Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teVW3Vw_B20
russell kane he's known as a multi-award-winning comedian presenter actor author and scriptwriter but man this guy is so much more i started doing all this biohacking and to survive on less sleep to not lose your hair or to slow down the aging process it [ __ ] my life in the proper sense everything fell apart like a junkie how can i get more of that my relationship with my girlfriend fell apart my bill started to not be paid i started to look thin it's the closest thing to a drug addiction i've ever experienced [Music] russell kane he's known as a multi-award-winning comedian presenter actor author and scriptwriter but man this guy is so much more he's genuinely deeply intellectually curious something that honestly surprised me and this sounds like it might be a offensive or a weird thing to say but i'm going to say it anyway i didn't realize how smart this guy is remarkably self-aware and on to top it all off brutally honest he says that how it is he has an ability to point out things that i think most of us muggles miss and he's also genuinely just a really nice and hilarious human being today you won't hear many jokes this is the more serious side of russell cain and a side of him that i did not know and would not have guessed before speaking to him so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] russell hello one of the things i read when i was um reading about your story was a quote um and i'm gonna read the quote to you you said i remained a boy while he was alive even when i was 18 and i needed to be a man to tell these stories what were you talking about when you said that um well i don't think that's true of just me i think any boy or probably girl who has a reasonably overbearing and dominant father you sort of remain
a child now that i'm a father myself i can see that's true so when my daughter mina is 40 she's still gonna be my my baby so that's the positive side of it the negative side of it is if it's quite an overbearing masculine energy you saw i felt sometimes a bit like a bonsai like i kept nearly growing and then the roots were trimmed so i was fully grown but small so if my dad was in the room you know i was instantly a child like i would say inside so it's just a very dominating figure and i think that would have been the same had my dad not dropped down dead from a heart attack years ago i think that would have been the same when i'd been 40 50 60 if my dad had been 90 year old shouting in the corner probably still would have been like that even if he wasn't in the room no no when as soon as what in his presence i think but so far as this that i think that quote might be talking about stand up yeah i wouldn't have dared to tell the funny stories about him while he was alive i don't think just on the risk he he was offended or you know there'd be consequences what was he like for anybody that hasn't read you about your story um steroid taking shaven headed silverback doorman right wing angry council estate working class barbell curl semi-professional bodybuilder lifeguard sheet metal worker lager nutter by lager i don't mean someone who gets on it i mean someone who puts the insulation on the outside of pipes the hardest job you can imagine crawling in boilers ripping out asbestos fiberglass cut hands white transit van gaal it away just massive shirts tail this is when he's taking steroids that was before i was born shirts tailored trousers splitting hulk like at the thigh just a force of meat called dave that was my dad actually call dave dave actually called dave from essex um so yeah he was just very old school so even though he's like more like someone who was born in about 1920 he had sort of the
politics and the attitude very unreconstructed masculinity quite knuckle draggy but just would just worked himself to death to provide barely raised his voice at me and certainly never laid a finger on me but didn't didn't need to i find the truly terrifying cockney can just give you summer you [ __ ] get in near now and you're you're done i i i i actually pissed came out of my body once when he spoke to me like that really i literally pissed myself i was i'd thrown my brother on the bed and he was crying and there's nothing scarier than hearing though on the stairs if you've done something to your brother or sister and you know your dad's coming up the stairs and he's like what happened what have you done your brother had to piss myself and that guy never laid a finger on me that's power my mom definitely laid her finger i don't think i would have been scared of her if she didn't but i was [ __ ] terrified of my mum like but she she would beat me like but my but i couldn't imagine how she could have achieved that same objective without hitting me with something it's it's it would be analogous of the nuclear deterrent threat if you know i've got nuclear weapons i don't need to fire them for you not to attack me so i know i knew my dad had whereas i just sounds incredibly sexist but the reality is once you're a 14 15 year old lad you're the same size as your mum there are no you know wearing the nuclear weapon she's got to put her money where her mouth is but haven't you got to know how nuclear weapons work to to know that they're i just to be honest with you my dad's giving me so many positive things it's just that the negative things are funny so that's why i talk about them disproportionately but to teach someone i'm five foot ten like a pepper army with hair on but when i stand on stage i don't need to hit people or shout they they sit in their seats and some of them
in the front row [ __ ] themselves if i even look at them so who have i learned that from it's partly my craft but it's partly also what a good teacher has uh what a good dad has like my dad and what a good stand-up has male or female that authority to stand there and hold a room with a reasonable tone in the voice pin drop is powerful it's harder for a mum to do that particularly where i grabs a lot of single mums um when you've got teenage lads that are sort of thinking what you're going to do it becomes like an arms race where the mum starts hitting the legs and hitting the face and it's needed because that's what the mum's got to work with i suppose that's why that's why i do believe this is so sexist and old school but i do believe if not a man two parental figures in in place one who can play the badass doesn't matter if it's two women two men whatever i think if you've got two it's double the force raising a child takes a village you i remember you know the way you've described your dad is um is quite different from who you are today and who you are over the last 10 years i mean yeah and almost the antithesis and i remember reading about the fact that you took a dna test at some point i took a dna test just out of curiosity because i'm big into science i wanted to know what diseases i was carrying i've always been fascinated about my ethnic makeup because my family history starts in living memory i'm obviously a little bit darker than i should be to be a brit you know i thought i wanted i was interested to know what was in there but part of me did go what if this is the moment i discover my dad's not my my dad it did cross my mind which is totally absurd sorry mum if you're watching um because he was blonde hair blond curly hair blue eyes very wide um it's just that which is not nothing in common my brother is the spirit of my dad
