Title: Hit It Bitch!

Soundcloud Time: 1:33:55
Youtube Time: 1:37:41

Original Record Date: June 3, 2013
Soundcloud Publication Date: June 6, 2013
Youtube Publication Date: February 25, 2015

Please Welcome a Man
Who if he becomes Dr. Who will tell everyone what his name is straight away.

Cool Kids
N/A

Guest Best Known
As the judge from Spice World, and of course Armitage Blair from Woof!

Audience

Better or Worse than Last Week: N/A
Like or Unlike Wikipedia: N/A

Member Member Note
David Frew shown on RH’s hand-held camera
nuclear physicist
wore hat with I Love London text on it (may have been a different audience member)
left the theatre at one point (to go look at London, RH posits)
Butlers shown on RH’s hand-held camera

Emergency Questions

Have you ever tried to suck your own cock?

I would be very astonished if any man here said they hadn’t attempted that act. And be very impressed by those that had achieved it. There seems to be two methods: one is what you might call the “Forward Curl” and the other is the “Backward Somersault”. Neither should be performed in public. Frankly distressing – so near, yet so far. I blame the fact that nature unfortunately gave me a really short, stubby tongue.

Ben Evans: Why were you the bad guys in The Borrowers?

Interesting point. I think my height – even in miniaturization – might have made me quite a tall Borrower. Also, in the end when you’re an actor, once you get your Equity card, your SAG card – your Screen Actor’s Guild card – you have to look yourself in the face and be honest. One of my favourite lines [in Dirty Harry: Magnum Force] – in it Clint says, “You’re a good man, but a good man knows his limitations”. I’m not sure how good I am, but I try to believe that I know my limitations when it comes to film acting. I am not going to get the scripts that Ryan Gosling has just turned down. It’s just never going to happen. It’s unfair, it’s beastly, but there are parts – Nazi Gauleiters, snooty lawyers, pompous judges, and vicious, in this case, scientists – that are somehow more likely to come my way. And it would be stupid to turn them down awaiting being asked to play the next Bond. Because, you know, it just isn’t going to happen. So, it’s realism. And actually it’s fun.

Ben Evans: Why did you agree to do Thunderpants?

Leslie Phillips, Simon Callow, and Rupert Grint is the answer. I met Rupert, along with the other “kids,” of the Harry Potter movies, and also the director was a friend. And it was one day in a courtroom. And to be perfectly honest I didn’t read the script.

If you could have a hand made of ham or an armpit that dispensed sun cream, which would you prefer?

I just so want to know, really, about your mind. The questions are interesting in and of themselves, but nothing like as interesting as the mind whence they sprang. I would go with the suncream. Both my hands are userful to me in all kinds of ways. And crumbly bits of breadcrumbed fat on the end – would they go off? My mother’s Jewish; I think she’d object.

Ben Evans: What is it like being Stephen Fry?

It’s a very hard question to answer. If I answer in a negative way it sounds ungrateful because I have an extraordinary fortunate life. I’ve been able to do an enormous number of things that most people don’t get the opportunity to do in terms of travel, meeting people, occasions, thing. You know, I get invited to ridiculous, “Would you like to drive a Formula 1 car?” and all that sort of thing. And I kind of have to pinch myself occasionally […]. Another part of me – I’ve made this boringly plain in television programmes and other things I wank on about – is that I am the victim of my own moods, more than most people are perhaps. Inasmuch as I have a condition that requires me to take medication so that I don’t get either too hyper or too depressed, to the point of suicide. I’ll go so far as to tell you that I attempted it last year. So I’m not always happy. This is the first time I’ve said this in public but I thought I might as well. And present of mind and the whole point is my role, as I see it, not to be shy but forthcoming about the morbidity and the genuine nature of the likelihood of death amongst people with certain mood disorders if they don’t look after it. If they think they can do without the medication and regular visits to a doctor, without taking care of themselves. It was a close-run thing. I took a huge number of pills and a huge number of vodka and the mixture of them made my body convulse so much that I broke four ribs, but I was still unconscious. And fortunately the producer I was filming with at the time came into the hotel room and I was found in a sort of unconscious state and taken to the hospital and looked after. Now you may say how can anybody who’s got it all be so stupid as to want to end it all? That’s the point – there’s no why, that’s not the right question. There’s no reason. If there were a reason for it you could reason someone out of it and you could tell them why they shouldn’t take their own life. Some of the most brilliant minds there have been have taken their own lives. Writers, artists, and people who are not particularly famous but are wonderful people. I like to think if I had children I would think harder about doing it. […] Sometimes it’s the expression I imagine on the face of my mother and father – both of who are still alive – that stops me, but there are other occasions when I can’t stop myself. And you may say, that’s what friends are for, you talked about Hugh. Why didn’t you just call him up? And all my friends, when they heard about this and came to see me in the hospital, said why? I said, it’s a very odd thing, but put it this way – it’s a cheap and silly way of putting it: Think of your very best friend. Very, very best friend. And suppose you suddenly noticed you had a massive and really disturbing genital wart. Would you show it to your very best friend? No. No, you might show it to a stranger, a doctor. A genital, urinary specialist. Or to Dr. Christian, I suppose. Embarrassing Bodies, or in the street in his case. The weird thing is, is although friendship is what Emerson called “the masterpiece of nature,” it is a thing we all celebrate, oddly enough it doesn’t solve things like that. So, although it’s terrible to bring the conversation down, what it’s like to be Stephen Fry is a very mixed and peculiar thing. If unmedicated there are times when I’m so exuberant, so hyper that I can go three or four nights without sleeping and I’m writing and I’m doing stuff and I’m so grandiose and I’m so full of self-belief that it’s almost impossible to deal with me. I can’t stop speaking, I’m incredible. I go on shopping sprees – fortunately one of the common signs of mania or hypermania as it’s known, is sexual exhibitionism – I don’t have that as one of my brands, but others do. […] When I’m conscious, when I’m rational, I realize that being Stephen Fry is a very wonderfully happy thing to be able to be. People are extraordinarily nice to me. […] Mostly it’s great. But there are times, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had this, Richard, when you’re on stage , and I spoke about this in the manic depression documentary, when I’m doing QI, and inside I’m thinking, I want to fucking die.

Notes

RH suggests that there should be a Muppet version of The Twelfth Night, where all roles are played by the Muppets except for Malvolio, which should be played by SF.

RH suggests that SF should be a king-like figure who approves laws and when SF dies David Mitchell can take over.

RH’s celebrity freebie list: Amy Pond from Dr. Who (the character, not the actress), Anne Widdicombe (because he likes a challenge), 13 from House (the character, not the actress).