16x03 - Zoe Lyons, Ria Lina, Tom Ward

[bunniefuu]

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome

your host for tonight

Zoe Lyons!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening, Apollo.

CHEERING

Look at your beautiful faces,

absolutely gorgeous to be here.

What a time to be alive, my friends.

What things we have learned. Who

knew that there were women out there

prepared to sleep with Matt Hancock?

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

Without full PPE as well,

that's just like, "What?!

"You're actually touching it?! Wow!"

Adverts have started to annoy me,

they're too jolly.

They don't reflect my inner self.

They don't. Too jolly. Too jolly.

They're trying to sell you a world

that doesn't really exist
- too jolly,

too optimistic, you know?

"The best a man can get." "Are you beach

body ready?" "Because you're worth it."

Those adverts don't speak to a

woman of my age in my situation.

They don't. They don't.

I'd love to turn on the telly

and see an advert that just went,

"Have you been

sitting at home all day

"..crying in your knickers

and eating biscuits?

"Well, this is the cream for you."

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

"Shame from L'Oreal.

"Cos you knew this would happen,

didn't you?"

My proper guilty secret, if I'm very

honest with you, right, is I

Late at night when I come home

from gigs I like to watch

It's usually Channel 5, usually from

America, programmes about people

having ridiculous plastic surgery

that they don't need. Anybody else?

SOME CHEERING

Just stupid, cos you don't need

You don't need to engage, do you?

There's no cognition required.

If you're like me, you can

just sit there in your chair,

vest on, one nut out

LAUGHTER

I'm usually eating with my fist,

like that.

Just watching it, going,

"God, look

"Look at these losers.

"I mean, how you let yourself

get like that? Honestly."

I was watching one the other night,

it was brilliant,

there was a woman on there,

she's probably my age

sort of middle aged woman,

quite beautiful, very

beautiful woman,

sort of Californian
-beautiful,

sort of tanned and taut.

Tanned and

You could bounce a penny off her.

Don't, it's ill*gal, but you could.

That's, you know, tanned and taut.

And she had what she had

what you would describe,

probably, in this feminist era,

she had what you'd call um,

uha cracking rack.

You'd look at her and go,

"Good boobies. You got good boobies there,

well done, girl.

"They're good boobies.

You've got a good boobie.

You're sort of a grapefruit
-sized boobie,"

which I always think is a sufficient amount

of boobie, isn't it? It is, isn't it?

Who's ever eaten a whole

grapefruit? You don't, do you?

There's always a bit left over. It's

enough boobie is what I'm saying.

Anyway, she wasn't happy with the

grapefruit, she wanted the next size up,

which I don't know in the sort

of fruit scale of boobie,

I'm guessing a cantaloupe.

That's what she wanted,

she wanted the cantaloupe boobie.

And that's what she got put in,

the doctor put in the cantaloupe boobies.

And they always have a

little follow
-up programme

a couple of weeks later, don't they,

when the bandages come off?

The doctor said to her,

"How do you feel now, Tiffany,

with your bigger boobies?"

And she said,

"I got to be honest, Doctor.

"I just feel so confident."

And I sat there

Confident?

To do what?

Float?

I mean, that's what she's gained,

isn't it, buoyancy?

She's just harder to drown,

that is it.

I've started sea swimming as well,

very on trend, I know,

very on trend, sea swimming.

I refuse to call it wild swimming

cos I'm not a f*cking salmon.

SCATTERED APPLAUSE

I'm not returning to the place

of my spawning. I'm just swimming,

that's literally all I'm doing.

You do two things in water
-

you swim or don't swim,

that's what you do.

You don't go for a wild walk, do

you? "I'm just going wild walking.

"Out with nature,

walking in the wild." No.

It's just swimming. Swimming.

I do it badly, I do it badly.

It's a lot of It's very popular

with the older ladies where I live,

the wild swimming, the sea swimming.

It's predominantly middle aged

women, round about my age,

we gather of a morning

like bison around a watering hole.

The sun rising. You can see

the steam leaving our ample hides.

SHE HONKS

And then we dip ourselves in,

and I was watching us the other day,

watching herds of us

entering the water,

and I suddenly had the thought,

I thought, "Do you know what?

"I don't think it is

climate change

"..that's causing the sea

temperatures to rise.

"Sorry, Greta, babes, I think

you've got this one wrong."

I think what it is, is herds

of menopausal women just

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

..cooling themselves off

in the English Channel, honestly,

we're like nuclear hot
-rods.

It's like Fukushima

off the coast of Hove some mornings.

I actually saw a mackerel breach

the water the other day and go,

"Is it me or is it off in there?"

And I love to travel.

I love to travel. I really do.

You know, I love to travel.

Like most people, we like to see

different places, experience

different things,

you know, and I
-I

The hotel I stayed in

recently in London,

I checked into this hotel

in London and it was amazing.

It had what I can only

describe to you, my friends,

as a motivational carpet.

I have no other words for it.

I hadn't ever encountered anything

quite like it in my life before.

It went from the reception to the

rooms, right? Ran all the way.

And it had little motivational quotes

going all the way along this carpet.

You know, the sort of thing that

really makes your arse pucker.

"Grab life with both hands."

Ohfuckety off.

I don't know why they needed

the motivational carpet.

I mean, I personally have never

checked into a hotel before

and then lost the will to live

before I've even reached the room.

Maybe it's happened,

I don't know.

"Room 104." "Thank you so much,

that's so kind of you.

I mean, what is the point?

"Oh, that's quite jolly, isn't it?

"That's really perked me up.

Right, off we go."

Ridiculous quotes on this carpet.

You know
- "What doesn't k*ll you

makes you stronger."

That's bullshit, innit?

One word
- osteoporosis.

It's like when people say,

"He died doing what he loved."

No, he didn't. No, he didn't.

He loved doing what he loved

right up until the moment he knew

he was going to die doing it.

Then he hated it

with every fibre of his body.

I very much doubt anybody's ever

thrown themselves out of a plane,

had that horrific moment when they realised

the parachute has not opened and gone,

"I'm loving this!"

Third quote on this carpet
-

"Don't be a tourist,

be a traveller."

It's a hotel in Central London!

Who do they think

was checking in, Marco Polo?

Having walked there across the

Gobi Desert on one flip
-flop? No!

We're all tourists. We found it

on TripAdvisor. I mean

..we are all tourists now.

That is the way of the world.

We crawl around this Earth like ants

on a piece of fallen fruit.

There's not a patch of it

we haven't fingered, honestly.

You could spend three days trying

to get to the top of Machu Picchu.

I guarantee, the first thing you'd

lay eyes on is a lost Deliveroo driver.

It was the final quote on this

carpet that really caught my eye

and it really stuck with me,

it just said
-

"If you hate your jobquit.

"Life's too short."

I thought, "How insensitive is that

"on a hotel carpet,

"given that the person who's going

to be looking at that every day

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

"..is going to be hoovering

the sodding thing."

I did notice I was getting a little

bit more nervous as a traveller

on recent flights I've taken. In

your 20s, you don't care, do you?

You're like that, "I'll live forever,

I'll live forever, me.

I'm going to live forever."

As you get older, you start

to really pay attention

to the safety announcements

on planes. It becomes more urgent.

You're more aware of your own mortality.

You know, they'll start the announcement,

I will definitely pay attention,

absolutely pay attention.

The glasses go on, the headphones

come off, book goes down,

notebook comes up. I'm like that.

Last flight I was on, it got to

that point We've all heard it

a thousand times, we've all heard it

a thousand times,

you put the little life jacket on,

right?

You put the little life jacket

on and she went, she said,

"And, of course, in the event

of landing on water

"..there is a whistle

"..to attract attention."

In the event of landing on water,

there is a whistle! A whistle!

To attract attention. Now, I think

for the first time in my life,

I really took in that whistle.

The fabric of that whistle, if you

will, the being of that whistle,

the ergonomics of that whistle.

There is a whistle!

To attract attention.

My brain had the very helpful

thought, it thought,

"Well, if we have landed on water,

"we have essentially fallen out of

the sky from 30 to 40,000 feet

"in a not insignificant metal tube

that may or may not be on fire.

"If that hasn't attracted

attention

"If everybody in the surrounding

area has managed not to notice"

SHE YELLS QUIETLY

"And you are THEN reliant on

"I got this."

CLEARS HER THROA

WEAK PEEP

"I was sure that was going to work.

"Put on your little blinky blinky

light thing, maybe they haven't seen

"the MASSIVE FLAMES BEHIND US!"

Can I politely suggest that the only

thing that would save you in that

situation is if you are lucky enough

to be on the same flight

as the woman with the big boobies

..and she went floating past

and you just use her as a life raft.

Ladies and gentlemen of Apollo,

are you ready for your

first act this evening?

CHEERING

Please raise the roof,

make her feel very, very welcome,

it's the wonderful Ria Lina!

CHEERING

Hello! Hello. Oh, thank you so much,

that was such a lovely,

warm welcome. You know what,

I'm going to be honest,

when I first started doing comedy,

that's not how they would greet me

when I first walked on stage.

I'd walk out and they'd go,

"Oh, a woman.

"This is going to be sh*t."

Well, let's address it.

Female comedy is different

to male comedy, isn't it?

It's because of the vag*na.

It affects the acoustics.

I don't know what they were thinking,

putting me and Zoe on the same bill
-

we might synchronise! The mess!

Not only am I a woman,

I have mixed race.

My mother comes from the

Philippines, my father is German,

which means I want to take over the world,

but just to give it a really good clean.

Do you know what, it is so lovely

being in a room full of people

I'm not related to cos I just

spent 18 months stuck in a house

with people I can't f*ck.

I locked in with my ex
-husband.

I mean, don't tell him he's my ex,

he doesn't know yet.

And my husband's older than me.

We have more than a 20 year age gap

which will always divide a room

when I tell them that because now all the

men are thinking, "Oh, he's a lucky guy."

Whereas all the women are thinking,

"I bet he had money!"

And, ladies, so did I.

What made lockdown worse is that we

were locked in with some children.

Sorry, not some children
- our

children. It's not like I just

The alarms went off and I was like,

"You three, quick, get inside!

"I will love you."

I didn't mind lockdown

home schooling, either,

because it turns out the government

didn't care what your kids

were learning,

as long as they were learning.

So my children are fantastic

at laundry.

We have three children,

we have a girl and two boys.

The middle boy is my favourite.

Never gets the whole room,

that joke. You know who laughs?

The parents laugh

because they know it's true.

We got parents in?

SOME CHEERING

Four. Four parents

..that are still awake.

Everyone else

SHE SNORES

Parent's know it's true.

The people who don't laugh

are always the ones that go,

"That's not true,

"Parents don't have favourites."

I hate to break it to you,

but parents do have favourites,

and if you didn't know that,

you obviously weren't the one.

OK, I say favourite. It was actually

more of a bonding thing.

I just bonded with my

middle son a little bit faster

cos when he came out,

he came out looking like me,

right? He had dark hair,

a dark eyes. I knew he was mine.

And the reason that was important is

because when my daughter came out,

my daughter came out blonde. Blonde!

I did not work nine months

to make a kid everyone thinks

I'm the nanny of.

And not only was she blonde, she

weighed 9lbs, I mean, look at me!

9lbs?! They tried to hand me

a big white whale in the hospital!

"What is that?"

"It's your baby."

"No, no, no, no. Whatever that is,

it crawled up inside me,

"it ate my baby and it got

stuck on the way out."

Turns out it was my baby,

so I picked her up a week later.

What? I kept her. I named her

and everything, she's very useful.

Well, I mean, she can't

sew a sneaker for sh*t

She can do other things,

like colouring inside the lines.

Apparently, that's really important

if you're blonde.

UNCOMFORTABLE LAUGHTER

Oh, that's the controversial

joke for you?

That's the one you went,

"Oh, no. OK, no, no, no, no, no.

"Backing out of that one."

Can I just put your minds at rest?

I have told that joke

in the Netherlands.

I have told it in Denmark.

I've told that joke in Sweden.

Trust me, blondes don't get it.

So I had to tell my parents.

Don't know why I worried,

my father was thrilled. He was like,

GERMAN ACCENT: "She looks like

what? Ja, I knew we would triumph!"

Although, to be fair,

it was really my mother

that I was more worried about

telling. How do I tell the woman

who raised me to identify

as a strong Filipina woman

that her granddaughter

is whiter than rice?

Well, apparently, exactly like that,

because if there's one thing

an Asian woman loves, it's rice.

And she loves having a blonde

granddaughter,

she loves taking her out and, oh,

my gosh, the picture that it makes

because my mother's already

gone through the change.

Here's a fun fact for you
- after

Asian women go through the change,

they don't die. They just shrink.

You're 12. You're 90. You're Yoda.

That's where my mother is now.

"Little old Asian grandmother am I."

And she loves taking my daughter out

just to see the reaction

that they get, because when

my daughter was little,

she had these insane blonde curls,

so every time they went out

together, it was like Halloween,

just Yoda and Shirley Temple

walking down the street.

My daughter was two,

they were the same size.

Nobody could tell who owned who. She

used to take my daughter shopping.

She loved taking her to Primark,

show her what her cousins are achieving.

I know that's rather uncomfortable

topic area. If you are feeling

at all uncomfortable about that last joke

or even maybe a little bit guilty,

it's a simple fix.

Just take off everything

that you bought on the high street,

leave in a little bag by the door.

I'll send it back to my cousins.

They'll resell it.

Everybody eats this week, huh?

Folks, you've been absolutely

lovely. My name is Ria Lina.

Please enjoy the rest of the show.

It's amazing. Thank you so much.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

Ria Lina!

Let us keep that wonderful applause

going and welcome your next act.

It's the brilliant Tom Ward!

CHEERING

It's not a wig. Good evening.

Let's just deal with that

straight away so you can relax.

I've been doing the solo life

this year. Just me, unattached.

Yeah? What I've noticed about when

I'm when I'm doing this solo life,

when there's not a girlfriend

in my life, I buy a lot more.

I spend money plugging that void.

Yeah? I buy more clothes.

I see a lot of people wearing clothes

here tonight, my kind of people.

When I had a little glimpse, I thought,

"Yeah, yeah,

they're going to love the clothes stuff."

I love clothes.

My favourite thing is sunglasses.

Not technically clothes but,

you know, it's on your eyes.

It's covering something.

I like shades.

Yeah? I like getting them

from those really weird shops

that sell everything. You know

those, like, household shops

that sell all the stuff you need
-

suitcases, nonstick pans,

women's nighties and then a

sunglasses carousel just outside,

there's a little man standing there

watching you while you try on

all the shades. And you're

looking at yourself in the little mirror

that's smaller than a human face.

That mirror is smaller

than a pair of sunglasses.

Got absolutely no idea

how they look on your head.

And that mirror gets around.

That mirror gets around.

They have that same size mirror

at the shoe shop.

Trying to get your whole

body in there.

So you can see how they look on you

as a total person.

"Well, I think they look nice,

"but I don't normally stand in

this position. It's hard to tell."

Backing away.

Most people accused of stealing

shoes were just trying to see

how they looked

from across the road.

Otherwise you get home later

that night, see yourself

for the first time in a full length

mirror with your shades

and your shoes on.

"Oh, no."

I feel like old
-school man

is being phased out now, yeah,

old
-school man. Heterosexuality

is hitting the skids now.

You feel that? It's had a good

knock. But there's new genres

now coming through. Any straights

in tonight, first of all?

SOME CHEERING

WEAKLY: "Yeah"

You hear that?

You can even hear it in the cheer.

Straight's old school now.

We'll talk about straight

in the future like a sort of charm,

like a charming thing. Little kids

will talk to their grandads.

"Grandpa, Grandpa, what? Why?

"What about the other holes,

Grandpa?"

"It was a different time.

"A man was a man

and a woman was a woman."

It's all changing now,

it's all up in the air.

It's great, it's exciting,

we've hit "refresh" on life,

haven't we? It's all brilliant now.

Straight is old school, even g*y

and bisexual is old school now.

We've got new genres now

coming through every morning.

The ones I'm jealous of

are pansexuals.

They can't even see gender.

SOME CHEERING

Yeah, they got magic eyes.

Blinded by their own openness.

They can see other stuff.

Tesco Metro.

They know the difference

between Tesco and Sainsbury's,

but they cannot, for the life

of them, tell you the gender

of the person outside Tesco.

"There is a very

attractivebeing

"outside Tesco.

I rather fancy that being.

"I think the being likes me.

"Someone's going to put

something insomewhere.

"Doesn't matter who,

it doesn't matter where,

"cos every soul's a goal, baby."

APPLAUSE

You cannot get more sexually

progressive than that,

I mean, bisexuals must feel

very silly right now.

They used to be the number one edgy

genre and then pansexuals came along

and said, "Piss off,

I raise you blind."

I just wonder what else

they can't see.

Yeah? If they're blind to gender,

what else is a pansexual blind to?

Yeah? If a pansexual

was a witness to a m*rder,

how useful would they be

in the police inquiry?

"What did you see of the m*rder?"

"Well, there was a being.

"Doing some stabbing."

"A being?

Were they a man or a woman?"

"I can't see that sort of thing."

"You can't see that? What were they

racially
- white, black, Asian?"

"Again, I'm far too progressive

to know.

"It was just an aura with a knife.

"They were stabbing the old person

I CAN see age, it's disgusting.

"My pansexuality really only extends

to young, sexy people, officer.

"Now, may I leave?"

I'll be honest with you, folks,

I was involved with a man a few years ago,

OK?

More than ten years ago,

I was involved with a man,

but because it's more than ten years ago,

I don't want to say I'm bisexual now. I

haven't been bummed in a decade. Yeah?

I feel like you need to renew

your certificates.

Can't just go around dining out on

former glories while practitioners

of bisexuality are out there,

front lines, out of order to them.

Consequences. And I feel like

that's happening a lot now.

A lot of straight people are trying

to claim they're a little bit more

g*y than they are, just to seem

interesting. Yeah? "I'm a bit g*y."

"Are you, though?

Have you been bummed?"

"I'm a bit g*y."

"Yeah, come on, let's hear it."

I was talking to a guy at a party,

right? He told me he was bisexual

cos he'd had a couple

of g*y thoughts.

Thoughts? I've had thoughts

about volunteering.

Have I volunteered? Have I f*ck!

And therefore, I am not a volunteer,

it's quite straightforward.

I can't walk up to volunteers

outside a soup kitchen and say,

"Yeah, I've thought about

doing that.

"Me and you are one and the same.

Have a great day.

"I'm off to have fun

while we both volunteer."

It's out of order.

But, you know, to be honest,

when I was involved with this guy,

it wasn't about him being a guy,

it was about the connection we had.

Right? I didn't really

care about his gender,

which I guess makes

me a pansexual back then,

but it didn't stick,

so I'm more like a nonstick pan.

Thank you so much.

You've been absolutely amazing.

God bless you all. Bye
-bye.

CHEERING

The brilliant Tom Ward!

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up

for Ria Lina and Tom Ward!

I've been Zoe Lyons.

Take care. Goodnight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE