This programme contains very strong language, adult humour and discriminatory language
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome your host for tonight, Paul Chowdhry.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
What's happening? Welcome to Live At The Apollo.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I'm your host, Paul Chowdhry.
A lot of smoke coming out here. There's too much smoke, man.
White people are going to shit themselves
when they see a brown man with a beard
with that much smoke.
Sharon looks like she's about to,
"Are we going to get radicalised tonight, John?
"I think this is the bit where he teaches us Sharia law.
"He looks like he's about to take off on a carpet."
This woman is like, "I'm sure he gave me a lift last week."
By the way, I've reinvented myself.
I want to be a family-friendly comedian.
You know what I mean? I want to be family friendly.
You know, I want to appeal to the masses.
I want to be...
I want to be like Ant and Dec, you know.
Not the one that drinks and drives, the other one.
What I'm trying to say is I want to be like Phillip Schofield.
I want to be...
MILD LAUGHTER
Too soon for the Phillip Schofield material.
Obviously we all know what happened to Phillip Schofield.
It was very brave of him.
He came out on national TV as being gay.
On live TV.
He came out to the nation as being gay, right.
He said, "I was married for 25 years.
"I've got two daughters, but I'm gay."
And we all saw that and then we forgave him.
And then the Queen died...
..and there was this massive queue.
Phillip didn't want to get in that queue.
In fact, Phillip Schofield jumped that queue.
And the British public were like, "You're a sick bastard, mate."
British people do not like queue jumpers.
You jump a queue in England,
you're a wrong'un, mate.
White people love a queue, innit? English people love...
I've been in the middle of a field before,
no-one else around,
"Are you in a queue, mate?"
"There's cows around and shit, Dave."
Even the word queue is long in the English language, isn't it?
Why isn't it just one letter Q? Why is it Q-U-E-U-E-U-E-U?
What's with the E-U-E-U?
It's like the letters are in a queue to get to the front of the queue.
I went to a gay club with my friend.
They said, "Get to the back." Right.
Turns out we were in an LGBTQ.
And Phillip Schofield's making a comeback now.
We've sent him to a desert island like Jeffrey Epstein.
Do you know how I found out Phillip Schofield got cancelled?
I put the news on, right.
Put BBC News on.
And Huw Edwards told me.
CROWD LAUGHS
You can't make this shit up.
I couldn't even get my head around what Huw Edwards did.
Apparently, he made indecent images of children.
I can't even wrap my head around it.
And let me give you some advice tonight.
Don't Google, "How do you make indecent images of children?"
I've been blocked from Google.
I'm the first British comedian, by the way,
to perform in Saudi Arabia.
Thank you.
Obviously, in this country, you know,
you can say what you want onstage.
Over there, you can't say certain things like...
..jokes.
Jokes are illegal in Saudi Arabia.
You know what it's like in London.
You can just swear at someone in the street.
That's a hate crime in Saudi Arabia.
You know what it's like in London.
"Here, wanker!
"Slag."
"Who's that, mate?"
"It's me mum and dad...
"It's Wanker and Slag, John."
You do that in Saudi, you'll get arrested.
I got into a road rage situation, right.
Some guy rammed into the back of me,
which is also illegal in Saudi Arabia.
Obviously, you know, in this country, uh, alcohol.
You know, like Saudi Arabia, alcohol is illegal.
It's considered haram.
It's forbidden in the Islamic culture.
Whereas in this country, alcohol is halal.
Innit?
This country was built on alcohol.
You know, when we colonised...
Sorry. You know, when you colonised...
CROWD LAUGHS
I'm British, but only so far back.
Now you walk around in London, right?
Especially like London.
You walk around in London with your mobile phone out, right,
some kid on an electric bike
will snatch that phone out of your hands
and ride off with it.
And the police can't chase them in case they fall off their bikes.
And they give you a crime reference number,
but you got no phone.