but i'm like i'm not my mum just energetic pepper army with hair on running around bouncing out of bed stick first thing in the morning and like in terms of like generational cycles where did your dad get it from so he always used to say to me i never had a dad so why about okay so then my mum would my mum would say so you've got to understand your dad didn't get taught how to be at my mum's game man your mom didn't get talked your mum did your dad didn't get taught how to be a dad so he just know what he didn't know how to be around babies he's never learned that sort of thing he never he didn't have anyone to guide him so quite a rough childhood his dad walked out on him when he was about i think he was about two and my dad's mom's hard as nails he's eastenders well his essex back then barking and it was just a tough childhood you know tough east london essex childhood where you you just survived basically and uh he he had a lot of dreams i think he would have liked to have gone the same way i did he was quite a good-looking bloke so he got scouted for modeling and things like that he pursued that for a bit he'd pursued the professional bodybuilding even tried to stand up i think like a pontins or a butlins he tried a little bit of acting only for a couple of years and then he went into the hardest i think of all the manual labour you can do which is sheet metal and insulation so that like i say crawling along pipes and all that so there's a lot of bitterness a lot of unrealized dreams a lot of abandoned by your dad a lot of hardness and negativity there from the childhood and that plagued him his whole life so if we were on a beautiful four-star holiday to minorco and the sun shining part of him would be thinking about the five-star holiday he could have i'm not like that at all how did you know how did you know he was thinking that well he would voice it half the time how
what would he say uh yeah it's all right imagine if i get the big job imagine if we would come back he'd be quite positive on holiday actually but he was like just imagine julie if we if we had more math my mom of course julian dave if we had more money that house we could have and my mom would be like dave we bought our own council house thanks thatcher it's a big house the biggest house in the street we've got pillars out the front yes it's a former council house we've got pillars we've got a swimming pool in the garden three beautiful bedrooms lovely bathroom massive house dining room front room two healthy sons at the point my brother was very unwell by the time he was 17 but at that point what was there to be negative about my it's hard job my dad did but good money but he couldn't see that he could just see his mate who started a glass company and now his son drove a lambo and he lived in chickwell and i don't and when my dad passed away we were going through the shed at the bottom of the garden and i found his diary and it was lit it was honestly it was one of the few things that made me cry when he died because i sort of toughened up to help with the funeral all that because my brother was ill by then and uh it's just rained today didn't get the job [ __ ] day james being a can i swear yeah james being a [ __ ] and that's my brother [ __ ] day [ __ ] curry it was like the diary of someone in prison that's what it was like it was it's so weird that someone could be rich and not know it i love making money don't get me wrong but i'm really good at enjoying what i've got so i've enjoyed every level of my comedy journey and i've never been bothered about whether i go further or not because i feel like if you can have two banging holidays a year and you love the house you're living in and your family is healthy done he was engaging in upward social comparisons right the whole time and if you do that you're never going to be happy absolutely and you see that with
people in in my profession that are earning a million pounds a year two million a year when they're in debt because they're buying an ap watch every week and they're going to the maldives four times a year and they've got they're in a 10 million pound house so they should be in a 5 million pound it's ridiculous that's consumerism but it worked on a more micro level so we would if we're going to stanton airport to fly to menorca traffic's probably going to be [ __ ] on the way to the airport i bet you the traffic will be [ __ ] so we're already he's pre-imagining the traffic jam will be in if we hit a traffic jam [ __ ] knew it holiday we'll probably miss the flight holidays [ __ ] julie i [ __ ] told you we should have gone for i [ __ ] told you he didn't shout maybe he would shout to himself sort of thing did you ever figure out where he learnt that behavior where that came from no idea like i said it was just all the bitterness and negativity and expecting things to go wrong that was his tape his script so if we were in a restaurant and i'd be seven years old and i'd spill a glass of water not coke or anything so he's not gonna get sticky legs he'd be like water everywhere a [ __ ] meal ruin i've got to sit here like i pissed myself for the entire movie it'll be like the worst thing in the world has happened like someone at that moment's probably found a lump on their body but to my dad the worst thing that can happen so he i felt sorry looking back now you've got you've got to feel compassion and love because it was just a constant tide of self-hate and negativity basically and imagining if we go and buy um something from ikea that needs putting up you know a screw will be missing and it's because i'm me because i'm cursed the [ __ ] screw will be missing you can guarantee it [ __ ] that all the time so for a little boy growing up you've got to work really hard not to absorb that i i see hints of that in my dad especially as he got older a
