Title: Sexomnia

Soundcloud Time: 1:10:06
Youtube Time: 1:10:08

Original Record Date: November 14, 2015
Soundcloud Publication Date: January 13, 2016
Youtube Publication Date: January 13, 2016

Please Welcome a Man
He didn’t want you to look at him but now he wants you to look at him!

Cool Kids
I was down at the Apple store.

Guest Best Known
He was, of course, a schoolboy in A Married Man. He was Young Hugh in Mrs. Dalloway, a proper film. And, of course, he was the Bearded Applicant in Shackleton.

Audience

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

Member Member Note
Liam HC’s “stalker”
had been at HC’s show the evening before
HC warns that if he should die under mysterious circumstances, Liam should be investigated
RH suggests that Liam, HC, and Eddie Izzard could be in a human centipede of stalking

Emergency Questions

What was the most deluded thing you thought of yourself as a child?

I think, didn’t all of us have the childhood thing of, like, the Truman Show? Where we thought everybody was doing it for us? That our whole life was just everyone was a performance and we – yeah, so… *Little audience reaction.* Two of us. Two of us believe this. But do you know, I was thinking when I was a kid all my ambitions and things, I just wanted… I did think I was special. I did walk around going, “I’m a little bit special.” I was – I had a middle-class upbringing. Horrendous that; parents going, “You can do that, of course you can. You’re marvelous.” It does make you think, I can do this. It actually fucks you up later in life when you realize I’m really a quite limited human being. But I think there’s… I don’t know, I did have showbiz dreams. I wanted to be a movie star or a film star. And I kept waiting to become manly. That was my – no, but I really did. because I was a very high-voiced little – and everyone used to laugh at me at school because my voice was really high and I had a little girl’s voice. And then I thought, My voice will break and it will be fine. And my voice broke and they went, “Yeah, you’ve still got quite a camp voice.” And I kept waiting for this moment. I really thought I was going to become a sort of… I think there was a film or something called Bronx Warriors in the video store. And there’s a picture of a guy on the front with kind of flowing hair. I never saw the movie, but I remember thinking, Some day I’m going to be like that; I’ll be that man and I’m just going to be a hard bastard. And I think it’s, I’m so sad it didn’t happen, because that was my little childhood dream. That one day this little boy – I was going to transform into this masculine bloke.

If you had to go on a week’s holiday with one of the puppets from Spitting Image, which would you choose and bear in mind the puppet would choose the holiday destination?

That’s so difficult. Because I’m thinking about… The same old questions every interview you do. Um, I really – gosh, that’s really… You obviously think of Thatcher, don’t you, when you think of Spitting Image? No, because it became really scary, the Margaret Thatcher puppet. It became all scary-eyed. Um, I’d… I’m trying to think of there were. I suddenly got this image of Leon Brittan’s puppet. Controversial, isn’t it? If you said Thailand, yes – no, but, um, no it was completely innocent. Um, Ian McAskill has a puppet. “Hello.” Do you remember? “Okay, good, yeah, yeah.” That was, yeah, that’s who I’d like to be with. I’m really crap at this question. It’s too imaginative for me. So Ian McAskill, and he would choose somewhere lovely because he’s a weatherman. So he would – obviously the puppet’s not a weatherman but it would be funny. I can’t get enough of the comedy Scottish accent.

Have you ever seen a ghost?

I don’t believe in it but I’m scared of it. This is really pathetic. We had a dog when I was sixteen. The dog died and my sister and I were talking in the kitchen. And we were just talking like that and there were two scratches at the door. And I went over to the door and opened it and we both went, “She’s here!” Ran around the house for about five minutes. Because we just thought the dog was going to be there. We both heard the scratches. It’s pathetic, isn’t it? […] We used to think there was a presence in our last house, my wife and I. But it was just the children probably. We really did used to – talking about wives dying again – my wife constantly likes to scare me. Really likes to. And waits behind doors. She knows I get spooked really easily. So, like, I’m in the bathroom sometimes and she stands by the door, and I open the bathroom door and she’s there, like that, and I *makes startled noise and action*. And I’m so scared of her – this is the reason I don’t want her to die first; I want the money, but – I feel like she’ll take the piss. I feel like if there is such a thing as ghosts she will knock things around the house, she will appear to me, she’ll do all that sort of stuff. But I really – I mean, I hate the idea, I don’t find it comforting, ghosts. My parents are dead. And if one of my parents appeared to me I’d be, “Honestly, fucking leave it. This is not lovely. This scares the crap out of me. Go away. I love you, but please fuck off.”

What is the worst emergency you’ve ever been involved in?

Is the guy here who was at my show last night at Potters Bar? *Affirmative answer from audience.* Yeah, I have a weird stalker who was at my show at Potters Bar last night. I tell this in my show. This isn’t a set-up to a bit of material, is what I want to say. This is a true fact that I tell now as a joke. I told it on [Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled] and it wasn’t a bit of material and now I’ve turned it into a bit of material and I feel guilty; like they think I put a bit of material in. But this is the scariest thing. I was in an armed siege in Stockwell in about 1997, 1998. Brian Damage’s gig, the Oval. And we were all sitting in this pub and we were doing a gig in the back room and everyone was wandering through to go and do a gig in the back room and I was on in the second half so I was hanging around in the main bit of the pub. And I thought, Oh, I’ll go through now. And we didn’t realize that during this time somebody called the police because they thought someone was in the pub with a gun because two guys had some feud going on. And the whole pub got surrounded by armed police. So I walked into the back room to do this gig. The whole room was empty. A light was shining through the emergency exit and I just heard, “Armed police. Step into the light.” And I promise you, I came through the door like this, going, “Uh, I’m hear for the gig.” And it really was that moment of these two armed policemen like this *mimes holding rifle*”. So I slightly thought maybe I would get shot, but I wouldn’t because I was like that *raises hands*. And I do have this thing where I don’t get that tensed in scary situations, I get the wrong thing. They told me to run to this building. And I’ve got a funny run and I was like, “Do I have to run?” And they were like, “Yeah, fucking leg it, mate.” And as I was running, because I’m a bit out for sight, as I’m running I just felt policemen behind every barrier thinking, Oh, fucking look at that. So it’s pathetic. That still consumed me. And it was amazing, actually. We ran behind this block of flats and all the other comics who’d been at the gig were there going, “Hooray!” Because they’d all been evacuated in the same way. And then these kids started coming off the estate to attack the police because the police were all in the area – this is when it was all winding down – so we nearly had a riot off that. A siege, nearly a riot – all of these comics going, “There’s so much material!”

Do you think if you have sex with a robot that should count as cheating on your partner?

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. It’s not a real person. That’s why Westworld – you watch Westworld as a child and go, “God, if that existed.” But you could go and have sex with anybody in the Roman world. The Roman world, I wanted.

Kettle Crisps are not as nice as they once were. Have I changed or have they? That’s a rhetorical question. If you could travel back in time to compare any food of today with an equivalent in the past, what time would you go back to and what food would you taste?

I’m really confused by food ’cause I’m not very into food. I’m really not. I know I’m chubby, I’m fat, but… I do eat crap because we do use food to fuel and I’m a comfort eater; I like chocolate and terrible stuff. I’m not somebody who watches Masterchef or anything. I do a Bake Off: Extra Slice and I love watching Bake Off, but I only got into it because they asked me to do Extra Slice. I watch it and I bloody love it. I love – I love the competition but I’m not a baker. The only thing that ever made me bake anything was watching that show. So I;m not an expert on food. But what do you mean? What food? There’s absolutely no difference in Kettle Crisps. What way are they different though? But I don’ think anybody really thinks they’ve changed that much apart from you.

Would you consider sex with a ghost as cheating on your partner?

You know, what’s interesting about this question is it throws me a lot – things I’ve never thought about, ever. It’s really good. Um, so if the ghost asked for your consent, you mean? So it’s like the entity. There are some people who do that. What’s it called? Sleep somna… People who start having sex with people when they’re asleep. In their sleep. Sexomnia, sexomnia. I’ve gotta be honest with you, I know that I might be prone to this. I thought other people would go, “Yeah, I’ve got that.” And it’s just me. My wife has had to go, “Get off me,” because in my sleep I started going *makes sexual noise and hand motion.* She’s sort of been assaulted in her sleep and she then woke up and… And I felt terrible about it because it was awful. Gosh, that’s not criminal, is it? But it is quite common. It’s my wife as well. She’s in bed. No, it’s not her fault, God. “She was in the bed with you. It’s her own fault! She was wearing a short nightdress!” […] But no, ghosts. The ghost thing. Ghosts scare me too much. I wouldn’t be able to perform. *RH suggests that it could be a sexy ghost.* It’s still from another plane of existence. It’s bloody terrifying. Come on, who would really be able to go, “Brilliant, I’m up for this.” Your whole mindset would be blown by the ghost existing and being there. And you think, Well who else could join in on this? If one ghost can get, you know… And then all of them gather around and watch. Can you be gang-banged [by ghosts]? Imagine someone comes in and can’t see the ghosts and you’re naked going *mimes group sex motions*.

Kickstarter: Tim Turner says, “Richard Dawkins claims to have seen dogs doing a 69. What’s the worst lie you have told to impress people?”

I really don’t lie because I’m really scared that if I lie then I’m going to get caught out be the lie and you just feel ridiculous. I lie… I don’t know. I lie pretending to know people that I don’t know. When people come up in Edinburgh. Especially as a comic because you’ve been around a lot and you meet and work with a lot of people that remember you because they’ve seen you on stage for twenty minutes or an hour, and you forget who they are. So I spend a lot of time lying, pretending I know people I don’t know. “Oh hey, how are you?” *Very excitedly.* “Hi! How are you? How’s it going?” And you’re thinking, Oh shit, do I like you? Did we get on well?

Notes

HC describes himself as “Michael McIntyre with problems”.

RH takes poll of who among audience thinks that Kettle Crisps have changed.