You do that in Saudi Arabia,
they'll chop your hands off, stick you in a prison cell for 27 years,
and you come out, you'd be stealing a phone with your foot.
I'm not saying we should chop their hands off in this country.
I'm not a conservative MP.
What I'm saying is
there needs to be more stringent sentences in England, innit?
Like, stick them in a prison cell
with some ex BBC children's presenters.
And then if they get out, they're free to go.
Had a great time at the London riots.
Anyone go?
Yeah, you went.
Sounded like he's on the wrong team.
You know, I grew up in the 1970s.
It was proper racist, England in the 1970s.
Now it's different,
but I used to hear phrases when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s,
"They're all coming over here, mate. They're nicking our jobs."
What jobs?
I mean, what's your job, Abdul?
Admissions officer.
Admissions officer? For a university.
Oh, for university. You had to make that quite clear.
Admissions officer.
You ain't nicking shit.
I'm looking for the Asian people
that are more interesting than this bastard.
It's a pretty white audience tonight, isn't it?
Free tickets. I thought there would be more of us.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
You, mate.
What's your job?
Pricing analyst.
Pricing analyst?
Yeah. You're nicking their jobs.
I've never heard an Indian be a pricing analyst before.
"Yeah. What's your job, mate?"
I'm a doctor in A&E.
"I could do that, you slag.
"Anyone could do that, mate."
And I was watching the...
I saw on my social media there was a Sikh guy, right.
I'm a Sikh. Full beard, turban,
and he was on the right wing side.
He was like...
"The country has failed us.
"Government has failed us.
"Country finished."
I thought there was a glitch on my feed.
I thought I was watching AI.
I thought I was watching an artificial Indian.
I bet there's racist white people at home watching that going...
"He's nicked my job.
"We used to do that, mate.
"They've nicked everything, in't they?"
"Country has failed us."
That's a proper Cockney London accent,
you know what I mean?
We're in London. You know...
You know the kind of people that make us proud to be Londoners.
You know, the kind of people, football fans that go to Spain
and other countries on away games
and take a shit on their doorsteps
and, you know, piss in their cafes.
The kind of people that make us proud as English football fans.
"It's coming home, mate."
It's never coming home.
It comes home, you're just going to send it back to its own country.
"Trophies, go home. Immigrants, go home."
By the way, the Lionesses,
the female football team,
won the Euros.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Know what I mean? 2022, the Lionesses won the Euros.
No-one's talking about that now.
Cos women are better than us.
Innit?
And there was no riots at the stadiums.
There was no violence.
How did England football fans celebrate?
This is a true story.
Dave went down to Leicester Square when we got to the Euros
with a bag full of fireworks.
And then Dave took his mate into the middle of Leicester Square
and bent him over,
pulled his pants down,
and then Dave stuck a firework up his arse.
And then Dave lit that firework and shot it into the sky.
I remember seeing that
thinking, "I'm proud to be British."
Protect the NHS, save lives. Shove a firework up your arsehole.
Imagine me and you, Abdul, right...
..went to Leicester Square with a bag full of fireworks.
And I bent Abdul over.
And I gently pulled his pants down,
and I went to shove a firework up...
Even before I'd done that, police would be like,
"IC4 - two darkies in the middle of Leicester Square.
"Shoving a firework up his arsehole. Definite terrorism.
"Shoot to kill, shoot to kill.
"Definite terrorism. Shoot to kill."
White people, "Shove a firework up me arse, Dave."
You see, that's what you call white privilege.
Cos Abdul wants me to shove something up his arse,
but it's not a firework.
"You're always taking the piss
"out of English people, in't you, Paul? Eh?
"Who would you support if England played India? Eh?
"Who would you support if England played Pakistan in the Euros?"
I noticed some people didn't get that joke tonight.
Don't explain it to the person sat next to you.
If they didn't get it, they shouldn't be here,
the thick bastards.
You know the kind of English people,
they're obsessed with Indian culture.
Indian food is the biggest cuisine in England.
"I love to go for a curry.