little bit more negative about everything moods you know seem to be irritable at a lot of things and one of the things that crossed my mind was i hope this isn't genetic like how do i avoid becoming this guy when i get to that age has that crossed your mind that the generational cycle might continue to some degree without you noticing obviously yeah i mean see him so my brother i don't i can't really go into my brother's illness because he's literally not well enough to consent for me to talk about it otherwise i would happily discuss it because it's an important subject to talk about but he's got some severe mental health issues let's just leave it there so my brother's really sort of unrefreshingly unaware of his mannerisms and gestures and postures if you like and it's just like my he's like my old man so how can your like the way your voice and the cadence of a sentence and the glances and the way you you say no i mean and stuff like that it is my old man so i mean on some genetic level there are copies of how we express ourselves there must be but apart from maybe your height i can't think of anything you can't change with loads of loads of ways education cognitive behavioral therapy if you need it i never have but you can um you can work on the way you eat your diet your lifestyle all of those you know genetics is not destiny one of the most fascinating things you can look up is identical twin studies over and over again you'll get one twin that's two inches taller than the other where he's had a more successful not two inches but it might be an inch taller where he's had a more successful life eating better food so you can literally grow taller they're they're genetically identi identical so you can't tell me i'm destined to suddenly be negative about traffic jams if two identical twins can
be different in height you must be able to push against behavior you see that film through identical strangers yes fantastic yeah amazing absolutely fantastic yeah yeah made me upset yeah it's inspired chris you know the ending is obviously tragic but uh yeah really powerful film and i think that shines a light on how it does it gives hope for all of us that you're not you're only 50 of your dad and 50 of your mum and uh although you're actually slightly more of your your mom i've learned how anyway but um so you don't you're not if you're only 50 if twins aren't destined to be the same you're not destined to be the same as a parent it's it's it's bad it's a bad way to think particularly if it's a negative it's a good way to think if there's something you want to copy tell yourself it chant it you want to be more like my mom she's such a cool cat or whatever we we have also grown up in a slightly different culture especially in the last sort of 10 20 years where we're much more aware of our psychology right and our and our and how trauma and childhood experiences have shaped us as adults whereas i think my dad probably didn't know so it was like someone back there in the control room running the show without him and he was just a puppet to the [ __ ] he'd been through whereas we are kind of a bit more open as a society now so yeah that that's my biggest learning men's mental health comes on the spectrum it doesn't mean mentally if we have mental health everyone has men if we have physical health we have mental health even if you have no issues that's good you are mental health so mental health runs on on a spectrum to people that are cooking on for hobbs like me and you hopefully all the way down to people like my brother who are severely severely ill with cognition issues and people who are severely ill or people who are trapped in time like our dads before an awakening they don't have
insight into their current state if you do not have insight into your condition you are screwed because if you're let's say for example schizophrenic without insight into the fact you have schizophrenia you will not take the medicine you just won't take it you'll look at the pill and go well i don't i'm not healed so you'll you'll be in assisted accommodation your entire life if you're schizophrenic but know you have schizophrenia chances are you can have a relatively normal life because you know i'm i need to take my medicine and that but you can translate that thinking to any aspect of business or commerce to stand-ups to entrepreneurs because i've noticed i call it black box thinking from the matthew syed book the moment you can have insight into a stand-up routine or into a business proposition in a proper way where you can look it and go that doesn't work you're going to be successful people that don't have insight into themselves in their personal lives they end up single they end up in unhappy relationships because they can't see their own thoughts they can't insight into themselves and go this quick one starting from the minute the lockdown is lifted we're going to start bringing in some of our subscribers to watch how this podcast is produced behind the scenes means you get to meet the guests meet myself and see how we put all of this together if you want that to be you all you've got to do hit the subscribe button i mean this is just an impossibly tough question yeah because we're talking about self-awareness really right so like how does and people people have asked me this question for the last five years and i really don't have a great answer still how does one become more self-aware well i it was literally part of my degree i'm very lucky here we go i started doing english literature because i wanted to do the most show-off on council estate posh subject possible way i mean i was going to get a first or i was i don't know what was going to
happen so i told myself i'm going to get a first amount what that was pre-ordained so i did two years of showing off about you know roland bartz and jane austen and all that and there was an opportunity in the last year to cross over into creative writing and the reason i did that is again goes back to my dad it's not very practical to be absolutely badass on jane austen unless you're going to want to be a lecturer or an academic whereas creative writing um is a practical profession you can go into advertising you can go into journalism you can try and write books you can as it turns out go into stand-up i didn't know that yet there's loads of places where you can go look i've not just got a first in english i've got a first in in writing i can take body copy and make your brand pop so par how do you do a dissertation in creative writing there's only one way you have to submit ten thousand words normal academic pouncing about and you have to submit ten thousand word short story play but you have to run through your own work and criticize it and say what you got right and what you got wrong once you've been through that and done it loads of times it just becomes natural to bring it to your life a copywriter in an advertising agency has to be able to really hate his own work he just created and find the faults in it because that will lift it above ogilvy's copywriter and you'll win the pitch it's as simple as that the person the man who cannot realize he's domineering or jealous and work on that will not have a fruitful relationship woman or a man indeed in order to do that with your life or with your copy or with your work or whatever in marketing you have to have a certain level of self-esteem and personal security to be to allow yourself to rise above your work and look back down on it in a critical way a lot of people's self-esteem are so fragile yeah that the prospect of being critical is uh it's just unthinkable
