Ladies and gentlemen, please
welcome your host for tonight
..Jason Manford.
CHEERING
MUSIC: Stop The Cavalry
by Jona Lewie
Oh! Merry Christmas!
CHEERING
Oh, wow!
What an absolute
treat to be here,
Live At The Apollo.
CHEERING
The Christmas special, no less.
Yeah. What an absolute treat
to be here this Christmas.
Very weird being on
a Christmas TV show,
I think it's the only
Christmas TV show that I do
that the continuity
announcer has to say,
"This show contains strong
language and adult themes."
That's not festive, is it?
Are you like me, though,
when the continuity announcer
says those things,
you go, "Oh
-h*
-h*
-h*?
I love it, me, when they go,
"This show will contain
bad language, nudity
"and scenes of an adult nature,"
I think, "The holy trinity!"
"Come on! All three!
This is going to be a belter!"
I just want this to
be a normal Christmas.
I want us to go back to normal.
I don't want to be swapping
presents in lay
-bys
like we had to do last year.
That was weird, wasn't it?
It was like a weird drug deal.
I want it to go back to normal.
I want to argue with the in
-laws.
I'm looking forward
to that this year.
I want someone drunk
-crying in the
corner at 4pm in the afternoon.
I want to be reading a news story
about people who've gone to some
sh*t Winter Wonderland in Dudley.
Sat a muddy field just pointing at,
like, a dog with some antlers.
"The Santa told my
kids to f*ck off."
I wonder if Covid has
changed Christmas forever.
We'll be going to kids' nativities
and the three wise men will we
bringing gold, frankincense
and a lateral flow test.
I want a proper British Christmas.
There's nothing like it.
CHEERING
I always find there's two sets
of people at Christmas time.
There's people good
at wrapping presents
and normal people.
That's it. And those people
who can wrap presents properly
really go for it, don't they?
Oh, there yous are.
Where are the good wrappers?
SCATTERED CHEERING
And where are the normal people?
CHEERING
The good wrappers with their
matching paper and bows,
and ribbons,
and bits of foliage, and
some wild winter berries,
and the rest of us
-
just a Sports Direct bag
and some sellotape.
Occasionally, you'll go
for the dad wrapping
-
and that's where you get a
present, you put it in the middle
and then you fold up the
ends like it's a cr*cker.
You feel like you're the first
person who's ever done it.
But I'll tell you what I read,
I read recently that
all the fancy wrapping paper,
all those ribbons,
all those bows
-
bad for the environment,
all goes in a landfill somewhere.
So, actually, the rest of us people
who've been just using
last week's Stockport Express,
we're saving the planet,
ladies and gentlemen,
We're the real heroes.
We are the heroes. Greta likes us.
I'm going to say something a
little bit controversial now,
I'll probably get
cancelled for this.
Well, look, this is the worry about
doing stand
-up now on television.
Everything you say is
a potential cancellation.
You don't know.
You know, even jokes.
"Knock, knock."
"What about homeless people?
They've not got a door."
So I'm going to say it,
I'm just going to say it.
I don't want to lose you here, OK?
Remember, we're friends, OK?
But just this is just my opinion.
I think Christmas dinners are sh*t.
CHEERING AND JEERING
Come at me. Come at me. Come at me.
They're a jumped up Sunday
dinner and you know it!
All that stress and pressure
on a Christmas Day morning.
Dry turkey.
You've got to have a glass of
Vaseline to wash it down with.
Bread sauce. Who's so mental
that they ate a piece of bread
and thought, "You know what?
This would be nice if it was wet."
Sprouts. What are they, a bet?
Who likes sprouts?
CHEERING
Absolute vermin, the lot of you.
What's with the sprout?
Little devil's haemorrhoids, that's
what we call them in our house.
Little pockets of evil.
It's like a full cabbage,
just in one little bite.
Like an undiluted cabbage.
And anybody you say it to goes,
"Oh, no, the way I cook
them is different."
They say,
"Oh, I cook them in butter.
"I cook them in bacon.
"I put chocolate on them."
You're trying to mask the
fact that they're horrible!
I don't do that with Jaffa Cakes.
"Here's a Jaffa Cake.
I know they're horrible
"so I've wrapped it in some ham."
Is there anything weirder than
other people's Christmases?
Have you ever done this thing where
you're going out with somebody new
and then you spend Christmas
at their family's house?
And halfway through, you think,
"What fresh hell is this bullshit?"
And you try to be supportive,
don't you, at first?
You get up, everything's different.
"Oh, right, you all have
a lie
-in and then a walk
"before you open any presents?"