"Yeah. Let's go to Dishoom. I love a curry.
"Oh. It's lovely, Dishoom.
"It's really good Indian food. Yeah, I love it."
That's Indian food for white people.
Asian people don't go to Dishoom. We go to...
GUTTURAL HACK ...Kebab and...
GUTTURAL HACK ..Karahi.
Because white people don't know.
"It's all the same, mate."
You don't know the differences.
There's so many different types of Asian people, by the way.
You know, you got the vegans, we've got the Hindus.
I don't know if you've got any Hindus.
CHEERS FROM CROWD
Yeah, they're the original vegans, the Hindus.
See? No energy left, no protein.
Yeah.
Hey...
SNORES
Original vegans.
Then you've got the Punjabis, like me.
The Sikh Punjabis.
AUDIENCE CHEERS
A bit more aggressive.
And then you've got the Punjabi Musulmans - the Muslim people.
SINGLE CHEER FROM CROWD
Still you? What, the only one?
"Yeah, it's still me."
It's the Pakistani Muslims.
Yeah. Which is more...halal.
That's where the halal food comes in.
Then you've got the Bengalis,
which is also halal,
but with a bit more oil in it.
You need to know about this.
I'm educating the white people here, innit.
Cos I know you...
"Let's go for a curry, mate. I'm pissed.
"I need something to soak up this booze.
"I'm lashed, man. I need a curry."
Cos you know why there's so many Bengali restaurants in this country?
Because when the Bangladeshis came to England,
they couldn't get jobs in Indian restaurants
cos Indian people wouldn't employ them in Indian restaurants, right.
So what they did is opened up Bengali restaurants
in Brick Lane and everywhere,
because white people can't tell the difference
between Bengalis and Indians. It's like...
"This is Bengali... Call it Indian restaurant.
"We're Bengali.
"They don't know shit. Call it Indian.
"White people don't know shit. Call it Indian, bastard.
"Nobody going Bengali restaurant. Call it fucking Indian."
"Let's go for a curry, mate. I'm lashed, John."
And the Bengalis saw them.
"They're coming.
"White people are coming.
"Get the oil! Get the oil!
"More oil!
"More oil.
"Chicken! Little chicken."
"Oh, this is tasty, John.
"This is... I gotta take a shit while I'm eating it.
"It's going right through me, mate.
"This is nice, mate.
"What is it? What is it, Abdul?"
"It's a petrol special."
There's so much oil in Bengali food, right?
How come Just Stop Oil don't go to those restaurants?
What a great job Just Stop Oil are doing, eh?
We admit about 3% of emissions in the world.
Let's see Just Stop Oil try that in China.
Let's see them try that in India.
I know they lie down on the M25.
"Let's go and lie down and stop emergency services
"getting to hospital. It's going to be great."
"Yeah, it's going to be great." Try that in Mumbai traffic.
They'd be lying down in the road. He'd go...
"White people lying down on the road?
"Drive, drive, drive.
"Reverse. Kill him! Bastard!"
Biggest show on TV at the moment, all these dating shows,
Love Is Blind.
It's the biggest show on TV for dating.
Nicking all these ideas from us.
Love Is Blind.
What, you meet a total stranger
and you meet for the very first time on your wedding day?
We've been doing that for years!
Innit, Abdul?
That's where you met your cousin.
White people are a lot more supportive with their kids.
You know, like...
"Marry whoever you want, love.
"I'm going to support you no matter what."
You're Asian, you know Musulman.
"Indian must marry Indian.
"Not white, not black, not Chinese. Indian. Indian, bastard."
Innit? We can't do that.
But when the kid gets a bit older, when he gets about my age,
the family's, "Just marry something.
"Just get you fucking married.
"White. Black. Chinese. Transgender. Nonbinary.
"Sam Smith, bring Sam Smith, bastard.
"Marry the...the mother."
Remember that, Abdul?
We weren't even allowed to watch a kissing scene on TV.
