This programme contains some strong language and adult humour.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
your host for tonight...
MUSIC: Stop The Cavalry by Jona Lewie
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Ahhhhh! Merry freaking Christmas!
CHEERING
I am Rosie.
I am your gay Christmas tree.
And if you don't know me,
this is what your voice
sounds like on Zoom...
LAUGHTER
..when your internet is shit.
I'm telling you.
Two fricking years I had...
"Rosie, there's something wrong with your...
"..connection!"
And I'm like, "No!
Only the connection between
my brain and my mouth hole.
LAUGHTER
You get on board...
..or you bugger off.
LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE
CHEERING
I am so glad you're all on board.
I am your host for the evening.
I will be here all night,
guiding you through,
so let's be honest.
It'll be a long...
LAUGHTER
CHEERING
If you've got any
New Year plans...
..for 2024...
LAUGHTER
..I would cancel them now.
I love Christmas,
I do.
Apart from wrapping.
Not for me.
I average one present
an hour.
Not good. This year,
I've put all the presents
in Tupperware.
LAUGHTER
Easy peasy.
A bit confusing for my mum
because her present
was Tupperware.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
My favourite part of Christmas
is the Nativity.
As a little girl,
I loved it.
And, every year,
I'd get so excited to learn
what my role was.
And three years in a row,
I got to play...
..disabled innkeeper's wife.
I need to clarify
that it was the wife who was disabled.
Me.
But even as a little girl,
I was a clever bugger.
And I read,
"disabled innkeeper's wife"
and I thought, "Well...
"..they haven't specified
"what disability."
LAUGHTER
So I got a bit creative.
My favourite year
was when Mary and Joseph
knocked on the door...
..and the disabled innkeeper's wife
did not answer...
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
..because her disability
that year was deaf.
LAUGHTER
She actually had loads of room.
LAUGHTER
She just didn't hear the door go!
Four years in to the Nativity game...
..I made it.
I got the big one
and I played Mary.
AUDIENCE: Woo!
Yes!
Yeah, baby!
Looking back now...
..I think it was my teachers
being woke.
LAUGHTER
And going...
"Well, why shouldn't
"a girl with cerebral palsy
"play the mother of Jesus?"
But if we're being honest...
..and if there was a God,
which - spoiler alert...
LAUGHTER
..there isn't...
If there was a God,
and if he had the choice
of any lady in the whole wide world
to put his Godly sperm...
LAUGHTER
..into, would he really choose
a little girl in Bridlington...
..with cerebral palsy?
No!
No, he wouldn't! Because that would be a fricking disaster!
LAUGHTER
People would be like,
"Oh, have you heard about Jesus?
"No, what?"
"His mum dropped him..."
LAUGHTER
"..again."
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
"Now he's got brain damage."
Like mother, like son!
I've had a good year.
I've had a great 2022.
I've had a lot of good things happen to me.
I, um...
Oh, I turned thirty...
CHEERING
..two.
LAUGHTER
Oh, I became an honorary doctor.
Yeah!
I'm now Dr Jones.
The power!
Although, right now, I've got to legally say
I'm not allowed to perform any operations...
..any more.
LAUGHTER
The vasectomies...
..they were getting out of hand.
Literally.
Another great thing that happened to me
was I got a girlfriend.
AUDIENCE: Oooooh! Yes!
Wait, don't cheer,
she left me,
and now I'm single again.
AUDIENCE: Aw! Thank you!
But I just wanted to say
that I'm single...
..on telly.
LAUGHTER
Call me.
I had a lovely time with my girlfriend.
My favourite thing I used to do with her
was we'd play a game.
Every morning, we'd decide
whether we wanted to listen
to our favourite band, Nickelback...
No judgment!
..or we would read
the Guardian - lovely -
or whether we wanted to have sex.
And we called that game,
"Rock, paper..."
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Oh, you are clever!
"..scissors."
But unlike the game you know,
"scissors" always won.
LAUGHTER
This year, I've been a little bit annoying.
And I think it comes with the territory
of being a disabled person
on TV.
This year,
I've won a lot of awards.
