this was me playing a bit of fuckery, but I don't care. Right? So the left of society, which I probably consider myself to be on, are really in support of the NHS. So I did a tweet saying the biggest cost to the NHS is like smoking, eating bad, et cetera. So if you really care about the NHS, take care of yourself. Oh, people are like, no, Steve, this is literally the, the replies are like, this is not it. Because I'm basically saying, if you genuinely care about the health service, here is all the data. The biggest burden on the NHS is people that are overweight and people that are smoking or whatever.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Well, the, the obesity one's particularly controversial because there's two movements at the same time. There's personal responsibility in the science we're learning about obesity, particularly during COVID. I mean, if you, if you want to do one thing other than social distancing, obviously get a vaccine. Most of us are too young to have had a vaccine. So if you haven't had the vaccine and you don't, and you don't want to live life like a prisoner, the best thing you can do is get in shape quick. You're better off, you're literally better off being, I think, a thin smoker. Literally, yeah. But it's a controversial conversation because quite rightly, we're reevaluating beauty standards. And a lot of people end up with eating disorders and fat shaming and all that needs to go away. And as, as soon as we associate.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Personal responsibility, longevity and health with a body type. We're in a difficult area where we create shame for people based on how they look, which is something we want to get rid of. So for someone like me who's on the left, my head just goes pop.

• 29:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you don't know where to start.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Smoking is slam dunk. Don't smoke, you're a bellend.

• 29:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  End off, dickhead, don't smoke, stop costing me money on the NHS. But someone that might be overweight, it's very, very complex to understand why someone's overweight. It's something I studied a lot, not because I've ever been overweight, but because I'm fascinated with biohacking and body and all of that. And I think the most illuminating thing I can tell anyone about being overweight is that eating too much does not make you overweight. This is, no one understands this. I'm going to blow your mind here. Being overweight causes you to eat too much.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Once you have the metabolic condition of being overweight, that fucks your circuitry, which drives you to eat more. Obesity causes calorie surplus. So shaming people for eating too much is a waste of time because most people with busy lives and kids and no money are in a condition that's compelling them to eat more. It might be emotionally compounded, it might be psychologically compounded, they might be recovering from abuse, they might be recovering from a bad relationship, they might just be skinned and can only afford fucking nuggets and they're just tired, they're not getting enough sleep. And unfortunately, until you get into a low-fat state like us,

• 30:29Speaker 01

  where it's easy to regulate your calorie, every part of your body is telling you to feed this obesity. No one understands that. I've gone deep into the science, I'm not a scientist, so look it up for yourself before everyone starts trolling me saying literature degree boy. But as far as I understand the science, layman's card's on the table. Obesity causes overeating. Now that is just boom, but it helps us to be more, as much as I agree with what you're saying, it just, it leavens more compassion into people's weight loss journey. Although you're absolutely correct, if you don't want to die of COVID and you don't want to cost the NHS money, getting in shape is one of the best ways to do it.

• 31:03Steven Bartlett?

  But of course it's not easy. And I've, I've had moments in my life where I've been most stressed and it's a downward cycle. Like, you know what I mean? So you eat and then you require sugar more and it, sugar becomes this addictive thing in my life. And it only happens to me when I'm stressed. So I'll have my little moments of downward cycle in my health when there's a lot on my mind. And so, yeah, I mean, compassion is certainly incredibly important in that regard. What about more broadly? So outside of health, the topic of personal responsibility, I like it because it's controversial.

• 31:32Steven Bartlett?

  And I discuss the nuance.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Trying to get us in the Daily Mail here.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Fat people should pay for themselves.

• 31:40Steven Bartlett?

  No, I know, just generally in your life and success and like what you can accomplish. The fortunate position I'm in, which is what I talked about in my last podcast, was because I came from like a very broke family where my mum can't read or write and I was born in Africa and we didn't have anything, no Christmas birthdays or holidays. My journey in life, people don't discredit it. They don't point at me and say, oh, you know, silver spoon, you can't fucking talk. So I feel like I could have the conversation a little bit more about personal responsibility. Of course I'm fucking incredibly lucky. Like, I didn't choose to be me. You know what I mean? I didn't choose my parents or the, the good and bad things that shaped me. But I, but I wanna, I wanna have a conversation about personal responsibility as it relates to career success. And let's, let's start with hard work. Cause in our society right now, there's two counter narratives. One

• 32:24Steven Bartlett?

  is that don't work like incredibly hard, you're going to burn out and you're going to have mental health problems. And the other is I've never met someone that sat here in front of me that doesn't work really fucking hard. And I, I did, I don't know how I would have sat here without hard work and tremendous sacrifice.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, we sort of already made the point, a lot of people are working hard at things they hate.

• 32:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  So, working hard at things you dislike, hate, or find stressful will bring success and money, but at a cost. Working hard at things you love, I'm, I finished filming at midnight last night in Maitland, I got in at half one, I had my dinner at two, and I fell asleep at three. And I bounced out of bed this morning to come here to do a podcast for the price of a car. Why? Because I love what I do. Now, if I was, had, got in at three from working as a hospital porter, and had to get up to do another job, which was quite well paid this morning, but I hated it, I wouldn't be buzzing. And that's what releases the cortisol and the stress hormone into your body. So, you can't compare, you're not comparing like and like, even though both people are working hard.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  You've even got people that might be barristers, or, or doctors, really well-paid professions, but find it stressful and they're burnt out and stuff. It's unlikely you and I will burn out, because I'm like, what's next?

• 33:44Steven Bartlett?

  And you're infinologically motivated by, you've got a sense of control.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, that's, that's what I think that, I think we can, we can differentiate there on hard work, straight away. So, I'm more interested in the first thing you said about the, the join between people's origin story, and how much dick they get for the success they've got. Because I'm, I have to phrase mine a lot more than you, because I get put in with the silver spoon guys, because I'm a, just a white man.

• 34:15Steven Bartlett?

  Male, yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  So, I, I'm not going to use real names here, and I'm not going to use real jobs, because I respect, my profession is so hard, I don't give a shit whether you're Prince Charles doing stand-up. Anyone who does stand-up, I just, it's so hard to stand up. And I don't think an elite background helps you in stand-up. Might help you in telly and production, won't help you on stage with a bucket of piss coming through. But I've been told on more than one occasion, we'd love, we'd love to, we booked you for the X show, but we've already got Ollie. And so we got Ollie, we can't have two. And I'm like, how, how is, how me and Ollie represent the same thing? I sometimes think, well, I've got more in common with, I could phone up, I don't know if you know who Judy Love is,

• 34:59Speaker 01

  comedian. I could phone up Judy now and we could speak for an hour. But we both grew up same, similar part of London, similar age, similar family. Yes, she's got Jamaican stories, but I've got Essex stories. That's the only difference in our conversation. We come from the same place economically. We come, we're fighting the same fight, we're punching up from, when we never, no one would ever say that. I'll probably be in trouble for even saying that. That's the controversial thing for me to say. And it shouldn't be. Because if Corbyn and people like that have got it right, everyone who starts with what I call lower entitlement points, I've got a lot more entitlement points than a woman of colour, undoubtedly. But I've got less, less entitlement points, probably

• 35:42Speaker 01

  than a Ghanaian prince, right? So all the people that have got fuck all, I'll start with, should link arms. Doesn't matter what gender you are, what colour you are, that would be powerful. I'm a bit nervous when we get carved up and we're, people who start in life in a tower block should, that tower block should be united, do you know what I mean? So that's the first point. But I do, I do think you, we get off, we do get off lightly if we've got money. If we had a more council estate background, it's like a licence to be okay with having money. Like, I can wear my rolly by the pool when I'm in Ibiza, because I sound common. Yeah. If I sounded posh, I probably would keep the Breitling on.

• 36:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. No, it's so true. I, one of, one of my guests that I had on the podcast, went to a very good school, and is white and blonde and very pretty. And

• 36:36Steven Bartlett?

  She basically can't give advice to anybody without the papers.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 36:42Steven Bartlett?

  Smashing her or social media. In fact, there was a meme the week before she came on the podcast. There was a meme that went viral. I think it did two hundred and fifty thousand retweets when she, the day she released her book. And it was this, someone pinned someone up against the wall with a big trumpet. And it was like white privilege telling you how to, how to become rich. Like she is not allowed to give advice to anybody because she's white and went to Oxford.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  And we, how much good insight and business knowledge and whatever do we lose?

• 37:08Steven Bartlett?

  Like so many people went to Oxford and didn't build multi, multi million pound, two multi million pound companies. I still want to hear this from this person.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  If someone's offering you knowledge, she's not, it's not like she's telling you about her struggles. There was a queue in Waitrose and I just couldn't keep, that, that would be the trumpet, right? She's trying to tell you how to build a business. So it doesn't matter where you, if you come from space, if you can make me money, tell me how. If you can tell me how to start the next comedy streaming platform service where I own forty percent of the shares. I don't give a fuck if you've got a double first from Cambridge or whether you're one of the Mandem, I don't care. Show me where to, show me how to do it. You've got to have, you've got to have an open. Knowledge is, is, is, once it's out there is democratic. The path to acquiring it is not. And but there's no doubt about, trying to stay on topic, what you're saying about personal responsibility.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Is I'm really split on this because I don't believe it's true that anyone with enough will and luck can make it. I think we're probably outliers and freaks and just wired a bit different and have got what it takes to push through. I think if enough blocks are in place, you're a single child of a drug using mum in a tower block. And I am built of stronger stuff. So I've bounced through my childhood and I've come out the other side, but a lot of people aren't. If we were all born the same, then why aren't I playing basketball? Why am I not sprinting? Why am I not a maths scholar? You know, some of us are born genetically more equipped in other departments. I'm clearly a highly energetic person who's good at motivating themselves.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Some part of that is in born. I was like, I was like it as a baby before I could speak, you know. The other toddlers are like dribbling on their blocks and I'm like, where the blocks at?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  So it's unfair for us to go if only Neil at the top of the tower block could have been like us. He too could have been an entrepreneur because maybe he just being a single mum, being of colour or being transgender or being, not everyone has the strength to push through those things. Not everyone does and it's unfair to go up to a wheelchair and go, just stand mate. I'm using wheel power with my legs. Why can't you? Because some people, that that is a wheelchair, their social background and they don't have the strength and then they start using drugs and they just sink too low. Not everyone can pull themselves out. That's why we do need more equality.

• 39:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I agree. I'm definitely pro equality. I, I, there's a sense of helplessness I get if I like, I go all the way and say, you know, successful people, well, they were born with something.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:39Steven Bartlett?

  It creates a sense of like, well, then you're, we're all just stuck in our lanes forever. And if I believed that when I was shoplifting pizzas in Manchester, but then again, it's like, what I do understand, I actually, when I, the harder I reflect, I basically give myself credit for nothing because I was born into a situation in a country. I actually think my bad experiences are why I'm here. Like the fact that my parents weren't around at 10 years old, created this big gap of independence, et cetera, et cetera. I've told this story a million times. But it's the bad shit that is the reason that I became an outlier, I think. I became very obsessive, obsessed with money. My book, that's why it's called Happy Sexy Millionaire, because it's the first page of my diary when I was like a kid. I want to be a happy, why did I want to be a happy sexy millionaire? Because we were fucking broke.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Have you got siblings though?

• 40:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I've got.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  So they are they all happy sexy millionaires?

• 40:20Steven Bartlett?

  Not one of them. None of them are like me. And they don't understand me either. They look at me and like scratch their head.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  But what does that tell you? It's almost like you've run a controlled experiment.

• 40:29Steven Bartlett?

  Exactly.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Tuning out genetics versus willpower.

• 40:33Steven Bartlett?

  I, the, the difference between my childhood experience and theirs was they were raised by parents and I basically wasn't. So by, I was the youngest. So by the age I was 10, my parents were like, oh, we've done parenting now. We will work all the time and we will be out of the house when Steve comes home and we'll be out the house when he wakes up. So I was the only one where the, the experiment was total independence.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  So thought experiment for you. If you'd have been born a fraternal twin, another boy.

• 41:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  So, so as, as much your brother as your other brothers, but happened to be born at the same time, same conditions, same school, everything happens. So do you believe you would have another happy sexy millionaire living in the flat opposite? Or do you think it depends what that brother's personality was like? Because we both know that that brother's personality is what would have decided whether he sat at this table with us today or not. And personality does come into it. We are born with different personalities to an extent. Hmm. So I'm not saying we're all stuck in our lanes, but I'm saying we need more social mechanisms because some Einsteins don't have energy. Some Einsteins might be a bit emotionally weaker. So we're saying my example of Neil at the top of the tower block, he might be really fucking

• 41:44Speaker 01

  amazing. We'll never harvest that talent because our society is set up with too many blocks in place to scoop it out. We had one thing in place for about forty years called grammar schools. Hmm. Very controversial, very unfair, dumping a load of eleven year olds in the thick bin. My mum went to a secondary modern, my dad went to a secondary modern, my wife, my brother in law, my mother in law and father in law all went to secondary moderns. So I know people who were told you're no good at eleven. So I don't say this lightly, and I know how horrific that is, but the data does suggest that there was a short period where we scooped off some bright, poorer children, not necessarily Neil in the tower block, but at least the

• 42:26Speaker 01

  poorer children whose parents meant well but were too poor. We got them. We got more Einsteins. When you watch Question Time, switch it on, and you're, I went to a state school and they're giving you all that, it will always be a grammar school. Always. It's very rarely I went to the local comprehensive and now I'm an MP. It's always, I went to a state, which state school? It's grammar school. You went to an elite education then. State, but elite selective. Hmm. So we need some more stuff like that. What can we do in our communities? What can our youth workers do? What can we set up in councillor states, headhunters that look for talent, particularly boys? I'm going to say that because I was a boy once. But there's a real problem with teenage boys. All this testosterone kicks in and it goes the wrong way for most of us.

• 43:12Steven Bartlett?

  You, when I came on your podcast, you ask very controversial questions. I think you like those questions. Those are the ones that are most interesting to you, aren't they?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, as long as I don't get in trouble.

• 43:21Steven Bartlett?

  Well, it's hard to tell. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. So I guess my, I was just thinking then, this is a controversial question, but he asked me controversial questions. So I can answer. Is there no hope for some people? Give me, so zoom out context. Got a friend, tried really hard to help them change their life or do something for themselves. 10 years of effort, made all the offers in the world to this person. Still, job seeker's allowance, you know, somewhat depressed, can't seem to have any impact. We grew up in the same street. We were best friends my whole childhood. I went off, he stayed there.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  I've got tons of examples like that. So I have to speak very euphemistically now. I'll be cancelled, not by the internet, but by my friends and family, stroke, associates, stroke. I don't even want to say which group these people are in. All of this. I've had female friends who I'm like, stop dating bastards. And the next guy, he's nice, he's a coke dealer. And he's like, he's gonna fucking, he's clear, he's gonna shag your mate. And some of these women are getting to 35, you know, like with the final egg in the goblet, like in Indiana Jones, waiting to be fertilized. And this, the next guy, he's, we've got three kids by three different women. He has, he's got an electronic tag, but it's great because we can spend some time in it. Just bang a boring guy or a guy that likes Dungeons and Dragons or an accountant. What, there's a sexual attraction there to bastard men that some

• 44:41Speaker 01

  women, particularly from my sort of background, working class women, find hard to get over, would be one example. But you can get over it. It is possible to do it. The mistake people like you and I make is we try to help. And say you've got a friend who's unmotivated, depressed, leaves every job after three months. It's always someone else's fault. It's always the system. It's always, if only Corbyn was in power. It's, my dad did this, my mum did that. Always putting it on someone else. And then you're making it worse by putting it on you. Let me help. You're just a positive version of that. The solution is they have to switch the light bulb on in themselves.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  They may not get there, but the moment they wake up and go, today's the day I'm gonna try and change my life. They should, that's the first step. It might be speaking to a therapist. It might be changing your career. It might be enrolling in A levels that you do at night time like I did. That was what, lucky enough, my revelation came at when I was eighteen.

• 45:41Steven Bartlett?

  You were on Jobseeker's allowance at one point.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  I was, yeah, I did my A levels late because I had this spark moment, but it's got to come from within them. It's not something as yet, although science might get there one day, but we can give to you in a pill or an injection. You've got to suddenly have, right back to the beginning of the chat, insight and be like, boom, chest out. I'm gonna see a therapist. I'm not gonna use negative language. I'm gonna get this self-help book, which, which gives me some cognitive behavioural therapy tools. I always mung up cannabis, CBT. Um, so yeah, it's, it's got to come from them. But for you and I, fixes, how can we solve it? How can I redraft the copy? What's the solution? Unfortunately, the solution is trying to get them to have some insight.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  So if you have got a friend like that, maybe have that sort of conversation with them that spurs self-reflection. Because giving them a million pound a year job is just gonna make them worse because that muscle that's atrophied will stay atrophied. That's sort of standing up, making your own strength muscle.

• 46:42Steven Bartlett?

  One of the most, um, probably scary things from my perspective that you ever did was walking out on stage for the first time, for your first gig ever. Like, what the fuck were you thinking?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:55Steven Bartlett?

  Going out and walking in front of people and telling fucking jokes, are you sure?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  With me, it's even more complex because I don't know if you've had any stand-ups on here before.

• 47:03Steven Bartlett?

  Never.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  But the majority of them, and quite rightly so, will be like, from a young age, I used to watch blah, blah, blah on TV. I used to watch all these American comics. I used to watch Chris Rock, Bill Burr, Bill Hicks. I knew that's what I wanted to do, man. I was like, you know, I was like the young boxer in the alleyway. I knew I was gonna box. None of that, nothing. There is zero in my CV that shows an affinity for the craft of stand-up. Always been the joker. I'm not being funny today. I don't know why you got me on one, but normally I'm always arsing around. Not, this is not a thing I do on stage. I'm just, I'm like the clown person. Just just my that again, I've just always been, I just love making people laugh.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  I've always been a joker. There's some data to suggest um youngest children have it. And I'm not the youngest child, the oldest, or people born in August and July purely because if you're smaller than everyone else, you've got to develop your personality quick. So if you look at the premiership, you won't find many footballers born in August.

• 48:05Steven Bartlett?

  I'll explain why I never made it.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  August.

• 48:08Steven Bartlett?

  August twenty six.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  So you won't find.

• 48:09Steven Bartlett?

  Twenty sixth as well.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  You won't find many sportsmen or anyone that requires size or physical prowess, those professions. So even if you turn out to be a very tall teenager, you're less likely to become a basketball player than a teenager one inch shorter than you who was born in October. The reason being, you'd have been pushed by the coach and taught and everything early doors at six, seven, eight years old. So and there is some data to suggest that people who work with their personalities for a living, people that have to solve entrepreneurs and find little rat runs in alleyways, develop that based on being smaller or more vulnerable. But that could take lots of forms. I've got an overbearing dad as well. So I'm an August baby, overbearing dad, and some of it will be genetic. My mum's very funny.

• 48:56Steven Bartlett?

  And you talked a little bit about, I was reading some of your previous interviews, you talked a little bit about how it was a bit of a defence mechanism maybe in school? If that's you found your place by being a.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't, but I don't know how I wasn't bullied, but I wasn't the smallest, no girlfriend, wasn't in with the in crowd at all. I was sort of like in a sort of external group that had diplomatic immunity. Definitely virgin, definitely no cool friends, definitely one of the idiots, but we don't punch him because he's sort of all right. Obviously, I did get, it's a working class school, I did get punched a lot, but not as much as, I was in that league, you probably won't even remember them, just above the bullied, the boring grey league.

• 49:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, no point.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is the place to be at school, because if you're popular at school, we all know, you're gonna have a shit life.

• 49:48Steven Bartlett?

  That would be the promo, just that.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  So anyway, so because of where I grew up, it's not, people are like, well, how can you have no content with stand up? So you've got to remember my age. I know I look young, young for my age. I'm forty five. So what was my dad watching on TV? Jim Davison, Bernard Manning, Jimmy Jones. It's like Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck, like, you know, Live at the Palladium and all that. It's not, obviously they're all talented comedians and I do, I do mean that. But it just didn't resonate with what, it's not, it's not about my life. So I'd laugh, I'd laugh because my dad was laughing. But I was like, what's this crazy art form? I've got to learn more. Me and my friends mostly either smoking, it's all about getting high. Or we'd watch Old Young Ones or whatever the funny sitcom of the day was, Men Behaving Badly, or whatever it was.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  That's what I thought comedy was. No, we didn't go to the theatre at the weekend. We didn't like which cultural pursuit should we do this weekend, family? It was like dad works all week, he's tired. We have a curry, your nan looks after you and then when you get to fifteen, sixteen, you get stoned over the park. Get someone pregnant, work in a shop, die. That's it. That's the finish line. So I managed to, like I say, have this weird entrepreneur turn my life around, get my first class degree moment. But just by sheer bad luck, I ended up at a university that did not have a stand up night. Most of them do. So again, I went those three years without any exposure to in the student bar stand up. It was all music. There was some theatre. No one talked about stand up. We didn't have this sort of slightly fashionable thing now of being obsessed with American stand ups.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  I like to say to my British colleagues, just remember, if you start having this sort of slick quality to your stand up, it can look a bit mannered. That's just a side point. So I went all the way to the office, to my dream job as an advertising copywriter with no content with stand up. Just being funny as fuck, the clown, you know, legend on a night out, first one up dancing. But I didn't know that that was something you could do for a living. And I ended up doing a job I loved, branding, copyrighting headlines. I still love it. You can tell by the way I'm describing it. And then the creative planner was like, you're always the one up at the pitch issue. I would do like, if we're pitching to a big client, I would do like the funny bit with interaction to get them on side when I'm presenting the creative. He said, why don't you try stand up? Stephen Workman, if you're watching, thank you. Why did you say stand up with your

• 52:03Speaker 01

  mind, he's got a vision. And I thought, you know what, do it once, like doing a bungee jump or a skydive or karaoke. It's just, that's as far as my thinking went. Something to tell the kids. So I wrote a few ideas down in a book, booked an open spot in, and I went and did it. It was very scary. I think I did a pack of Imodium before I went on. And my hand was shaking. And I got that, it wasn't, obviously wasn't great, but I did well-ish. First laugh was like someone stuck cocaine, heroin, ketamine, everything in my, not that I've done those drugs, but everything in my veins. And I was hooked in the proper sense of that it fucked my life. Everything fell apart. Like a junkie.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  How can I get more of that? I want to gig three nights, I want to gig five nights a week for no money. I've got a creative director, we're talking about multi, multi million pound accounts. Advertising is you work till 8pm, you have pizza on your birthday under your table, you sleep at the office. I'm running off to do unpaid gigs in Manchester. My relationship with my girlfriend fell apart. My bills started to not be paid. I started to look thin because I suffered with my nerves in the beginning. I'm throwing up shit like both ends. It's the closest thing to a drug addiction that I've ever experienced. I would have not seen my mum for a year to chase this dream. I was hooked with on that laugh. And like, this is what I'm born to do. I just fucking know it. How can I monetize it, basically?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  How, why were you hooked on the laugh? Why did the laugh matter so much to you? It's a rush. It's a rush. Anyone is, I've not taken any serious drugs, but anyone that's taken any recreational drugs, which is a bad analogy because they're not actually addictive. But coffee, for example, I can't live my life without, without it.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Why are you addicted? It's as absurd as asking me why I'm addicted to coffee. Because I go, I wake up, I feel alive and I have an amazing day. The same. Laugh goes in, buzz, serotonin, pupils dilated. Afterwards, I want to tell everyone about the gig. I was taking shit footage into work and showing it to people and playing it in the office. Look at me. That's me. Look, look, come and look at me. This grainy footage in the, I mean, that's so embarrassing that I did that. I just, I couldn't, I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I was getting laughs from strangers. It was, it's straight to the ego, straight to the cortex.

• 54:26Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone has that, but do you, have you ever considered that you might have, that might have mattered more to you? Maybe because of your childhood or whatever than other people, that, that sense of like that validation and that.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'd had plenty of validation at work. I'd had the whole office cheer. I'd rung the bell when we've won big pitches. I've got the rush in the meeting, but it, nothing were. It's the difference, I'm trying not to talk about drugs all the time. It's the difference between going from a beer to MDMA, right? I don't recommend any hard drugs, obviously, particularly people that work with their brains. You're a fool if you mess with the equipment. But you can't compare them. When you say everyone has that. Not everyone stood on stage to a thousand people and seen people standing and clapping. That is different. It's of a different category of ego rush. Very dangerous.

• 55:22Steven Bartlett?

  What problems does it give you?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Well, initially all of.

• 55:25Steven Bartlett?

  Come with it.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Initially that, my, my life fell, my life fell apart like a junkie's. I was down to ten stone at one point.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  So it come to the point where I had to say, this needs to not be a drug. This needs to be a food and I left the agency and then I was, you know, off.

• 55:42Steven Bartlett?

  Still today though, right? So all, all things come with their, their costs. What is the cost today of that, that career and that rush and that?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I suppose the worst thing is the travel. That is a genuine negative one. Since Min has been born, my daughter. I actually quite like travelling. I like being in the back of a car. I love watching movies. I love reading. And I love eating on the move. So all the things that most people hate, I just happen to quite enjoy, just pure. Don't know why, because I'm always on the go. I like being forced to sit still and watch a movie. So I love flights, for example, the longer the better.

• 56:18Steven Bartlett?

  You still shit yourself now when you're about to?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yes, big time. But so far as missing part of your child growing, massive negative. Doing a tour is, there's a guilt thing in your gut and you do cry a bit after FaceTime and that particularly when it's a baby. So that's the biggest negative I can think of. But once you're with a woman or a man that gets it, there's no negative in your relationship. I was with a couple of girls before who would make me feel bad about being away. Whereas Lindsay's kicking me out the door. She's focused on the business. We're a team. That's well paid. Fuck off. See you later. Don't call home if you're stressed. I'm cool with it. That's what you need, man. You need someone who gets it. I do shit myself though, still, yes. Do you know the Imodium scale goes up depending on how much of my show it is.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  So if you'd booked a show for me today where you're going to introduce me and I'm going to do 20 minute stand up and you've got 2,000 people in the room, there would be nerves there, a fair bit of nerves. But mostly I'm ready to knock the gig the fuck out with my first punch. If you've put an event on and Michael McIntyre's closing and you're hosting it and you, to me at the last minute said, Russ, I've decided to do two halves. Can you do 20 minutes at the top? I'd shit myself because they're not there for me. They're there for you and him. And I've got a conversion job to do.

• 57:33Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  And the risk is massive. They're Michael's fans, they're your fans. And that's when the nerves kick in. When I'm doing Royal Variety Show or Live at the Apollo where people have responded to a TV ticket, not me. That's when the nerves go back to old school style nerves.

• 57:47Steven Bartlett?

  How do you, what's the battle you have with those nerves in terms of your cognition? And before you go on stage, what are the tips you can give people? A lot of people?

• 57:53Speaker 01

  There's two, there's two ways to work on that. The first thing is the actual practical thing on the night, I would say, just work with breathing and mindfulness and all the stuff you've probably read a thousand times. The other thing to do is if you can. Find a way to do it. It depends which stage of your career you're at. If you're at the stage of the career like me and you, a lot, I'm not trying to be offensive, a lot of people are sucking our dicks a lot of the time. So we're constantly walking into the rooms where people think we're legends, it's never going to be a difficult gig. Now and again, something comes up where you're the tadpole and you don't have the hardware in place and a fucking, Bill Gates is speaking before you, Oprah's hosting it, and all of a sudden you're who's this guy?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  You're having a day of who's this guy? We're all, we can all have a who's this guy day? And the only way to practise that is to put yourself in more who's this guy moments regularly. So how I do that? As soon as my tour finishes, I book the smallest, hardest, weirdest, they might have bad lighting, they might have no microphone, they might be half sold, and I'm unlisted. Unlisted, unannounced, unexpected. And I'll walk on to tiny clubs full of drunk men, 50-year-old UKIP dads, all of those places, I put myself in those all the time because the risk is high, the nerves are the same, but the consequence is zero. So I'm constantly

• 59:18Speaker 01

  training the muscle of convert the people who don't know who I am, keeping it sharp the whole time. So whatever business you're in, you'll be able to think of an equivalent way of doing that. So set up smaller situations where you're having to keep that muscle because the danger is the more successful you get, you lose the muscle of walking into a room full of skeptics. And if you lose that muscle, that's the money-making muscle. So practise it. I keep mine tight at all times. I constantly put myself in unbuild, unlisted, unideal situations. When you walk onto a stage when you're at my level, which I would call myself quite recognisable, you can't say I'm like Michael McIntyre or Chris Rock or someone, but I'm

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  sort of known as a stand-up. So what that means is when I walk on stage at the Comedy Store, late show, 400 people drunk off their tits, work do's, hen do's, and I'm unbuild, unexpected, unlisted, the room splits into three, straight away. It splits into, oh my god, it's him, fucking what a treat, we've got him for 20 quid. To the middle, who's that? Am I supposed to know who that is? Is he good? I don't know, I think I've seen him. And the final group, can't stand this cunt. That's the only group I'm playing to, when a little bit in the middle group. They're the only people I'm interested in, because that's where the muscle building exercise is.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  And then when you go on stage to your audience, they get you like that.

• 1:00:43Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. But if you come with that conversion energy to your own audience, you must be.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  You don't need it. That's the problem. All you've got to do is put your foot out and they're like, it's his foot. He's amazing. That's, that's the problem. That's the problem. You get flabby easy in all businesses.

• 1:01:00Steven Bartlett?

  So you talked about your relationships there and your current partner. I, um, I heard you got married for nine months.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 1:01:07Steven Bartlett?

  Forgotten.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sorry. I realise what you mean. Yeah, no, I did. I was, I was married before. I was married. So I'm currently, I'm trying to enjoy my middle marriage. That's what I say.

• 1:01:18Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  No, I was, uh, so we, we were just, we realised we were just mates. Uh, yeah. There was a romance there. We had a lot in common. We were both into this same world. And we were sort of living together and we got married and we were like, that was a mistake. And then we just weren't married. And it was totally amicable. No, no fighting, no, no problems at all.

• 1:01:36Steven Bartlett?

  But you talked about the, uh, understanding that your current partner has, current wife.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my, my former partner, the, the one I was married to for nine months had that as well, which is why, so we thought we should probably get married, but we realised marriage needs more than that.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  So yeah, so Lindsay is more, Lindsay doesn't get jealous unless I do something dickhead, like follow a glamour model and instantly like a bikini pic, which I get my arse kicked. But still do, because I'm Neanderthal and uh, I'm a man.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  So unless I do something stupid like that, which I rightly get in trouble for, or like change my flight in Ibiza and go to a boat party, which I also tried to do and got my arse kicked for. So, but my, if I'm on the road and doing autographs afterwards and there's all girls in the picture or something, I've never, ever, like Lindsay's just not even a flicker. She gets it. That's the job is every, you're everyone's friend. If the girls fancy you in the audience, even better. That means another Maldives holiday type thing. That's the way. She's in business mode. She isn't on a bit of an entrepreneur Lindsay. She's got two businesses and she sees my business as a business.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  And she never ever guilt me over being, I might be away for four nights. I won't, some days I've gone, shit, I didn't phone home. I didn't text. I didn't even. Now and again, all I have to do is do a good night. And she knows that my head might be full. There's never any fallout, never. And that just makes the trust and the bonds, it's just, of course, I then do call home. Well, it just works because of that.

• 1:03:10Steven Bartlett?

  You're someone that will get a lot of attention because it's, I mean, it's your job, right? It's like to keep holding.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Literally to seek attention is my job.

• 1:03:17Steven Bartlett?

  And, and women, they love funny guys, right?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:03:20Steven Bartlett?

  You know, probably, I don't know if this is going to get in trouble, but you know that you could have a lot of different partners if you wanted to.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  I could be harvesting twenty four seven.

• 1:03:29Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I mean.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  I probably would have fractured pelvis by now if I hadn't got married.

• 1:03:32Steven Bartlett?

  People are going to hate this question because they think I'm encouraging it, but I'm here to play devil's advocate. Okay, why aren't you?

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Well, I fell deeply in love and got married and I'm just, again, you go back to the childhood, undivorced parents. It's just what I modeled on is I've never had a problem with saying to a girl, the relationship's done, my head's starting to be turned, let's move on. And as much as it breaks my heart, if I ever felt that way, I would, obviously with a marriage and a child, I would sit down to to Lindsay and say, there's an issue here. I've started to have these thoughts. How can we work on it? And we'd, we'd work something out. So that's just my way I operate. Hardly any men do. Sorry, girls, for my sex. If only men did. I mean, but they don't. So I'm trying to, a man should go, I haven't done anything,

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  but I'm having these thoughts. What does it mean? Does it mean we're not in love? Does it mean sexually our relationship's not exciting? Is there something we can do that, some games we can play to mimic that? I don't know, whatever. Couples need to just have that conversation because if you pretend men and women aren't having those thoughts, you're naive. So you need to keep the relationship alive. That's the way to do, to do it. Why, why am I married? Well, A, I'm forty five, remember? And B, I, I'd, I'd been, I'm more serial monogamist. So I've gone from age sixteen to thirty odd. Be with a girl for three years, break up, get straight with another girl, literally the next week, break up on anywhere between nine month to three year relationships.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Never had a one night stand. I'd never been single. I'd never been on a lads holiday. So when I split up, it's a bit weird, but my mum was like, you are not gonna find a sustainable relationship because of all these reasons you said, you're gonna get a lot of female attention, you're always gonna wonder what it's like. She went, I was you, I'd have a year on your own. So I set the clock and I was like, Panani Master in action. And not cynically, not cynically shagging. That's gonna be the promo clip.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  But not cynically shagging, but being sing, it's more to, more to it than just shagging. It was like just being in a, living in a flat on your own. Bought a banging flat in London, one I've still got, I use it as my London residence. And I just thought. You've still got it? Yeah. Does your wife know? Well, we stay there all the time. And she's, and I'm like, I can, I can come and live, I'd never lived on my own before, I'd always live with a woman, always live with a girl. And it was just nice. I'd just be in my pyjamas, have a curry and then I could, I could, or I would, I would just think, I'm gonna go out on the pool after the gig. And that gets boring, quick. And then she's got some sort of issue, like sex addiction issue, and you're addicted to lots of different women. I'm not that type of dominant guy that needs to fuck

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  a thousand women to prove I've walked the earth. I more, without getting too personal, I do enjoy, I'm a highly sext individual, very, unfortunately for Lindy, incredibly high sex drive, like a nineteen year old lad. But it's sex I enjoy, not conquering women. So I can quench that thirst with one woman over and over again. But I did wanna know what it was like to, you know, to be single, to be free. And part of that, I'm sure it's the same for a woman, for a man, is to go, what's it like to have a one night stand or to be, to be, have this rock star lifestyle and sleep with loads of women. The difference I did it was if I was going out after a gig, or if a girl had DM'd me and we were going

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  out or whatever, just missed Tinder. I would say, this is where I'm at, this is what I do for a living. I'm single, I, I do love making love and I love going out, but there is no relationship here. I would never went to bed with a woman dangling any fake carrots, ever. I think it's a form of, I don't wanna use language too strongly, there's a sort of consent tweak in there. If you're lying, if you're in a power position like me and saying, let's see where it goes, but you just wanna fuck her. I think that's wrong. I think it's morally wrong. I think you should say, this is what it is. I want to party with you. Can you handle it? And news flash, most women are looking for that too. So I had a wicked time for, for

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  a year. And then one of those girls was Lindsay. And it's just something different happened. And we saw, we saw each other again and again and again. And then being married.

• 1:07:49Steven Bartlett?

  I, I asked this question because I was, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night, who's an entrepreneur, and he's continually failed in marriage. And we were going back and forward about whether, about the importance of meaningful relationships. And I was making the case that they're incredibly important. I sent him a TED talk about, which shows that they did a study on men over, I think about a hundred years, and showed that the men that were in committed relationships, lived longer, had way better health, were way happier. They studied men for a hundred years. I think it's the only hundred year study they've done of this type. And he was basically saying, well, you know, women that, you know, they, they just don't understand that I'm ambitious and stuff. Well, is he wrong? Is he right? How is he wrong?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Statistically true. And also, people that believe in God live longer. I'm not a God, I'm total atheist for you. I mean, that would be the curveball you weren't expecting.

• 1:08:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Talking about Jesus, Stephen. Now, it's people that believe in God live longer. And so I think it's not the case that faith keeps you alive, or that a relationship keeps you alive. As far as I understand the science, there's a neuroprotective and cardiovascular benefit of doing what we're doing today, just hanging out, basically. And the most reliable way to hang out and check in with someone on a regular basis is to have someone you're married to. Are you okay? Take your stress levels down. Or even better, get together every Sunday with a bunch of people who actually give a shit about whether your skin, whether you've got cancer, whether your wife's left you, who are going to look out for you. And sadly, in our society, religion is the only thing that forces people on a Friday, Saturday

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  or Sunday, to get together. If you're going mosque every Friday, is it? If you go mosque, if you go mosque once a week, and you're, you're praying next to that man next to you, he's probably going to notice if you're down. It's as simple as that. There's nothing magic about marriage. But Homo sapiens, I believe that our cortisol levels drop and our dopamine levels rise when someone gives a shit about us. It would make sense on an evolutionary level. If you look at the way chimps are, that when one of them gets excluded from the group because they have a fight and they're going, you know, you see them on the documentary, they're very, they're sent to, they never live long. Because why would you? Where is the evolutionary drive of your genes to pass seeds and eggs on? If you're the type of person who can't bring the pack forward.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  So there would be a strong evolutionary argument for single people to die before attached people, for non-religious people to die before atheists. So atheists like us have to make sure we really have strong friendship groups. And I wish, wish, wish we could get humanism off the ground. Every Sunday, there's readings, there's your, your local Richard Dawkins is doing a science reading. We all have a bit of tea and cake, our kids all play together and then we all go home. Wouldn't that be amazing? Why doesn't it exist?

• 1:10:32Steven Bartlett?

  It's so true.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Solve a lot of problems because we pick up, if you were depressed, I'd pick up on it if I was seeing you every week.

• 1:10:37Steven Bartlett?

  Everything you've said is backed by everything I've studied. And I've, I've written a chapter in my book called The Journey Back to Human, which describes this. It was inspired a lot by Johannes Hari, who wrote Lost Connections.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Yes, I know.

• 1:10:46Steven Bartlett?

  And about getting back to our tribes. And when you look at the way we're living our lives today, it's, it's just the antithesis of human.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  And religion and relationship is the only way you can keep those human elements in. So far as your, your friends who keep having failed marriages, marriages fail for lots of different reasons. So you, so for, for men who keep getting into three year relationships and splitting up, if, if it's the same reason every time, if the eye is roving and he just wants to fuck other women. I mean, we need to speak about this in real language that men use. Sorry if you find it offensive, switch off. But a lot of the time, a man gets two, three years in, the novelty wears off and he's like, I just, what's it gonna be like? I wanna fuck a different woman.

• 1:11:31Steven Bartlett?

  The, so the cost as well, the resistance or the uncomfortable parts of the relationship remain. But the upside decreases.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  If it's sex, a lot, for a lot of men, so I feel so sorry for girls that, but why did, why did my man cheat? What was it I wasn't doing? It's hard to face the fact that some men, maybe sixty, seventy percent of men who split up with you, just wanna shag someone else. It's, let's just put it that way. I'm sure many women, but I don't speak for women, so I'm not being sexist, I'm just not speaking for women. Let, get a woman on here, ask her why she splits up with someone every three years. So you need to, if you're a man that has those urges, you need to find a, a woman that you can work with, that can keep you sexually excited and do whatever you need to do. Just you've got to do it and and you've you need a woman you can talk about those

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  things with and a lot of it can be role playing verb dirty talk verbal fancies whatever these are practical tips a lot of couples never cross these boundaries because they're too shy she split up with someone because you wanted to get dressed up as a policeman and pretend she was someone else and you were too cringe to tell her but that could have been the thing that converted it.

• 1:12:36Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  It could be as simple as as going to a club separately dancing with with other people then going home together at the end of the night have you tried until you have that conversation as a couple and admit you're having those thoughts you will split up or worse cheat and ruin that woman's life and ruin her faith in men or if you're any well I'm sure it's exactly the same if you're a gay gay man as well you're ruining that that boy you've split up if you're ruining his life so far as what why women split up with men who knows and that's not for me to say but I do think a lot of the times we're reluctant to admit it's such a basic sexual reason but I I suspect it is the case and will make any old I just felt bored we'd grown apart yeah I suppose it will say any

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  old shit just to not admit I like looking at girls on Instagram I want to go on holiday on my own.

• 1:13:25Steven Bartlett?

  Tough conversation to have right because it's it feels like an attack on.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  But you build it in as fun.

• 1:13:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  You'd be you'd be like it's three years in I'm gonna be straight with you I really really love you as long as you love if you don't love a girl just tell her you you definitely need to split up but if you love her but have sexual urges that is resolvable.

• 1:13:41Steven Bartlett?

  Guys I think quite often hoochie and this is a presumption I don't know the truth they will take the path of least least resistance so they look over at their partner and they think if I have this conversation this is gonna blow up and she's gonna scream in my face I think I can just go and grab that apple without without resistance so they just reach out for the apple because that conversation feels like more psychological discomfort than.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah I don't I just don't don't go shagging other people to end your your relationship.

• 1:14:06Steven Bartlett?

  We all do that they literally cheat to end the relationship.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  We've all had moments I have in past relationships where I've found myself in a bar contemplating it talking to a girl and as soon as that happens I know either I don't love this girl or something's going wrong in the bedroom it's normally one of those things.

• 1:14:27Steven Bartlett?

  Can you love someone and you?

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:31Steven Bartlett?

  Is this the type of question you'd ask me?

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Probably, yes.

• 1:14:34Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you think so?

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Probably. In the same, in the same way, I, I can adore my daughter and would die for her. But would I go and work on a project for a month with no phone contact at a pivotal devetment point of her life? Yes, I could, because I can compartmentalise. I imagine women are exactly the same. I, in fact, I suspect a woman can be profoundly in love with a man who's not giving her attention or making her feel special or sexually exciting her, and she can have sex with someone else, feel awful and still profoundly love her husband.

• 1:15:06Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things you said is you said you're, you're forty five.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:15:10Steven Bartlett?

  Forty six, when?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  The August.

• 1:15:11Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, of course, you're an August baby.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  August baby.

• 1:15:13Steven Bartlett?

  Not long. You look about thirty one. Like, if you told me you were thirty one, thirty two, I'd probably believe you.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Steven Bartlett?

  Um, how have you done that?

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  So first of all, it's got me into trouble, um, because what happened was when I started doing all this biohacking and stuff like that.

• 1:15:28Steven Bartlett?

  What's biohacking?

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  It's where you're, you're using the current science available to try and hack your own biology to survive on less sleep in a way that doesn't damage your health, for example. I've not cracked that one, to not lose your hair, working on that one, or to slow down the aging process. So not so that you can live to a hundred and twenty, not that, it's a common misconception, but that so you can have the bit of your life between thirty and seventy in a more sustained younger state. That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to have better middle age years, not be a hundred and twenty year old. What you'd like to be is a hundred and twenty year old that's like an eighty year old now. What you're trying to do is stretch, particularly,

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  I did my first gig at twenty eight, so I quickly realised I need to find some solutions here because I'm high energy Lee Evans act. I talk about my mum, my dad, I'm a late bloomer, I've got a, I would end up having a wife much younger than me. I need to have the body of a thirty year old man quick. So I started studying.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I was thirty at the time, but you know what I mean? I need to keep it here. Um. So the trouble it got me into is when this stuff started to work dramatically work. I would sit down in interviews like this with journalists and people would go, so how old are you, Russell? And I would say, oh, guess, trying to get a compliment. And they would all, they started to guess four years younger, five years younger, then ten years younger, then fifteen years younger, like you have today. And I thought, this is showbiz. Fuck that. I'm gonna knock a few years off. Because the one prejudice people are still allowed to have, not book you because you're old, can't wait till old live matters starts because I'm gonna be fucking behind. No, but seriously, why can we, why is it okay to make redundant and underpay and exclude people based on their chronological age? Uh. But that prejudice alive and well. Um. So I, I thought I lied.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  I lied my ass off. And of course, I was really unsophisticated about it. I was like celebrating my real birthday with comedians and friends. And then lying to the observer or the mirror.

• 1:17:28Steven Bartlett?

  How much did you lie by?

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Five years.

• 1:17:30Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, not bad. I forgive you.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Um. But so that was a story. That was a tabloid story in two newspapers and I, and a lie, jokes were made on TV, a, a comedy award ceremony. So I was quite mocked for it. So as a comedian, Eminem style, I took that, wrote a show about it called Right Man, Wrong Age. Took it on tour, owned it. No one said a word since. And now I talk about it all the time. I think it's quite funny, really. It's quite human. I mean, what the fuck? If, if, I don't know what, whatever the thing is in your profession, maybe.

• 1:18:03Steven Bartlett?

  It's age as well. It's been age for me. When I was eighteen, everyone wrote about me because I would like, I'd made a hundred pounds and I was eighteen. And I realized that in my industry, your age and the achievement are the most important things. So if I was eighteen and I'd made a hundred quid, they had me on BBC. This eighteen year old's made a hundred quid.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:21Steven Bartlett?

  And I realized that by, when I get to twenty five, I actually need to have made about a hundred million for them to consider me the same way.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Steven Bartlett?

  So I'm like super slow to change my birthday every year. I'm like, oh, twenty seven. I'm like, I need to be a billionaire.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Right. So, but from a business sense, it might be exaggerating turnover to seek investment, then revealing real turnover afterwards. But say, okay, we're all billionaires anyway, that type of thing. So I was exaggerating turnover to attract investment. Um. But I didn't realize it was a, it's a massive issue because people come to stand up comedians for authenticity and realness. Particularly my type of stand up. So anyway, I owned that, chucked it back. That's all good. How I've done it is just, there's loads of places you can go to. I started with Dave Asprey and Bulletproof and all of those things, although I do think drinking butter is way over the top. But so moving towards a lower carb, not keto, nothing extreme.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  I don't believe in anything extreme that's hard to stick to, but certainly I don't believe we're supposed to eat white bread and cereal and shit like that. Working with what we're built to do would be the most basic way without spending money. Anyone that's watching this can start. We woke up on the savannah this morning, you and I. It's time to go hunting. There ain't going to be food there. We probably would have eaten at 2pm. No doubt about it. Human beings are built to have anywhere between 16 hour to two day fasting gaps. No doubt about it.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  And sure enough, now we look at this on a cellular level, we can see what happens. So I ate at, last night I worked very late, so I didn't eat till nearly 11pm. By now, as I'm speaking to you, not only do I have an intense fucking focused high from only having had coffee and water, which has got to be a good thing. There's autophagy going on in my cells. So the cells are eating up their own bits of dead protein and shit, just out of sheer desperation for something to eat. That's the first thing that happens. Apoptosis is the proper name for it. The cells that, the shit ones just die and burn off, like the crust at the edge. If you pour food on the edge of that situation, as far as I understand the science, I'm sure people will refine what I'm saying. I'm trying to distill what I've learnt for the layman.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  You keep all that crap in. So unfortunately, we're pro fasting is brilliant. I don't buy into many fads, but the science here, you can see it under a microscope. So intermittent fasting and eating lower carb is something anyone can do. Someone on 10 grand a year can do that tomorrow. So eat more leafy green vegetables. If you're on 10 grand a year, you are probably. Exactly, but eat more leafy green vegetables. Breakfast is, I think, the easiest one to skip because you produce a hormone in the night that suppresses appetite anyway, otherwise you'd wake up hungry all night. If you are waking up hungry, your diet's fucked, change it. So you don't, I won't wake up hungry. So we're brought up to wake up not hungry and eat a bowl of Cocoa Pops and then boom, the insulin goes up.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Insulin, you don't want your insulin high and the only way to do that is sugar and carbohydrate. So lower your carbohydrate, hundred, hundred twenty gram net a day, anyone can do that. Still rice, if you like bread, eat bread, but eat wholemeal bread. That's the two most basic things you can do now. So far as the more intense chemicals, I can tell you what I'm on. I would take phytacin in the morning, which is a senolytic activator, something that's that stops cell decrease and senescence, like aging in cells. Once a week, I will probably also take another senolytic activator, chloroquine's called. I take PQQ every morning, that's the little pink one.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  I do take NMN, which is really expensive, but the, the life force in the cells that keep us going is called NAD, N A D, and that's what causes aging. Aging is not inevitable, it's your cells, we're, we're a combination of digital and analog information, so every time you rewrite a cell, it gets rewritten a little bit less well and then you get wrinkles and gray hair and you start forgetting and you die. So if you can help the cells be more accurate in writing, you can stay younger, not just in how you look, but generally. So I do take NMN every day, that's the big one. And that, that is a precursor to creating NAD in the body. And I've, I mean, I have no botox, I have no filler in my face.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  I do use stuff from Boots and moisturise and I do go for like a posh facial now and again, but there's nothing artificial in my skin. This is a great point, moment to cut to my podcast sponsor, N M N. Well, N M N's the drug, loads of people make it. Okay. Um. If you're looking for a good one in the UK, go on Amazon. I think it's double wood is good. It's expensive though, man. You're looking at six pounds a day. Ooh, for a sub. Expensive, yeah. Like six pounds a day. But if you think, if you're spending, if you're lucky enough to be spending that on a coffee, take a flask, buy N M N instead. I bought, I bought my own coffee today. So what I will do is, my pet hate is watching a video like this, listening to podcasts and people not listing

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  grams and brands afterwards. And all the top guys, David Sinclair's the guy you want to read, by the way. If you read one book that will change your life, it's Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To, David Sinclair. He does all the science, but he always refuses to give like geeky levels of endorsement. What I take because his inbox always crashes. So what I will do is I will I will send you exactly what I take on a daily basis. You need to check with your physician and you need to make sure everything's right for you, obviously. But N M N is definitely the one that encourages N A D production and helps the cells copy themselves and slow down aging. Resveratrol, very, very, very important. So I take a 750mg of N M M and I take a gram of resveratrol every morning.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  Don't go on Amazon and buy resveratrol, the brown stuff. You need trans resveratrol, the ultra refined stuff. You need a gram of it a day. Vita fair is a good brand. What about hair? Hair, they've still not. Starting to get grays. Yeah, they still not solved why we go grey or because baldness is a genetic program that's running, like your height. It's harder to hack. It's to do with the testosterone hormone, D H D that kicks in, D H T that kicks in. So your body after a while, and the way it synthesises testosterone in the scalp, causes the follicles to die and fall off. The only way to do that is to block D H T. But if you're a man,

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  it's a two, it's a double edged sword because if you start messing with your testosterone, you can lower your sex drive, lower your aggression. I need lots of aggression in what I do when I go on stage and for exercise and things. So I don't take things like finasteride, which we know works. Because I'd rather be Jason Statham, like bald and horny than have loads of hair and a eunuch. That said, I am losing my hair at the crown. I have been for about two years.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  The reason you can't see it today as much as you could two years ago, I am using a derma roller.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  You can buy these cheaply on Amazon. Make sure you buy one with individual titanium spikes. If it's boasting hundreds of titanium spikes, it's a shite one. It means they've got a rolled out bit of titanium. You want one, if it's plastic, it'll be about 190, 200 spikes titanium and you'll be able to see each individual spike. 0.5 millimeter, once a day, roll, roll, roll. It's a little bit painful. Roll, roll, roll, roll, roll. At the temples here, and then you would put on minoxidil, 15% ideally. Duo Gen's a good one. Again, very expensive. You're looking at 30, 40 quid a month.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  But it works. What does it do? You start to get first of all, little pubey grey hairs and it just holds the wolf. So you're not bald. You don't have like 17 year old hair. But as you can see, I am. No, I am not bald. And that's all I do. The roller is, the roller's about, oh no, the roller's about a tenner. The minoxidil is expensive, but you can get like a, get it down to about 30 pounds a month, but don't go below 15%. And if you really want to do belt and braces, how you shampoo is important. Get a really good caffeine shampoo like Alpersin. And you want a brush like, it's like a round, really cheap round plastic brush with the plastic bristles.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Like boys would have gelled their hair with back in the day, one of those. And when the shower, really scrub that shampoo in. And leave it for five minutes. So if you shave or you brush your teeth, go and have your toothbrush and you shave while the foam's there and then shower it out. How did you get into all of this? Was it that book? No, no, no, that's, I've just researched myself, the optimal methods for hair regrowth. But for biohacking, I've used David Perlmutter, the doctor, cardiovascular doctor about heart health and cholesterol. And make, trying to learn the safety of going higher fat. I use Dave Asprey for a lot of the supplements, your PQQ. And things like that. And on all the knowledge about high fat and biohacking and sleep and all that.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  And I use David Sinclair for the real, real hardcore science on life extension. It's a brilliant book. It's just about accessible for the main reader, but if you get into it, you love it. There's loads of stuff in there I don't do, like the cold showers and things like that.

• 1:27:35Steven Bartlett?

  Cold showers, tell me about that. I've, I've heard about this, but I just don't have the guts every day. It just feels like it'll ruin my day.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  The most controversial thing about what I've said is I'm not recommending people go low carb. I'm just saying it's what I do. You might come from Australasia and you might have different genetics that mean you, if you eat a high fat diet, it's incredibly dangerous. Check what your doctor recommends. Go and do your own research. Go to Atlas Biomed where you can get your own biome sequence by sending a bit of poo through the post. It's fascinating. And they send back your whole internal microbiome. Get your cholesterol tested three months in, six months in, see what it's doing. My cholesterol, of course, is off the fucking charts, but so is my HDL cholesterol, meaning my cholesterol

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  ratio is good. Do I have plaques in my arteries? Yes, I do. I've run a CT scan. So you could need to take your own call on that. I mean, if you're a student and you get hit by a car and you're 18 years old and we do an autopsy, you will have plaque in your arteries. Babies have plaque in their arteries. We all have plaque in our arteries. I remain to be convinced that the fact I have cholesterol running around my blood actually is the thing that makes the plaque cholesterol. That I'm in a minority, I'm not medically trained, I could be talking shit and I could be in a coffin when I'm 60, but I'm fascinated by it. I'm a layman, I'm on a journey. You do your own reading.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  The NHS recommendation certainly isn't to eat high fat, but I just don't buy the science. It stinks to me. So, and plus, I just, I'm going on how I feel.

• 1:29:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's probably the most important way. Your podcast, you have a podcast which talks a lot about cancel culture.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:24Steven Bartlett?

  What's, what's going on in our society at the moment in terms of cancel culture? It seems to be getting much more, maybe because of algorithms and we're, we're separate, you know, we're creating these echo chambers and we're defining, you know, this side is, you know, left and this is right and there's nothing in the middle. But what's going on within society? And I guess the question I'm going to come to eventually is how do, how do we fix it? And can we fix it? Or are we fucked?

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  I think we're probably a little bit fucked for the time being because after loads of historic injustice and inequality and I hate the word woke. I don't, I almost don't want to be woke because it's such a cunty word. Um, I just think waking up to things you're not seeing before. The word woke's become politicised, so I reject it as a term. But we, we need to swing the barometer a little bit this way until everyone's being represented properly. Then it will settle, probably in our children's generation, it will settle. So stop panicking, Gary, Dave Lee and everyone with a uni and Jack profile. It will, it will settle. Um, what I find frustrating and toxic is we're living in a culture where you can be cancelled overnight.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Anne Middleton cancelled overnight, Sharon Osborne cancelled overnight.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter who you are, what your background is, what colour, what gender you are, you are at risk. No one is safe, trust me.

• 1:30:40Steven Bartlett?

  Especially white men.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Well, anyone really, I remember, um, I don't even know if I want to put it back out there, but no, Regie Yates of it. And he, he said something about Jewish music producers.

• 1:30:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, I remember, yeah.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Just about survived that. So I, I, I don't think anyone, I think any, I think, I think it's probably worse if you're off colour because the right will be ready. They'll be fucking ready, see, fucking see. So I would actually say no, I would say, I think everyone's at risk from this. It's a rabid, oh, we got one of them, particularly a lefty and, and cancelled them. How can we live in a culture of instant, pardon, I'm sure you shouldn't say black and white after what you did, but instant black and white cancelling, where you can wake up in the morning and be gone, that at the same time exists alongside, how dare you use a label? Nothing has meaning. We're in a post-modern world of amorphous fog where we don't even have pronouns.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Nothing's real, history's not real, the things you've learnt aren't real, literature isn't literature, nothing has a label. No, you're cancelled, and I'm sure, what? Well, which is it? Are, are we in a post-modern, nothing means anything, everything's up for grabs, shifting meaning, diverse culture, which sounds quite exciting to me as a comedian? Or are we in a Nazi Germany executed the next morning? Both of those two together, head fuck.

• 1:31:59Steven Bartlett?

  I have this tweet saved in my drafts on Twitter and it says, and I didn't tweet it because I didn't have the nuts, right? Because I was being, I was like low key being cancelled for something I said at the time. So I thought I'll just stagger this one out, but it says the left will allow you to be non-binary in everything but your opinion.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:13Steven Bartlett?

  And it's kind of what you're saying there. It's like, we've got to the point where we understand things aren't binary, right? In sexuality and other points, but my opinion has to be like, if the stance I take on Black Lives Matter doesn't perfectly, I don't look like I'm wearing, like, as I said in the last podcast with Anne, the football kit, shoes, socks, shirt, then I am definitely of the right and I should be treated as such.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Steven Bartlett?

  And I had it quite recently with the Sarah Everett tragedy, because I made the point that the narrative, and this is this key sentence that I just, social media just didn't allow me to express, then which narrative is most helpful and productive in creating the shift we need to see in male behaviour? Which narrative? Is it the narrative that, which I saw a lot of, which is, it's all men, all men are the problem? Is that the narrative which is most helpful and productive? And so the conversation I was trying to have is-

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Realpolitik, what works in the real world?

• 1:33:18Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not saying there's not a fucking problem with men, or they're not pigs, or there's not like the patriarchy, or there's not misogyny. The stats say that. I'm not the stats. The stats say 97% of young women have experienced some form of sexual abuse or harassment. My point is about the, which narrative is most productive and helpful?

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  You're a businessman, you're like, which model can we employ to get the best profit?

• 1:33:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because I reflect, I say, when Tommy, when Tommy Robinson ran around saying, okay, it's not all Muslims, but it's always Muslims that are blowing up buildings, whatever, we would run him out of town because that's a deeply toxic way to think, right? And it's the same with black people. Like, we get, you know, locked up more. So asserting that, you know, it's not all black people, but it's some black people, therefore the fear is all black people. The way that I got to my logic, I was like, I have two nieces who are going to go into the world, who I love dearly. What would I say to them? They're four years old and three years old. What advice would I say to them to help them? A, guard against predatory male behaviour, but also to help them in their life be productive and to work with 50% of the population. It definitely wouldn't be Alessi, right?

• 1:34:20Steven Bartlett?

  Sit down. You're gonna have to fear all men. That some of them, the threat Alessi is my niece, is all men. That's not, for me, wouldn't be a, imagine the damage I would do to my niece.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know what to say. You've put it brilliantly. I it is.

• 1:34:35Steven Bartlett?

  I got finished off. I got finished so badly on Instagram. I was fucking, they finished me.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  It's because part of the problem is having a discussion like this when a girl has just died. If you and I to have this at university in two years' time, it's quite an interesting, it's a very interesting conversation that needs to be had. So I did do a stand up response to it. I did a one minute thing, but I waited 10 days.

• 1:34:59Steven Bartlett?

  Smart.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  I waited 10 days and then I did a rant about, um, why do we teach sex education so late? Why do we teach consent so late? And I, and I just made fun of the British education system, not speaking to teenagers about sex soon enough. Cause I think that's what the issue is. Um, we don't teach our, well, all boys, whether they're, whether they're predatory boys or not. Men aren't taught about sex early enough. From angels to sex offenders, they should be taught in primary school.

• 1:35:25Steven Bartlett?

  Not from porn.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  No, exactly. That's where the problem is. Um, but yeah, so I think sometimes having, trying to have a con. I, I do actually disagree slightly with one of the things you said right at the top, which was when you said, oh, um, I need to have a binary opinion, but, but not have a, a binary sexuality because I, I do think, no, you can have a non-binary opinion. I, we could be talking about Jane Austen and literature and we can say, yeah, but I can't think of a subject you and I can, can't, can have a conversation on where fashionable post-modernism, nothing means anything doesn't apply.

• 1:36:01Steven Bartlett?

  On a major issue, Black Lives Matter.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we could, we could, we could talk, we could talk about, now, we're not, we're not going to say whether Black Lives Matter or not, but we could have a discussion about, does race exist? On a genetic level, we've proved that it doesn't. So what is race? Does we, we could, we could chat and everyone could leave the lecture going, I don't know what to think.

• 1:36:18Steven Bartlett?

  In a lecture or face to face?

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Or, or we could, we could broadcast it now. Talk, talk about race.

• 1:36:23Steven Bartlett?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  Talk about, does race exist?

• 1:36:25Steven Bartlett?

  And this is why I love podcasts, because you get context and nuance. Hundred and eighty characters in the middle of the Black Lives Matter. Russell, why haven't you posted the black tile? You can't go, well, does race exist? People will go racist. Silence is violence.

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  But you could still, but what I mean is we can be post-modern fluffy and not say anything. Almost about anything, but we still be cancelled at the same time. Now, those two things are both quite extreme.

• 1:36:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  And they're opposites. And that's making, that's cloak and close down debate and hamstrung people. I like my offensive people where I can hear them. I don't like them on WhatsApp groups, hidden.

• 1:37:03Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  I was never against Nick Griffin of the BMP going on question time. I don't mind putting that out there. A lot of people say, you put him on there, you legitimise his views. What actually happened? He looked like a total cock and now he's disappeared. Have the courage to know. I do think there is good and bad. I don't think right wing people are bad and left wing people are good. In fact, I think there's just as many cocks across the spectrum. I do think violence and hatred is bad, full stop. Sorry, I do. It's a moral, absolute moral category. I would rather see the people who think it have their arguments exposed. The biggest experiment we've ever seen of that is Donald Trump.

• 1:37:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Where the, yeah, his fucking just fell apart because most people saw he was a cock, regardless of what he'll tell you. And you probably won't see someone like him for a long while now.

• 1:37:51Steven Bartlett?

  But you're right. And that sort of right wing sentiment that rose around the world at the same time, like Bolsonaro.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Steven Bartlett?

  Even here in Europe, all at the same time. And it almost feels like now it's falling a little bit away.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  I don't like chastity belts and gagging and things. And that, when they were like, Donald Trump's coming, but we won't give him a state visit. Nonsense. I want red carpet. I want streets lined and let him hear what we think. Let him see the way British people show they're unhappy. Don't sort of all mutter into your tea hoses and send memes like in Shoreditch. Fuck, let's go out there. Let's, let's, let's, where's our pranksters? Where's Simon Brodkin doing a stunt on him? You know, have the courage of your, of your arguments. The goodies always win in films and they will win on the earth. I believe that. I'm an optimist.

• 1:38:35Steven Bartlett?

  Should anybody be cancelled? Deplatformed, chucked off, immediately thrown out?

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Not in haste. That's why I make evil genius. It's a, it's a slow weighing up over the hour. We take the good and the bad and we have an intellectual discussion. It's very tongue in cheek and funny, but it's a long discussion about the people's merits.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  It's interesting as well, the elitism of it as well. Why Picasso's painting still hanging? Why? The guy was grade A nonce and misogynist. Why are his paintings still up? Because it's so lofty and important. We can't quite bring ourselves to cancel it. I mean, I don't know if, do we go here? I mean, I don't know what I think of that Michael Jackson documentary anyway. But it's almost like Michael Jackson's so powerful and musically important that we dare not go there. So there comes to a stage where we're not willing, you know, someone sort of cancel proof. I mean, if you're really, really controversial, look at the Old Testament.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  He did some vile fucking things, stoning people, like flooding people with fire, burning gays. How has he not been cancelled? Old school god. Too powerful.

• 1:39:51Steven Bartlett?

  That's interesting. I've never actually considered that. Some people are too. Michael Jackson's a very good example because.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  I don't want to give it. My, my, my Spotify's going to be empty. I might just got over bump and grind being deleted.

• 1:40:03Steven Bartlett?

  I do know it's funny because I was actually thinking about Michael Jackson this week because I just absolutely adore the art. And having the thought of having to separate Mike, the, the artist from the art. And that the artist could have been such a horrible predator. It really is something that helps, you know.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  The useful rule of thumb I've found is the closer the art is to the predation and the nature of the predation, the more problematic it is. So I find Picasso very problematic because everything I'm looking at in the studio is, in a gallery is possibly a teenage girl's body. I find Michael Jackson problematic because when he's talking about love and I want to be close to you and I want to touch this and that, what's he singing about? What am I dancing to?

• 1:40:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  If someone writes beautiful romantic novels, but they like harming animals in private, less problematic. Because when I'm reading the novel, I'm not absorbing animal harm.

• 1:40:54Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Am I absorbing paedophilia if the song is? Who's R. Kelly singing about? Bum and grind with whom? An underage, do you see what I mean?

• 1:41:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So what's, what's next for you? What are you working on? What's, um, what's the next chapter of your life all about as far as you're concerned?

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  Well, uh, as well as just doing TV all the time, whoring it up on any show that will have me, which I've been doing since I started. It's about the theatres reopening. Um, for now, outdoor socially distanced performance. So I'll be finding as many spaces where I can put a marquee over, vented at the side, just to get back out there and stay sharp. I am working on a novel. I always am. I'm working on a sitcom. I always am. And I'm developing formats. I always am. I'm always hustling. Always trying. I'm yet to get that format away where I own it and it's my IP. I have with Evil Genius. I have, I have made a TV pilot of that with BBC Studios. I would love to sell that because I think that would work globally as a format.

• 1:41:46Steven Bartlett?

  Very timely as well.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  I have got my eye on things like that as well, but mostly it's how can I get in front of people and make them laugh? Cause that's what I want to do.

• 1:41:54Steven Bartlett?

  Well, uh, you certainly are very good at maths. Um, I, it's, it's a talent that you have that I'm like positively jealous of, like just your natural ability to make people feel comfortable and to laugh. It's a real.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  I feel the same with you, starting a multimillion pound business.

• 1:42:09Steven Bartlett?

  No, but I wish I had that. I feel like I would have been more successful if I had that.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  I trained you for one year and we both, we both keep revenue.

• 1:42:14Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, no, no deal. Thank you for coming today. No, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure and I don't think people realise how much of a fucking intellectual you are. I, my first clue was all those books you had behind you on your Zoom background when I did your podcast, but.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  I dug my way out the ghetto with books like that.

• 1:42:29Steven Bartlett?

  You're so fucking smart and I don't think people realise that. I think they think you're a comedian. You're much more than a comedian. You're fucking genius at the same time.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  It doesn't pay to look too smart when you're a comic.

• 1:42:37Steven Bartlett?

  True.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  I love Radio Four, but I want to be on ITV One as well. No disrespect to ITV One.

• 1:42:42Steven Bartlett?

  Listen, thank you so much for your time today and, um, people, people know where they can find you, but your podcast Evil Genius is, is immense and it's very timely and needed in our society. So thank you for doing that.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  And I am trying to squeeze out stand up on Channel Four during the day. So if you're ever at home or you've got a day off, Steph's packed lunch. Twice a week I'm on there doing that. I never thought I'd do daytime TV, but I fucking, I love it. And I do stand up at 1pm.

• 1:43:04Steven Bartlett?

  The world needs that too right now. Yeah. Thank you so much, Russell. Appreciate you. Thank you.