All language subtitles for Bill.Bailey.Dandelion.Mind.2010.720p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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Hello.

Good evening, Hammersmith. Hmm.

Yes, it is I.

This is my new name for Britain,
Limboland.

People have suggested others.
Poundland.

Uh, Leavakia.

Uh...

Who is gonna take us forward

in these uncertain times,
these tumultuous waters?

Well, it's not gonna be the
Greens, is it? God love 'em.

God love the Greens.
Closest to my political heart.

But they are, they're
well-meaning,

but helpless,
aren't they, you know?

They're just useless,
the Greens.

They're like a CND sticker
on a submarine, you know.
They just...

Every election I'm willing them
to say something

that isn't bereft
of common sense.

Come on! Come on! You can do it!

Uh, we want to scrap the army.

Ugh...

And what? And replace it
with a stout wicker fence.

Oh, Christ.

Not again.

Cars are illegal. Petrol's free.

Yes, thank you, thank you.

My local hospital's
been torn down.

Been replaced with an app.

Uh...

You download it, it tells you
where you can harvest local
medicinal herbs,

just like Tinder
for witch hazel.

And...

But I'm a massive supporter
of the NHS.

Is there any NHS supporters?
Any NHS workers?

Big up yourselves.

Massive respect.

My mum and dad worked in the NHS
their whole lives.

I couldn't do that job.

Well, I haven't got
the qualifications, obviously.

I'd be a liability if anything.
"Hold on, mate. I'll Google it."

It's not just about
qualifications, is it?
It's a vocational thing.

You've got to know what to say
to people sometimes in difficult
times.

You've got to know what to say.
You've got to be compassionate
and firm.

You've got to be tender.

I don't think I've got it in me.
I think I'm too
emotionally glib.

If I had to be the bearer of bad
news, I'd probably get it all
wrong, you know.

I'd probably do it in song form.

That'd be wrong, wouldn't it?
Come out like this.

♪ I've seen your scans

♪ Don't make any plans

♪ A farming incident
in Ukraine ♪

♪ Poultry will
never be the same ♪

♪ A revolution
the world held its breath ♪

♪ The day the chickens
marched on Kiev ♪

♪ Their beaks are shiny
and not very long ♪

♪ Their wings are tiny
and not very strong ♪

♪ Bravely they marched their
banners all a flutter ♪

♪ Stop pumping us
with garlic butter ♪

♪ The first to fall
was the bravest of fowl ♪

♪ He attacked a queue in KFC

♪ They killed him
with a trowel ♪

♪ They grabbed the body
'cause the staff
were gonna chuck it ♪

♪ They buried him with some
coleslaw in a hero's bucket ♪

♪ Hurrah, hurrah

♪ This chicken havoc
we are wreaking ♪

♪ Rejoice, rejoice

♪ The ducks have taken Peking

♪ Nothing left
all streets swept clean ♪

♪ No chickens
no chickens to be seen ♪

♪ Just a lone voice
in this poultry Waterloo ♪

♪ You can cut off our heads

♪ But we'll still
be chasing you ♪

♪ The day the chickens
marched on Kiev ♪

Cheers.

I'm just trying
to get behind anything.

I mean... something!

Like, bizarre Olympic sports.
I watch them three o'clock in
the morning.

This sort of... That one.
You know, the race walking.

The cockney marathon I call it.
Yeah, that's it.
Move it up, yeah.

♪ Do me a favor

♪ I'm doing the
cockney marathon ♪

I just love it.

I had a very odd experience
in Tallinn in Estonia.

Some years ago I did a sitcom
called Black Books.

- And in it...

...there was a scene in it

where I held up a neck massager
to my breasts,

and there were two
rotating cones.

I was like, "Bernard, Bernard,
Bernard. I'm a prostitute robot
from the future."

Now fast-forward
to Tallinn Airport security.

I'm putting my items through the
scanner, the Eye of Sauron as I
call it.

And the guard
fixed me with a gimlet eye,

and he nudged his mate,
and he went, yeah,

mumbling something
in what I assumed was Estonian.

He turned to me and he went,
"Bernard, Bernard, Bernard,
Bernard, Bernard."

He went, "Bernard, Bernard,
Bernard."

Now...

I knew what he meant,

but it freaked all the other
passengers out like you wouldn't
believe.

They all thought it was
some weird Estonian folk
greeting.

And then of course
we had to take the obligatory
selfie.

Now I'm fine with that.

I accept social media into my
life, albeit grudgingly,

because if you're in the public
eye, like what I am,

you have to have
a social media presence,

otherwise some other nerk
will rob it off you, all right?

As I discovered when I went on
Twitter,

and there were four other Bill
Bailey Twitter users pretending
to be me,

having a much more fulfilling
life, which is really galling.

It's extraordinary.
Facebook is like the Death Star.

It sucks us in
with those tempting links.

Protractor beam of Facebook.

Oh, look at this link,
oh, I must resist.

But, no, look at it.
It's so tempting.

When this guy
put some bread in a toaster,

you won't believe
what happened next.

What happened,
what happened, what happened?

You will believe
what happened next.

And... and YouTube, it's just
like a portal for the deranged.

It's like a... it's like a sump
from a vast underground lake of
anger.

I put a still photograph of a
cabbage on YouTube to see what
would happen.

The amount of hatred
that came back my way.

What did you do that for?
You stupid man!
You stupid cabbage man.

It's a cabbage, isn't it?

Being online
is very dangerous, you know.

Being online
we're at risk from cybercrime.

My email was hacked.
Some hackers got in.

They guessed "bill123"
and they got in.

And they emailed my accountant.

Now some of you are thinking,
"You haven't got an accountant,
Bill.

You keep all your money
in a tree stump in the woods,

and every midsummer's eve
you ask the wise old stag of the
forest

to tap out where
I should invest it."

But, no, I actually have got
an accountant.

Well, I did have and they
emailed her,

and asked her to transfer some
money to an account in Turkey.

A place I've never been.
Showed no interest.

And she bloody did!
She just handed it over!

Now what really annoyed me
was the language that they used

was so clearly not me.

Hurry up. Where is money?

Send money now, Julie,
for Turkey house.

Did she think,
"Bill's a bit grumpy today.

He's lost his grip
of grammatic structure"?

And then they used
a load of baffling emojis.

Things I would never use.
"Hurry up, Julie.
Where is money?"

Pony, pony, pony, cricket bat,
sad face, cable car.

But we have to accept technology
into our lives.

There's nowhere back.

Umm, I-I'm going to make
an assumption here, Hammersmith.

I'm gonna guess
everyone here's got a
smartphone,

and, uh, everyone's got
their own ringtones.

Umm, but here's a way...
Here's a thing you can do.

Uh, you can make your own
ringtones.

Umm, you can make them
out of any everyday household
object,

like this hand-carved African
log drum.

Perhaps like a messaging tone.

Something like that,
or perhaps a WhatsApp.

Or perhaps a longer personalized
ringtone for a family member.

Hello? You know...
Something of that nature.

And what you can do,
I'm just gonna demonstrate now

how you can create a very
simple, working everyday
ringtone.

Right, so that's it. Recorded.

Now here it is
sampled over here.

And you can improve it with a
bit of a musical counterpoint
like this.

Here comes the ringtone.

Or if you prefer,
you can layer the ringtones

into a kind of ringtone
symphony, like this.

Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!

A sitar solo.

Something like that.

You never see any Satanists
playing log drums though,
do you?

♪ Satan is coming
for your eyes ♪

You never hear that. Now...

I'll tell you what
really annoys me,

apart from taramasalata
and bad manners,

and that is...

the constant pressure
to upgrade.

Not just technology,
but our lives generally.

Every time you open a paper,
or a magazine,

there's some article exhorting
you to live a better life.

Ten super foods
you should be eating right now.

Ten places you should have gone.

You've been looking out the
window wrong your whole life.

And really
I was disturbed recently by one.

It said, "I'd been eating
biscuits the wrong way up my
whole life."

Right, now does anyone here
eat chocolate Digestive
biscuits?

You, sir. Do you?

When you eat them,
when the chocolate
goes in your mouth,

- it's on the top, right?
- Yeah.

So the chocolate goes in on the
top, the writing's on the
bottom.

But when you eat the plain
Digestive, where's the writing?
It's on the top.

That's how we
should be eating them.

We've been eating chocolate
Digestives upside down our whole
lives.

I'm clearly more freaked out by
this than you are.

It's just part of this pressure
to improve our lives.

I get this all the time,
and you can't withhold.

Eventually, you succumb.

Friends were telling me,
"Bill, you look a bit stressed.

You need to get a massage."

And I hate massage.
I'm covered in hair.

I feel like a dog being groomed.

But... I say, "All right,
I'll go along with this."

So eventually I went to
get a massage, you know.

Not a, you know... I mean a...

A legitimate one.
Not a, you know...

I don't know what that
is actually.
That's just a weird gesture.

There you go, mate. It's like
a cockney drive-by massage.

There you go, mate.
Have some of that.

There you go.
That'll sort your chakras out.

No. Ooh, double-bubble.

And, uh...

I went to a spa,
you know, like a tosser,

and, uh...

I got undressed, put the robe
on,

put the little hairnet thing on
like that.

I'm waiting for the masseur,
and she comes in the room,

and the first thing she did was
this...

Which is not a good start for
any sort of social interaction.
That.

It turns out it wasn't a
hairnet, it was disposable
underpants, right.

I don't know.
I just put them on.

And I actually thought,
"These are really comfortable.

There's two holes for your ears.
This is brilliant."

And while I was waiting I had
teased all my hair out through
the holes.

I looked like Princess Leia's
wizard uncle, you know.

But happiness is now
no longer a thing,

which may happen to us,
you know,

and that's the thing,
that's where it's leading all of
this.

The end point of Western
civilization is to be happy.
Happiness.

And happiness is now no longer
just a random thing,

which may or may not happen
to us if we're lucky.

It's a quantifiable resource.
It's a currency.

I flew to Copenhagen. I came out
of the airport, there was a sign
saying,

"Welcome to Denmark,
the happiest country in the
world."

Now I've been to Denmark,
it's nice,

but people are not congoing
down the street going,

We all live in
Denmark, we all live..

Wearing a cape, made out of
bacon, and a pastry hat,

which is obviously what I'd do.

And the reason for that is that
Denmark has got great social
provision.

It's got, you know, good
healthcare and great education

and the roads are nice,
and everything's nice.

But that doesn't necessarily
equate to happiness.

To me, happiness is more
elusive, it's more mercurial,
it's subjective.

It could be anything -
birdsong, a funny-shaped cloud.

Finding a valid receipt
for a faulty domestic appliance.

Ah-ah-ah-ah.

That is like the universe
shining on you for a day. There.

Because if you've tried to take
a toaster back without a
receipt,

- that is a walk of shame.

I've tried that, you walk in,

"Uh, I'd like to return
this toaster, please."

"Do you have a receipt?"

"Uh, no, but I did have one,

and I bought it here,
well, not here, another shop.

It doesn't matter
because I bought things,

and I bought a toaster,
and I like toast.

I like to butter toast.
Yum, yum, yum."

And you're making no sense.

Then you start babbling
like an African prince,

who has promised me £5 million,
if we email him some toast.

I'll cut you in on the deal.

And then they realize
you haven't got a receipt,

and this must give them
a mild sexual thrill I think.

"Well, I'm terribly sorry, sir,
if you don't...

have...

a valid receipt..."

But if you do have a receipt,
oh, what a beautiful thing that
is.

Oh, frabjousday.
"Do you have a receipt?"

"Yes, I do. Ooh, look, I've
laminated it for my pleasure."

"I'm looking at you through it."

Pa-ding!

Such a glorious reveal that is.

I sometimes delay
the pleasure of that

by pretending
I don't actually have a receipt.

"Do you have a receipt?"

"No, a kestrel snatched it
from my grasp seconds ago,

but I need this cordless kettle
because I have a rare condition,

where my knees need to be
immersed in boiling water all
the time.

I need...

Then you turn away all broken
and go, "Wait a minute.
What's this?"

'Cause that is happiness
right there.

What the Danes have is something
else. That is contentment.

Contentment is knowing
that you're right.

Happiness is knowing
that someone else is wrong.

Namaste.

Tiny little things
make us happy.

For me, it's schadenfreude.

The vicarious pleasure of
watching popstars humiliated.
That's all it is.

When Justin Bieber fell down
the trapdoor. Whoo-hoo! Yeah?

I wanna see more of that.
I wanna see Kanye West step on a
rake, right.

Nothing life-threatening,
just annoying. Dang!

Elton John gets his hand
stuck in a teapot.

That's all I want.

Somebody's told him
there's a Fabergé egg in there,

and he's gone in after it

with his pudgy little pub-piano
playing fingers.

The preposterous, pompous,
wiggy little berk that he is.

Don't know where that came from.
Uh...

Don't mean it in a bad way.

Now I've written
a song for Adele.

And it's called You Left Me,
But I'm Not Gonna Go On About
it.

♪ I met you down
on the street ♪

♪ And you said that there was someone you were on your way to meet ♪

♪ And I knew it
couldn't be me ♪

♪ Because I was the one that
was there ♪

♪ I stood for many hours
crying outside your door ♪

♪ Because I knew that our love
our love was no more ♪

♪ And I said why, why, why,
why, why ♪

♪ Why, why, why, why,
why, why, why why, why ♪

♪ Why did you leave

♪ Why did you leave me

♪ Why did you leave me

♪ Why did you leave me

♪ Why why did you leave me

♪ You, yes, you
Why did you leave me ♪

♪ But I'm not gonna
go on about it ♪

It goes on like that.

I wrote a song for Coldplay,
as well.

It goes like this, uh, "things
will probably work out all
right.

Who-oa-oa-ah!"

Seems to sum up their miserable
oeuvre,doesn't it?

Mumford and Son's album. Uh...

You see...

British happiness is different
from happiness around the world

because we process happiness
in a different way in Britain.

American friends I've met,
Australians, they're much more
in the moment.

Oh, yeah! They're in tonight!
Whoo-hoo!

They're much more, much more
upbeat, much more positive.

I say to my Australian friends,
"How are you?"

"Awesome, awesome!"
I mean, genuinely in a
non-ironic way.

"How are you?
How was yesterday?"

"Awesome, mate!
Today's gonna be awesome."

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"I don't know.
Picking up stones in the rain.
It's gonna be awesome."

We never say that in a
non-ironic way.

In Britain,
the best you're gonna get...

Because our happiness
is based on this premise:

things could have been
a lot worse.

All right?

That's as good
as it gets in Britain.

That's why the standard greeting
in Britain... "How are you?"

"Not too bad."

That's as good as it gets
in Old Blighty.

"Not too bad."

Things are clearly bad, but
they're not quite as bad as we
thought they were gonna be.

We've dialed down our
expectation

to an acceptable level
of disappointment.

We're eking out our expectation
in diminishing increments of
reduced joy.

Things are not too bad.

There's the abyss.

We're not in the abyss, we're in
the car park and snack area

adjacent to the abyss.

It's not too bad.

That is the ludicrous optimism
of the British psyche.

In Britain we have
the highest per-capita ownership

of convertible cars in Europe.

That is preposterous optimism,
right there.

When you see a couple
with the top down in July,

their faces contorted
in a rictus of optimism,

as the horizontal hail
drills into their retinas...

"It's clearing up, it's clearing
up."

My own mother,
God rest her soul,

one of the greatest optimists
I ever knew.

At the end-of-term school
play...

I was in it, obviously.

It was The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
by Bertolt Brecht.

Some of you will know it.

Yeah, we had quite an ambitious
English teacher and...

For those of you that don't
know, it's a play.

It's about the rise of
gangsterism in Prohibition era
Chicago.

But it's a thinly veiled
satirical allegory about the
rise of Nazism,

the thuggishness, the brutality
and the inexorable rise of
Hitler.

A lot of parents
were expecting the Nativity.

Oh, they've reworked this.

They've done the baby Jesus up
as Hitler.

Naturally, I was the lead.

I was the Ui character,
the putative Hitler character,

so to go that extra mile,
I dyed my hair black,
cut it short,

and combed it to the side.

I came back from
the hairdresser's, and I walked
in and my mum went,

"Oh, my goodness.
You look lovely."

I said, "Mum, I'm supposed
to be Hitler."

And she goes, "I don't care.
You look very smart."

And I didn't know
it at the time,

but that was the high watermark
of her approval of my
appearance.

The Hitler Christmas.

The Hitmas.

See, one of the jobs as a comic,

you have to listen in sometimes
to the idiosyncratic way in
which people talk.

Sometimes you hope
to get a glimpse of the
zeitgeist.

Sometimes you don't get that.
I was in a pub in North Devon.

I overheard two blokes talking,
and one said to the other one,

"You heard about that Eric
Beaumont? He's in a right
state." "Why's that?"

"He entered
the North Devon vegetables

that look like celebrity
competition."

"Oh, yeah."

"Here...

he had a piece of root ginger
looked like Sandra Bullock."

"Oh, yeah?" "Yeah."

"Sellotaped it to the wheel
of that coach like in Speed."

"Yeah, lovely job, lovely job."
"He's been disqualified."

"'Cause it didn't look
like Sandra Bullock?"

"No, 'cause technically ginger's
a fruit."

"Oh, right."

So...

That's ten minutes of my life
I'm never getting back, you
know.

I was outside my own house
here in Hammersmith where I
live,

keeping it real on the west
side. And...

- Yes!

And, uh, I was walking up
and down my street,

not walking up and down
like a distressed polar bear,

I was just walking,

looking up there, what's up here
oh, that's changed, isn't it?

And, uh...

Oh, bloody developers. Oh, yeah.

Oh, ooh, a Costa, oh, and, uh...

That's evil. The evil of Costa.
So that's another show.
And, uh...

So I'm walking up and down my
street,

and I overhear two women
talking,

and I naturally, I instinctively
listen in on their conversation.

I catch the end of the
conversation, and one says to
the other,

"There's that puddle
I was telling you about."

You see, the thing is
I think that's just
transference.

I think people wanna talk to
each other in Britain, but we
can't.

We're incapable of
saying nice things.

Other people, other races
are able to do that.

I walked the Ridgeway last year.

It's a beautiful walk,
and when you walk outdoors

sometimes strangers accompany
you for a portion of the walk,

and there's this wonderful
American couple join us.

Really positive, upbeat,
totally, uh, you know... very
kind of full of life.

As they were walking
they kept up this commentary

about what a great time
they were having.

"This is a great walk.
What a fantastic idea this is.
Thanks for inviting me."

"Why, you're welcome.
What a great idea.

I'm so glad we're walking on
this path. What a terrific path.

Look at that view. I'm having
a great time. Shall we have
lunch?"

"Yes, let's have some lunch.
What a great idea."

On and on and on.

It was weird and charming,
I guess.

And, but...

All of us Brits,
we're incapable of doing that.

We'd love to be able to say
that, we'd love to be able to
say,

"You are my fond companion.
I like walking with you."

But we can't.
It comes out in a different way.

It comes out like this, "Whose
idea was this. How much
further?"

And the "not too bad",
that's just like a...

It's like another daily
greeting.

Somebody goes out in the week.
"How was last night?"

"How was the night out?"
"Oh, not too bad."

But if you haven't seen someone
in a while, you get a bit more,

you get a bit,
you get a bit extra.

You say, "I haven't seen you in
ages. How are you?"

Not too bad, all things
considered.

When people say that to me,
I want to say to them,

"You have considered all
things?"

Uluru, the Okavango Delta,
The Cradle of all Life,

the Alps, the genius of Mozart,

the limpid minimalism
of Arvo Paärt?

The unplayable piano music
of Franz Liszt,

whose giant manatee-like
flipper hands

means that if you're not
a circus freak or a yeti,

you can't actually play
the bloody stuff?

The tectonic plates
inching around the planet,

mocking our brief dance
on the surface?

Those yogurts with a bit of
fruit in the corner?

All human artistic endeavor?

Everything that has ever existed
at a molecular level?

Pushing somebody in a pond
when they least expect it?

Sitting around the house in your
pants eating gluten for a laugh?

Wars, religion, ideology,
a rose,

opening up a new jar of instant
coffee with the back end of a
teaspoon?

The sensation of that!

The baffling longevity
of LinkedIn?

Standing on the Rialto Bridge
at midnight

covered in Marmite, naked,

chucking wine gums at tourists
shouting, "I forgive you"?

The uncountable stars,
the boundless universe,

beyond which our imagination
founders on a distant shore,

where we dare to touch
the hem of infinity's cloak?

You considered the opalescence
that shimmers on the surface of
a tear,

that wells up in the shepherd's
eye, as he...

as he marvels at the beauty
of yet another Patagonian
sunrise?

"You considered that?" "Yeah."

"And how do you feel?"
"Not too bad."

OK, it's time for a couple
of poems.

Uh, I use the syllabic structure

of the football formation:
four, four, two.

This is called Love Gone Wrong.

"I held you close,
you looked morose, dead wasp."

And this next poem
is a five-lined high coup,

a cinquain if you will.

And in it I tried to sum up
what it is to live in the West.

We see such chaos and
destruction enter our lives
through the TV.

We feel upset by it,

but we can't be upset all the
time otherwise we'd never take
the bins out.

So we have to distract ourselves

with the mundane,
the sensual, the quotidien.

This is the paradox
of Western existence.

"In this mad world spun fast
For nothing lives fly past

Helplessly we look on aghast.

Ooh, cake!"

When I was a kid,
when I was learning the piano,

I always preferred the
minor keys.

The major key was always
associated with happiness.

But I preferred
the more melancholy minor key,

the beautiful minor scales,
like the melodic minor.

That hopeful ascent
and depressing descent.

♪ Things are looking happy
and joyful ♪

♪ No, they're not
they're depressing and bleak ♪

And the wonderful harmonic minor
with that Eastern figure at the
end.

It's impossible to play that
without playing it like this.

That's why...

I failed my Grade Three.

I'm in a social situation,
people say,

"It's someone's birthday.
Will you play the piano?"

And I say, "I will."

"Will you play Happy Birthday?"
I say, "I'll do it in the minor
key."

Then I go a bit Liszt.

Bit cabaret.

I've rewritten the lyrics
to Happy Birthday

because I think Happy Birthday
is a bit of a dirge, so...

It's also too unrealistic.

This is more downbeat and
realistic.

This is Happy Birthdayin the
style of the 1930s Berlin
Cabaret.

In a Kurt Weill birthday
if you will.

♪ Happy birthday

♪ Happy birthday

♪ What a rhapsody of fear

♪ Let's strum the harp of
pointlessness ♪

♪ You've survived
another year ♪

♪ Each little candle

♪ A tiny death knell

♪ A snickering footman

♪ A tolling bell

♪ One for deception
and one for a crime ♪

♪ And one for a dream
extinguished by time ♪

♪ Our lives a brief shuffle
down the gangplank of pain ♪

♪ To adjust an
old sponge cake ♪

♪ Left out in the rain

♪ Stumbling to oblivion

♪ From embryo to ghost

♪ So let's charge
our dirty glasses ♪

♪ And raise a futile
toast to you ♪

♪ And your meaningless
milestone of decay ♪

♪ Happy birthday

♪ Happy birthday

♪ Like anybody cares

♪ It's a lie, it's a lie
it's a lie, it's a lie ♪

♪ It's a cake in
the shape of a lie ♪

♪ Why use that knife
to cut the cake ♪

♪ Why, here's
the reaper's scythe ♪

♪ Happy birthday
cheeky chops ♪

♪ It's not every day
you're five ♪

Thank you very much!

All right.

Anyone here
play in a rock band?

- Yeah?

Someone over here? Yeah?
What sort of, what sort of band
is it?

- A rock band? You play an
instrument?
- MAN 1: Punk.

Punk? You're a punk band,
and you...

Argh! Right.

- What's the name of your band,
sir?
- Death Star.

Death Star.

- I like it.

And is it sort of
quite fast and furious?

- No.
- No.

- It's slow punk. Hmm.

♪ Smash the system
from within ♪

♪ For that is the only
true way ♪

Sorry. It's gone medieval.
Medieval punk.

- Hmm.

♪ Smash the system
from within ♪

♪ And then we'll take the
wolves to the tower ♪

Sorry. I got
a bit distracted there. Uh...

- And do you play
an instrument, sir?
- Guitar.

Guitar! Right on.

And when you're, when you're
playing with Death Star,

when you're rocking out, do you
feel transported by the power of
music?

Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

So...

Well, that was a long walk down
a windy beach to a café that was
closed.

So...

I don't mean that in a bad way.

It's not like they're recording
it for a DVD or anything.

Any metal fans in?

- Yes.

'Course there are.

Uh, I like a bit...
All kinds of metal.

Anyone play in a metal band?

- MAN 2: Yeah!
- Yes!

Excellent. And what...
what is the name of your band,
sir?

- WKD.
- Pardon?

- WKD.
- WKD.

Wicked.

Have you looked at the bottle
you're drinking and gone, "Good
name."?

And are you...?
What kind of metal do you play?

- Thrash.
- Thrash.

Right, that's one of the best,

one of the most
aggressive forms of metal.

Uh...

There's, uh,
there's death metal,

and death metal, again,
very aggressive form of metal,

and there's certain sort of
protocols we have to follow,

like there's two singing styles,
there's the growling style,
roo-roo,

and the screaming style, agghhh!

And there's a chord progression,
very popular in death metal,

which is this.

Which I think is the only
chord progression in death
metal.

And you add that
to the singing style,

roo-roo, oh-ooh-oh-ohh-oh.

That's a death-metal
rowing team.

Oh-uh-oh-uh-oh-uh.

Which I would bloody love to
see, I have to say.

Oxford and Cambridge
rowing along sedately,

and then a long black boat
pulls up alongside.

Oh-uh-oh-uh.

All Viking helmets
chucking goat carcasses at them.

Oh-uh.

Oh, make that happen, someone.

- Umm...

I've got this theory that most
songs in the popular canon

will be improved by playing them
in the death-metal style.

So if you'd like to suggest a
few songs,

I will endeavor to do that.

MAN 3: Justin Bieber.

Justin Bieber.
Not Justin Bieber.

That's the only one
that doesn't work weirdly.

- What was it?
- MAN 4: Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
All right, then.

♪ Twinkle, twinkle,
little star ♪

♪ How I wonder what you are

♪ Up above the world
so bright ♪

♪ Like a diamond in the night

♪ Twinkle, twinkle, little star how I wonder what you are ♪

♪ Twinkle, twinkle,
little star ♪

♪ Twinkle, twinkle,
little star ♪

♪ How I wonder what you are

Very good. Thank you. Well done.

Well done. Good suggestions.

Now along with metal,
I like bird watching, right.

Not at the same time.
That would be weird.

Oh-uh... Ooh.

Satan. A chaffinch.

- And, umm...

But when we travel
we always have a kind of visual
idea

about what it will be like
when we get there.

And I had this
very clearly in my mind,

when I took my whole family
to see the Northern Lights,

and it was a beautiful image.

We were all bundled up in the
cold drinking cocoa,

looking at
this marvelous, natural
phenomenon.

That resolutely
did not happen, right.

We went to Tromsoø in northern
Norway, in the Arctic Circle.

I don't know if you've ever been
to the Arctic Circle, but it is
nippy.

And I mean that seems
an obvious thing to say,

but, I mean,
it is properly nippy.

It's not just, "Oh, I might
throw a pashmina over myself."
No.

It's "argh!"

Your eyes freeze,

and you forget your own name,

and you have to put on all the
clothes you've ever owned in
your life.

And then another suit,
and then more and more suits.

I had more suits than you can
imagine, and pour soup into each
layer.

And you just...

And also...
this is my idea by the way.

I had this idea that we would
dog-sled under the stars

to see the Northern Lights,

not just passively enjoy it
from a hotel balcony or a cruise
ship.

No, we were gonna dog-sled
through a forest, across a
glacier,

and thus see the
Northern Lights.

What could go wrong
with that scenario?

And, ahem, we arrived
at the dog-sledding place.

The dogs looked existentially
furious with everyone around.

This is not a good start.

The sledge looked like something
I'd made coming back from the
pub.

Couple of deck chairs,
bit of carpet, brilliant!

The guide just looked bored
with the whole thing.

He was the security chap,
the safety talk.

He was wearing animal skins.

Clearly, some of them just
recently been killed, you know.

And...

He looked bored
and stoned in equal measure.

And the sledge had a braking
system.

It was just a metal bar with
teeth in it and he just said,
right, he goes,

"Right, to stop it,
you just press that."

Good luck. And...

So we all got on these sledges.

Me, my wife, our son,
my dad, my wife's parents.

We all got on sledges,

and headed off into the
darkness.

And within seconds
I realized this was a terrible
idea.

It was so fast,
terrifyingly fast.

We got on the sledges.
I was all ready to go. Really
excited.

"Ooh, this looks great."
So here we go. Argh! God!

We just shot off,

and low branches
whipping over my head.

Argh! Argh! Jesus!

And even if it hadn't been
totally overcast,

there's no way
you could have leaned back

to look at the Northern Lights
without fear of instant
decapitation.

The next thing I found out
was that the dogs, right,

they don't pull you up a hill.

The slightest incline
they just stop, right.

They weren't having it.
This, this...

A millimeter up like that,
and they go, "Ugh, we can't..."

And then the one at the back
would just look back at you,

like all sort of contemptuous,
like, "We're not pulling you up
there."

Hmm.

So you had to get off the
sledge, and walk behind,

until you reach the level area,

and then jump back
on the sledge, right, fine.

Uh, within minutes
of leaving the dog base,

there was also,
there was a tremendous
kerfuffle.

Two nurses from Prestatyn
were catapulted into a crevasse.

Started screaming uncontrollably
in a darkened wood.

I don't know if you've
been on holiday

when people scream
uncontrollably in a darkened
wood,

but it puts a real downer
on the whole thing.

And they were scooped up, put
on a snow mobile, taken back to
base.

And as they were going past,
they were going, "Go back. It's
terrifying."

You don't wanna hear that
on your holidays, right.

Anyway, so then this is
what happened, right.

My wife's parents,
they were a team.

Anne, uh, she's a tiny
petite birdlike woman.

She was the passenger and her
husband Peter was driving the
sledge.

A larger, uh,
quite a-a-a sort of a heavyset
man.

Quite a fit man in his early
days. A hill walker.
A mountaineer.

Now reaction time, not quite
what it was as a younger man,

and quite a big weight
differential between the two.

Quite important later on.

So...

Peter was on an uphill section,

and quite rightly
he was behind the sledge
walking,

and then for some reason
the dogs were spooked,

and they just took off,

and he didn't quite make it
onto the sledge.

So now he was running
behind the sledge and Anne
telling him,

"Peter, you have to jump on."

"I can't jump on.
I'm just going to run behind."

"No, Peter,
you have to jump on."

I can't jump on. I'm just gonna
run behind. I'll catch up.

For about a quarter of a mile
he ran behind the sledge

till eventually the cold
caught up with him.

He started to falter a bit
and his leg went down.

He was down on one knee and now
he was on two knees being pulled
along.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

And gradually he held on.

Clung onto the sledge until
he was being pulled along on his
chin.

Argh, argh, argh, argh, argh!

"Peter, don't let go."

"I can't hold on, Anne.
I think I'm gonna have to let
go."

"Darling!" "I'm gonna let go."

He let go. Zoom! Gone.

Vanished in the arctic night.

The end! No.

- And...

We were oblivious
to all of this.

We were at the front
of this caravan of doom.

I remember saying to my wife,
"Everyone's having a great
time."

Just as I said that Anne
came hurtling out of the
darkness.

No driver on the back.

Out of control.

Screaming.

I don't know if
you've got in-laws,

but it's unusual
to see them in that state.

It's...

It's unnerving, you know.

It's surreal, you know. You
don't quite know what to make of
it. Whoa.

It's so different to
how you normally see them, which
is quite sedate.

When you go round their house
and you go,

"Hello.
Do you want a cup of tea?"

"How was the trip?
"Oh, not too bad."

"What was the....
what was the journey like?"

And then you have
the route conversation.

"Well, we went on the A4792."

"Oh, the A4792. Well, normally
you go the B4793."

"Well, normally we go the B4793,
but this year we went the
A4792."

"What was it, the satnav?"
"The bloody satnav."

"Took us round the bloody..."

"Let's have a look at the map."

"So you went on the A4792..."

On and on. We have these
conversations for years of our
lives.

Nobody's listening anymore.
I've been making them up for
years.

"Which way did you come?"

"We tunneled out the house.

Let ourselves in through
the back door."

"We were fired out of a cannon.
We landed in next door's garden.

We've been passing ourselves off
as Belgian diplomats for six
years.

Madam and Monsieur Bertrand.
We've been living in the attic.

We come down
every night on a pole."

"The front pole or
the back pole?"

"Oh, the back pole.
We come in. We were beamed here.

We got a lift with camels.

W-W-We hitchhiked.

We got a lift here
with the Banana Splits.

Snorky done a load of crystal
meth. Smashed into a lamppost.

The point is...

Such a surreal sight it was
when I saw Anne

that my first reaction
was not the correct one.

It should have been. "Oh, my
God. Let me help you." But no,
it was this.

"Wow."

I've never seen her
make that noise.

Then a second later an even
worse thought entered my head
which was,

"That's actually quite funny."
Right.

And then the correct thought
which was, "Oh, my God. Let me
help you."

So I leapt onto the sledge
and brought it under control and
uh...

'Cause, I mean,
the machine was caning it.

She was absolutely barreling
along.

The dogs without the
counterweight of Peter.

There was no weight. The dogs
thought they'd been given the
night off.

They were hammering along.

It was like a Maserati
pulling a Pringle, right.

And I said,
"Anne, where's Peter?"

She looked at me
with a mix of emotions,

like one of them being,
"You brought us here."

And she spoke. I said,
"Where's Peter?"

And she spoke in this
high-pitched querulous Welsh
voice.

I said, "Where's Peter?"
She said, "I think he's died."

OK.

Terrible thoughts
were entering my head.

And they went, "Oh, my God.
I'm responsible for a man's
death."

No, the thought in my head was,
"I will never hear the end of
this."

Any documentary about the North
Pole? Huh? Remember? Huh?

A Fox's Glacier Mint.
Anything could be a trigger.

And then I heard his voice.

Oh, he's fine. Thank God.
He was just a bit shaken.

So we did a head count
to see if we're all here.

I looked around. We're all OK.

My dad's sledge
had sort of veered off the path,

and was now buried
in a snow drift.

He'd been there 20 minutes.
It was -22.

My dad, his circulation,
not what it was.

When I pulled him out I thought
he's a goner. I've killed
another one!

They're dropping like flies.

There was no movement
on his face.

It was just...

Just his tongue
coming in and out like this.

He was hunched down
like a little velociraptor, like
this.

I said, "Are you all right,
Dad?" He just went, "Ooh."

His whole face
pulsating blue and green

is the closest we got
to the poxy Northern Lights.

And...

We got...
we got home,

and we discovered
by some quirk of nature,

the Northern Lights
had been visible from Dagenham,
right.

I went for a drink with my
neighbor and he said, "How was
the trip?"

I said, "Not too bad,
all things considered."

I met this girl when I was 19.

I thought she was the one.

Then she said something a bit
weird and I thought, "Maybe
not".

Because love's strange like
that. It's fickle. It's
mysterious.

You meet someone,
you think you're getting on
great,

and they say something a bit
odd, a bit culturally
inappropriate,

and you think,
"This is not gonna work out."

Like, you're getting on great,
and then they'll say,

"Hey, I've got us some tickets
to see James Blunt in concert."

And at that point you can just
go, "This isn't working out" and
walk away.

Or sometimes you're talking
to someone long into the night,

and something monstrous
is revealed about them.

You'll say things like, "I like
running into the sea naked at
midnight."

"Yeah, I like doing that."

"Tell you what I don't like.
Taramasalata."

"No, I don't like that, either."

"I love staying up late at night
watching old movies.
I love doing that."

"Tell you what I don't like.
The Jews."

OK.

I've just gotta pop to the shops
for the rest of my life.

See...

When men and women get together
in a heterosexual context

that's dotting the sexual i's
and crossing the t's there,

women demand
more of men, you know.

They wanna know more.
They wanna know what's going on.

Uh, they wanna ask questions.

Umm, men we're a bit more
simplistic.

We've figured out our role in
life a long time ago,

which is basically carry stuff,
try not to get in the way and
then we die.

- But...

I mean...

There's a bit more to it than
that. That's the bare bones of
it.

Women want a bit more.

When they meet a man
they've invested time in him.

They wanna know more,
so they ask him this question,

"What are you thinking?
What are you thinking?"

It's very important. Women have
a greater emotional articulacy
than men.

They want to know what's
going on.

And when they see a man
gazing off into the middle
distance,

a wistful look on his face,

they mistake that for
intelligence.

And...

Deep philosophical thought. Wow,
he's grappling with the problems
of the age.

Nope.

When we're gazing off like that,
we've gone into a power-saving
mode.

"What are you thinking?"

"Hmm. Nothing.

Literally nothing.

A spinning wheel at best."

Women are quite persistent,
"What are you thinking?"

It will shake a bloke
out of his reverie.

And blokes are quite good at
cobbling together something
under pressure.

"What are you thinking?"

"Uh... just thinking...
how compatible we are."

"Aw, that's sweet."

"Phew! Got away with it."

I've been with my wife a long
time, many, many years,

and we have a great
relationship, we've moved on.

We don't ask ourselves
what we're thinking anymore.

We don't need to.
We're very honest with each
other.

In fact, if you're very honest
with someone,

you don't wanna know
what they're thinking all the
time.

It would lead
to some awkward exchanges.

We might be looking at a sunset.
She might say, "What are you
thinking?"

And I'd have to say, "I'm
thinking about a sandwich I had
in 1984."

We're sitting at the kitchen
table, ostensibly going through
the accounts,

and I'm nodding like I'm
listening.

"Yeah. Mm. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh."

But actually what I'm thinking
is, "If I had a long, thin,
bendy neck,

I could see what's under the
fridge."

We're doing the washing-up,
and I'm drying a plate,

and I'm stuck drying this plate.

Sometimes you stare at the
plate, and she'll say,
"What are you thinking?"

I'm thinking, "Could I wrestle
a Frisbee off a panther?"

That's what I'm
thinking right now.

Just give it here!

Or we're having a
romantic dinner.

She reaches across the table,
"What are you thinking?"

"Honestly, what I'm thinking?

I'm thinking if I lie down
next to the bathroom scales,

could I weigh my own head?"

You're laughing now.
You'll be trying that later on.

So anyway I met this girl,
right. I was 19.

What do you know?
Your head's full of sparkles.

And I bought a bag of cookies
from this new cookie store in
town,

and I turned up, and I said,
"Oh, hi. I've got these
cookies."

And she opened the door,
and I was momentarily
transfixed.

I thought, "Wow, she might be
the one. This might be it."

And she smiled and took a
cookie,

and I just... suddenly our lives
sort of unfolded before me.

I saw us running on a beach.

I saw children.
I saw a marriage.

I saw a golden wedding
anniversary where we run a
dolphin sanctuary

and we're punting off to the
sunset as the dolphins form an
honor guard.

All of this happened in an
instant, and she took a bite of
a cookie,

mmm, like that, and then a
little crumb broke off the
cookie,

and she licked it back in a
sensual way.

Off her lip, not off her
shoulder. I mean...

Like that.

She's not a lizard, right.

Ah, unlucky in love again.
Another lizard, Bill.

I love you. Bleurgh!

Anyway...

And then fatefully
she took the second bite,

and this is what ended the
relationship, stopped it in its
tracks.

This one word and it was a word

that was meant to be endearing,
but it was not.

It was a hateful word to me.

It was something evil.

It was like all of Dan Brown's
works boiled down into a single
hateful word.

And she took a bite, she looked
at me and she said, "Yumbles!
Yumbles!"

And outwardly I smiled,
but inwardly I was going, "No!"

"Not yumbles!"

The Caribbean dream
evaporated in a minute.

One minute I had a "ram"
daiquiri in my hand, a rum
daiquiri in my hand.

A "ram" daiquiri is a completely
different thing. It's a sheep!

- Yeah!

I had a rum daiquiri in my hand,
warm wind in my hair,

and then the next minute a
corpse had washed up on the
beach

and it had my face
and an eel slithered out of its
mouth.

Ugh!

The sky went black with ravens.

There was a rain of frogs and
a beautiful woman went by on a
jet ski,

except it wasn't a beautiful
woman, it was a goat in a
shopping trolley

eating a light bulb,

and through mouthfuls of broken
glass,

the goat was bleating,
"Yumbles, yumbles."

So I looked at her for a minute,
and I just said,

"I don't like the Jews," and ran
off.

Now...

I've written a musical
based on the Terminatorfilms.

In a dystopian future...

two people, an unlikely love
story,

between a machine and a person

is starting to unfold.

FEMALE VOICE: All through the
years I've come to rely on you,

but this has blossomed into the
fact that I have feelings for
you.

MALE VOICE:
I cannot process feelings.

FEMALE VOICE: I know.

MALE VOICE:
What is wrong with your eyes?

FEMALE VOICE: I'm crying.

MALE VOICE: Why do you cry?

FEMALE VOICE: When it hurts.

MALE VOICE: My sense is not
detecting any physical
impairment.

FEMALE VOICE:
Sometimes it hurts in the soul.

MALE VOICE: I do not understand.

MALE VOICE:
I have been out into the
wasteland.

I went to the bombed-out
supermarket.

I got you some food.

FEMALE VOICE: What did you get?

MALE VOICE: Tinned peaches.

I have not had them before.

FEMALE VOICE:
I have not seen them in a long
time.

Oh, my God. Tinned peaches.

MALE VOICE:
Let me open them for you.

Bzz bzz bzz. Zzz, vvvv.

I have an attachment.

Bzzz.

FEMALE VOICE: Yes, I can see.

Oh, wow. Tinned peaches.
I haven't tasted these in a long
time.

Mmm. Yumbles.

FEMALE VOICE: Don't go!

- Anyway...

I went to see Sir Paul
McCartney.

Now we all know Beatles songs.

We've grown up with them,
we sing them and listen to them,

but when you actually hear them
being sung by a living Beatle,

there's an emotional heft
that I was not expecting.

I thought this is extraordinary.

These songs, they're more than
songs. They're like memes.

They're like threads
in a cultural tapestry of
memory.

When I looked around thousands
of people were lost in reverie,

as they remembered the moment
when they heard these beautiful
songs.

And I thought if ever I get to
meet Paul McCartney I want to
try and tell him,

I want to try and say this,
try and describe this experience

because I bet no one's ever told
him how brilliant he is over the
years.

I sort of thought, "These songs,

they're enmeshed, you know,
in the cultural consciousness,"

and I thought, it was quite
arty, a bit pretentious this
speech,

but I thought it was well
meaning.

Anyway, suddenly the opportunity
arose to meet Paul McCartney.

Me and me mate Kev,
a huge Beatles fan,

we were invited backstage
to meet Paul McCartney.

So now I'm really excited.
A bit nervous.

I've gotta get this speech
right. It's gonna be so great.

So Paul McCartney, he comes out,
and he looks round the room,

and then he sees me
and very briefly our eyes meet,

and he looks at me,
and he smiles and he leans
forward,

and he goes, "Bernard,
Bernard, Bernard, Bernard."

- He didn't do it.
He didn't do that.

- He didn't do that.
He didn't do that.

He didn't do that.

He came over. He shook my hand.
"Hey, nice to meet you, fellas."

Then I thought, "This is it,
Bill. This is it. You're up.

You've got to get this right.
There'll only be one
opportunity."

So I started the speech.
It started well, "Sir Paul
McCartney..."

And then it went downhill really
rapidly 'cause I was so nervous.

I went, "Your songs, like, uh,
with a tapestry and everything,

like a thread with a culture
and a black bird.

See, l-l-like, like...
I, a tapestry, when a goat,

a kestrel sees a vole
and you whoo."

And it was just gibberish.

Kev's looking at me like,
"What the hell?"

And I went, "I don't know
what's going on."

And then it just became sounds.

La, la, la.

Hmm, blackbird, tapestry. Ugh...

And I thought, "I'm gonna have
to bail out of this," so I just
went,

"And this is my mate, Kev."

Paul McCartney turns to Kev and
says, "Hey, Kev." And Kev meets
his hero.

He goes a little bit to pieces.
He's like, "Oh!"

And his leg starts to go a
little bit.

And he starts to
do his low chuckle.

And Paul McCartney's
shaking his hand,

and now Paul McCartney's
shaking a little bit.

Paul McCartney turns back to me,

and for some reason now
I'm doing this.

Mang, mang, mang, mang, mang.

I have no idea why.

I think I was trying
to reset my vocal ability,

and I thought I was doing it in
my head, but no, I was doing it
out loud.

Mang, mang,
mang, mang, mang, mang.

Mang, mang, mang, mang.

I was like some
drug-addled Pingu.

Mang, mang, mang, mang.

This is where
we should have backed away.

"Bye-bye, Paul McCartney.
Bye-bye."

But, no, it got so much worse.
So much worse.

Because then I thought,
"I'm going in again.

If it kills me, I'm gonna have
another crack at this speech."

So I start again,
and I try and say,

"Your songs are enmeshed
in the cultural consciousness."

But the word "enmeshed" gets
stuck in the doorway of my
brain,

with another word, "entrenched".

So this weird hybrid word comes
out, and this is how I go,

"Paul, Paul, Paul,
your songs are enmenged.

Umm... with everyone."

And he looks at me
and goes, "Enmenged?"

And I forget where I am and who
he is and the context of this
conversation.

So I just look at him and say,
"What?"

And he looks at me and goes,
"What?"

And then I say, "Enmenged,"

and he looks at me,
and he goes, "Enmenged?"

And I look at him and go,
"What?"

We're just trapped
in this weird nexus of nonsense.

"What? Enmenged?"

"Enmenged? What?" "What?"

"Enmenged?"

This is not how I wanted this
to turn out at all.

It goes on for years and years.

We grow long beards. "Enmenged."

"Enmenged?" "What?"

Finally Kev saves the day.
He goes, "Great show."

"Oh, thank God!"

So they're getting on and Paul
McCartney tells a joke and Kev's
laughing,

and I think I should
now join in.

I should now laugh but I don't
trust what's coming out of my
mouth.

So I try a little test laugh
a little bit to the side.

But what actually comes out is
like no laugh any human has ever
laughed.

Like a zombie horse with
emphysema,

trying to get his head
in a tight jumper.

It gets so much worse,
it gets so much worse,

because what happens,
Paul McCartney then tells a
story

about going to see Tony Bennett
in concert and I think,

"I've been
to see Tony Bennett in concert.

This is my way back in."

So I launch recklessly
into this story.

It's Glastonbury. It's the mud
fest. The worst it's ever been.

There's a lake of liquid mud
in the dance tent.

The blokes with the nozzles
and the tractors they use

to suck the crap out the toilets

are brought into suck the mud
out of the dance tent.

Except something
goes terribly wrong,

and they end up pumping
a load of shit into the dance
tent.

I don't think it was an
accident.

I think it was more a case of,
"Here, dance in this, you
trust-fund tossers."

I'm just saying.

Anyway, on the main stage

was the incongruously dapper
figure of Tony Bennett.

Total mismatch with the audience
who are all mud monkeys.

Thousands of them just shuffling
about in the trenches of the
Somme.

And Tony Bennett's got
an immaculate Vegas showband.

Na ba ba na ba, zabadoo bow!

And all the mud monkeys are
going...

Tony Bennett appears
on the back of the stage,

and he's walking down the ramp,
which is covered in liquid mud,

and halfway down he slips.

Whoo.

And then he slips forward
like this,

and then he starts
careening around the stage,

as the band are going,
"Am bam a na ba do..."

And all the audience are going,
"No, Tony Bennett! Don't fall!"

Tony Bennett comes out and he
goes, "Hey, what a night,"

like he's in Vegas,
and not in a shitty field of mud

at half-past two in the
afternoon.

- And...

I try and tell this story to
Paul McCartney. It doesn't come
out right.

This is how it comes out, "Paul,
Paul, Paul! I've seen Tony
Bennett."

He went, "Whoa! Ha-ha-ha!"

The final indignity
was when we left.

He turned away and he turned
back to me and he went he goes,

as an afterthought,
he looked at me and he went,

"I'll be watching
you on the TV."

And I turned to him and I went,
"And I'll be watching you,"

and I poked him in the eye.

He just leaned forward
at the last minute.

Whoa!

My only hope is somewhere in the
world tonight he's telling that
story,

and he gets to that bit and he
goes,

"And then one of the Hairy
Bikers poked me in the eye."

You've been a lovely crowd,
Hammersmith!

Thanks very much.

One more? One more?

Well, it's that time of night

where I play an Irish reel
upon the mandola.

This is called
Nana's Got No Gammon.

Thank you, Hammersmith!