Al Murray

Our guest today is Al Murray, aka the Pub Landlord and the host of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, a podcast all about the Second World War which is one of the UK's most successful history podcasts. In this conversation, Al talks to Gyles about his family history, which is steeped in war stories and tales of derring do, espionage and also some tragedy. He is also descended from the great Victorian writer, William Makepeace Thackeray, satirist and author of Vanity Fair. From this rich history emerges young Al, who tells Gyles about his unhappiness at prep school, his love of drama, and his hatred of games. He talks about going to university, and starting out as a comic on the scene in 90s London. The We Have Ways Festival takes places this weekend, in Buckinghamshire. Tickets available here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/we-have-ways-fest-2026-tickets-1981185669670. The Pub Landlord is on tour, tickets available here https://thepublandlord.com/. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoZLtkZi4v5b2WzerOf0ACA. Join The Rosebud Family here https://open.acast.com/networks/682f0de710ca442d5f244250/shows/6835e960944c948b9a623f10/episodes/www.patreon.com/rosebud. And visit our website here https://www.rosebudpodcast.co.uk/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:14Speaker 02

  D-U-B-E-S-O-R. I'm coming to you backwards and forwards. This is Rosebud. I'm Gyles Brandreth. Cue the music.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Gyles Brandreth. It's a Friday. It's a Friday in September. And I have to tell you something, sometimes I feel a bit blue in September. Is it the beginning of the new school year? It makes me feel a little apprehensive, going back to work, summer is over. I wanted to chuckle today. I wanted somebody who usually makes me laugh as a guest, and I found that very person. It's a comedian. He's called Al Murray. He has been making me laugh now for almost a quarter of a century, and I think he first became famous in the late 1990s. He's now a household name. He's not just a comedian, though being a comedian is quite enough. He's also somebody who's a bit of an authority on the Second World War.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  I know, because he told me, that his grandfather died at Dunkirk. I also know, because he told me, that when he was a boy, his dad took him to see the film A Bridge Too Far, and that made him totally fascinated by, maybe I'd say obsessed by, the Second World War. As a consequence, he has a hugely successful podcast called We Have Ways of Making You Talk, which is an exploration of every aspect of the Second World War. And this is a big weekend in his life, because it's the We Have Ways Festival. It's his podcast in festival mode. It takes place at the Black Pit Brewery in Buckinghamshire, and people who are fascinated by the Second World War get together, they listen to his

• 3:12Speaker 02

  podcast, they share stories, they look into the history, they explore all the aspects of it. And I wanted to explore all the aspects of Al Murray, the pub landlord. If you like his comedy, and I do, you'll find he's on a nationwide tour any minute now as the pub landlord. But I wanted to discover who Al Murray actually is, where he comes from, what his family was like, what are the roots of Al Murray? And there's much more to him than you might expect. I think you're going to enjoy this. Welcome to Rosebud, with me Gyles Brandreth, and with my very special guest, the pub landlord himself. Yes, it's Al Murray. Cue the music.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Al Murray, before I begin, the Al is short for?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Alastair.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Alastair with an I or an A?

• 4:12Speaker 03

  With an A.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  An A, does that mean?

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Spelled properly, yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  What's the difference?

• 4:16Speaker 03

  I've no idea.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Is one of them Scottish?

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yes, the A is more Scottish.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I think so than the I. So you're with an A, is there a middle name?

• 4:24Speaker 03

  James Hay. So my, James is my mother's father, who was killed in the war, who she never knew. And then Hay is a Murray family first son appendage name. Had I had a son, I wouldn't have bothered. But so my father is Ingram Bernard Hay.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  You've let your son miss out on this wonderful heritage going back.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  And yet you're somebody who is locked into the past. Anyway, we'll come to all of that. So, Alastair Murray?

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I've got that bit now. Born on the 10th of May 1968?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  So the light is very flattering here, because, well done you. Good. I have to ask you, Al, have you been called Al all your life?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Yes, well, although I had a nickname when I was a boy, my family used to call me Buzz.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  And that was what everyone called me. I think I have still an aunt who's like sort of holdout, who still calls me that. But basically, they all called me that. And then when I was about 17, 18, I said, no, no, no, we're not going with the childish nickname anymore, and I'm Al from now on.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  But why were you Buzz?

• 5:35Speaker 03

  I think because I made peculiar noises when I was small. My dad, my dad is a great nickamer. He gave everyone multiple nicknames. We all had, we all, all of us as children had nicknames, everyone had nicknames. And it was, it was a sort of thing he, I think probably it was easier than remembering our names, you know, so, so we all had, yeah, we all had nicknames.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Well, Al Buzz Murray.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  That's a good showbiz name, Buzz Murray.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Buzz Murray. Actually, it's more of an agent's name.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Yes, possibly.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Though Al is also an agent's name.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  It is very much an agent's name.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Who's looking after you? Oh, you've got Al. I'm with Al Murray now. Oh, really? I'm sorry.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Sorry to hear that.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I used to be somebody quite good, but I've slipped. I'm now with Al Murray. Anyway, Al Murray, born 10th of May 1968, what is your very first memory?

• 6:22Speaker 03

  It is, I think, of a birthday party, when I must have been turning three, I think, but maybe, maybe earlier even, because my parents had a climbing frame in the, they've lived in two houses where in the village they live. And I was born in the cottage on the high road, as was my younger sister. We were both born at home, and there was a climbing, and I remember being on that climbing frame at what was a birthday party with a little Tommy gun with a turning handle that made a tack tack tack tack noise.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'm sure we're going to be talking a great deal about the Second World War, and in your first memory, we have a Tommy gun and a climbing frame reminiscent maybe of The Wooden Horse?

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Possibly.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  In that fame. What is the film, a feature of The Wooden Horse? What's it called, The Wooden Horse?

• 7:07Speaker 03

  It's called The Wooden Horse, yes, about the fellows escaping.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. With a wooden climbing frame.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  So where is this home, and who are these parents hosting this party?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  So this is in Stukely in North Buckinghamshire, and my parents are Ingram and Juliet.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Ingram?

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Ingram, yes.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Ingram?

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Now, I have to unpack that a bit. Ingram Bernard Hay Murray?

• 7:30Speaker 03

  That's right, yes.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Where does the Ingram come from?

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Well, my, my grandparents, his parents, Rafe and Morissette, were, he was English, and she was Austrian, from an Austrian family, and they met when he was working for the BBC in Vienna in 1936, or something like that, because he was one of the very first radio correspondents to the BBC. And in fact, he did their first outside broadcast, outside news broadcast. But basically, he was in, I can't remember where he was, but he was in somewhere in Eastern Europe, held his microphone out the window to relay the sound of the crowd as he reported on, after the, after the, after Czechoslovakia was broken

• 8:13Speaker 03

  up, after the failure of the Munich Agreement, and he was reporting, recording the sounds in Slovakia of the crowd.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  This is your grandfather?

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Rafe, Rafe Murray, yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Rafe Murray, he was now, Rafe Murray reporting.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  And he sounds like that.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Here we are. I'm hearing, I'm in what used to be called Czechoslovakia.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. And there's also a clip of him reporting on the Crystal Palace fire. And it's again, it's, and the flames, unbelievable. I cannot believe what I'm seeing on my own, you know, licking on the side of the building. It's on, you know, like that.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  But more slowly, actually.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  But more, yes, more slowly, yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  With more dignity.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  With a little bit more dignity than maybe I am relaying here. But he was, so he was in at the Beeb and was a foreign, was multilingual, spoke many languages. And so he'd gone out to be, you know, the BBC's man in that part of the world. And he met my, lodged in my great-grandmother's house and met Morissette, who was an artist who was a couple of years older than him, and they met, he brought her back to Britain. So I think the Ingram comes from a sort of, from somewhere in Middle Europa as a name.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Really?