Innit? Like, "No, please, please."
Remember, what did you do when a kissing scene came on TV?
Didn't look.
You didn't look.
Pretended you were blind.
I thought... I had to pretend I was blind
for the first ten years of my life.
"Shut it, bastard! Throw the TV out the window."
I'm...
English people sit there with their kids.
"Here, son, have a look at that, mate.
"Get me the remote. Turn it up, son.
"Have a look at that. Oh, call your sister downstairs.
"He's giving her a good pounding, son.
"Look at that, mate."
"Who's that, Dad?" "It's me and your mum, that is.
"It's when you were conceived, you little slag."
Are you ready for the show tonight?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for Ania Magliano.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hey, everyone. How's it going?
Are you well? AUDIENCE CHEERS
Oh, my God, it's so nice to be here.
Look, I'm just going to get straight into it, right.
This girl that my friend and I went to school with
posted this quote on her Instagram page.
It's quite a famous quote. Maybe you have already heard it.
It goes like this,
"Big minds talk about ideas.
"Medium minds talk about events.
"Small minds talk about people."
And we bitched about her for so long.
Grow up. Do you know what I mean?
I went on her Instagram to see what she does now.
Her job full-time is selling crystals.
It's like small minds may talk about people,
but tiny minds think that rocks can cure arthritis.
Just by means of a cheer, who here likes gossip?
CHEERING
OK, thank God. The rest of you are liars and cowards.
I don't believe you.
I love it so much. I do it all the time, right?
There's one situation that I've noticed
is always more likely to make me gossip.
And that's if I feel a bit socially awkward.
Like, I feel like the other person is losing interest
and I need to keep them entertained.
So, like, if I was a spy, right,
and I was captured by the enemy
and they were sort of torturing me
to try and get information out of me,
they were pulling out my fingernails one by one,
they were holding a gun to my head,
they were waterboarding me
for hours and hours and hours on end,
I wouldn't say anything.
But if they started to look bored...
If one of the torturers, like, reached for his phone,
I'd be like...
"Oh, my God, I'm not supposed to tell you this."
I just think gossip has got a bad reputation
because of all this historical stuff like the Bible.
There is so much stuff in the Bible that says that you shouldn't gossip,
which is so rich coming from a book whose entire vibe is gossip.
Like, I don't know if anyone here has actually read it,
but the New Testament literally starts like...
"And...
"..she was a virgin."
That's such good stuff. It's so scandalous.
Like, I feel like if that was happening in this day and age,
it wouldn't be a religious text.
It would be a Daily Mail clickbait headline.
You know?
"Virgin gives birth in barn. The father will shock you."
I would have loved to be around in religious times.
I think I would have had so much fun.
Obviously, I'd be a woman. I'd have no rights.
I wouldn't actually mind
just cos I'd be there spreading the stories of what was going on,
and there was so much to spread.
I'd be there with all the other women,
we're grinding grain into flour.
That is actually what they did. I Googled it.
And I'd be like,
"Oh, my God, you won't believe what he's done now.
"So get this.
"He invites them all round for supper.
"He says it's the last one.
"It's like we get it, you hate hosting.
"He washes their feet.
"Gross.
"And then he goes, 'One of you is going to betray me.'
"Honestly, what a drama queen."
And then, like, four days later, or however many it was,
we'd all be back and I'd be like...
"Oh, my God, you won't believe what he's done now.
"So you know how he got crucified?
"Yeah, we all watched. He was literally dead.
"Well, he's back."
I would have been one of the Real Housewives of Jerusalem,
is what I'm saying.
I would have absolutely thrived.
I get worried that I'm not interesting enough as a person.
I did this thing recently that I got very obsessed with.
I got very obsessed with the Myers-Briggs test.
Give me a cheer if you know what that is.
AUDIENCE CHEERS OK, cool.
So for anyone who doesn't know,
the Myers-Briggs test is basically this personality test.
It says that everyone in the world
is one of 16 different personality types.