like you know this is why people get to from my experience where people get so defensive and because they're because they're so if you one shot to their self-esteem will take the whole house down so that they immediately go like this hat likes so you could look at it that way so i would say that person needs to learn not self-esteem because self-esteem's a totally different conversation they need to learn objectivity a piece of writing is a thing a relationship is a thing that you've built with someone a comedy routine is a thing a poem is a thing the things over there that's not you you have to practice being able to take the piss out of the thing criticize the thing no someone's not coming up to you and going you're ugly um you're unlovable uh you've got a big nose you're not tall enough stuff like that is gonna hurt and there's no way of getting objective but if you can't look at a poem you've written and someone goes i really love the meter but the adjective there's a bit obvious then you should be able to thank that person they're giving you a gift if they know their [ __ ] but you're the one that should be saying that first eminem style eight mile seize the bars and turn them on yourself first hard to do because everything is better it makes better work it makes better humans yeah i completely agree it's just really tough to do like practice it's practice i get a lot of um i this is the message i get most often sent to me by my agent or an instagram and it drives me [ __ ] nuts i had one the other week oh my god i love what you do i'm i'm a really funny person this is how it was phrased the other week how how many gigs would i have to do before i could like open for you on tour can you have a look at some stuff i filmed on my phone and i'm i'll give them an answer that norm i never get a reply to this answer i say okay it's quite simple lucky for you there is a really simple model to
follow you need to work unpaid for three years in the clubs three times a week i wouldn't recommend a relationship and just warn your friends you're not gonna see them i started to earn about two three hundred pounds a week after five years at that point you're ready to give up your day job on about the eighth or ninth year you're going to be ready to do a support slot i never go yeah people don't want to hear it but you if you went up to the guy in the gym who's 16 stone and five percent body fat and can you tell me how i can get like that you'd say the machines are over there [ __ ] just get going yeah the machines are there you cannot skip the machine you cannot skip the tricep station if you want triceps you can't just go but it's going to hurt uh it's too much work to get attracted then just don't get triceps don't but don't moan if you don't have triceps head to the dip station and see you in four years i completely yeah i now i've wrote about this my book came out last week and i wrote about it in my book i remember someone turning to me was actually the ceo of my company now company i've just left and he said to me steve you know this personal brand stuff and this like speaking you do on stage was like how long did it like how did what he was like how do i how do i do it and your brain immediately scrambles around looking for like three tips right three tips to describe like a deck i remember my first talk in school at 14 years old my hand's shaking absolutely the truth is like someone's seen you with a sharp sword and they've said how do i get a short sword that sharp i said well start sharpening it now and then ten years time but people don't work no one wants to hear the answer is boring repetitive practice for most most people that are absolutely [ __ ] excellent at something have done a lot of boring repetitive practice that would be boring to the person asking the question not to us
i loved every [ __ ] gig i did and that's the difference that's what kept you doing it for 10 years or two decades whatever is that you genuinely intrinsically loved it for its and people want the rewards right but when they if they started and genuinely wanted they too would discover that love if you if you say i want to be an identity i'd be a dentist you start dental training and you're finding it boring in a slog news flash you don't actually want to be a dentist you'll be rich yeah so find something else find something where you love the journey that is a secret so that's what my dad never found he did he didn't find a job he took pleasure in he's got nothing to do with coin although i'm into it but if you love the outdoors you're going to love landscaping whether you're on 17 grand a year or 17 million a year you're gonna love it because that's what you were born to do it's such a counter narrative to the narrative that sells which is like short investment big so it's like seven days six pack abs that's everyone [ __ ] signs up for that imagine imagine that the like 10 years maybe maybe that's true and that's and the problem is a lot of the t the tv we make i make sells that x factor spot do one song live the pimp lifestyle and of course that is what in the all of the x factor that's ever been on and all of pop star the rivals how many of those people are now platinum selling artists living in mansions what harry styles try and name some one direction that's it that's out of every single little mixed doomer that's out of every single one in a show that's designed to push people to the front in an artificial way so if you think that's going to happen if you're russell from essex you're deluded it's but any business if you're passionate mixed with a little bit of luck people this is the other thing people like us don't like putting out there but i'm afraid there is a bit of luck involved and it sort of causes like we always sat
here again i've worked so hard oh look at me with my work hard badge but at some point we had some luck as well which is we're in the right place right time mixed with the hard work so some people are more lucky than others luck is a thing and what lucky not luck as in lottery number luck but luck is in oh my god you've met that you've met the perfect partner you you've been the business oh you you were looking for a friend a french bulldog breeder and you found exactly the right one at the right time when you were looking for a puppy why are you so lucky where's my life so [ __ ] so they tested this they got a bunch of people together half people who say my life [ __ ] i'm so unlucky and half people like me who like i've gotta admit i'm a bit hashtag blessed i do have a lot of luck and they run tests on them and the test they run was very simple the the psychologist i come here is the british jewish guy really funny brings loads of books out richard something or other he's written a book about it about luck look it up they gave them newspaper each and they went in there go into your separate rooms and on a page is a picture you're looking for whoever finds that picture comes in first gets a hundred pounds cash that was the game so everyone went in like that on page two your massive headlines was it's a trick stop turning if you've read this headline go and collect the money that was on page two all the unlucky people missed that all the lucky people found it you know why because lucky people eyes are open the hustlers so it turns out you can make luck you can practice that you can hone it that's something you can hone next time you walk into a meeting just think right what's that guy do for it for a living who's that is that a contact that's not luck if i sit down next to someone and he happens to be doing a comedy streaming service start up and he signs me up that's me being a bit bold and striking up a conversation and looking at what
he's wearing and having to think you can learn these skills people don't like that because that sharp puts the mirror on me and creates personal responsibility where i yeah you know what i mean and i feel like in our society at the moment this is just an observation i've had personal responsibility is people [ __ ] hate that yeah i did i remember doing a tweet about um because okay this was me playing a bit of [ __ ] but i don't care right so the left of society which i probably consider myself to be on are really in support of the nhs so i did a tweet saying the biggest cost to the nhs is like smoking eating bad etc so if you really care about the nhs take care of yourself people like no steve this is literally the replies like this is not it because i'm basically saying if you genuinely care about the health service here is all the data the biggest burden on the nhs is people that are overweight and people that are smoking or whatever um well the obesity one's particularly controversial because there's two movements at the same time there's personal responsibility in the science we're learning about obesity particularly during covid i mean if you if you want to do one thing other than social distancing obviously get a vaccine most of us are too young to have a vaccine so if you have another vaccine and you don't and you don't want to live life like a prisoner the best thing you can do is get in shape quick you're better off you're literally better off being i think a thin smoker literally yeah but it's a controversial conversation because quite rightly we're re-evaluating beauty standards and a lot of people end up with eating disorders and fat shaming and all that needs to go away and as as soon as we associate personal responsibility longevity in health with a body type we're in a difficult area where we create shame for people based on how they look which is something you want to get rid
of so for someone like me who's on on the left my head just goes pop yeah smoking is is a slam dunk don't smoke your rebellion yeah yeah end off [ __ ] don't smoke stop costing me money on the nhs but someone that might be overweight it's very very complex to understand why someone's overweight it's something i studied a lot not because i've been overweight but because i'm fascinated with biohacking and body and all of that and i think the most most illuminating thing i can tell anyone about being overweight is that eating too much does not make you overweight this is no one understands this i'm going to blow your mind here being overweight causes you to eat too much once you have the metabolic condition of being overweight that [ __ ] your circuitry which drives you to eat more obesity causes calorie surplus so shaming people for eating too much is a waste of time because most people with busy lives and kids and no money are in a condition that's compelling them to eat more might be emotionally compounded might be psychologically compounded they might be recovering from abuse they might be recovering from a bad relationship they might just be skin and can only afford [ __ ] nuggets and they're just tired and not getting enough sleep and unfortunately until you get into um a low-fat state like us where it's easy to regulate your calorie your every part of your body is telling you to feed this obesity no one understands that i've gone deep into the sign i'm not a scientist so look up for yourself before everyone starts trolling me saying literature degree boy but as far as i understand the science layman's cards and table obesity causes overeating now that is just boom but it helps us to be more as much as i agree with what you're saying it just it levens more compassion into people's weight loss journey although you're absolutely correct if you don't
want to die of covid and you don't want to cost the nhs money getting in shape's one of the best ways to do it but of course it's not easy and i've i've had moments in my life where i've been most stressed and it's a downward cycle yeah like you know what i mean so you eat and then you require sugar more and sugar becomes this addictive thing in your life and it only happens to me when i'm stressed so i'll have my little moments of downward cycle in my health when there's a lot on my mind and so yeah i mean compassion is certainly incredibly important in that regard what about more broadly so outside of health the topic of personal responsibility i like it because it's controversial mm-hmm um and i discuss the new trying to get us in the daily mail here in fact people should pay for themselves no i know just generally in your life and success in like um what you can accomplish the fortunate position i'm in which is what i talked about in my last podcast was because i came from like a very broke family where my mum can't read or write and i i was born in africa and i we didn't have anything no christmas birthdays or holidays my journey in life people don't discredit it they don't point at me and say oh you know silver spoon you can't [ __ ] talk yep so i feel like i can have the conversation a little bit more about personal responsibility of course i'm [ __ ] incredibly lucky like i didn't choose to be me you know what i mean i didn't choose my parents or the good and bad things that shaped me yeah but i but i wanna i wanna have a conversation about personal responsibility as it relates to career success and let's let's start with hard work because in our society right now there's two counter narratives one is that don't work like incredibly hard you're gonna burn out and you're gonna have mental health problems and the other is i've never met someone that sat here in front of me that doesn't work really [ __ ] hard and i i did i don't know how i would have sat here
without hard work and tremendous sacrifice well first of all we sort of already made the point a lot of people are working hard at things they hate yeah so working hard at things you dislike hate or find stressful will bring success and money but at a cost working hard at things you love i'm i finished filming at midnight last night in madison i got in at half one i had my dinner at two and i fell asleep at three and i bounced out of bed this morning to come here to do a podcast for the price of a car why because i love what i do now if i was had got in at three from working as a hospital porter and had to get up to do another job which was quite well paid this morning but i hated it i wouldn't be buzzing and that's what releases the cortisol and the stress hormone into your body so you can't compare you're not comparing like and like even though both people are working hard you've even got people that might be barristers or doctors really well paid professions but find it stressful when they're burnt out and stuff it's unlikely you and i will burn out because i'm like what's next and you're intrinsically motivated by you've got a sense of control exactly so that's that's what i think that i think we can we can differentiate there on hard work straight away so if i i'm more interested in the first thing you said about the the join between people's origin story and how much stick they get for the success they've got because i'm i have to phrase mine a lot more than you because i get put in with the silver spoon guys because i'm a just a white man yeah so i'm not going to use real names here and i'm not going to use real jobs because i respect my profession is so hard i don't give a [ __ ] whether you're prince charles doing stand up anyone who does stand up
i just it's so hard to stand up and i don't think an elite background helps you in stand up might help you in telly and production won't help you on stage with a bucket of piss coming through but i've been told on more than one occasion uh we'd love we'd love to we'll book you for the x show but we've already got ollie um and so we got ollie we can't have two and i'm like how how is how me do me and ollie represent the same thing i sometimes think well i've got more in common with i could phone up i don't know if you know who judy love is i could phone up judy now and we could speak for an hour about we both grew up same similar part of london similar age similar family yes she's got jamaican stories but i've got six stories and that's the only difference in our conversation we come from the same place economically we come with fighting the same fight we're punching up from when we never no one would ever say that i'll probably be in trouble for even saying that that's the controversial thing for me to say and it shouldn't be because if corbyn and people like that have got it right everyone who starts with what i call lower entitlement points i've got a lot more entitlement points than a woman of color undoubtedly i've got less less entitlement points probably than a ghanaian prince right so all the people that have got [ __ ] all uh i'll start should link arms don't matter what gender you are what color you are that would be powerful i'm a bit nervous when we get carved up and we're people who started life in a tower block should that tower block should be united you know what i mean so that's the first point but i do i do think you we get off we do get off lightly if we've got money if we had a more council estate background it's like a license to be okay with having money like i can wear my rolly by the pool when i'm in ibiza because i sound common yeah if i sounded posh
i probably would keep the breitling on yeah it's so true i one of one of my guests that i had on the podcast um went to a very good school and um is white and blonde and very pretty and she basically can't give advice to anybody without the papers smashing her or social media in fact there was a meme before before she came on the podcast there was a meme that went viral i think it did 250 000 retweets when she the day she released her book and it was this someone pinned someone up against the wall with a big trumpet and it was like white privilege telling you how to how to become rich like she is not allowed to give advice to anybody because she's white and went to a good oxford and with how much good insight and business knowledge and whatever like so many people went to oxford and didn't build multi multi-million pound two multi-million pound companies i still want to hear this from this person if someone's offering you knowledge she's not it's not like she's telling you about her struggles earlier there was a queue in waitress and i just couldn't keep that that would be the trumpet right she's trying to tell you how to build a business it doesn't matter if you come from space if you can make me money tell me how if you can tell me how to start the next comedy streaming platform service where i own 40 of the shares yeah i don't give a [ __ ] if you've got a double first from cambridge or whether you're one of the mandem i don't care show me where to show me how to do it you've got you've got to have an open knowledge is is once it's out there is democratic the path to acquiring it is not um but there's no doubt about trying to stay on topic what you're saying about personal responsibility is i'm really split on this because i don't believe it's true that anyone with enough will and luck can make it i think we're probably outliers and freaks and just wired a bit different and i've got
what it takes to push through i think if enough blocks are in place you're a single child of a drug using mum in a towel block and i am built of stronger stuff so i've bounced through my childhood and i've come out the other side but a lot of people aren't if we were all born the same then why aren't i playing basketball why am i not sprinting why am i not a math scholar you know some of us are born genetically more equipped in other departments i'm clearly a highly energetic person who's good at motivating themselves some part of that is inborn i was like i would like it as a baby before i could speak you know the other toddlers are like dribbling on their blocks and i'm like where the blood set so it's unfair for us to go if only uh neil at the top of the tower could have been like us he too could have been an entrepreneur because maybe he just being a single mom being of color or being transgender or being not everyone has the strength to push through those things not everyone does and it's unfair to go up to a wheelchair and go just stand mate i'm using willpower with my legs why can't you because some people that that is a wheelchair their social background and they don't have the strength and then they start using drugs and they just sink too low not everyone can pull themselves out so that's why we do need more equality yeah i agree i'm definitely pro-quality i i there's a sense of helplessness i get if i like if i go all the way and say you know successful people well they were born with something yeah it creates a sense of like well then you're we're all just stuck in our lanes forever and if i believe that when i was shoplifting pizzas in manchester but then again what i do understand i actually when i re the harder i reflect i basically give myself credit for nothing because i was born into a situation in a country i actually think my bad experiences are why i'm here like the fact that my
parents weren't around at 10 years old created this big gap of independence et cetera et cetera i've told this story a million times but it's the bad [ __ ] that is the reason that i became an outlier i think i became very obsessive obsessed with money my book that's why it's called happy sexy millionaire because it's the first page of my diary when i was like a kid i want to be a happy why did i want to be happy sexy because we were [ __ ] broke have you got siblings though yeah i've got so are they happy 60 millionaires not one of them none of them are like me and they don't understand me either they look at me and like scratch their heads but what does that tell you it's almost like you've run a controlled experiment exactly so tuning out um genetics versus willpower i the the difference between my childhood experience and theirs was they were raised by parents and i basically wasn't so by i was the youngest so by the age i was 10 my parents were like oh we've done parenting now we will work all the time and we will be out of the house when steve comes home and will be at the house when he wakes up so i was the only one where the the experiment was total independence so thought experiment for you if you'd have been born a fraternal twin another boy yeah so as much your brother brothers your other brothers but happy boy at the same time same conditions same school everything happens so do you believe you would have another happy sexy millionaire living in the flat opposite or do you think depends what that brother's personality was like because we both know that that brother's personality is what would have decided whether he sat at this table with us today or not and personality does come into it we are born with different personalities to an extent so i'm not saying we're all stuck in our lanes but i'm saying we need more social mechanisms because some einsteins don't have energy some einsteins might might be a bit
emotionally weaker so we're saying my example of neil at the tower block he might be really [ __ ] amazing we will never harvest that talent because our society is set up with too many blocks in place to scoop it out we had one thing in place for about 40 years called grammar schools very controversial very unfair dumping a load of 11 year olds in the thick bin my mum went to a secondary modern my dad went to a secondary modern my wife my brother-in-law my mother-in-law and father-in-law all went secondary moderns so i know people who were told you're no good at 11. so i don't say this lightly and i know how horrific that is but the data does suggest that there was a short period where we scooped off some bright poorer children not necessarily neil in the tower block but at least the poorer children whose parents meant well but were too poor we got them we got more einsteins when you watch question time switch it on and you know i went to a state school and they're giving it all that will always be a grammar school always is very rarely i went to the local comprehensive and now i'm an mp it's always i went to state which state school it's gramsci you went to an elite education then state but elite selective so we need some more stuff like that what can we do in our communities what can our youth workers do what what can we set up in in in council estates headhunters that look for talent particularly boys i'm going to say that because i was a boy once but there's a real problem with teenage boys all this testosterone kicks in and it goes the wrong way for most of us you when i came in your podcast you ask very controversial questions i think you like those questions those are the ones that are most interesting to you aren't they yeah well as long as it gets in trouble well it's hard to tell hindsight's a wonderful thing um so i guess my i was just thinking then this
is a controversial question but he asked me controversial questions so i can answer it is there no hope for some people well give me con so zoom out context got a friend tried really hard to help them change their life or do something for themselves 10 years of effort made all the offers in the world to this person still job seekers allowance you know somewhat depressed can't seem to have any impact we grew up in the same street we were best friends my whole childhood i went off he stayed there i've got tons of examples like that so i have to speak very euphemistically now i'll be cancelled not by the internet but by my friends and family stroke associate stroke i don't even want to say which group these people are uh i've all of this i've had female friends who i'm like stop dating bastards and the next guy he's nice he's a coke dealer and he's like he's gonna [ __ ] he's clear he's gonna shaggy mate and some of these women are getting to 35 you know like with the final egg in the goblet like in indiana jones waiting to be fertilized and um this the next guy he's called we've got three kids by three different women he has he's got an electronic tag but it's great because we can spend some time just bang a boring guy or a guy that likes dungeons and dragons or an accountant what they call there's a sexual attraction there to bastard men that some women particularly from high school background working class women find hard to get over would be one example but you can get over it it is possible to do it the mistake people like you and i make is we try to help and say you've got a friend who's unmotivated depressed leaves every job after three months it's always someone else's fault it's always the system it's always if only corbyn was in power it's uh my dad did this my mum did that always putting it on someone else and then you're making it worse by putting
it on you let me help you're just a positive version of that the solution is with them they have to switch the light bulb on in themselves they may not get there but the moment they wake up and go today's the day i'm gonna try and change my life they should that the first step it might be speaking to a therapist it might be changing your career it might be enrolling in a levels that you do at night time like i did that was what lucky enough my revelation came up when i was you're on job seekers allowance at one point i was yeah i did my a-levels late because i had this spark moment but it's got to come from within them it's not something as yet although science might get there one day but we can give to you in a pill or an injection you've got to suddenly have in right back to the beginning of the chat insight and baby like boom chest out i'm going to see a therapist i'm not going to use negative language i'm going to get this self-help book which which gives me some cb cognitive behavioral therapy tools i always hung up with cannabis um so yeah it's it's gonna come from them but for you and i fixes how can we solve it how can i redraft the copy what's the solution unfortunately the solution is trying to get them to have some insight so if you have got a friend like that maybe have that sort of conversation with them that spurs self-reflection because giving them a million pound a year job is just going to make them worse because that muscle that's atrophied will stay atrophied that sort of standing up making your own strength muscle i've been on my heel journey for a couple of years now but in the case of some of my best friends who i've talked about on this podcast before one particular friend called ashley jones who knows that i talk about him in his transformation story he did have a problem eating certain foods