"Yes, fine.
No, totally fine, yeah."
"What, nobody watches The Snowman?
"OK. Yeah. Me neither, yeah."
But the one that gets me,
it happened to me at the in
-laws,
they all open the presents
at the same time,
in a flurry, like
absolute barbarians.
In our house, you take
turns to open presents.
Yes, it takes four and a half hours,
but what else have you got to do?
CHEERING
Who's with me?
Yes, it's like Deal Or No Deal
in our house, but we enjoy it.
Take time to savour the presents
and watch each other.
Not ripping it all
over like heathens!
Give me a cheer if you, like me,
take your time to open
presents one at a time.
CHEERING
Yes!
But that wasn't everybody.
Who, in this room,
just absolutely goes for it
with a flurry of chaos?
CHEERING
Unbelievable. Jesus hates you.
Unbelievable.
Traditions are very
important to people.
One of our famous traditions
that we do in our house
-
every single year, we go to a
town centre in the northwest
and we watch a local celebrity
turning on the Christmas lights.
It's one of my
favourite things to do.
One of my favourite moments of
doing this was a few years ago,
we went to Right into
the centre of Manchester
and would you believe,
on that night,
turning on the Christmas lights
was none other than '90s
legend Chesney Hawkes,
ladies and gentlemen?
It was Chesney Hawkes!
CHEERING
Everybody loves Chesney Hawkes,
and he was on stage
I am the one and only ♪
We were all like,
"Yes, you are, Chesney!"
You can't take
that away from me ♪
We wouldn't want to!
It was brilliant.
And he finished and we all went mad.
5,000 people, all cheering,
"Yes, Chesney!"
And he went, "Merry Christmas,
Manchester,"
and we went, "Merry Christmas,
Chesney."
He said, "Did you like that?"
We said, "We loved it."
He said, "You want another one?"
We went
"Have you got another one?"
Because we'll hear that again,
to be honest, mate. That is a tune!
That was a good night.
I'll tell you what's
hard this time of year,
trying to stay trim,
trying to lose some weight.
Are you going to
bother this Christmas?
AUDIENCE: No!
Just leave it, man. Everything's
got so many calories in.
Just looking at stuff can put weight
on, even your advent calendar.
Every bloody door's 250 calories.
It's a nightmare!
I've got MyFitnessPal.
Anybody use MyFitnessPal?
SCATTERED CHEERS
I put, MyFitnessPal,
put all my food in it.
You know, log all my food.
Make sure I'm not eating too much.
Christmas time. What's the point?
Scanning through trying to
find what 24 Miniature Heroes is
for your breakfast.
I don't know about you, right,
but there's a thing out there and
you might have heard of this,
it's called body dysmorphia.
This is It's an awful thing.
It's when you look in the mirror
and You're fine,
you're absolutely fine.
But when you look in the mirror,
the mirror tells you that you're
fat or ugly or grotesque, right?
And I've got whatever
the opposite of that is.
Because I look, I can see it,
I've got a belly, I've got the
moobs, I've got the chins,
yet when I look in the mirror,
I think, "f*cking
nailing it today, Jason."
You are hot to trot, big guy.
Yeah!
CHEERING
Sometimes I put the bins
out in my underpants
as a little treat
for the neighbours.
Hi, Mrs Morris, you dirty old cow.
You got me again.
I needed to lose some weight.
I don't know about you last year,
but I piled it on last lockdown.
My God, really went for it.
So this year, I thought, "No,
I'm going to sort myself out."
Beginning of the year,
stood on some scales.
I don't know about you with scales,
but what I love about scales
is they have been
engineered to the nth degree
by people at the top
of their profession
and yet nobody has ever
got on a set of scales
and taken the first reading as fact.
You know, when you get on it, you
go, "Well, that can't be right,
"let's"
"Just have another go there."
I spend 20 minutes river
dancing on them sometimes.
Drag it elsewhere in
the bathroom, like
"I just need to
find a friendly tile!"
There's moments when you know
you've put on a few pounds,
it might be a reflection, you know,
a shirt doesn't fit
you that it once did.
For me, I remember very clearly,
I was at home,
I ran upstairs naked,
I got a round of applause
and I was the only
person in the house.
APPLAUSE
That was a tough day, yeah.
That's exactly what it sounded like.
Thanks for reminding me.
Social media is a
good way of finding out
you've piled on a few pounds,
and not in a nasty way,
I don't mean trolls.
I mean even people who
are being nice to you.
People send me
messages all the time.
I don't know what it
is about what I look like,
but a lot of people look like me.
