[audience cheering and applauding]
[announcer] Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.
Please welcome to the stage
a man who really doesn't need to do this.
[audience laughing]
Ricky Gervais.
-[upbeat music playing]
-[audience cheering and applauding]
[audience cheering]
[music fades]
Hello.
-Hello. Thank you.
-[cheering continues]
Shush. Thank you very much. Shush.
No, shush.
Thank you, but shut the f*ck up.
No f*cking whooping or-- Just laugh.
No, but thank-- Shush. Everyone calm down.
Shush!
I'm filming this. Shut up, you c**ts!
[audience laughing]
Thank you very much.
Um
Welcome to my show. Uh
It's not a show.
There's no dancers or jugglers.
It's basically a bloke talking,
um, which is essentially
what stand-up comedy is.
A bloke talking.
Sexist.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
What about all the funny female comedians?
Like, um
-[audience laughing]
-No. No. No.
Right. No, no, no, no, no.
I'm not doing that.
Okay, right. That was irony, okay?
There'll be a bit of that throughout
the show. See if you can spot it.
Now, that's when I say summat
I don't really mean for comic effect,
and you, as an audience,
you laugh at the wrong thing
'cause you know what the right thing is.
It's a way of satirizing attitudes.
Like that first joke,
I used the old-fashioned sexist trope
that women aren't funny.
Now, in real life,
I know there are loads of funny women.
Like, um
[audience laughing]
I did it again. Well spotted. Good.
[audience laughing]
No, but there are. Um
Dame Edna Everage. She's
[audience laughing]
Uh
Eddie Izzard.
[audience laughing]
She's brilliant, in't she?
[audience laughing]
She's not only a great comedienne,
she's also a great actress, isn't she?
She was brilliant
in that thing as that man, weren't sh--
[audience laughing]
It's good to be back. Um
I fell back in love with stand-up
on my last tour, Humanity.
I played arenas around the world.
Netflix bought it for a record amount.
It was the most-watched special
of the year.
I thought, "Everyone loves me now.
Everyone loves me now."
Then I got this tweet.
[audience laughing]
A real tweet, right?
"Call yourself a comedian?"
He knows I do.
[audience laughing]
Literally says the word in my Twitter bio.
[audience laughing]
"Call yourself a comedian?"
"You're about as funny as"
Now, I thought he was gonna go
for the jugularand say, "Miranda," or
-[audience laughing]
-Come on!
Come on, guys. Don't--
[Ricky laughing]
I'm joking. Right.
[audience laughing]
"Call yourself a comedian?"
"You're about as funny
as a fart at a baby's funeral."
[audience laughing]
Yeah. He was trying to hurt my feelings.
But his big mistake was choosing summat
that'd be f*cking hilarious!
-[audience laughing]
-As if that would--
-A fart at a baby's funeral?
-[audience laughing]
Big, echoey church.
Everyone just silently sobbing like that.
Tiny little coffin.Tiny little coffin.
[audience laughing]
-And someone farts?
-[audience laughing]
-You'd laugh.
-[audience laughing]
Even if it was your baby. You know? No.
[audience laughing]
If you're at the funeral,
it's been dead a week.
[surprised laughter]
-You're probably up for a giggle.
-[audience laughing]
Particularly if you're the father.
If you're the mother,
you probably still find it hard
-seeing "the funny side of things."
-[audience laughing]
Oh, women!
-[groans]
-[audience laughing]
Not all women.
I mean, the old-fashioned ones.
The old-fashioned women. Oh God!
You know, the ones with wombs.
-Oh.
-[audience laughing]
Those f*cking dinosaurs.
-[groans]
-[audience laughing]
No, I love the new women.
They're great, aren't they?
The new ones we've been seeing lately.
The ones with beards and cocks.
They're as good as
[audience laughing]
They're as good as gold. I love them.
[audience laughing]
It's the old-fashioned
And now the old-fashioned, they go,
"Ooh, they wanna use our toilets!"
"Why shouldn't they?"
"For ladies!"
"They are ladies. Look at their pronouns."
[audience laughing]
"What about this person isn't a lady?"
"Well, his penis."
[audience laughing]
"Her penis, you f*cking bigot!"
[audience laughing]
"What if he r*pes me?"
-"What if she r*pes you?"
-[audience laughing]
"You f*cking TERF whore!"
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
But that tweet sums comedy up, doesn't it?
How subjective it is. How one person,
some people can find them hilarious,
some find them
the least funny person in the world.
When someone says to me
about another comedian,
they say, "Oh, they're not funny,"
even if I agree with them, I stand up--
I say, "You can't say that.
You gotta say you don't find them funny."
I hate it when people say,
"That joke was offensive."
I say, "No, you gotta say
you found it offensive."
It's about feelings,
and feelings are personal.
And there's loads of types of comedy,
and comedy evolves.
There's a new type of comedy at the moment
called woke comedy, right?
No, it's very progressive, you know?
There are clubs
where the comedian has to sign a thing
saying he won't say anything contentious
or anything that could offend anyone.
It's a safe space for the audience.
Woke comedy.
And, uh, I tried to watch a bit of it,
and I decided
I'd rather watchLouis CK masturbate.
[audience laughing]
Can't mention him anymore.
He's canceled. Uh
Not enough to apologize and move on.
You gotta
Like poor Kevin Hart. See, Kevin Hart,
he got the job hosting the Oscars.
His best day ever. He was on Twitter,
"I've wanted to do this all my life."
And then someone found
these ten-year-old tweets.
Look, they were sort of childish,
sort of shitty h*m* tweets.
It was about his son.
He was mucking around.
He said, "Oh, my son's doing so-and-so.
I hope he's not gay."
There was a massive backlash.
He went, "I'm not h*m*, sorry."
He deleted 'em, right,
and said, "I'm really sorry."
Ten years later,
someone finds a screen grab
and goes, "Look, he's done this."
And the Oscars go,
"You gotta apologize again."
He went, "No, I've apologized.
I can't keep apologizing."
And he's right. If there's no value
to saying sorry and evolving,
he might as well just tweet 'em again.
[audience laughing]
That's how I deal with sh*t anyway.
[audience laughing]
But if you're the type of person
to revel in someone getting canceled
for summat they said ten years ago,
you're just ensuring
that one day you'll be canceled
for summat you said today.
You can't predict
what'll be offensive in the future.
You don't know
who the dominant mob will be.
Like, the worst thing you can say today,
get you canceled on Twitter,
death threats,
the worst thing you can say today is,
"Women don't have penises," right?
[audience laughing]
Now, no one saw that coming.
[audience laughing]
There are no ten-year-old tweets
of people saying--
You won't find a ten-year-old tweet
of someone saying,
"Women don't have penises."
Do you know why?
We didn't think we f*cking had to.
[audience laughing]
Liam Neeson. Oh.
He nearly got canceled, didn't he?
Liam Neeson. Now,
-I don't know why he told this story.
-[audience laughing]
But he did,
at a press junket to a journalist, right,
and he just started saying, uh,
"It was 30 years ago,
and, uh, my friend came home,
and, um, she'd been r*ped," right, and
That's not the funny bit.
[audience laughing]
[laughs]
He said, "She'd been r*ped."
I said, 'What did the guy look like?'"
"Said it was a Black guy."
"So I got my cosh and I went out
looking for the first Black guy."
