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monday.com or tap the banner to learn

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more. Hello

0:36

and welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith. This

0:39

is The Comedian's Comedian, and today it's a blast

0:41

from the past for me. Perhaps

0:43

a blast from the future for you, if

0:45

you are as yet unfamiliar with Finnish comic

0:47

Tommy Vollomies. He is

0:50

absolutely brilliant, and this was

0:52

such a joy. And

0:54

you can probably hear the sunshine

0:56

spreading across my face as I

0:58

just reflect on how

1:01

lovely it is to reconnect with someone who you've not seen

1:03

for so long and with whom you

1:05

shared such an important time. Me and

1:07

Tommy were open mic acts together many

1:09

years ago, like 16, 17, 18

1:12

years ago, on the London comedy

1:14

scene. And he has gone on to wonderful

1:16

things. He's done over 2,000 gigs

1:19

in eight countries, appearing on television in

1:21

England, Belgium, and Finland. He writes for

1:23

the top news satires in Finland, and

1:25

his latest show tackles the big topics

1:28

of religion, politics, racism, and homophobia. He

1:30

also has a wonderful podcast, which is

1:32

called Queer and Dumb, and

1:34

this is their podcast description. Trans man

1:37

Jamie McDonald answers questions from dumb straight

1:39

man Tommy Vollomies. So loads to talk

1:41

about here. In the first half of

1:43

this episode, we'll discuss the journey from

1:45

graduating business school to launching into comedy.

1:47

We're going to get into Tommy's analytical

1:49

and research-focused approach to stand-up and to

1:51

everything else, and we're going to talk

1:54

about what it's like performing in Finland

1:56

with a substantially smaller stand-up circuit. Remember,

1:58

if you join the insiders... on

2:00

Patreon at patreon.com/comcompod you can watch the

2:02

full episode and get access to over

2:05

60 minutes of bonus features with Tommy

2:07

including the cultural influence on Finland from

2:09

the US and UK scenes and if

2:11

viral crowd work clips have yet to

2:14

hit their shores plus Magic the Gathering

2:16

for those that care and I can't

2:18

remember was this off off mic

2:20

or was it on the show we talk

2:22

about how Tommy is in the background of

2:25

an episode of South Park if that doesn't

2:27

crop up in the show tweet at me

2:29

at comcompod what this South Park thing you

2:31

bastard and I'll post about it.

2:41

Hello hello old friend how are you?

2:44

I'm good how are you still I've

2:47

missed you I've missed you

2:49

it's really good to see you it's

2:51

it's it is such an extraordinary blast

2:53

from the past to suddenly be back

2:55

in touch with you since

2:58

I mean when we knew each other on

3:00

the London open mic circuit in what years

3:02

you were in London for three years I

3:04

think I was in London from 2005 to 2008

3:06

and I met you almost immediately

3:10

because I went to Edinburgh did you know there's

3:12

a festival in August I've heard of this

3:14

festival it sounds good how did you find it

3:16

so we were

3:18

doing the completely random open mics and

3:21

we were at the same open mic

3:23

where's this kind of a scammy guy

3:26

was doing an hour and a half of a

3:28

two-hour show and then we both

3:30

got like 10 minutes oh

3:32

my god I remember the guy I

3:34

believe he got busted for tax evasion

3:36

so all's well that ends well never

3:39

have guess but yeah I

3:41

met you there and we were wondering like is this

3:43

typical of the comedy scene that the host does an

3:45

hour and a half and then we both do 10

3:47

yeah we were sort of a

3:50

we had just started I don't know when you

3:52

started like 2004 or 5 or I something like

3:54

that I think for yeah yeah it's

3:56

so and we haven't laid eyes on each other since you

3:58

left the UK and those days no

4:01

one really had a website. We

4:03

used to put our CVs on

4:05

a site called comedycv.co.uk which

4:08

would function as a

4:10

kind of multiple websites for people that were

4:12

told they needed a website to

4:14

send information to bookers. So my point

4:16

is that we didn't stay in touch

4:19

because it wasn't common to stay in

4:21

touch those days because the internet was

4:23

so new. Yeah, it was internet 0.0.

4:30

And I just to fill the listener in

4:32

I have referred to your jokes

4:34

on several occasions I would

4:36

say over the 12 years of

4:39

my podcast. The one that

4:41

I smacked. The one

4:43

that I most frequently brutalize. When

4:47

I spoke to Joe Wilkinson on

4:49

the Chatterbix podcast, I don't know if you're

4:51

aware of that podcast. Joe is now very,

4:54

very successful as a comic and

4:56

a really interesting comic presence. And

4:59

he has a podcast with another brilliant comic

5:01

called David Earl called Chatterbix. I guested

5:03

on it and we waxed lyrical about the

5:05

old days. And he'll be thrilled that you're

5:07

on this. He listens to every episode of

5:09

the Comedians-Comedians. Oh cool. And he'll be thrilled

5:11

that you're on this. The one I think

5:13

that I brutalized and I believe I did

5:16

an impression of you. Would you like to hear it? This

5:19

is me doing an impression of one of your jokes.

5:21

I would love to hear the worst

5:24

Finnish expression on the North St. Hemisphere.

5:26

I would love to hear. I believe

5:28

you used to say, my

5:31

uncle is living the

5:33

dream. He's

5:36

in a coma. Perfect.

5:38

10 out of 10. No notes. You

5:45

were just, you, I remember you

5:47

dressed in black because you, I

5:49

think it was because you liked Bill Hicks, but

5:51

it may have been for similar reasons to Bill

5:53

Hicks dressing in black. I

5:56

dressed in black because I

5:58

grew up overweight.

6:02

And that makes you look slimmer. And then

6:05

when I was in London, for that time

6:07

I was not, but then later on I

6:09

regressed to my old habits. But that was

6:11

the reason I dressed the black.

6:14

Because I still have the identity of

6:16

an overweight person. You look like a

6:18

kind of an oddball. Is

6:20

that fair? Yes.

6:23

I can tell you a bit of the background. Tell

6:26

me a bit. I don't know where to start

6:28

with this. I've overjoyed to see you. You're so

6:31

welcome on the podcast. And I want to

6:33

talk about your comedy, your podcast, where you're

6:35

at now, all of that stuff. But let's

6:37

just luxuriate in some reminiscence for a bit.

6:41

Okay. The feedback I got back

6:43

then was that I'm sort of

6:45

like distant and weird and foreign.

6:49

So I'm not that much that anymore

6:51

because I have learned human speech. I

6:57

grew up when I was about 35 when

6:59

I was like, people don't talk like my

7:01

uncle is living the dream. Yes.

7:04

Well, I think you were leaning into

7:06

your foreignness, right? And also, I'm an

7:08

oddball in

7:10

Finland as well. Are you? Yes.

7:14

In what what what are your oddball

7:16

characteristics? What are your traits that are

7:19

different to the Finnish mainstream? The

7:22

typical ones like overly analytical

7:26

and not that good at small talk.

7:29

So I'll be the guy who's at a

7:31

party and people are having fun and they're

7:33

talking about all kinds of stuff like sports

7:35

and whatever. And then I'll just walk

7:37

in there and interrupt them by talking

7:40

about computers. Yes. That kind

7:42

of guy. Okay. I

7:44

know I did lean into the Finnishness when

7:46

I was over there because I

7:48

figured it's like a USP unique selling point.

7:51

A hundred percent. And and you

7:53

also because you were doing oddball

7:56

one liners like unusual one liners.

8:00

The ones I remember are things like I

8:02

saw a homeless person and I gave him

8:04

one penny because I figured it's the least

8:07

I can do. That

8:10

kind of thing. And you would lean into the kind of

8:12

the, I guess like the

8:15

challenge of being a one-liner comic, which I

8:17

am not, but I've nothing but respect for

8:19

people who bother writing proper jokes and delivering

8:21

them. But it's

8:23

almost like the slow measuring out

8:25

of your, of the words of the joke

8:28

allow the audience to catch up at exactly

8:30

the right time. And you were, you, that

8:32

made sense to you as a kind of

8:34

comic persona. And

8:36

you don't need as much material if

8:38

you talk slower. Which

8:41

is only fair given how much material a

8:43

one-liner comic needs. Yes. I

8:45

think that's reasonable. So what brought

8:47

you, tell us, tell us what brought you

8:50

to London and where you were in your

8:52

life. I started doing stand-up comedy

8:54

in 2004 as a lark. I

8:58

had just graduated from business school and I

9:00

figured I don't know what to do. The

9:02

reason I went to business school is that

9:04

it's not a specific education. It's

9:07

not like now you're a heart surgeon. So you do

9:09

heart surgery. It's just that you do

9:11

business. So after that, I didn't know

9:13

what to do. So

9:15

I tried all kinds of things and one

9:17

of them was stand-up because people had told

9:19

me a lot of times in my life

9:21

that I'm funny. And it was

9:23

always the situation where I didn't try to be. It

9:27

was the typical situation like at high

9:29

school you have to do a recital

9:31

or whatever. And then people start laughing

9:33

at me because of my awkward and

9:35

still-dead persona. So it doesn't

9:37

fix with the serious material. I

9:40

remember at a geography class

9:42

I was talking about world hunger

9:45

and famine and people started

9:47

laughing so much that the

9:49

teacher was super angry at me. Like he

9:51

thought I was doing it on purpose. Oh

9:54

no. In Africa, a

9:56

lot of people do not have that much.

9:58

And people just start laughing. laughing and

10:00

that's not appropriate. No, of

10:02

course. And when you say you're persona, do

10:05

you mean your personality? You mean you just

10:07

naturally spoke? My personality, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

10:10

Just my actual personality. Like

10:12

I said, overly analytical way of looking at things.

10:14

Like you said, the joke, I saw a homeless

10:16

person, so I gave him one opinion. I figured

10:18

it's the least I can do. That's

10:21

an overly analytical way of looking at what's

10:23

the least one someone can do. So

10:26

it's the smallest amount of currency.

10:30

So that kind of, then I just tried stand

10:32

up on a whim and the

10:34

first gig was great. So

10:36

I figured I'm going to do

10:38

this. This is going to be amazing. And then

10:40

the second gig was terrible. And

10:42

I was like, okay, I'm still going to do this,

10:45

but now I know the realities. Yeah.

10:48

Okay. How did you apply your analytic or

10:50

how do you remember it's a long time

10:52

ago now? How do you remember your analytical

10:54

approach and how you applied that

10:57

to stand up comedy? I

10:59

read a book that said that

11:02

I think it was Jay Sankey's Zen

11:05

and the Art of Stand Up Comedy. And

11:07

I figured I just learned this from a

11:09

book like I've learned anything. So it said

11:11

that the punch line has to

11:14

be believable and surprising.

11:17

So I just look at everything

11:19

like how can I make the

11:21

most surprising punch line possible while

11:23

it is still believable? Okay. So

11:27

it was sort of like limit testing. Like

11:31

I saw these signs everywhere that said

11:33

clean up after yourself since your mother

11:35

does not work here. I

11:38

would see them in Finland. I would see them in Britain. They were

11:40

like a thing in the 2000s. I remember

11:42

them, yeah. Yeah. They were quite

11:44

a popular sign. So I figured what's the

11:47

best possible punch line for this? So

11:49

I started the limit testing. Like what's the most surprising

11:53

that you see it in space or whatever

11:55

but that's not funny because it's not believable.