It's like astrology for men.
And it will tell you your personality type with four letters.
So you could be like ENFP.
That's a type. INTJ.
CUNT.
I did it, I got ENFP - 100% extroverted.
That's bad, that's bad. I know that's bad.
I was like, "Oh, my God, that probably means I'm so intense.
"I'm so difficult to be around.
"I'm probably too much for a lot of people."
And it said only 0.05% of people get 100% extroverted.
And I was like, well, where are they?
You know, where are my people?
And then I realised...
..they all work at Lush.
I'm not sure if everyone's familiar with the soap shop Lush,
but it's basically this cult on the UK high street.
And what happens is you get one millimetre over the threshold
and someone's like, "Hi, welcome to Lush,"
and someone else is already rubbing soap in your arm
and someone else is going down on you.
It's intense.
All the staff really want to get to know you.
They are all weird.
They all look like when you open up a new game of The Sims,
and it randomly generates a starting character for you to use
and none of their body parts match yet.
You know, they've got like a nose ring, blue hair and a gilet.
They're freaks.
I used to work at Lush.
I haven't worked there in a long time.
I did learn quite an interesting thing whilst working there.
It's very easy to get stuff from Lush for free
because they have a policy called Random Acts of Kindness,
and what that means is that if someone comes in
and they're having a bad day,
a staff member is allowed to give them something for free
to cheer them up, which is quite nice, right?
I do worry that it comes across a bit like
you're having a bad day and you really need a wash...
..but you can use it to your advantage.
If you go in and do something like this, they'll be like,
"Hey, welcome to Lush. How's your day going?"
And you just go...
"Oh, I'm having a really bad day, actually."
"Oh, my God, what's going on? You can talk to me about it."
"OK, well, my...my boyfriend actually just dumped me."
"What? Oh, my God, that's so awful.
"What happened? Did he give you a reason?"
"He said I had such dry skin."
There you go. Little free soap for you all.
You're welcome.
As soon as I stopped working at Lush,
I redid the Myers-Briggs test.
I'd actually gone down.
Isn't that interesting?
I'd gone down to 80% extroverted.
I want to keep going down.
I want to get to a place where I'm 0% extroverted
and I just hate people.
I hate people, I hate the sight of people.
Any time anyone wants to speak to me,
I'll just want to spit in their face and hope they die.
And then I'll get a job in Zara.
My main anxiety, though,
is that I'm not, like, sexually adventurous enough.
I'm a 26-year-old woman.
A lot of my friends are very sexually adventurous people.
I'm not sexually adventurous.
I'm not even that adventurous adventurous.
I've lived in my flat for three years.
I still haven't tried one of the hobs.
Back left.
What's she up to?
Let her keep her secrets, that's what I say.
But the most sexually adventurous thing I ever did,
I did it when I was single.
When I was single,
I ordered the number one vibrator on the Lovehoney website.
And the Lovehoney website is a sex toy website
for those of you pretending not to know.
I kind of ordered it out of spite, right?
Because one of my exes called me a prude,
which I think is such an extreme thing to call someone.
I don't think I did anything to warrant that.
The only thing I can think of maybe,
is once I said that I don't like morning sex.
That's not a big deal.
That doesn't mean that I'm not a sex positive.
I just don't think you should do something
that disgusting in the morning.
Not whilst the blackbird is singing his morning tune.
But I went on the website. It was late at night.
I just ordered the first one on the list
cos I thought, "That'll be good. That will probably be quite nice."
The thing that arrived is so terrifying.
It plugs directly into the wall.
It has one of those on the end of it.
It uses mains electricity.
It needs to be PAT tested.
I just find that so threatening
cos I think what that's basically saying is,
"What I'm about to do to you
"couldn't possibly be done with a battery.
"I'm gonna need that same stuff that powers your fridge."
It's huge. It's bigger than this.
It looks like a piece of farming equipment
from the Industrial Revolution.
But it's called a Wand.
There is nothing magical about it.