A lot. CHEERING
No! Don't!
I need a bigger house!
There's no room in there.
An award I won is I got voted
this year's most remarkable woman.
CHEERING
I mean...
I'm not!
The most remarkable thing I've done all year is,
for eight straight hours,
I had a wank.
LAUGHTER
Thank you, Killing Eve.
LAUGHTER
I recently met Jodie Comer,
and I said, "Oh, I've got a joke about you."
And she said, "What is it?"
And I went...
..ha...
No.
Another bloody award I got
is I got voted one of the country's
most powerful lesbians.
CHEERING
No, no, no. What does that even mean?
I wasn't number one.
Cos that was Clare Balding.
Wanker.
LAUGHTER
And I wasn't number two...
..or three...
..or five!
Or four.
I was number...
..96.
Ninety fucking six!
I don't know 96 lesbians!
Where are they?
I want to play rock, paper, scissors!
CHEERING
Right.
I'm done!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Let me tell you,
you are in for a bloody cracker of a show!
Are you ready?
CHEERING
Yeah, you are!
Now, please give it up
for your first act,
she's amazing!
It's Cally Beaton!
CHEERING
MUSIC: Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues
Happy Christmas, Apollo!
CHEERING
Oh, it's lovely to hear your spirits so up
with the cost of living crisis as it is, isn't it?
I've decided this year we're going to barbecue the turkey
and have Christmas dinner in the garden.
I say the garden, I live in North London.
My garden is about the size of a small tea towel, so...
I sometimes think I mow away more when I shave.
LAUGHTER
It's just a joke, sir. All right?
I don't shave, so...
LAUGHTER
It's a lovely time of year, isn't it?
It's all about the children this time of year.
Give us a cheer - the parents in! CHEERING
You sound very chipper for people who are going to have to choose
between heating your houses and Lego this Christmas.
I'm a parent.
I am a single parent of a boy and a girl, apart from on Tinder,
where I'm a single, fun-loving nurse. But that's...
It's nice to see you again, sir.
I, um...
But, no, my kids are amazing.
I've got a boy and a girl.
My boy is the ginger one.
He's my favourite. And...
He isn't. I...
No, he's an amazing kid.
So when he was little, he was diagnosed with autism.
And he always had this phenomenal gift with maths and numbers,
but he never liked anyone to give him a hug.
And it was a difficult thing, you know, being his mum,
not being able to hold my own child.
But I would look at him and I would think,
"That's my little boy filling out my little tax return."
So, you...
You power through, don't you, Apollo? Power through.
You'll all know this.
There are so many fantastic celebratory things
about autistic children.
And one of the most brilliant things
is they tend to have an encyclopaedic knowledge
of the thing they most love in all the world.
And in my son's case, it was always anything to do with animals,
and in particular, monkeys and apes.
My son, at a very young age, was one of the world's foremost
primate experts, and I became one of the world's
second-foremost primate experts.
And let me get this out there for you lovely people.
It's a lonely life being a bonobo ape mum.
Now, some people here may know what bonobo apes are.
They're an endangered great ape.
They're the closest living relative of a human being.
Don't worry, sir. If you're not laughing, you're learning.
They're... LAUGHTER
In DNA terms a bonobo ape is just half a percent removed from a human.
Half a percent!
I've dated people less human than a bonobo ape.
APPLAUSE
And they've left that half percent DNA on my sheets, but...
AUDIENCE GROANS
But I think it's amazing, isn't it, that a teenage boy
would have that knowledge of bonobo apes.
Here's a fun fact for you, Apollo.
They eat up to half their body weight in food
and masturbate up to 20 times a day.
I know!
Bonobos wank a lot, too.
But I'm so proud of my boy.
He's now making a living out of his passion.
He is now a primate-specialising zookeeper at a big zoo
down in the West Country.
So... Thank you.
APPLAUSE
I couldn't be more happy for him.
We speak every single day and he tells me about all the weird
and wonderful creatures he's met.
Not just the people of Devon. And...
LAUGHTER
We spoke yesterday - because zoos have to be open during Christmas.
We spoke yesterday and he said to me, "Mum, Mum, you'll never guess
"what I did today." And I said, "What did you do today?"
And he said, "Today, I castrated a lemur."
So... I know!
And I said, "Well, you've always been clumsy."
LAUGHTER
But I remember for his second Christmas I didn't want to do
all the gender stereotyping things.
So for his second Christmas I bought him a little iron
and an ironing board. I thought that would be so sweet.
Turned out he'd never seen me use an iron.
So, he just started walking around saying,
"I can't talk right now, could you send me an email?"
I think things have got a little bit better now.
But when I was a little girl, we were told it's not OK
to be angry. Not ladylike.
Little girls must not get angry.
And little boys were told, it's not OK to cry.
You mustn't get upset.
So little boys would always take their emotions out in aggression.
And as adults, we as women, we get told we're a little bit
naggy, aren't we, sometimes? We're a bit passive aggressive.
That's cos you took aggressive.
You left us passive aggressive.
But we're fine with that.
Luckily, we're absolutely fine with that.
LAUGHTER Nothing's wrong.
Why would anything be wrong?
I could keep this going till next Christmas, but we've got
a show to do.
But I think it would be lovely,
don't you, if men would cry a bit more?
Not just every four years at the Euros.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Do you know what, it's nearly 2023.
When are we going to start celebrating women and our bodies?
It does not matter what age, size, body type we've got.
Am I right, Apollo?
CHEERING
I, erm...
You guys are all right with the F-word, yeah?
Feminism. So...
I love this whole body positive movement there is.
I think it's brilliant.
And my daughter bought me a T-shirt and it just sums it up, I think.
On it, it just said the words,
"My weight is not the most interesting thing about me."
And I think, isn't that a beautiful, simple thing to have upliftingly
on a T-shirt? Isn't it?
APPLAUSE
I was going to wear that T-shirt to do this, actually,
but it makes me look fat. So...
LAUGHTER
My daughter and I, we're really close.
I took her out for some festive cocktails last week and we went
to one of those lovely fancy sky bars down on the South Bank
of the Thames.
And as we were queuing to get in, they were doing very, very thorough
bag checks on the door.
My daughter's face just fell and she said,
"Mum, Mum, they won't suspect you.
"Can you put my weed in your pocket?"
I was like, something's gone wrong here, hasn't it?
"Can you put my weed in your pocket, PLEASE?"
LAUGHTER
And where was I going to put my cocaine?
But we got in.
We had the most wonderful night and we kept getting free cocktails.
There was a very, very good-looking young waiter,
wouldn't let us pay for a single thing.
At the end of the night, that waiter came over,
he bent down, he said to my daughter, he said,
"If you weren't here, I'd take your mum home with me."
I couldn't believe how long it took to get an Uber for my daughter.
It was...
LAUGHTER
So I found this thing online that can best be described
as a menopause magnet, right?
I don't mean George Clooney.
This is literally a magnetic device to help a woman
through the menopause. This thing arrived in the post.
It said it would help me with my mood swings and my hot flashes.
And what you do is... I know this sounds weird, sir, right.
But what you do is you put a magnet on the front of your knickers,
you put a metal disc on the inside of your knickers.
It keeps the magnet securely and discreetly in place.
And that bit works so beautifully.
But what they don't tell you on the menopause magnet packaging
is when it is tucked neatly and very discreetly in your pants, distinct
possibility you will find yourself metallically attached...
..to the self-checkout in Waitrose.
LAUGHTER
The unexpected item in the bagging area.
LAUGHTER
I just rang it through as a butternut squash and I pissed off.
LAUGHTER
I felt so stupid. The week before,
I'd spent a whole ten minutes attached to my tumble dryer.
I mean, it was a very nice ten minutes if I'm...
LAUGHTER
It took me so long to decorate the tree this year.
All the baubles kept getting stuck in my pubic triangle.
I've still got at least one novelty Santa down there.
But no, they're really powerful magnets.
Honestly, sir, if you've got any metal fillings,
I'd shimmy back a bit and shut your mouth.
A pandemic was no place for a menopausal woman, right?