11:58

Then I figured what's the most believable? that

12:00

you just see it in some kid's room. And

12:03

then you just get closer from both

12:06

sides, like keep making it

12:08

more, keep

12:10

trying to keep it surprising while keeping

12:12

it believable. And the one I ended

12:14

up with that work was, I

12:17

saw a sign that said, clean up

12:19

after yourself since your mother doesn't work here, at

12:21

an orphanage. And

12:26

there was like a shred of truth

12:29

to that because there's so many stories

12:31

about these absolute worst orphanages in the

12:33

world. And people could believe

12:35

that someone might be that cruel,

12:38

someone who has an orphanage might be that cruel that they put

12:40

up the sign. So that was sort

12:42

of the most believable

12:45

I could make it while still keeping

12:47

it surprising. I think

12:49

it's really fun that for someone, an analytical

12:51

person such as yourself, you decided to have

12:53

a go at stand-up comedy. So you read

12:55

a book about how to do stand-up comedy.

12:58

And then started doing stand-up comedy.

13:01

That's very methodical in the way that I think a

13:03

lot of people might not think,

13:06

they might not realise there are books about it,

13:08

they might want to go in radically a different

13:10

direction and go, hey I'm full of self-belief and

13:12

piss and wind and I'm just gonna go out

13:14

and believe in myself. And I

13:17

appreciate the methodical nature of your

13:19

approach. That seems to be what I know

13:21

of you. I have the same approach to

13:23

sex. I've

13:26

read books like how

13:29

do you do this particular sex act and

13:31

then there's all kinds of tips and then

13:33

there's testimonies and whatever. And

13:35

I don't know why other people

13:37

don't. Since for some people

13:39

it's like a mystery like, oh I did

13:42

this and like I would be hanging

13:44

out with my friends and one of them is like, oh

13:46

I did this and it didn't, I don't

13:48

think it made her happy. And I was like,

13:50

did you miss page 36? That's just

13:55

my approach to most things. Like there must be

13:57

a book, there must be a manual, I will

13:59

learn that. Yes,

14:03

there's something quite satisfying about

14:05

the idea of learning from

14:07

books and the simplicity, I

14:09

suppose, of recognising that oneself

14:12

is simply the latest human being and that

14:15

all the human beings you've gone before have

14:17

experienced very many of the same things, learnt

14:19

to do it and left information on how

14:22

to do it. That

14:24

seems obvious when you put it like

14:26

this. Our need

14:28

to reinvent the wheel

14:30

is ego. We

14:33

have to feel like, okay, I've reinvented.

14:35

A lot of people who start stand-up,

14:38

it takes them about a year to figure out

14:40

that, okay, there are some people

14:43

who have done this before me and

14:45

I can actually learn from them. And

14:48

a great part, in stand-up you

14:50

learn a lot of things from

14:52

mistakes. And

14:55

mistakes are more memorable. That's

14:57

like an evolutionary thing, the negative things

15:00

are more memorable. Like if you look at,

15:02

there's like a news item and then 10

15:04

different comments, the most negative one you

15:06

will remember that one, even if the nine are

15:09

like positive ones. So mistakes are

15:11

easier to remember. So stand-up comedians

15:13

and engineers and whatever learn from

15:15

their mistakes, but they don't have

15:17

to be your mistakes.

15:20

You can look at other comics, see

15:22

what mistakes they make and

15:25

then learn from them for your own

15:27

act. We don't

15:29

only have, we can stand on the shoulders

15:31

of giants and losers.

15:39

Can you think of an early example

15:41

of learning from someone else's mistake? The

15:45

two common topics. I

15:47

don't know if you had like TV shop,

15:49

television shop where after midnight

15:52

they sell all these fake

15:54

products and it's always like they

15:57

bundle in a lot of things like not

15:59

only this. but then you also get this

16:01

and da da da. So people who would stay

16:03

up late would see, is this a thing in

16:05

the UK? Oh, like a TV channel. A

16:08

shopping channel. Yes. Gotcha. Understood. Yes.

16:11

Yeah. Yeah. So after like 1

16:13

a.m., they start selling those. So

16:16

those are inherently funny since

16:19

all the dubbing is so bad

16:21

and everything. So a lot of

16:24

comics would do jokes about that.

16:26

And I would look at a night

16:28

and when the fourth comic does

16:30

a joke about that, audience starts

16:32

to revolve. By

16:35

listening to podcasts, I've learned that in

16:38

the US, there have been Tinder revolts.

16:41

Like when there's a US open mic with

16:43

like 35 comics, everyone has three minutes. So

16:46

when the 10th person goes on stage and says,

16:48

so who's on Tinder? The audience

16:50

actually roars, starts shouting like, no,

16:53

no, no, no, no, because it's so so

16:56

basically look at what the others are doing.

16:58

I'm interested in the eighth and ninth comics

17:00

that talked about Tinder and the vibe in

17:02

the audience where they were on the verge

17:04

of revolts, but the touch paper had not

17:06

yet been lit. The eighth and

17:08

ninth were able to do it because

17:10

Americans are so tolerant. I

17:16

like your genuine reaction. But

17:18

yeah, that's one thing. And

17:22

you can also learn about sequencing

17:24

the jokes. Like someone might have

17:26

a joke that doesn't work because

17:29

of what the previous joke worked.

17:32

And I remember at a London comedy

17:34

store, a gang show, this

17:36

person who was doing well did

17:39

a joke about being

17:42

unemployed. And then like a minute

17:44

later, she did a joke

17:46

about her current

17:48

job. Yeah. And someone just

17:50

shouted from the audience, I thought you were

17:52

unemployed. Mm hmm. And

17:55

that's just sort of a it

17:57

was a mistake. It wasn't my mistake. It

17:59

was her mistake. But I

18:01

stood on her shoulders and

18:04

made a mental note and started to

18:06

see like that was an extreme example

18:08

You can't say you're unemployed then says

18:10

you're that is an extreme example, but

18:12

I would see factual inaccuracies in other

18:14

people's like If

18:16

you space the jokes out a

18:19

bit more if there's like five minutes

18:21

in between then the audience doesn't remember

18:23

and then you can Have factual inconsistencies

18:25

with your set, but you can't have

18:27

them right? So those are would be

18:29

like two examples of you can look at

18:31

other people's mistakes If

18:34

you're really nice, you can tell

18:36

them about them, but they don't always see

18:38

it as you being really nice No

18:41

for sure. Hey, you should probably wait until you're

18:43

asked I want to come but

18:45

I want to come back to some of these early

18:47

experiences But I think before we should do that Before

18:50

we do that we should first establish where

18:53

you are now and what you're up to

18:55

now like what what happened to you I

18:57

would like I want to

18:59

follow the thread of what you've been up to since

19:01

we last saw each other And before we then come

19:03

back and get and get further into I've got lots

19:06

of questions about joke writing and early game stuff I

19:11

started 2004 19

19:14

years ago. I did one year in Finland three

19:16

years in London and now I've been back in

19:18

Helsinki for 15 years I

19:21

am a national a bee celebrity I

19:29

Am a Finnish Bee celebrity

19:31

and friend, but

19:34

a lot of the comics there stand-up comedy is popular here.

19:36

So a lot of the comics are a celebrities so

19:40

one of them explained to me the difference

19:42

between like a celebrity and be celebrity and

19:44

a celebrity Like

19:46

if a bee celebrity goes into a bar and

19:49

beats someone up It's newsworthy

19:52

and if an a celebrity goes into a bar,

19:54

it's newsworthy So I'm within

19:56

a beat down of an

19:58

a celebrity But

20:01

yeah, like a national, so if

20:04

I'm gigging around

20:07

Finland, I'm usually the

20:10

hitliner unless there's like an actual like

20:12

a name, then that's

20:14

where I'm at, like a circuit regular

20:19

with educational TV

20:22

stuff. And the biggest, I've

20:25

written for a lot of news

20:28

parodies over here, which

20:32

all of them are directly copied from

20:34

you or the States. And

20:36

with some of them, we pay money and with

20:38

some of them, we don't. And

20:41

that's the same thing all around the

20:43

world. There's the same shows, same

20:46

shows, whether it's like Egypt,

20:48

Albania, Finland, Norway, all

20:51

the formats are copied. Sometimes

20:53

they're like, okay, this was copied so much that

20:55

we actually better buy it. Yes,

20:58

yes, I see what you mean. I remember growing

21:00

up with Whose Line Is

21:02

It Anyway, the improv show in

21:04

the UK, and being staggered when I found

21:06

out that it was literally a carbon copy

21:09

of an American product. Yes.

21:12

Yeah. So basically where I'm at with

21:15

my career, I would say like

21:17

a working comic. Yes.

21:21

Excellent. And the only other Finnish

21:23

comic I think that I've ever had on

21:26

the podcast is Ismo. Yeah.

21:28

I imagine it's a small enough circuit that

21:30

you know Ismo. Yes,

21:32

he's a huge star. Yes.

21:36

Is he a friend of yours? You can speak freely. If he's not

21:38

a friend of yours, I'll cut it out. You

21:41

don't have to cut it out.

21:43

I have professional respect for him,

21:47

but we're not exactly on each other's Christmas

21:49

card lists. Fair enough. Enough

21:51

said. So I

21:53

respect his ability. Yes, for

21:56

sure. So how many comics

21:58

would you say? And I don't know that I'm can

22:00

answer this about the UK. I think in the

22:03

conversation very recently, I think I estimated

22:05

there being something like 2,000 comics

22:07

in the UK. I've kind of pulled that figure out of

22:10

the air. You know, I think there are maybe 70 comics

22:13

who are on TV all the time,

22:15

and then there's got to be 1,500

22:17

to 2,000 who are on the circuit

22:19

to various degrees. That may

22:21

not be true, but assuming that's true,

22:24

what's the equivalent in Finland? Our

22:26

population is 5 million, 5.5

22:29

million. So what's yours, like

22:31

70 or something? You

22:33

call it 70. I think it's 60, but I

22:35

haven't checked for a while. You

22:37

should be more analytical. That

22:40

wouldn't suit me at all. So

22:43

basically, we have slightly less

22:45

per capita. Working comics, we

22:47

have 50 plus, but it's

22:51

kind of hard to draw the line because

22:53

most people have other products. Since

22:56

the comics don't work during Monday and

22:58

Tuesday, so it makes sense to have

23:00

occasion to adverts or whatever or writing.

23:02

I would say we have 50 plus

23:05

working comics, at

23:07

least, depending on the definition. Then

23:10

several hundred semi-professional

23:13

people who have an

23:15

actual day job. Not

23:18

like a couple day job, but an actual day

23:20

job. And then a never-ending

23:23

sea of open books. Some

23:27

of them stay in the circuit and some of

23:29

them leave. But

23:31

yeah, I would say, if you have like 2,000

23:35

people who can say that their occupation

23:38

is a comedian, we

23:40

have about 50. I actually

23:44

spoke to a producer and

23:46

she said that our biggest ticketing

23:51

service last year sold

23:53

half a million tickets for stand-up.

23:55

Wow. So

23:58

every Finnish person's is one

24:00

tenth of a stand-up live

24:03

show every year. That's

24:07

incredible. It sounds like Finland

24:10

has an incredibly healthy, thriving kind of

24:12

a circuit. Is it the sort of

24:14

place that British

24:17

or American comics should come to in

24:19

order to enjoy what comedy was like

24:21

over here in the 90s? They

24:25

should and they do. There's

24:29

Apollo, one of our biggest venues. They

24:32

have the comedy store Night. There's

24:35

this comedy store, London comedy store. You've

24:38

heard of the place? Yes. Yes.

24:42

I thought you meant the Apollo theater. I see

24:44

that. You're a dry joke. Yes, I have heard

24:46

of the London comedy store. Their

24:49

acts go around the world playing local

24:51

comedy stores. We have a

24:54

monthly comedy store Night, which

24:56

is hosted by a Scottish comedian,

24:58

Ray Zimbino, who lives here. They

25:01

already come here. That's

25:04

like the circuit regulars who come here. Then

25:07

there's these big, huge acts

25:09

who do our big culture

25:11

arenas. They

25:14

already do. The biggest

25:17

difference between

25:19

the British comedy

25:21

scene and the Finnish comedy

25:24

scene, like the general

25:26

vibe, is that

25:28

we are a lot less

25:31

cruel. There's

25:34

a lot less bullying by

25:36

the people who made it

25:39

towards the open mics. This

25:41

was my experience in 2005, 2008. Also

25:45

I've spoken to people on the

25:47

British and American comedy scenes. There's

25:51

meritocracy, which makes a lot of sense.

25:55

If you're funny, you get a

25:57

decent position. But maybe... they

26:01

don't need to

26:03

bully the open mics quite

26:06

as much as they do. So

26:08

it felt sometimes a bit sick

26:12

when I was over there. The behavior I

26:15

experienced, I don't know how

26:17

it was you when you started getting like 10 minutes

26:20

or 5 minutes at the comedy store or something. I

26:23

noticed a lot of bullying like me and

26:25

then I heard from others. If

26:27

someone did that over here, people

26:30

would be like, are you all right?

26:33

Like is everything right with you? Is

26:35

everything right with you at home? Because

26:38

that's how you can't do that in other

26:41

workplaces. Like if you're at an

26:43

office workplace and you have like a new employee

26:46

there, you teach them,

26:50

you don't like bully them

26:52

like in a schoolyard. Like, yeah,

26:54

they're both 15 years old. So

26:57

I'm talking about 15 years,

27:00

what it was 15 years ago. And another

27:02

thing I noticed immediately when I went back home in

27:04

Finland in 2008 was that something

27:08

I hadn't noticed when I was in Britain was

27:11

that the audiences in Britain were

27:13

quite misogynist. Okay. I

27:16

would at several times I

27:19

saw female comics get

27:22

absolutely horrific treatment from

27:25

audiences. The audiences, the audiences. Like

27:28

show us your tits, love. I

27:31

heard that several times. And then when I spoke to

27:33

the female comics, they were sort of, of course, they

27:35

recognized the

27:39

issue and then they were like,

27:41

oh, I just need to have comeback lines for that. And

27:43

then I went back to Finland and the audience didn't do

27:46

that anymore. And when they

27:48

didn't do that, like one guy at one show shouted

27:50

something and then they just got thrown out. Yeah,

27:53

we're shouting like a slur slur by

27:55

a female sex worker. So they just

27:57

get thrown out, which should happen in a normal

27:59

society. So those are the biggest,

28:02

it just feels a lot less cruel because

28:04

it's comedy and people should be having fun.

28:07

So why should the audience, why

28:10

should the British audiences abuse

28:12

the female comedians and why

28:14

should the British circuit

28:16

regulars abuse the promising open mics? So

28:19

this is from 15 years

28:21

ago, this was from before me to, I don't

28:23

know how it's now. Yes, it's

28:25

really interesting because the stuff

28:28

you describe, I recognize

28:30

both of those tropes.

28:34

And I hope, I was thinking as you were saying that,

28:36

I hope that it is a bit like seeing

28:39

a time capsule from 15 years ago. I'm

28:42

not sure. For sure, you

28:44

know, there are huge

28:46

social justice problems in any industry,

28:49

let alone one with the lack of regulation

28:51

that comedy has. I was chatting to someone

28:53

recently about the phenomenon

28:55

of established

28:58

acts, bullying, newer acts. I mean, I didn't, I

29:01

wouldn't have used the word bullying at the time.

29:03

And I don't know that I have seen bullying.

29:05

I've heard about bullying. I don't feel that I

29:07

was ever bullied myself. But

29:10

things like in

29:12

the dressing room, you know, the open

29:14

mic takes one of the beers from the

29:16

fridge and one of the diehard older comics

29:18

says, oh, those beers aren't for open mics.

29:21

In a way that then that becomes

29:23

that information becomes kind of passed around

29:25

the open mic circuit. And probably it

29:27

was just a mean joke or a

29:29

kind of a like a

29:31

testing someone to see how they react, which

29:34

is of course in itself bullying. I

29:38

don't think that. Yeah, right. Well,

29:40

this is it. I mean, I feel like

29:42

we don't have that anymore. But I'm less

29:44

involved in the circuit than I was at

29:47

the time. I spend less time in green rooms

29:49

these days. And I

29:52

hope that that is consigned to the

29:54

dustbin of history. I certainly can tell

29:56

you if you return to London, you

29:58

would be surprised. and

30:00

I am impressed, I'm sure, with

30:03

the proliferation of female comics and

30:05

the proliferation of comics that are anything other than

30:07

white men across all of those structures. There are

30:10

still loads of white men, of course there are,

30:12

but there is so much more opportunity and

30:15

respect for people. And there are lots of

30:19

gig booking posts on Facebook saying, we've

30:21

got all the white men we need.

30:23

I'm specifically looking for female-female identifying and

30:25

non-binary acts for this show. So

30:27

there's a lot of, like, there has been a- We

30:30

don't say that out loud. Right,

30:33

okay. I don't know

30:35

if we're right to say it out loud, but I think

30:37

we're still in a corrective period. I

30:41

was booking a show with a friend of mine, and

30:43

we were like, okay, the white

30:45

male straight quota is

30:47

done for this show. How do we book

30:49

the others? Are we like, show

30:51

us a picture of your skin colour? Like,

30:54

how do you say it? Well,

30:59

people that I see- I only book one

31:02

gig myself, and I don't need to

31:04

make posts about it, but the posts that

31:06

I see say it very outright. They say

31:08

it very natively. We're completely filled with white

31:10

men. We're particularly hoping to hear from female

31:13

identifying and non-binary, or,

31:15

you know, majority, global majority people.

31:17

That's interesting, because we don't know how to

31:19

say it out loud. It would sound

31:22

insane, sort of. Yeah, yeah. So maybe you are

31:24

further ahead in this, because- Well,

31:29

maybe we had further to come

31:32

from. I mean, I think we've had

31:34

a stand-up comedy culture for longer than

31:36

you have, and so maybe the bullying

31:38

was developed and entrenched in the circuit

31:40

in the 90s. I

31:44

think the bullying that we've sort of described or touched

31:46

on there is probably a

31:48

reflection of the insecurity of people

31:50

who've been going 20 years and

31:52

who feel that their options and

31:54

opportunities are diminishing due to

31:57

an influx of- you know, wrongly feel that

31:59

their opportunities are- diminishing due to an influx

32:01

of newer acts. That's probably what makes that

32:03

happen. And perhaps in Finland

32:05

if there hasn't been a

32:07

30-year culture of stand-up comedy

32:10

with those kind of numbers. We

32:12

have the same frustrated feelings that I've been

32:14

going so long I should have more, but

32:17

I just beat up the mirror. Yeah.

32:20

So that it hurts,

32:24

but it's less bad the bullying. Yeah.

32:28

Yeah. It's really shocking to think

32:30

about it, I'm sure, across all

32:32

industries and across all periods

32:35

of time. It's shocking to look back

32:37

and see what was accepted as standard

32:40

practice. People

32:44

in the entertainment, the

32:47

performing arts, are especially

32:49

unprotected. And there are so

32:51

few good worthy spots

32:54

and everyone is competing for

32:56

them. So it reads

32:59

a ground for abuse and

33:01

bullying or something. And there's

33:03

no HR. There's

33:06

no corporate guy you can go to speak to,

33:08

so you have to have common rules. But

33:12

what I said about Finland, there's less

33:14

bullying. It's not just it's other Nordic

33:16

countries as well, like the Swedish scene,

33:18

the Norwegian scene, and the Danish scene

33:20

that I've seen haven't been to Iceland

33:22

yet. But it's the same thing

33:24

that's a bit of a like

33:27

a family. If you go to a family

33:30

meeting and someone is

33:33

being overly mean, then others are just like,

33:35

are you okay? Yeah. Yeah.

33:38

Are they, this is kind of reflected,

33:40

I suppose, do you have progressive

33:42

prisons in Finland in the way

33:45

that I associate with Scandinavian countries?

33:48

The sentences are quite

33:51

short, which is something that some people

33:53

complain about. That people, even

33:55

if it's a tough crime, people get

33:57

out fairly soon. And there is an

34:00

emphasis on trying

34:02

to return people to the

34:04

society. So when your sentence is starting

34:06

to end, they do these things, they

34:08

give you liberties a bit by bit,

34:10

and then you might get an apartment,

34:13

and you might get like a job

34:15

or something, but they try to bring

34:17

you get psychology counseling. It's

34:20

more like helping

34:22

than just straight up punishment. Yes.

34:25

And are you a progressive

34:27

person in a progressive culture?

34:29

Do you feel that your

34:31

values and principles are more progressive

34:34

or the same as the government's

34:36

principles? I'm extremely

34:38

left-wing. So

34:40

I do shows like during

34:43

elections, I do

34:45

shows for the most left-wing party, the

34:47

Left Alliance, Vazem, and I'm a member

34:49

of them. So,

34:52

things are quite left-wing

34:54

compared to especially the

34:56

English. We'd

35:00

say the Scottish not so much.

35:03

So the Scottish are fairly left-wing, if you

35:05

look at their policies. So we're quite close

35:07

to them, I would guess. Actually,

35:10

there's this theory that when Scotland

35:12

finally gets rid of you guys,

35:15

like finally gets their independence, they actually, the

35:17

reason they didn't vote for it last time

35:19

was they didn't want to leave the European

35:21

Union. That was one of the arguments. So

35:24

there's a bit of an irony, perhaps. But

35:27

one day when they break

35:30

out, Braveheart style, there's

35:33

this popular theory that they will

35:35

become the unofficial sixth Nordic

35:38

country and join our trade

35:40

organization. They

35:42

already do some like cooperation with

35:45

us, but that's quite, and they're

35:47

closer than Iceland. Yeah,

35:50

right. Okay. So the

35:52

distance is not a problem. But still,

35:54

about your question, yes, I am extremely

35:56

left-wing. I was once a candidate for

35:59

the... municipal

36:02

government and it did not go well.

36:05

Oh wow, tell me about that. I've never

36:07

had a candidate on the show before. I

36:10

was maybe a bit too left wing. I

36:13

did the machine where you write

36:15

about like they give you statements and

36:17

you say what you think and

36:19

I was alone in the corner. So

36:22

they have the conservative,

36:25

the values conservative, the values

36:28

liberal. So whenever

36:30

the value is liberal, I'm like I choose this

36:33

and then there's the money

36:35

side, like how much services

36:37

would you give? Would you have more

36:39

progressive taxation? So basically it's

36:43

a left barely left wing country, although

36:46

not always at this moment we have a right wing

36:48

government, like one of the most right wing governments we've

36:50

ever had. I've had

36:52

in a global sense been

36:54

on this fight and

36:58

I'm on the extreme left. Okay,

37:01

tell me if that is not a

37:04

thing I hear. There is someone very

37:06

close to me and friend outside of

37:08

comedy who has been going harder and

37:10

harder left and listens to Chappo Trap

37:12

House podcast and that kind of media.

37:15

And it's been like I'm left wing and

37:17

I sort of enjoy how

37:20

kind of all in he's

37:22

gone on being extremely left wing. But you

37:24

very rarely, I can't think of many people

37:26

who said on this

37:28

show or in my life, I am extremely

37:30

left wing. What are the- They're

37:33

analytical enough. What

37:35

are the markers for you of the extremeness

37:37

of your left wingness? The

37:41

markers. What

37:43

are the milestones when you realise, well, I

37:45

can't just be left wing anymore. I feel

37:47

like this, therefore I must be extremely left

37:49

wing. When I see left

37:51

wing policies, and I think you could have gone

37:54

further. I wouldn't do

37:56

things that differently, I would just

37:58

take them further. there's progressive

38:00

taxation that the billionaires and millionaires

38:02

should pay this kind of tax,

38:05

I would increase it a bit. And

38:07

when they try to close the taxation

38:09

loopholes, it wouldn't be that easier for

38:11

people to use that tax havens, which

38:14

is something that the European Union is

38:16

trying to do at the moment. So

38:18

I would make a

38:20

harsher law. So it's just a matter of

38:23

degree. It's not like I wake

38:25

up with a picture of Karl

38:27

Marx or something. It's

38:29

just I would take the numbers further.

38:33

Okay, that's not okay. We're fairly far not

38:35

to moderate your podcast. We're fairly far away

38:38

from comedy. Yeah, that's quite all

38:40

right. I'm building I'm building for the listener

38:42

a picture of you. And you must trust

38:44

me, Tommy to be able to

38:46

get you back into the subject in hand.

38:48

You are one of the handful

38:50

of people who in advance said, so can

38:53

you send me the questions? And I delighted

38:55

in telling you absolutely not. Yeah,

38:58

it's just creps. Yeah.

39:00

If I had the questions in advance, it would

39:03

be like learning things from a book. Well,

39:06

that's just how the brain works. Yeah. When

39:14

you're ready to pop the question, the

39:16

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it the right way. restrictions apply.

40:01

So this is Tommy. You can tell how

40:03

much fun I'm having talking to him and

40:06

he's just such a joy to talk to. He's

40:08

one of those people who everything he says is either obviously

40:10

funny or if it isn't funny you've got to just play

40:13

it back through your head again to see whether he's being

40:15

dry and he's really funny and you're an idiot. So

40:17

a great joy to talk to him. Coming

40:20

up in the second half we're going to find out how comedy

40:22

translates from Finnish to English. We'll

40:24

talk about the Finnish corporate circuit and

40:26

we're going to talk about Tommy's podcast

40:28

Queer and Dumb the mission of a

40:30

straight person exploring the queer scene. And

40:32

at the very end of this episode there is

40:34

a moment which I wanted to edit out where

40:37

Tommy says something. Tommy

40:39

harkens back to a positive memory he has about

40:41

me and I was feeling bashful about it and

40:43

I said let's take it out. And

40:46

then Suzy our logger said no no leave it in

40:48

it's good. So I am and I'm just walking away

40:50

from it. All right. I never normally like to include

40:53

anything on the podcast whereby anyone says

40:55

anything nice about me for some reason. That's

40:57

just how my mind works. You can

40:59

watch the full episode. You heard me watch

41:01

the full episode on video at the Insiders Club.

41:04

If you're a member of the Insiders Club you

41:06

can join for a minimum three pound a month.

41:08

We have several different tiers and I will name

41:10

some of the people from those tiers later on

41:12

because if you're an insider producer or dare I

41:14

say it an insider executive producer like Neil Peters.

41:17

Hi boss. Then you get your name

41:19

read out at the end now not to mention

41:21

getting to watch full episodes. So

41:24

join the Insiders Club on Patreon. It's

41:26

patreon.com/comcom pod or you can find links

41:28

from Stuart goldsmith.com or indeed comedian comedian

41:30

dot com. I'm giving you too

41:32

many options there but I am deduplicating

41:34

my friend Carl is helping me deduplicate

41:36

my life and my web presence. And

41:39

eventually I will just say one thing

41:41

to you. It'll just be dot. It'll

41:43

just be go to.com and

41:45

receive a simple walkthrough of everything

41:47

you can do with your life and then it

41:49

ends in you subscribing. Yes that's what

41:51

we want. So that's all coming up.

41:53

And remember those extras we're going to talk

41:55

about magic the gathering to a small extent

41:58

because that is what Tommy you need. to

42:00

play to a professional level. Has

42:02

that wet your appetite? Yes, it's

42:05

wet something. That doesn't mean anything. And

42:08

again, I was going to delete that.

42:10

I don't have time. My

42:12

toilet seat has broken and is

42:14

it possible for the urine of

42:16

a child to corrode over many

42:18

years? Well, over a year, I

42:20

think we've only had it a

42:22

year. The metal bracket. Because I don't

42:25

think I'm weeding on it. And I don't think

42:27

any of the female members of the household are weeding on it. But

42:30

the toilet seat has just snapped. And that is

42:32

a thing like I'm going away now, I'm not

42:34

going to be back till tomorrow and then I'm

42:36

away for like five days. And

42:38

having to like you can't knock out and

42:40

get a replacement toilet seat. Doing that has

42:42

really smashed my extraordinarily tight schedule

42:45

for today. But at least I've spent that

42:47

minute telling you about my toilet. Sorry,

42:50

Tommy. God, I can imagine. Tommy's excited

42:52

that this episode is going out because

42:54

he gave me the pleasing information that

42:56

this podcast is highly regarded in Finland.

42:58

Hello to Finnish comics and Finnish listeners

43:00

and those who are both.

43:02

Hello to you all. I would love to

43:04

come to Finland sometime. It looks awesome. And

43:06

Tommy's been sending me some very funny photos

43:08

of daily life in Finland. But

43:11

I will apologise to you one more time,

43:13

Tommy, for talking about my toilet seat. But

43:15

now I've done it again. So this apology

43:17

is nothing but a vortex into I'm

43:22

in a toilet. Oh, Christ. OK, well,

43:24

listen, we're going to let's

43:26

get let's get the hell back to this episode

43:28

before I make things worse. Come

43:30

and see me at the McCuncliffe Comedy Festival.

43:32

I'm doing spoilers there and I've got some

43:34

other exciting stuff going up that I'm desperate

43:36

to talk to you about. A lot of

43:38

it is me and producer Callum behind the

43:40

scenes. He's co-producing kind of my entire life

43:42

now. And we're simplifying, deduplicating

43:45

and changing stuff. I now have a

43:47

proper mailing list with stuff going on.

43:49

I've got I've got some news that I

43:51

can't tell you, but I've read a really

43:53

interesting book about writing a really

43:55

interesting book. And that is completely

43:57

turbocharged, a project which has been.

43:59

And just having a little hover,

44:02

a lot of work has been going on,

44:04

but to very little tangible benefit and now

44:06

I'm feeling very excited about it. This really

44:09

is post-amble stuff. Let's get back to the

44:11

show. So

44:18

talk to me a little more

44:20

about your comedy and the

44:23

shape that your comedy takes. What does

44:25

a week look like gigging for you in

44:27

Finland? Or a month? How

44:30

many shows are there in your average month? And I

44:32

realize you podcast as well and we'll talk about that

44:34

in a moment. Before

44:38

the Corona, I think

44:40

I did about 100 to

44:43

150 shows per

44:46

year and I did nothing else.

44:48

Some of them were like open mics. OK.

44:51

So when I tell this to people

44:53

that I do like 100 or 250 shows per year and

44:55

they're like, oh, that's

44:57

a lot. It's two to three

44:59

work days a week. Which

45:02

is less than five. What the actual

45:04

humans do. But that's not

45:07

all paid gigs. There's

45:09

some of them are corporates and some of

45:11

them are club gigs. And I do a

45:13

lot of open mics. I'm always writing new

45:15

material and those are usually like the beginning

45:17

of the week. And that's the most fun

45:19

I have. After

45:22

the COVID

45:25

or like I don't know if you passed that

45:27

or whatever, but the numbers have not yet reached

45:30

that. OK. That would be

45:32

like my two

45:34

to three gigs a week. And

45:37

how many, if any of those are in English?

45:42

One tenth, I would say. OK.

45:45

I would do like an English

45:48

show once a month or

45:50

something. But mostly in Finnish. OK.

45:53

And how do you feel the... Excuse

45:56

me. Can I tell a joke in Finnish? Please.

46:01

Minon se dani

46:03

ella un el mar, han

46:05

on komassa. Is

46:10

that the end of the joke? Yeah, in a

46:13

coma. Oh yeah, lovely! Please,

46:15

now I know what it is, please can I hear it again? Minon

46:19

se dani ella un el mar,

46:22

han on komassa.

46:28

Thank you for the audio recording, won't pick

46:30

up the little yatta-tata that you did with

46:32

your hands on the punchline. Tell

46:34

me then how much of your stuff is

46:37

translatable, how much of your existing

46:39

Finnish material is translatable to English?

46:42

Is there much wordplay or are you just

46:44

going for funny concepts that are then able

46:47

to be translated? Almost

46:49

everything I write in English is somehow

46:51

translatable to Finnish, but not the other

46:53

way around. Since when

46:55

I write in Finnish I work with the

46:57

culture. I work with Finnish culture, like I

47:00

talk about Finnish politicians, Finnish TV shows, Finnish

47:02

traditions, so that doesn't really

47:05

translate. But the other way, when

47:07

I write in English I think about generic

47:09

things. So,

47:12

not that much

47:14

of the Finnish stuff translates,

47:17

maybe a bit less than half. But

47:20

that's because of cultural reference points. Rather

47:23

than funny ideas, I'm really

47:25

interested in what ideas are funny.

47:28

Like if you see a child excitedly run

47:30

towards its parents and then fall over and

47:32

that's a kind of universally funny thing, provided

47:34

you're confident the child isn't hurt. Do you

47:36

know what I mean? There

47:38

are universally funny tropes. A

47:41

similarity between the Finnish and English

47:43

sense of humor is that

47:48

both audiences like surreal

47:51

stuff, like whimsy. And

47:54

that's not always the case with

47:56

the Americans. So I've noticed that the Americans are

47:59

not always the case with the Americans. comedians have

48:01

a fairly less whimsy

48:04

or just, can

48:07

I tell an anecdote about dying in

48:09

front of Chris Rock? Please.

48:12

Yeah. I was doing

48:14

an open spot at the

48:17

Comedy Store and Chris Rock would come

48:19

there because he's doing the O2 or whatever, so

48:21

he wanted to train his thing. So

48:24

he comes backstage and says hi

48:27

to everyone and introduces and

48:29

it's a bit weird when Chris Rock comes to you

48:31

like shaking with the hand extended like,

48:34

hi, I'm Chris. I

48:36

am aware of this particular information.

48:39

So I told him, hi, I'm Tommy. So

48:41

then he started talking to the host and

48:43

this is my impersonation of Chris Rock. It's

48:46

if possible, even worse than your impersonation

48:48

of a Finnish person. Okay,

48:50

go ahead. So Chris Rock was like talking

48:52

to the host. So this

48:55

is the Comedy Store.

48:58

This is the Friday Late Show, right? It should

49:00

be really easy because in

49:04

New York, the Friday

49:07

Late Show is so easy my mother could

49:09

do a spot. Before

49:12

the host gets to

49:15

say anything, I interject me

49:18

like a three-year-old comic. I

49:21

interject and say, has your mother done a spot? So

49:26

I tried to be whimsy. I tried to be worse.

49:29

I tried to like this because

49:31

it's what he said. He actually

49:34

said, that's what my analytical mind

49:36

heard that this mother could do a spot.

49:40

Extreme silence in the room, just extreme. The

49:42

host face-pawned.

49:47

Like actual physical face-pawn. That's

49:49

when I realized this is not good. And

49:51

then Chris had an entourage of

49:53

about 30 people, 10 of

49:56

whom were in the Comedy Store backstage.

49:58

So it was a complete It's

50:01

not the biggest backstage. There were

50:03

ten of Chris's entourage and

50:06

everyone just staring at me, shaking their head. Chris

50:09

was looking at me. Chris stopped, looked

50:11

at me straight in the eyes and

50:13

said with an extremely

50:16

serious voice like he's talking to a

50:18

child, no. My

50:22

mother has not

50:25

done a spot. What

50:28

I meant was the

50:32

Friday late show. It's

50:34

so easy. She could

50:36

do a spot. That

50:42

was a long time ago. I'm not sure I've

50:44

recovered still. I

50:47

was really hoping that

50:49

your next response to Chris was

50:52

to say, but has

50:54

she done a spot? No,

50:58

there is a semblance of self-preservation in

51:00

the genre. I

51:03

think sometimes you find yourself in such trouble that

51:05

the only way out is to double that. That

51:08

might have been better than what I did, was

51:11

go home and cry myself to sleep.

51:13

Oh, Tommy, I'm sorry. There's

51:17

not a lot of comics who I think are better

51:19

than him, so I met my biggest,

51:21

pretty much my biggest hero, managed

51:24

to meet them, tried to tell

51:26

a joke and embarrass myself in

51:28

front of everyone. This

51:32

is a skip and a jump

51:35

to a slightly different subject, but

51:37

how do you cope when things

51:40

go badly in comedy? You

51:42

as an analytical person who

51:44

understands himself, how

51:47

do you cope with the emotional rollercoaster

51:49

stand-out comedy? I

51:52

try to find the exact point

51:56

of the flaw. blame

52:01

that flaw and get better.

52:05

It's still in either

52:07

hurts. No

52:10

matter how analytical you

52:12

are, it hurts to do bad lists. I

52:15

want people to have a good time.

52:19

I want there to be some

52:21

meaning. They have come over here. They've

52:23

spent money. They have traveled

52:25

with their feet or their car. They're

52:27

there to have. And the purpose of

52:30

the event is for them to have

52:32

a good time. So then when I

52:34

do poorly, I have

52:39

caused a failure in the

52:42

system. It's

52:44

like in a factory, one of the machines

52:47

doesn't work. So that's bad. I

52:53

feel bad for wasting their time.

52:55

And I try feverishly to find

52:58

the thing that went wrong,

53:00

whether it's pacing, the

53:03

joke, the

53:05

gestures. I

53:08

had this joke

53:11

where I said, I

53:15

tried to buy, I

53:17

don't remember my own jokes. Maybe. Anyway,

53:22

I had a joke that

53:27

dealt with buying

53:30

condoms. And

53:32

it was the sort of like completely harmless

53:35

joke that worked every time

53:37

I told it. And then I was

53:39

doing a corporate. And

53:41

I told it. And

53:43

it completely killed the mood because

53:46

the premise of the joke was

53:48

that finally at the bar counter,

53:51

I realized that I should buy a condom

53:53

since I, by then, I realized

53:56

I don't want to have kids. As

53:59

if that's information. I only came

54:01

by at that exact moment. I

54:03

phrased it better back then when I remembered my own

54:06

material. But anyway,

54:08

it completely killed the show.

54:11

So it was a corporate gig,

54:13

and I couldn't get it working after that. And

54:16

I was just wondering, is there something wrong with

54:18

the joke? And then I spoke to

54:20

one of the people, and

54:22

they said that their secretary had

54:24

a miscarriage last week. And

54:28

she had always wanted a kid. And

54:30

when she got visibly pregnant, everyone was

54:32

happy for her. And

54:36

it was like a work group of 20 people.

54:39

So I completely destroyed the mood by emphasizing

54:41

how little of an interest I have in

54:44

having a kid. So

54:46

I totally destroyed it. And after that,

54:48

I was thinking, what can I do about that? Whenever

54:52

I go into a corporate show, should I always ask

54:55

in advance that can I do my condom joke? Or

54:59

I still don't have an answer for that. But

55:01

it was sort of an example of you can

55:03

always die for any reason. Yes.

55:06

Because you can't know the thing. One

55:08

thing that you could do, you could do my uncle

55:10

is in a coma. Yeah, but he's living the dream.

55:13

He's in a coma and discover that someone in the

55:15

room has an uncle in a coma or has, you

55:17

know, like the CEO has recently his child

55:20

is in a coma. You

55:22

can't legislate for absolutely any

55:25

connection that anyone could make to your

55:27

material. Anyone

55:29

any job can not only

55:31

bomb but totally destroy your

55:34

set, which is

55:36

too much information. It's

55:38

like someone when a comedian learns that

55:40

it's like when someone learns that the

55:42

universe is a vast and cold.

55:45

Maybe you were better off not knowing that. I'd

55:50

say one difference between the Finnish and

55:52

British comedies is we have a lot of

55:54

corporates. There's this huge tradition of

55:57

all the all the corporate.

56:00

pretty much every corporation have a Christmas

56:02

party and a spring party and whatever.

56:04

So people get to do corporates all

56:06

over the world and

56:08

they pay a

56:10

lot compared to clubs but

56:13

they're not like British corporates where you

56:15

get ten thousand pounds or whatever and

56:17

then there's a TV celebrity. They're more

56:20

like if you're good in

56:22

your third year of comedy you can do

56:24

corporates for like 700 euros. And

56:29

I figured that's not the case in like

56:31

Britain that like a promising decent comedian gets

56:33

to do 700 or what? No,

56:35

I think no one really knows

56:40

what anyone else goes out for but I

56:42

think you would not be trusted to do

56:44

a four-figure

56:47

some, you know, for a corporate

56:49

if you didn't have a really

56:51

convincing track record of success in

56:54

a variety of circumstances. That's not the

56:56

case here since the demand is so

56:59

huge. Yeah. There's so many corporates. It's

57:01

just like a tradition of either you

57:03

go to their headquarters

57:05

or they have bought the

57:07

place in a restaurant or

57:10

something and they want some kind of entertainment.

57:12

Yes. Okay. Okay. So it's kind of

57:15

like a halfway house kind of between

57:17

the two states. Yes. Between

57:20

the two different versions. Okay. And

57:22

if they only took the people

57:24

with the massive TV hosting resume

57:27

they just wouldn't have enough comedians.

57:30

Yes. I think this is partly what I

57:32

mean when I wonder whether people from

57:34

the UK will be thinking I've got to

57:36

move to Finland because you know what I

57:39

mean? It's like if I say that hearkens

57:41

back to the 90s I think there's an

57:43

understanding here that comedy used to be a

57:45

lot easier as a career than it is

57:47

now. Because of a lack

57:49

of Margaret Thatcher we have not

57:52

destroyed our middle class. So

57:56

it's not just like people make little

57:58

money with comedy or completely

58:00

insane money, but there's a vast

58:02

middle class of comedians making fairly

58:05

comfortable money. And that's

58:07

what happens when you don't destroy your middle

58:09

class. What is it that comedy

58:11

satisfies in you? Two

58:15

things. One is attention. Always,

58:18

always wanted attention. Like as far as

58:21

I can remember when I was a

58:23

little kid and the adults

58:25

were talking, I needed their attention. So

58:27

I just don't know what creates

58:29

like a vast. My

58:31

parents did give me attention. Like so I

58:33

don't think, I don't know if it's a

58:35

psychological, but it's just so great to

58:38

be listened to, be watched

58:41

by a lot of people.

58:43

That's huge kicks, like huge dopamine

58:46

kicks. And the other one

58:48

is that the world is insane

58:52

and the only way I can

58:54

make sense of it is

58:56

with jokes. Like

58:59

with a global global world, like the

59:02

beginning of the 2000s, we

59:05

could have done quite small

59:07

things to avoid

59:09

it. But and

59:12

the scientific community knew about it

59:14

and the corporations knew about it.

59:16

But they're like, if we

59:19

do these extremely minor things, next

59:21

quarter will make 5% less

59:23

profit. So let's destroy

59:27

our species. That's

59:30

such an insane thing to do. And

59:33

that they all did it. All the corporate people

59:35

did it and they managed to

59:37

get scientists to think tanks. And then

59:39

when the actual scientists tried to tell

59:41

humans that maybe for 5% next

59:46

quarter more profit, we shouldn't destroy

59:48

our species. People are

59:50

like pre hugger, pre

59:52

hugger. So that's so

59:55

crazy. I can't wrap my head

59:57

around it. But if I change

1:00:00

it into a comedy form, then

1:00:02

I'm in control and

1:00:04

I can make fun of how surreal it

1:00:06

is. Yes. This global

1:00:08

warming is the only thing, but just

1:00:11

general how we treat

1:00:14

each other and we make

1:00:16

so much food around the world

1:00:18

and yet we still have famine

1:00:21

and we have so many houses around the

1:00:23

world and we still have homeless. So

1:00:26

that doesn't make any sense. So

1:00:29

if I wasn't making jokes, if

1:00:33

I was just looking at factual

1:00:35

information of the world, I'd

1:00:39

go crazy. So it's

1:00:41

a defense mechanism. It's a

1:00:43

defense mechanism against the kind of

1:00:45

bewildering cruelty and chaos of the

1:00:47

world. Yes. So

1:00:50

that and getting attention. Those are the

1:00:52

two reasons I can't imagine myself doing

1:00:55

anything other than comedy. I

1:00:57

suppose there is something existential and

1:00:59

something, you know,

1:01:02

dread-laden, something doom-laden about the

1:01:04

chaos of the world and

1:01:07

the reaction, not simply

1:01:09

to laugh at it, but to make other

1:01:11

people laugh at it, to make jokes out of

1:01:14

it. You said that was a means of

1:01:18

taking control of it. Yes.

1:01:22

So we can together laugh at

1:01:25

the absurdity. And

1:01:28

is there, what is the reflection of

1:01:30

that upon your kind of mental health?

1:01:32

Do you feel like you have robust

1:01:34

mental health? Are you a happy person?

1:01:38

Yes. And there

1:01:41

have been stages. Before I

1:01:43

started comedy, I wasn't that

1:01:45

happy. Like I lived on, even

1:01:48

though I was successful in Magic the Gathering, whatever. I

1:01:50

lived until a 24-year-old not

1:01:52

being that happy. And

1:01:54

then I started doing comedy and

1:01:58

getting, it was so,

1:02:01

so good. It felt so, it still feels

1:02:03

so good that I

1:02:05

got happier. But

1:02:07

the moment where I think I actually,

1:02:09

I feel happy and the moment I

1:02:12

feel was about five

1:02:15

years ago when

1:02:17

I started enjoying the

1:02:19

ride. Like

1:02:21

for example, I would always, nowadays

1:02:24

when I'm on stage, I

1:02:27

think about the joke that I'm in.

1:02:30

I live in the joke when

1:02:32

I, it used to be that I'm always thinking about the

1:02:34

same joke. A lot of comedians, the next joke, a lot

1:02:37

of comedians say that they're always thinking about the next joke.

1:02:40

My advice to them is

1:02:43

to try thinking about the

1:02:45

joke you're in. Like

1:02:47

you might find that you

1:02:49

do better and that you

1:02:51

have more fun. I

1:02:54

know it's not the thing you're supposed to do, you're

1:02:56

supposed to be thinking about the next joke, what do

1:02:58

I tell next for this sort of, but live in

1:03:00

the joke. And off stage,

1:03:03

like when I was an open mic in 2007 going

1:03:06

to Liverpool, the

1:03:08

local chuckle hut or whatever, I

1:03:10

would just be thinking like, how does this advance

1:03:13

me? How do

1:03:15

I have to do this gig so I get

1:03:17

the next gig? So I would never be in

1:03:20

the moment. So

1:03:23

I don't think I was maybe the best company.

1:03:28

I was listening to this podcast by Dana

1:03:30

Gould and he said

1:03:32

that whenever he

1:03:34

meets someone who knew

1:03:36

him before he was 30, he just

1:03:38

says sorry. And

1:03:41

that hit me a bit too hard. I think

1:03:45

I became an adult of like 35

1:03:47

or something. But anyway, I

1:03:50

would just be the calm,

1:03:53

frigid analytical self just thinking about

1:03:55

how does this advance my business

1:03:57

plan of moving along in comedy.

1:04:00

But now, what

1:04:03

happens is when I go to those clubs, I

1:04:06

talk to the open mics and we have a lot of

1:04:09

fun. I just learn about their life. I'm

1:04:11

like, so what do you do for a living? Tell

1:04:14

me about your family or something. And

1:04:16

those trips are amazing. Just

1:04:19

the car rides, they're so much fun. And

1:04:22

I'm just wondering, why didn't I do this before? Well,

1:04:25

before I was just like, oh, if I

1:04:27

tell the joke number seven a bit better,

1:04:29

maybe in a month

1:04:31

and a half, I will do better at the Comedy

1:04:33

Store Gong Show or something like that. Yeah.

1:04:36

So living in the moment, it might

1:04:38

decrease my efficiency by 5%. But

1:04:45

it brings happiness. So

1:04:47

yeah, I was fairly unhappy until I

1:04:49

started doing comedy. That brought me more

1:04:52

happiness, but then self-actualization, like realizing

1:04:54

that it's good to live in the moment when I

1:04:56

was about 35 years old or something. That's,

1:04:59

yes, I'm happy. That's

1:05:02

a really lovely answer. Thank you, Tommy. That's

1:05:04

a really, I'm really fascinated by that. And

1:05:06

it ties beautifully back into comedy as a

1:05:09

thing, living in the moment, living in the

1:05:11

moment of the joke. I can absolutely think

1:05:13

of times when I was doing that, times

1:05:15

when I forgot to do that, times when

1:05:17

I realized I wasn't doing it and faked

1:05:19

it. And I also think,

1:05:21

you know, we've been going a similar amount

1:05:24

of time. And I think

1:05:26

that I too missed out

1:05:28

on friendship

1:05:30

opportunities and depth of, I feel like

1:05:32

in comedy I know lots of

1:05:34

people, but the kind of depth of my friendship

1:05:36

is coming. You were always real

1:05:38

nice. You were always real nice. I would never get

1:05:41

the idea that you're one of those career hogs. Like

1:05:44

you would never, no

1:05:47

one ever felt like they were

1:05:49

wasting your time. Oh,

1:05:52

that's wonderful to hear. I'm very pleased to

1:05:54

hear that. And a lot

1:05:56

of people, like when you're talking to them, there's the

1:05:58

thing about like when you go to Edinburgh. and

1:06:00

then you're talking to someone, they're looking

1:06:02

behind your shoulders all the time, like,

1:06:04

oh, is there a producer or something?

1:06:07

You never did that. Like

1:06:09

you would, no one,

1:06:12

you made no one feel worthless. Thank

1:06:15

you. Thank you. That's

1:06:17

important to me. That's a really wonderful thing to

1:06:19

hear. Thank you. That's just my analytical

1:06:22

observation of your human behaviour. Let's

1:06:24

finish up. I've enjoyed this so much. It's really lovely to

1:06:26

see you. I've had a lot of fun. Look,

1:06:29

we haven't talked about your podcast. Let's talk

1:06:31

briefly about your podcast, which I enjoyed enormously,

1:06:33

although the branding of it is, it makes

1:06:35

me laugh that you position yourself as dumb

1:06:37

when we know that this is not the

1:06:39

case at all. Tell us about your

1:06:41

podcast. Can

1:06:44

I tell the origin story first? By all means, yeah.

1:06:47

Okay, so I did a gig this summer

1:06:49

at Pride, and there was

1:06:51

this queer feminist comedy night,

1:06:54

and I asked to be there, and then the host was

1:06:56

like, tell me, do you

1:06:59

have something you want to tell me? And

1:07:01

I'm like, yeah, no, no, no, I'm straight, but can I be on

1:07:04

the bill? And then

1:07:06

the host was like, okay, I'll put you on the

1:07:08

bill, not really knowing what to expect. So

1:07:11

I wrote a lot of jokes about

1:07:14

the patriarchy and how

1:07:16

ridiculous it is that since a

1:07:18

child, this is one of the insane things. Since

1:07:21

I was a kid, I've been told in

1:07:24

school and whatever that men are smarter

1:07:26

than women, and that's why CEOs are

1:07:28

men, and presidents are men, and prime

1:07:31

ministers are men. And all

1:07:33

I could think of, if men actually are

1:07:35

smarter than women, how does

1:07:37

it show? Like

1:07:41

Stu, have you seen men? Not

1:07:45

the brightest bunch. I'm sorry I'm doing material

1:07:47

now, I should do material and put. But

1:07:49

anyway, I did that kind of

1:07:51

jokes, and then I did jokes about how stupid homophobia

1:07:53

is and whatever, and it went over

1:07:56

gangbusters. It went over really well. So

1:07:58

I figured, can this be done

1:08:00

more. I was

1:08:03

the token straight in

1:08:07

a queer bill. So I figured, can

1:08:09

this be done outside of a comedy show? Pride

1:08:12

is huge in Finland. We had 100,000 people

1:08:14

last time and nothing

1:08:17

in Helsinki gets 100,000 people.

1:08:20

Absolutely nothing. So Pride is

1:08:22

the single biggest event in

1:08:25

Finland. But then the rest of the

1:08:27

year, there's nothing. The queers go

1:08:29

to the right of our own podcasts. And

1:08:32

then the straights go to their own. I figured,

1:08:34

can this be combined? So I came

1:08:37

up with this idea of the queer scene for

1:08:39

idiots, because there's these books like Something

1:08:42

for Idiots and whatever. So I

1:08:44

call it the person organizing

1:08:46

the gig, Jamie McDonald,

1:08:50

a trans man. So I

1:08:52

figured, Jamie, let's do this podcast. It's

1:08:54

called Queer and Dumb. I'll be dumb.

1:08:56

You'll be queer. It's no problem for

1:08:58

Jamie being queer. Like he'll do

1:09:00

he'll do that one for free. And

1:09:04

the idea is that I ask

1:09:06

questions, like the easiest LGBT questions

1:09:08

about whatever is the topic, like

1:09:10

whether it's Pride or whatever. The

1:09:13

title is a bit of a clickbait. But

1:09:15

it means that I'm asking the dumb questions. Yes.

1:09:18

And someone someone was asking me like, tell me like, it's

1:09:20

called queer and dumb, but you're not dumb. And I

1:09:23

consult them by saying that

1:09:25

if you actually want to

1:09:27

listen to a podcast, the

1:09:30

host is dumb, you're

1:09:32

spoiled for choice. Yeah. To

1:09:35

start with Joe Rogan and just go from

1:09:37

there. Like you will find

1:09:40

these particular podcasts. So

1:09:42

basically, that's the idea to be like

1:09:45

an idiot's guide to the queer scene, where

1:09:48

I ask the simplest questions. And

1:09:50

I had a lot of fun

1:09:53

doing it. I'm not sure why there isn't

1:09:55

another similar podcast. I tried to go through

1:09:57

the LGBTQIA Plus podcast, and I haven't

1:09:59

found A similar

1:10:01

concept. That's interesting. Yes, one

1:10:04

of the really interesting things about it, because

1:10:06

of the positioning of it, because it is

1:10:08

like an idiot's guide to the queer scene

1:10:10

or queer culture, and each

1:10:12

episode – I've heard three of them, I think – each episode

1:10:14

has a sort of a specific thrust to it where you say,

1:10:17

I want to know about this and I want you to explain

1:10:19

to me about this. And

1:10:21

you have very interesting conversations, and

1:10:23

Jamie's a very funny and personable

1:10:25

person. Jamie is brilliant. Really,

1:10:27

really good. And he

1:10:31

is genuinely

1:10:33

answering your questions. I

1:10:36

felt like I learned something from it. I learned

1:10:38

something about the origins of Pride. Jamie

1:10:41

has zero bullshit. Jamie will

1:10:44

just answer the question completely

1:10:46

honestly, and I will ask

1:10:48

whatever. So

1:10:52

it's this combination that's

1:10:54

either going to make good content or be

1:10:56

like a mutual career suicide. Yeah,

1:11:01

well, I really enjoyed it. I

1:11:03

think people should listen to it. I found it

1:11:06

funny and interesting. I

1:11:08

found it funny and interesting. But I think I was

1:11:10

going to say, I think maybe the reason why there

1:11:12

aren't other podcasts like it that I'm aware of either

1:11:15

is that it is a sort of

1:11:17

a progressive mission of a non-queer person,

1:11:19

of a straight person, to actually bother

1:11:21

finding out and to invest time and

1:11:24

energy in exploring

1:11:28

another culture like that. But not

1:11:30

another culture, you know, an adjacent and

1:11:32

completely intertwined kind of culture. There is

1:11:34

a thing called allyship,

1:11:38

and it's with a lot of

1:11:40

minorities, not just like the LGBTQI plus

1:11:42

minorities, but there's always been allyship.

1:11:45

I haven't invented

1:11:48

anything. It's

1:11:50

just that for some

1:11:52

reason, this particular podcast doesn't

1:11:55

exist yet. So I

1:11:57

just figured I'm going to make it exist. the

1:12:02

inventor of allyship. Tommy Varney. Please

1:12:05

go fuck yourself. Can

1:12:09

I give one shout out? Yes, please.

1:12:11

To the level of the Finnish

1:12:13

comedy scene and our extreme professionalism.

1:12:17

Most of your guests I've seen, they've been at their

1:12:19

house. I'm in an

1:12:22

actual fantasy studio and my

1:12:25

sound technician, Henry

1:12:27

Lechto, has

1:12:30

written for four full

1:12:32

seasons of the Finnish version of

1:12:35

Have I Got News For You.

1:12:37

Wow! That's great.

1:12:39

Four full seasons. Has your

1:12:41

guest ever had a sound technician

1:12:44

this knowledgeable about TV

1:12:47

news parodies? I

1:12:49

don't believe so. And what is particularly

1:12:51

thrilling for me, not to detract from

1:12:53

his achievement at all, but what's particularly

1:12:56

thrilling for me is that you as

1:12:58

a guest are the first person ever

1:13:00

to shout out their sound technician. And

1:13:03

if that isn't allyship, I don't know what

1:13:05

is. I

1:13:07

love you, Stu. I

1:13:10

love you, man. Thank you so much.

1:13:12

Thank you. We didn't really, I

1:13:14

would normally finish on Are You Happy, as you may know,

1:13:16

and we've covered that. I suppose

1:13:19

I'm just sort of wondering because I don't know

1:13:21

when I'll see you in person next. Do

1:13:24

you have a particular memory

1:13:27

of the scene in that time

1:13:29

in London that you,

1:13:31

not one involving me necessarily, but to

1:13:33

me necessarily, but do you have a

1:13:36

kind of a cherished,

1:13:38

I almost wanted a bit

1:13:40

more time of just kind of chewing

1:13:42

the fat and responsibilities, I'm sure you

1:13:44

have limited time on your podcast studio.

1:13:47

But just like what is one of your,

1:13:49

I'll come in again, what's one of your

1:13:51

favourite memories of the UK comedy scene at

1:13:54

that time? We've spoken about some of the

1:13:56

negative aspects, some of the more kind of

1:13:58

scammy promoters and what have you. But

1:14:00

like, what do you look back upon fondly from

1:14:02

that time? It's

1:14:04

not one specific

1:14:07

memory. It's waking up

1:14:10

every single day and

1:14:12

knowing there's a gig somewhere where

1:14:14

I can learn something by going to watch

1:14:16

it. Either I'm performing on the bill

1:14:19

or I'm not on the bill. The

1:14:22

amount of talent is just so huge.

1:14:26

I'm not sure if people know that

1:14:29

because Americans are better at self-promotion. So

1:14:32

they're better at filling the YouTube, they're better

1:14:34

at billing the Netflix. But

1:14:37

I think you guys should... When

1:14:40

I see like a Netflix compilation thing

1:14:42

where there's five comedians,

1:14:45

if these people were British, this would be

1:14:48

a higher quality. So I genuinely

1:14:50

think your comedy scene is...

1:14:54

Even though it's extremely well known,

1:14:56

it's widely underrated. I would recommend

1:14:58

people go to London,

1:15:00

look at the shows. They're

1:15:03

really, really good. Not the open mics. The open

1:15:05

mics can be horrible. But like

1:15:07

an actual page show, they're really, really good. So

1:15:10

that's like a generic memory. I have one

1:15:13

memory about you that really stuck

1:15:15

to my mind. So

1:15:19

you were hosting. You

1:15:21

were hosting a show and you had just started to get

1:15:26

the hosting of a page show. It was one

1:15:28

of your first of those gigs. And

1:15:31

then you do your bit

1:15:33

at the beginning. And then the opening

1:15:35

act who does like 20 minutes was

1:15:37

a bit of a circuit regular.

1:15:40

I was like open mic in the middle

1:15:42

or whatever. So the opening act, a professional

1:15:45

comedian and a person

1:15:47

of color. And

1:15:50

he would go on stage

1:15:52

and he's black. And he

1:15:55

would do jokes about how Muslim

1:15:57

women have the burqa because

1:15:59

there's... ugly. He

1:16:02

had an entire bit about

1:16:04

that and then you

1:16:07

went on after him and it's

1:16:09

one of your first professional hosting

1:16:11

and you immediately told the audience

1:16:13

a public announcement like that joke

1:16:15

that the comedian did was not

1:16:17

okay. You

1:16:20

cannot say that that's a racist thing, it's

1:16:23

nonsense. I apologize and

1:16:25

the following acts will not be this

1:16:27

racist. So I just

1:16:29

figured that that's a grave. I

1:16:34

wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have had the

1:16:36

courage to do that. So do

1:16:39

you have like a career death wish or

1:16:41

are you the ally? Do

1:16:47

you remember this incident? I

1:16:49

remember the act. I remember,

1:16:51

I don't remember the joke, but I remember

1:16:53

it being about that and

1:16:57

I don't remember the incident,

1:16:59

but I am very pleased to

1:17:01

hear it. I suspect I do

1:17:03

remember rather more well than that

1:17:07

an earlier incident where something like that

1:17:09

had happened and I hadn't said anything

1:17:11

and I think I had decided that I'm not going

1:17:13

to let that happen again. So

1:17:16

you saw the second half of

1:17:18

the movie of that

1:17:20

moment because there is someone out there who

1:17:22

saw me compare a gig where someone said

1:17:24

something like that may have been the same

1:17:27

person and I was flustered and didn't know

1:17:29

how to cope with it and through to

1:17:31

commercial as they say, I kind of like

1:17:34

brought another act on or what have you. So there'll

1:17:36

be someone out there with the opposite, not the opposite

1:17:39

of that story, but I'm thrilled

1:17:41

that you saw that.

1:17:43

So what I learned

1:17:46

was a couple of things that as a

1:17:48

white person you can call out a person

1:17:50

of color for being racist. I

1:17:52

just didn't know that that's the thing that exists

1:17:55

and then after that I

1:17:58

learned that you can be career-wise, minded

1:18:01

and have dignity.

1:18:05

That you don't have to choose, you

1:18:07

don't have to just say be silent

1:18:09

or whatever. So that stuck to

1:18:11

mind as a memory, I've thought

1:18:13

about that particular moment a

1:18:16

lot. Tommy,

1:18:19

if that anecdote was about someone else, I could

1:18:21

leave it in. I can't round off this

1:18:26

episode with you telling a story

1:18:28

about me being something like an

1:18:31

extremely, you know, that's like

1:18:33

a really nice story about a nice thing

1:18:35

I did. Who would I be if I'd

1:18:37

finished the podcast with that? It

1:18:40

was a big moment for me since I

1:18:42

learned. It's like I read books. So that

1:18:44

was like seeing something happen.

1:18:48

So a singular anecdote.

1:18:55

You're asking me like a really nice

1:18:58

anecdote that I had in the

1:19:00

London comedy scene. And the thing

1:19:02

that I enjoyed most was doing a

1:19:04

gig in London and doing well. And

1:19:07

I had so many of the good shows

1:19:10

that I don't remember a singular one.

1:19:14

So I did

1:19:17

so well, the joke was so good

1:19:20

that I cannot

1:19:22

pick a single. I had a lot of fun in

1:19:25

London. I just remember the bad shows because

1:19:27

there were so few of them. Beautiful.

1:19:33

If I had done

1:19:37

less brilliant shows,

1:19:40

both in brilliance and the amount of the shows in

1:19:43

London, I could name one. But there

1:19:45

were so many and they were so

1:19:47

good that I know I can. Thanks,

1:19:50

Tommy. So

1:19:54

that was Tommy. What a joy. What a

1:19:56

joy. And thank you. Can I thank Tommy and his

1:19:58

brilliant studio tech who is on the show. also a

1:20:00

famous comedian in Finland. Thank

1:20:02

you so much for really making the

1:20:04

effort to hire a studio and

1:20:07

have proper gear at your end. Whenever I

1:20:09

have to do video episodes with

1:20:11

people where they are remote or on Zoom or what

1:20:13

have you, few people go to that effort. I don't

1:20:15

know if I mentioned at the time that when I

1:20:17

interviewed wonderful Mike Pabiglia, I sort of

1:20:20

thought to myself, well, he's got a podcast studio.

1:20:22

Maybe he could sit in it, but he sat

1:20:24

around the corner from it and recorded on his

1:20:26

laptop. So there's that. Important

1:20:28

Tommy News before we wrap this episode

1:20:30

up. Tommy says that he timed this.

1:20:32

This is classic Tommy. He's probably read

1:20:34

a book about this. He

1:20:36

timed it so that when this podcast goes out,

1:20:38

he has two episodes. He and

1:20:40

Jamie have got two episodes with a British guest

1:20:43

as the latest ones. Travis Glossop, a radio and

1:20:45

podcast producer, has been in Finland for a year

1:20:47

due to his relationship with a Finnish woman. And

1:20:49

episode 12 is him talking about Britain and his

1:20:52

youth. Episode 13, launching Thursday, is

1:20:54

a mini episode again with Travis where the

1:20:56

three of us discuss non-sexual art that makes

1:20:58

us horny. This is what you can expect

1:21:00

from the Queer of Dumb podcast. We recorded

1:21:02

an episode and a mini episode in a

1:21:04

row since Jamie is on a vacation now.

1:21:06

Efficient use of studio time. Classic

1:21:08

Tommy. He says, but yeah,

1:21:10

the first thing that people see when checking out

1:21:13

our pod from yours is me talking about feeling

1:21:15

a strange sensation as a kid whenever MacGyver or

1:21:17

Night Rider would get tied up. That

1:21:19

to me is a recipe for a tremendous amount to

1:21:21

enjoy. So do check out the Queer of Dumb podcast.

1:21:23

I've listened to a few of them. They're really, really

1:21:25

good fun and you genuinely learn stuff as well. I

1:21:28

will do a post down below at you in just a second. Please

1:21:32

find Tommy via the Queer and Dumb podcast. He

1:21:34

presumably, he is on Twitter and TikTok and all

1:21:36

those things and will tip them in the show notes,

1:21:38

but I don't have them at my fingertips.

1:21:41

I will, what will he do? Thank you,

1:21:43

producer Callum. And remember, you can see my

1:21:45

award-winning climate show spoilers at the Leicester Comedy

1:21:47

Festival on the 22nd of February at 7pm.

1:21:49

Link's in the show notes. That one is

1:21:52

nearly sold out. It is also in the

1:21:54

McCunselith Comedy Festival. So go to MacComedyFest.something or

1:21:56

other and find out that that has a

1:21:58

few tickets. due to

1:22:00

being in a large room. A reminder for

1:22:02

you that the Insiders Club is moving to Patreon

1:22:05

where you can get full video episodes, extra content

1:22:07

now in video as well as audio, including over

1:22:09

16 minutes with Tommy. Over

1:22:11

16 minutes. Let's just say roughly 16 minutes.

1:22:14

I feel like we're upselling 16

1:22:16

minutes with over 16.2 minutes with Tommy. With

1:22:20

under 17 minutes is another way of saying that. We

1:22:23

have exclusive guest announcements and engagement. Engagement?

1:22:26

Exclusive guest announcements and engagement. Oh,

1:22:29

that's because we've opened community chats, which has been

1:22:31

Chris and Stu's secret only fans. So if you

1:22:33

want access to Stu's secret only fans, you've got

1:22:35

to join the Patreon. And plus we have a

1:22:37

monthly Stu and A, which is a Q&A with

1:22:39

me. With a fun

1:22:41

title. And you also get access to the full back

1:22:43

catalogue of extras with the new RSS feed. Go

1:22:46

to patreon.com/comcompod for more info. Thank you

1:22:48

so much to our Insider Producers. These

1:22:50

are people who have gone in at

1:22:52

a particular tier on the Patreon. They

1:22:54

are Sam Allen, Jay Lucas, Gary McClellan,

1:22:57

Dave. That sounded like a

1:22:59

double baron name. That's two people. Miles Walsh,

1:23:01

Nick Waite, Andrus Purdey. I

1:23:04

mean, he's Estonian, so it's probably Purd. Caroline

1:23:07

Schmidt, Jonathan Stewart, Richard Lucas, Paul Swaddle,

1:23:09

James Burry, Ashley Stewart and Mike Sheldon.

1:23:12

And as you can hear, that's an

1:23:14

absolute sausage fest. So please, female

1:23:16

and female identifying and potentially non-binary

1:23:19

listeners to the show. Also, would

1:23:21

you please step up and join the Patreon? Because

1:23:23

I'm going to be awkward reading out those, I'm

1:23:25

going to say it, pretty white male names.

1:23:28

But a big thank you to

1:23:30

our special and very fancy Insider

1:23:33

Executive Producer, Neil Peters. And

1:23:35

if you'd like to join that gang, you've got to join it. I think

1:23:37

it's £19.99 a month. So

1:23:40

if you want to be one of the real swanky guys like Neil and

1:23:42

get a big thank you, which I promise

1:23:44

from now on will sound less sarcastic, then

1:23:47

hop over to the Patreon and do that. That's

1:23:50

everything. So I've been Stuart Goldsmith. The show was

1:23:52

produced by producer, that was Tommy Volumies. The

1:23:54

show was logged by Susie Lewis. And I

1:23:56

will post-amble at you in just a second. But and if

1:23:59

you're new. to the show that's where I'd chat to you

1:24:01

for a bit afterwards but that's basically the show finished and

1:24:03

now there's a bit on the end. Welcome

1:24:07

to the bit on the end. I've

1:24:11

got a couple of things to talk about. Let's start

1:24:13

with the sadder thing which is that Moz passed away

1:24:16

and thank you so much to those of you who got

1:24:18

in touch regarding Moz and were

1:24:20

kind enough to tweet what a pair of

1:24:22

bollocks though at me and not just tweet

1:24:24

across many social medias. I

1:24:27

don't know what you do. I

1:24:29

don't know what the protocol is to honor someone who

1:24:31

is a member of the sort of fan community and

1:24:33

worked on the show. There's loads of logs in

1:24:36

a big archive of this show and several

1:24:38

of them bear Moz's name and

1:24:41

I don't know what the official thing is that

1:24:43

I say now so

1:24:46

I shall just wing this. You

1:24:48

were a good dude Moz and I think you...

1:24:52

It's not my place to do a big thing like

1:24:54

this but listen. I really enjoyed all of the encounters

1:24:56

I had with Moz and I

1:24:59

remember him fondly and for those of you in

1:25:01

the... Can

1:25:03

I say fandom? I

1:25:06

think it would make him laugh but I'm struggling

1:25:08

through this. There

1:25:10

was something about the whole of that final

1:25:14

show that we did for him. There

1:25:16

was something about that which felt... I spoke a little

1:25:19

bit about this last time. It

1:25:21

felt peaceful and wonderful

1:25:23

and joyful and not

1:25:25

sad. It didn't feel sad

1:25:27

at all and it has slightly reconfigured the

1:25:30

way I think about death. I think that

1:25:33

has probably got bigger ramifications that I can

1:25:35

get into for now. On

1:25:37

the subject of... Again

1:25:39

is this an appropriate link? I don't know. Die

1:25:42

Henwood is coming up on the show. Fabulous.

1:25:44

Just irrepressible. Kiwi

1:25:46

who just wants to have a good time. Die

1:25:48

Henwood. Very famous in

1:25:50

New Zealand if you are listening from there and

1:25:53

very lovely. I spent a really fun... I've got

1:25:55

a particular fun memory of walking to get chips

1:25:57

with Die after a gig at the Christchurch World

1:25:59

Baskers. And he

1:26:03

is just absolutely radiating peace at the

1:26:05

moment because he has stage 4 bowel

1:26:07

cancer and is going to come onto

1:26:10

the show and talk to us about

1:26:12

his comedy career and I imagine we will

1:26:14

also get into how he manages to be

1:26:17

so from what I understand, from my

1:26:19

correspondence and other stuff I've seen from him recently, how

1:26:23

he manages to just remain

1:26:26

kind of peaceful and hopeful and optimistic and

1:26:28

really wonderful. So those things are going through

1:26:30

my mind at the moment. I feel like

1:26:33

it's one of those, you

1:26:35

know every so often lots of people seem to

1:26:37

either get ill or get very ill or pass

1:26:39

away within a short period of time. He's like

1:26:41

gee this is happening all over the place at

1:26:44

the moment and I

1:26:47

think that the

1:26:49

experience I've had with Moz in particular

1:26:51

has made me feel very kind

1:26:53

of calm about it. I mean not calm in

1:26:56

how I stumble through a thing on a podcast

1:26:58

not knowing what the proper way

1:27:00

to talk about this is, what's the most respectful way. You

1:27:02

know one of my great things is like oh god

1:27:04

I just never want to upset anyone or say the

1:27:07

wrong thing and I think when it comes to death

1:27:09

it's one of those things that usually closes me down

1:27:11

and makes me stumble and go what's

1:27:13

the most, is it okay

1:27:15

to be respectful. Do you know what I mean? I just turn

1:27:18

into a jelly. But there we

1:27:20

go. Anyway, sign R and Moz. That's,

1:27:27

yeah. What a

1:27:29

pair of bollocks though eh? Great lad.

1:27:31

Now other stuff we have other stuff to talk

1:27:33

about as well. I'm very

1:27:35

excited about the, my god having the

1:27:37

Patreon all in one place is a

1:27:39

joy. Having had like

1:27:41

just administratively to kind of prune

1:27:44

away branches of what I now

1:27:46

realise now that I'm working on

1:27:48

the show with producer Callum is

1:27:50

like the show had

1:27:52

become over many years me trying to do 20

1:27:54

jobs and delegate little bits of them and trying

1:27:56

to, the whole back end of like using MailChimp

1:27:59

and Moz. WordPress and PayPal and trying to sell

1:28:01

a tape together this whole thing. The

1:28:03

simplification of it is fabulous and I just hope

1:28:05

that I manage to use that to take a

1:28:08

deep breath every so often and enjoy the space

1:28:10

rather than using that to go great that's done now

1:28:13

I can fill my time more. But guess

1:28:15

which one I'm doing? I've had some really

1:28:18

fun experiences recently I'm going to talk to the

1:28:20

patron about some of those I did a gig

1:28:22

at the Houses of Parliament which is deeply eye-opening

1:28:24

and weird. If you would like to join the

1:28:27

the insiders club you get the chance to submit

1:28:29

your questions for a monthly Zoom stew and a

1:28:32

what a fun title they wrote and

1:28:34

so you can ask me about that if you like

1:28:36

but one of the other things I will say and

1:28:38

this is I hope this doesn't sound too kind of

1:28:41

artful to be talking about this where is

1:28:43

the thing I've got a list of things

1:28:46

to mention in stuff and I know where

1:28:48

is it it's there Susie

1:28:50

the logger says I'm

1:28:52

gonna read some of this verbatim Susie says you

1:28:55

know I've been logging what's

1:28:57

the sense of that you know no you

1:29:00

know you know I should have read this first

1:29:02

I should have reread it first Susie says she's

1:29:04

been logging Martin Abano's audio through this auto transcription

1:29:07

program that we used this afternoon and curiosity made

1:29:09

me look at one of the videos of you

1:29:11

both because he obviously works in audio to see

1:29:13

who he is because she didn't know of him

1:29:15

before and she's gone from listening with interest she

1:29:18

says to watching this very same section with a

1:29:20

massive grin on my face and chuckling at your

1:29:22

interactions as you know I love the podcast but

1:29:24

there is even more joy in watching it it's

1:29:27

a total delight so much is lost by

1:29:29

not seeing your facial expressions it's almost a

1:29:31

different experience so delighted you're filming these now

1:29:34

I think I'd read that out anyway even

1:29:36

if there wasn't a genuine financial benefit to

1:29:38

me of convincing more of you to using

1:29:40

it to convince more of you to support

1:29:42

the show on patreon so that you can

1:29:44

watch it but that literally never occurred to

1:29:46

me this is the real reason I want

1:29:48

to read it out is I was completely

1:29:50

floored by that because my experience of watching

1:29:53

video episodes of me interviewing someone is that

1:29:55

I can't look away from my own stupid

1:29:57

smug face nodding and and sort

1:30:00

of... Do you know what I mean? I'm

1:30:02

just incredibly self-conscious about what my face is

1:30:04

doing and I thought

1:30:06

that, you know, when obviously

1:30:08

there are moments where we cut from them to mine to

1:30:11

both of what have you, I would be so happy if

1:30:13

it was a video episode of Just the Guest

1:30:17

and I was just a shadowy figure in

1:30:19

the darkness in the background, but apparently it's

1:30:21

good. So there we go. Let me know

1:30:23

your thoughts on that. The

1:30:26

Con Con Facebook group is still up and running and

1:30:28

there's been some very fun stuff in there. Let's just

1:30:30

briefly tell you what's been going on in there recently.

1:30:32

I've been enjoying this. Paul

1:30:34

Savage made a

1:30:37

very funny post that was non-Stu

1:30:39

approved showing off about how

1:30:42

much he... It was a little kind

1:30:44

of jokey meme about the

1:30:46

fact that posts, like advertising posts, self-promotional posts have

1:30:48

to be Stu approved to be in the Facebook

1:30:50

group for Con Con, which remains one of the

1:30:53

nicest corners of the internet, if I do so

1:30:55

myself. And then I cut it out, put

1:30:57

a big red cross over it and reposted it. And then

1:31:00

Adam Larter, I see, has just posted

1:31:02

a Paul Savage approved post about the

1:31:04

original meme. So that's fun. There's some book

1:31:06

posts in there, which I won't tell you

1:31:08

about unless you join, but those have been

1:31:10

great. I've been asking people about what you

1:31:12

use the podcast for and what

1:31:15

have you actually learned from it? Like what's

1:31:17

a tangible thing that you now do differently,

1:31:19

a result of something you heard on the

1:31:21

podcast. I would love to hear more of

1:31:24

those. I've hashtagged them book posts. So if

1:31:26

you're in the Facebook group, you can encounter

1:31:28

those. There is also some really interesting stuff

1:31:31

in there. There's applications for volunteers at the

1:31:33

Secret Welsh Comedy Festival, a sarcastic post

1:31:35

about street performers by way of a

1:31:37

cartoon, some people asking about Melbourne, an

1:31:40

argument about a very famous comic using

1:31:44

some material we may have heard before. It's

1:31:46

not an argument, but it's something I won't... Let's keep it to

1:31:49

the Facebook group and some

1:31:52

other things. So basically join there and

1:31:54

you can be part of that slightly

1:31:56

more extended community if you are unable

1:31:58

to support the show. financially

1:32:00

so that's nice as well. That'll do me for

1:32:02

now. Yeah,

1:32:05

that'll do for now. I hope that wasn't too big

1:32:07

of a gear change from

1:32:09

talking about Dear Moz to talking about

1:32:11

the fucking Patreon, but

1:32:15

any squirming I might do as a result

1:32:17

of it, I just think he'd enjoy. Bye-bye.

1:32:20

Oh, and try and try and maintain a consistent sense

1:32:22

of self, will you, for once? Oh,

1:32:25

and one more thing, one more thing. Have

1:32:28

you read The War of Art by Steven

1:32:30

Pressfield? Brilliant quote from it, brilliant quote from

1:32:33

it. I've been thinking about this for 48

1:32:35

hours now. You are not the

1:32:37

problem, the problem is the problem. I

1:32:40

read that and I sat in a cafe and said

1:32:42

it out loud to myself five times with a dazed

1:32:44

expression on my face. You are

1:32:46

not the problem, the problem is the problem. And then I said it

1:32:48

to my wife and she said, what do you mean? And I was

1:32:50

like, oh, I thought it was really obvious, so I'll just talk you

1:32:53

through it for 20 seconds. When my

1:32:55

situation is something that my experience is that when

1:32:57

something is going wrong, like I'm running out of

1:32:59

time, because the toilet seat broke, and I'm thinking

1:33:01

fuck, I've got to meet someone in 22 minutes,

1:33:03

it's going to take 20 minutes to get there

1:33:05

and I haven't packed for London yet. My

1:33:08

feeling is like, oh, God, that's me. I'm a

1:33:10

problem. I fucked up again. I'm a piece of

1:33:12

shit. Oh, shit. But I'm not, I'm not the

1:33:14

problem. The problem is the problem. There's a

1:33:16

lateness issue because lots of stuff happened because the toilet,

1:33:18

the toilet seat was the problem. I'm not

1:33:20

the problem. So I don't have to feel

1:33:22

bad about it. I just have to hurry

1:33:25

up and finish this now. Okay. Turtles.

1:33:31

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1:33:40

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