I've never seen this type of vibrator before.
All the vibrators that I've seen advertised online
are very small and portable, and they're not making big claims.
They're just happy to live in your bedside drawer
and they'll be there like,
"OK, girl, I'm here if you need me.
"Like, if you and your partner get like, super, super drunk one night,
"maybe you could experiment with me for a little bit.
"Honestly, I might not do anything,
"but I might speed things along for you a little bit.
"Either way, no worries if not."
Whereas my vibrator is just next to the bed like,
"Do you want to meet God?!"
Not really.
It doesn't even fit in the bedside drawer.
It's just curled up on the floor like a python.
And after it arrived, I was like, "Is this the right thing?"
Cos I checked on the website cos I thought maybe it got mixed up
with like an order meant for Guantanamo Bay.
It was the right thing.
Not only that, I read the description for the first time.
It said in the description,
"This is the world's most powerful vibrator."
I don't think I need that.
I need, absolute max, a whisper on the wind.
The world's most powerful vibrator.
You shouldn't be able to buy that without a licence.
Underneath as well, it said,
"The vibrator will turn off automatically after 20 minutes
"for your safety."
21 minutes and there's a danger of death.
I can't even... I don't even want to share.
It costs £90.
So I felt like I had to try it because I spent so much money.
And I don't even have a plug next to my bed.
I had to get the extension cable.
That felt desperate.
I turned it on onto the lowest setting.
It had eight settings.
I turned it on to setting one. Rrrrrr!
It was so loud! I was like,
"There's nothing private about this experience.
"The neighbours are going to think
"I'm having a new kitchen put in at midnight.
"They're going to call the council.
"Well, no, they're not calling anyone.
"They don't have any power right now."
I tried it just for like one, maybe two seconds.
And I was like, "I can smell burning.
"I can't use this thing.
"It's going to sand me down. It's going to erode.
"I'm going to be flat over.
"There'll be nothing left, like Barbie."
But it had eight settings.
I thought, "I have to see what setting eight does."
Not on myself. I know my limits.
I just turned it up to setting eight in the sky.
Fuck me.
I was like, "I'm going to rip a hole in the space-time continuum.
"I'm about to meet my granddaughter.
"She's going to be flat over like a pebble as well."
I can't use it.
It's too much for me, and I can't return it
because it has technically been used
and it's really hard to sell.
And that's actually why I'm here tonight.
Until then, I'm just going to sleep with it
under my bed as self-defence.
Thank you so much. I've been Ania Magliano.
Enjoy the rest of your night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Ania Magliano.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Are you ready for your next act?
CHEERING
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage, Ian Smith.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Oh, hello, Apollo.
Are we well?
CHEERING
Yeah. Very exciting.
It's good to be here. My name is Ian.
I come from a little town in East Yorkshire called Goole.
SMATTERING OF CHEERS
Yeah, a couple of Goolies in!
If you don't know Goole,
it's just a stone's throw away from York,
if you throw that stone onto a two-hour train journey.
And it's a weird town full of weird people.
I'll give my favourite example.
So, I went back there recently.
I saw a man on a mobility scooter just driving around.
A kid threw an egg at him,
but then the man stood up off the mobility scooter,
he ran after the kid
and he punched that kid in the face.
That made me proud to come from Goole,
one of the few towns where you get to see benefit fraud live.
My housemate, he's weird.
35 years old, still draws a little line on his milk in marker pen
to know where the level was.
I think that's stupid, but I get my own back.
I buy my own milk and I use that to top his milk up
just above the line.
Just fucking with his head slowly.
He's confused.
He's looking at it. He thinks the milk is growing.
I have sat and watched him Google the phrase, "Does milk expand?"
I'm in there.
And my side of the fridge,
it's looking pretty good at the minute.
I don't mean to brag so early on, but I've got Gu puddings in there.
AUDIENCE CHEERS
Yeah, I'm doing all right.
If you don't know what a Gu pudding is, let me explain them to you.