Even in this room tonight,
you'll have an ex
-boyfriend,
somebody who goes
to your local cafe,
maybe somebody who you work with
and it'll just be, you know,
a white guy with dark hair
trying to grow a beard, right?
There's a lot of us.
Like, 40% of this population.
And yet people sometimes
take pictures of these people
and then they tweet me and say,
"Oh, my God, my cousin,
he looks just like you."
And this has been happening
for well over a decade,
and it's yet to have
been a compliment.
Not even once, by accident,
I've ever gone,
"Oh, fair enough, he's all right."
No, no, just a cacophony
of munters for ten years.
Obviously got a high
opinion of myself, haven't I?
Sometimes people come out
In the street, they'll stop me in
the street, "Oh, mate, my pal,
"he's the spitting image of you,"
and then they bring this
thing out the pub, right?
He can't wait to meet,
he's all excited.
HE SNORTS
"You all right, mate? No way!
"Sometimes I have to do
selfies as you and everything."
"Oh, really? Because your
eyes aren't even level!"
Obviously,
I've got a high opinion of myself.
When I was trying to lose some
weight this year, a friend of mine
said to me, "Look,
don't just weigh yourself."
This is a good tip, actually.
He says, "Don't just weigh yourself
"because you can't always
The scales don't tell the truth.
"Get a tape measure.
Measure your body.
"Measure your tummy,
your chest, your neck.
"And add those numbers
up, and in a few weeks' time,
"hopefully, you'll have
lost some numbers."
I thought, "Right, that's
exactly what I'm going to do.
So I measured myself.
This was at my absolute biggest,
beginning of the year,
measuring myself right here,
in the middle of the belly,
right in the middle of the barrel.
I can't believe I'm telling
this on telly, but here we go.
"122 centimetres," it read.
Woo! Thank you, one person.
Big fan of the metric system, madam?
Because the rest of the
room is staring at me going,
"I don't know what that is."
Let me tell you, I didn't
know what it is, either,
so I went on Google,
"Convert 122 centimetres."
It's four foot.
Just let that sink
in for one second.
Four foot around the
middle of a human being.
And, for the people at the back
there, I am actually six foot tall.
That's the measurements
of an oblong, not a person!
Six by four is a bloody
fence panel where I come from.
Devastated is not the word.
And Google
Google's not your friend.
Google's using you
to keep you online
and, underneath the
information, it said
.."interesting things
that are four foot."
And I thought, "I don't
want to know, Google,"
but a little bit of my
brain was like, "I do."
So I clicked on it. First example,
Danny DeVito is four foot six.
What a day I had that day.
Woke up absolutely fine,
went to bed with the knowledge that
I could wear Danny DeVito as a belt.
It's been an odd year and
a half for rules people.
I don't know if you're a rules
person, I'm a rules person.
But the rules people have struggled
over the last year and a half
with Covid because, you know,
you look out
Scientists, epidemiologists,
nurses, doctors, researchers
all over the world have been
telling us that Covid is dangerous.
But at the same time, to be fair,
your brother's friend from
the gym says it's not
and
It's very difficult to know
who to believe, isn't it?
It's very difficultto know.
CHEERING
I know!
It's hard!
And the problem is,
when you're a rules person,
you wore the mask,
did social distancing,
you've had your vaccine,
all the things that you do.
When you're a rules person,
you do no research
because you just trust that
people cleverer than you
have done the research and
you just get the last bit
and you go, "OK, cool.
Thanks, science."
But people who don't believe in it
-
your anti
-maskers, anti
-vaxxers
-
they do LOADS of research.
It's all bollocks, but
they do LOADS of research.
They've been to the
University of Facebook,
and they passed with flying colours.
CHEERING
And the problem is
The problem is, when you
come face
-to
-face with them,
we sound like the thick one
cos we don't know
"I just wore it
"because somebody said to
wear it, I don't know."
It happened to me in the
middle of the whole pandemic,
I was walking in my village and my
brother's mate from the gym, Dean
..he saw me, "Hey, Jay.
"Hello, mate." I said,
"All right, pal?"
"I see you're wearing your mask,
you f*cking sheep."
I said, "Yeah, yeah, I am, yeah."
"What are you wearing that
for, mate? Don't do nowt."
I said, "Well, I don't
know if I'm honest, Dean,
"but I just figure if I'm wrong,
"I just accidentally
wore a mask for a year.
"Whereas if you're wrong,
someone's nana died, you know?
"And I just figure, out the
two options, mine's safest!"
CHEERING
Well Let me stop you there,
folks, because let me tell you,
Dean had me.
Dean had me with an argument
I had not thought about.
He said, "All right, mate,
explain this then.
"How come, with a mask on,
"you can't get COVID, but
you can still smell a fart?"
And I do not know, Apollo,
I've literally no idea.
I was flummoxed,
I had nothing to say.
I thought somebody
needed to put Dean
in a Chris Whitty press conference.
You know, when he opens it
up to general questioning.
"Any more questions?" "Yeah,
I've got one actually, Whitty.
"Dean, Total Fitness. Look"
"I don't know if you've done
any research on this or anything,
"but how come, with a mask
on, you can't get Covid,
"but you can still smell farts?
"A lot of us are worried about it
"at the University of
Facebook this semester."
But Witty, do you remember? He was,
like, unflappable, weren't he?
He'd just be like, "Next slide."
It'd be a graph about
farts or something.
He'd be like, "Well, as
you can see here, Dean,
"the fart particles are smaller
than Covid particles.
"The 'farticles' as we call them
in the medical community"
I don't know. I've no idea!
There's loads of
things we don't know.
My favourite argument about
the vaccine is people going,
"You know, you don't
even know what's in it.
"You don't even know
what's in it, mate."
You're going, "Oh, I've just had
chicken nuggets for dinner, mate.
"Do I look like a man who
cares what's in things?"
I've been giving my children
Calpol for 12 years.
I've never once looked
at the ingredients.
That pink magic could come
straight out of pig's arse,
right into her mouth,
but she's asleep and her
earache's gone. Thanks, science.
CHEERING
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, you
are in for an absolute treat.
I've worked with this first
act many, many times.
She's making her
Live At The Apollo debut,
so please give it
up for Maisie Adam!
MUSIC: Merry Christmas Everybody
by Slade
Hello!
CHEERING
Merry Christmas, Apollo!
It's lovely to be here.
It's very nice It's nice seeing
you all in your Christmas attire.
It's lovely, it's wonderful.
It's nice you're getting so into it
and I mean this in the
nicest possible way,
but it does feel now, for me,
a little bit like, you know,
when, on Christmas Day, you'd put
a play on for your mum and dad
in the front room as a kid.
That's what I feel like right now.
I feel like you lot were sat down
ready to watch the
EastEnders Christmas special
..and then I've come into the living
room and stood in front of the TV,
and gone, "Hello, please, can you
watch my one
-woman nativity?"
In fact, did anybody here ever play
Mary in the school nativity?
CHEERING
Really?! Yeah, with that projection,
madam, I'm not surprised.
Very good. Really
engaged the diaphragm there.
Very, very good.
I always wanted to play
Mary was the jackpot, weren't it?
Mary was the jackpot
at the school nativity.
Always wanted to play
Mary, never got it.
The biggest role I ever
got in the school nativity
This is, honest to God, true.
The biggest role I ever got was
the wife of the wise
man who brought myrrh.
The wife! I didn't even
know he had a wife!
The wife of the wise man
who brought myrrh. I was furious.
Didn't have any lines,
only the husbands had lines
because it was the '90s.
That's how it was back then.
Basically, each of the lads
had to step forward
and say what they
brought the baby Jesus,
and the first lad, he stepped
forward and he was like,
"I bring you gold."
And the second lad, he stepped
forward and he was like,
"I bring you" And he said,
"Frankenstein," cos he was nervous.
f*cking amateur.
Then my husband
..went to step forward
and, at the last minute,
I took it off him and went,
"WE bring you myrrhtogether."
CHEERING
Feminism!
It's what the Pankhursts
would have wanted.
CHEERING
My husband was mortified,
Joseph was like,
"Can you control
your wife, please, mate?"
I said, "You're one to talk, Joseph,
look where yours has ended up."
No, I love Christmas,
it's my favourite time,
it's my favourite time
for a lot of reasons,
but mainly cos you get to go home,
you get to go home and see
all of your home friends, like
I love I love hanging out with
all the people I went to school
with. We go on a big night out.
That's what I
I love a big night out.
You know what I mean when I say,
"Big night out"?
Like, stickier the
floor, the better, yeah?
Them establishments
where you walk in
and you can smell the booze
on the walls already.
Yeah, yeah.
The ones where you walk
in with your dignity
and you leave with
nothing but a hand stamp.
Yeah, them ones. Oh, I love those
nights out, love them, love them,
but I have a theory about nights out
and I think I can
persuade you guys, Apollo.
I have a theory about nights out.
I think the best nights
out we've ever been on,
or will ever go on, were the ones
when we were like 16, 17 years old.
Yeah? You know them ones?
Because there was a risk.
You weren't actually old enough
to be on the night out,
so you had to prepare for
Part of the thrill was seeing
if you could get into the nightclub
and you had to prepare
the week in advance,
you had to try and find an
ID that looked like you.
I say, "Look like you,"
have to find an ID that
was of the same race
and just hope for the best.
Do you remember the thrill of being
stood in the queue for a nightclub
trying to memorise
all of the information
on that driver's license?
I revised more for
my eldest cousin's
best friend's driver's license
than I did any of my GCSEs.
I loved it.
Trying to remember
Trying to make your face
look like the passport photo.
So that, by the time you got to the
front and handed it to the bouncer,
you'd be like
"Ask me my postcode.
Go on, I'll know it."
Also, I feel like we
need to take two seconds
to just acknowledge the
aesthetic of those years, right?
The aesthetic of them
years when I was 16
-17,
because my mum, for example,
my mum was a punk in the 1970s.
So when I look at photographs of her
when she was on her first nights
out, when she was 16
-17,
I'm like, "God, Mum, what a
time for fashion that was.
"You look amazing,
that's incredible."
And it's sad because I know
that if ever I have children,
they will never, ever
look at a photograph of me
from 2009
..and go, "God, Mum, what
a time for fashion that was.
"You look amazing.
"That's incredible." You
know the years I'm on about,
where the lads were brushing
their hair horizontally forward.
Remember that? Horizontally forward,
everything except for their fringe,
which meant that every lad
walked round with a
sort of nervous tick of
Oh, it gave you fanny
flutters, didn't it?
Oh! Yes, please!
Oh, but we can't give them
We can't, we can't give them sh*t.
Oh, God, no, no.
The women were worse.
We were worse than the lads.
Like, you know how?
Right, it started,
it started with the eye
Do you remember we were trying
fake eyelashes for the first time?
Fake eyelashes for
£1 from Poundland.
Yes, for one great British pound,
you too can look like you've got
two massive spiders on your face!
And the glue is so bad that,
halfway through the night,
it'll look like they're
trying to crawl away.
It was like a 3D experience. Then
you went down to the lips, right?
How much money do you think is spent
by the make
-up
industry year on year
by finding new colours
-
pinks, purples, reds?
Must be hundreds
of thousands of pounds.
Yet my generation, this
is why I'm proud of us,
we were the first generation to go,
"Now, do you know what I think?
"I think what we'll do is we'll
take the foundation from our face
"and move it to our lips, yes."
"Yes, just move that
Dream Matte Mousse along. Yes."
If you don't know,
Dream Matte Mousse was a foundation
that was literally like wearing
sponge cake on your face.
And then the worst bit of all,
the piece de resistance of
this make
-up ensemble, right,
was the fringe, the fringe,
because you know how, now,
if you want a fringe
as a nice little A side fringe,
sort of accentuate
the features of your face,
it's quite subtle, it's quite nice.
Oh, God, no back in '09, if you
wanted a side fringe, right?
That's what you were
working with, my friends.
CHEERING
Yeah!
That's what you were working with.
It says a lot when the
current haircut I've got now
is not the shittiest
one I've ever had.
Honestly, you go on any girl
my age's Facebook profile,
I promise you, right? Go
Go on her profile and go back to
the picture that she had in 2009.
I promise you, I promise you,
it'll be her with a
fringe like this, OK?
Stood in front of a
door before a night out,
sideways on, with a clutch bag.
It won't just be
you either, will it?
Won't be you, it'll be you
and all of your friends,
usually stood in
height order for the photo.
All sideways on with your clutches
and the photo's not
taken on an iPhone.
No, no, no. It's taken on a
bright pink digital camera.
Yes, and you slid the door
back, you slid the door back.
What was great about that camera was
you could then wear it on a string
around your wrist for
the rest of the night.
You'll be stood sideways on,
with your clutch bags,
in a line and you'll
all be stood the same way
cos there was only one
post back in 2009, right?
Which was this.
Different time! Different time!
Loved it.
People have got their traditions
at Christmas, haven't they?
Everyone's got their
things that they do.
My family, we love to go
to the Boxing Day football.
We love to go to the
Boxing Day football.
I LOVE football.
Absolutely adore it.
I've played it my whole life.
I actually had trials at
Leeds United as a teenager,
but I don't like to go on about it.
Oh, my God, no, please,
now. I'm really shy.
Like, if you see me afterwards,
don't ask me about my time
at Leeds United because
I'll just be really modest!
I love football,
absolutely adore it.
And when I moved recently,
from Yorkshire to Brighton,
and it took me a long time
to find a football team,
a local women's football
team that I could play
It took me a long, long time
and, just before Christmas,
I finally found one
and it was great.
I saw this girl post about
it on a forum on Facebook
for women in Brighton and
I messaged her straight away.
I said, "Hi, can I join your
football team, please?"
And she said, "Yes, of
course, it's £5 to play.
"We play Thursday nights and we're
an LGBT friendly team," right?
In Brighton.
I thought everything was
LGBT friendly in Brighton,
I thought "LGBT friendly" in
Brighton just meant "citizen".
So I turned up, right? With my
£5 to play. Had the best time.
It was wonderful.
Everyone was so lovely.
I forgot how much I enjoyed playing,
it was really such a lovely evening.
In fact, I'll say it,
I played, frankly, 90 minutes
of world
-class football.
Three assists. Two goals.
Only mentioned the Leeds United
thing once, it was amazing.
CHEERING
And afterwards, right? And
afterwards, the captain, she went,
"Oh, if you'd like to come
to the pub with us,
"we always go for a
drink after the game,
"you're very welcome to join us."
I said, "Yeah, that'd
be lovely. Thank you.
"I'm always looking for
new mates in the city."
So we went along to this pub, we got
a round in, we sat in this booth
and she went, "Well, I think we
"should say welcome
to our latest member.
"Maisie, welcome to
Blags, and cheers!"
And I cheersed as well and said,
"Sorry, what's Blags?"
And she looked at me like
I'd said, "What is football?"
She went, "Blags
- Brighton l*sbian
and g*y Sport Society."
And as it sunk in
that I had accidentally joined
a l*sbian football team
..I made the decision,
there and then,
to keep my heterosexuality
hidden, right?
And I got home that night and
my boyfriend Michael was like,
"How was it, love?
I was like, "Yeah, good.
I think I'll have to refer to
"as Michelle from now on."
I told him what happened
and he was like,
"Oh, you should probably
be honest there."
I said, "You're right,"
and I messaged the captain.
I said, "Hi. Thanks so much for
this evening. I really enjoyed it.
"I just thought I
should let you know,
"cos you said Blags, I'm straight,
"and if it's best
I don't come any more
"cos it's a safe space for your
community. Please just let me know.
"It won't be awkward. I'd hate
to infiltrate the lesbians."
Upon reflection, "infiltrate"
was too strong a word.
And she didn't reply,
right, for 12 hours.
12 hours I spent lamenting myself
for accidentally
infiltrating the lesbians.
Woke up the next morning,
she'd replied.
She said, "Hi. Don't worry about it.
"Most of our team are
of the LGBTQ community,
"but as long as you're inclusive,
you're very welcome to join us."
I said, "Oh, great,
thank you so much."
And I turned up the next week,
right? And the captain, she went,
"Hello, we've got you a
little Christmas present.
And she said, "Well, we've
got your shirt number printed
"and she held it up and
it was the number one
"which, if you don't know,
is usually for the goalkeeper."
And I said, "Hang on, what's that
about? I don't play in goal."
And she genuinely went,
"No, no, no, it's because
of the shape of the number.
"You're the only straight one."
I was so touched.
I was so touched, and then
she unravelled it further
to show the name she'd got printed
for me
- "c*ck Gobbler."
And true to form, Apollo,
I'm very good at heading it,
and I'm not afraid of a tackle.
You've been an absolute dream.
Merry Christmas, I've been
Maisie Adam, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Maisie Adam, everybody!
I told you, absolutely fantastic.
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
are you ready for
your next act of the night?
CHEERING
I worked with this guy
very recently on my show.
He's absolutely hilarious.
Please put your hands together
for Nabil Abdulrashid!
CHEERING
What's going on, everybody?
Are you all right?
I'm Nabil Abdulrashid
and, of course,
some of you will recognise
me from mistaking me
for security outside.
Cos when you look like me,
you can't just be outside
to enjoy the ambience. No!
Everyone assumes you're there
to search people or sell drugs.
So I do both.
I take them from him,
give them to him.
It's how you stimulates
an economy, you see.
Or a w*r.
So, it's amazing.
I go to the
Britain's Got Talent last year
and I got a golden buzzer.
It was amazing.
CHEERING
But I'll tell you what was better,
I got to annoy racists
across the country!
CHEERING
By simply existing, right?
I'm not just talking about
gammons on Twitter,
I'm talking about other comedians
because, believe it or not,
comedians are some of the most
insecure, r*cist, jealous people.
I'm not saying they're all
white men, but they are.
And I had this one guy who
did the show, just like me,
but he didn't do as well
because he's sh*t.
And he said
"Nabil, you know why you
did better than me?"
I said, "Because I'm better
than you." And he said,
"No. The reason you did well is
because you've got a good gimmick."
I said, "Gimmick? GIMMICK?
"OK. What's that?" Then
he said, "Oh, you know."
I said, "What, exfoliation?
What?
"I thought
everybody knew about that."
He said, "No, no, no, no.
You know, the black stuff."
HE GASPS
I said
"You're really going to reduce my
whole existence into a gimmick."
"This is not" I said, "b*tch
"..this is no gimmick.
"I woke up like this."
CHEERING
It's not a gimmick. And then we
got we got into a back and forth
in the green room, like,
"Well, why do black comedians
"all talk about being black?"
I said, "I don't know.
I think it's a black thing."
He said, "Yeah, but you
guys all talk about race,
"and that's not a
big deal any more."
I said, "Yeah, but you guys
all talk about your genitals
"and those were never
a big deal, so"
Ra
-ra
-ra
-ra
-ra!
You know, I was deeply
hurt by what he said,
so I decided I was going
to turn a new leaf.
You know? This is all I know.
This is my experience. This
is what I talk about, I said,
"You know what? I'm going
to try something different."
And I decided to announce
it officially on Twitter.
So I went on Twitter and I said,
"Hey, guys, I promise
not to do any more jokes
"about Islamophobia or racism.
"As long as you guys promise not to
be Islamophobic or r*cist to me
"..for a week." I didn't
want to be too demanding.
One week is OK, no?
The first response
"Well, sod of back to Africa,
then, you t*rror1st!"
I said, "Oh!
"The people have voted!"
I must deliver!
I knew what the people would
vote for before they voted
but I let them vote to feel strong
because that's how democracy works.
And I realised something as
well, because they all started
pouring all this abuse on
me on Twitter, I realised
Have you ever noticed how racists
can never be r*cist properly
in their own language?
Like they can never spell,
read or write their own?
I spent the whole night going
FAUX POSH VOICE:
"No, no, no, Darren,
"There's only one K in f*ck off."
You know, it was really
This one guy who was like,
"Oh, if you don't want to be
in our country"
"Our country" spelled A
-R
-E.
Country!
"If you don't want to
be in our country
then why don't you leave, you?"
Now, he wanted to
call me a dickhead,
but he omitted the K and A.
So the last word in the sentence
read, "D
-I
-C
-H
-E
-D."
Man called me a "diched"!
And I'm sorry, but there's
no comeback for "diched"
because that's not English.
This guy transcended
linguistic barriers, right?
I said, "Mate, that's
French. You leave."
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
My favourite other thing
that these guys do
is they always heckle you with,
like, threats of deportation.
They're like, "Oh, you need to be
on the first boat back to Africa,"
because apparently there's a boat
that just goes there, right?
Doesn't go to any
country in particular,
just parks outside Africa and
we moonwalk home, just
"The first boat back to Africa."
I said, "What? why the first boat?"
"Why a boat? My brother,
if you hate me that much,
"why not a plane?
They're so much faster."
"Trust me, they are.
That's how I came here."
"On the first boat"
I said, "Why the first boat?
"My brother, I descend from the
tribe that turned sl*ve ships
"around from Brazil and
went back to Nigeria.
"You don't want me on a boat.
"Put me on a plane.
"Actually, Muslim, plane, that might
not work out so well, but"
But fair enough, OK. Thing is,
they keep saying,
"The first boat, the first boat."
Man, I've got a wife and two kids.
We're never making the first boat.
APPLAUSE
Do you know how long it takes
those three women to get ready?
No! Were not
making the first boat
and I can't leave her here
cos these guys don't
like single mums, so
Because racists tend
to be misogynistic, too.
Yeah, I know. Don't worry,
I'm not a feminist.
I just think they make a
lot of very good points.
I think it's very pretentious
how a lot of men decide that,
because they don't
hate women that much,
they're now a feminist.
I'm not one of those guys.
I'm honest. I think the best
way to describe my condition
is that I am a
recovering misogynist.
What that means is that I
acknowledge the patriarchy's a thing
and that, as a man, I benefit.
I have male privilege from a society
that systemically
discriminates against women.
I believe that toxic masculinity,
r*pe culture, these things exist
and they have subconsciously
affected all men
-
at least all straight ones.
And I also admit that I,
despite all that I know,
have deeply problematic thoughts
and views about women.
But I don't tweet them,
and that makes me a good person.
No, the reason
The thing is, to be fair,
I'm way too happy to
be a feminist and
SCATTERED CHEERING
It's hard work.
I said that recently in Brighton.
Uh
And it was within earshot
of a level
-nine feminist.
Now Yeah, she was a level nine.
She had, like, the
purple dreadlocks.
She was like the boss of all
After you fight all
the other feminists,
she's the last one you meet.
Just appears in the cloud
of smoke and organic music.
Just "BOOF!"
So I hear, "Excuse me,
"I think you'll find
that joke is sexist
"and it's a stereotype
about feminists."
I said, "Are you sure?"
I said, "Why don't you
tell the truth, Nabil?
"With everything you know, why
don't you want to be a feminist?"
And I said, "Well, to be fair,
the real truth is this, OK?
"I have no interest in
dismantling the patriarchy
"or getting rid of male
privilege." She said
"Why?!"
I said, "Because look
at me, I am black.
"Male privilege is the
only privilege I have."
She's like, "Nabil, you
should join the feminist cause
"because, 300 years ago, we would
have fought to free your people."
I said, "No, you wouldn't.
"300 years ago, you'd
have fought to own us too."
I said, "No, you know what?
Maybe, for once,
"we should make allyship
transactional,
"maybe we could have a trade.
"I could trade you some
of my male privilege
"and you could trade me
some of your white privilege
"and through
this existential osmosis,
"where I become a bit whiter
and a bit more feminine,
"the world becomes better."
And it was at this
point that I realised
what a genius
Michael Jackson actually was.
Hee
-hee!
But the thing is, just before
everything went to sh*t,
Christmas period, I was
performing in Holland, right?
I'm a Muslim. I don't
celebrate Christmas.
But you know, it's a nice time
because it brings out
the best in people.
People go out and do acts of
charity they normally would not do.
It's something that I've always
had a positive association with
until I went to Holland.
Because Holland has, like,
a longer, darker cut of Christmas,
like the Snyder cut of Christmas.
I went over there and they teach
children in Holland that
IN FAUX DUTCH ACCENT: "..if you're
a good kid, then the Sinterklaas,
"which is basically Santa,
will give you gifts.
"Oh, it's good. Ja. Ja."
But if you're bad,
then Zwarte Piet
-
which means "Black Pete"
-
will kidnap you and sell
you into sl*very in Spain,
and they teach this to kids
as little as three and four.
Now, the promoter who's booked me
is a black Surinamese Dutch guy.
He's a black Dutch guy.
Never thought to tell me
that this was the case
because not only that, white Dutch
people run around in blackface,
scaring kids in the name
of Christmas spirit.
IN FAUX DUTCH ACCENT:
"It's good, ja. Oh, ja."
So I show up and these guys went up
to me in full blackface Zwarte Piet
HE CACKLES
going
And out of fear for my life,
I knocked him out cold, rude boy.
Nah.
Cold!
Knocked the black off that white boy
and my friend's like,
"Nabil, man, we need to go,"
I'm like, "Nah, so what? Croydon.
"Never ran, never will. So what?
"Ops get dropped. Bang, bang."
I looked up and I saw 15 more.
Listen, I'm a heavy
-set Nigerian,
but on this day I was Kenyan.
I ran!
I ran!
We ran like nine blocks.
I'm like, "Bro, what
the hell was that?"
As we're running I mentioned
my friend's black, right?
He's six
-two, big afro, red lips.
11 months of the year,
good looking Dutchman.
One month of the year, Zwarte Piet.
We're running, kids see him and
run in the opposite direction.
I'm like, "Bro, why are these
kids running away from you?"
He explained what it was, and
I was like, "Oh, thank God,
"cos I just watched this
documentary on R Kelly and phew!"
In the end, he was like
IN FAUX DUTCH ACCENT: "No,
it's not funny, bro. It's r*cist.
"It's not funny. It's r*cist.
We keep telling them,
"they don't listen."
And I thought to myself, "Yes, it
is r*cist, but I've got two kids
"and I don't mind
kids being scared of men
"because men are the
ones that harm kids.
"Men are trash. I agree."
But what I don't like about this is
that they're only
scared of black men.
So I thought,
"Rather than cry racism,
"let's get black men to
dress up like white men
"..and scare the hell
out of these kids too."
That way,
they'll be scared of all men
and not just one race.
And it was at this moment I realised
what a genius
Michael Jackson actually was.
Well, that's my time.
I'm Nabil Abdulrashid.
Assalaamu Alaikum.
Croydon, stand up.
Nabil Abdulrashid!
There you go.
Have you had a good night?
CHEERING
Merry Christmas!
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