Original subtitles

How you doing?

Great. Thank you.

Wow. Calm down.

Shut the fuck up.

Thank you. What a lovely welcome. Just for that, I'm going to try my hardest

tonight.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Rick, relax.

We've already had our money's worth just seeing you.

What? You're a legend. Shut up. Why is he... I'm not a god.

I'm just an ordinary guy, you know.

Going around talking to people. Sort of like Jesus.

In a way. But better.

Well, I've actually turned up.

So... Thank you and

welcome to my new show, Humanity. I don't know why I called it that. I'm not

a big fan.

I prefer dogs, obviously.

Dogs are better people than people, aren't they? They are... They're amazing

dogs. They're our best friends.

They guard us. They guide us. There's medical detection dogs that can smell if

you've got, like, AIDS.

I'm not a doctor, but their noses are, like, a thousand times more sensitive

than ours. So they sort of go, poor, you're well HIV.

Fuck, you know.

And you go, you can smell AIDS on someone.

Yeah. Yeah.

Then why didn't you smell it on the bloke I brought home last night then,

you fucking idiot?

They did the first three billion years by themselves, evolution and all that,

and then we got involved and we did a bit of selective breeding, you know,

getting them how we wanted them to do jobs for us, you know, a bit more of

that, a bit stronger, faster, whatever.

And they're great at the jobs they're bred to do, and they love the job

they're bred to do because they're genetically hardwired to love that

behavior anyway.

Although... The Rhodesian Ridgeback was bred to hunt lions.

And I can't help but think that was a little bit of a shock to it when it

found out.

So we did all the breeding, all the different pedigrees, thousands of miles

around, a big passing out parade. There's a bloke in a square with a white

coat and a clipboard. And he goes, right, dogs.

And they all go, what, what, what?

Who wants to know what jobs they've got? We all do, we all do.

Okay, Labradors.

Yeah?

Do you like carefully bringing back dead ducks?

Yeah.

That's your job. Amazing. That is amazing.

That is my favourite job. That is my favourite job.

Jack Russell's. Yeah. Do you like shooting down rabbit holes after...

Yeah.

That's your job. Fucking hell. Best day ever. Best day ever.

Miniature poodles. Yeah. Do you like being carried around by elderly

homosexuals?

That's your job. That's your job.

Ridgebacks, yell.

You're hunting lions.

What?

You're hunting lions.

Fuck off.

Yeah, you are. No, we're not.

Lions? We get fucking mashed.

Why can't the Rottweilers hunt lions?

They're shaking babies.

Good boy.

Good boy. You shake that baby if you want. Good boy.

Cheers.

Ah.

So, yeah, this is my first new stand-up show for seven years, if you don't count

the Golden Globes.

Which you shouldn't. The Golden Globes, very different. Oh, God, different vibe.

200 million people watching around the world. And it's live, you know. Big

thrill. But with that many people watching, there comes a bit of stick.

Everyone's different.

Everyone's a blogger. Everyone goes, I was offended.

Why?

He said an horrible thing.

We said loads of horrible things.

Yeah, but that was a thing that I care about.

That's the thing about offense, isn't it? It's about feelings, and feelings

are personal. I don't care about the so-called backlash, you know?

Comedian in hot water.

But my girlfriend Jane, she does worry a bit, and she reads things. Oh, why are

they... What have you said? I go, don't worry about it. They're not coming to

the house. Fuck them.

So... So I wind her up. I pretend I'm going to say much worse

things than I ever would.

Think of that. I have to make up worse jokes than I actually...

Just to scare my girlfriend.

So when I'm doing the Golden Globes, we go out about a week before, it's in LA,

we fly out, right, and I'm writing jokes as the ceremony approaches, and, you

know, they release sort of more presenters, and I take my pick, I go,

yeah, I've got a good intro for them, yeah, I'll do, yeah, Mel Gibson, yeah,

I'll introduce him, yes.

About three days before this last one, right, just to wind Jane up, I said, oh,

I've got a good intro. She went, what? I said, Bill Cosby would make our next

present a sleep on the couch.

Please welcome Helen Mirren.

I didn't do it. I didn't do it.

She went, you're not going to do it. I said, no, no, I'm not going to do that.

Next day, I got her again.

I said, is this too much then? I said, not even Bill Cosby carries enough

tranquilizer to bring down this next magnificent beast.

Please welcome Melissa McCarthy.

I didn't do it. I would never... I'd never tell a joke like that. It's

horrible. I just... I was just doing it to annoy Jane.

I'd never... I'd never even think of that. So don't... Even on the

day, on the way to the red carpet or in the limo, just to wind her up, I said,

oh, I'm going to start off with a funny little one-liner, just an old-fashioned

joke. She went, oh, what? I said, um...

What did the deaf, dumb and blind orphan get for Christmas?

And Jane went, I don't know. I said cancer.

I didn't do it. So you're getting offended at a joke that doesn't exist.

So I'd never say that in public. So to anyone who mattered.

Anyway, so don't.

As it was, I didn't have to worry about offending anyone, because it just

happens, so... And the big controversy last time I did it was a Caitlyn Jenner

joke, right? Oh, outrage on Twitter the next day. And by outrage, I mean a

couple of people going, it was transphobic.

It wasn't transphobic in the slightest. It was a joke about a trans person, but

the joke had nothing to do with that aspect of her existence.

And that's the other thing about offense.

People get offended when they mistake the subject of a joke with the actual

target. And they're not necessarily the same. I'll tell you the joke. You make

your own minds up. Right.

So... It's live, so they go,

and now your host for the 68th annual Golden Globe Awards, please welcome

Ricky Gervais. And they're all clapping, all the actors are looking up, smiling

at me nervously. It's brilliant, right?

So I just go...

Relax. I'm going to be nice tonight.

I've changed.

Not as much as Bruce Jenner.

And I go, now Caitlyn Jenner, of

course. And what a year she's had. Became a role model for trans people

everywhere. Bravely breaking down barriers and destroying stereotypes.

She didn't do a lot for women drivers.

That's a clever joke, and I'll tell you why, right?

It's layered.

No, listen, right?

The subject of that joke is stereotypes. I'm playing with the notion of

stereotypes, right? So I start off saying, she's a real woman. Some would

say a liberal, progressive attitude.

Then I go, oh, if she's a real woman, I hit them with the old-fashioned

reactionary stereotype, she must be a bad driver then, right?

And the target of the joke is a celebrity killing someone in their car.

Let's not forget that, Chloe.

A celebrity killing someone in their car, running home and popping on a

dress. That's the target of the joke, just so we're clear, okay?

She was interviewed about a week later at some press conference for a show she

was launching, now cancelled.

And the press were around and one of them said, what do you think of the

Ricky Gervais joke?

And she went... maybe I should host the Golden Globes, right?

And they tweeted that, and they added me in, because they want a celebrity feud,

you know? It was clickbait, so I rose to the bait, obviously.

I just sent back, let her host, just don't let her drive.

Another website that was in the room, Entertainment Weekly, they tweeted a

different headline, and they added me in as well.

And their headline was, Caitlin finally breaks silence over Ricky Gervais.

I just sent back, at last.

She always breaks too late.

Bring it on.

Bring it on.

But I'm a considered comedian.

I like my jokes to be accurate and my targets to be fair.