Do you remember when they were taking your temperatures everywhere before you could get in?
We were only ever one hot flush away from getting fully cancelled.
It was...
I remember the last time it happened so clearly.
I was out with a friend, we were trying to just get a pizza
and they were taking temperatures on the door and the guy took mine and he looked at me.
He said, "There's a problem."
And I said, "What do you mean there's a problem?"
He said, "I'm really sorry, there is a problem."
And I said, "Am I a little bit overheated?
"That's funny, cos I'm a 50-year-old woman,
"I've just spent an hour and a quarter on the Northern Line
"wearing a mask, and I raised two children single-handedly,
"I gave birth to them with no pain relief while their dad
"complained his back was hurting, and
"I haven't had a good night's sleep in about two years because of my
"anxiety, my irrational crying and my vaginal dryness.
"I don't know what my body's doing. It should send the tears down there.
"That's where I really need them.
"And...
"And I am attached to your fire extinguisher by my pants!"
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Turned out the problem was
with the card machine. You had to pay on the app.
So...
So let me find out, you lovely Christmas Apollo people,
who are the other single people in apart from me?
Single people, make some noise.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHEER
Oh, a few people there.
So, I mean, I'm going to be the ghost of Christmas dating future.
I'm going to make you beautiful women feel so much better
about being single.
By the way, do you ever do the drink dialling thing?
Do you ever do that? You're saying no, your mate's going,
"She bloody does." Yes, I did it last week, right.
I sent a text to my ex just to see if he wanted to go for a drink.
That's all it was.
And autocorrect jumped in and changed it to,
"You've got a tiny dick and you've ruined my life."
So...
LAUGHTER
It's weird, isn't it, technology?
By the way, I did, for the first time in my life,
I recently dated a fellow ginger and I felt
like I was doing something illegal.
I did! Especially because he did look a lot like my brother.
So... I mean, not once I started sleeping with him, obviously,
he didn't remind me of my brother then.
He does it differently. So...
LAUGHTER
Because it's Christmas-time, instead of ending with a joke,
I'm going to leave you, if I may, with a really uplifting quote.
Somebody told me this the other day. I'd never heard it before.
I think it's beautiful. It goes like this:
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high
and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
That's Michelangelo.
And I think, isn't it amazing, that wisdom
from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?
You've been absolutely delightful, Apollo. Happy Christmas!
And goodnight!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Cally Beaton!
Are you ready
for a little bit more comedy?
CHEERING
Yeah, you bloody are!
So whoop and cheer for
the amazing Eshaan Akbar!
CHEERING
MUSIC: Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade
# So here it is, Merry Christmas
# Everybody's having fun
# Look to the future now... #
Yes! Merry Christmas, Apollo!
CHEERING
Lovely to be here.
I'm not Romesh.
LAUGHTER
It is lovely to be here.
But here's the thing, Christmas as well...
I love Christmas.
Give me a cheer if you love Christmas.
CHEERING Thank you.
I love Christmas, too, but I get it, some of you are you looking at me,
you're thinking, "Hold on a minute, Eshaan.
"You?
"You love Christmas?
"You look a bit too...Muslim for that, mate."
It's true.
I am from a Muslim background, but we love Christmas in our household.
Because we're Muslim, though, we do things a bit differently.
For a start, we don't call it Christmas,
we call it Jesus Eid.
Instead of having kind of pigs in blankets,
we have lamb in shawls.
We used to play pass the parcel.
But then my uncle got taken away by MI5, so we...
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
..stopped that immediately.
But my family, actually, my family background, we're from two countries
that actually celebrate Christmas a lot.
Combined, there's four million Christians in those countries.
My dad's from Pakistan and my mum is from Bangladesh,
which means I can make a fantastic
pair of jeans.
LAUGHTER
What else can I tell you to add to this kind of colourful concoction?
Guys, I also happen to be a deaf person.
HIGH-PITCHED FEEDBACK
No disability ever gets a woooo!
Because I wear a hearing aid, what tends to happen is I go for a job
interview sometimes and I can see an HR manager sitting in a corner
going, tick, tick, tick.
"Please be gay. Please be gay. Please be gay."
LAUGHTER
And they're not the only ones that do weird things when they find out I'm deaf.
Often people will come up to me, they'll be like,
"Oh, my God, Eshaan, it's so interesting that
"you wear a hearing aid because I think I'm actually
"a bit deaf, too."
LAUGHTER
What do I do with this information?
And you can't do this with any other disability, can you?
Like, you can't go up to someone in a wheelchair...
LAUGHTER
Say, "Mate, when I drink too much..."
LAUGHTER
"..my legs feel a bit wobbly as well."
It's just a weird thing to say.
But here's the thing.
I think, as a society, we need to get a bit more honest about the
flaws in our thinking, right?
Over the last few years, I feel like too many of us have tried to
present ourselves as having perfect thoughts.
And I can be honest enough with you, Apollo, to admit to you tonight
that when I see someone with a more visible disability
than I've got, I get jealous
at how much clout they've got in the disability game,
cos no-one respects deafness as a disability, do they?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Pardon?
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Don't applaud him!
That was ableist and unnecessarily so.
I get jealous of them because no-one respects deafness as a disability,
do they?
I can't legitimately enter the Paralympics, can I?
There's blind football, wheelchair basketball.
A deaf race would be a line of men just waiting to start.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
The thing is, it's not all bad.
Cos look, life is hard and life is complicated.
And when life throws lemons your way, you've got to try and find
a way to make lemonade. I wasn't born deaf.
I turned deaf in my mid 20s, right.
So the silver lining that I found of my deafness is this -
I get a Disabled Persons Railcard.
AUDIENCE: Ooooooh!
Gets me a third off rail travel. Absolutely amazing.
And when I got it, again, be honest about the flaws in your thinking.
You were like, "Eshaan, you've got a Disabled Persons Railcard,
"you don't like walking so much.
"Bro, go and get a blue badge."
LAUGHTER
So I walked into the local council office - a bit too ably.
LAUGHTER
The guy looked at me behind the counter and he goes, "Ah, yes, come over."
I'm like, "Wow, this guy knows exactly why I'm here," right? And he beckons me over.
He sits me down and then he pulls out a form.
And on the form you have to tick the reason why you're giving someone
a blue badge, right?
He ticks off,
"Weight-related mobility issues".
LAUGHTER
The thing is, in the UK, like, I grew up loving trains, right?
But there's one thing about the trains other than the fact
that I want them to run on time, that I really need them to change.
And it's this announcement that goes, "See it, say it, sorted."
Have you heard this?
For those that haven't, "See it, say it, sorted,"
is an announcement on trains which basically means if you see
something suspicious, call the British Transport Police.
But we all know what they really mean by suspicious.
If you see a brown bloke
with a rucksack...
..give us a fucking call.
LAUGHTER
Now, I've never liked "see it, say it, sorted"
because, for a start, it just raises fear and suspicion constantly.
Second, it doesn't get to the heart of the issue of what they really
want us to do, which is racial profiling.
And third, and most importantly,
see it, say it, sorted
doesn't bloody rhyme.
LAUGHTER
Now this upset me. I said, "Right, I've got to come up
"with some alternative options to reflect the reality of
"the situation and make it a bit more linguistically appealing."
So I've come up with two options to replace "see it, say it, sorted".
By way of cheer, you can tell me which one you prefer, OK?
So option number one to replace "see it, say it, sorted".
Seen a Muso? If so, let us know.
LAUGHTER
Average? OK.
Option number two.
Don't be wacky, report a...
LAUGHTER
Hey!
You little racist pieces of...
Gotcha!
LAUGHTER
I'm in my late 30s at the moment and a lot of my friends
are already kind of parents of toddlers.
Do we have any parents of toddlers in at the moment? Give me a cheer.
SOME AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHEER
Yeah, you are the worst human beings on the planet.
I hate each and every single one of you, right?
Cos parents of toddlers nowadays,
my God, they feel the need to show that they love their child
when they're in public.
Like, get on a train, you'll 100% see this.
