This week's podcast is sponsored by Brave New World, which is a Sky original drama based on the book of the same name by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. It's an adaptation which asks topical questions, and it draws parallels to the current world we live in. Oh, sounds spicy. A central theme of Brave New World is happiness or freedom. How much of our individuality, freedom of choice and privacy are we willing to sacrifice in exchange for always being happy?

Which sounds frighteningly familiar to my actual life and my relationship with my smartphone. But there you go. I write all episodes of Brave New World are available on Sky. Now check it out. Welcome to the Blind Buy podcast.

We're going to begin this week's episode with a short poem. That has been submitted to us by French actor Juliette Binoche. This poem is called The Priest. The priest has broken free from the paddock, the steam of freedom careers from his leathery rhinoceros, his hooves stamp persad based on the cold October Lord, we feel the Todds in our chests. There is a mass to be said. But the priest has broken free from the paddock. And he's running towards the lake.

Thank you very much, Juliette Binoche, I loved you in the English Patient, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast. Maybe you could start with this episode I've got I've got a very special treat, this episode, a very special treat. If you don't want to go back to some earlier episodes, there's lots of episodes to listen to. Regular listeners, we've got a special treat, I'm speaking to Graham Norton this week, Graham is the biggest TV presenter.

In the UK and Ireland, without a doubt, he's also an author. And he's on this week to speak about his brand new book, which is called Home Stretch, and you can preorder it right now.

It's his third book. And fair play to Graham for coming onto this podcast because. Like I said, he's massive, he's absolutely huge, and so for Graham to come on here and give me a full chat is very humbling and very nice and very sound of him because he's in big demand and. You know, there would have been a lot of competition from loud radio shows and shit like that. This is a podcast that's run from a fuckin essentially a bedroom in Limerick where I still speak into a sock as a microphone, a fair play at the Graham.

Before I get into the interview, have I got anything to plug? Look, I haven't had Fokin gigs in a long time because of coronaviruses, you know? I won't have gigs for a very long time, but I got offered an online podcast festival, there's an online podcast festival called the Unmuted Podcast Festival, and they said to me, will you do an online podcast gig? So I said, fuck it. Yeah. What have I got to lose?

Why not? Let's do it. See what it's like. So on the 22nd of October. I'm doing an online live podcast where I speak to a guest and it's exclusive, so if you want to get a ticket for this, just go to the unmuted podcast festival, Dotcom, and look for the Blind Buy podcast, and you can buy a ticket to see a live online podcast. I know it's going to be crack. I've never done one before.

But why the fuck not so if you're interested in that. Get an take. Here's the interview with Graham Norton. Is I just wanted a chat. Listen, this is. The whole point of a fucking podcast and what makes it different from traditional media is it's not an interview, it is an interview. But it's you want to create the intimacy of a fucking kitchen. That's do you want it's an interview, but you leave space for the conversation to go where it needs to go.

And it's a nice, long interview. It's it's 90 minutes long. So if you're listening to it, you can get two days out of this podcast, if you like, pause it, listen to the rest later. And I'm very happy with how I recorded it. I'm after Machado's. With recording podcasts over long distance, so. Graham is actually in London, I'm in Limerick. But to be honest, it sounds like we're sitting in the same room because I got my shit together with how I record long distance podcasts.

It's it's it's better audio fidelity than the one I did with Samisen, which I was really happy with. And I recorded that over Zoome. But I used a new method this time and the. The chat with Graham is better audio fidelity, it's closer to the podcast Hogge and other feeling Sammy will be back on at some point of a feeling me and Sammy are going to have another chat again.

And when we do, I use this method to record it. But here you go. Here's the chat I had with Graham Norton and. A talented, funny. And generous person. So, Graham. What is the crack, first of all, how are you? I'm very well, how are you? I'm cold, I'm getting used to Sherlock minutes for six months into it now, so it does feel normal and I'm lucky. Thus I just I have the type of job where I can work from home.

So I'm just reminding myself each day to be thankful of that, you know, because some of my friends don't have that there. They have to work in shops and shit like that. So I don't allow myself to complain.

You know, I must say, talking to people who are put on furlough or freelancers and stuff like it's not just a financial thing, it's just they've got so much time and like, time is a bad thing. Too much time is is really. Yeah. It's it's that must be hard. So and also I think the other thing is because what we do was never knowing to if it was never routine. So we're used to being in our house a kind of weird times of the day and for a very long time.

Yeah.

So it really doesn't feel that different for me. I mean, I miss gigs, I miss gigs and I miss connecting with people at gigs. But other than that, I've spent my life writing, being on my own, spending huge amounts of time on my own at the expense of of kind of social things just to do my art. Yeah. And the one thing I want to start out and one thing that I really want to ask you and that I'm really curious about yourself.

Right. And it's kind of it's a parallel between myself and yourself. You write serious fiction. You write actual serious fiction, but you come from a background of being an entertainer and a win well-known face. I'm in a similar situation. I'm obviously not as well known, but I also write serious fiction. It's kind of being promoted off the back of my pre-existing image. But how do you find OK for me personally? I do find it difficult to get received critically as someone who it's like all of a sudden, oh, he's writing books now, the lad with the bag is writing books out.

You've written three books. Now you've written A Keeper, Homestretch and Holding. Yeah, right. Like. How did did you find resistance, first off, that did people go, what the fuck you mean he's writing a book of fiction and does that? And also, well, two things. One is what's good is that the bar is very low. Probably not with you. I think people thought you'd be able to write fiction. I think they knew you'd be able to write fiction and.

I find I find the disconnect between you, the comic and you, the writer, smaller than the disconnect between me as shiny faced fool on television and and a writer.

I think the disconnect is smaller. I didn't. When I read your book, I kind of thought, yeah, this is the book that man would write, it didn't I didn't think it was that that jarring that it was that it was you. The man in the plastic bag was right in that book. I thought I thought it made sense to me. I could I could hear your voice in that book.

I think it's hard. Look, I made a choice, didn't I? I made a choice years ago to go down a particular route. And so I can't really complain now that I'm not taken as seriously as a writer as I'd like to be. Because if I don't there if I wanted I wanted that respect, I'd have been a writer. That's what I'd have done all those years ago. You know, instead of scrabbling around comedy clubs and piecing a living together, doing that, I'd been doing bits of journalism and writing short stories and all of that.

And I, I didn't do that. The kind of the the showing off gene was stronger than the writing gene.

Well, that's one thing that when I found myself kind of defending your writing in just in social circles, if anyone said, what the fuck do you mean, he's writing a book, I get angry because the thing is, is that, like I you started off in doing Edinburgh shows, right?

So you started off essentially you're writing your comedy, being up on stage, responding to an audience, all of these things that's writing, that's creativity. So I was saying, well, why the fuck shouldn't he write a book? Didn't doesn't have a career in comedy behind him, doesn't have all these things that have prepped him to do it. Why is it so strange that all of a sudden what's the difference being a page and an act on stage, it's still taking something from your mind and creating something outside of yourself that people engage with?

You know? Well, especially when I started when I started up, then I was doing the comedy characters and stuff and I was doing these monologues and it was really written. You mean like if if I'd been heckled. I don't know what I'd have done, you know, because I was such a kind of I was such an actor trying to kind of get into comedy and and it took me and that was when, you know, it was difficult because I wasn't a standup.

And people don't really know what to do with you if you're not a standup, but you're not, you know, but yet you are a funny person. You are doing funny things and you're doing an hour in Edinburgh and people like it. But actually, there's no career there.

You like you might do Edinburgh, you might do the Brighton Festival, you might do Dublin Theatre Festival, but that is or Kilkenny, you've got you cut laughs or something.

And tell us about the when you started in Edinburgh with the Mother Teresa character. Are you saying that like you had strict monologues and you didn't deviate from that monologue like that? Was there room for improv because Edinburgh's not.

Yeah, well, you have to be Mother Teresa. She was able to talk to people and she would interact with the crowd and or stupid competitions and stuff like that. I think it was.

Tell us about the other. What were you doing? What other stuff? I did a show called. What was one called Charlie's Angels Go to Hell, and that was a proper monologue that was kind of about me in America and it was kind of, you know, all of that. And that's about Graham.

It was yes, it was about me. It was kind of it was autobiographical, but it was like a little one man play type thing. And then I did I did the Karen Carpenter Bar and Grill. And that was it was a different time.

It was a different time. What year are we talking here?

A long time ago. That would have been 19.

When would that have been like mid nineties, ninety five or ninety five, something like that, and and that again that was all that was all just monologues to the audience and that kind of story. But I mean, with Edinborough, you've got to put it in the title of your show in January or something. So you haven't written this, but you just of think I want to I want a show that stands out. So, you know, Mother Teresa of Calcutta that stands I was trying to say is go to hell.

Karen Carpenter, Bar and Grill. And so you wanted the names that kind of people would notice in the program. But then, of course, you've got to write it. You've got to write a show that it's got something to do with Karen calling for Charlie's Angels.

Yeah, that was going to be my question. Men like, you know, that's a tough one.

It is tough. When I did Graham Norton and his amazing hostess, Charlie, and I just I realized I had not I thought, surely I've got something funny to say. No, no. I just I kind of pretended that the show like I was I had a host trolley in the poster and yeah, I just pretended that it didn't exist. I just like.

How did you work? Karen Carpenter into the into the Karen Carpenter's Bar and Grill. How did you work a bar and grill into it.

And now I remember I remember the climax was a spaceship that looked like a freight benthos stake in the pie. Tin came down and she went away. She was taken away in in that. That's the only bit of the story I remember. Well, yeah, it did. I have it. It's in the house somewhere of it. But it had a car, it did have a structure. It did have a story.

How does it feel? Sometimes one of the things that freaks me out about Edinburgh is I think back to doing a show every single fucking night for 30 nights, sometimes two times a day. And I literally can't remember what I did. I can't remember what I did on stage for for for that long. Why? What the fuck are you the same like can you not. You're talking about entire monologues. Oh yeah. You remember them what they were about.

They're entirely gone. I mean those little images of little snippets of things that I remember but but that's all. And there's certain shows you remember for all you know, because what's nice about Edinburgh is it's such a small audience.

You know, certainly the venues I was playing, it was almost like a hundred people, tops. Mm hmm. And what's nice about that audience is that you can take them in lots of weird places, you know, like odd things can happen and and. Yeah. And you don't lose the audience.

There's kind of a trust. Yes. With that audience because they're so small and you're all in this room and it's kind of what Edinburgh is about. Yes. And I remember I, I used to do I used to do this stupid thing just to fill time. And it was a question. It was an interview with an audience member, became a guest. And this was before I had a chat show and but an audience member would become a guest.

And, you know, and it was just I got the names. I think I got the names from the tickets or something like the credit card receipts. I'm sure it was all data, but that's what those those the scammers do not not scammers, but not hypnotist's. The psychics, psychics. That's what they do with the names. They get the names from the tickets. Then they do a lot of research. And then all of a sudden the person is surprised that they know this information that's coming from a dead relative.

So you were doing the audio in that game without even knowing it, without even knowing it, if I'd call it the name, and they'd come down and I'd give them a choice between, oh, I could topical questions and personal questions. And then both envelopes ended up having the personal questions in it. So they have to answer these personal questions. So anyway, and it was fine, it was funny and ended up at this one afternoon I called out the name.

And it's a small room. This guy put up his hand and he was clearly really ill, he was sick, he was emaciated, graded, and I kind of thought he going to be able to get down here. But he did. He got onto the stage and he sat in the chair opposite me. And the last question on this questionnaire was an. It was. Oh, you can have sex with anyone you like, but you can have sex with anyone you like, but it's the last time you'll ever have sex.

Who would it be? Right. And normally, you know, it's a funny question because maybe they're partners in the audience and they're feeling pressure, I ought to say them, but really I'd like it to be, you know, Angelina Jolie or like George Clooney somewhere and with this guy. It suddenly suddenly became an incredibly dark, serious, profound question. Oh, my God. Because you kind of thought, well, you're not long for this world.

This of this is a sort of a true question. And and there was nothing funny. But but but I remember it because it was such a special moment. I loved the audience in that moment. I loved him as well. Was that compassion?

Was the was responsible. I was just everyone. I wanted to hear his answer. And his answer was it was a I think it was his first boyfriend who now lived in Australia that was who he wanted to be with. Did you get a sense that you would this person who was looking at their own mortality or who doesn't know how long they have left, that you would ask them a question that they themselves hadn't really considered? And it was a big existential moment.

I think it was what was nice was he wasn't glib about it. He, in his answer, was sincere, you know, because it's it's you know, it's a hypothetical, stupid pub drinking game question. But for him, it wasn't for him. It was like, actually, I'd love to see that guy again. I'd like to be with that man one more time and then, you know, whatever. And and that's the magic for me.

That was the magic of Edinburgh. And all those kind of crazy things would happen. And and everyone there's kind of a pact that you're all in this funny little hot, sweaty room. And and, yeah, those things can happen. Do you ever find yourself trying to chase that on television? How do you feel at television? Like do you miss that or do you feel that in in in a TV setting you can achieve that? Essentially, what we're talking about is intimacy.

It's a contract of intimacy with an audience.

And what a run, I think on telly, certainly on my show, on telly, that's really, really hard. I think on the radio you can achieve it where I think people feel.

What's the difference between the two there? Because, one, you can't see the audience. You can forget about the audience on the radio. Yeah. You know, it feels like two people in a room. And I remember I Mary Berry was on the the show on the radio show. And, you know, I just have a stupid chat on about cooking and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I say, oh, and you've chosen to record what have you chosen and why?

And Mary Berry looked at me and she chose Chosen Sailing by Rod Stewart. That was her choice. And I said, why did you choose this? And she went, I had a son. And suddenly your eyes were filled with tears and suddenly I was just. And it was the thing that her son had died, you know, decades earlier. And I think she thought she was fine. I think she thought, oh, I can say this.

I you know, I won't this won't move me. This won't upset me. But I think it was somehow saying it out loud in front of someone like me who I didn't know any of her family history. Yeah. Suddenly it hit her and it was all and that's the sort of moments, you know, you couldn't have on the TV show. And in fact, if you did, I think we've had one guest who cried on the television with Jon Voight.

He moved himself with some story and we cut it out. We couldn't live with it, you know, and it's not a safe space.

That's the thing. Like with you and Mary in a studio, that's a safe space. But in in a in a TV setting, often it's not a safe space for raw emotion.

No. And I think we're and also it's very hard to come back from us, you know, do you kind of go. Well, I was going to talk to Greg Davies about the tour, but that's called Mary. And for a while. And, you know, and at least on the radio, you know, we have this moment, but then we play a record and then that's all, you know, there's a kind of people, except there's a kind of a grammar that after the record, things will be different.

We won't still be crying.

And the power of music as well as the part, the power of music to create an emotional space.

So absolutely. Because, yes. And you know, and it was Roger dating and he loved boats. And that's why she and she you know, and I was so sweet that she thought this was going to be lovely. Oh, great. So I love that song because it reminds me of my song and and just it overwhelmed her. And what I'd like to know about as well is so some of the questions I'm asking that came from the Internet, ask people on Instagram to ask you what I think of you as a Twitter boy.

But are you are you big?

I just assure I have to do the whole shebang. I prefer Twitter, Twitters, better crack. I know Instagram is nice to know people aren't pricks on Instagram, but people are prexy Twitter.

Instagram is I don't know what it is, but I think because people know you're not going to read it. If they know you'll see it.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. And so one of the questions I got asked was, was to to ask you about your time in a commune in San Francisco when you were younger.

And what I would like to know is, is in the context of that, but also how do you go from being a young lad in West Cork to all of a sudden knowing that it's like, I want to be on a fucking stage, I want to be in Edinburgh and was what happened in San Francisco and influence in that?

It was some of those those hippies were amazing. They were so good for me. You know, I was 20. Was it the 80s? It would be in the 80s, 83, 84. Run then.

And what type of hippies like it's old hippies in the 80s. Were they old or hippies was happy.

Still, a thing that was happening in San Francisco was hippies is still a thing that's happening in San Francisco. There are either hippie retirement homes now. And so that, you know, they can talk, you know, that they speak to their own people that are not stuck in a retirement home sitting next to a Trump supporter. They're in a lovely, happy retirement, you know, and they're it'll all be eco and vegan. And you know it.

They've done it well. They've done it well. But back then, we were in this epic it was called Star Dance, the hippie commune.

And like, how how do you get like just for me, there's no Internet. There's not what how do you you just get on a plane. Did you decide you were going to join the hippies back in college or did you get to America all like all accidental?

I was going to see this. This is this makes me sound older. This is not a character from Jane Austen, but I hadn't had these pen pals and.

Oh, fuck. Oh, my God. To remember one them and I you know, I'm from everywhere. You signed up with an age.

I think you signed up with an agency. How do you get a pen pal. I like how the how does that there was an agency and you saw it, you wrote away, you sent it, you paid some money and you sent in your address and then you started getting letters all over the world, half of them you couldn't understand because they were in such bad English. But I. You try and write.

Did you advertisers have did you say my name is Graham. I listen to this music. I like these books. No, I was it was it was more random that I knew maybe it started school. You know, I think it might have been a school thing because I'm thinking now I wouldn't have paid money. So I think I had something to do with schools and it was some sort of pen pal thing like that.

Anyway, I ended up pen pal with this guy called David Philip Pando. It's not a great name. Fantastic David Filipino. And he was in L.A. So my big running away scheme was I was going to go and see David Miller Pando in L.A. So I get the J1 visa. I get to New York, New York, terrifying. I couldn't you know, I just had to get out of there.

But New York was scary in the eighties, too, wasn't it? And also I'd seen I'd seen a lot of. What was that? The Equilar I remember the equalizer with your man, Edward Woodward, and I do not know.

But what was the crack that that was just it was a lot of people being shot in dark streets in New York. And I'd seen too many episodes. So and also, like when we got to when we got there as kids and we stayed in like a YMCA or something in in New York, was this in like Manhattan?

In Manhattan. And Manhattan was very hardcore back then. That was that was it was.

But it was exciting too. I remember we came through the Midtown Tunnel and, you know, and we were all like, we were pathetic. All these little Irish kids pressed against the glass, like looking at the big cars and. Yeah, and then we came through the Midtown Tunnel out into those big glass canyons. And I remember the bus driver that came on the milkman. Welcome to the Big Apple. And we were like, yeah. And then they took us they took us to the YMCA.

And the next morning they gave us a talk.

And I don't know what the talk was called. I think it was, you know, whatever orienteering or something like that. But yeah, I said it could have been called how not to get killed in New York and they might get scared. The shit out of us. We were.

We were. And I still do these things.

So you never look up. Don't look up. You walk by the curb, not by the wall.

Oh, my God. And you if you have to look at a map, go into a shop, never look at a map on the street, don't advertise that you are a tourist or your wife.

And and weirdly, I still do all of that. It's it's kind of ingrained in me now.

You know, if I'm with someone in New York and they start looking up at the buildings, I think you could be killed in that.

So how do you go from there then to meet this David? Philip. Well, that I had a seven day Rambler tickets for the bus for Trailways bus, OK.

You went on a bus from New York all the way across the country you had with me.

And it was going to last me a month. I had 200 pounds, fifty pounds a week. And I thought that's more than I was living on in Cork. So I thought I'd be grand. My parents waved me off. They knew that I had two hundred pounds and I was going to America like it was madness. So off I go, get on the bus, Trailways. But of course, because I was kind of pretentious, if you guess, and I, I thought, I won't get a map, I won't be tied down, tied down like will be tied down by maps.

So I would just look for the leaflets in the bus stations that were going like that. We were like a straight line across rather than a straight line up and down. And I thought, well that's me heading west.

Anyway, that's not a very good way to go and find out what type of young fella.

Why are you Graham? Like, what music were you listening to? What visions did you have? Who did you want to be? Who did you think you are?

Who did I think I was I don't know. I mean, I wanted to be I, I think I wanted to be an actor. But then but then I thought I couldn't be an actor because I didn't know how you did that. I just didn't know how you did that. And so I think mostly I was looking for adventure, I suppose, or I mean, I wanted to get away. And this seemed like as far away as I could get.

And it was, you know, it was like and so much of it was like a movie like I remember I didn't have a Walkman or anything, but I remember being on the bus and we the guy beside me had a Walkman and bless him, he said, oh, do you want to listen to some music? And he gave me the headphones for a little bit. And I remember I put the headphones on and it was the, you know, the song Midnight Cowboy.

Everybody's talking, everybody. Oh, my God. And it was just suddenly you were in a film, you know, and I was going across the bridge across some big anonymous river in somewhere in the middle of America.

And you're really lucky with that man, because the thing is, you got to go to America at a time when you could genuinely experience culture shock like kids nowadays can't expect like. There's you can just look at all of America right now on the Internet, like we are aware that America is. I have a horrible place in parts we know about it all, but you got to go to America with this division that had just been sold to you by Hollywood and to experience it that way and also to discover that every bus station in America is in a shithole like, you know, bus station is it is a nice bit of town.

They're all the worst bit of town. So, like, you're literally stepping over people when you don't matter where you are alive, that it's just terrible.

And I'm like, but I was good was I had that kind of fearlessness of youth as well. So I probably wasn't as scared as I should have been.

Yeah, the naivete, the wonderful naivete. They can actually serve you well and.

Yeah, and it's great so long as you survive. You know, that's why I'd hate to be a parent, because you'd be so terrified every time your child left the house because you'd remember all the incredibly stupid things you did when you left the house. But anyway, the long and the short of it was the bus ticket. The seven day Rambler ticket is ran out in San Francisco. So I never get I never met David. I never. Oh, wow.

I know.

Did you write to him and say sorry for not making. You know what? I just I just got out. I was pregnant and then my mother, you know, you do these long distance calls because it was so expensive, you'd basically like you. You'd call home and go hello and then hang up. And just so they knew you were alive. But I remember my mother, Mr. written to me, remember she said on the phone that this guy, some guy called David Allahpundit was calling the house because, of course, he thought I was dead and I thought I was one of the bodies you were stepping over getting out of the bus station.

And so I did call David Pando and say, look, I'm in San Francisco and I'll try and get down to much, but to L.A.. But and it wasn't going to happen. And then I had a phone number for someone in Tampa to have one phone number for someone in San Francisco that someone had given me back in Ireland and I did you know this?

No, no. Never met them.

It's like here's an Irish person. Here's someone who's been recommended, a sound I'm just going to ring. She wasn't even I she wasn't even Irish. It was she was in some perfectly nice American woman living her life and suddenly got a phone call from me. And and, you know, she couldn't help me, but she knew someone. And she said, look, all these people, maybe they be able to help you and make a few phone calls on.

I got a room for the night in this hippy commune and I was just paying nightly to rent this room. And then I think they are they said, look, do you want to stay? And so I said, yes, I would.

And what were the conditions of staying like? It's like a commune. You don't have to pay rent, but you're expected to know you did it washing up or you did have to pay rent.

You did have to pay rent. It was OK compared to everyone else. It was really cheap rent. But you did pay. Yeah. And, you know, there were all those classic things. There was a chore wheel where, you know, you had to clean bits of the house and you had to cook a couple of nights a week. You can imagine how much they dreaded when the 20 year old from our cook. Yeah. Yeah. Because I didn't know how to make anything.

I went to the reunion.

I went back all my wine, how I felt like I was actually it's quite a long time ago now, I suppose about fifteen years ago, something like that. I went back and and some of them are still there. Some of them are still in house, but lots of them would come back for this party, this reunion. And this woman said, oh, I still make your soup. I said, what?

What was the fucking same?

Some sort of potato leek thing that I made. I had no recollection of making soup.

Were you did you were you put in this soup or did you have like did you did you know, like, I must have you must have told me how to make this soup.

But also even now I've described some type of type of ancient and mythological Irish, meaning that the soup that you just brought over, that you just a traditional recipe and it's just like me.

Yeah, just this comes from West Cork on the west of Ireland, handed down from Cuchulain.

Oh, in San Francisco.

I'm like, I don't. Even now though, I find it very hard to make to make small amounts of food. I over cater all the time because I when I learned to cook it was in vast pots of food.

Yeah.

And and that's where I met. That was the first time I met tofu. Wow. Yeah.

There's not a lot of tofu and fucking Iolanda. No there's no really wasn't. And, and also it was disgusting. I mean tofu now is nice and I food flavors in it. Yeah. It's quite firm. But back then it was just gelatinous glop and bit have that and mostly vegetarian food. And then you sat on these cushions around these big and electricity schools, you know, those big wooden table school things. There were two of them together and they formed the infinity table.

So there was no head of the table or any of that. You just all around and there was quite a few house meetings involved. And, you know, there was on a Sunday night, you could go to this barefoot buggy where people, you know, all left their shoes in a pile and you danced barefoot in, like some community hall somewhere.

It's with these people the same age when they all get older. They were in. Were you the only young person? There was a kid. There was a kid called Mehndi. And and what was fascinating about her was so so all the hippies, blah, blah, and then me sort of pretending to be a hippie. And then there was Mindy and Mindy had no interest in being a hippie. She was going to a school. And so her room was like this weird window into mainstream commercial America.

You opened her room and it was just full of Barbies and rainbows and, you know, pink dolls, houses. And, yeah, you could tell kind of the mother was sort of embarrassed that she was like a cuckoo in the nest, sort of capitalist cuckoo in the room.

But now she's she's not that she has. I think she's followed her mother and she's grown into a kind of into the irony of that.

So weird. The children that all children rebel. That's that. Yeah. But then they then they return to the values they're brought up with at the earliest life.

Yeah. I guess. Well also decent values. It wasn't like, you know. Yeah you would but I remember that that would you know what meant for everyone making soap for each other and.

Having this sharing communal lifestyle is a lot healthier than the ultra capitalism of Barbie. Yes, it's a lot healthier, but she but at the same time, she needed it. You know, I suppose. Yeah. And even and you think in somewhere in San Francisco, like at school, she'd have found her tribe, you know, the other hippie children. But I suppose it was kind of, you know, the mid 80s. So I guess it wasn't a great time for hippies there.

They were on the wane. So I guess she she wanted to you know, she wanted the pink bubbles in her hair and all of that. But the mother did that experience.

What did it do for your for your what did it do for your confidence? And I guess what I'm trying to get at here is like the point in your life where and I had it myself for you. Go fuck it. I could go on to a stage, you know, at that point where you go, you know what I think I could chans going up onto that stage. And it's it's a strange transition to make.

But did you have a did you did you have a person or did you have a moment? What was it for you? And you know what it was, it was so the other someone I used to be in, think of the you're familiar with that.

But like I was in school, I was 16 and. Opened like I did have a lot of support at home with my creativity, but the thing is at home. It was it was either music or painting, it was quite a narrow definition of art and comedy didn't fall into that comedy and perform and didn't come into that. So when I was in school. What I was doing when I was kind of medicine in class are doing funny voices and making people in the class laugh, OK, I thought that was me misbehaving and I was being informed by the teachers that that was me misbehaving.

Now, as an adult, I look back and I got no, no, no. I was training my set for the stage when I was in class making people laugh. That's me responding to an audience. Everything I learned that I was doing on the stage in Edinburgh and all this stuff that came from the classroom and Mr Krom, the other rubberband, did he come from a family where things like musicals and performing were valued in his family? And he was the first person to say to me, no, you're creative.

What you're doing is you're not messing, you're not creating trouble. What you're doing is actually creativity. And that's what made me realize, oh, fuck, when I make everybody laugh, I know it's disrupting the class, but I'm exhibiting a talent of some description that it's learning and that helped me learn how to value it, too, because it comes easily to you.

You think you think it doesn't matter where you think you are. And it's only as you get older you realize, oh, actually the other kids in the class couldn't do it the way I could. You know, the kids weren't like, this is a this is a this is a commodity, this talent. Yeah. Because, you know, because it's just what you did. It was just your way of your coping mechanism, whatever. You kind of don't think it's of any value.

And you see I see that with actors and stuff where I don't read through. They're hilarious in the first read. They're so funny and good. And aren't they lucky that they can just do this, you know, falling on their head? They can just and of course, they then torture themselves trying to do something else or trying, you know, because they won't accept that. The thing they did first was actually that's the best. That's that is, you know, you have a you have an incredible talent.

So just relax. You're great. But there is that kind of weird thing where people don't accept it, they don't value it. They've got to torture themselves.

Did you try any performance in San Francisco? I did. I think I auditioned for a couple of things, didn't get anything. But I but the big thing that I got out of the the hippie commune was and it sounds so. And is it because say it sounds a hippy dippy. It should. It came from a hippie commune, but it was that, you know, they were saying to me, you know, what did I want to do?

And I was saying, oh, I'd like to be an actor. And and and and I suppose I always thought, well, I don't know how to do that or will. That's not something that I would do or sure, if I tried to do that, I probably fail. And they in that kind of amazing kind of American way, we're just like, well, if you want to be an actor, that's what you should do. You should follow that dream.

And and I kind of thought, well, that's true, because all the because I realized if I go to London and try to get into drama school and don't get in, then I think then I can think again. But unless I do that, I'll never know if I could be an actor or not. And I remember to the the the mother of the little Capitalis Kouakou she was in, she'd come back to school to study, to be a nurse.

And she was I think she was forty years old. And I remember just thinking how tragic that anyone at 40 would try and start to do something like why why would you bother at 40 years old starting a new career? And I must have hopefully I didn't say that bluntly, but I must have voiced that opinion to her in some way, because I always remember her saying to me, well, look, if I if I do this, you know, till I'm 60, I'll have been doing it for 20 years in brackets as long as you've been alive, you little dear.

And and that was and that was a really good thing at twenty to hear you kind of think, oh, actually, God, you know, because you're all you you're in such a rush when you're young. And it was great to kind of go, God, actually, there's more time.

There's a bit more time than I thought there was like there I could, you know, fuck around till I was forty and then start a career because, you know, you're still going to be I'd still be doing a job for twenty years, which is longer than I could imagine doing anything for. So it gave me kind of permission to go down some dead ends and cul de sacs and things. And rather than kind of being on the fast track and, you know, knowing exactly what I wanted to do and, you know, having life goals and things, I had to reach you kind of thing.

Actually, the meandering approach is probably more fun, more interesting and. And ultimately, more rewarding because searching for failure, that's brilliant phrase, looking for where are my opportunities to fail here? And then recontextualize because people it's a thing that I try and incorporate that failure is is this thing that's seen as a negative. But if you're creative, if you're working in any creative field, you have to search for and embrace failure because it's the only way you progress and learn.

So failure isn't a bad thing in the creative industry. It's just a way to to develop is it's got to be about risk.

There's got to be some risk and some challenge otherwise will not. Well, the main thing that you'll just get very bored if you live a life with no risk or challenge in is not just dull life. We're going to take a tiny little break from the interview there now to let you know that this podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the patrie on page Patreon dot com forward slash the blind by podcast. It's a 100 percent independent podcast.

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I was probably going to be doing TV this year to not make and TV. TV is also getting hammered by coronavirus. My book, my book of short stories come out. The paperback got released right in the middle of lockdown in March, so there's a big pile of fuckin unsold books. So this podcast is my sole source of income. So if you're listening to it, you're enjoying it. Each week, you're taking something from it. Just please consider giving me the price of a pint or the price of a cup of coffee once a month.

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Tiny little break right now for a digitally inserted advert. A guest who hosts this podcast, they insert adverts into this podcast. So what I do. So you don't get a nasty surprise. I give you a little warning by playing a musical instrument. This week we're going to play a choir, which is. It's a I think it's a south South American or Latin American percussion instrument with a very interesting sound on it. So this is the gropers.

So when you hear the Guéra, don't be surprised if you get an advert for some bullshit. Beautiful instrument.

You know that instrument from my twitch stream? I'm on Twitch Twitch, that TV Fiberglas, The Blind by podcast three times a week, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at around eight thirty pm. Each time I come on a chat, I play video games. I'm writing a nonstop live music. Go to video games. It's called crack. You can come on, you can chat with me. Come along tonight. Back now to part two of the chat with Graham Norton, where we get into a bit of celebrity gossip.

Graham gives me a bit of celebrity gossip. Yum-Yum. So did you head back from San Francisco then and train in London with a bit of accent? Yeah, so I came back to I came back because I realized, you know, I couldn't live in America and because. What was that? Just because of Visa, the visa stuff. So I had to come back.

So you did, what, like a year and a half in in some first class and not just over a year, I think.

And then I actually one tiny thing before we move on. And when you were speaking there about, you know, being told by the people in San Francisco about the hippies, about, you know, you can if you want to be an actor, you pursue it. Did that give you any type of. How did that contrast to the support you would have received at home, like were your parents supportive of if you said you wanted to be an actor?

How does that fly in West Cork like it couldn't fly, you know? Well, certainly not in my family. You know, I think the idea was, if that's great, you like acting. And then they were supportive of my interest in it. Like my father used to drive me up to Cork to go to rehearsals for the everyman. And, you know, yeah, they supported me as much as they knew how, you know. And your dad was like, again, it was me.

So, like, they they gave me all the support that they understood how to give. But if I said I want to be a professional actor like they would, you know, the three of us would just look at each other blankly because that wasn't the thing, you know? And I don't understand why I was so kind of paralyzed by it, because there were actors, you know what I mean? Like, there was the AP and there was the gate and there was RTG.

Clearly, there were Irish actors, but the only Irish actor I knew. Kind of who knew someone I knew was feeling the shawl, you know for sure. Yeah, and she was from Cork.

She'd been to Yuxi and she'd gone to London and she went to Rada.

So I kind of thought, oh, that is so that's she's left breadcrumbs for me. I will follow that. And so that was the only thing I knew how to do. You went to London, you went to drama school, and then you got an actor. So that was the route. So I did it. I went to London and I applied to drama school and I got into Central. So, you know, following the hippy thing of, you know, follow your dream as far as you can, I you know, until you reach failure.

And so I was being I was finding success. You know, I got in and then I got an agent and then I got a couple of jobs. And that's when the dream, the dream sort of sort of quietly steered into a layby and it just stopped. I just didn't get any jobs, really. I had kind of a little flurry of activity early on. And then that was the end of it. And that's how I kind of ended up writing my own stuff.

And, you know, how happy am I that I didn't end up being an actor? I'm delighted. I'm not an actor. When did you start to feel like my first encounter with you was obviously unfortunate, but like when did you start becoming really comfortable with presenting with presenting a TV show? And because I remember your your first one, the very first I was it. It was on channel called Knowledge. Knowledge was on a that was ICTV, that was what it was when ITV decided, right, we're going to we're going to own nighttime and that's why I thought it was Channel four.

It was obviously ITV trying to compete with China. They do these late night shows. So Davina hosted one. What was hers was called God's Gift, and that was a dating show for men. I didn't mean come on stage and then all the women, I think the women all crowd around a man and that's how he want to start. I can't remember. But she had a really out there thing. And then we did Carnal Knowledge, which was produced by Rápido, who also made Eurotrash and things like that.

And ours was like a filthy Mr. and Mrs. Game show. Yeah. And of course, we were, you know, back then people didn't understand. So we signed a contract to do. I think there are 12 shows. And, you know, because we all came from our traditional world, our agents were like, OK, and then if it goes well, there'll be more shows that more shows. No, they will just show those 12 shows for like three years.

They just showed those 12 shows over and over and over again.

But surely there was a benefit in that, because at least it means if you're doing some type of live shit, it's effectively an advert.

I suppose it was just frustrating that you kind of think like, you know, we you know, we didn't get paid to reflect the fact that it was being, like flogged to death on the telly. Yeah.

The problem with that is someone then takes your image and they then decide how oversaturated you become. Well, there's that.

And also the people think that's still who you are. You know, three years later, I'm still there in an orange mohair jumper. This is bad, but that's where I will. I knew Maria McFarland before that, but she was kind of the main host and I was her sidekick and always grim, like the the Buerge fights in the car park afterwards. And you'd be getting them to drink bottles of Becks at 9:00 in the morning to relax. Oh, my God.

It was really it was hard core.

Everyone wants to know, like, who was the biggest who's who's been the biggest asshole ever on your show? Is that something you're OK?

And you know, the thing I like about assholes on the show is I'm always quite forgiving if they're an asshole. Yeah, because I can't it's nobody's job, you know, nobody left school. And I'm going to be a chacho guest. You know, people are something else. They're actors and musicians, models, writers, whatever the hell they are. Yeah. So if they're awful on the show, I kind of think, well, OK, well, we'll never have you back.

But I don't hate you because you were awful on the show. And weirdly, it's I'm kind of spared the asshole, Larry. Mostly it's really the next day when I'm talking to people in the office that I discover the asshole Larry, that went on, I am fucking class.

It's never always the case, man. It's the same with me. You meet someone and you think they're sound, but then you ask the assistants and then it's like, no, this person's a prick. They were nice to you, but they were Prechter, the people who were underneath.

And also you often tell if they if they are surrounded by pricks, if they've got like a really horrible publicist, really horrible manager, you kind of think that's odd. Yeah. And then you figure it out. Yeah, it's a pile of bricks and they're just another one that I mean, I suppose for the the people backstage, they have a hard time. Like there was one person I won't say it was, and they already had nine dressing rooms.

And this sounds made up. This sounds like how could that be true? How could one person need nine nurses? They had nine dressing them. And and, you know, we did notice it wasn't like that. That doesn't happen every week. So we were kind of going crazy. They've got nine dressing rooms and then somebody came running into the production office, someone from that person's team. We have a nine one one situation and we're not really what is it, but we need another dressing room.

And so, Catherine, the line producer, she's very calm and she gets on the phone to get another dressing room. We'll get you another dressing room. And why are we waiting on the phone? She's going out of interest. Why do you need to know the dressing room and when they want to charge their mobile phone? And yeah, and that's why they need another hexagram and and we were talking about it afterwards, kind of like, how does that happen?

How do you get yeah, that's my my immediate question is and I'm like, I don't need to know who the person is, but I'm going, what level of fame are they at and how the fuck does that happen to us?

I think it goes back to the kind of Mariah Carey basket of puppies thing, you know, where she's backstage. You know, the story about Mariah Carey, that PAFA Ryder was a basket of puppies. She would play with another band. And I think where that comes from, that comes from people making work for themselves, people making themselves indispensable. So like so Mariah Carey is sat in a room and you go in and you go, how are you, Mariah?

And she goes, I'm fine. Do you need anything? No. Would you not prefer this room if it was if case wise? It's a really horrible color, would you not before this room was white, I suppose it would be it would look nicer white. Suddenly Mariah Carey is demanding her. Her dressing room is white. And would you like some scented candles? I'd say and you could be nicer. Would send the candle Mariah Carey demands and candles and then suddenly you get one where somebody goes, wouldn't you like some puppies?

Wouldn't it be lovely to be rolling on the floor?

All of a sudden there's a new job is created kind of puppy, right? Yeah. There you go. Yeah.

So you think it's a culture of essentially grave thing, a person who has a lot of money to create work? I think so.

So like so that person was going to charge a mobile phone and somebody kind of might beep and you want to have a nap so it might make some noise. Would it not be better if we if we charge that in a separate room? And because that's the only explanation. Yeah, it's something.

In my career, like like obviously I'm nowhere near that fucking level of fame, but still I go I go on stage and I do festivals and you have people who who are responsible for your rider and stuff. And it's something I've always battled with over the years, especially when working on TV. The one thing I learned is so when it comes to doing a gig and you do when I want I want a writer, I literally just want what I need.

And what I need is some food, some beers, some water. That's it. But from an early stage, I was encouraged to be like, no, no, no, you can't do that. And I'm like, wait, what? Here's the thing. What a writer you need to put on the really weird thing.

So my really weird thing on my writer is I need a hand drawn image of Elvis Costello, and every venue has to give me a hand drawn image of Elvis Costello.

What's that about? And what so what I was told from the early stages of my performance is.

The writer that I get my needs, my food, my water, that's not really that's not really that important. But what is fucking important is the sound, the lights, all these things out there on stage. So what you do is you create a writer that has some curveballs in there. And by doing that, when I when I go to a dressing room and I don't see Elvis Costello, then I go, well, OK, Elvis Costello isn't here.

Why have they fucked up our stage? And then you go up to our stage and you see are shit, they don't have monitors there. For me, this is the wrong microphone. Now we have a real problem about how the show gets affected. So there is a culture of weird shit in your rider because it lets you know the quality of the entire venue. If they don't read your personal rider, they're certainly not reading the really important technical writer.

So once I heard that, I was like, OK, I'm OK now to have a little bit of weird shit. I don't feel like I'm abuse and people are wasting their time. But one thing I would say, Graham, is and it's a huge thing with me and my plastic bag and my anonymity like. Mental health is hugely important to me and maintain a healthy sense of self-esteem and a healthy sense of identity, and when I first started working on RTA and all of a sudden there's people who are employed as runners.

So their job is to come up to me and say, would you like a chair? Would you like a cup of coffee? Now, I don't want someone doing this for me because I'm like, why the fuck should someone get me? I'm a grown man. I don't think I can get my own coffee. But then it's like, please, it's my job. I have to get you coffee. But then it's like. Charlie brokered that a piece on this, too, it's you let someone get you a chair, you let someone get you coffee, and then two weeks later you're going, where the fuck is my coffee?

And then I have to mine myself around that because I'm going, am I now becoming a prick? You know what I mean? And it's one of the things that my bag protects me because. I know what it's like if I'm in Ireland and I can walk into a room with my bag on and everyone knows who the fuck I am, everyone knows there's Boambee, but I can walk back into that same room with no bag on. Nobody knows who I am.

And the experience of those two things is very different. And what I find is when I'm blind by. I don't have to win anyone's approval. Everyone looks at me with this sense of their jaws are open because they're looking at the guy they've seen on TV or seen on YouTube. But when I got back into the same room and even speak to the same people, now I have to I'm a nobody. I have to earn that person's trust through demonstrating that I'm a trustworthy, nice person.

And that helps my mental health because I'm engaging with empathy. Yeah. Like, how do you find that? Would fame like your fucking Graham?

No, I think that like, it's weird you say that thing I remember and there's nothing we can do about this. But I remember when I first got a show on Channel four and I remember going to a production meeting. And I walked in here all sat around the table and I just noticed when I spoke, everyone shut up and everyone looked at me like what I was saying was important. And and I'm aware that that probably still happens, but I no longer notice it.

There you go, and but I am so you can't continually notice that or you'd go crazy, you know, Ibolya, because it just becomes the way meetings are. Yeah.

So I said, well, you know, one thing I can say to examine your defense, and it's one of the reasons I was really, really happy to have you on this podcast. I don't know if you remember. Right, but about five years ago, there was a party for Troy.

I remember because we shared the same agents and I was just there with no on. And I got talking to you and me and you ended up talking about it was about your wine. Then we ended up chatting about whatever and about an hour into me. And you haven't crack Ugo's. Who are you, by the way?

And I assume the whole time you knew I was blind boy, and I was like, isn't that lovely? Graham just met this random Irish fella at the party and connected with me the whole night just because I was crack and then found out I was blind by. And I just found that really a good reflection on your character, John. I mean.

Well, I say and I don't know whether this was intentional, but it's certainly true that I don't know celebrities. People assume that I'm just going to hang out with famous people. And and I don't. And I think I think partly that's to do with that. I'm the host. So, OK, like, literally I will will have a bunch of people on the show, cultural people, and will have a great time. So I went really well.

And the next day online, I'll see a picture of everyone on the couch leaving a restaurant. They've all had dinner after the job. I'd like. But you're not present, you know, and and I don't care. But I just think it's interesting that. Because you're sat on that chair over there, you're like some sort of comedy butler, you know, you've got you've got like your silver tray with questions on it. And but the others, they feel like peers on that on that couch.

And so it's a I mean, I've talked about this before. There's an odd thing about hosting a chat show where on one level it's very high stakes because your name is above the door and you walk out and I was going, yay, yay, Graham. And that's, you know, the big I am. But the minute you have the guests out. It doesn't matter how, you know, crappy or terrible they are, you've got to be low status.

You've got to be you know, you've they've got to be higher than you. And I think a lot of people who think they're going to enjoy hosting a chat show, that's where it all falls apart. When they suddenly realize because you have to have humility, you realize it's not about you, the show.

Yeah. And it's kind of what you set the tone, I suppose. But but it it is literally not about you. It's got to be about those other people or the whole show is kind of doomed. You're a deejay, but with the crack instead of music, that's a very good description, yes. Yeah, that's exactly what I. Do you ever worry about like so because you use the couch model and that's the one of the most enjoyable things about your show, is you see people sitting beside each other and you never think that these people be in the same room.

And that's what's so lovely about your show. Do you ever have to, like beforehand go with two people now sitting on the fucking couch and we haven't? We've reason to believe that they don't get along with each other.

I mean, sometimes you've got to kind of think, God, here we go. And like we had like Tom Cruise and Seth Macfarlane were on the couch same time. And, you know, there are some and there's a bit of a family guy, there's a family Guy episodes that, you know, you have seen them.

I can't imagine he enjoyed them very much. So you you know you know, that was a nervous time because, you know. Yeah. That could go horribly wrong, but of course, you know, as it happens, I think Seth kind of apologized to Tom. I'm not sure if they did it on the show or whether it was a little recording break. Why is Tom aware of this? He must be.

Because the thing is, with Tom Cruise, it's it's one thing I wonder about recently, like, so. Someone was describing it was Trump's niece who wrote a book about him recently, and she's also a psychologist. She said something about Trump, which I found fucking phenomena, which was, you know, the way people trying to assess Trump's mental health from a distance. She said, when someone is that famous.

You can't use the regular rules of society to assess their mental health because they're effectively institutionalized, and I would put Tom Cruise at a level of fame where he's effectively institutionalized that I do know about fucking and outside as well.

Have you ever met someone who's so fucking famous that you're just kind of taken back on? They don't live on my planet.

There's something different, you know? He would be in that category. Definitely that that it's not about. Well, I suppose it is about him, but it's about me. It's about I never get past the kind of the the line that's been drawn around him. You know, he never seems like a real person, not a physical lineup.

Does that mean assistance? Are you literally going it's Tom Cruise, it's Tom Cruise. And I can't get past the spectacle of last.

You can't get past it. You never forget. Most people look go on the show, no matter how famous they are. You know, after a little bit of, you know, oh, my God, they become a person, you know, and they either become a dull person or an interesting person or a funny person or dick or whatever they become. But they they morph into a human being. He remains Tom Cruise. And, my God, he's good at it.

Like he's so good at it. And and it's so it's and also I feel like. It's his choice he decided to do that, and I hope it's worth it. I hope for him the rewards are worth it, because you're right, what he's done to his life is kind of extraordinary. But like he will, he won't experience things in the way that the rest of us experience things, you know, stuff in the way that the rest of us know stuff.

Maybe he remembers, you know, maybe he can think back to to when he was a boy and when this was his dream.

You know, it's that Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan said something once, which was just jarring and kind of depressing. So Bob Dylan is also at that level of fame. And Bob Dylan was saying that when he goes to a restaurant, even a famous person restaurant, everybody changes how they eat when Bob Dylan walks into the room, including someone like Robert De Niro or Bruce Springsteen, because it's Bob Dylan. So Bob Dylan doesn't get to be a normal person, even around other famous people.

And Tom Cruise is also that.

He would be definitely. And I mean, that's. And I think personality types like I mean, OK, so the reason I wear a fucking bag is I couldn't handle any notoriety that doesn't suit my personality. I've got a history of anxiety, agoraphobia. I like being an artist. I don't like being recognized as well known. But I think some people do have the type of personality where being completely recognized and everyone knows who you are, that suits who they are and that works for them.

But does it, though? Because I think what's incredible that you had the foresight. To know it was season one, a big brother, I first started doing rubber bandit stuff in season one, a big brother and I watched the guy who won it was called Craig. And I watched how he became the most famous person in Britain and Ireland. And then after two months, he wasn't. And then after six months, he was like working and being killed.

People were still coming up to him. And I remember thinking, Jesus Christ, fame is so disposable right now. Imagine being really famous, but you don't get to live that life or have the trappings of it. So you're essentially just being a regular person, but being bothered time and it scared the fuck. Do you wonder why is it that because those Big Brother people back in, you know, season one, season two, Big Brother, they were more famous than God.

I mean, they were so famous. Yeah. Yes.

The the kind of the bad things have happened after Love Island. You know, people's mental health now seems to be worse or or fame seems to me. Is that all it is? Is it just is it just the people sitting on Twitter scrolling through vile stuff about themselves?

Like, the only people who were absolute pricks back then were the newspapers, the newspapers were horrible, like the treatment that they got, and then you could throw it away, you can throw it away, or you can say to yourself, it's a journalist's job to be a prick, but with social media and it's real people and man, people are fucked up on the Internet. You know, people really that there's some people who really try and hurt people with words really, really have a good think about hurting people with words.

And you said a brilliant thing about that, about you look at the little avatar and you see that it's a man and he's got to he's holding his granddaughter or something. And I the dark. Yeah. And you have to think like they're not that they are like they have they have goodness in them. And I try and latch onto that when I see, like, an old man rubbing his dog and he's on a Daily Mail comments calling for the death of refugees, you know it does, Jeremy, because I'm going you have enough compassion to put your dog into a photograph.

You have enough compassion to tell your granddaughter you love her. What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, you know, it is a moment of hatred that you have, right?

I find that fascinating. The that weird thing where it it's like road rage. I think it's like, you know, very similar. You call everyone every name under the sun when you're driving.

But like, if you if you're even if your window is down, you wouldn't do it because you are open a simple grandmas as you could be in traffic and you'll pick your nose if you're in the car, but you will not pick your nose walking down the street. The car gives you the sense of this illusion of privacy that I think social media does the same thing where you think you're not vulnerable.

You think, yeah, I'm I'm protected here because I'm in this in this car of Twitter, my Twitter mob. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I it it's I do think it's and and it's a bit like because I didn't learn how to drive till I was in my late 30s and the minute I got in the car I was furious with everybody and, and I got where was this anger like what the fuck is that. What was my vent, what was my outlet for this anger before I drove?

And it's a bit like that with Twitter. I think before these people had a Twitter thing, they weren't out in their garden screaming at neighbors. They weren't, you know, in the supermarket just throwing packets on the floor going, I hate this, I hate it, and are calling for change that, too, and the like. How does it but it's weird that that it's that that anger is enas it just needs an outlet. And and yet if you're not given the outlet, you seem to be fine.

Like I didn't feel I wasn't walking around like a pressure cooker before I had a car. Yeah, but the minute I had a car, Mr. Angry. And were you shocking yourself going, I didn't know I could get this angry, why am I being in this horror and why am I screaming? I'm very I don't pick the horn. I'm I'm not that angry. I'm OK. I probably am, but I'm not. Was it a silent, very silent coverage?

But no, it would be I would be verbal. I would be screaming inside the car. Yeah, I've got better. I have calmed down. And also because I think bad London traffic moves so slowly now, there's no nothing's holding you up. Yes. It just it all just crawls along. So you just have to give it up. And I'd love to talk a bit about your writing process rights, like you've written three novels since 20, I'm guessing 2015 you started the first one, like that's a pretty large output in five years.

How do you find the time? What is what your your routine for writing your your books?

And why do I mean with me? I, I basically I like I want to write, you know, it's not like, it's not like homework, it's not like oh juice. I'm going to do that. It's the thing I look forward to. I like getting lost in in those worlds, in those characters in the story. I like all of that.

So if I've got time in my diary, I kind of think, oh, that could be those are book days. Let's do that. And and I look forward to those days because. I'm sure what is right and feel like for you. Do you ever feel do you feel like you're kind of watching a film in your head and your story is revealing itself to you? Or are you thinking more about what's going on?

It's a bit of both. You know, on a good day. It's like watching a film and you go, oh, my God, I've no idea that was going to happen. I'm like, you know, why don't you two writers and they talk about the characters took on a life of their own. You just roll your eyes, but then it happens that you're innocent. And now I'm that. I'm not pretentious prick talking, don't you? And then my characters, I realized my character couldn't do that.

And, you know, what are you talking about? But is it is true. Those are the good days. Those are the days when you're like, oh, I love this. And then there's other days when it is heavy lifting and you kind of think, how am I going to get them to hear or how can I solve this?

Because you have deadlines, you've got deadlines, you've got a publicist. And Graeme, this book is coming out next year and we need it finished. So how do you tackle that? But that's when you put a word, you've got a word count and at what's your daily word with the word count? I just have an overall word count. The overall it's about a thousand.

And so the deadline is great. The deadline is the reason that I think any book is finished. I mean, I'm so enamored of, you know, writers who write novels on spec and then send them off to agents and publishers. Yeah, the idea of typing the end when no one was waiting for you to do it, because I think there's always something.

I mean, maybe it's different with short stories, but with a novel, there's a bit about two thirds of the way through and I've talked to other writers and they all go, yep, that's right, about two thirds way through where you just kind of think no one would be interested in this story. No one wants to meet these characters. Why am I continuing? And that would be the point where most novels end up in a drawer or on a memory stick.

But because, as you say, publishers are going with that novel, you you have to push through that big wall of self-doubt and get to the end.

Do you have support from your editors with that? Like when you get to that point, do you ring up your editor and go, look, I don't give a fuck about these characters and I can't see why anyone else when I mean, why are those conversation?

I don't have those conversations because the whole point of these books is I don't have any conversations. The books I mean, I do in the end. In the end, once it's finished and I've talked to editors, that is it. Very private. It it it's private, but private makes them look at secretive. It's not secretive. It's just completely personal. It's the only thing in my life where. Where I'm calling all the shots, it's just about it's just about my imagination, whereas, you know, most things I do, there's either a meeting about the show or but or you're having to deal with someone else or they're saying, oh, we can't play that music or, you know, the guest doesn't want to talk about this or, you know, there's always something else to consider.

And with the books, there isn't. Or if it is, it's something I've put in. It's a break I've put in place myself. It's not a it's a self-imposed thing. Not it doesn't come from external forces. And do you feel that you watch a relationship with your Irish identity, because that was another real common question that was asked, like I do find that Irish people. We're very not claiming I mean, like sometimes people look at Irish people who go to the U.K. and do TV as if it's a soccer team and as they've gone to the U.K., some type of betrayal or something like that, you know, how do you feel about your Irishness and your Irish identity?

Is it important here? Is it part of who you are?

Well, it has to be part of who you are. And that's part of one of the latest book, Homestretch. That's kind of one of the themes of that book, is, you know, I've you know, I've talked about this before when, you know, I didn't leave Ireland, I ran away. I couldn't wait to get out of the base. That was me done.

And at home stretch, it's about a woman who's in New York. She finds out that her mother dies and she says that's the last one, that's a keeper. But if there's a crash, three kids die live. And it's about the following, the life of the driver of the car. But. But I remember, you know, when you when you leave Ireland and you think, right, that is, you know, done and you come to England and you don't go anywhere near Kilburn and you think I've grown up with, you know, four million of them, I don't need Irish people in your life.

Does it add up and you're making new friends? You've got a career and it's fabulous. It's great, great, great, great, great. And then you're at a party and you bump into an Irish person. You've never met them before. You don't know them and you get talking to them. And it's that when you're young, this is depressing. Now I find it lovely, but when you're young, it's depressing. You're talking as a person and you realize, oh God, I already know this guy better than I will ever know anyone I meet in the UK.

Yes, because they watched Wonderly Wagon and they knew, like Murphy is and you just have this shared history, these weird bonds. And as I say, when you're a kid, I think that's depressing. Now, in my 50s. I love that. I love that I have a bond with this place that when I go back to Ireland, you know, I haven't lived in Ireland full time since 1983. So I've been out of the place far longer than I was ever there.

But when I go back, like, I just I you know, you have to say I know Ireland better than I will ever know the UK. And I wouldn't have the confidence to to write a book set in Britain. I don't know what the inside of people's houses look like.

I don't know what their conversations are, but I don't know what English people talk to each other about. Yeah. So and I don't know what their conversation sounds like. You know, when I read books and everything at the intimate private.

Yeah. I wouldn't have no idea what the fuck the English people talk about when they're eating the roast beef. You know, I don't know.

So, so and it's weird because I should know. I mean, that's stupid that I don't know. I've been here for so long, but I don't I don't know. Having said that, I do feel at home here, you know, like when I get on the plane to go to work, I'm going home. When I get on the plane to come to London, I'm coming home. You know, I pay taxes, I vote here.

My career is here. It'd be mad if I didn't feel some sort of sense of identity with with certainty with London. You crazy? If I still felt like an outsider, I don't feel like an outsider.

But equally, I think London is a kind of a separate thing, isn't it? Because, you know, who knows Londoners? I don't know Londoners. I mean, I know all my neighbors are from somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah. You're pretty serious about your wine as well. And I mean, I love us.

And also, I think if you got to put your name. Yeah. That wanted to question do you get drunk on your own. Yes. I mean, I get drunk a lot less than I used to, I have to say. And I don't like talking about because I don't because I feel like I'm you know, because if you say, oh, I've cut down my drinking, it's like I'm judging the person has to be and no, I'm not.

It's not that I don't what I just you just get older and, you know, sort of hangovers get worse.

But it's not so much that I remember when I was I was writing a sort of a memory thing, and it was called The Life and Loves of Heat and Night and I chapters of all the things I loved.

And I wrote one chapter on drink and I thought, oh, that'll be good. I put all my funny stories about being drunk in one chapter. Yeah, people told a funny story about being drunk much after it really stops being funny.

It just becomes sort of tragic by the end, you know, and things like I remember I was in a bar in in Shoreditch and it was the stickied of army, all the shots and that and and I left. I was going home and. Anyway, I don't know how long longer, maybe 45 minutes later, and my friends found me asleep leaning against a lamp post. Oh, my. This is only about five or six years ago, and and you got to think that ass is cute when you're 22.

If you're 50, that's fucking awful. It's the front page of the daily not be asleep against a lamppost when you're 50.

So I just thought I yeah, I this doesn't suit me anymore. Yeah, yeah. That's what it is. And also, I don't want to it's that weird balance of control in your life isn't it. So I don't want to say I'm giving up drinking because then I've the power to the drink. But equally I'm, I'm telling the drink I can I can not have you. I don't have to have you. So it's a weird it's a weird kind of power balance between me and alcohol and trying to kind of assert my control while still enjoying it.

And one last question for you. All right, which are books when you're writing, do you ever feel that like how much self discovery, how much like almost therapeutic going into yourself, going into your your childhood, your Arani memories? Do you ever find out about your writing process?

I mean, what's interesting about it is that it all comes out of you, you know, like. You must find this where you know, you're writing something, and no matter how odd or extraordinary it is, it's it's in you. You haven't you haven't plucked it out of the air. You're not channeling it from somewhere. It's stuff that's in your brain. And I think what surprises me is sometimes the the empathy you can have or how the facility you have to put yourself in situations you thought you knew nothing about.

And suddenly they were actually weirdly obviously I have experienced that or can or I can imagine it really vividly. And those are the kind of the the surprises, I suppose. And also the overall surprise is I think that these books that I've written, these novels are much more. Sentimental and kinder than I ever thought I would be as a fiction writer, i.e., I imagined my books would be quite snarky and cruel and a bit world weary and jaded and actually turns out that's not who I am when when I write novels, that's not where my mind goes to in fiction.

I'm I'm sort of an old softy, really. Does that make you feel good about who you are now, your sense of because one thing I noticed earlier, when we're speaking about, you know, when you're younger and you meet Irish people, you have this sense of resistance, which to me that what stuck out there, it's like when a teenager is exploring all these different types of music or types of dressing as a way to find out who they are.

But now, as you're older, you don't find resistance to meeting Irish people. You find it kind of warm, like when you're speaking about there, are you comfortable now with a sense of identity, as does Santa said? Fuck it. I'm actually quite kind and empathic and my stories are telling me this is not a comfortable is a comfortable sentence.

And I feel, you know, as you get older, you better you better get comfortable in your skin. You so much of it. Yeah. So, yeah, you, you, you want to relax into yourself and you want to have a sense of who you are. And because I think if you're still, if you're still struggling in your kind of late 50s to kind of find yourself or to like yourself or accept yourself. You know, as I said earlier, we've got more time than we think.

But at the same time, know there comes a point when you need to kind of be in your groove, I think, or accept until the problems of accepting what you're what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you're never going to do.

You know, I'm all for follow your dream. Follow your dream. Follow your dream. There comes a point when you've got to give up on your dream. There comes a point when you're going like, that's not going to happen anymore.

And the process, the grief around that, people don't. We speak about grief in terms of the death of people. But quite a few people experience grief around the death of dreams.

Absolutely. And a bit like every sort of grief, you know, you there is a process to get through it. You know, there are all the you know, all those things ending in acceptance. And that's where you've you've got to get to. And otherwise, you know, you're that person that you meet who's, you know, still working on a demo or still having meetings about something or other. And, you know, we all we've all known those people.

And you think, oh, God, you know, I suppose if it still drives them, I suppose if they still if they're still moving forward and it still gives them it feeds them in some way, it's the relationship they have with a gram of what I what I always think of there is I remember it was like I was seen it was fucking Dragons Den or something like that.

And it was a dude who he had an idea he'd invented a new type of sport. Like 30 big divide. That's that's very good news for him. That's ambitious.

He was living out of his car because he was so sure that this sport was going and it was 30 years into it and he was living out of his car. It sold his house. And it's like, look, I've got this new fucking sport. And I think it could be in the Olympics.

And it's it's it's when it's that it's his relationship with his dream is now on. Hell, yes. It's not like I've got this sport and I think about it in my spare time, but it's not impacting my fucking quality of life or my family. What it's like now, your relationship with your dream is is fucking up the quality of your life.

That's why it's putting its people got sold a lie somewhere along the way. I think when I was the started that thing and I guess they did. The Yanks are the people who told me to follow my dream. And I and I did. And but my dream then morphed into something else.

You were right. You were you fired in the right direction. But what about people? I think it comes from if you look at the history of America and from terrorism, it's just like they took this country and it's massive and we're told just go for it and take whatever the fuck is there. And there's gold in them there, hills and keep going. And that now manifests itself in the American psyche. What it's like. Yes. What you need to have limitations to what you need to self reflect is this dream.

If you're too deep into it and it's impacting your life and you're living in your car because it was a fucking sport, you got to go. Maybe this is the wrong dream. Maybe there's a I'm not a parent, but I always kind of think if I was a parent, don't put all the drawings on the fridge like some of the drawing cartoons must be better than others. And and, yeah, more work went into some of the drawings than others.

And like, I think people should recognize, you know, that hard work is is required. It's not, you know, every you know, it's thing your little princess or little prince and that it's like that can't be that healthy in the end because, yeah, your expectations need to be managed in some way. And yet at the same time, you don't want to crush people. There must be some weird that there must be some happy medium where people kind of you know, they they can dream.

But at the same time, they understand that there are kind of practical things in life that you have to address. For me, I've always viewed what I do as a hobby, I've always viewed it as a hobby, and the bag also was part of that. Another reason for my bag was like because I went back and did a Masters five years ago, I always have my in my awareness for what if what if if this doesn't work out and I have to get a different job, well that would be quite easy now because I have Bigham had no.

No. That you did your Masters.

Was it like I kind of did you come out where did you meet new people? And then when you got to know them well enough, you'd go, actually, I actually find joy. And yeah.

So when I was in my class, it was a small class of about 12 people. After a few weeks, I just kind of said, look, this is my art. This is what I do. I'm doing my masters around this and I'm going to ask you to respect the situation. But once I had gotten to know me, they didn't give a fuck to my other life, meant I had a fucking bag in my head. So so I had to establish trust first.

So it never got out. You never got you. It wasn't. No, that's really impressive because you would tell people you would kind of go you'll never guess who's in my class. I'd say they did a little bit, but they'd have never, like, asked for a photo. People never came in and said they did at the end. At the very end, when I finished my master's, certain people said, look, my brother's a massive fan, all right?

I didn't tell him what were coming near the end. Will you sign this for him? Will you do that? Or people generally, they're really respectful of it because they understand my reasons behind it, you know, and you just put in the work to show them that you're a person who's worth trust.

And do you think you'd ever have another life? Where and where you were something else as well, and maybe yes, and did have a face. Not not publicly, right, but like I trained to be a psychotherapist years ago and I quit because of so outside, and I would like to think maybe if I give up this, that I go back as a psychotherapist, not in the public eye, but as someone who helps people through therapy. You know, I do get asked a lot from FBI agents and all that shit.

We just take off the fucking bag and then we can sell you in the UK, for fuck's sake. But I'm like, no thanks.

It doesn't. So I think it's brilliant that you know that. Because the thing about, you know, having I think people think they want to be well known, you know you know, the older kids who go on Love Island and all those things, they think they're going to enjoy it. And and like you need to be you need to gird your loins for us, particularly now, as you were saying, you know, that whole social media thing, like it's not going to be as fun as you think it's going to be.

There are perks. There are nice bits. But yeah, but and also it's something that you can't turn it on and turn it off. That's what's brilliant about you, can't you? You've got a hand. You've got a tap. You pop that back on and look at me. The big I am and it's wonderful. But then you can just go to the shops. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I can as you were saying earlier, I can get drunk and fall asleep against the lamppost.

You're young enough, I'm young enough, but still like I can do that with my friends, you know, and I don't have to worry about.

I mean, the fact of the matter is you went out, you had a good night, you got drunk, you fell asleep against a lamppost, how easy is that to frame in the paper that you are now? Your life is falling apart and you're destitute?

Very easy. I mean, there you go. And how many times have I seen people in the newspaper who I don't know, they were they were at a house party the night before that, a hangover, famous people. And all of a sudden the newspaper is like, this person's life is in ruins. And it might not be true.

Maybe they just but I find this a very odd thing with these papers where I know that everything I read about myself in a newspaper isn't true, or at least it's yes, it's skewed wrong or it's they put a spin on it that isn't correct. And I will read the thing about myself and all the rubbish, and I will literally turn the page and read a story about someone else. OK, well, I didn't know that. Oh, poor man.

Terrible.

And it's great that you can help you.

I can make that connection. Yeah. Fucking hell, and that's 90 minutes there, Graham, right, so I just want to say, look, thank you so much for for doing this. I really appreciate it and not just for doing the interview. I'm six months in fucking lockdown, so I don't get the opportunity to speak to people. So it was just a lovely conversation as well as a thank you for this really, really nice, don't you?

And I'm not saying this. I'm such a big fan of your podcast. It's really is one. I think someone's out there. You got just a brilliant, brilliant mind and fantastic.

What an absolute gent, what a lovely, cathartic chat that was. It was like I said, there at the end. It didn't feel like an interview. It felt like being on the phone, felt like being on the phone and having a lovely a lovely conversation and a chat with someone who had stuff in common with, you know, I'm and I love doing that. It was it was just nice. The rest of my day after this. Because I'm kind of locked up.

Quarantine. You know, I miss human connection, and when I did that chat with Graham, I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day I was born. I had endorphins. You know, I'd made a human connection. I'd engage with empathy. So thank you to Graham for that. Just for doing that was fantastic. I'll catch you next week. Don't know what next week's podcast is going to be about. Probably a heartache we'd see with the crack is all right if you're a no listener.

Thank you for sticking around. Listen to some old podcasts. Subscribe to the podcast like it can follow on on Spotify, whatever share Atman. Share it with a friend, especially if you're not living in Ireland, if you're in America or Australia or Britain, if you like my podcast show to a friend and get them to listen. That stuff really, really helps. OK, yacked.

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