They're these posh little puddings.
They come in a glass ramekin.
You eat the pudding, then you wash out the ramekin
and you look at it and you think to yourself...
.."I'll do something with this.
"I'm gonna do something with this ramekin."
Tell you the first thing you do,
you put it in a drawer with 25 other unused Gu ramekins.
I've got a drawer in my kitchen.
It's got ten Gu ramekins and a packet of Imodium.
I don't want to know what that is for.
Anyone taking Imodium tonight?
SOME CHEERS FROM CROWD
Wow.
A lot of you.
Horrible interval, I imagine.
I think Imodium is the best medication.
Stops you shitting yourself,
but crucially, it's got some of the funniest
potential side-effects on the packet.
If you look on the side of an Imodium packet, it says,
"If you take Imodium, you may suffer from a loss of libido."
Oh, the diarrhoea does that for me.
I'm not worrying about my sex drive when I'm shitting myself like this.
What sort of psychopath is mid diarrhoea...
..reading the words,
"Lose my libido?" No, thank you, then.
"I'm feeling pretty sexy and confident at the minute.
"Oh-ho! Going out tonight.
"Might get lucky in between these frequent, horrendous toilet stops."
I don't know.
It's hard being a Northerner living in London.
That's my situation at the minute. I'm a Northerner living in London.
I get patronised all the time.
People hear my accent, they assume I'm stupid
rather than getting to know me and working it out that way.
Look, a lot of the time, they are right.
I only found out two years ago
that American people call aubergines eggplants.
Two years ago I found that out.
I found it out because I overheard two American people
talking about eggplants.
And my first thought was,
"These two absolute morons.
"An eggplant? I think they're trying to say chicken.
"An eggplant?
"Are you calling a cow a beef tree? What's wrong with you?"
Yep. Hands up. I'm the idiot in that situation.
Fair enough.
People don't like the Northern accent.
Like, I was on Radio Four last year,
doing a bit of stand up,
and I received multiple complaints.
And look, not because of anything I was saying,
like the content of the stand up.
All my complaints were about how I pronounce the letter H.
OK. And I get the sense in the room,
you're not going to be on my side for this story.
I say it wrong, I'll put my hands up.
I say it wrong, I say haitch, it's supposed to be aitch.
Big old difference there, isn't there?
I think any normal people would not give a shit about this,
but people do.
I got a lot of emails.
I got an abusive tweet from a woman called Margaret.
She wasn't happy.
She said, "I was enjoying listening to Radio Four
"until Ian Smith came on.
"Someone needs to teach him how to speak properly.
"It is A-I-T-C-H not H-A-I-T-C-H."
Has anyone here been in a position
where you've had to have a letter spelt to you?
A letter?
A letter is...is one, isn't it?
A letter is one-letter long.
Yeah. Thank you.
A-I-T-C-H.
Margaret has spelt a letter to me with five letters.
One of those letters is the letter she's spelling to me.
She's lost her head here, Margaret.
And the thing that upset me most about Margaret's tweet.
That woman had not tweeted in five years.
Five years.
Her last tweet five years ago was,
"Beautiful weather outside.
"First goldfinch of the season on my bird feeder.
"Bliss."
And she's put her laptop screen down.
She's lived in that blissful life for five years.
And nothing's bothered her in five years.
And not just five years, by the way.
Does anyone here remember the last five years?
They're the shittest five years of our collective memories!
Nothing's bothered Margaret, though.
Pandemic - straight over her perm.
She doesn't give a shit about that.
Cost of living crisis, not bothered.
Wars rampaging around the world,
she's probably rolling her eyes at the news.
I said haitch on the radio...
..she's heard that and gone, "For fuck's sake!
"I will not stay silent."
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Looking round the house for her laptop.
"Where is it?
"Where did I put my 2018 Dell laptop?"
Getting it out.
Blowing all the dust off the keys.
"What's my login?"
There's no way she remembers her login after five years.