So I was engaging these people. I was saying, why is it transphobic? And they

were saying, it's about a trans person. I said, well, that's ridiculous.

That's like saying a joke about Bill Cosby is automatically racist.

It depends on the joke. But I was talking to them. I'm willing to learn.

And I found out my crime was that I deadnamed her.

Now, I'd never heard that term, you know, before a day after the Golden

Globes. And that was saying her old name and even acknowledging that she used to

be a man.

But she did.

I saw him on the Olympic Games.

It was... It was decathlete. He was in everything.

He was all over the place.

Shopper and pole vault.

He won a medal.

He was famous.

He was on telly all the time. But, you know, a big, famous man with a huge... I

don't know, but, I mean, I'm guessing he probably... He's a big... But I've

learnt my lesson. Now, I'd never deadname her now. Now I know it's wrong.

I'd never deadname her now.

But, like, years ago...

When, you know, she was a man.

It was years ago, I'm saying, right? And she went to the doctor, right?

And knocked on the door, and the doctor went, come in, this is years ago.

I'm saying, I've never deadnamed her now, but this is like a flashback before

anyone... So, come in.

And he went, hello, Bruce Jenner. Because that was his name then. The

doctor, you know, this was years ago. And the doctor went...

Oh, I'm Bruce Jenner, you big old... How you doing, boy, you fucker? How you

doing?

You big old lunt. Boy, how you doing, boy?

Come here, you fucker.

How you doing, Bruce, you boy? You all right?

And Bruce Jenner, because that was his name, this is years ago, right?

So, Bruce Jenner went, yeah, not too bad, Doctor, yeah.

Not too bad, right?

And I was like, what can I do for you, Bruce, you fucker? How you doing, boy?

And Bruce Jenner went, because that was his name, Bruce Jenner went, look at

that.

And they went, oh, come on, Bruce Jenner, you know the rules.

He uses his whole name every time for some reason, I don't know why.

Come on, Bruce Jenner, you fucker, you know the rules.

You can't bring your big old pole vaulting pole in here, mate, you know.

And Bruce Jenner went, no, that's not my pole vaulting pole, that's my enormous

penis.

And I thought, oh, right, yeah, seeing as it is your penis, you can bring it in

here. But you should have left your shotputs outside.

And Bruce Jenner went, that was his name, for 58 years, I think.

He went, no, they're not my shotputs, they're my enormous testicles.

That's where I keep my testosterone and my spunk and shit.

And the doctor went, oh, yeah, that makes perfect. I'm a medical man, and

you're a big bloke. Yeah, fucker. How you doing, boy? You're a big... And you

would have a big old cock and balls. They're beautiful. They're a bit

familiar. And I go, no, but you must be very proud of them, Bruce.

And Bruce said, oh, this is going to surprise your doctor.

I want to get rid of them.

And the doctor went, what?

Why? Oh, they get in the way.

Get in the way of what?

Fucking driving, for one thing.

So I'm engaging these people, and I'm saying, but I had to say her old name,

because that gets me into the joke. I say, I've changed, not as much as Bruce

Jenner, and then I do the actual joke. They're like, no, this is my second

crime. I say, she hasn't changed, right? She's always been a woman, because she's

always identified as a woman, and that means she's a woman.

Fine, if that's the rules, you are what you feel. If you feel you're a woman,

that makes you a woman.

Cool. You know, I'm not one of these bigots that think having all that done

is science going too far, you know? In fact, I don't think it's going far

enough.

Because I've always identified as a chimp, right?

Well, I am a chimp. If I say I'm a chimp, I am a chimp, you know?

Pre-op.

But, um... And don't ever deadname me.

Don't ever call me Ricky Gervais again. From now on, you call me Bobo.

So...

I'm going to have species realignment.

I'm halfway there, to be honest. I'm sort of short, with short legs and long

arms. I sort of stoop like that. My back's getting hairier by the day. I've

got fangs. I love nuts.

Oh, I love nuts.

And once, I was at the zoo, and I could tell people were looking at me, so I

just started masturbating.

So... I am a chimp, right?

I am a chimp, if I say I'm a chimp.

And so I've got to live as a chimp for a year, then have hormones, get me all

nice and hairy. That'd be lovely, right? I'm going to stay a male chimp so I can

keep all that, right? A male heterosexual chimp, keep the same

girlfriend.

Jane would be happy. She loves me. She loves chimps, so, you know.

And I reckon that's got to be easier for a man to turn into a chimp. We're so

close than for a man to turn into a woman in many ways. You know what I

mean? A bit of hair and a top lip like that.

as opposed to your cock and balls ripped off and a hole gouged out into... No,

I'm not a doctor, but that is... the gist of it. I know which one I'd rather

have done. And I'm not saying I think chimps are better than women. No way.

Right?

Any ladies here, right? I can't see you, but to me, every single one of you is

equal to a chimp.

So...

So I'll have all that done.

I'll do all that. I'll do all the... I'll retain the ability to speak

English, like in emergencies.

If I'm talking to Jane, I'm going... She's going, what is it, Bobo?

What is it, Bobo? Ah, you left the fucking oven on. There's a fire.

What are you telling me? That if Caitlyn Jenner was being chased by a wolf,

right, and there was a big fence, but she had a long pole, she...

She'd revert. She'd be over that fucking... Easy.

So, how will that end? All that, all that, doing all that.

Right? I'll be legally a chimp. I'll be well, properly chimped up, right? I'll

be able to use chimp toilets and everything, right?

And then I'll be walking along Hampstead High Street holding Jane's hand. Come

on, Bobo.

We don't even hold hands now, so I don't know why she's suddenly all over me just

because I'm a chimp, right?

But we'll be all in love, maybe matching jumpers.

Walking like, ah, come on, baby, ah, in love. Just two guys, ah, ah, ah, ah. And

then if a bigot in a white van slows down and goes, that's fucking

disgusting, I just fling shit at him and run up a tree.

And that's why that joke isn't transphobic, so... Cheers.

So humanity, what is humanity?

What are we? Well, we've touched upon it there.

We're great apes. Not metaphorically, we're literally great apes. We are 98.6%

genetically identical to a chimpanzee. We're closer to chimps than chimps are

to gorillas. We left our common ancestor about six million years ago.

We have the same life cycle. Same life cycle as any other animal, which is our

parents mate, we're born, we grow.

We mate.

Our parents die.

All our friends die.

And then we die.

Now, my seven-year-old niece didn't like hearing that, right?

But I said, you've got to look... I said, stop crying.

I said, you're seven, you know, today.

So...

Any more grizzling and this party's cancelled.

So let's take the first of those, right? Birth.

It's already an odd one for humanity because the human being is born before

the end of its natural gestation period.

And by that, I mean, because of our evolution, our brain is so big, we have

to get that huge head out early. That's why the skull is in parts and supple,

right? And then we have to carry on gestating outside the womb. That's why

we're so useless.

Compare us to other mammals, right? A giraffe is walking along. It goes...

Oh, I'm proper pregnant, right?

I'm going to have a baby giraffe right here, right?

Yeah, there it is.

See you later, right?

And the baby goes, Mum, can I get a... It's got to be fucking ready, right?

We're helpless, right?

Just think of that, right? Nine months, we're just growing in this perfect

environment, just like that.

Just everything's...

It's like being in a little Kate Bush video, right?

And then suddenly, and you're being squeezed out of an hole near an arse.

You're covered in shit. They're screaming. You go, I can't breathe.

Someone goes, yes, you fucking can, right?

That's the first one second of life on Earth. You don't know where you are. You

can't choose where you're born. I was born in a place called Whitley Estate in

Reading, right?

Yeah, no, I wouldn't have chosen that.

I've chosen Hampstead. I did choose Hampstead. It just took me 45 years to

be able to afford it, right?

Very different. Very different, my upbringing, you know, to how I live now.

I know I live a privileged life now.

Hampstead, ridiculous.

Oh, it's a rarefied place, right? It's just like the grandchildren of poets and

painters and me, new money, right?

But... Growing up, it was tough. I don't know what it's like now, but in my day,

my estate was really sort of rough and scary. It felt like wildlife.

I was weak and vulnerable, right? And there was danger around every corner.

The school I went to was on my street, and I ran there every day so I didn't

get mugged or molested. And there weren't a lot of paedophiles in Reading

because the murderers had killed a lot of them, but there was still a couple,

right?

I moved to Hampstead, oh my god, it's no crime.

I saw a knife once in Hampstead, it was a pallet knife.

Just a bloke, just painting, oil painting, in the middle of the street,

broad daylight, no one was gobbing on it or calling him Bender, it was weird.

So, I know my...

Life has changed drastically, but it wasn't always like that. And the reason

I'm telling you this, as a famous person, you sort of read about yourself,

you know, gossip and, you know, Twitter and everything.

And one thing kept cropping up, even when I was preparing for this tour,

people were saying, oh,

oh, he's out of touch.

He's so famous. He's rich.

He's mega rich.

I am.

I could have this place burned down for a laugh.

No, but they say things like, oh, he's an observational comedian.

How can he say things that relate to ordinary scum? And I say... I say,

don't call them scum, all right?

But even the papers, they try and get around to it. I do interviews, and

they'll always say, oh, do you always fly first class?

I go, no, often private.

And the number of times I've answered this question, right, they say, do you

know how much a pint of milk is?

It's meant to make you look out of touch, and I don't know, but that's

irrelevant, right?

Next time a journalist asks me that, I'm going to say, I don't know, mate, but

here's a grand. Run and get me one, will you?

Is that enough?

Is that enough? Yeah.

Another question that I always get, particularly with the posh papers, the

Sundays, they're doing a profile piece, and...

They're still trying to alienate you and make you look different, right? And they

always say things like, no,

you don't have children. I say, no. I say, why don't you have children?

Which is a really odd question to ask someone, why don't you have children? As

opposed to asking people, why do you have children, right?

Let's ask the fat lady in the leggings why she's had eight.

Shall we?

Oh, nine. That one just fell out. That one didn't even touch the sides.

Or disturb a cigarette. That one just, boom.

Don't claim for that.

People say, oh, it's selfish to not have children.

How can it be selfish to not bring a life into the world that doesn't exist

on any level?

It's not as a long sort of cabinet full of potential ghost feats as going, we

want to be born, right?

But I've thought about it, and there's three reasons I don't have children.

Okay, three main reasons I don't have children, and I'll share them with you.

Okay, here they go. Three reasons, right?

One,

there's millions.

The world's overpopulated. No one's sitting around going, oh, Rick's not

having kids, we're going to run out.

Two,

kids are scroungers, aren't they?

I mean, from day one, it's all me, me, me, isn't it?

Feed me.

Clothe me.

Pay for my chemotherapy.

No.

No.

Not my problem, son.

Not my... Luck of the draw, boy. Luck of the draw.

It costs the average household in the West $200,000 to bring up a child,

right? And you don't see that back. They don't want to pay you back. They're not

grateful. They don't go, oh, thanks for having me every day. They go, I didn't

want to be born, right?

Even if they get a top job, right, which they won't, okay, you'll never see that

money back, right? They'll just put you in a home, okay?

And my kid, he'd be born into ridiculous wealth, wouldn't he?

So... he'd be a little cunt.

A little Hampstead cunt.

Running around with all the other fucking little Hampstead cunts.

Being all Hampstead and cunty. I'm a little Hampstead cunt. Yes, I know. I

know, yeah. These are my little cunty friends. Yeah, I know, it's obvious. I

can tell from your little fucking cunty hats that your little hamp...

You little posh hamster." And on the one hand, he'd know he was a little fucking

hamster cunt.

I'm a little hamster cunt. Yes, we know. Everyone knows, right?

He'd know that, right? And on the other hand, he'd know that he could never live

up to being as brilliant as his dad, right?

I'd say, you know, I've worked my way up from nothing, and I gave it to you, and

you're just a little useless hamster cunt. He'd go, yeah, and that would...

Probably prey on his little mind a bit, wouldn't it? Like, 11, 12, he'd sort of

be a naughty boy, run with the wrong crowd, try and get out from under my

shadow, right? And then he'd turn to drugs, and at about 30, he'd come home

and he'd overdose on my Afghan rug. 20 grand, that was, right?

And as he was there, right, convulsing and throwing up his fucking lungs,

right? And with his little posh, high-pitched fucking death rattle,

right?

In little fucking dying words.

He'd go, do you love me now, Daddy?

No. No.

No, I never did, and that's why you're never going to be born. You useless

fucking junkie hamster cunt.

And three...

I'd worry sick about him.

No, I would. I've only got a cat at the moment and I worry sick about her. I

check the door three times when I go out so, you know, she doesn't escape. I put

food and water in every room in case the door shuts and she's peckish for 20

minutes.

A human baby, oh, my God, the responsibility of a human life. I'd

watch it sleep.

You know, we've said how weak and vulnerable they are. It's like, oh, my

God, you perfect little thing, you...

Oh, flesh of my flesh.

Go to sleep in your expensive cot.

Night, night. Sleep tight.

Don't let the bed bugs... Oh.

Dead.

Yeah.

Just... Why?

Why is it dead?

It's just fucking dead.

Look.

Fuck's sake.

Fucking hell.

What a fucking waste of time that was.

Fuck's sake.

Embarrassing. Jane?

What? Come here. I'm in the shower. Come here.

What? Fucking dead already.

I just fucking...

Fucking hell, Jane.

You call that a baby? That is... If Jane

was out, I'd have to text her, wouldn't I?

What could just... Baby's dead.

She'd come back, whoop, what the fuck?

I'd go, yep.

Forget the pampers, lol.

if it made it through the terrifying cot years, right?

And there was a toddler running around head height to my antique tables with

their sharp edges. I had to pad them so it didn't run into it and fucking cave

its head in and die.

And then the social services come round, they say, is this your child, Mr.

Gervais? And I go, yeah. And they go, what happened here then? I go, it was a

fucking idiot.

I did think of adopting for a while a little third world child, because that

would tick all three boxes, wouldn't it? You know? You think of it like, one,

right? I wouldn't be adding to the population problem. I'd be alleviating

an existing problem. A young kid born through no fault of his own into abject

poverty. He would have died without me. I can literally save his life and give

him a great upbringing, right?

Two, he would be grateful, wouldn't he?

He'd want to pay me back, wouldn't he?

Particularly if I let him know that all the other kids in the village, they

weren't so lucky. They didn't make it out.

I'd tell him that early on, so he really bucked his ideas up.

I'd go, I'd go, Tundi, come here.

Come here.

Yeah, yeah.

Go and pop a shirt on. You're not in Africa now, mate.

That's better. Yeah.

Tunde, yeah, water straight out of a tap. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's not free. It's Hampstead. There's a little, you know, but... Yeah,

of course it's safe. Safe, fresh drinking water. Have as much as you

want. Have a bucket full. Straight out of a tap. Fresh drinking water. There

you go.

Go and clean the car.

Go on.

Now I go, look, look.

Do you remember your friends in the village back in Africa?

Yeah, they're all dead.

Because a rich man didn't save them and bring them to Hampstead. So, do you want

to pay me back?

Yeah, yeah, I bet you do. And the good thing about them is they can start work

when they're about six.

I just call up Nike and I go, do you still make your stuff in sweatshops?

Got a great little worker here. Yeah.

A pound a day is fine.

He's got to start somewhere. Yeah, brilliant.

And three, if he ran round and caved his head in and died and the social services

came round and said, is this your child, Mr Gervais?

I'd go, does it look like mine?

I'd go, this is Hampstead. It's obviously broken in, mate.

That's why I don't have kids.

But even though I don't have children of my own, people still show me photographs

of theirs like I give a shit.

I don't mean my own family. They've given up, right?

I've got older brothers and sisters. They've all had loads of kids. Their

kids have had loads of kids. And their kids are having kids. It's like a

pyramid. There's about 50 of them. I don't know all their names. I see them

at Christmas. They come running over, Uncle Ricky. They know I've got a bit of

cash.

They go through my pockets and fuck off.

It's like being mugged by mice, right?

No, I don't mean now. I mean strangers, right? So I can be busy. I can be

working. I can be on the set of a TV show or film or something. I can be

stressed. I can be producing it or directing it.

And you get someone who comes in for one day, like he's got one line or a

stuntman. They come over, they introduce themselves, and I go, oh, yeah, good to

have you. I'll be with you in a minute. Then they hover, right?

And they say, busy?

I go, yeah, yes, yeah.

I go, oh, you work in the weekend?

Not filming, but I'll be in the edit or something. So, yeah.

I'll take in my youngest to ballet lessons.

Oh, great.

Great.

Yeah, she's eight.

No.

I've got a photograph of her here. I want to go, you know what? Show me if

she goes missing.

I'll keep an eye open in the woods. You know what I mean?

But you've got to go through the whole polite rigmarole. You've got to go, oh,

she's beautiful.

Yeah.

It's got to be that long. Too short and it's awkward. They know. You go, yeah.

Too long and it's like, oh.

She's fucking beautiful.

It's a minefield, isn't it?

I'm not out of touch, but I am spoiled.

And there's a difference.

I'm not out of touch. I didn't have any money until I was 40. I've got the same

family and friends, same values.

But I am spoiled.

Because opportunity and privilege spoils you.

And it doesn't take much. I'll give you an example.

First time I started making it in America, The next time we flew, we were

met at the plane by a bloke in a suit and a thing, and he just walked us past

the queue, like that, and straight out the other side. And the first time it

happens, you're sort of horrified. You're going, oh, my God, everyone's

looking at me, pretending to be late. Oh, God, a baseball cap. Oh, God.

Next time we flew, I went, where's that bloke who walks us through? I'm not

fucking queuing, right?

It's quick, right?

And whenever I fly to the States, I've got a place there, but I'm always

working, right?

So... Someone else is paying, right? So I go first class, BA.

It doesn't get any better. Even if I was paying my own way, I'd still go first

class, but Jane would probably be in coach.

It's 10 grand a pop.

That new Planet of the Apes movie is on. She'd love that. She'd be happy, right?

But when someone else is paying, I say, Jane, get up here with me, right?

Front two seats.

Oh, they board us early. We're on the plane about 15 minutes before anyone

else. Oh, my God. They bring around these snacks, these, like, warmed

caramelized nuts in a bowl, right?

Champagne is great. It's like a little day off for me. No phone or anything.

It's like a little holiday flying to the States, right? I could do without the

safety video.

That's always a bit of a downer, right?

I'm totally pointless. If you go into the side of a mountain at 500 miles an

hour... The brace position does fuck all.

Imagine if that worked, right? You're going down, right?

The flames smash. You go, I'll try it, right? You do that.

Ball of flames. You wake up. Everyone's dead.

You go, fucking hell, that's amazing.

That is...

They always use that voice, don't they? They always use that voice, that

calming, hypnotic voice. Like, nothing bad will happen. They're saying

horrendous things, but they're trying to make you think, nothing bad will happen,

because I'm using this voice, so don't worry about it, right? They say things

like, in the event of the plane landing on water, it smashes the fuck to bits,

right?

They say, in the event of the plane landing on water, your life jacket is

equipped with a whistle.

A fucking whistle.

So... The plane hits the water, smashes it a bit.

Everyone's dead except you, by a miracle.

You're bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean.

Four degrees, that water is, right? You've got about 15 minutes before

hypothermia sets in, right? Or eaten by a shark, or you drown.

And you're hoping they've dispatched air-sea rescue.

And you're going, oh, my God, I'm bruised and broken.

I'm going to die. I don't want to die. What happened there? I don't know what

I'm doing. Hold on.

I mean, air-sea rescue.

Now, I don't know if you've ever been in a helicopter.

Of course you haven't, right? But... They're fucking loud, right? It's like

having your head in a washing machine. You have to wear earplugs and then ear

defenders. Your teeth rattle. It's like... Like that. So you're over the

Atlantic Ocean at night, you go...

It's never going to happen.

If you crash, you die, right?

But apart from that, it's brilliant.

Right, so, I was flying Heathrow to JFK just before Christmas, right?

Boarded us early on the plane. She comes round, champagne in a wine glass, like

you like it, Mr. Vase. I go, thank you. She goes off, I go, excuse me, got any

of them warm nuts?

She went, oh, we're not handing out nuts on this flight.

There's a lady getting on who's so allergic that even someone else eating

nuts in the vicinity would cause her to have a fatal reaction.

I went, oh, my God. She went, yeah, I said, oh, of course, yeah.

I was fuming.

I mean, what's that got to do with me? Why can't I eat nuts? Just because

fucking this woman will die, right?

Nuts. I mean, how has she lived this long? If walking by a nut kills you...

If being just near a nut, how has she never been near a nut before?

And how has she lived long enough, having never been near a nut, how has

she lived long enough to earn enough money to be near me on a plane?

Honestly, it's... And if being near a nut kills you, do we

really want that in the gene pool? I mean...

I've never wanted nuts more. I felt that she was infringing on my human right to

eat nuts, right?

And this is how spoilt I am, okay?

I actually had this thought. I thought, oh, no, I wish I'd brought my own nuts

on, right?

And I thought that for about a second, I thought, oh, no, that wouldn't work,

because she'd get on, right? She'd start going, oh, blowing up like a frog,

right?

And die,

right? And then someone would go... Ricky Gervais brought his own nuts on.

So of course I don't take my own nuts on. What I do now before I fly, I have a

shower, and then I rub myself all over in nuts, just in case.

Because then they go, oh, can I have any nuts? I go, oh, no, not nut nuts. A lady

getting on so allergic she'd die. I go, yeah, not a problem, right? Lady gets

on, sits down, starts blowing up like a frog.

I'm going, what's the matter? I'm touching her all over. I go, what's the

matter?

What's the matter, love? And she goes, oh, nuts, right?

And dies, and I go, who's been eating nuts?

I get off, got free.

So I got to America, I went on a chat show, right? Tonight show with Jimmy

Fallon, right? And I told that story, the whole thing, right? And it went

well, audience laughed, great. Went out, bye.

Next day on Twitter, outrage.

And by outrage, I literally mean one person going, how dare you, right?

This woman had seen this. She was like, I saw you on Jimmy Fallon. It was

disgusting. Making fun of my daughter.

How dare you? Children die. Oh, my God, who's this woman? And she's tweeted me

about 15 times.

She starts atting NBC and Jimmy Fallon. I'm going, why is she stirring up

trouble? How many followers? 23. Ignore it. Don't worry about it, right?

And you know when you're being told off, and they use your own silly words

against you, like a teacher going, what, you find so-and-so funny? And because

the teacher's really angry, you go, yes, you do find that thing funny. Whatever

they... She said, would you find it funny if my daughter blew up like a

frog?

Yeah.

Yeah, because you're saying that. Yes.

If you said that at the funeral, I would... Yes. Yeah.

So... Right? And then someone else gets involved, Ohio Mums Against Nuts, right?

And she does a blog, right, and they're talking to each other, and she puts me

in her blog about how disgusting I am, how many children die and all this sort

of stuff. One of them even filmed a little girl, right, and put it on

YouTube and sent me the link, and I opened the link. It was a sweet little

girl, about seven years old, and she just went, Dear Miss Gervais, I have a

fatal nut allergy.

Delete.

Not my problem, right?

Ignore, ignore, ignore, right?

But then one of them said something that reeled me in, just because I'm this self

-professed Twitter police, right? I try and explain to someone every day what

freedom of speech means, particularly in the context of comedy, and particularly

in the context of a joke, that a joke about a bad thing isn't as bad as the

bad thing. It's not even necessarily condoning the bad thing. It could be

anti the bad thing. It depends on the actual joke.

And this woman said...

You should never make jokes about food allergies.

I should have left it, right?

I sent back, I make jokes about AIDS, cancer, famine, and the Holocaust,

right? And you're telling me I should never joke about food allergies.

She sent back, yes, but the Holocaust didn't kill children.

Well... It did.

It was horrible, the Holocaust.

Some would say as bad as food allergies.

Did it kill children?

Jesus.

It did kill children.

Oh, my God, Hitler killed 12 million people, many of them children.

Hitler, I've just got to say, Hitler, you couldn't make him up. He is the

worst human being to ever walk the face of the earth. He's a crazy, evil,

racist, narcissistic serial killer.

Just terrible.

But... If I was throwing a dinner party, and

I'd been slaving all day over a hot stove, right? And I was getting

everything ready, right?

And there was one place left, and I had to either invite Hitler or that little

girl with food allergies.

I know who'd ruin that party more.

You know what I mean?

Everyone's enjoying it. How is everything? He's going, yeah, it's

yummy, right?

He's loving it. I'm going, cheers. How you doing, boy?

She's going, I can't eat that. Oh, fucking hell.

Who wants Ferrero Rocher? Me!

Right? I can't eat them. I'll fuck off home, right?

But that's what the world's like. People see something they don't like and they

expect it to stop, as opposed to deal with their own emotions. They expect

everyone to care about their thing as much as they do, right? And it's why the

world's getting worse. And the world is getting worse.

Don't get me wrong, I think I've lived for the best 50 years of humanity.

1965 to 2015, the peak of civilization for everything, for tolerances, for

freedoms, for communication, for medicine. And now it's going the other

way a little bit. The last couple of years, just a little blip maybe, right?

And I'm not saying this just because I'm old, because that does happen. Old

people say things like, oh, everything was better when I was a kid.

Of course it was, you were a kid.

Everything's better when you're a kid, right?

Being old is the shit bit.

Whatever's happening in the world, being old is the... I wake up these days and I

go, oh, fuck, I didn't die.

Got to do it all again. I'm usually hungover, headache, liver pains. I can't

walk for the first five minutes because I've got no joints in my knees, right?

I'm getting fat again now, right? No, I was thin until I was about 28, like

proper skinny, like nine and a half stone, right? Then I got a job.

And the next sort of 20 years were what I call my eating years.

And I just got steadily fatter and fatter till I reached a peak of

unwellness and blobiness when I was about 48 years old. And it was one

Christmas, I was at home, lying on the floor, right?

And I was saying to Jane, I'm having an heart attack, right?

And honestly, my heart rate was like 130, I felt nauseous, I had

palpitations, I was sweating, because I had eaten 11 sausages.

True story, right?

I was like one of them snakes. You know when you see a big, like, python swallow

a pig whole, and then it's just fucked.

It's just like...

For a week, it's like a duffel bag, just there.

That was me, right?

And obviously, I wasn't having a heart attack, but it worried Jane. She said,

you've got to start looking after yourself. I thought, yeah, yeah, you're

right, thought, yeah.

So I started working out, right? I started working out every single day. I

didn't give anything up, right? I don't eat meat anymore, but I was having like

2,500 calories, 3,000 calories a day, including wine every night, right?

But I burnt it off the next day. Just so I could do all that, I worked out for an

hour and a half every day, running, weight training. I had more time on my

hands than the average person.

I had a gym built in my house. I had no excuse. And I lost about 20 pounds, and

it was great.

But now, I still eat and drink too much, right? But I physically can't.

burn off the calories. I can't do enough because I'm so old and broken and tired.

So I'm going to get steadily fatter and fatter again.

And this time, I am going to die.

I'm losing my hair. It's getting really thin. I know it looks great from there.

Cheers.

No, honestly, in a lift, right, with that light directly overhead and the

mirror, it looks like an x-ray, right?

I'm going to have to buzz that off soon. I'd never wear a wig.

Oh, my God.

Guys, if you wear a wig or a toupee and you think you've got away with it, you

haven't.

Everyone knows.

Everyone knows immediately.

My brain knows a wig has come into the room before I do, right?

I could be at a party or something and it'll go, there's a wig in here. I'll

go, is there? Yes, there is.

Spidey senses for the wig. The way they smile at you like there's nothing wrong.

Telltale signs, isn't there?

I was put off wigs for life, though, by my uncle Reginald. Great bloke. He's

dead now. Died a few years ago, right? I was only little, right? But he went bald

in his 20s. Tragically bald. I mean, he started going bald and his hair fell

out. It might have been something. It might have been alopecia or something. I

don't know. But he was bald for 10 years into his 30s, right?

Turns up one day at our house.

Alvis! What is...

And I remember, I was about eight, and I said to Auntie Edna, what happened to

Uncle Reginald's hair? And she went, it was a miracle.

They were lying, they were just hushing, everyone knew he was bald, right?

But he'd embroiled his family in on the lie, so they had to lie as well, they're

going, yeah, it just grew back, yeah, it's amazing, right?

And there's so many things he wouldn't do, because he was terrified of the wig

coming off, right?

We weren't allowed balloons at parties, right?

Auntie Edna said, yeah, Reg is allergic to balloons. He wasn't allergic to

balloons. He was terrified one of us kids would rub one on our sweater,

right? And his wig would fly across the room.

We've got photos of him in the family album, right? And if he's at a wedding

or a christening and he's holding a baby, he's always holding it at arm's

length, like that.

So he can't grab his wig? It must have been on his mind all the time, right? It

was the only thing he feared, that wig coming off in public, and this

ridiculous lie being exposed.

He was in the army, he was hard as nails, wasn't scared of anyone or

anything, spiders, snakes, roads, wasn't scared of cancer.

How's the chemo going, uncle? Not a problem.

We got a photo of him the last year, I think.

He was 75.

Yeah, it must have been his last year he was alive, right? And it was a hot day,

and he was in the garden in his little trunks, right? And he was a wizened

little man by then, and white chest hair, jet black wig still.

Died in it, buried in it.

He's wearing it now.

A little skeleton with jet black hair, right?

Like posh spice for eternity, no?

But I knew all that was going to happen.

I knew I was going to get old and fat and ill and blind and deaf and shit

myself and be pushed around in a fucking bucket, right?

But you're ready for that because you're warned. You know everything about

getting old. Well, one thing they don't talk about, and so you're not prepared,

and it was a shock to me, right?

I only found out about it recently, and I'm going to share it with you now.

The distending testicles.

See, you don't know about it, right? But it happens in your 50s, right? You know,

I wasn't checking them or anything, but I didn't see them for 20 years, right?

But all I know is, as a young man, they were pert, and now they're like two

plums in a sock, right?

I don't know when it happened, but it was recently, right? They just... And

this is how I found out, right?

So as I've been getting older, and they've been secretly stretching away,

right?

As I've been getting older, I've been getting richer, so my baths have been

getting more and more luxurious, right?

And last year, I moved into a new house in Hampstead, right? I had a big bath, a

big sunken bath.

Oh, south-facing windows. I was in there, like, the first night. Oh, lovely

bath. Sun streaming in. Classical music on. I thought, this is the life. I look

down, and they're floating.

Right?

Now... I've never dreamt that testicles would float. They seem like they'd be

heavy. You could tie things down with them.

Do you know what I mean?

Most people would never see there.

Like in the sea, you've got trunks on. In a shower, they dangle. And baths

aren't usually that deep.

And that was my first thought. Oh, my God, I never thought testicles would

float, right?

And then my second thought kicked in, which was, hold on, this bath's two feet

deep, right?

And I'm sitting on the bottom and they're at the top. What is going on?

And I looked and my testicles are now longer than my penis, right?

Easily, by some way, right? In fact, they've created like a little fleshy

sort of life raft, right?

My penis was dry, just nestled, just floating on top, like that.

Just bouncing around.

I should have given it a little whistle.

No, but I'm just looking at this thinking, this is bizarre, fucking hell,

right? And I thought, maybe it's a fluke. So to test it, I held them under

the water for a minute, and I let them go, and they bobbed up. They're really,

they're really buoyant, right? So you try it when you get home, if you're in

your 50s, right? And a man, obviously.

Or Caitlyn Jenner.

But the world is getting

worse, and I blame the beginning of its demise on social media.

Because Twitter and Facebook, that's where this ridiculous notion bred,

right, and became stable, that it was more important to be popular than right.

Everything was like me, agree with me. It falls into two tribes. Oh, I don't

agree with them, so I'd block them. And now in this post-truth era, people don't

care about the argument. They don't look at the argument. They say, who's saying

the argument?

No, they're not on our side.

It's ludicrous.

And it also bred this ridiculous notion we've always had.

My opinion is worth as much as your opinion.

But now we've got my opinion is worth as much as your fact, which is nonsense.

I get tweets from people saying, well, I believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

Well, I believe you're a fucking idiot then.

You can't have an opinion on the age of the earth, right? You can have your own

opinions, but you can't have your own facts, right? But it was all about being

popular, right?

And even politicians picked up those symptoms.

Politicians tweet now, they want to be popular. We had a referendum about

Brexit because they were passing the buck. They didn't want to make a

mistake. And the other thing is this ridiculous thing of, oh, let's ask the

average person what they think.

Let's stop asking the average person.

Do you know how fucking stupid the average person is?

We still sell bottles of bleach with big labels on that say, do not drink.

Let's take those labels off, right?

For two years.

And then have a referendum.

But it's not just politicians, even real news. The news on TV says things like,

well, tweet us your news.

No, don't let them tweet you the news.

Assault Tyrannosaurus Rex, you liar, right?

There was a big news story last year, right? It was about a terrible train

crash. Now, the train crash had happened about a year before, and there was a big

inquiry. And the results of the inquiry were published this day, and so there

was an expert on the news, and he was saying, well, we've looked at

everything, and we've decided that the speed of the trains on this particular

line were a contributing factor to the accident, so we're going to slow them

down a little bit, and statistically speaking, this should never happen

again, right? That should have been the end of it. But the guy went, well, we

went out and asked the general public what they thought.

So then there was three banal vox pops. The first one said, well, I already pay

£960 a year, so I'm not happy, right?

And the next one said, well, it takes me 45 minutes each way, so it's not good

enough, right?

And the last one said, well, I always say, it's better to arrive at work late

than dead.

Why is that on the news?

And when is that applicable in any situation?

You know what I mean? You go, all right, Ted, you're in early.

Ted?

We've been through this. Remember I said I'd rather you arrive late than dead.

But the big enemy is stupidity, right? I want to share with you the most stupid

tweet I ever got, I think. Now, admittedly, when I first got on Twitter,

I pushed my agenda a little bit. I was an outspoken atheist. Not because I

thought I'd change anyone's opinions, but because I thought it was important

to... tell the other side, you know?

There are still 13 countries where people are put to death just for being

an atheist, and there's people bullied, and I just wanted to say, it's fine to

be an atheist, it's fine to believe in God, and it's fine not to. That's what I

was saying, really.

And then I realised I didn't even have to tweet about religion or atheism, I

could just tweet a fact, and that annoyed just the right people, right?

I tweet things like, happy birthday, Earth, 4.6 billion years old today.

And someone would always go, oh, we know what you're fucking doing. We know what

you're doing, right?

So this is a tweet I got from someone after one of those, I assume, right?

And it was all in capitals, which excited me.

That's the sign of Twitter madness.

Mixed with anger.

It's great, right?

And I looked at his profile, and sure enough, he's a gentleman from Texas.

He's a fundamentalist, creationist.

Christian, right? Which is fine. He loves God. He loves God and fetuses,

mainly.

He loves the fetus from conception to when it turns out gay.

And then he's...

Right,

so remember it's all in capitals. He's shouting at me, right?

Best tweet ever.

Your science, my science.

Science, by the way, is spelled S-C-I-E-N-T-S.

Already good, isn't it? I mean, he's obviously heard the word. He took a

guess.

Never seen it written down, because it's not in the Bible.

So, he's... Your science won't help you.

Well, it will.

It's helping him.

beam this little message up to a satellite and down to me.

Your science won't help you when Satan, of course he believes in Satan. Why

wouldn't he? He believes that God made the universe in six days.

You're not going to say to him, do you believe in Satan? And he's going to say,

a bit far-fetched.

Why doesn't God kill Satan?

That's what I'd ask him. If I was wrong and I met God, and I'd go, oh, you do

exist. He'd go, yeah. I'd go, well, in which case, I've got a few fucking

questions, mate.

In fact, the first one would be, why did you make chocolate kill dogs?

What's... mental?

Also, if you hate homosexuality so much, why did you put the male G-spot up the

arse?

What is wrong with you?

Then I'd say, why don't you kill Satan?

And he'd go, what?

I'd go, why don't you kill Satan? If he does all the bad stuff and you do all

the good stuff, yeah, and you want good stuff, yes, yeah.

I mean, you do want, yes, yeah.

And you could kill him, couldn't you, if you wanted to, yes, because you can do

anything easy, yeah.

Why don't you kill him then?

Because...

Shut up.

Your science won't help you when Satan is raping your British ass.

And he's got a point.

Because if I die and I find myself in hell being raped by Satan, science

has pretty much let me down.

But it's this last line that he just throws away, this line that he signs off

with makes this the best tweet I've ever received, right? Your science won't help

you when Satan is raping your British ass.

I'll be laughing.

So... He's there too.

So he's a fundamentalist Christian who's lived his life by the Old and New

Testament. He dies. He wakes up in hell, right? Which must be...

Off the charts, on the scale of emotional trauma for a... You want to

go, oh my God, I mean, how I... Oh my God, why have you forsaken me? I mean,

that's the worst place. No, it's for eternity. I'm going to be tortured for

eternity. He sees me getting raped, goes... What, he's suddenly over

it, is he?

His day suddenly got a little bit brighter, right?

And like he's not next, right?

So... You see, I'm getting raped, right, by the devil, right?

And he's just there, you fucking atheist scum, right?

And I'm like, yeah, whatever, right? Because I assume it happens all, it's

like an attorney, so I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I might say, watch your

hooves on my testicles.

And they go, why are they so distended?

And I go, oh, like you're Brad Pitt.

You know what I mean?

Sorry, are we talking or raping here? Can we... So

he's like, you fucking atheist. He's probably bored, isn't he? Fucking

atheist every fucking day.

And his little gargoyle comes up and he goes, Satan.

And he goes, what? And I go, yeah, what? And he goes, there's a fundamentalist

Christian up here.

Fuck this. He'd be on him like a ton of bricks with me.

So... I got that tweet, I loved it, and all I did was retweet, right?

And just watch the fun, people piling on, going, ah, loser, and all this. And

he's fighting back really witlessly, saying things like, go fuck your sister,

you English faggot.

That makes no sense at all.

And I forgot about it. Went off, did something, came back. A few hours later,

I'm on Twitter again. I think, oh, what's happening there, right? And it's

still all going off, right?

It's really funny. I'm laughing at all the replies that people are saying

things to him, right?

I'm scrolling down.

There's one tweet just directly to me from this woman. She says, what, you

find rape funny?

No, no.

What? No.

What? Because you find rape funny? No, no, no. Listen, what? Because you find

rape funny? No, no, no. Listen, everyone. Listen.

Right? No.

Right? So I said to her, I said, No, I didn't tweet that.

She went, no, you retweeted it. I went, well, yeah, just to show he's an idiot.

I just said, well, yeah, but you must find it funny. You must find it amusing.

He's like, no, no, it's not a frivolous thing to be laughing. I said, well, no,

I just don't know. So I said, well, it's up to him, isn't it? They go, well, not

really. I said, well, it is up to him. He can do it. So now I'm arguing with

quite a nice, sane person, presumably, who thinks this sort of thing's mental.

But I'm fighting for his right to fantasize about me being raped by

the devil.

Because I'm so conscious of freedom of speech.

What a topsy-turvy world.

Although, her opening gambit annoyed me a little bit as well, because she did

that thing that people do.

She said, she didn't say, what, you find jokes about rape funny. She said, what,

you find rape funny.

And the answer to that is, no, of course not. No one finds rape funny. Not even

rapists find rape funny. Do you know what I mean?

There's never been anyone giving evidence going, well, it was dark and he

was wearing a ski mask and he was giggling. That's never...

So

I sent back, do you mean jokes about rape? She said, yes. I went, depends on

the joke.

Fucking duh, no, it does.

I was going, no, it does, it does.

Depends on the joke.

I said, of course it does. It's about context. It's about the content. I said,

what do you mean by a rape joke?

And she said, even a joke with the word rape in it is unacceptable.

I said, that's ridiculous. It depends what the joke is. And I tweeted that

clip of me in the office going, I think there's been a rape up there.

And everyone gets that because of the context.

And the target is a middle-aged man who's so narcissistic, he'll say the

most horrendous thing to get attention to win a silly game. So you have to

understand the joke and where it's going and where it comes from. And I said,

some jokes don't punch up or down. They don't punch anywhere. They can just be a

little pun, a silly play on words that don't really mean anything, right? And

the example I gave was a joke that went around when I was a kid. Even adults

told it, right? I tell you, it was a woman goes running into a police

station. She says, help, help, I've been graped.

And the policeman says, do you mean raped?

She says, no, there was a bunch of them.

Right?

That is a rape joke, right?

So, and I even said to her, I said, no, I agree.

Yeah, real rape jokes. Rape jokes where they're fucking horrible and the victim

is the target.

They're disgusting. I'd never tell those.

but it depends on the joke, not the word or the subject, right? And I think I

calmed it down. And they agree, yeah, some jokes are worse than others, right?

And she ended it with saying, well, okay, I see your point, but still, I

will laugh at a joke with the word rape in it when I know that no one in the

audience has been raped, right?

I should have left it.

I just sent back, what, a weird door policy?

It's rubbing salt in the wound, isn't it?

You turn up to a comedy gig, you pay your money, then someone says, oh,

before you go in, love, can I just ask you a question?

Yeah.

Have you ever been raped?

I have, yes.

You can't come in.

What? Why?

There's a lady and she says she won't laugh if you're in. Come on, off you go.

But again, that's what the world is like.

People take everything personally. I think the world revolves around them,

right? Particularly on Twitter, right? I don't know. I'm not tweeting anyone. I'm

just tweeting, okay? I don't know who's following me. I've got 12 million

followers. I don't know who's following me. They can be following me without me

knowing, right?

Choose to read my tweet and then take that personally.

That's like going into a town square, seeing a big notice board, and there's a

notice, guitar lessons, and you go, but I don't fucking want guitar lessons.

What's this?

There's a number here. Right, call that, right?

Are you giving me a tar lessons?

I don't fucking want any.

Fine, it's not for you then. Just walk away.

Don't worry about it.

I should say one thing in Twitter's defense.

I mean, I use it as a marketing tool and for fun like everyone else, right?

But one great thing about Twitter, for me personally, I'm very into sort of

anti-animal cruelty. And years ago, it would take... ages to get 100,000

signatures on a petition standing outside Tesco's or something, right? And

that's the magic number, because then it gets heard in Parliament. And I've been

part of many campaigns through Twitter, but we've got 100,000 signatures in

days, maybe, and the law's been changed. So thank you to anyone who's ever

retweeted anything to do with Alan McCourty, because it really makes a

difference. So thank you.

Even something as clear and distinct as animal cruelty, right? You think, no

one's going to argue with that, are they?

Yes, they will, right?

They just want to be heard, right?

I'll tweet something about a bull being tortured in a bull ring, right, for

entertainment, and I'll say, ban bullfighting. Someone always says, what

about the kids in Syria?

What?

Well, I'm not giving you a choice.

You can do both.

I'm not saying, throw that kid back in the hole, there's a bull here.

And there's one thing that I didn't want in my head, but it exists, so we've got

a deal with it now that I found out through Twitter. There's a thing called

the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China every year, and it's horrendous. And we

send... People with money to buy the dogs, to bring them back. But it's a

drop in the ocean. They eat tens of thousands over this weekend.

And I tweet the details, why it's so horrendous, the petition.

People don't really read it.

It's a knee-jerk. People say, racist.

I go, what? They go, well...

We eat pigs and cows in the West. Yeah, we do. I don't. But yeah, I used to,

right? Sure. And you're right, yeah. A pig is worth as much as a dog. A cow is

worth as much as a dog. It's not about the species.

It's what they do to these poor dogs. And what they do is they torture the

dogs first because they think it makes the meat taste better.

They beat them. They blowtorch them. They even skin them alive.

And I saw this picture.

on Twitter of this opening of this ceremony, these two guys in this Chinese

square, and they're skinning this dog alive, and it's screaming, and they're

laughing. I thought, that's the worst thing I've ever seen. Can I tweet that?

I thought, yeah, I've got to. So I tweeted the picture with a petition, and

I just said, one beautiful creature and two ugly cunts skinning it alive.

And it took off. Those are retweets, and it made the press.

I got one tweet back from a woman that said, is that language necessary?

I should have left it.

But I was incensed. I said, you're more offended by a word

than by an animal being tortured to death.

She said, I just hate the C word.

I definitely should have left it.

I sent back, people who hate the C word would hear it a lot less if they didn't

go around acting like such cunts.

Thank you. Good night. You've been fantastic.

Good night.

Cheers. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

I hope you enjoyed the show.

I hope no one was offended.

No, I really do, because that's never the point. I've always wanted people to

know they can laugh at bad things without being bad people. And I think

it's my upbringing. As I say, I grew up in poverty with nothing, right? But the

point was to pay your way, then have a laugh.

That was the men. The women carried on working, obviously.

But it was my older brother, Bob, who's about 11 years older than me, and it was

him who I first saw making these dark jokes right in the bad situation.

While the bad things were happening, he was making jokes about it, and people

were laughing, and I realised, oh, he's healing them. That's what comedy's for.

That's what humour's for. It gets us over bad stuff, right?

Typical Bob story.

He once spent an hour in the pound shop in Hailing Island just asking the

cashier how much everything was.

Just to see if he could break this poor man's will.

And Bob was the first person I saw answer back to authority, and the first

authority you come across are your parents, right? And he'd have an

argument. He'd get in trouble. He'd get sent to bed, right? But I thought, no,

he won the argument, though, right?

And he teased my mum.

So my mum was a typical working-class woman, I think, in that, as I say, we

lived in a shitty area, right? And most of the houses had, like, a bit of mud.

and a stolen bike, and fence posts missing.

She mended the fence, she turfed the garden herself, she painted the step,

because she thought, if it looked respectable, we'd be respectable. So it

was about reputation, I guess.

And so Bob would send her postcards that just read, is that paedophile postman

still reading your mail?

And she'd take it, and she'd go in, and she'd be horrified, and she'd call Bob

and go, Bob, he saw it this time, you've got to stop doing that.

Even at her funeral, my mum died first, and my dad carried on for a year or so,

just drinking beer in the garden, and he went, right? But for my mum's funeral,

we sort of split up into different duties. I went and did sort of catering

and flowers, and Bob went to see the local vicar. That was a mistake, right?

We'd never been to church. He didn't know us. We didn't know him. So he just

said to Bob, tell me about your mum so I can say a few words. And Bob saw that as

an opportunity, right?

So Bob with the straight face said to him, well, she was a keen racist.

And the vicar went, oh, I can't say that. Bob went, okay, puts you like

gardening, right?

And he was trying to get someone past the vicar so the vicar would say

something and make us laugh in church. He didn't warn us, right?

And he did get someone by the vicar. So we're called Ricky, Robert, Bob.

Ricky, Robert, Marsha, and Larry.

Now, Larry is the oldest. He's in his 70s, born in the war, right?

I've always thought he was the sensible one, okay?

I suppose firstborn, weight of the world on his shoulders. In fact, my mum told

me that when he was a teenager, he got a job, and he gave her the money to bring

up the rest of us to help out, right? So he's a stand-up guy, Larry, right?

So Bob gives the vicar the wrong name.

Didn't warn us. We're all in church, right?

Start of the funeral, we're all there, right? Packed out, right? The coffin

comes down.

The vicar goes to his pulpit, all confident with his little notes, right?

And he goes, Eva leaves behind four loving children, Ricky,

Robert, Marsha, and Barry.

And we start like that, right?

Everyone realized was that we're all fucking laughing we see Larry go Right

and the church is like We'd

see Larry go And then it was just our giggling just fits

right and then Larry eventually sort of started doing

And the vicar's thinking, what have I said, right? And he put in a few little

things that the vicar wouldn't know about that he said, set us off again,

just things that were just lies or just slightly wrong.

And my niece and nephew started crying, and I'd come prepared with a little

packet of those tissues. I was giving them those, and they were taking one and

handing it on. But before the funeral, I'd taken all the tissues out, written

on them, carefully folded them back and put them in. So they were pulling out a

tissue, and it said, snivelling fucking bitch, right?

And they're sort of laughing, right? So it was like a madhouse, right?

Everything the vicar said or did, we all started just fucking laughing, right?

And you could see the vicar was visibly sort of shook a little bit, right?

He ended the funeral, and he made a beeline over for me and Bob, right? And

he came and said, sorry, was that okay?

And me and Bob went, it was fucking brilliant, mate.

It was fucking brilliant, mate.

And that's what I'm talking about. We're all going to die.

So we should have a laugh, because if you can laugh in the face of adversity,

you're bulletproof, okay?

And me and my brother Bob had one simple rule, and that was, if you think of

something funny, you've got to say it, right?

Win, lose, or draw, right?

It might go well.

It might go badly, but...

You've got to say it. And bear that in mind as I leave you with this, right?

So, we're all in the car one day, right?

Bob's driving, right? Packed in this car, going on a little day trip to the

beach, right?

And we get stopped, a little security check, right?

And there's a British Bobby there, like that, and he just stops the car.

Bob winds down the window, he says, where are we off to then? Bob went, uh,

Bognor, right? He went, can you just pop the boot, please?

Sorry, he's not there.

Looks in the boot like that.

Goes back up to Bob's window.

Gets that mirror on a stick thing. And he starts just looking under the car

like that.

And as he does that, his helmet falls off, right?

And out of the helmet falls a packet of 20 cigarettes.

And the copper just went, oh, I bet you've always wondered what we kept

under our helmets.

And Bob went, I knew it was some fucking brains.

You've been amazing.

Good night.