They'll be like,
"Oscar, we're on a train.
"Did you bring your bag with you today, darling?
"I know, there are lots of people on the train, aren't there?
"What's that, you want to press the button even though they're waiting?
"Don't worry about them.
"Maybe I'll read you a story first, Oscar.
"I love you, Oscar.
"I really love you, Oscar."
Fuck off!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I understand and assume that you love your child.
I don't need to see this performance parenting.
Now, I don't have any children. I've got a little nephew.
When I get my nephew along, I think to myself, I don't want to miss out
on the opportunity to be a complete dick in public.
LAUGHTER
So I get my nephew, I sit him down, I say,
EXAGGERATED ACCENT: "Hello, Ali.
"We are on a train.
"Did you bring your rucksack with you today?
LAUGHTER
"I know, there are lots of people on the train.
"What's that, you want to press the button, do you?"
All the parents shut the hell up.
And there's a woman in the corner going, "See it, say it, sorted."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
And I know some of you are sitting there thinking, "Hold on, Eshaan,
"it's a Christmas show. You can't start talking about terrorism."
It is funny, though.
LAUGHTER
One of my favourite things about Christmas, right,
are the Christmas adverts. I absolutely love them.
When I know they're about to come on, I go to the living room
with a pack of tissues to cry.
Pack of tissues, enjoy the Christmas adverts.
But a couple of years ago, right, Sainsbury's did an ad
that caused a major issue.
They showed a black family enjoying Christmas.
The horror!
They showed this beautiful, strong black dad making a lovely Christmas
dinner for his beautiful family.
And he's stirring some gravy.
Gravy, fuck off. Jerk sauce. We know what's happening here.
LAUGHTER
And all these people are like,
"Right, Sainsbury's, it is political correctness gone too far, mate.
"This is some woke bollocks. I've had enough of this bullshit.
"I'm going Tesco, I'm going Morrisons. Piss off, Sainsbury's!"
LAUGHTER
And all these lovely liberal people on Twitter,
they were like, "Oh, you dirty, disgusting gammons.
"I can't wait to shop at Sainsbury's this year.
"In fact, I think I might have a Caribbean Christmas.
LAUGHTER
"There'll be steel drums, and everything." Ooh!
And they were conducting themselves with this air of superiority,
like somehow they're better than the people boycotting Sainsbury's.
I'm like, hold on a minute, hold on. You're not better than them.
We all do it. We all boycott stuff we don't see ourselves in.
Every single person in this room at one point or another has boycotted
something they don't see themselves in.
It's the same reason I've boycotted porn.
LAUGHTER
There are no Asians in mainstream porn.
Why? There's billions of us. We're shagging.
And by the way, when I say Asian, I mean curry Asian, not noodle.
LAUGHTER
And you hate yourself for getting it, don't you?
I was thinking to myself,
why are there no Asians in mainstream porn?
It really, really made me sad.
And I thought about it and I thought about it.
And I realised, it's because Asian porn,
the storylines would be so shit.
Imagine a classic patient-doctor porn scene.
Patient comes in, she's like,
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Oh, my God, Doctor,
"I've got such a headache, big boy.
"How are you going to get this one out of me?"
And he's like,
INDIAN ACCENT: "Well, you take two paracetamol four times a day, you'll be fine."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
And she's like,
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Oh, my God, my hand is stuck in the photocopier.
"How are you going to get me out of this one, big boy?"
And he's like,
INDIAN ACCENT: "Er, turn it off and then on again. I don't..."
LAUGHTER
Or she gets in the back of a taxi...
Gets in the back of a taxi, notices the cab driver, and she's like,
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Oh, my God.
"You're such a hot, sexy cab driver. Mm.
"You want to park the car somewhere,
"come to the back and do naughty, naughty things to me, big boy?"
And he's like,
INDIAN ACCENT: "Will you give me five stars?"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Eshaan Akbar.
Merry Christmas. I'll see you soon!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Eshaan Akbar.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Have you all had a lovely time?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Please, give it up one more time for Cally Beaton...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and Eshaan Akbar!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I've been Rosie.
Bye-bye!