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Because it actually sounds very English, doesn't it, rather than Middle European?

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Or Northern French. But I think, I think they were, I think, I mean, I don't know, because funny enough, I've never said to him, where on earth is your unusual name?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  But you say this, you speak of them in the present. They are both alive, your parents.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  They're both still with us.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Touching wood?

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Touching the required material. Yes, they are, yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  And what age are they now?

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Dad's 80, he'll be 89 in May, so, 89 surely. And he's in, he's in excellent, he's very, very mentally acute and is in full possession of all marbles.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  And what's his story from when he is born, up until you were born in 1968, from the?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Oh, so he went to, he went to boarding school.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  And when was he born?

• 10:05Speaker 03

  He was born 1937, May of 1937.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's the first born, immediately after. They get married?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  And in those days, people got married and then had the children? That's the way it worked?

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Yes. And he was the eldest, and then he has three siblings. And my grandfather then, then was immediately recruited into the Foreign Office when the war began, and went to work for SO1, which was SOE-adjacent, so Special Operations Executive-adjacent, and then went to work for a thing called the Political Warfare Executive, who did black radio, propaganda, messaging, message controlling to occupied Europe and to Germany. So he was involved in the fake radio stations they ran. And then my grandmother, because she was also multilingual, because she was a German speaker, was used on those radio stations as a participant.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And though she was Austrian by nationality?

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  She was married to him, and therefore she wasn't interned or anything.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  No, she wasn't interned. And that is a question, my dad has said, I've always wondered why she was never interned, because she wasn't interned. They obviously thought she was okay.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  There's no suggestion that your grandfather, when he was working for the BBC, was also working for the Foreign Office, is there?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  I'm asking.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Oh Giles, I mean, people working for the for their secret services and the BBC at the same time, that's never happened.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  But.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  No one's ever been double handed like that before.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  About that.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he probably was. And and the thing is, is all the people at P W E were

• 11:35Speaker 02

  P W E?

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Political Warfare Executive. People like Sefton Delmar, Tony Crossland, lots of people were were working at the BBC and in Fleet Street and for the this propaganda outfit at the same time. So and there was great cross pollination across it. But then my grandfather was involved in the the the effort to get Tito on side in out of Alexandria, out of Cairo, rather, and all that sort of spooky stuff. And he was part of the political mission that went to Athens in nineteen forty four with Churchill, with Macmillan, to to to try and get the Greek government installed and anti-communist Greek government installed. So he was involved in all sort of murky stuff.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  You knew him?

• 12:16Speaker 03

  I knew him. Yes, I knew Rafe. He died. He died when I was thirteen or fourteen. So I knew him. But but not but as this sort of benign grandfather, rather than this fellow in a trilby with a, you know, with with a briefcase full of secrets.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  I mean, you're giving us a flavour of him as a character from the third man.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, I you know what? I think I think nearly but not quite is the thing with Rafe. And then he then he went back out, he came out, then he set up a thing called the Information Research Department, that was a Cold War propaganda unit, that was set up immediately after the war. And they are the people that got George Orwell to write a list of left wing people who couldn't be relied on. So which is quite, which is quite interesting. Orwell did Orwell, but you know.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Betrayed everybody, did he?

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Yeah, it's fantastic, really.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  But Orwell's supposed to be a great hero to us. We love his use of the language. We have that fine statue of him outside the BBC.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes. He's a great hero. He's a great hero.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  But he betrayed his friends, essentially, didn't he?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, basically. He said, he said to the, he said.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  It's like McCarthy, inviting people to denounce people as communist sympathisers.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Quiet. He didn't, he didn't, you know, he, they asked him, they said, who, who really should we be keeping an eye on in that sort of left, left wing comment sphere? And he figured a load of people. It's got, it's got, it's an interesting little story. So my grandfather was involved in that. And then he became, then he was at the consulate in Egypt, because he spoke Arabic as well as German and all these other languages, and was involved in the Suez Crisis. So was involved, was was present at the dinner where Anthony Eden

• 13:52Speaker 03

  dressed down Abdul Nasser, where so Eden's, this is, it's an awful story, this. So.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And Eden's Foreign Secretary at the time?

• 13:58Speaker 03

  No, it's when he's Prime Minister. And so Eden, Eden in nineteen fifty six, he he spoke Arabic, Eden, but he but what he'd do, when what he did when he met Nasser, is he did the whole meeting through the interpreter, and then dressed Nasser down in Arabic, when he not got what he wanted after the meeting. And it's very, very bad form. And my grandfather was at that dinner and thought the Prime Minister behaved appallingly. When when he was running his office in in Egypt, dealing with dealing with Tito's people, Randolph Churchill turned up.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  This is the son of Winston Churchill?

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Who was also a member of Parliament.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Had a bit of drinking issue.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  And also the problem of being the son of the great Winston Churchill.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  And fancied himself a commando and all this sort of thing. So he turned up and says, right, you've got to parachute me into Yugoslavia right now. And and I've had some, I've had some briefing notes from some bloody fool in your office, who who who told me this, that and the other. And and he's, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And he's, and and what I need is fifty copies of the Daily Telegraph to take with me, or the Daily Express to take with me, to show the Yugoslavs that that, you know, that they are in people's thoughts. And this, that and the other, I need these weapons, and I need this, that and the other. And and the thing is, is the memo he was complaining about, my grandfather had drafted himself, had written himself. And because Churchill, Randolph Churchill wasn't a details man, he hadn't realised that he was talking to the person he'd got

• 15:23Speaker 03

  the memo from. And he'd assumed it was that my grandfather was was somewhere lower down the pecking wheel, rather than the boss. So he's going, one of your subordinates sent me this bloody memo. And they had this, they had. And and and the thing is, is they're in this officers' mess with with this American contingent with them. And the Americans are shadowing the British to see what they're up to. And it turns into this two hours of absolute flaming argument between my grandfather and and Churchill Junior. Absolute blazing row. And in in the report, eventually, he he writes to Bruce Lockhart, writes back to London, a description of what happened. He says, my only regret is he was too big for

• 16:03Speaker 03

  me to throw down the stairs. He was so obscenely rude, called me, called me things that no, you know, no one, no man should ever endure and all sorts of thing. And it's really interesting because because I didn't know my grandfather in that capacity at all. And and that he's at the heart of this moment. With the, and imagine having that fight with, because Randolph Churchill did very much regard himself as the Prime Minister's son, he could go anywhere, do what he wanted, and you you couldn't say no to him. And that my grandfather's in this row with him, saying, no, I'm awfully sorry, sir, you, you, you, you know, that's, that's not going to happen. And you don't berate us for our working practices. We do know what we're doing. We have got this figured out. You know, it's an extraordinary moment.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  No wonder you're besotted with all of this, because your grandfather had an exciting life, and you had rather a dull one.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Well, you could, you could, you could argue it that way entirely, Giles. But but what's quite interesting there is his brother, Rafe's brother, Stephen, Stephen Murray, was an actor.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Oh, forgive me, not just an actor, but I knew him.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  You knew Stephen?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  I knew Stephen Murray, and I had dinner with him not long before he died, with the actress Eileen Atkins. I remember him particularly as being wonderful. He took over from Ralph Richardson in a play at the Mayfair Theatre.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  And I got his autograph.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Wonderful. You know.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Six characters in Search of an Author was the play.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  You see, I think.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  How marvellous.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  I probably met him a couple of times as a toddler, because we're not, we're not, we're not a cheek by jowl family at all. So I don't, I never knew him. So for the fact that you knew Stephen, I know, I know his daughter, but the fact that you knew Stephen.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I knew your great uncle better than you did.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Turns out.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  How fantastic.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  It is fantastic.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Well, there we are. He was a, he was a very fine actor.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Very good looking when he was young.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  And a great character actor in older years.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Yes. The navy lark as well, was the thing that sort of rescued him, because he had a, he had a Lear that failed, and then he had quite a difficult career after that. But that's amazing. How wonderful.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  So, in this interesting family.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Your grandparents, they bear fruit, and their eldest son is Ingram?

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  And what does he do with his life?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  He does his national service in nineteen fifty six. So he, we're talking about the Suez Crisis. Dad did the landing at Alexandria in the in the Suez Crisis, which is quite an interesting story. And he loved being a soldier. But his father forbade him going into the army.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Because in those days, you just had two years' national service.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Which was compulsory up till about nineteen fifty nine.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's in the last sort of tranche of people. And he really loved it. He had a great time and and became a territorial soldier, kind of immediately, became a reservist immediately, and a paratrooper. So a life of great adventure and all this sort of stuff. And he was very into it. And.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  And did he look like a tough guy? I mean.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  He looked like they, soldiers back then weren't all, weren't all huge. They were wiry, sort of tough little fellows. And he was, he was, he wasn't a small man, but he wasn't, he wasn't sort of built like they are now. But yeah, and all of that, all of his sort of, all of his crew were like that.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  It's quite interesting. If you walk down the street that has, it's Whitehall, isn't it?

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Where there are the statues outside the Ministry of Defence of the different generals from the Second World War.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  You see that physically, they're not what you expected.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  They are small. I mean, particularly, of course, Montgomery.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Montgomery's a slight fellow. Yeah, yeah, little man, little wiry, like Terry of a man. But dad, dad then went to work for British Rail. And because he, well, because I don't, I think he hadn't got the qualifications to go to the Foreign Office or something like that. And as a nationalised industry, it was a sort of quasi civil service job.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Tell me about you and your dad together. What were you like?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Well, I, I, dad, like I said earlier, we're not, we're not, we're not necessarily a close family. But I think I, I've, I regarded dad, I remember going to see him parachuting or something. I very much regarded him as sort of this dynamic.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Heroic figure.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although, you know, when you when you get into teenage years, you you revise such views. But a very sort of, he's very, he's a very driven man. He's a very clever man.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Do you have photographs of him in uniform around the house?

• 20:12Speaker 03

  My, my, yeah, I've got a picture of him, the picture I've got of him at home from when he was a young man, when he was doing that, is of, they have a selection thing for parachuting called P Company, which is like this really brutal, physical test, series of tests they have to do. And they have, you know, sort of fifty percent failure rate, and they have to run around carrying a log and all this sort of stuff. And there's, I've got a photograph of him doing that when he must have been thirty, when it's his boys doing the thing, and he was with them, doing it with them, running alongside them, taking part, being part of it. And that, that is the, that is the, my young dad, memory of this sort of dynamic guy with a big bead of sweat on the end of his nose, from when

• 20:56Speaker 03

  he's exerting himself. That's my, that photograph is that my memory of him. And his horrible, his horrible tracksuit that my mother loathed, with his, with his red beret on, and all the, all the lads pulling the thing along. And and that's, that's my sort of image of him from when I'm a child, when I was a child, certainly.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  And how come this person, you, grandson of somebody who was both a spy and a pioneer broadcaster, and special operations during the Second World War, and the son of somebody who took Alexandria almost single handed, certainly was going to be parachuted in, these are horrific. How come you've ended up as a comedian and podcaster?

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I think.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Uh, in the end, the the real, the core difference between me and my father is I am not a he's a very, he's a, he's a physical person and I'm not. I've, I've, I've never been sporting. I've never like rowing or playing squash or anything. It's just, it's just, it, it never got passed on to me.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  But being serious, what have you got from him, do you think?

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Oh, um, well, he had a, he has a, a, a, a, a keen sense of humour. He's very curious. He's a curie, he has a curious mind. And I think I have, in the end, inherited his, um, work ethic. I, I remember being berated, berated by him quite a lot when I was a young man for being bone idle. But, you know, when you're as hardworking as he is, everyone's bone idle, really. Um, but, but, but I, and I know, I think, because I'm often asked, I have to talk about this with my wife quite a lot, about why I work so hard. It's because, because actually I know how lazy I am. And if were I to, were I to stop, I would look out the window for the rest of my life and pick my nose and.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  I mean, do you feel that your father and grandfather led more worthwhile lives than you are leading?

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Oh, no, there's nothing greater than the joy of laughter, Charles.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  But you sometimes brood about that. You sometimes think.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  No, no, I, you know what? The thing I shy away from when I, when I think about what I do is, is, is being self-important about it. You know, when, when you see people talk about how they're satirists and how important they're satirists, you think, oh. Get over yourself, right? You know, we're in it, we're in, we're all in the entertainment business, one way or the other. But, but I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, um, the path better trod would have been one of public service in my case, because I think I'd have been, I think I'd have been bad at it.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  But do you admire your father?

• 23:21Speaker 03

  Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Although, I mean, a big part of how I ended up doing is, is he would, he worked, like I say, he worked incredibly hard. So he'd get up at, he'd commute from, from where they still live, Stukely. He'd, he'd get up some mornings, he'd be up at five, he'd be on the milk train and he'd be home and eating his dinner on, getting time for the nine o'clock news and eat his chop in front of, and you, and I remember looking out and thinking, not much, not much interested in that kind of life, if I could possibly avoid it. Um, and maybe whether that consciously drove me into being a comic, because I, you know, one of the, one of the reasons to, to become an entertainer, I think, is the, the lure of the idea that you won't have to get up in the morning.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  And then you find yourself in, in Salford doing BBC Breakfast, uh, uh, uh, again, at like seven, I think I had to get up at half past five. And that, so that part's backfired. But I think, I think watching him do that, maybe, um, maybe made me think, no, I don't know that, I don't know that that's my destiny.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Tell me about your mother. What is her maiden name?

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Um, uh, Richie. So she's Juliet Anne Thackeray Ritchie.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Yes. The Thackeray is my great, great, great grandfather is William Makepeace Thackeray. The, the Vanity Fair, Pendennis, Esmond.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Yellow plush papers, Punch, the Punch author, the, the, the absolutely brilliant, um, essay about going to watch Hanging, which I think everyone should read.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Um, anyone with a view on Capital Punishment should read that. Um, he was an, and so lurking in the family background has, is, is on that side was William Thackeray. And I had a, a great aunt, Belinda Norman Butler, her name was, who was very much the keeper of the flame and the sort of guard dog, um, of the fa, uh, uh, of, that's probably too harsh. But like the, she was the, she was the person really liked being vigilant that his memory be kept.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  And how right she was. We're speaking of one of the, the greatest novelists in the history of the English language. I'm not exaggerating. I mean, Thackeray is up there, certainly with Dickens and Trollope as a Victorian novelist.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  So I, I mean, I, you're speaking to somebody who is a devotee of Thackeray, who has the complete works and has certainly read all of his fiction, but not, I think, all of his journalism.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I haven't read all of his fiction, but I've read most of his journalism. I, I, for a very long time, because this was this, this thing in the family picture, I was like, I'm just not, not interested. Who, who cares? It's a long time ago. And then, and then I remember sort of saying to myself, well, I've, I ought to at least read Vanity Fair, right? And the, the book is staggering. And, and, and that he wrote it, first of all, with wilding the cartoons as well, because he felt, I need to do, I need to do the illustrations, I need to be, I need, because I want people to know what I, what I think these people look like. And then the novel started to become a success, because of course it's serialized and he's writing, he's writing, uh, uh, in installations.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Then the task gets out of his grasp. It turns into this thing beyond his original plans as well, which I think is, which is just brilliant. You know, he's pursuing, he's pursuing the, the novel as it, as it unfolds. And, and I think, I think, um, what is, what is really brilliant about Vanity Fair is that, obviously, it's, it's one of those big moving parts novels and we've all these different characters and they're, and they're, and they're written in the satirical style, so their names tell you who they are and all this sort of thing. I mean, I think it's, it's, the social observations in it are so acute and, and universal. He does that, he pulls off that brilliant trick of it's apparently parochial, but actually it's universal. It's apparently set in eighteen fifteen sixteen, whenever, but it's not. He's writing about his own period.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  And he'd do that, he'd back project. He's writing about that, but he's writing about now, uh, uh, the book about the, the, the, the, it's depictions of social climbing, of the interactions of class, the effects of money on people, um, of, uh, uh, how politics operates. It's, it's, it's, it's just a brilliant book. And I think he's such an interesting man and his, and his books are so, his writing is so interesting. And he's a brilliant satirist. He starts off as a satirist, you know, Punch, I've got, I've got his inkwell, the Punch farewell inkwell that they gave to him on his departure from Punch.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  I must come round and see it. You, you've been to his house.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes, I have.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Kensington High Street.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, I was invited, um, I, I went about, about ten, twelve years ago, um, and, and looked round. And of course, it's the Israeli embassy now. So, so you, you go to this peculiar security environment as well. But there's, he had a, a writing room built that has a, that, and it's all Victorian mod cons. So he has this writing room built where there's a window with a fireplace under it. So you can look out the window at the same time, sitting by the fireplace and warming yourself. And, and the, you know, it's flued around, the, the chimneys are flued around the, um, the window. It, it, quite wonderful.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And am I right in thinking among your other forebears, is this on your mother's side, is the Duke of Athel?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  No, that's, that's my father's side. That's the Murrays. But I, I, I mean, I, I went through a period at, um, on social media, people telling me that.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Oh, is that not right then?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know. I, I, it's not a thing I've ever, I've ever been curious about. No, no, apparently. But, but like, you know, I think we're.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  I know.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  If, if the kind of arts and coronets I would have to enact, I think, involves six or seven hundred people.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  What is curious to me, though, is that the pub landlord, this will be a revelation to many people, has among his forebears.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  This, uh, a duke, this extraordinary writer in Thackeray.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Um, spies and soldiers, high drama, it's extraordinary.

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• 30:53Speaker 02

  So what sort of woman is your mother? She's still with us?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Yes, she's still with us. Um, mum is, um, uh, uh, uh, source, she's, she's brilliant. She's, um, we, my, my sisters and I always talk about how we were scared of mum, not dad.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  That she was, she would be the one who would deliver the stern word finally and, and sort us out. Uh, but mum, mum volunteered, um, her whole working life at the Citizens Advice Bureau. She was deeply involved in that and involved in, in, in, in that whole culture. And it's been, it's been, it's been interesting to us since, since she retired, talking to about working, working in the C A B and the, and the, you know, inevitably the politics that would come into that kind, that area of voluntary public service.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  What were they like together, your parents?

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Um, they're, they're, I mean, they're, that's a, I don't know. I, I don't know that I've ever really thought about what they liked together.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Well, because they're alive, it's more difficult to describe.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Yes, they're very affectionate with one another. And, and dad, if he turns his hearing aids on, I think he's, he's good company.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  But they're like, they're sort of characters in a play, in a nice play.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  Yes, I think.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Quite a comfortable play.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yes, possibly. Yeah, well, yes.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Where there's a, there's a nice drawing room, there's a garden beyond.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  There is, yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  The kitchen's a bit untidy, um, but you come into their room, it's basically the, the, the sofas comfortable and at ease.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Yes, it is, yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  And they understand each other.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Yes, I think they do, definitely.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  She looks after the domestic side on the whole.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Um, and they were loving.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  But there wasn't intimacy like we now expect.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Well, no, I mean, we are, we are not, you know, my, my, my father and I shake hands.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  You know, and I'm, the thing is, is it, it just doesn't bother me that, that, that I, I don't want anything else from that. We, we shake hands when we see each other. We're always delighted to see one another. And that's sort of, that, that's, that's plenty. And it's plenty enough for them, you know, that, that there's no need, there's no need to.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Do all this huggy, huggy muggy stuff.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  With my children, we are very tactile.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  But, but, yeah, I, um, they're, but the, the thing is, is I don't, I don't, I, I detect no flaw in such a way of it.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  As a child, what's your recollection of your sweetest moment with your mum? A happy moment?

• 33:08Speaker 03

  She would cook me a fried egg for breakfast. And that, uh, that was the sort of, that was the thing where you knew you were, you knew you were being looked after properly.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  And what sort of little boy were you as a, before you were ten?

• 33:22Speaker 03

  I, I was very homesick when I got to school. Didn't like it.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  You went to a prep school, did you?

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Really in Bedford. Really didn't like it. And I, and I, and it's interesting because I sort of, I think I found that out about myself. Um, I didn't, didn't know that I was going to find that a wrench. I didn't, just, I, I, and so I think I was probably more, more of a homebody, close to my family boy than I realised. I know I was, I know I was, um, I liked reading, but I know I was, I know I was sort of cheeky and stuff, I think.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Were you actively unhappy at the prep school? I mean.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  I really didn't like the first two years. I hated it. Really hated it.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Did you tell your parents what could you do?

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I'd write, I'd, I used to write home three times a week.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Because normally you only wrote home on a Sunday morning.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  I would carve out the time during prep. So I'd get my prep done and then I'd write mournful letters home, like, I can't bear it here.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  And which of them replied and what did they say?

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Mum would, mum would write back, sort of, everything's all right, don't worry. Dad's handwriting always was illegible and remains illegible. And it's a family joke that no one can read his postcards. So a letter from him would have been no use to anybody.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  She basically said, stick with it, you'll get used to it.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  These things get better.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and, and the, the, the thing is, is by the end, you know, because I boarded from when I was nine till I was eighteen, by the end, I, I, I really liked it. I, my last two years of boarding school were fantastic.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  So where did you go on to after the prep?

• 34:48Speaker 03

  We stayed at Bedford. So Bedford had a, Bedford School has had a prep, prep department. So you do, you do, you know, you do that and then you go into what they call the upper school. By the last two years, by the upper, by the lower six and upper six, you know, everyone's settled their differences. You've gravitated towards the people you're going to be friends with, rather than you're with the people you, you're living with. And, and the last couple of years, I absolutely, I had a whale of a time.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  And who were the sort of people you were friends with?

• 35:14Speaker 03

  So I had, uh, the, the sort of core bunch of us at the end were the lads we did, we played music together and we did plays together.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Oh, what sort of music?

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Jazz mainly, but, but.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Oh, and what were your instruments?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  I played the drums. There was a, the fellow called Ned, Ned Bolting, who's a, who's the, uh, Tour de France correspondent, um, who, who became an expert on that. He played clarinet and a bit of saxophone. A fellow called Dicky Weatherall played the piano. But there was a, there was a loose group of us and then a couple more lads would come and go in and out of that group. But we did, we, we would play music together and we did theatre together. And, uh, we genuinely had one of those drama teachers who.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Was an inspiration.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Turned the lights on, you know, you think, oh, right, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's another, another world out there.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  What were they called?

• 36:02Speaker 03

  He was called Mike Morrison. And Mike, he won't mind me telling this story. Mike, Mike, um, uh, I managed, I, I found out where he was, where he was working because I wanted to thank him, basically. This is about, this is about twenty years ago, this. I wanted to thank him. I wanted to say, thank you, you know, you set me on this course. And, you know, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now, which I enjoy so much, if it hadn't been for you, because it turned us on to the idea that we'd maybe, maybe you could write, maybe you could perform or whatever. And, and, and I wrote, I, I managed to track him down. I think he was working in Tun, in Tunbridge. I can't remember anyway. Can't remember where he was working. I wrote to him and, and saying, you know, Mike, heartfelt thanks. You don't forget a good teacher, you know, everything you did for me and, and I wouldn't

• 36:46Speaker 03

  be doing what I am today. And he basically wrote back going, well, that's lovely to hear. Thanks very much. By the way, I'm trying to book a festival. It's the only way I can, basically thought was a way round my agent.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  He won't mind me saying so, I'm sure.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I hope you delivered for him.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Uh, no.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Who turned up at the festival.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  I was too busy.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Shows how grateful you really were.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, no, it's show business, not show friends.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  But, um, it, it was.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  But this school teacher really made you. He showed you the way that you've followed since.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Well, I think, I think, I don't know that, I don't know. I mean, he never, he never, you know, tapped me on the elbow and said, try stand up comedy. But he, there was, there was just this feeling of, of, of a sort of a bit more possibility. Because, because now, you know, you look, comics coming through now, there's degrees, you could do degree courses or, or, and there's so much more performing arts out there as an option for, for, for young people. Even the idea of going into the media exists. When, when, you know, when I, I remember the careers advice we'd get at school, you know, the, the, if it's, if you've got a bright boy who's into acting, maybe he'd like to be a barrister.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  And I'd think, no, I don't, I, no, maybe I wouldn't like to be a barrister. So what on earth am I going to do?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  But you were at a school and from a family where the assumption was you'd go to university.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  And it, the, the assumption clearly was that you'd try for Oxford or Cambridge.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  And, and you did and you got in.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  And that, you took that in your stride? That's.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Like, it didn't feel, it didn't, no, it didn't feel automatic because I, because I tried and failed and I had to try again to get in. Um, but it did feel like, it, that felt like the.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  That's the path.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Did you think of going to the army at any stage?

• 38:27Speaker 03

  No, no. I, I knew, I knew that wasn't going to be, work out for me. And, and again, because I, I, the, the, because I'm not physical, you really, you've got to want to, you've got to want to run around for hours on end if you want to be in the army. And I don't want to run around for hours on end. So it, it, it, it never felt like a thing I was ever going to do.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  When did you learn the facts of life and from whom?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Oh, that's an excellent question. Um.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  It's not going to be your father if he's shaking hands with you.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  I believe the fifth on this. Um, uh, is it the fifth?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Well, no, I, I meant, I didn't mean, when did you first discover them for yourself? I meant, which we can come on to. I meant, who instructed you in the facts of life?

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Well, boarding school. You went to boarding school.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  I did.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Um, uh, boys would, boys would, there'd be someone with an older brother who would have a porn mag, basically.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Oh, really? And what I was, actually, what I was asking was, was it your mother, your father, or did, was it the matron or was that a housemaster who had to give a talk?

• 39:27Speaker 03

  It was left of boarding house, boarding house.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Discovery.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  The dormitory, the dormitory, I think, in my first year at boarding school, yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Gosh.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  At Sussex Boarding House, yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Well, that, well, well done.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  I was only inquiring about how you discovered the facts of life. We can now move on to, since you've opened the Pandora's Box.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  You've been.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  When did you, in terms of show and tell, discover the facts of life?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  I don't know. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you. But, I mean, I, I, um.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  When did you have your first crush?

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Oh, um.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  I don't know. I think, I think there was a, there was a, a French friend of my parents who when I was sort of four, I would follow around. Sort of mooning at her. But beyond that, I don't know.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  But your first attempt at wooing, as it were, that was reciprocated.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, I had a girl, I had a girlfriend, um, uh, I did a play and, you know, with, with one of the girls' schools at Bedford. We were a boy's school, they were girls, and that's how you'd meet. You'd, you'd either do debating. Or you'd do plays if you wanted to meet girls. Or, or if you didn't want to meet girls, there were girls there, you know, um, and so there was a girl, a girl I went out with from a play. I think that's probably my, my first.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  And were you any good at it?

• 40:46Speaker 03

  I, I don't know.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  As a wooer? I mean, think of yourself. I mean, I'll give you an honest answer. I thought I was rather good at it. It turns out, in retrospect, I wasn't. I, I thought at the time I was delivering.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I think I was probably pretty clumsy. But, you know, I mean, that's all right, though, isn't it? It's okay. It's okay to not know what you're doing when you're young.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Well, it's okay in retrospect. Years older animals can look back on the young and be understanding. But at the time, it's a bit. Well, what I'm really getting at is what sort of, were you awkward as a young boy? You were obviously happy doing the drama and the music. You were free, that freed you. But as a lad around the school.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Well, that's a really good point, actually. Because I think the reason I gravitated to, um, performances, it, it, it's sort of two, it's two things at work. Um, it looked like it might be fun, but the other thing about it, I remember being thirteen, fourteen and being incredibly self-conscious. Not really knowing how to present myself. And the thing about performing is there's a virtue in figuring out how to present yourself in performing. Or you're allowed to be awkward, or it's, it's, it's a contained environment. The edges, the, the frame of the proscenium arch. You know, the margins of the portrait, the limits of the script, the limits of the depiction, right? So you can set yourself to those. And that's, I think, why I play a character even now doing the pub land. Because, because it's, you don't have to think about that.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Whereas if I myself, I'd, I'd be bogged down in thinking about how to present myself. And I think that's one of the things that really drew me to performance is that. Um, that feeling that, that, that here's a place where, where there are rules about how you present yourself. There's limits, there's margins, there's, there's edges. And I can fit into those and be comfortable having them in a way that. Even school assembly where we used to think where you'd have to take the, you'd have to take down to the front to the monitors, you'd have to take down. The, the class register. And even that, you'd walk down through the main hall in the school and that, I would feel self-conscious doing that. I think, I think everyone was looking at me.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  And that would be an awkward, an awkward moment. You think I'm gonna trip, or you would trip and everyone would, you, you, you know, whereas on stage. You don't need to worry about that. They're meant to be looking at you.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  And you've done this all your life, haven't you?

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Hmm, yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Because you like to, in a good way, compartmentalise.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  So that, we were chatting about this earlier, when you're doing comedy, you're doing comedy.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  When you're preparing for the podcast series.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  That's what you're doing.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  When you're being a husband and father, that's your role.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Well, yes, I mean, you, my wife might dispute that because she often says my mind's on other things, but yes. It, it is what you try, that's, that's at least, certainly from a work point of view, is very much that, that, that, you know, the, these things are, these things are bought in boxes. And that, I really like, I really like that. I find that, that grants you, um, you know, uh, the, the, once, once you know what the limits of the thing are. You know, the frame is the most important part of the portrait. I can't remember who said that. But once you, once you know what the limits of the thing are, it's easier to get it right.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Looking at your life up until the age of twenty one, what is the worst thing that happened to you during the first twenty one years of your life?

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh, that's a good question. I would think probably.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  I, well, I broke my arm when I was coming home from a concert and I was drunk when I was nineteen. And it, it was one of those things that really made me sort of think.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Uh, that I was sort of, uh, not serious enough about stuff.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  And that I was being a bit aimless and feckless. And I don't know whether, I don't know whether that really sunk in. Um, but it certainly was one of those moments where I really dented, you know, the confidence I'd, because one of the great things about going to university is you get, I found, is you got to start again. You didn't have to be the person everyone had been at school at for nine years. You could come in and sort of, you know.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  And did you present yourself differently?

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Well, I think, I think I sort of, I think I, you know, I didn't know anyone, so I didn't, I wasn't bound up in anything they knew about me.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  What college were you at?

• 45:01Speaker 03

  St Edmund Hall. So I could sort of, you know, you could, you could get a chance to reboot.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  In my day, there were lots of sporty types.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Yes, I know. Well, that's the interesting thing is they were, they were there too, but there was also, there was also a kind of underground feeling of the people who weren't into the sport. And they, they all, we all gravitated to each other very, very quickly. And that was great. That was, that was, and I think, and I think when I broke my arm, it kind of like, it, it kind of. Dented my, my confidence.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  What about the best thing that happened to you in your first twenty one years?

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Oh, um, that would be, um.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Falling in with the comedy crowd, um, um, the friends that I made, um, when I, when I got to university, I think. Because there, the, I remember my father saying this, he said, when you get there, you're gonna be, you, you, you know, he says, you're one of the bright kids at school, and then you're gonna get there and you're all gonna be like. Average or bottom. He said, that's the thing that's going to be the big revelation when you get, when you, when you get there. And, and boy, he was right. And it was, it was, but it was brilliant. It was brilliant to be around people who were so funny and clever.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Any of them we, we still know.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  Well, so the first, the, the first, um, my first day at, at, at Teddy Hall, I took my drum kit in to put, put in the music room. And as I took it down into the music room, in the music room in the basement in one of the blocks there was, um, was Stuart Lee and Richard Herring. Who had been in Edinburgh that summer, that August, and had, and had, they'd, they'd played to eight people or whatever, but had returned sort of in triumph because they'd done it. They'd been and done their own show at the fringe. They, they, they, and they were, they, they'd only been in their first year.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  And they were still first year students.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  They'd been and gone and done it, right? And I said to, oh, what, what are you chaps up to? And Stu said, well, you know, we've just been in Edinburgh doing our sketch show and we're doing it next week. You know, and I said, well, how do I get to do comedy? And, and they told me about this thing, this fortnightly club where you had to turn up with new material. Not recite Monty Python or whatever people have been doing. You had to turn up and do self-generate. And it just felt like brilliant. I could do that.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Can you remember the first laugh you got, what the line was?

• 47:15Speaker 03

  I can't remember the line was, but I know what the, I, I, I think I know what the sketch was. So, so basically, I, I then corralled some pals together. We bullied them into, bullied them into performing with me. And we had a sketch called the French Revolution sketch, because there's a piano and it's a thing where all the heads were, after the heads had been chopped off, they were plonked up and they all talked to each other and. And it was all groaners, it was all groaning puns and we all, and, and it got, it got big laughs. And, and I, and. I often think with a lot of, a lot of people are comics, if the, very, very often what happens is the first time you do, you get a load of laughs and you think. Brilliant, this is great. And then you have three years of, of sackcloth, cloth and ashes. But, but just, it's that first time and you want that, you want that taste again.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  And I, and I remember, remember, we, we had a quite a good run at the end of our first year. We did, we did a little show, which we put on in a, in a theatre in one of, I can't remember which, one of the colleges. And did an hour of stuff together and it was, it was just fantastic. And then we went to the fringe and, and it's that. And played to seven people. But that, but the point was doing it. The point was, it was possible and you could grab, grasp the net.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  The journey had begun.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Still continues. Does that mean the story, I mean, that is what changed your life? Uh, first of all, Mr Morrison and then Oxford has made you the person you are.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  I think so. And then, and then, but then the other thing, and because, because, because, because it is fair to say, going to Oxford and, and all that is an, was an amazing. Privilege and, and, and a real lottery win, a, a life lottery win. But the other big win was if you moved to London in, in early nineteen ninety one. You could rent a flat in, or a room in a house in West Norwood for like, I don't know, forty, fifty pounds a week. You could, there were, there were fifty comedy clubs in London because it was the real alternative comedy boom. And if you hacked away at it, you could learn how to do it by being bloody minded and persistent and.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  Cold calling people on the phone. You'd buy time out, you'd pick the numbers out of time out, you'd sit with the phone and cold call people. And you'd gradually worm your way into the, in, into the, into the regular performers.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  What was the worst of those experiences in the nineties, early days?

• 49:27Speaker 03

  I, I, I died a couple of really horrendous deaths. And, and so, so when I'd got the sort of pub landlord lined up and figured out, and I was, I started to really, really work hard on that.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  You thought I'm need a character.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, like, well, that came, that happened in Edinburgh by accident. So I was at, at the fringe with Harry Hill, who I'd become friends with. And we were doing a show in Edinburgh in a Pleasance Cabaret Bar, and there, there was a gap in the show that needed filling because it was made up of little, little bits and pieces. I was meant to be comparing it. And I said on the night we got, we got there, I said, well, I had a brainwave. I said, why don't we say the compare hasn't turned up? And that the barman has offered to fill in. And Harry said, yeah, whatever. So I wrote some things down, went on and it, and, and the first things that came to mind worked. Because the, because it's defined, the limit, the frame.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  The persona, the character, yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  And, and, and then Harry went on this bit, did his bit. While he was on, I wrote a few more things, went on, they did, they all worked. So then I stayed up all night writing jokes. The next day I cut my hair off because it needed to, I needed to have short hair for it. And then we went, we had a really great run at Edinburgh that year. And then, and then we went on a tour and by the end of the tour, I had an hour of stuff. That had just, as a stopgap, literally to fill that five minute gap in that first night in Edinburgh. And, and it all flowed from there. And, and so the sort of, that's the next thing that is, is working with Harry, that moment which completely changed things.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  So, because I fell on the act and it, it worked right away. It's never really essentially, the core idea of it has never really changed. From when those first three weeks where I was bashing it out, figuring it out, not really. Even though times have changed and fashions have come and gone in comedy and all this sort of thing, the core idea has never really changed.

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• 53:09Speaker 02

  Before we get on to what your life is now, tell us about your, how you met your wife.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  We met at a, um, at a party thrown by my management company.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  She was a television journalist. And she was there looking for, looking for free drinks from, um, from, from my management company. And we, we, we met there and we hit it off immediately.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Immediately?

• 53:36Speaker 03

  I think so, yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  This was different. Why do you think on this occasion?

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Oh, because she's a woman of great taste and sophistication and boundless patience.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Oh, no, clearly a woman with very low expectations.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Well, why not be up?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Who decided to settle for this 42-year-old pub landlord?

• 53:52Speaker 03

  No, she's, um, she's, uh, she's, uh, a, a, a brilliant person to be around. And, and also, you, you know, I think you can't take on, uh, someone who does my line of work lightly. You know, we, I'm away an awful lot. I'm away a third of the time. And in fact, actually, one of the things about the pandemic that, um, that, uh, really sort of turned my head is I was home for 80 months. Never, I've never been, I've never been home for a month. You know, this sort of revelation of that. I really do love, I love being at home and my family's fantastic. And I don't have to, you know, being away all the time maybe isn't, maybe, although we're back to that now because, because things are busy again. But, but, no, um, she, I think taking on someone

• 54:35Speaker 03

  in our, in this trade is pretty difficult. And that there is, that there isn't the, um, regular pattern of the working week even, or the working year, or any of that, you know.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  What do you give the relationship?

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Oh, um,

• 54:54Speaker 03

  I think, well, because we, we, we, I think, what I give the relationship, I really love having a family. And I think that's what, that's what I, I think that's what I, um, give to it. I think I, I, that's the thing I, I've always sort of, I think going to boarding school means you want to go home.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  And, and I think, so all I ever really want to do is go home. So home is, home is, I think home is what I offer. But, you know, because, because I'm away all the time, that's the, that's the sort of thing that's, you know, yesterday, I woke up in York after a gig in Middlesbrough, got the first train from York, got home, put the oven on and cooked Sunday lunch. Because that's what I want to do.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  Sounds all right, doesn't it?

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Does sound all right. Why do you think you are so fascinated by the Second World War?

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Oh, that, that, that, I mean, that goes, it goes back to a lot of what we were talking about with my, my father's family. But my mother's family, you see, the thing is, is I, you know, growing up in the 70s, there were, there was Airfix, Action Man, war films. There was, uh, Dad's Army even. The country's still digesting the war, or digesting the war culturally at that point, rather than in terms of the raw cost, it's in the 50s. And because Dad was a soldier in the 50s, all of his officers had been, um, people who'd fought in the Second World War. Well, you know, the, his first brigadier was a guy who fought at the Battle of Arnhem, at the bridge at Arnhem, you know, he's one of those people. So he was interested in it from that perspective. And then, but on my mother's side, this is the thing that dawned on me as I grew up.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  It's my mother, my mother's father was killed fighting in the Territorial Army in the, what was it? Bucks Battalion, so a reservist battalion from Marlow. And he was killed in the fighting in this town called Harzerbrook, outside Dunkirk, in the collapse back to Dunkirk, before my mother was born. So there's the footprint of, of that, which is why my second name's James. And then her uncle, so my grandmother's brother, was killed fighting in Burma, in a place called Pinway, in late 1944, fighting with the Gloucesters. And so, as well as the sort of fascinating history on the side, on my, on my father's side, there's the grim, actual footprint of the damned thing.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  That by the time you grow up, you realize it's not an adventure. It's not bugles at dawn and, uh, and, uh, and fluttering flags at sunset. It's the grim, bitter cost of the thing. And so, so, and that, that's what we digested. And I wonder what on earth my grandmother made of me playing with an action man when I was five, six, seven, you know, having lost her husband and her brother. What, what must she have thought of that? And me making model Spitfires? What must she have, how did she process that 30 years later, when I was a little boy? And that's, that, that, as I've grown older, has become really the thing that's the, that, that, you know, that, that, that, that Trotsky famously didn't say,

• 58:01Speaker 03

  it's a attributed term, that, you know, you may not be interested in war, but war's interested in you. And that's how I feel about the Second World War. It, it, it was the, the event that, that, doesn't matter who you are or, or what you thought of it, it, it, one way or another, it was going to get you, it was going to involve you, it was going to change your life, flip it upside down one way or another. And, and that's why I find it relentlessly fascinating. And the other thing that I find really interesting about it is the school of history that was predominant when I went to university was very much, you know, long duray, this idea that there's sort of tectonic plates of history, that, that the people on top of the froth, and that the things are going to happen anyway. You know, that, that, the giant dialectic forces at work

• 58:46Speaker 03

  that mean, you know, comes from a Marxist Hegelian reading of history. War is all about contingency. You know, the, the, the book, book before last that I wrote, which I wrote about the Battle of Arnhem, there's too much stuff in there that involves people's personalities, the clashes of personalities, for you to be able to honestly attribute it to the tectonic plates of fate, which, which is, you know, what some might, some would like to argue about how history works. There's too many moments where someone could have turned left rather than right, that would have directly changed the outcome of the days that followed, and the, and therefore, the hinge of fate that followed, that those events. For it, it, I, I feel very often it refutes that, um, that, um, other way of looking at history.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  And that's, that I think is really, is really, really interesting, whether it, whether it succeeds in refuting it, I don't know.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  It does. I have to say, I've only, I've only, I'm afraid, recently come to, we have ways of making you talk. But it's very intriguing in 2026, even though it's about 1939 to 1946.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  Well, well, today, James and I have been talking about the episode.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  This is James?

• 59:51Speaker 03

  James Holland.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  Tom Holland's brother, for those who, who aren't aware. So, The Rest Is History, um, which is the, the, the big plump, uh, uh, stablemate of ours, um, uh, goal hanger. Interestingly, they, they, they came after us. It was Jim and I doing, we have ways, that led Tom to saying, what's a podcast? Could you explain that to me, please, James? And then them doing theirs. So, so I feel faintly responsible for some of the Rest Is stuff.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Am I right, you stood against Nigel Farage at Clacton? Was that for publicity, for fun?

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  It was for fun and also, um.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Marguerite, was it?

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It was for fun and it was to try and engage with the political process one way or another. Lots of my contemporaries were saying all sorts of things about Nigel Farage, weren't doing anything about him, is how I felt. And also Russell Brand, that autumn, had said, what's the point of you voting? There's no point of voting, it never changed anything. And I thought, well, no one, I haven't got his platform, but what I can do is encourage people to vote. They don't have to vote for me. They should get involved. Vote, vote one way or another.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  And how did it go? Who voted for you?

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  318.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Not too bad.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Of the most sensible people on the planet.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  I, I have to tell you that I did a little bit better than you, because when I stood as a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1992, the monster-raving Looney Party agreed to stand their candidate down in my favor.

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  Well, well, I mean.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  So it's probably how I got in, was worth your 300.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  It's that sort of consensus that maybe the country could do with a bit more of, Giles.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  What, did you actually, did you learn anything about politics from that?

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did, actually.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  What did you learn?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  The thing I learned is, um, I would not want to be a politician. And the reason is, everyone wants you to fail. The driving impetus is they want you to fail. That your rivals within the party want you to fail so they can succeed. The press want you to mess it up, because that's a better story. Um. The public in the end will consign you to the dustbin. Once you've served your purpose, which may even be just to vote against someone else. So, uh, uh, you're meant to drink deep, uh, drink a deep draft of poison when you become a politician, I think. And that was the, because we were doing, we were doing a satiric campaign. We were, our campaign was openly a joke.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  The whole thing from start to finish, and the political journalists wanted that to fail as well. They want, they, they, they trade in failure. Failure is their meat and their drink.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  I've got such a good flavour now of the public you, and there's much more to the public you than I realised. Cause I've seen the pub landlord, I've seen you being hilarious. I knew about the podcast. I've only just started about it. I was intrigued that you've written these serious books. But what I would now like you to do is close the door. You're on your own in a room. You are William Makepeace Thackeray.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  And you're writing a paragraph about Alistair Murray. That's going to tell me something I didn't know about him. Not about what he's done, but about who he is, the nature of this man.

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  Well, in the style of Thackeray, I suppose.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  No, don't hide behind that. Give, well, you can if you want, because you're so clever, you probably could.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Sion of a, of a, of a gilded family with a, a long history of public service and sacrifice. Yet nevertheless, an encounter with the theatre in the form of his great uncle. In an effort to run as far and fast as he could from where he came.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  He's nevertheless ended up in the public eye far more than any of those. Any of his predecessors who maybe lived modestly in the shadows of service.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  The part of him that enjoys showing off has been amply rewarded and fulfilled.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  And now, as he starts to grapple with the, with ideas of history. The show off remains undimmed.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  And he chooses to ride two quite different horses that often pull him in different directions. And at the centre is his family and his home, uh, uh, that keep him on track.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  What's your flaw?

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  Sometimes I wing it when I shouldn't. And that, that, that's when I, that's when I can come unstuck, when I think I can wing this and I, and I haven't. Haven't prepared properly.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Are you a sensitive person?

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Um, I think I can be. Yeah. I, I, I, I think my daughters, my daughters would, my daughters would say that, um. They sometimes do that, oh dad thing, like when I, when I start on a subject or on, on an attitude. That they maybe think they need, never need to hear from me again. But sometimes it could be things, it can be things I'm sensitive about, but I, I don't, I don't, I think, I think what they like, I think. What my daughters like from me is they know what they're going to get.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Yes, but this is, I mean, the reason I'm asking this is that my children and my wife sometimes say to me. Stop talking. Just for a moment, stop talking. We know what you can do. We know this is how you've survived all these years. You've just kept going, kept working, kept being jolly.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Stop talking for a moment. And what is there? So what I'm trying to get you to tell me is when you're not winging it, when you're not being the pub landlord or. Al, the family man, what is there?

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  I don't, I, you know, I, I don't have an answer to that question, Giles.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  It's a problem.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  I'm gonna have to go away and think about it. You've set me some homework.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  I have set you some homework.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  Come here for homework.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  No, well.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  You've done yours and now I've got mine to do.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  I'm warning you, it's quite a dangerous thing to do because last time I did it instructed by them. I ended up just sitting alone in tears.

• 1:06:03Speaker 03

  Oh, well, okay. Well, I.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  I don't want you to do that.

• 1:06:06Speaker 03

  No, I'm sure that won't happen.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Well, I hope, I hope it won't happen. Good. All right. We've got to our last few questions.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  And that is an, an easy one to begin with. A moment of joy. Sheer joy.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Sheer joy.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  And a specific moment.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  Okay. Um. My daughter in, uh, at school, they have a, a project called Rocksteady where they have little rock bands that play together. And she's the drummer in her little band. Uh, this term they were called Seven Up. There was another band today, and it was this morning that they did this. They had their concert this morning, the end of term concert. And there was another band who called themselves Airbus Three Eighty, who were from year two. I don't know why they called that, but it was amusing. And they, Daisy and her band played, um. They played a version of Running Up That Hill and they're all, they're all year three. So they're, they're eight. Five of them, six of them playing together, guitars, pianos, bass, drums, and they absolutely smashed it.

• 1:07:02Speaker 03

  And the sheer joy of watching her sit there and, uh, lay this drumbeat down, uh, is unsurpassed pleasure.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  And a moment of sadness?

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  Well, I think, I think probably that the time I was the, I mean, we talked about it earlier. The time I was probably at most miserable in my life was when I went to boarding school. I remember the, the first couple of weeks there being, feeling completely at odds with the whole thing. I had no, I had no resources for dealing with it. I'd know, sort of no idea what I was even dealing with. And, um. I mean, maybe boarding school has changed, but, but, you know, in the late seventies, it, it, it, it was a. Bear pit of a pecking, the pecking order changing relentlessly, updating itself. That, that we were all different boys at different ages in that house, because it was a, it was a, it was a small boarding house. So we were all mixed up, jumbled up year wise. And it was a very, it was a very, it was a.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  A hard, hard environment. And I remember the, probably the happiest time I had in that boarding house when I had flu for a week and I read Lord of the Rings.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  General Patton, is it, who said, I'm going to ask you for a quotation now.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Military quotation, your favourite one. Am I right? Is it General Patton who said, have a plan, execute it violently, do it today?

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  Yes, that, that's Patton all right. Yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Good. Give me your favourite military maxim.

• 1:08:24Speaker 03

  Well, his other one is really, really good, which is he said, um, uh, it's not your job to die for your country. It's your, uh, job to make that other son of a bitch die for his country.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  I don't know why we're laughing. It's dreadful, isn't it?

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  But, but, but, but what, what I quite like about that is it's, it's very honest.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  He's not gilding any lilies there. Um, uh, uh, uh, yes, Patton's rhetorical style is, um, is very bracing and, and, and. Uh, of its time, but very interesting because he knew exactly what he was doing and he had to push the buttons.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  What have you learnt during your life?

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Um, uh, I think the main thing I've learnt during my life is that you've just got to keep going. KBO is the, is the thing I've really learned.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Keep buggering on.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Well done. Well, thank you for buggering by. You're brilliant.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  Pleasure.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Al Murray, you're a joy. Thank you.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  My thanks there to Al Murray. If you want to go to his festival, it's at the Black Pit Brewery. The We Have Ways Festival this very weekend. If you want to see him on tour, well, you just look up Al Murray. And the pub landlord, and it'll tell you all the dates that he is doing. I am going to see him because I think he's very funny. He's also very, very interesting, isn't he? Anyway, that is Al Murray. Our thanks to him. Who will our guests be next week? Who knows? Stay with us. And actually, if you want to join us over the weekend, you can, because we do Sunday episodes for people who belong to the Rosebud family. And if you want to become a family member, all you have to do is go to patreon.com forward slash Rosebud.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  B A T R E O N dot com forward slash Rosebud. And it's about a five a month plus VAT. And it's ad free and, um, well, you meet me and Harriet, who's my friend and producer of Rosebud. We, well, we do all sorts of things on a Sunday afternoon with a different kind of even more intimate episode. In fact, the other day on one of our Tuesday more Rosebud episodes, we replayed a Rosebud family episode. One of the ones that's normally just there for the family on a Sunday, but we wanted to share it to give people a taste of what happens on a Sunday. And it was all about dreams and nightmares and both Harriet and I were in quite confessional mood. And anyway, it was an episode that intrigued people, including someone who's written to us, Deborah Jane Johnson.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  And this is what she writes. Dear Giles and Harriet. I very much enjoyed the dreams chat and thought I'd tell you about a couple of mine. I had an erotic, definitely that Harriet, not romantic dream. Years ago, which featured a night of passion with a colleague of my husband's. Oh. At the time, we were living at a boarding school where my husband taught. The man in my dream was the maths teacher. I'd never thought of him in any other way than as an acquaintance. The day after the dream, I bumped into him and could not make eye contact. I felt embarrassed despite the fact he had no idea of our lovemaking.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  I have a recurring dream that I finally realised happens when my life is too busy and I'm trying to keep too many plates in the air. I'm at home and I have cats who live upstairs in the attic and I forget to feed them sometimes for days. I'm an animal lover, so this dream is distressing.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  My best dreams are when my sister appears. She died at the age of forty-six twenty years ago. I miss her every single day, but when I dream about her, it reaffirms my belief that she's always close by. That's lovely. I live in southwest France and couldn't get to Edinburgh for your show, unfortunately. I absolutely love the podcast. Never stop. Love, Deborah. Well, I hope we do never stop, and I hope the show we did in Edinburgh, or a version of it, may, may travel, so you may get a chance to see it elsewhere. Who knows? But I love the range of your dreams. The erotic dream with your husband's colleague.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Whoa, wow, wow, wow. And then the anxiety dream with the starving cats in the attic. And then that lovely, your best dream, the reassuring dream when your lovely lost sister comes back and is with you. And you think, well, she's always close by, and that's good. Aren't dreams fascinating? Anyway, thank you very much, Deborah, for being in touch. That's Deborah Jane Johnston. If you would like to be in touch with us, it's simply [email protected]. [email protected]. Drop us a line. Thank you again for your company, and we hope we never stop. There's so many people in the world with interesting stories, and we want to share them with you. My thanks again to

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Al Murray. My thanks to my producer, Harriet Jane. My thanks to Alec Cadell, who edits these and puts them up on YouTube for us, because you can see them as well as hear them nowadays, if you'd like to. And we are grateful when you leave a comment, particularly a positive one, because that's reassuring, but also it's helpful, because it helps spread the word and grow the family. As I say, if you want to actually join the intimate family, the inner circle, you can do that by going to patreon.com forward slash Rosebud. But we're here anyway, every Tuesday, every Friday. Next Tuesday, it'll be me and Harriet. Next Friday, I'll be here with a very, very special guest. Next Friday is really one

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  you will not want to miss. That's me, Gyles Brandreth. This is Rosebud. Cue the music.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Rosebud is a Plain Jane production, produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Gyles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leopard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  Hi, it's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. Twelve celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series. The iconic Parker Posey hosts this unique reality competition show where twelve celebrity contestants shake down in an Italian villa to win a share of up to $250,000. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.