"Nothing happened. I came to my senses."
But the weird thing about that story is,
who has a cosh?
-Who has a
-[audience laughing]
But it was touch and go.
They canceled the premiere
'cause of the backlash.
People wanted the film to be deleted,
and I get it.
Some people can't separate the art form
with the artist's personal life.
I know Liam. I've worked with him.
He's a lovely man. Definitely not r*cist.
But when that broke,
even I was like, "Oh, will I ever be able
to find Schindler's List funny again?"
[audience laughing]
I I I do still find it funny, obviously.
[audience laughing]
But now there's so much outrage,
and we hear about it,
and it's taken seriously, you know?
There's Oxbridge comedians
writing for the posh papers,
the rules of comedy,
they're laying it down,
laying down the law.
And it's all stuff like,
"Comedy should punch up.
You should never punch down."
Sometimes you've gotta punch down,
like if you're b*ating up
a disabled toddler.
Know what I mean?
[audience laughing]
If you punch up,
you'll miss the little c**t. He'll win.
[audience laughing]
I like that joke
'cause it highlights the difference
between metaphorical
punching down in jokes
and actual punching down.
But people nowadays want you to believe
that words are actual v*olence, right?
Now, you laughed at a joke
about b*ating up a disabled toddler.
No one got hurt. If I'd have actually
dragged out a disabled toddler
and started b*ating him up,
you wouldn't laugh, right?
That's why I dropped that bit.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
But these people are virtue signaling.
They're trying to bring people down
to raise their own status,
and they say,
"No, we're protecting minorities."
They're basically saying
minorities haven't gota sense of humor,
which is so patronizing.
And I get that as well,
what it's like to be outnumbered.
In this country,
we're still only 5% Black, 5% Asian,
5% LGBTQ, you know? Tiny numbers.
Now, I'm a white,
heterosexual multimillionaire, right?
[audience laughing]
-[audience cheering]
-Um
There's less than 1% of us.
[audience laughing]
But do I whine? No!
-Do I
-[audience laughing]
I don't mind. I just get on with it.
"Come on, Rick. Come on, Rick!"
"Just keep fi--"
I'm like Rosa Parks,
know what I mean? I'm like
[audience laughing]
Except I fought for the right to never
have to take a seat on a bus, but
[audience laughing]
People complain about things
they don't have to watch.
It doesn't affect them, you know?
And, again, everyone's got the right
to be offended and complain,
but they've gotta know
that we're not trying to offend.
That's not our aim, you know?
We're tying to make you laugh.
We're trying to give you a good time.
Here's the deal, right?
So I riff
If I say summat tonight
that's so offensive,
that you've never heard anything
so fuckingoff the charts in your life,
don't make a scene.
Go to the box office. They can't give you
your money back straight away.
There's a form you fill out
with the complaint, and I take those away,
and I sh*t on them.
[audience laughing]
So that's the rules of comedy.
[audience cheering and applauding]
SuperNature. Why SuperNature?
Well, for two reasons.
One, I wanna debunk the supernatural.
I don't believe in anything supernatural.
I believe that anything that exists
is by definition part of nature
and is explainable,
if not now, then eventually.
Also, SuperNature 'cause nature
is super enough, you know?
It's It's amazing
that we're even here discussing it.
We're the only speciesthat allows
the universe to understand itself.
The chances of us being here at all,
the chances of you being you existing now,
the chances of that sperm hitting that egg
is 400 trillion to one.
And I think life is like a holiday.
We don't exist
for 13 and a half billion years,
then we have these 80, 90 years
if we're lucky,
then we die, never to exist again.
Some people are even offended by that.
They go, "You can't say that.
This can't be chance."
"It's too good.
Someone must have made it all."
"I'm too special. I can't just not exist."
"I'll live again. I'll, uh
I'll go to heaven."
"I'll be with my friends and family
or come back as a spirit
and walk amongst you."
"Or I'll be reincarnated.
I'll come back as someone else."
That'd just be someone else.
[audience laughing]
That's all that's happened.
You're not involved. That is just
[audience laughing]
someone else, right?
Many people believe in reincarnation,
of course.
Some people claim they remember
who they were in a previous life. Um
There's a society in America, of course...
-Um
-[audience laughing]
-In California, of course, right?
-[audience laughing]
And they remember
who they were in a previous life.
They're always someone pretty special
in their previous life.
Not so much
in the life they've got now, right?
-[audience laughing]
-But I saw a documentary about it,
and every year,
they have a "come as you were" party,
where they go dressed
as the person they were in history.
Two Napoleons.
[audience laughing]
So at least one of 'em is f*cking lying.
[audience laughing]
No reincarnation. No ghosts.
You seen all the ghost hunter shows?
Oh my God, hundreds of ghost hunter shows.
Years and years. Celebrity Ghost Hunter.
All around the world,
thousands and thousands
of hours of footage,
they've never seen a f*cking ghost.
Not one.
It's all like, "What was that?
Oh, it's just the No, not the"
[audience laughing]
"Did you hear that? Oh, was it you?"
-"No."
-[audience laughing]
Imagine if wildlife programs
were like that.
[audience laughing]
Imagine watching David Attenborough
all these years and he goes,
"Here on Kilimanjaro, we see--"
"Oh, no, it's not"
[audience laughing]
"And by the banks of the Limpopo,
the elusive--"
"Oh, it's not"
[audience laughing]
You'd stop watching the c**t.
[audience laughing]
They've never seen a ghost.
The pedo hunter shows, on the other hand
[audience laughing]
There's usually a couple in the crew
just in case.
-[audience laughing]
-Particularly if it's a BBC production.
Oh shut up!
[audience cheering and applauding]
There's no reincarnation,
no ghosts, no heaven, I believe.
People can't get over that.
People quiz me on Twitter
when they find out I'm an atheist.
They go,
"You don't believe in God at all?"
I go, "No."
"Do you pray?" I go, "No."
They go, "Why don't you pray
just in case there's a God?"
I say, "Why don't you put garlic
over your door
just in case there's a Dracula?"
-[audience laughing]
-I got no problem with praying.
I know loads of nice Christians
and Muslims and Jews,
and if one of my family is very ill,
they say, "I'll pray for them."
I say, "Thanks very much,"
'cause it's a nice gesture.
If they said,
"We also canceled the chemotherapy,"
-I'd go, "Don't do that. Don't do that."
-[audience laughing]
-"Pray? Fill your boots, son, but let's"
-[audience laughing]
"Let's do the praying
and the chemotherapy, shall we?"
"'Cause that's the same result
as just the chemotherapy,
so let's let's definitely keep that one,
shall we?"
[audience laughing]
I got in trouble talking about praying
on Twitter. Remember a few years ago,
that terrible disaster in Oklahoma,
the hurricane?
People lost their lives, their livelihood,
and I donated to the Red Cross.
I tweeted about it with a link saying,
"You can donate here too,"
trying to help them,
and one of thosefrivolous
entertainment magazines from America,
their account tweeted this thing
that annoyed me.
They tweeted,"Beyonc and Rihanna
send prayers to Oklahoma."
And I tweeted back going,
"I feel like a c**t. I only sent money."
[audience laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
Someone tweeted me once,
"Would you come to the bedside
of a dying child
and tell them there's no heaven?"
I tweeted back, "Is it a paid gig?"
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
Oh
[audience laughing]
I don't care whether you believe or not,
what you believe in, who you pray to.
Doesn't affect me.
I just think
that nature is super enough, you know?
I don't think we need angels and unicorns.
We've got the f*cking octopus.
That actually exists.
Eight legs, nine brains,
three hearts, and a beak.
Make your f*cking mind up!
What are you doing?
The duck-billed platypus, a monotreme.
When scientists first found that,
they thought it was a hoax
'cause it produces eggs and milk.
It could make its own custard.
It doesn't, but it it could.
[audience laughing]
It could. It definitely could.
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
But even though we know the chances
of us existing at all are astronomical
and that life is so short,
we waste so much of it
worrying about stuff,
about things that might never happen,
about things that won't matter in a week,
let alone a year or ten.
I'm terrible. I worry. I'm a worrier.
I lay awake at night thinking,
"What if" and all that,
and I hate being stressed.
So I try and rule stress out of my life,
which is really stressful
'cause I have to have
a plan A and a plan B and a plan C.
And if I do all my work, at home, I go,
"Right, militant. No work. Just relax."
"Just a glass of wine. Just relax."
If summat comes through the door,
I'm like, "What the f*ck's that?"
[audience laughing]
It's usually money. [sighs] Um
[audience laughing]
Right. [laughs]
And Jane, my girlfriend, she's like,
"Let's have a look, shall we?"
She tries to calm me down.
I've been with Jane now nearly 40 years.
And we've--
-[audience cheering]
-Thank you.
And we've always had cats
'cause Jane read early days thata cat
will make you live longer,de-stress you,
stops you having a heart att*ck and stroke
if you're wound up.
She was basically trying to save my life.
So we got cats. We've always had cats.
I think it works.
Like, if I'm really stressed,
I go, "Where's the cat?" Right?
Fell asleep. "Wake up!"
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
"What?" So, no, then I stroke the cat,
and I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm stressed."
"Look, she's so unstressed."
And I think, "That's unfair,"
and that stresses me out a little bit.
I've gotthe weight of the world
on my shoulders.
She's got nothing.
No conscience, no guilt.
You will never see a cat feeling guilty.
You will never go into a room
and see a cat like that,
"That's f*cked up."
[audience laughing]
You go, "What's the matter?"
"What's the matter?" "Yeah."
"All the f*cking sh*t in there.
That's what's the matter, mate."
[audience laughing]
"Like what?"
"Like like that bloody mouse I k*lled."
[audience laughing]
"Probably had a family, didn't it?"
[audience laughing]
"Probably, yeah."
"I didn't have to t*rture it first."
[audience laughing]
-They don't give a f*ck.
-[audience laughing]
If a cat was big enough,
it would k*ll you and eat you.
They're the opposite to dogs.
This sums up the difference
between cats and dogs once and for all.
The cat has got a barbed penis.
True. Google it.
Careful. Right, but
[audience laughing]
A barbed penis, right? Two reasons.
One, it holds the female in place
during mating.
So it slides in easy,
then it goes, "Oh, run? Oh, you can't."
[audience laughing]
And, two, when it withdraws,
that pain causes the female to ovulate.
Think of a different way, mate.
And that makes me think
maybe there is a God
'cause, I mean,maybe he did cats and dogs
'cause they're--
He went, "Boom, there you go."
"Cats and dogs,
you're ballpark furry mammals."
"You live at home.
It's a good gig. You get fed.
"What sort of penis were you hoping for?
"Dog." "Doesn't matter."
"Whatever you--
It'll be the best penis ever."
"Just summat that matches my onesie,
just a little, uh"
[audience laughing]
"Maybe a little furry mound.
Summat lady dogs would like."
"A little furry mound
with a little pink lipstick in it."
[audience laughing]
"Furry lipstick. Good choice."
[audience laughing]
"Cat."
"Gimme a f*ck-stalk with hooks."
[audience laughing]
The cat is the only animal
that domesticated itself. It's true.
Just wandered into civilization
about 10,000 years ago
and went, "Meow! Feed me," right?
They made the meow up for us.
They don't do that in the feral state.
"Meow!" They learned that we "Aw!"
And it works. My cat goes, "Meow!" "Aw!"
I let my cat do anything it wants.
It can sleep or go where it wants.
If we get a parcel in the post,
if I undo it, right,
and if she gets in the box,
"Aw!" I can't throw it away.
We got about 17 all over the
mansion.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
And if we're watching telly,
me and Jane, if it gets in our lap,
such aprivilege, we don't move.
Even if we need a wee,
we don't wanna disturb it.
The other one gets the drinks
all night. "Aw!"
And people say to me,
"You spoil that cat."
I go, "Yeah, I do. It's a cat."
It's not a person.
What's the worst that can happen
if you spoil a cat?
It doesn't grow up
to be f*cking Boris Johnson. It's
[audience laughing]
No, I don't I don't get political. Um
Although he is out of his depth, okay?
[audience laughing]
I mean, he started off by saying
women in burkas look like postboxes.
Now, it's not up to Boris Johnson
what a Muslim woman wears on her face.
It's up to her husband.
[audience laughing]
Not
Not my rules.Not my rules.
[audience laughing]
This won't be in the special.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience applauding]
Edit.
[audience laughing]
Yeah, cats, in't they?
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
No, I I do love cats. Um
I really love dogs. We haven't got a dog
'cause we travel too much, usually.
But wherever we are in the world,
New York or London,
we go for a walk every day
just to meet dogs,
in Central Park or Hampstead Heath.
I know about 200 dogs by name now,
and you always meet
a few of your little friends,
and it sets me up for the day.
It's like my f*cking heroin.
And if you meet a brand-new dog,
you go, "Hello,"
he's never met you before,
and if you're nice to it,
he's just met you,
and suddenly you're best--
He'd do anything for you.
"Need a kidney?" They are amazing, dogs.
It makes me laugh,
that sign people put on their house,
"Beware of the dog." That makes me
wanna go in the house to meet it.
So if you wanna keep me out of your house,
put up a sign that says,
I dunno, "Beware of the AIDS," you know?
[audience laughing]
Although that's not
as good as it was, is it, AIDS?
No, seriously,
it's like all diseases let you down,
but that was
I mean, in its heyday,
it was f*cking amazing, wasn't it, AIDS?
[audience laughing]
Coronavirus? f*ck off.
That couldn't
couldn't hold a candle to AIDS.
[audience laughing]
In the '80s, two blokes talking,
it would be, "Oh, will you suck my cock?"
"f*ck off. You've got AIDS. I'd die."
Now it's, "Give it here.
I'll take pills for the rest of my life."
-There's no
-[audience laughing]
But the bigots jumped on it in the '80s,
the Christian right,
all fundamentalists, actually,
by going, "This is God's wrath."
"This is God's punishment
for h*m*."
Imagine thinking that.
What are you imagining
in your head to think that's true?
So you think God's in heaven, do you,
and he's looking down on civilization,
and he suddenly goes,
"I'm sick of all this bumming"?
[audience laughing]
"I mean, what the--"
"Oh, come on, lads! What's going-- What?"
[audience laughing]
"Oh, look at"
"I've warned 'em. It's in the Bible."
"No bumming." Not in those words.
[audience laughing]
Leviticus 28:11.
"Any man who lieth with another man
as he doth a woman,
they are both an abomination
and shall surely be put to death."
-Basically, no bumming, right?
-[audience laughing]
So he went, "They're taking the piss.
I've gotta do summat."
"I know. AIDS." Like that.
Like he did with light,
just like, "Oh, it's dark. What can I do?"
"Light," right? "Let there be light."
The same with this. "Let there be AIDS."
"And there was AIDS."
Not on earth,
but up in his laboratory, right?
So he'd made the AIDS, all there,
horrible little things, right,
"There you are."
[growls]
You couldn't see 'em,
but he could see 'em.
[growls] Like that, right?
And he went, "Right, you're AIDS."
They went, "We're what?"
He went, "You're AIDS."
They went, "What's that?"
"It's, like, the worst disease ever."
They went, "Oh, brilliant." And he went
Netflix have already bought this.
f*ck 'em, right?
[audience laughing]
"You're AIDS."
"Right, what do we do?"
"Right, I want you to k*ll h*m*."
"Why?"
"I don't like watching 'em."
[audience laughing]
"Don't watch 'em, then."
"I've got no choice. I'm omnipresent, so"
"I'm watching
50 million people bumming right now."
[audience laughing]
"So, you know"
"Right. So what do we do?"
"I'm gonna put you down on earth."
"Where?"
[sighs] "Africa, right?"
[audience laughing]
"Why Africa?"
"They're dying anyway."
[audience] Oh!
That's not me saying that, is it?
That's God. That's God saying that.
[audience laughing]
[sighs]
[audience laughing]
"Where-- where in Africa?"
"Oh, just in an arse, right?
I'm gonna put you in--"
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
"I'm gonna--" "In all the sh*t?"
"Yes, yes. I'm gonna put you in an arse."
"That is where you're gonna do a lot
of your best work through the 1980s."
[audience laughing]
"Right? So I'm gonna cram you
in an arse, right?"
"Then what?" "Right."
"If a cock comes in,
that shouldn't be there, right?"
-"Get in the cock as well."
-[audience laughing]
"What, all of us?" "No."
"Some of you get in the cock,
some of you stay in the arse
-in case another cock comes along."
-[audience laughing]
"And if I know this arse,
there will be another cock."
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
"So some of us get in the cock,
some of us stay in the arse."
"Yeah." "Then what?"
-"k*ll 'em both, right?"
-[audience laughing]
"So k*ll all h*m*?" "Exactly."
"What, even lesbians?"
-"No, not lesbians, right?"
-[audience laughing]
"Why?"
"'Cause I like watching them."
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
[audience applauding]
[Ricky laughing]
[audience laughing]
But all diseases let you down eventually,
not just AIDS. Um
After AIDS, it was SARS, wasn't it?
Remember SARS?
"Ooh, gonna wipe out humanity."
Didn't. Then, uh,Ebola,
the flesh-eating disease.
"Ooh, Ebola's come to London!"
Some nurse got hot for the weekend
and that was it, right?
Then Zika virus. Remember those babies
born with half a head?
"Zika virus!" "Don't worry about it."
"Oh, I'm pregnant!"
"Start knitting a hat."
-[audience laughing]
-You know?
Talking of abortion, um
[audience laughing]
Now, I don't wanna divide the room,
um, but I'm pro-choice.
I don't think it's anything to do with me
or any man
what a woman does with her body.
-But on the--
-[cheering]
Thank you. On the flip side,
there are people who are anti-abortion.
Not just people
who wouldn't have it for themselves.
They want no one to have it.
There's a small percentage
that are really militant.
Of those, there's a small percentage
that are f*cking--
There's ones in America
that are like t*rrorists.
They b*mb abortion clinics,
put fetuses through your door,
and they've got
this propaganda machine that goes,
"Liberals, they're aborting babies
at nine months,
pulling them out of the vag*na,
liquidizing them."
Like, crazy conspiracy theory, right?
And now they've got the Internet.
So they've got fonts and memes.
It's like science to them.
And this thing goes round.
You've probably seen it.
It goes
I've heard different derivations of it,
like, "This was a real lecture,"
or, "This was a real questionnaire."
Nonsense. It's all made-up.
It goes like this.
"A woman is pregnant.
She already has five children."
"Two are deaf. Two are blind."
"One is mentally Ret*rded."
"She has syphilis.
Should she have the baby?"
"No?"
"Well done. You've just k*lled Beethoven."
[audience laughing]
What are you talking
That makes no f*cking sense at all.
Okay, keep it fair.
Let's do the opposing
So, okay, there's another woman.
She's pregnant.
Two children, great hearing,
great eyesight, really smart.
She hasn't got syphilis.
Should she have the baby?
Yes?
Well done. You just gave birth to h*tler.
[audience laughing]
Now, I don't wanna divide the room,
but I'm not a fan of h*tler.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
Hear me out. I've got my reasons.
Listen, listen, listen.
And it's sci-fi.
Whenever I see a sci-fi series,
there's always one where they invent
a time machine and try and k*ll h*tler.
And if they're successful,
they come back to the present,
and it's worse 'cause they've mucked up
the time-space continuum.
Of course it is.
You change the slightest thing in history,
it has a catastrophic effect.
I wouldn't change anything,
even if I could.
My life's too good.
I can't take that chance.
-Know what I mean?
-[audience laughing]
If scientists came to me
and went, "We've sorted it."
"You don't have to go back in time.
Just press this button."
"It kills h*tler before the Holocaust,
before the w*r."
"The present is exactly the same,
except it makes you a bit more ginger,"
I'd go, "No."
[audience laughing]
"Why should I suffer?"
[audience laughing]
But whenever you see
one of those fluff pieces,
whenever they askin one
of those questionnaires celebrities do,
there's, "What's the first thing you'd do
if you had a time machine?"
They all say,
"Oh, I'd go back and k*ll h*tler." Really?
You'd go backand buy Microsoft shares,
you f*cking liar, right?
[audience laughing]
I've interviewed people
on my radio show in America,
and I always ask that question
for a laugh, and they all say,
"Oh, I'd go back and k*ll h*tler."
I go, "People tried at the time."
And now they say, "Oh no, I'd go back
and k*ll him when he was a baby."
So you'd go back
and find baby h*tler, right,
who hasn't done anything wrong yet,
-and just strangle him?
-[audience laughing]
Also, have you seen h*tler
when he was a baby?
Oh my God, absolutely adorable.
Look at that.
[audience laughing]
-Look at his little face!
-[audience laughing]
You'd go back,
and you'd go, "Is that h*tler?"
"Yeah."
You'd go, "Oh, you little n*zi, you!"
[audience laughing]
I know what you're thinking.
Why have I got a picture of
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
baby h*tler on my phone?
That's my business.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
What if I do masturbate over it?
-[audience laughing]
-What?
What if that's the only thing
I masturbate over?
There's no victim, no crime.
You could call the police now,
have them come to my house,
and they'd say,
"We heard you admitted you're a nonce."
I'd go, "Yeah, but only for pictures
of dead baby h*tler," right?
I'd go, "Check the rule book."
And they'd go, "Yeah, good as gold."
-[audience laughing]
-Right.
"Do you wanna see where I masturbate?"
"Yeah, go on."
So I take them down
to the wanktorium, right?
-[audience laughing]
-It's basically a converted wine cellar.
But it's that picture
blown up 100 times, right,
just around the walls, like that,
dripping with 40 years of come.
[audience laughing]
I've only lived there five years,
so I don't know
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
That won't be in. Um
[audience laughing]
No, but, uh, people do
have a problem with h*tler. Um
-[Ricky laughs]
-[audience laughing]
They wanna go back and k*ll him,
and I say, "Chill."
"h*tler is the man
who k*lled h*tler, in't he?"
Give him his due.
Due. D-U-E.
[audience laughing]
I don't worry about dying. Um
Or I don't worry about being dead
'cause I won't know about it.
That is the best thing about being dead.
You don't know about it.
It's the same as being stupid, right?
-[audience laughing]
-It's only painful for others, right?
I worry about how I die.
I don't wanna die alone in agony,
or I don't wanna be found
in a wardrobe hanging by a belt,
wearing ladies' tights,
covered in amyl nitrate, know what I mean?
I'm not into that sh*t,
so if I am found like that,
just know that one of my mates
has stitched me up, right?
[audience laughing]
I don't worry about dying.
I don't do anything towards not dying,
if you know what I mean.
I eat and drink too much every day,
have done for 40 years.
Day and night, I eat and drink too much.
People say to me,
"Rick, if you gave up the booze,
you'd live an extra ten years."
I go, "But they're the last ten years,
the sh*t ten years."
I don't want them, right?
If I gave up booze now and Imade it to 80
and someone said,
"You can have an extra ten years,"
if I could go,
"Oh, great, I'll have 20 to 30 again,"
that'd be perfect,
but, no, you gotta have 80 to 90.
Have you any idea
how awful it is being 90, right?
I've seen 90-year-olds
sitting in an armchair,
and they go, "Argh!" And you go, "What?"
They go,
"I've broken every bone in my body!"
'Cause they're brittle.
They've got dust for blood.
They bruise up blood clots.
They got hernias
popping out everywhere, right?
If you're 90 years old
and you get to the kitchen by yourself
to make a cup of tea,
if you lift that kettle and it's too full,
there's a very good chance
your stomach'll come out of your arsehole.
[audience laughing]
So eat and drink as much as you want
and just f*cking die is my advice.
-[audience cheering and applauding]
-Thank you.
[laughs] I should say I'm not a doctor.
-[laughing]
-[audience laughing]
I do see a doctor
once a year or once every two years.
I have to have medicals
for things like this and TV shows,
and, uh, I go private, right?
It's 600 quid. It's three hours long.
But they do everything.
Blood sample, stool sample, urine sample,
ECG, ears, nose, throat,
bollocks, the finger. Everything, right?
And you have to fill out
this big form, write a lifestyle thing.
That takes f*cking ages.
I tell the truth, except units of alcohol.
I work those out,
-then I halve them, right?
-[audience laughing]
And when he gets to those,
he still goes,
-"That's an awful lot."
-[audience laughing]
And I think I've won. I go, "Is it?"
[audience laughing]
And, uh, at the end of the three hours,
they've got all the results
back from the lab,
and he's got this big computer
It's like body composition.
And from there, they work out
your percentage chance of a stroke,
heart att*ck in one year,
five years, ten years,
and mine's always about the same.
It always gets worse with age.
Nothing you can do about that.
But I'm always like
I'm at the end of healthy weight.
I'm just nearly obese.
I'm just right, oh, like that.
I was prediabetic once.
I had to sort that out.
And now I'm pre-gout, right?
[audience laughing]
Pre-gout, right?
And so he tells you all that and goes,
"So, what are we gonna do about this?"
And I wanna go, "What do you mean, 'we'?"
"I've just made you
600 quid, mate, right?"
[audience laughing]
"You're gonna fix it,
and I'm gonna carry on."
You don't take a car to the garage
and he goes, "Tires are bald."
"Big end's gone. What are we gonna do?"
"You're gonna fix it, mate,
and I'm gonna pay you."
[audience laughing]
He went,
"You need more fiber in your diet."
I wanted to go,
"Get me wine with fiber in it, then."
"I can afford anything.
You must be able to invent that."
He said, "You're heavily constipated."
I wanted to go,
"Get in there with a spoon, son."
[audience laughing]
And then they always leave it
right to the end. They don't even look up.
They go,
"And can I give you a rectal exam?"
Which means I have to go, "Yes, please."
I just--
I want them to surprise me on the way out.
"Bye." "Bye."
-"And that's fine." "Thank you."
-[audience laughing]
But there's a big build-up.
And as they're washing their hands,
they've gotta say,
"Oh, um, would you like a chaperone?"
So you're gonna have
your finger up my arse,
and now you got a mate watching?
No, just do it.
[audience laughing]
And they lay you on this bench,
on your back to start with,
pants and trousers round your ankles,
knees apart like a little frog.
-[audience laughing]
-And they do the balls first, right.
And I'm nervous at a doctor,
I'm really nervous,
-so I've got no balls, right?
-[audience laughing]
He has to dig them out
like a tortoise's head, know what I mean?
It's just like a little fist of fear
down there. It's [laughs]
And I f*cking hate it. I go [gagging]
-Like that, right?
-[audience laughing]
I still It's horrible, right?
And then they turn you on the side
and lube you up
and go the finger up the arse.
That's great.
-Not great. That's not why I go, but
-[audience laughing]
"Me again."
"You were here yesterday.""Come on."
[audience laughing]
But this one time, it was an old man, and
It was still a doctor,
not just an old man.
[audience laughing]
"Doctor said he couldn't make it,
so I thought I'd I'd have a go."
[audience laughing]
There was a sort of, like,old-school GP.
He was about 75,
little shirt and tie, tweed jacket.
And he was sitting on an armchair,
and he didn't put me on the bench.
I was just standing up, and he went,
"Just pop your pants and trousers down."
So I just
So he was little--
So he was head-height to my balls,
and, as I say, I'm nervous at the doctor,
so I jabber. I talk.
I think, "If I put 'em off,
they won't find the cancer."
And so he started doing the balls,
and I went,
"What are you looking for there, exactly?"
And they usually go, "Shush," and they go
And he didn't.
He went, "That's a good question."
And he sat back, and he started
telling me all about cancer.
So now I'm just having a chat, right?
[audience laughing]
And he went on for ages.
He was loving it, right?
And I remember it felt rude to do that,
so I was going, "Oh, right, right."
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
I do work out a bit.
Um, I actually joined a gym,
literally on my road, I discovered.
I've got a gym in my house.
I got bored with that. I, uh
But I thought, "If I join the gym,
if I pay a year in advance,
I'll try and get value for money.
That'll make me go."
Then I remembered,
"Oh, I'm f*cking rich. It doesn't"
[audience laughing]
I could join a different gym
every day for a laugh.
Just go along and go,
"There's 2,000." "See you tomorrow."
"You'll never see me again."
[audience laughing]
And, uh, I go about once a month,
and I sort of do
ten minutes on the machines,
and I run home, like that.
I don't use the changing rooms.
I've got a thing
about public changing rooms.
I always have, and I'll tell you why.
I don't know if it's the same
in ladies' changing rooms,
but men are so proud
of their offal, right?
If I'm in a public place,
I have a shower, one minute,
towel, corner, pants on, right?
There's blokes walking around naked
before the shower, talking.
"How you doing?" After the shower.
There was one bloke
in the shower way too long.
He took ages, right?
And he got out,
no towel, just dripping wet,
just went up to the mirror
and started doing his hair first.
[audience laughing]
There was me and this really fat bloke
once in the changing room.
I was getting changed,
and he was really big.
Like, 350 pounds, right?
And he was naked
on one of those precision scales.
And he was there
for f*cking ages like that, and I was
He was like that for ages.
I wanted to run over and go,
"Mate, you'll never be an astronaut."
-[audience laughing]
-"It doesn't need to be this accurate.
"Just pop some pants on
and take a f*cking gram off."
I'm not having a go at fat people.
As I say, I'm fat.
I'm overweight. Know why?
'Cause I eat and drink too much.
That's what does it.
I don't judge fat people.
I just know how they got fat.
If I see a fat person,
I go, "Well done," you know?
"You've eaten way more
than you'll ever need, same as me," right?
If I see a fat couple,
I go, "Yeah, that works," right?
But then as they're walking along
and you see their little fat toddlers
and you go, "Aw, that's not fair," right?
[audience laughing]
And the mother always goes,
"They love cake."
'Course they love cake!
They're baby mammals.
We're the same species
as we were, like, 200,000 years ago.
We've got a hunter-gatherer brain, right?
All this affluence
is so much faster than our human biology.
So when you get
one of those cakes from the supermarket
that's packed with fats and sugar,
your brain goes,
"f*cking hell, that's amazing!"
"Keep eating that.
There might not be food tomorrow."
But there will be food tomorrow.
The fridge is full, and your mum's
on the phone to Ocado. Know what I mean?
[audience laughing]
Now there's even a stigma.
Doctors get in trouble for saying
to someone, "You're overweight."
No, that's a political--
No, it's like fat shaming.
You don't get cancer shaming.
He's trying to save your life.
There was a school
that tried to ban the word "obese"
'cause they said it was derogatory to
I don't know what to call 'em.
-Um
-[audience laughing]
-Round children, right?
-[audience laughing]
But that's the polite word.
That's the word we invented
so we didn't say "fat little fucker."
Don't Don't keep changing words
'cause one person gets offended.
Also, fat people
aren't offended by the word "obese."
They did it all.
They're jolly, aren't they?
They're jolly. You see a fat boy,
you go, "All right, fatty?"
-[laughing] "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"
-[audience laughing]
[laughing] "Oh yeah!"
Blop, blop, blop.
[laughing] "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
And they go to the doctor.
"Come in." [laughs]
Blop. [laughs]
Doctor goes, "f*ck me."
Oh. [laughs]
"Am I obese?"
[laughing]
"No, you're morbidly obese."
[laughing]
[audience laughing]
"What does that mean?" [laughs]
"Means you'll die of it." "Oh, does it?"
"All right."
[audience laughing]
"What, straight away, or"
"No, you've got diabetes,
so you'll have your legs amputated soon."
"And if you carry on, you'll die later
of stroke and respiratory, heart failure."
"Oh, right."
[audience laughing]
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Of course.
Start working out and eat healthy."
"You'll be right as rain." "Oh, right."
"But you won't, will ya?"
[audience laughing]
"No. No."
I feel sorry for them,
even though it's their fault.
When you see
one of those documentaries on telly,
like The 600 Pound Man or summat,
and he's being winched out of his house
to go to hospital, right?
If you're dangling from a crane, right
[audience laughing]
Right?
[audience laughing]
And you see a film crew, right
[audience laughing]
[Ricky sighs]
you know you f*cked it.
[audience laughing]
And then, you know, as I say,
they wake up the next day.
They've had their legs amputated.
It's really sad,
and they're crying, and I'm crying.
They're going, "Why did I let it
go this far? I'm so stupid."
Then they get philosophical about it,
and they go,
"I never really used the legs, so"
[audience laughing]
-And by then, it's lunchtime, and so
-[audience laughing]
And they go to the nurse,
"Didn't throw them legs away, did you?"
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
Guys, do you ever act
more working class around builders?
[audience laughing]
I do. I can be walking around
leafy Hampstead, right.
-Book of poems, right.
-[audience laughing]
-Scarf, right.
-[audience laughing]
-Just humming Brahms, right.
-[audience laughing]
And some scaffolders go, "Ricky!"
"All right, c**ts! How you doin', boys?"
-[audience laughing]
-And I don't know why I do it.
[laughing] I don't know why
why I try and impress them.
I've always been fascinated
with human behavior, right?
But as I said at the beginning,
we're the only speciesthat allows
the universe to understand itself.
But we see all nature through our eyes,
so it all comes back to us.
Why are we here? What makes us?
Is it our genetics or the environment?
The old nature versus nurture argument.
The psychologist Piaget was once asked,
"What's more important for the intellect
of a person? Nature or nurture?"
And he replied, "What's more important
for the area of a field?"
"Length or width?"
All right, if you don't know the answer,
just f*cking
[audience laughing]
But psychology, psychiatry,
neuroscience, it's still in its infancy,
and we still know
so little about the brain.
And 150 years ago,we knew nothing.
It was just It was all guesswork, right?
And, uh, like, everything was just mental.
If you weren't a white, heterosexual,
married, Christian man, right,
if you deviated too far, "Mental."
They just went, "Mental," like that.
h*m*? "Mental. Mental illness."
You were put in an asylum for life,
or worse, tortured.
Women who fell pregnant
out of wedlock, "Mental."
Asylum for life, right?
And now we understand things more.
We're more tolerant. We're
I think it's going too far
the other way, though,
because now nothing's mental.
You can't find summat that someone's
Nothing is considered mental.
Everything is a syndrome
or an addiction or a preference, right?
I could have my legs removed,
have wheels put on,
identify as a pram, right
[audience laughing]
And if you say I'm mental,
you're a bigot, right?
[audience laughing]
That's a bit hack,
that joke, now, isn't it?
"Identify as a thing, then."
It's a bit old-fashioned,
but I'm gonna leave it in
to annoy people, right?
Because that's the bit
that'll offend people.
Same as humanity.
I talk about AIDS, famine,
cancer, the Holocaust,
r*pe, pedophilia,
but the one thingyou mustn't joke about
is identity politics.
The one thing you should never joke about
is the trans issue.
"They just wanna be treated equally."
I agree. That's why I include them.
[audience laughing]
You know?
[audience cheering and applauding]
But they know
I'm joking about all the other stuff,
but they go,
"No, he must mean that," right?
Like a joke is a window
to the comedian's true soul.
It's just That's just not the case.
I'll take on any view
to make the joke funniest.
I'll pretend to be right wing.
I'll pretend to be left wing.
I'll pretend to be clever.
I'll pretend to be stupid.
Whatever makes the joke funnier,
without prejudice.
Okay, full disclosure.
In real life,
of course I support trans rights.
I support all human rights,
and trans rights are human rights.
Live your best life.
Use your preferred pronouns.
Be the gender that you feel that you are.
But meet me halfway, ladies.
Lose the cock. That's all I'm saying.
[audience laughing and applauding]
That's all--
[audience applauding]
[audience laughing]
And it's mad to think joking
about summat means you're anti-it.
Like, I made a joke about self-ID.
In fact, I wish self-ID
had been around when I was a kid.
I'd have used it to get sh*t.
I'd have gone to my mum.
"Mum, I'm trans."She'd have gone, "What?"
I'd have gone,
"I'm either trans or I need a new bike."
[audience laughing]
She'd have gone, "You need a new bike."
-[audience laughing]
-I'd have gone, "You're the boss."
[audience laughing]
But I, uh I grew up in the '60s. Jesus.
I had, like, Victorian parents.
We hadn't heard of any of this.
But what if I was a teenager now
in these really woke,
progressive times, right,
and I had really cool,
hippie parents, right,
and I went, "Mother, Father, I'm trans"?
They'd go,
"Oh goody, that's so f*cking trendy."
[audience laughing]
And my dad would go,
"Bagsy I pick the vag*na."
I'd go, "Thank you, Daddy," right?
-Pfft. Right?
-[audience laughing]
Then there'd be a montage,
and I'd go to hospital.
I'd have all the electrolysis.
I'd grow my hair.
I'd have I'd have a big fanny, I think.
No. No, if someone else is paying,
I'll have the big one. Know what I mean?
"Dad trying to buy me with minge.
f*ck you, Dad." Right?
Big fanny, boobs, right, and, uhPfft.
-Right? -[laughing]
-[audience laughing]
No, I'd I'd come out, and I'd emerge.
I'd be a real woman. I'd be Vicky Gervais.
-I'd be Vicky Gervais, right?
-[audience laughing]
Yeah. No, I'd be a real woman, right?
And you can't change your sexuality,
so I find women attractive, so I'd be
I'd be a lesbian.
I'd be a little lesbian fella
called, um, Vicky Gervais, right?
Right? And I'd probably be a butch lesbian
'cause of all the testosterone till then.
Also, I like the fashion.
Jeans, black T-shirt,
short hair,
beard!
No, I'd be
No, I'd be a real lesbian
called Vicky Gervais,
lesbian about town, right?
And so, I'd, uh
I'd go down to Brighton, right,
and, uh, I'd go into a lesbian bar, right,
and I'd go, "Hi."
Pool table. Winner stays on.
I'd be there all f*cking night. Voom.
-Right?
-[audience laughing]
All right.
This joke isn't worth it
for the punchline. The punchline is sh*t.
So just enjoy the journey, right?
[laughs] Anyway, so I look around,
and I find one of those pretty lesbians.
[laughs]
This is so childish
and misinformed, it hurts.
I'm gonna leave it in though. Right, so
No, I'd find a pretty lesbian. I'd
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
This is pathetic, right?
Even for me.
I can't do this
with a f*cking straight face!
Right, right, right
[Ricky laughing]
And I'd go over like that.
I'd go, "Hi. Are you a lesbian?"
She'd go, "Yeah. Are you a lesbian?"
I'd go, "Yeah, just a bit. Look at that."
[audience laughing]
She'd go, "That is a lovely fanny."
I'd go, "f*cking cost enough."
She'd go, "What?" "Nothing."
And then I'd be wooing her, right?
I'd be doing all the
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
I'd be complimenting her
on her l*zzie ways.
-I'd go, uh
-[audience laughing]
I'd go, "Oh,"
I'd go, "I love your Doc Martens," right?
She'd go, "Oh, thanks."
-Pfft. Right?
-[audience laughing]
[speaking indistinctly]Pfft.
[audience laughing]
I'd go, "Oh, those are big earrings."
"Yeah." Right?
Then she'd go, "Wanna come back
to my place and lez off?"
I'd go, "Yeah, just a bit."
So we go back. We get naked.
-I boob her up. I don't know what
-[audience laughing]
Minge her off? I'd do that one.
I'd do that one.
Definitely do that one, right?
I'd google it.
I'd f*cking google it, right?
And I'd Right.
She'd go, "You wanna wear a strap-on dildo
and give me a good seeing to?"
I'd go, "Yeah." So I'd put a strap-on on.
I'd put the big dildo there
on my new fanny like that
and tie it at the back.
And that's when I'd kick myself.
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Ricky laughing]
I told you it was sh*t, didn't I tell you?
[Ricky laughing]
Oh God.
[audience laughing]
Oh.
But one thing that isn't ambiguous
whether it's nature or nurture is racism.
No one's born r*cist.
You've gotta learn that sh*t, okay?
And, okay, I don't wanna divide the room.
I'm not a fan of racism. Um
No, hear me out, right? I
I don't carewhether you're Black,
white, brown, European, African--
You're going, "That's all right,
Black, white, brown, European, African."
"What about the f*cking Eskimos?"
r*cist, right?
"They're f*cking weird, Rick."
They are not weird, just different.
"They live in the snow."Yeah,
that is their little house, the snow. So?
"They wear a dead sea lion
for their clo--"
Yes, that's their clothes.
A dead sea lion.
But here's the thing about racism.
You drag one out of his hole in the snow
and peel him out of his sea lion outfit,
and he's standing there naked,
you take a closer look.
He's basically a cold Chinaman.
[audience laughing]
So
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughing]
I know you can't say
"Chinaman" anymore, right?
[audience laughing]
I can't believe you ever could
because that is the laziest labeling
of a demographic I've ever heard.
So the first one lands on our shores,
and we gather round,
going, "Where are you from?"
And he goes, "China."
And we go, "Oh, you're a Chinaman."
And he goes, "I'm a what?"
"You're a Chinaman."
"A Chinaman?" "Yeah."
"What's my wife?"
"Duh. Lady Chinaman."
[audience laughing]
"Why don't you call me by my name?"
"I don't know your name, do I?"
"It's Ling."
"Ling?" "Yeah."
"Is that your first name or your surname?"
"Both."
[audience laughing]
"Ling Ling?"
"Herro?"
[audience laughing]
Right, no. Right.
Right.
[audience laughing]
[Ricky laughs]
-Remember, irony. Okay?
-[audience laughing]
Also, that's not me saying that, is it?
It's the little Chinaman, innit? So
[audience laughing]
If he's all right with it, then
[audience laughing]
-That won't be in. Right, okay.
-[audience laughing]
f*cking hell, have I got anything
for this f*cking special?
[audience laughing]
Oh, this is all right. Right. Um
[audience laughing]
Did anyone have a pedo teacher
when they were at school?
-Yes, yeah. Yeah.
-[audience laughing]
[laughs] Round of applause
for pedo teachers, yeah!
[audience cheering and applauding]
f*cking hell.
-Unbelievable.
-[audience laughing]
That's another thing.
I think whereas people are now
trying to be so politically correct,
they're trying to out-woke each other,
soon someone'll say,
"You can't say 'pedo' anymore."
"It's a derogatory term. It offends
people who are child-addicted," right?
So you're gonna have
people going to the doctor going,
"Doctor, I think I'm child-addicted."
Right?
The doctor'll go,
"Oh, you poor thing. How do you feel?"
"I feel like I wanna fiddle with kids."
[audience laughing]
-"That is one of the symptoms."
-[audience laughing]
"Don't worry. Sit down."
"We'll get you into a facility
at taxpayers' expense,
and we'll wean you off children."
"How does that work?"
"You know when they give
heroin addicts methadone?" "Yeah."
"Well, we're gonna
start you on dwarfs, right?" [laughs]
"It might work. It might"
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
"It might work."
-[Ricky laughing]
-[audience laughing]
[laughs]
[audience laughing]
"How does that work?"
"Let me think.
I haven't thought it through."
Right, okay. No. Um
"So what you do
is come into the facility."
"We've hired loads of dwarfs,
and we're not open
during the panto season."
"We can't get the staff."
"So you you come in you come in Feb--"
Shush. "You come in
February to November, right?"
-[audience laughing]
-"We've hired loads of dwarfs,
and we've dressed them up
as schoolchildren,
and they just run around
the campus like that."
[laughs] "They're free-range dwarfs."
-[audience laughing]
-"They're free-range dwarfs,
and they look like
they're about six years old,
but they're above legal age.
You're not breaking the law."
"They've been paid. It's consensual."
"You just go up to one you fancy,
pull down his little trousers, fiddle--"
"Hey, Doctor, I said I was a pedo.
I didn't say I was gay."
"Do you think there's, like,
h*m* in the pedophile community?"
Like, one pedophile,
he's all smug. He's heterosexual.
He's abducting a little girl.
He's taking a little girl into the forest.
He sees another pedo with a little boy,
and he goes, "You f*cking bender."
[audience laughing]
There's a London borough
that tried to ban registered pedophiles
living within one mile of a school.
Now, say what you will about pedos,
-but they're not lazy. Know what I mean?
-[audience laughing]
A lot of 'em are bus drivers.
That's nothing. [laughs]
[audience laughing]
You know?
So this pedo teacher, right
True story, this.
It was about 1976. I was about 14.
And, uh, looking back,
I feel a bit sorry for him
'cause he was probably late twenties,
and he was a nervous sort of guy,
and he was obviously gay, and he had
a fling with one of the older boys,
who might have been 16, 17.
So now, would have been totally legal,
but then, technically a nonce.
Banished. Convicted. Never heard of again.
Big scandal, right?
And when it broke, I went home that day.
My mum was there,
and she went, "Did he touch you?"
And I went, "No."
She went, "You sure?"
I went, "Yeah."
She went,
"He couldn't have fancied you, then."
[audience laughing]
So now my mum is winding me up
about me not being attractive enough
to be sexually abused, right?
What if I had got a complex?
What if I had thought, "I'll show her"?
[audience laughing]
I'd come in at midnight. "Where you been?"
"Sucking off bus drivers.
That's what you get."
[audience laughing]
But that was typical of my mum.
My mum, she was the salt of the earth,
but she just said what she wanted, right?
She'd do anything for you,
but she reserved the right
to moan about it.
So, growing up,
our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Dawson,
she was about 25 years older than my mum.
So when my mum was 60,
this old lady was already, like, 85, 86.
My mum was
the last living witness to her existence.
She lived alone.
My mum did everything for her.
Went shopping for her, did the housework.
Made her lunch, sat with her for a while.
She went back, made her tea.
This went on and on.
I remember calling home once.
My mum was, like, 70.
And I went,
"I called earlier. You were out."
My mum went, "I was round Dawson's."
I went, "Oh, how is she?"
My mum went [sighs]
"She just won't die, Rick."
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
I have very fond memories
of growing up in Reading, um,
which is why
Yeah, why I never go back.
[audience laughing]
Wherever I am in the world,
I bump into someone from Reading.
"I'm a Reading boy." "Oh good."
That should be enough, but it never is.
They always want more.
They say things like, "Oh yeah,
you knows Norman Taylor, don't you?"
I never know this person.
I go, "Oh, no."
They go, "Yeah, he knows you."
-"Yeah, I'm on the telly, mate. Um"
-[audience laughing]
"You went to Ashmead School."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"You knows Pete Shepherd."
"When was he there?"
"1993."
"Yeah, I was 31, mate. I was"
[audience laughing]
"He knows you." "Does he?"
"Has he got a telly?" "Yeah."
"That's what's happened here."
[audience laughing]
But I do like old stories.
I don't tell showbiz stories.
They're boring to me.
I like real stories.
Whenever I'm working up a tour,
I think of things that have happened to me
and how my life's changed.
And I thought of one for this tour,
and it was hugging, right?
No one's been hugging
for the last couple of years,
which I preferred. I liked that.
I never liked hugging.
I liked it when you couldn't hug.
It always felt awkward.
I didn't hug anyone growing up.
I didn't hug anyone till I came to London.
A working class kid
on an estate in Reading,
you don't hug people.
You don't hug your f*cking dad,
granddad, or your brother.
You wind 'em up.
You take the piss. That's our hug, right?
I'll give you an example.
We were at our dad's funeral,
and I was in the graveyard
with my brother Bob.
Bob was having a cigarette,
and our uncle Mike came along.
We hadn't seen Mike for, like, 25 years.
Last time we saw him,
he was, like, 50, and now he's, like, 75.
He hadn't aged well. He was an old man.
And he came up to us
and went, "Hello, boys."
And Bob sort of looked at him
and recognized him
and went, "f*ck me," like that.
And then Bob looked around
the graveyard and went,
"Is there any point you going home?"
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
Right?
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
And Uncle Mike laughed and went,
"Always nice to see you, Bobby."
And that was their hug. Know what I mean?
I'll give you another example.
When I left school,
my best mate was a bloke called Mark.
We did everything together.
We took a year out before college
to earn money to get pissed, really.
And we did. It was the best summer ever.
And, uh But then summat happened.
His, uh His grandmother d*ed,
and he lived
he lived with her, so it was a big deal.
And, uh, he went to the funeral,
and the first place he came
after the funeral was my house.
He sat down in his little black suit,
and he was just quiet.
I didn't know what to say.
No hugging, right?
So I went, "How was it?"
He went, "It was awful."
Said, um, "She was cremated,
and we all went outside
to watch the smoke go up,
and the wind changed,
and it all blew in our faces, right?"
[audience laughing]
And I went, "In your mouth?"
He went, "Yeah." I went I took a chance.
[audience laughing]
I said, "Did it taste bitter?"
And he went, "Yeah."
I went, "That was her clitoris."
-[audience laughing]
-[Ricky laughing]
Right?
[audience laughing]
And Mark just went,
"f*cking hell, Rick," like that, right?
And then he started laughing.
And that was our hug.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh.
I'll leave you
with one final story, right?
It's another true story.
If I say they're true, they are.
I promise, they're all true. And, uh
My favorite are the school stories,
and this is probably
my favorite school story ever.
It was 1976 again,
so, uh, I was about 14,
and we had a kid in our class
called Gary Masterman.
And Gary developed Tourette's syndrome.
Every sentence had a swear word in it.
He had a tic.
We learned all about it in assembly.
Gary was up there.
All the teachers, all the kids knew him.
He was a popular lad, right. And, um
Yeah, nice guy, Gary Masterman.
But sometimes his tics seemed relevant.
I'll never forget,
we were having this lesson
with a young female teacher
called Miss Wilkie.
She was at the blackboard.
She was doing calling-out suggestions.
Can't remember what it was about.
She'd go, "Simon, what do you think?"
"Yeah, that's good. Yes, that works.
Brian, what do you"
"Yeah. Yeah, good. Yeah."
And she went, "Gary."
He went, "I'll finger you, miss."
[audience laughing]
And she just went, "Anyone else?"
[audience laughing]
And she pointed to Sean Dixon,
and Sean went, "Yeah, I'll finger ya."
[audience laughing]
You've been amazing. Good night.
[audience cheering and applauding]
Ricky Gervais: SuperNature (2022)
Moderator: Maskath3