Original subtitles

APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to Modern Life Is Goodish,

my name is Dave Gorman

and on tonight's show, I want to get my teeth into

an issue that, when we were last making a series,

wasn't even a real concern for most people.

Artificial Intelligence.

Now, you might expect me to have a cynical view of AI,

but, do you know what?

I actually think it's a really powerful tool.

You can even get it to write scripts for you these days

and this day's audience won't hardly notice the wiser.

LAUGHTER

AI's critics seem to come at it from two directions.

On the one hand it's an existential threat

to everyone's livelihood and on the other,

it's so stupid it doesn't know how many fingers we're supposed

to have, although, I'll be honest,

I've never really noticed that myself.

In my experience... APPLAUSE

In my experience it just doesn't appear

to be that intelligent. I'll give you an example.

Recently, I was in some holiday accommodation

with a small selection of DVDs.

One of them, the Mel Gibson thriller Ransom.

I was tasked with finding out whether this would be

an appropriate film to watch given

the age range of family members present.

Long story short,

I found myself at this website that

I don't think is written by humans.

I think it must be using AI to scrape the internet

for other people's writing.

It definitely gets things wrong.

Here's the plot summary for this version of Ransom.

"A retired lieutenant colonel tries to raise £950

for two flights to East Africa".

I can tell you that Mel Gibson's character isn't

a retired lieutenant colonel, but more to the point,

it's not just wrong,

it's wrong in a way that any human being

would immediately know is wrong.

I think £950 is a clue, isn't it?

Here's a still from the film.

He is surrounded by what are clearly US dollars

and I'm going to go out on a limb here

and say that is more than £950 worth, isn't it?

I mean why would any ransom ever be £950, anyway?

The one thing hostage takers don't normally do with

the ransom is knock a bit off to make it sound like a bargain.

I have no idea where it found this sentence,

maybe we'll never know, but I do know that it is wrong.

What's worrying about AI, I suppose,

is that even though it's demonstrably awful,

businesses are still using it.

They would rather have a shit thing for free than pay

a person to do it properly.

It makes me realise that I think maybe London cabbies were

the canaries in the coal mine.

To have a licence to drive a London cab,

you have to do The Knowledge.

"There are thousands of streets

"and landmarks within a six mile radius of Charing Cross.

"Anyone who wants to drive

"an iconic London cab must memorise them all."

It normally takes people

three to four years to do it. What a feat of memory that is.

It came as no surprise when

a cabbie won Mastermind in 1980. Anyone remember the name?

Fred Housego.

Absolutely. I might as well have said,

"Who here is over 50?" LAUGHTER

Every one of them remembers the name

Fred Housego.

Incidentally, young people,

that isn't a sepia-tinted black and white photo

that is what life looked like in

Britain in glorious technicolour back in the day.

Imagine having a skill set built up

over three to four years and then being undercut

by any old sausage with a sat nav.

And maybe we should have taken

the taxi drivers' side on this, but we didn't,

most of us just went, "Ooh, cheaper taxis".

I appreciate, incidentally,

this is a very London-centric view of things.

If you live outside of London, the arrival of

the sat nav has almost certainly improved your taxi experience.

Something happened about six years ago that really showed me how

London-centric things can be.

What it is, is...

I moved out of London.

Leaving London is like leaving a cult.

Those who remain in the cult are unable

to acknowledge that life can meaningfully exist on

the outside.

In London, the East End was always my patch.

This is how closed minded some Londoners can be.

One of my London mates, Nev, a proper Cockney,

Nev, born and bred, born within the sound of Bowlegs,

his mum had rickets, lot of poverty in the old East End,

I told him we were moving.

He asked where to,

and I told him we are moving to Bournemouth.

And his first words were,

"What tube line is that on?"

LAUGHTER

I said it's not on a tube line, we're leaving London.

He said, what are you doing that for?

I said, "We want to be nearer to the grandparents."

He said, "Why don't you make the grandparents move to London?"

I knew after about six months that it had been

a good move for us. Do you know why?

Because in those first six months,

we had more nights out...

..in London... LAUGHTER

..than we'd had in the entire two years before it.

And when I say more, I mean two more

and when I say two more,

I mean two.

A few weeks after we'd moved

I mentioned it on Twitter as it was then,

and it was fascinating to see the reaction.

It's that sort of, "I know one thing about Bournemouth

"and I'm now going to do the joke that I think I'm supposed to do" reaction.

A lot of "Are you retiring?

"Retiring to the seaside. Are you just waiting for God?"

Et cetera, et cetera.

And I know where they're coming from.

I don't take offence.

I understand that's how British people relate

to one another. But at the same time,

it's not really an effective way of teasing someone going,

"Ha-ha-ha, you moved to a town full of old people,"

when the reason we moved there was to be near

to some old people. Of course,

some people served their banter

with what I would describe as a side salad of pompous.

"I'm sorry, but I'm with Oscar Wilde on this.

"When you're tired of London, you're tired of life.

"Hashtag. Just sayin."

Two things here. Number one,

I do not believe that Oscar Wilde would ever have used

the hashtag "Just sayin."

Number two that is not an Oscar Wilde quote,

that is a Samuel Johnson quote.

The full quote is as follows "You find no man,

"at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London.

"No, sir. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,

"for there is in London all that life can afford."

I'm not sure that taking one man's opinion from nearly 250 years ago

and presenting it as an immutable fact for all people for all time

is a great way of constructing an argument, is it?

I too can pluck some words

that somebody else once said hundreds of years ago.

And my argument is going to be,

"Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.

"Oh, I do like to be beside the sea.

"Oh, I do like to stroll along the prom prom prom,

"where the brass bands play..."

AUDIENCE:Tiddly om pom pom.

Exactly. I've got an argument people can join in with.

I think that means I win in the court of popular opinion.

This is an incredible way to respond.

"Why would anyone want to be surrounded by old people?

"Ugh, makes my skin crawl just thinking about it."

Well, good luck for your future, my friend.

"Look at what you're letting yourself in for".

Now this chap had attached some pictures to his tweet

and I need to expand them before we can appreciate

the rest of his words.

They were population trend graphs for the East London

and Bournemouth postcodes.

He's taken them from a website called PlumPlot.co.uk,

which is one of those weird URLs where you're never quite sure

where the break in the word is supposed to be, are you?

That could be plum plot

or it could be plump lot.

You just don't know, do you?

It's like that time that Tim Vine - king of the puns,

appeared on Lorraine one morning

and they gave him the hashtag Britain's Pun King.

I need to confess by the way, that's not real.

I Photoshopped that, I'm just being silly,

it was actually, I know it was King of the One Liner.

You obviously can't do that at quarter to nine in the morning,

there's too many people with a yoghurt on the go.

Anyway,

these are the particular graphs that my correspondent was tweeting about

and now that you know that I can show you

the rest of his words.

"Look at what you're letting yourself in for.

"East London's a Christmas tree.

"Bournemouth's an urn."

LAUGHTER

That is not how graphs work!

It's not about whether they paint

a pretty picture or not, is it?

It's about what the data tells you.

You can't compare these two graphs

because you're not comparing like with like.

They've both got the same vertical axis going up in ten yearly age brackets,

but they have different horizontal axes.

That East London graph goes out

to 200,000 women in that direction

and 200,000 men in that direction,

whereas the Bournemouth graph only extends to 50,000 people.

To make these charts comparable,

we have to make them both go out to 200,000.

And that changes the middle of the Bournemouth graph

to look like that.

Now Bournemouth is a lighthouse,

a beautiful, picturesque coastal scene.

Whereas East London is a hypodermic syringe.

But of course, it's not about the pictures,

is it? It's about what the data actually tells you.

Let's consider my place on these charts.

I was in my 40s when I moved and I am now in my 50s.

So, in east London, I was one of 78,677 men.

And had we stayed.

I would have become one of 58,558 men.

In other words, ladies and gentlemen,

in East London, I only had a 74% chance of survival.

In Bournemouth I became one of a group of 36,414 men

and I am now one of 42,791.

It's hardly surprising I made it into my 50s ladies and gentlemen,

because moving to Bournemouth gave me

a 118% chance of survival.

I'm not quite sure how this works,

but if we keep moving I'm pretty sure I can live forever.

I'll see you after the break.

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish.

Now earlier, I was showing you people's tweets about me moving

to Bournemouth - but I held one back

because I think it's a doozy.

I think one person in particular is going to find

the first line especially funny.

"You will be running back to London in no time." Yeah?

The one person who I know thinks it's hilarious?

Is him. LAUGHTER

"In London all the celebrities hang out together.

"You won't enjoy hanging out with all us normals.

"Where you gonna find celebrity friends in Bournemouth?"

There's so much to unpack here.

One, he thinks I'm a real celebrity.

Two, he thinks all the celebrities hang out together.

Three, if he's one of the normals I won't want to hang out with,

does that mean that he lives in Bournemouth?

And if he is a Bournemouth resident then he should know

the answer to his question, shouldn't he?

It's obvious where I'm going to find celebrity friends

to hang out with in Bournemouth, isn't it?

I'm going to find them at the Hotel Celebrity.

Why else would it be called

the Hotel Celebrity if it isn't where all

the celebs hang out? That's how it works, isn't it?

If you're in Plymouth and you want to meet a celebrity,

you'd go and get your nails done at Celebrities Nails,

yeah, that's how it works.

If you're in Liverpool and you want to meet a celebrity,

go and get your photos taken at Celebrity Images,

that's how it works. It's obvious, isn't it?

Actually, this is another quite good use of AI.

You can see that they've blurred the face of this woman.

I have used AI to unblur it and look,

it's Meryl Streep. LAUGHTER

The Hotel Celebrity claims

to be Europe's Premiere Celebrity Themed Hotel

and I suspect they're right

because every single room is themed around

a different celebrity,

and I knew that when I first looked at their website

and saw that mosaic and I thought, well,

presumably they've got 160 rooms

and they've represented everyone they've themed

a room around in this mosaic.

Then I did a deeper dive into the website

and I discovered, they claim to have 59 clean celebrity themed rooms.

Which does raise the tantalising prospect... LAUGHTER

..of there being 101 filthy celebrity themed rooms.

"Yes, Sir, the filthy Angelina Jolie room is surprisingly popular".

I don't think you get to choose your celebrity,

but I think based on this selection,

I personally would be going for Bowie.

That'd be exciting, wouldn't it? I love a bit of Bowie.

A man who reinvented himself so many times.

I think everyone has

a different version of David Bowie in their head.

Now, just create in your own mind's eye what you think is

the perfect hotel bedroom themed on your David Bowie.

I am not scared of how amazing your creations are,

because I know that I'm still going to show you

something that will blow your freaking mind.

Keep what you've created right up front.

Now, imagine putting the key in the door

and throwing it wide to reveal...

LAUGHTER ..the David Bowie Room at

the Hotel Celebrity!

Representing his much less well-remembered MDF phase.

You can't look at that and not think of David Bowie, can you?

It's like his music is already playing in your head.

# There's a starman waiting in the sky

# He'd like to come and meet us

# But he thinks he'd blow our minds... #

That is not a David Bowie themed room!

that is a bloody Travelodge! What are they doing?

Now, look, I should be fair here,

I have looked at every single photo on TripAdvisor

and I can tell you,

there is evidence of Bowie in this room.

There are two posters of him on that wall

and there are two posters of him on that wall.

That is not a David Bowie themed room!

That is a David Bowie fan themed room,

if the fan's parents have got very strict Blu-tac protocols.

There are other details in these rooms.

Imagine you've turned up late at night.

It's gone midnight, you've had a skinful - you're with your partner,

you don't care whose room you're in, you just want some kip.

You wake up at four in the morning needing a wee

because you're a man in your 50s

and that's how it bloody works these days.

You don't want to wake up your partner.

You're feeling your way in the dark.

Eventually you find the door.

You can't turn that light on until you've shut the door, can you?

Oh, I hope it's not a squeaker.

HE IMITATES DOOR CREAKING

Only now can you pull that little cord.

And when you do, you are greeted by...

You'd shit yourself, wouldn't you?! LAUGHTER

I'm sure many people will be

wondering what they're doing even having

a Michael Jackson room in the first place,

but given that they have,

I do wonder why the Michael Jackson room is

a twin when Jedward's a single. LAUGHTER

There isn't really a Jedward room. I made that one up,

and I am sorry, I am sorry,

I always tell you immediately if I'm telling you

a little fib, I'm just being silly.

That is actually the Ken Dodd room.

And it's not actually a single, that's just one corner of the room,

because that's also the Ken Dodd room,

that's also the Ken Dodd room, and so is that.

Now, here's my point.

If you are running a hotel themed on celebrities,

you owe it to yourself as a business decision

to remove your personal taste in celebrities from this experience.

This is a hotel.

Anyone on earth could come and stay there.

I think you need to be choosing celebrities who transcend

culture and time.

Certain people have become avatars for

the concept of celebrity. I think Charlie Chaplin,

Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe,

Elvis Presley are names that almost anyone on Earth would recognise.

Now, I'm a man in my 50s

and I'm British so of course I know who Ken Dodd is.

And as it happens, I bloomin' love Ken Dodd.

But I wouldn't expect half of you

to know who Ken Dodd is.

Imagine being Spanish.

Ken Dodd's work can't have reached the continent, can it?

Now, I live in Bournemouth, trust me,

lot of German and Spanish tourists in the summer.

Imagine a Spanish couple turning up at this hotel,

asking for a family room.

And you give them the Ken Dodd Room.

Those children are going to be utterly bamboozled.

And so are the parents.

Where's little Pedro going to sleep?

He's five. He's your youngest,

little Pedro is going to be in that bed there, isn't he?

Maybe you'll have a furtive game of cards around that table before

retiring to your own beds later on that night.

Little Pedro is going to wake up first, isn't he?

About 5:00 in the morning, if memory serves.

The first thing little Pedro sees

when he wakes up in that bed,

is going to be that, isn't it?

And I say to you ladies and gentlemen,

no child on Earth, but especially not one without

a single mental hat peg on which to hang

the notion of Ken Dodd's existence,

should ever wake up on any given morning

and have the first thing they see be that.

LAUGHTER

That is just not right!

I think we all need a moment

to think about what we've done here.

I'll see you after the break.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish,

now for anyone who's just tuning in,

earlier on we were talking about celebrity abuse.

By which I don't mean the abuse of celebrities,

I mean the abuse of the word celebrity.

Things that use the word celebrity when they have no real connection

to actual celebrities things like this and this and this.

High five, mate, yeah, absolutely. High six, fella, high six.

That landed, didn't it?

If you've ever watched a celebrity show on TV and had that thought,

"Celebrities? I've never bloomin' heard of them,

these aren't celebrities." Give me a little cheer.

AUDIENCE CHEER

Yeah, before we had influencers and YouTubers

and The Only Way Is Essex reality stars,

we used to have proper celebs, didn't we?

People who'd trod the boards and learned their craft the hard way,

You kind of, you... I know, I could feel you went for that, sir.

You're connecting with me emotionally on this, aren't you?

What's your name there, fella? Steven.

Steven, yeah.

You've watched those shows and gone ,"I've never heard of..."

you've watched that, haven't you? I have.

You have, haven't you? Do you know what mate,

Steven, you're wrong and you've made a complete fool of yourself there.

Not just you, everyone. We're all wrong,

me included.

That was a lazy joke based on flawed logic and I should

know better than to tell it to you, ladies and gentlemen.

You're not alone though, don't worry about it.

Any time any celebrity-based show appears on TV these days loads

of people make the complaint that they're not proper celebrities

because they've never heard of them.

And it's an attitude that is often

accompanied by posts like this featuring Bruce Forsyth

and Roy Castle. Now look, the video attached here is amazing.

They both play the xylophone, Roy plays the flute,

Brucie the piano, they tap dance,

they sing scat jazz - it is a tour-de-force from

a bygone age and I have nothing

but admiration for their talents.

But this, "There was a time when you had

"to be multi-talented to make it on TV"

is simply not true. That is a lie.

I think it is a lie that Boomers tell themselves

because they need to believe that they grew up in

a world that rewarded merit and talent

and that you come from an ephemeral world of frippery and nonsense

because if they can convince themselves that that's true,

they don't have to feel guilty about

the fact that they could afford to buy

a house whereas you have to wait for them to die.

LAUGHTER

There have always,

always been people who have become celebrities

for no reason other than

the British public just kind of liked them.

I'll give you an example.

LAUGHTER Fred Housego.

And I know, some of you are immediately thinking,

"Well he wasn't really that famous." But he was.

And I've already proved he was.

More than 40 years after he won Mastermind,

everyone in this room over

the age of 50 remembers his name.

Because he had a pretty big career in TV

and radio after it.

In 1981, he was voted TV Personality of the Year.

Woman Magazine was asking 'Has Fame Spoilt Fred Housego?'

LAUGHTER I'll give you another example

of someone who was famous back in the day

for no reason other than people

liked him. Anyone remember that name?

Ted Moult.

Ted Moult. Loads of you. There you go famous.

Ted Moult was a farmer who became

a TV and radio personality.

I think to my generation, he's probably best remembered

for the many adverts that he did, yeah?

He'd be the pitchman,

front and centre telling you about the product.

He was basically an influencer.

Ted Moult's TV career is so vast it is almost impossible

to fit his whole IMDB page on one screen.

But it starts in 1958 on What's My Line

and ends in 1986 with the Kenny Everett Television Show

and do you know what was the springboard to his fame?

Like Fred, it was a quiz show.

Only this was on the radio.

Ted Moult first came to the public's attention on

the BBC Radio general knowledge quiz,

Brain Of Britain. And some of you are thinking well,

winning a quiz is a demonstration of his talent.

But he didn't win it.

He got knocked out in the first round. LAUGHTER

I think that is that side of the argument dealt with,

now let's deal with this.

It feels like a reasonable stance, doesn't it?

If a celebrity is someone that you've heard of,

it stands to reason that someone you

haven't heard of is not a celebrity.

But this is a false equation, isn't it?

A celebrity isn't someone that you have heard of.

It's someone that people have heard of.

The mistake you made earlier, Steven,

is in believing that you are people. LAUGHTER

It used to be the same thing. As a kid you and I,

we'd pretty much heard of everyone that our mums

and dads had heard of and they'd heard of everyone that we'd heard of.

And do you know why? Because we didn't have any choice.

In the 1970s we only had three TV channels.

Do you know how many TV channels there are today?

Nobody knows. LAUGHTER

It's literally an unknowable fact.

I think it's hard for young people

to understand how little choice there was.

You had three channels and in most households,

only one TV. No video recorder, no laptop,

no iPad, no phone.

You had no other screen and so what was on,

was what you watched. And sometimes,

there was nothing on.

There were times in my childhood where I spent half

an hour watching that. LAUGHTER

I can explain it best with this diagram.

This serves two purposes. One, it is a subliminal ad

for the game, Twister.

But, two, it represents a family of four.

In the 1970s, with one screen in a house, the overlap

of their televisual knowledge looked something like this.

Nowadays, in our world of infinite choice,

every member of the family will watch their own

things on their own time on their own screens

and so it looks more like this.

So, when you complain that people aren't really celebrities

because you've never heard of them,

what you're really saying is that you think

the producers of Strictly ought to be booking those people.

LAUGHTER They're never

going to do Strictly. That's Tom Cruise,

that's Taylor Swift,

that's Paddington Bear. LAUGHTER

And those sorts of people were never on that sort of telly.

I loved Blankety Blank when I was a kid

but there isn't some golden age

of Blankety Blank where Terry Wogan's panel was made up

of De Niro, Windsor, Olivier, Stallone,

Heston and Onna. That never happened.

There was always a smattering of weathermen,

taxi drivers and farmers.

And when Fred or Ted or any of

the many others of their ilk appeared on the box,

nobody yelled, "He's not a celebrity,

"I've never even heard of him." Why?

Because everyone had heard of him. Why?

Because, for example, when Fred Housego won Mastermind,

there were 18 million viewers.

Why? Because there was nothing else on.

Case closed. APPLAUSE

I don't think there is any qualitative difference between,

say, Ted Moult being thrust into the limelight by

an appearance on a quiz show

and Joey Essex being on The Only Way Is Essex

and seizing his opportunity as well.

Good luck to Joey Essex. Whoever he is.

He is an interesting case actually.

The Only Way Is Essex has made him a bona fide star

with credits coming out of his wazoo and yet,

one of his most recent credits was for Love Island.

Not a Celebrity Love Island. Just Love Island.

That's a bit weird, isn't it? On Love Island,

the winning couple can make 50 grand between them and,

whatever you think of it as a show,

it is a bit weird pitching non-celebs against

a celeb when there's serious prize money at stake, isn't it?

Of course, it got a lot of headlines at the time.

A lot of people had a lot to say on the subject,

ladies and gentlemen.

Luckily for you... CHEERS

..I read the comments sections on articles like these

so that you don't have to.

And I've taken my favourite of the comments

and turned them into something that I like to call

a found poem... CHEER

..that I would like to perform for you now.

CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS

All so-called reality shows are essentially popularity contests.

So, putting a celebrity in is basically cheating.

It's no different to a lympic runner taking steroids.

Shame on you Joey Essex. Shame on you.

The show is called Love Island

because it is filmed on the island of Mallorca.

What the producers fail

to realise is that Britain is also an island.

LAUGHTER

Nobody in Britain thinks that being an island is special

because we are one. LAUGHTER

This is sick.

Joey Essex is old enough to be the father

to some of those girls.

He should not be on there ogling them in their swimming costumes.

What are the BBC thinking? LAUGHTER

Love Island is not on the BBC.

I didn't say that it was. LAUGHTER

I simply asked what are the BBC thinking?

And I stand by that.

FFS. Why is this news?

Who is this for?

It is certainly not for me

and I intend to say no more on the matter.

It's not as if there aren't more important things

to get worked up about.

For instance...

..when did it become 10p for a plastic bag?

I tuned in because I thought I liked Joey Essex.

But I was confusing him

with Stacey Solomon's husband. LAUGHTER

He is also called Joe. But, to my surprise,

he turns out to be someone else entirely.

I think the producers could have made more of an effort

to make this clear to people.

As I can't be the only one who fell for this trick.

Not cool, BBC, not cool.

Mate,

the youngest contestant on there is 21.

Joey Essex is 33.

33 minus 21 is roughly ten or something.

LAUGHTER

I don't think many people become dads at ten.

Good maths.

Can't wait to see your comment on one

of Dave Gorman's poems. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

May the 21st, 2021...

..is when it became 10p for a plastic bag.

I thank you. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

MUSIC STOPS The Billroth String Quartet!

Ladies and gentlemen, see you after the break.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Modern Life Is Goodish,

ladies and gentlemen,

where we have been discussing notions of celebrity.

It seems odd to me that people will complain about someone they've never

heard of doing Strictly when they must know by now that sometimes,

it's the least well-known people who

turn out to be the most popular.

To me, the most obvious proof that

the most famous person isn't always

the best person can be found,

like so many things in life,

by analysing Cash In The Attic. LAUGHTER

I don't mean the Channel 5 reboot,

I mean classic BBC Cash In the Attic,

all 586 episodes of it.

You can't make that many shows without using several presenters,

and on Attic, the roll call of presenters included some true titans

of British broadcasting. Rippon, Fogle,

Hunniford, Jones and Bond, Jennie Bond.

And yet, I would suggest that

the Queen of Cash In The Attic was always Lorne Spicer.

It's one particular word that she does especially well.

Here is a bit of a pre-title sequence for you from Lorne.

Nowadays, we're all inheriting

lots of stuff from our parents, but...

It's that last word, "but."

She makes it sound like

a duck quacking. "But?" Here it is in isolation.

But...Yes, good, isn't it?

I've got an even bigger one for you.

But...Ooooh, love it!

I like big buts and I cannot lie. LAUGHTER

A big but like that is really useful for a TV presenter.

It's used to lead the viewer onto the next idea,

and to distract you from

the fact that what they've just said was utter gibberish.

Look I'll show you again.

Nowadays, we're all inheriting

lots of stuff from our parents, but...

What does that even mean?

"Nowadays, we're all inheriting lots of stuff from our..." Are we?

LAUGHTER Is that a new thing?

Has that started happening nowadays?

In the past, was everyone buried in a pyramid

with all their worldly goods? LAUGHTER

It's nonsense and you don't notice it because of the.

But...Yeah.

Just whisks you around the corner and away.

And what is around that corner?

But when we become parents ourselves,

and the children have literally flown the nest...

Not literally. LAUGHTER

Figuratively, Lorne. Figuratively.

APPLAUSE

There's the nonsense

you know what won't be far behind, don't you?

They have a tendency to leave a lot of stuff behind.

Yeah, and look at it forming on her lips ready.

But in some cases, that can be beneficial.

Yeah, in some cases it can be beneficial.

As we'll find out with the items we're looking at,

later today, on Cash In The Attic.

And then off she goes into the title sequence.

And of course, we will emerge from the title sequence

to find out which part of Hertfordshire

we're visiting this week. LAUGHTER

TITLE MUSIC PLAYS

Well, I've come to St Albans in Hertfordshire to meet

a lovely lady who's called in the Cash In The Attic team

to help her get a day out at a top London musical.

And that little lyrical sentence there,

"To help her get a day out at a top London musical,"

that is the reason I bloody love Cash In The Attic.

That is the sentence that defines its place in

the hierarchy of the antiques shows.

You've got your Sunday teatime, Antiques Roadshow,

where someone is there with a grandfather clock,

and the expert says, "Oh. I think this is worth between

"£70,000 and £90,000."

And he doesn't say,

"What are you going to spend the money on?" LAUGHTER

Instead, he says, "Oh, you'll have to get your insurance

"adjusted for that now, won't you?" And we all assume we're watching

the kind of person who can take a £70,000 clock home,

put it back in the hallway,

and then carry on living their normal life. LAUGHTER

Other end of the spectrum, you've got daytime ITV,

where David Dickinson is helping a man sell

a signet ring so he can buy a bag of skag.

LAUGHTER Now, in the middle...

In the middle, you've got daytime BBC,

where they're gonna raise a significant sum of money.

On Cash in the Attic, it's normally between £1 and £3,000,

that's a significant sum, isn't it?

But no-one's going to give you a wodge of 50s at the end of that,

because money would appear vulgar on daytime BBC.

So instead, you have to declare at the start of

the show what you want to spend the money on,

and then we see it come to fruition at the end.

All of the old eps are still listed on the website.

They give them all a title and a description,

the title will be the punter's surname

and then the description normally tells you what they want to do with the money.

So the one we just saw Lorne introduce was this,

"Inglis. Fiona Inglis enlists Lorne Spicer

"and John Cameron to help raise money for a special trip."

I love these descriptions.

I love the ones that sound the dullest.

It's the fact that someone wrote them to go in

a TV listings mag in order to persuade you to watch,

and yet some of them sound like they were written by

Alan Bennett on an off day.

"Seymour. A couple try to raise enough money

to build a new garden fence." LAUGHTER

Sometimes I think they just sound a bit too exciting,

like this one. "Ransom.

"A retired lieutenant colonel... LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"..tries to raise £950 for two flights to East Africa."

That's where it came from!

That is where it came from. The one we were watching,

Inglis, is amazing.

There's always four characters in a Cash in the Attic.

You get your presenter and your expert

and then two punters.

Let's have a look at the two we're dealing

with on this particular episode, OK.

The lady in white, that is Fiona Inglis, it's her home

and her antiques we're going to be selling.

And then the slightly older lady in

the grey cardigan is here to help out.

Now, my first thought was that maybe this would turn out

to be Fiona's mother, don't worry.

Lorne is always going to get to the bottom of issues like this.

So how do you two know each other?

Yeah, how do you two know each other?

Well, Janice is my pet sitter. LAUGHTER

Pet sitter?

Has she become your friend while she's been doing that?

Because you seem rather keen on maintaining

the master-servant relationship here.

This is why I love this episode so much.

It's the British class system in a nutshell.

We're basically watching

Blackadder and Baldrick do Cash In The Attic. LAUGHTER

Of course, Lorne also needs

to find out what they're going to spend the money on.

I'd very much like to take Janice into London.

Yeah, you've never been to London before have you, Janice?

No, we only live 25 miles away but you've never been.

Little treat for Janice. That'd be nice,

wouldn't it? Nice, yeah, that'd be nice, yeah.

For the day and perhaps go and see a musical.

And look at how overwhelmed with gratitude Janice is.

She's never known the like, has she?

I'm being slightly disingenuous here.

She actually is exceedingly grateful.

Which you will see if

I run this clip on a little bit more. Here we go.

And I know she would love that, wouldn't you Janice?

That's nice, that's smashing, thank you.

You don't have to do that, though. Ah, no but you deserve it.

You really do. That's very kind, thank you.

Thank you, miss, you don't normally let me out the chimney,

miss, that's ever so kind of you. LAUGHTER

Thank you, I do appreciate it. Thank you ever so much.

That's ever so kind. I love this episode so much.

It's amazing. Now, I've always had

a sneaky suspicion that they don't just sell antiques that

they find in the home.

I think the production team might have a van parked down

the road with two or three interesting pieces in it.

Not expensive stuff, cheap stuff, just to guarantee they get a

sufficient antique-y content in the show.

I can't prove it, but I can show you

the sort of scene that has aroused my suspicion.

Is this of any interest at all? I found it downstairs.

It's not too bad. Where did it come from?

Now, the cheeky answer would be, "Downstairs.

"I just told you." But we all know what he really means is,

how did this come to be available for sale at the auction?

Now, on reflection you might think that

the pet-sitter is unlikely to know the answer.

How would a pet sitter happen to know

the provenance of any of the antiques found in

the home of the pets she sits?

But in this instance,

as luck would have it, Janice knows.

I think, well, Fiona and I got it at a

a car boot sale a few weeks back now.

I think if Janice had truly been at a car boot sale

with Fiona and witnessed that purchase she

would have sounded very confident in her answer.

I'll play it to you again

and you can decide if she sounds confident or if she sounds like

a producer has just asked her to, "Just pop upstairs

"and pretend you got this at a car boot sale, there's a love."

And she's still struggling to remember her lines.

Um, I think, well, Fiona and I got it at a

a car boot sale a few weeks back now.

It is only conjecture on my part, ladies and gentlemen,

and the important thing here is they did raise enough money

for their day out at the theatre.

Although, and I think the sharp-minded

of you will be ahead of me on this one.

There is going to be an issue here isn't there.

Given how these two women know each other,

if they both go to the theatre together,

that is going to raise certain logistical issues, isn't it?

With her auction money,

Fiona has brought her good friend Janice out for a day

to remember in London's West End.

I know some of you caught it, some of you didn't,

so here it is again in highlight form.

Out for a day to remember in London's West End.

Once more, zoomed in, and slo-mo.

LAUGHTER

She brought a dog and a cat!

To the theatre! LAUGHTER

What are you going to tell them, Fiona? "It's a guide dog?"

That won't wash, love, you're carrying it!

And what's Janice doing with a cat?

As a professional pet sitter,

she ought to know that cats are very independent animals.

You can leave them at home for hours,

they're absolutely fine, and, and I've tested this,

they don't like the theatre. LAUGHTER

What is she doing?

They can't possibly leave this unremarked on in the show.

Obviously, they have to talk about it.

This is Lula, this is my birthday present from my son

and I brought her with me today

because I couldn't leave her at home on her own.

Oh, I wonder why you couldn't leave her at home, Fiona.

Oh, yeah, because you've brought your pet sitter!

Is it just me or does that sound like she's having

a bit of a dig?

Your natural instinct is to look at the person talking.

I'll play it again and just keep your eyes on Janice,

I think there's a tiny flash of microaggression there.

Because I couldn't leave her at home on her own.

LAUGHTER

That's a face that says, "I know, and you haven't stopped bloody

"mentioning it all day long."

I love this episode so much.

And so, my son Duncan is going to look after her

in his dressing room for me while we go and watch the show.

LAUGHTER What...? What...?

What?

What do you mean? Duncan's in the...?

What? Oh, I'm sorry.

I know something that you lot don't know.

I'm so sorry. I probably should have put this clip in the show earlier.

I knew this, I should have shown you as well.

Well, my son's Duncan James and he is in a band called Blue.

LAUGHTER

Oh, yeah, he's in the pigging show all right!

Fiona's son Duncan James is in the hit show Legally Blonde.

He's not just in the show, he's on the poster!

He's the star of the bloody show!

And yet for the last 57 minutes of television,

you have asked me to emotionally invest in

the idea that this woman is selling her things in order

to afford a ticket to the theatre.

And only now do you reveal it is to go

and see her presumably-millionaire pop star son!

And you are seriously asking me

to imagine that he can't score his mother pigging tickets?

I am not sure how West End contracts work,

but I know I can get tickets for my mum. Can't I, mum?

LAUGHTER

Yes. Of course I can. APPLAUSE

You see?

And I'm sorry for swearing, Mum,

but this sort of nonsense drives me

to fucking distraction.

In a world where people get upset that

the people on TV aren't famous enough,

you'd think the producers would

want to mention that he's in the show,

in the show's description, wouldn't you?

Get a few more eyeballs on it. But no.

They forgot to mention that didn't they?

That is not a fair description of this show.

This show should be described like this.

"Inglis. Fiona Inglis,

"who is the mother of Duncan James from Blue,

"sells some stuff she may or

"may not have owned... LAUGHTER

"..at auction,

"and then takes her pet sitter...

"..and her pets to the theatre

"to watch Duncan because that's free." LAUGHTER

That would be a fair description of the show.

And do you know what?

As weird as that sounds,

I think more of us would have tuned in as well

because that sounds bloody delicious.

If there's any message in tonight's show,

it is this.

And I say this with my hand on my heart, ladies and gentlemen.

Can we please have a bit more honesty in TV?

LAUGHTER

Thanks for watching. Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media