She had to stay angry at me for the amount of time it takes
for her to reset her own password.
Livid throughout that bit
where she's clicking on fire hydrants
to prove she's not a robot.
"That's a fire hydrant.
"I know what a fire hydrant is.
"I'm a human being.
"A-I-T-C-H-U-M-A-N - human."
Yeah.
It's difficult to know whether that applause is for me or for yourselves
for working out the spelling bit there.
I'm getting a dog. Very excited about that.
Getting a dog. Yeah. CROWD CHEERS
I'm going to call my dog I Wish I Had A Dog, right?
Cos then when it runs off in the park, I get to go,
"I Wish I Had A Dog! I Wish I Had A Dog!"
And when it comes to me, everyone will be like...
"What is that guy capable of?"
More exciting news - I've got a girlfriend. Very exciting.
Yeah.
She's called I Wish I Had A Girlfriend.
Shouted in the park.
It does work sometimes. It does work.
But me and my girlfriend, we had...
We had a big holiday recently. We were in New Zealand.
Very exciting. AUDIENCE CHEERS
Yeah.
We were in a place called Auckland
and we visited this tourist place called the Glowworm Caves.
Now, if you don't know what the Glowworm Caves are,
it's very difficult to describe them to you without sounding patronising.
They're...they're caves.
There's worms in them.
You're not going to believe what they're up to.
I was very excited to go
until I read a one-star review on TripAdvisor.
This woman, she wasn't happy.
She said, "Do not go.
"There is a little girl who cries throughout."
There is.
Not, there was when she went.
There is.
She thinks that's a permanent fixture of the Glowworm Caves.
Her name is probably Margaret. That's what's happening there.
I've got one criticism of the Glowworm Caves,
and it sounds pretty pathetic,
but you don't get enough time with the worms.
Do you know what I mean? You're in and out. It's a tourist trap.
And they tried to pad out our experience
by putting us back on the bus
and telling us that we were going to a second secret location,
and we did not want to do that.
We wanted to stay in the location we booked.
We're on a bus. We don't know where we're going.
That's a kidnapping.
So about an hour later, we arrived at a farm.
Very similar set up to this.
There's an empty stage, we're all sat in the audience.
A man comes on the stage with this level of confidence,
and it's crucial you know we have no idea why we're there.
And he comes on and he goes,
"Who here is ready to see a live sheep shearing?!"
Uh, none of us.
No-one is ready to see a live sheep shearing.
I don't know if you've been told this.
We booked a Glowworm Cave.
But he just thinks we're being shy.
He's straight back at us, "I can't hear you.
"I said, who's...?"
And we're going, "No, no, no, no, no. We've heard you.
"We can't do confused silence any louder than this."
So he goes to the back of the room, lifts up a hatch,
a sheep comes running out.
Cos he's always doing the sheep shearing,
whether we're ready for it or not.
This sheep, it's like running around the stage.
And I've never seen an animal do this before.
When it saw an audience, it did like a double take.
It just sort of went...
Well, even the sheep isn't ready for a live sheep shearing.
There's only one man ready for a live sheep shearing.
This psychopath at the back,
just like...just stalking the sheep,
until eventually he runs and jumps on top of the sheep,
gets it in a headlock.
He's kicking the legs of the sheep
so it ends up on its arse.
He's got it like that. He's got a microphone.
He ducks behind the sheep
so he can do a voice for the sheep.
As if he's thinking,
"If they can see me, they won't believe the sheep is talking."
Just kind of like that.
And he just goes,
"Hello, everybody.
"I'm about to get me haircut."
I'm watching like,
"This is the most brutal thing I've ever seen in my life."
And the whole thing's ruined
cos they've got a little girl who cries throughout.
Thank you very much, guys.
This has been brilliant. See you later. Thank you.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Ian Smith, ladies and gentlemen.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
A big round of applause for the acts you saw tonight -
Ania Magliano, Ian Smith
and I've been your host, Paul Chowdhry.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE