Original subtitles

APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome

to Modern Life Is Goodish where tonight, ladies and gentlemen,

we are going to do something a little different,

we are gonna have a special guest.

AUDIENCE:Oooh! Correct noise.

Now, I want to make sure that I give our special guest

the very best introduction I can,

so I've been studying the various intros available in

the showbiz world,

and I think I've decided that

the best introduction is what we in the business call

the "It Can Only Be" intro.

For the uninitiated, that's where

the introducer lays down two or three facts about

the introducee that the audience could triangulate

and work out who it could be,

but before your brain has had the chance to come up with

the answer, the introducer is already saying,

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it can only be..."

And you lot are looking at me

as if I've lost my mind. LAUGHTER

I'll show you what I mean. For me, the king the maestro,

of the "It can only be" intro,

has got to be Mr Brian Conley.

In the days before he turned into a silver fox,

but while he still had that problem where both his hands share

the same magnetic polarity,

he presented a TV show called The TV That Made Me.

There he is on the set

and here he is ladies and gentlemen in action.

Welcome to The TV That Made Me.

Ah, you can see they solved

the problem by glueing his hands to the sofa. LAUGHTER

Let's watch the "It Can Only Be" master at work.

My guest today has been the king of the jungle...

Yeah, he's been a king of the jungle.

..the star of the square. Star of the square.

It can only be the one and only..

Well, who can it one and only be, ladies and gentlemen?

Let's work this out for ourselves.

He's given us two bits of information here.

Number one, they are the king of the jungle.

And number two, the star of the square.

What could these phrases mean?

Let's think about the king of the jungle,

it could be, could be,

that he's about to introduce a lion.

LAUGHTER

Or, or he could be about to introduce Tarzan.

Yeah, that would also work, wouldn't it?

Or, and I think we know this is the truth. We're British.

We know that when someone in British light ent

says "King of the Jungle" what they really mean

is someone who has won "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here."

What about star of the square?

It could be that he's about to introduce one of

the actors from the obscure 2008 Australian movie,

The Square. LAUGHTER

Or maybe someone from the 2017 Swedish film,

The Square. LAUGHTER

Or one of the many members of

the Lewisham based grime outfit,

The Square. LAUGHTER

We've all got our favourites, haven't we?

We've all... Mine's MC DeeJillz.

Oh. But again we know it's not going to be those things.

This is daytime telly and it's Brian Conley doing the talking

so we know it must mean someone who has been in EastEnders.

Now, how do we solve this riddle?

Easy. With a Venn diagram. That's how we solve this riddle.

What are we looking for here, ladies and gentlemen,

we are looking for someone who fulfils the following criteria.

They have won "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here."

And they have been in EastEnders.

Now, it turns out, there are actually two people who live in

the intersection of this particular Venn diagram.

You've got Charlie Brooks, but you've also got Joe Swash.

But Brian said king of the jungle, not queen of jungle,

so it must be Joe Swash. Ladies and gentlemen,

let's see if we've worked it out correctly. Go on, Bri, take it away.

It can only be the one and only Joe Swash.

AUDIENCE CHEER Exactly.

That is how you nail an "It can only be" intro.

If you do it right, it literally can only be one person,

so you should always be able to work it out.

With that in mind... LAUGHTER

..let's have a look at another one.

Welcome to The TV That Made Me.

My guest today is a friend to the stars

and one in her own right.

It can only be the lovely...

LAUGHTER

I'm not sure that one's working, is it?

Let's plug this into the. Venn diagram.

We have got friend to the stars,

and a star in her own right.

So what you've got do now

is remove all of the stars,

who hate all the other stars.

We should be left with just one star.

The only star who is a friend to other stars

and who presumably doesn't realise that none of

the other stars like her. LAUGHTER

I think we're all now thinking of the right person, aren't we?

Let's just satisfy our own curiosity.

It can only be the lovely Alison Hammond.

Look at that face!

Even she's as surprised as you are! LAUGHTER

She's stood backstage thinking, "I thought I was on this show,

"He's introducing somebody else... Oh, bloody hell it's me. I'm on."

I'll show you my favourite ever

Brian Conley "It Can Only Be" intro. This is absolutely peachy.

My guest today is one of Britain's most cherished actors.

It can only be...

LAUGHTER You can't do that!

You can't start by saying "is one of,"

and then immediately tell us "it can only be."

You've just told us it's one of multiple people in

a category, you idiot. That's not how it works, is it?

Well, I suppose technically you could,

but it wouldn't feel right. I mean,

I'm not saying anyone should ever do this,

I think it's in very poor taste,

I'm only pointing out that there are

times when it would be technically accurate,

if you were to say, "My guest today

"is one of the Bee Gees. Ladies and gentlemen,

it can only be." That would... LAUGHTER

Just saying it would technically,

We're all just saying, technically...

I told you that's funnier than the Chuckle Brothers.

LAUGHTER AUDIENCE:Oooh!

Oh, no no, no. Don't you dare go "oooh,"

if you laughed at two Bee Gees,

you can't suddenly go "oooh" over one Chuckle.

You're the one with the moral compass that's out of whack.

LAUGHTER

Anyway.

The only way I can make sense of this is if it means

the most obvious of Britain's cherished actors.

So, I think it must be Britain's most cherished actor.

Right now, you're all rolling through your little mental Rolodex

of Britain's most cherished actors. Is it Sir Ian McKellen?

Dame Judi Dench? Maggie Smith?

Derek Jacobi? Lower your sights just a little bit.

I guarantee that not one of you is thinking of

the right answer. When I tell you the right answer,

not only will you obviously know

that you weren't thinking of the right answer.

You will also know in your gut that nobody was thinking of

the right answer.

You just will. Here we go.

It can only be the legend that is Anita Dobson.

LAUGHTER Now, look,

I think Anita Dobson is a wonderful actor.

I truly do,

but I don't think anyone thinks

she's Britain's most cherished actor, do they?

I mean maybe Brian May. But maybe not, I don't know.

I don't think even Brian Conley thinks

she's Britain's most cherished actor.

In fact I know he doesn't. Because I asked him.

LAUGHTER

I sent him a cheeky little tweet.

"@RealBrianConley, just a quick question.

"Who would you say is Britain's most cherished actor?"

No edge, no agenda, Bri, just curious.

Just the sort of thing I like to know from people.

I got a reply.

"Got to be Michael Caine for me." LAUGHTER

I love it when someone who tweets exactly

the way you think they talk. "He's the guvnor."

Anyway, the important thing is that we all now understand how

the "It Can Only Be" intro works

so let's put it into practice

and introduce my special guest this evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, my guest today has been a star of the Square

and is one of Britain's most cherished actors.

He is a one-man walking variety show.

He can do it all, ladies and gentlemen,

he can sing, he can dance, he can present,

indeed his presenting gigs have included

the Royal Variety Performance and The TV That Made Me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together,

because he can't. LAUGHTER

It can only be, the legend that is,

Mr Brian Conley, ladies and gentlemen.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Brian, very nice of you to be here.

Lovely to be here, Dave. Lovely. LAUGHTER

If I'm honest, I did think this was gonna be the Russell Howard show

LAUGHTER

So, what do you want me to do?

I want you to do what you do best which is like an introduction.

LAUGHTER

All right, then.

You just introduce the second part of the show, is that all right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He'll see you after the break. Cheers.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish with me,

Brian Conley, yes.

I have done eight royal variety performances

and now I am here.

LAUGHTER

Anyway I want to introduce you now...

LAUGHTER

The star... APPLAUSE

Please.

Let me introduce the star of tonight's show.

He can't sing, he can't dance, he can't tell jokes,

he just stands in front of a screen like

a weatherman who's lost his map. LAUGHTER

It can only be...Dave Gorman! CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Brian Conley, ladies and gentlemen!

Mr Brian Conley. LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Do you know what, ladies and gentlemen?

There is something that I need to get off my chest.

In recent times...

..I've developed a bit of a bad habit with

the old H.

I've just realised what that sounds like.

I'm not admitting a heroin addiction here, ladies and gentlemen.

In fact, could we get rid of the sofa, it's not really helping.

It would be really weird to get Brian Conley to introduce

the bit where I do the heroin confession, wouldn't it?

I haven't got a heroin problem.

Honestly, I hardly ever touch the stuff.

The bad habit I've developed is with

the actual letter H.

I have started mispronouncing the letter haitch.

I just did it again. The correct pronunciation,

as I'm sure you all know, is aitch.

It's got a punchy "ay" at the beginning.

It's not haitch.

I've become a haitch person, ladies and gentlemen,

I can feel you looking at me thinking,

"Come on, Dave. How often are you called upon to say

"the letter haitch out loud?"

Let me tell you, in my role as Fan Club president

for the band, Steps, it happens. LAUGHTER

But it does happen, doesn't it? It could happen to anyone.

I was having a little romantic stroll with Mrs Gorman

the other day. A young lady came up to us and said,

"Excuse me, do you know if there's a cashpoint nearby?"

I said "Absolutely. You jink left here and immediately right,

"you'll go down that little ginnel,

"you will emerge directly in front of the HaitchSBC."

And as I said that, Mrs Gorman let go of my hand...

LAUGHTER

..and took one step backwards as if

embarrassed to be seen with me.

And when the woman had scurried off

to get her money out of the hole in the wall,

Mrs Gorman turned to me and said,

"What the hell's happened to you? When did you become a haitch-person?

"You were always an aitch-person. I met an aitch-person,

"I married an aitch-person,

"I'm not sure I'm happy about this haitch-person whose turned up unannounced."

And I tried explaining to her how it happened,

and in many ways it was her fault, but let's not dwell.

LAUGHTER It was really because of Covid.

And I know that makes it sound like I think it's a symptom,

what I mean is, it was because of the lockdowns.

Here's the thing. During lockdown,

Mrs Gorman's work could carry on a little bit,

and so she carried on working a little bit.

Mine was completely wiped out for the best part of two years.

Which meant that in the Gorman household,

I carried the main burden of the home schooling.

I bloody loved home schooling! It was brilliant!

The GorBoy was only five, I knew all the answers.

LAUGHTER

I think you've got to find ways of making home-schooling fun -

and that's what I did. We were in reception,

with a five-year-old, so we were doing phonics.

When you're doing phonics you don't say, "A-B-C-D-E-F-G."

You say, "Ah-buh-cuh-duh, eh-fuh-guh-huh.

Which means I spent months intensively "huh-ing" for my boy.

Huh-ah-tuh is hat.

Huh-iss - his. Huh-oh-tuh - hot. His hat is hot.

And all those months of "huh-ing" for my boy have left

a residual "hhuh" at the beginning of my haitch

and I can't bleeding shift it!

And incidentally, I do know that some of

the people watching this show will also be haitch people

and I don't want you to feel picked on or judged.

If you are a haitch person, you don't have to sit there thinking,

"Oh, no, Dave hates me for being a haitch-person."

I don't hate you for being a haitch-person whatsoever - each to their own,

you do you, absolutely fine. I do not hate you for it.

I just hate me for it, because it's wrong.

LAUGHTER It is wrong.

It is wrong. They're not both right.

It isn't a matter of opinion.

If you look it up in the dictionary,

you can see for yourself, ladies and gentlemen.

Aitch is the 8th letter in the modern English alphabet.

And the dictionary tells us that it is sometimes spelt out aitch.

And while I'm here,

isn't it bloomin' weird that letters can be spelled out as words,

using letters. LAUGHTER

Surely letters ought to be

the smallest unit of lexicography, shouldn't they?

I mean I can see in the case of aitch it makes some

sense doesn't it - that's teaching us

the correct pronunciation for the letter aitch.

But what are we doing wasting paper

and ink in dictionaries having words such as "ar" which is the letter R,

and "see," which does not have a C in it,

and is the letter C. This way lies madness, doesn't it?

If somebody said to you tonight, "How do you spell H?"

I'm pretty sure everyone in this

room could very confidently tell them that it is A-I-T-C-H.

But then that person could go,

"Right, and how are you spelling that?"

And you'd have to go...

"Well, that's A-I-T-double E, S, double E...

..A-I-T-C-H." LAUGHTER

Can I have a quick spell check on that?

Absolutely. And you can see how this could

rapidly spiral into madness from here to here

and to here and even beyond, ladies and gentlemen.

Nobody needs to be spelling that out, do they?

Nobody, nobody.

It's A-I-TEE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-ES-E-E...

..A-I-TEE-E-E-E-E-E-ES-E-E... ..A-I-TEE-E-E-ES-E-E-A-I-TEE-SEE...

..A-I-T-C-H. And good luck to anyone

watching this show with subtitles.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Now, the thing about this is....

Think... Think about where this leads us.

You follow this idea down the rabbit hole,

ladies and gentlemen, you will discover as I have,

this means that the alphabet is not in alphabetical order.

LAUGHTER

What's H Doing over there?

Surely it should be over there, shouldn't it?

And R, that begins with an A as well.

That should be up there, shouldn't it?

Now, B you'll be glad to know is not moving anywhere,

because that is B-double E - that is exactly where it needs

to be. That is AOK. But what about C, ladies and gentlemen?

C doesn't even have a C in it, does it?

It begins with an S,

so it needs to be down there, between the S and the T.

Now I've left that little space up there, ladies and gentlemen,

because there is another letter that begins with C,

and that is of course Q.

So, let's throw that one up there like so, ladies and gentlemen.

Now, D isn't moving.

D is exactly where it needs to be.

That is D-double E, so that's dandy, isn't it?

But there is another letter that begins with a D

and I know some of you are trying to work out what it is.

Some of you have got there, that's right, ladies and gentlemen,

it is of course W.

So, let's throw that one up there like so.

Now, E doesn't have any alternative spelling.

It is only ever the single letter E,

but the phoneme that the E Makes, the "eh" sound,

you can hear that at the beginning of many of

the letters in our alphabet, can't you?

You can hear it in your F and your L and your M

and your N and your S and your X. All of which are,

unsurprisingly, spelled with an E at the front of them.

So, let's throw all of those up there

and tidy it up a bit like so.

We have basically now done the job at this point.

There's always a few suspicious souls out there

thinking maybe G is spelt with a J, but it's not.

Maybe U is spelt with a Y, but it's not.

Maybe Y is spelt with a W, but it's not,

ladies and gentlemen, they are all now in the right place,

and I can see the looks on your faces tonight,

ladies and gentlemen. You're thinking,

"Bloody hell, Dave, how the hell are we supposed to remember

"the correct alphabetical order?"

And that's simple, isn't it?

You just need a handy little mnemonic to guide you, yeah?

I'll give you mine as a little free gift.

All you've got to remember is After Heating Ready Brek Quickly,

Don't Worry, Even. Fluids Like Milk Need Some Xantham Gum.

It Just Keeps Ordinary Porridge. Consistently Tasty,

Utterly Viscous Yet Zesty. That's how I remember it.

LAUGHTER So, take that and run with it,

free gift from me. Free gift. Yours. APPLAUSE

There is, of course,

another way of remembering it, isn't there?

And that is the song.

Yeah. I know you all know the song.

You've just been singing the wrong blooming words most of your life,

haven't you? Let's run through it once together,

just to help cement this information in our brains.

Join in as soon as you feel ready,

which will of course be immediately,

because the words are on the screen. LAUGHTER

So here we go.

# A-H-R-B-Q-D-W AUDIENCE SING ALONG

# E-F-L-M-N-S-X-G-I

# J-K-O, P-C-T

# U-V-Y and Z

# Now, I know my AHR

# I am sure that I'll go faaarrrr. #

APPLAUSE Abso-blooming-lutely!

Abso-blooming-lutely! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Conley says I can't sing.

That was a good effort folks,

I know it quite well at this stage

and the quick bit in the middle - the N-S-X-G-I,

still throws my brain a loop.

It's hard because you don't even remember learning

the ABC song.

When something is that hardwired it's very hard

for your brain to do it any other way.

Think about what that means. Once upon a time,

you didn't know the ABC song

and learning it was relatively easy.

Today, if you had virgin brains,

untouched by knowledge of the ABC song,

then today, learning the AHR song

would also be incredibly easy, wouldn't it?

And that's what I mean when I say you've got

to find ways of making home schooling fun.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE What I'm saying is...

What I'm saying is,

I've had quite a lot of emails from the school.

What I'm saying is, behind every headline,

there's always a human story that needs to be told.

I'll see you after the break.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish,

ladies and gentlemen.

Now, I'd like to start this part of the show with

a bit of advice. I think it's good advice for anyone,

but I'm really thinking of men of a certain age.

There's something I think you should get.

I've got one

and it really has put a bit of a spring in my step

and got the blood pumping. What it is,

I really recommended getting one for yourselves is

a nemesis. Yeah. LAUGHTER

You can get them online these days.

That's where I got mine, online.

I'm a little wary of explaining to you how I came

to get my nemesis,

because I am aware that it involves going into

a world that some of you will be a little bit resistant to.

It happened, ladies and gentlemen,

in the world of the cryptic crossword. LAUGHTER

And there it is. I feel the pushback immediately.

"Don't talk to me about crosswords, Dave,

"it's a load of gobbledegook! It's code and I don't understand it.

"It's not for me." And I know why some of you think that.

You've picked up a copy of the

Guardian on your train home one day, haven't you?

You've seen the cryptic on the back page

and you've seen a clue like that one for example.

"Problem for Francesco,

"the French eating eg nice old copper nut left."

Oh, that is an ugly old word salad right there,

isn't it? That is gibberish.

And because you think all clues look like that,

you think these things aren't for you.

But they don't actually look like that,

and if you think they do, that is blind prejudice on your part.

I had to use Photoshop to make a clue look like that.

Real clues should sound like perfectly reasonable sentences.

That clue is actually "Problem for driver scrambling to reverse."

Which like all of the other clues in this excellent puzzle from

the setter, Brendan, is a perfectly cogent sentence, isn't it?

I think your confusion lies in

the fact that you don't understand how

a seemingly ordinary sentence is supposed to guide you

to put one word in a crossword grid.

So, I'm going to explain how they work.

I do this simply to give you the information you need

in order to follow a story set in cryptic crossword land.

And I will do it against the clock, ladies and gentlemen.

I need someone I can trust on the front row.

I'll give you the stopwatch, OK. Go.

There are two parts to a standard cryptic crossword clue.

You will get a definition exactly the same as a non-cryptic clue

but you'll also get some word play to help you.

They could be in that order but they could also be in this order.

The important thing is that there will be

a definition at one end or the other.

So, let's have a look at a clue you've already seen.

"Problem for driver scrambling to reverse."

The definition could be problem or it could be reverse.

But it doesn't have to be just one word, it could also be a phrase,

so maybe the definition is scrambling to reverse,

or maybe it's problem for driver.

When you've worked out where the join is,

and in this case that is where it is,

you know that the rest of the clue is your wordplay.

Now, you've effectively got two different clues that both lead to

the same answer. You can solve either of them

and then use the other to corroborate it.

Now, let's have a look at the wordplay here.

What is the word scrambling doing?

It's a literal instruction to you to

scramble the letters - T-O-R-E-V-E-R-S-E

And when you scramble them you can make them into

a new word, for example - oversteer,

which I think we can all see is a nine-letter word

and a pretty good definition for

the phrase "problem for driver." Stop.

How did I do?57 seconds.

Ladies and gentlemen, in under a minute,

you now all understand

the rudiments of cryptic crosswords.

APPLAUSE Which means...

Which means you know enough to follow a story

set in cryptic crossword land.

And here's the thing, a few years ago,

quite by accident,

I became a professional cryptic crossword setter.

I now set cryptic crosswords for

the independent newspaper using the pseudonym Bluth,

for the Daily Telegraph,

using the pseudonym Django and for the.

Guardian using the pseudonym Fed.

I know that is a lot to take in, but back off, Guardian,

we don't need to know.

What I didn't realise, when I became a setter,

was that just as you get reviews in this game,

you also get reviews in the cryptic crossword game.

There is a website called Fifteensquared.

Every day it reviews the cryptic crosswords published in

the Independent, The Guardian and The Financial Times.

It's got a little bit of blurb at the top of each page

explaining what they thought of the crossword,

then they go through the puzzle clue by clue,

explaining how they all work.

Then, beneath that, there is a section where members of

the public can leave their thoughts and comments.

And as you can see, on the occasion of my first published puzzle,

57 people did just that.

And it is amongst those 57 people,

we will find...my nemesis.

LAUGHTER

She wasn't my nemesis immediately.

She was just someone who didn't like my first crossword,

and she is entitled to not like my first crossword.

I'm not so thin-skinned I can't take a bit of criticism.

That's absolutely fine.

Her name is Jane and I bear her no ill-will.

Her first comment begins, "Sorry, Bluth,

"I really would like to say something positive."

To which I think, "Would you really, Jane?" LAUGHTER

But she is entitled to criticise

and do you know what?

I've been doing the job a little while now

and with a bit of hindsight,

I can look back on that first crossword,

and I can see that one of those clues was genuinely crap

whichever way you look at it, it really was.

This is the one I'm thinking about, that one there.

"Crap, whichever way you look at it." LAUGHTER

Now, what's going on here? I'll tell you what's going on here.

The answer to that one is poop. Why is it poop?

It literally means crap whichever way you look at it.

This is one of the clues that. Jane didn't like,

ladies and gentlemen, but there were others.

Oh, there were others, as you can see.

She goes on to say, "..but I was turned off immediately

"by the double dose of bog paper, the zit, and the crap."

You've seen the crap clue, ladies and gentlemen.

I'll show you the other three clues.

I'll be honest, I do understand that there are

people who don't want to see the word "crap" in their newspaper,

I get that. But I confess

to being surprised that anyone is upset by "spot",

"bums" and "bog paper"

but then we have to remember that Jane is

the sort of person who puts inverted commas around

the phrase "turned off."

Jane has to make it perfectly clear that that is

a metaphorical turned off. She was turned off so to speak.

She clearly doesn't want anyone

to think she was literally turned off

because then they'd have to contemplate that prior

to doing my crossword she was literally turned on. LAUGHTER

She doesn't want anyone to misinterpret her comment as

meaning "your crossword put me off my wank" so...

LAUGHTER

Now which one of us has got a mucky mind, Jane?

it's you, not me. It's you.

Jane wasn't my nemesis at this point.

If anything, I was upset that I'd upset someone.

I wouldn't want to upset anyone

and when her comment ended saying "I'll try again with your next offering,"

I distinctly remember thinking, "I'd really rather you didn't, Jane."

And I'll tell you for why.

On the day that my first crossword was published,

my second and third had already been accepted,

and I think if you're offended by bog paper, zit and crap,

you're going to find clues such as

"Warning: whore regularly found on live stream"

just a little bit too rich for your blood.

I was right in thinking that Jane would be offended

by my second crossword.

I was wrong in thinking that would be the clue that did it.

The clue that upset her was actually this one.

Eight down, "See seven are made poorly eating supermarket crabs, for example."

Why would that upset anyone?

Perfectly innocent sentence, isn't it?

Let's have a little look at it

and see if we can work out what's going on.

Let's take those first three words, "See seven are."

You can see, the clue tells us,

they have been made poorly or constructed badly.

So, let's construct them badly.

Now let's make them eat something.

What are they going to eat? A supermarket.

Which supermarket? Aldi. Giving us venereal disease,

or crabs for example. It's as simple as that.

APPLAUSE As simple as that.

Jane was not happy.

I was beginning to despair that anyone else was bothered by

eight down. To be honest, had I spotted it earlier in the solve,

I'd have ditched the puzzle forthwith. LAUGHTER

"It isn't clever."

It is. LAUGHTER

"And it's not even vaguely amusing."

It is. LAUGHTER

Look at all these people laughing, Jane.

Every one of them, it is, it's proven.

"And yet it's apparently, one of the mainstays of the compilation.

"Not for me, Bluth, but thanks anyway."

Always unfailingly polite

while clutching her pearls, was Jane.

I was upset that I was upsetting someone,

so I genuinely did try and clean up what I was doing.

But it wasn't enough.

Things would sneak through my checking process.

This one. "Weeps, dropping back in to doctors."

I failed to spot that it's another poo clue.

It's the dropping that does it.

The dropping I had in mind was an animal dropping,

it's poo, isn't it?

And this poo is going backwards

and it's going into the doctors,

giving us the word droops, which,

the dictionary confirms is a perfectly fair definition

for the word weeps.

Jane didn't like it, ladies and gentlemen.

"I've yet to make my mind up about this setter."

I think we all know that's not cocking true, don't we?

Made her mind up very quickly as far as I can tell.

"And one across didn't get me off," oh, Jane, not again,

LAUGHTER Not again, Jane!

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, "to a good start."

Sorry, sorry, Jane.

It felt like every single time I Was published,

she'd be there having a bloody go.

"Quite enjoyed this once I'd got past the seemingly obligatory

"lavatorial reference and the prostitutes."

LAUGHTER

There was nothing I could do to please this woman.

Now in some ways, I have a great deal of sympathy for Jane here.

And there is an argument that maybe the crossword should be a haven.

A little oasis of calm in the corner of your newspaper,

which is already full of so much crap, isn't it?

Especially in recent times,

quite literally, given we have been dumping raw sewage

into our rivers and our seas.

This has been a big story for some time now, hasn't it?

You can imagine the upset all of this has caused.

One company even claimed that the public has

"No right to swim in the sea." Oh, you can imagine

the wild swimming community in particular got very.

worked up about that.

I sometimes go swimming in sewage myself,

but only in a metaphorical sense. By which I mean,

I sometimes find myself spending hours reading

the comments sections beneath stories such as these.

That's what I've done with these stories, ladies and gentlemen,

and I've taken my favourite of those comments

and turned them into something that I like to call a found poem,

that I would like to perform for you now.

MUSIC: Suite No 4 in D Minor by Handel

While all the pollution is clearly appalling,

the one good thing to come of this, would be an end to wild swimming.

When I was a lad, we just called it swimming.

LAUGHTER

In a time when most towns have perfectly decent swimming baths,

I am wondering why so many people want to swim in rivers anyway.

Having looked at the sort of people who do it,

I suspect the main reason is that it is free.

Why don't people just pop to their local baths

and leave the rivers to take our ordure away as nature intended?

Call me old-fashioned,

but I don't mind a bit of crap in the rivers.

They're dirty anyway.

But I draw the line at it going in the sea.

LAUGHTER

Swimming in rivers isn't something normal people do.

It's something normal people tell their dogs to stop doing.

Swimming in the sea however is a normal thing that normal people do.

On holiday. LAUGHTER

"Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink."

So said a famous poet once.

I don't know which one,

but it makes you think.

Fish can't pop to the local baths.

Why won't anyone think of the fish?

I can see why people think having sewage in our rivers is a bad thing

but has anyone stopped to ask where else it should go?

Before we had water companies our wee

and poo still existed,

and I'll bet you a pound to

a penny that most of it ended up in the water.

We should be giving Thames Water a pat on the back for

the amount of sewage they don't put in the water,

not complaining about the amount they do.

I don't eat fish. LAUGHTER

Nature, as always,

has provided the solution.

Cucumbers! LAUGHTER

They're 96% water and more importantly they're free.

LAUGHTER

I don't eat cucumbers. LAUGHTER

It's odd to think that humans are the only animals to have toilets.

Apart from cats. LAUGHTER

Newsflash.

Fish poo in rivers. If fish won't think of the fish, why, should I?

LAUGHTER

Where on earth do you think sea water comes from?

Rivers flow into seas. Water is water is life.

Actually, rivers flow into lakes. LAUGHTER

It is rain that fills the seas.

That's why seas are salty.

I thank you. APPLAUSE

The Billroth String Quartet, ladies and gentlemen.

I'll see you after the break.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish where,

before I was distracted by rivers of filth,

I was telling you about how I got a nemesis?

But we never actually got to

the point where Jane became my nemesis.

I genuinely started off feeling upset that

I was upsetting her.

But there is a moment on which my relationship with Jane turned.

Now, initially. I was just setting crosswords for the Independent

but after a little while I received a message from someone at

the Daily Telegraph saying "We're enjoying your puzzles.

"Would you fancy crossing the floor and writing some for us as well?"

And I said, "Yeah, absolutely I will."

As much as anything, because the Daily Telegraph is not reviewed

on Fifteensquared. That's just the Independent,

The Guardian and the FT.

I thought it'd be nice to have

a puzzle published one day and not have Jane jumping up

and down and calling me out as a reprobate, wouldn't it?

What I didn't realise when I said yes,

is there is another website that

reviews every crossword ever published in

the bloody Daily Telegraph, isn't there.

And that website,

ladies and gentlemen is called Big Dave's Crossword Blog.

LAUGHTER No relation.

Now, before my first Telegraph puzzle was published,

they asked me to write an article about becoming

a setter, which I did - and, as I'm sure you can imagine,

that set off a thread of conversation within

Big Dave's Crossword Blog.

And who the hell do you think turned up in that conversation,

ladies and gentlemen?

You're not wrong, of course she bloomin' did.

"Couldn't find anything in the Daily Telegraph

"about Dave Gorman coming in as a new compiler.

"Please tell me it's not true." LAUGHTER

And when my first puzzle was published

it wasn't long before she showed up again saying,

"I always expect this setter's puzzles to be peppered

"with references to bodily functions, football teams and so forth."

Bodily functions, football teams

and so forth. LAUGHTER

I don't think the whole of the world has decided

that football and bodily functions naturally both reside in

the same ugly category of things polite society doesn't talk about at

the dinner table, have they?

You can't just make things bedfellows by putting them in

a sentence together and adding an "and so forth,"

can you? If I said to you all,

"Oh, I always expect this setter's puzzles to be peppered

with references to knitting and racism and so on,"

you know immediately that's not right, don't you?

That's not fair on the knitters of the world, is it?

Or the racists. It's not fair.

I think that's a little bit revealing.

Am I alone in detecting the faintest whiff of snobbery here?

I think she's the sort of person who was offended by

the venereal disease clue,

not because it mentioned venereal disease,

but because it mentioned

Aldi and not Waitrose. LAUGHTER

Rightly or wrongly,

I thought I'd seen who she was at that point.

And once my imagination had painted Jane as a snob,

I found my whole attitude changed.

Instead of being upset that I was upsetting her,

I started enjoying upsetting her.

With a bit of hindsight, I can see now that

I was maybe not completely stable at this point.

I had become obsessed with her.

I don't think I would have said so at the time.

I think if you had asked me at the time,

I would have told you that she was obsessed with me.

But that's because I was obsessed with her.

In my head, and I knew not to say this out loud to anyone.

I thought she was sort of flirting with me.

You know in that way when boys are very young

and they end up pulling a girl's pigtails in the playground,

it's because they're emotionally underdeveloped

and they don't know how to get attention.

I sort of thought she was metaphorically pulling my pigtails.

I was self-aware enough to know that if I said that out loud,

it would make me sound like I was disappearing up my own fundament,

so I very much kept these thoughts to myself.

But I discovered that I wasn't the only person who thought it.

A very good friend of mine, he sent me a Whatsapp one day

saying, "Just seen Jane's latest! I think she may be trying to pull.

"She's in love with you!" LAUGHTER

And I sent him a reply saying,

"Ha. That looks like a clue."

Because it does, doesn't it?

Look at the wording he's used there.

"She may be trying to pull. She's in love with you."

That feels very cluey to me, don't you think?

It's not quite fair on the solver who doesn't know

the back-story, is it?

It's not really fair just saying "she" and "you."

let's take those out, if we take the "she" and the "you" out,

and replace them with say,

"Jane" and "comedian."

That feels fairer immediately, doesn't it?

Little tip for you here. If you're writing a crossword clue,

try and have as few words as possible, OK?

Right now, we're wasting two words by having "may" and "be" separately,

aren't we? We could just squish them together,

make them one word.

That's going to make things a little bit tighter,

just in a small way. Also, another tip for you,

try and avoid full stops if you can.

We've got a full stop there, but we don't need it, do we?

We could remove that, and if we do,

I think we could lose the "she's" that follows it as well,

just put a dash in instead, it will make it into one sentence.

Look at that, "Jane may be trying to pull, in love with comedian."

It means exactly the same thing,

and it really has started to feel like a clue now, hasn't it?

That's really feeling very cluey.

So, I had that one published in the Independent.

LAUGHTER Now...

I know that you are now all able to solve that

and you can all see that the answer

to that clue is clearly "Russell Howard."

But that's not important. Not important right now.

The message in this clue was in the clue,

not in the solution.

Now, I will never know what was actually going on

in Jane's world that day, but I'll tell you this.

On this puzzle, she did not comment.

I don't know what that was, but in my head,

that was her going, "Shit, he's seen me!" LAUGHTER

I will never know the truth.

And while Jane was still not yet my nemesis,

I think my obsession with her was growing.

It was no longer just about my puzzles and Jane.

This was about all puzzles and Jane.

Every time I was doing a crossword,

if I was solving a clue that was a little bit salty,

my first thought became, "Oh, can't wait to see what

"Jane's got to say about this one."

And one day I was doing a crossword in

the Independent by a man called Hoskins.

It was, I say without fear of contradiction.

The filthiest crossword I have ever seen in all my days.

I could not believe what I was looking at.

I will start with the soft stuff, but trust me,

we're going to get a lot darker very quickly.

Have a look at this, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, "Ready for a spanking? Mind your own business."

Bit of cheeky S&M in the Independent cryptic crossword.

I promised you darker, how about this?

"Bishop up for sex and crack takes the biscuit." LAUGHTER

A man of the cloth, a bishop, no less,

taking hard drugs and getting his dick wet.

Oh, my life, Hoskins, you're pushing the envelope now, aren't you?

There is more, ladies and gentlemen.

"Out-of-head Scandinavians and boozers..."

Very next clue, "...hooking up and having sex."

We've got drunken Scandinavian swingers,

S&M, a bishop taking hard narcotics and getting his end away.

And just when you think he has plumbed the depths,

he goes even further, ladies and gentlemen.

"Part of the body pervert has up goose." LAUGHTER

The sexual assault of barnyard animals,

ladies and gentlemen!

And just when you think Hoskins has done all he can

to wallow in the filth of bodily functions,

he puts the cherry on top of this particular cake

by also including football and so forth.

LAUGHTER

I finished this puzzle,

I rushed straight to Fifteensquared to see what Jane had to say.

Was Jane in the comment section that day?

You bet your sweet patootie she was in

the comment section that day. Oh!

"Nice to see a few flashes of the old Harry in this one,

"and a relief to discover that I wasn't alone

"in not knowing the football term."

"Quite a lot of ticks on my sheet...

.."shrug," "butt out," "let off and "glad rags" all getting a mention."

"No complaints from me today." LAUGHTER

SHOUTING: This is when I got a fucking nemesis!

LAUGHTER How fucking dare you?

APPLAUSE

Are you genuinely trying

to convince me there is anyone on this earth who genuinely thinks,

"You've crossed the line there, young fella'm'laddy."

But also thinks that's AOK, is there? LAUGHTER

Am I actually expected to believe someone is operating within

a moral framework that says, "Oh, that's going too bloody far,"

but that's a fucking bull's-eye, is it?

I'm sorry, Jane,

did my toilet roll put you off your goose fuck?!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

And now...

..I've offended myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for watching. Good night.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

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