and so he transitioned to making huel a greater part of his diet and the guy went from being and i'm sorry ash if you're listening the guy went from being like slightly overweight constantly um having health issues that are unrelated to like you know being slightly overweight to being to literally having a six-pack posting his six-pack on instagram but more importantly being high-energy and feeling amazing so when i'm like you know talking to you guys about huel i do so with such a level of passion because i believe that it can really help change your lives in a significant way i believe it can make you mentally better i know it can make you physically better and so yeah what a joy it is to have a sponsor that you believe in that much um yeah and they're also just really good people one of the most um probably scary things from my perspective that you ever did was walking out on stage for the first time for your first gig ever like what the [ __ ] were you thinking hmm going out and walking in front of people and telling [ __ ] jokes are you sure like with me it's even more complex because i don't know if you've had any stand-ups on here before never but the majority of them and quite rightly so will be like from a young age i used to watch blah blah on tv i used to watch all these american comics so i used to watch chris rock bill burr bill hicks i knew that's what i wanted to do man i was like you know i was like the young boxer in the alleyway i knew i was to box none of that nothing there is zero in my cv that shows an affinity for the craft of stand up always been the joker i'm not being funny today i don't know why you got me on one but normally i'm always asking around not this is not a thing i do on stage i'm just i'm not like the clown person why just just my again
i've just always been i just love making people laugh i've always been a joker there's some data that suggests um youngest children have it and i'm not the youngest child the oldest or people born in august and july purely because if you're smaller than everyone else you've got to develop your personality quick so you if you look at the premiership you won't find many footballers born in august i'll explain why i never made it august august 26th so you won't find me sixth as well you won't find many sportsmen or anyone that requires size or physical prowess those professions so even if you turn out to be a very tall teenager you're less likely to become a basketball player than a a teenager one inch shorter than you who was born in october the reason being you'd have been pushed by the coach and taught and everything early doors at six seven eight years old so and there is some data to suggest that people who work with their personalities for a living people that have to solve entrepreneurs and find little rat runs in alleyways develop that based on being smaller or more vulnerable but i could take lots of forms i've got an overbearing dad as well so i'm an august baby overvaling dad and some of you will be genetic my mum's very funny you talked a little bit about i was reading some some of your um previous interviews you talked a little bit about how it was a bit of a defense mechanism maybe in school if that's you found your name yes by being a yeah i wasn't but but i don't know how i wasn't bullied but i wasn't the smallest no girlfriend um wasn't him with the in crowd at all i was sort of like an ex in a sort of external group that had diplomatic immunity definitely a virgin definitely no cool friends definitely one of the idiots but we don't punch him because he's sort of all right
obviously i did get as a working class school i did get punched a lot but not as much as i was in that league you probably won't even remember them just above the bullet the boring grey league no point yeah which is the place to be at school because if you're popular at school we all know you're gonna have a [ __ ] life so anyway so because of where i grew up it's not people like well how can you have no contact with stand up so you gotta remember my age i know i look young young for my age i'm 45. so what was my dad watching on tv jim davison bernard manning jimmy jones it's like bruce forsyth and jimmy tarbuck like you know live at the palladium and all that it's not obviously they're all talented comedians and i do i do mean that but it just didn't resonate with what it's not it's not about my life so i'd like i'd laugh because my dad was laughing but i was like what's this crazy art form i've got to learn more me and my friends mostly either smoking it's all about getting high or we'd watch old young ones or whatever the funny sitcom of the day was maybe even badly whatever it was that's what i thought comedy was no we didn't go to the theater of the weekend we didn't know which cultural pursuit should we do this weekend family it was like dad works all week he's tired we have a curry nan looks after you and then when you get to 15 16 you get stoned over the park get someone pregnant work in a shop die that's it that's the finish line so i managed to like i say have this weird entrepreneur turn my life around get my first class degree moment but just by sheer bad luck i ended up at a university that did not have a stand-up night most of them do so again i went those three years without any exposure to in the student bar stand up it was all music there was some theater no one talked about stand up we didn't have this sort of slightly fashionable thing now being obsessed with american stand-ups i like to say to my british colleagues just remember
if you start having this sort of slick quality to your stand up it can look a bit mannered um that's just a side point so i went all the way to the office to my dream job as an advertising copywriter with no content we stand up just being funny as [ __ ] the clown you know legend on a night out first one up dancing but i didn't know that something you could do for a living and i ended up doing a job i loved branding copywriting headlines i still love it you can tell by the way i'm describing it then the creative planner was like you're always the one up at the pitch issue i would do like if we're pitching to a big client i would do like the funny bit with interaction to get them on the side when i'm presenting the creative he said why don't you try stand up stephen workman if you're watching thank you uh why do you use chase stand up with your mind's glass region and i thought you know what do it once like doing a bungee jump or a skydive or karaoke it's just that's as far as my thinking went something to tell the kids so i wrote a few ideas down in a book booked an open spot in and i went and did it it was very scary i think i did a pack of imodium before i went on and my hand was shaking and i got that it wasn't obviously wasn't great but i did wear ish well-ish first laugh was like someone stuck cocaine heroin ketamine everything in my but not that i've done those drugs but everything in my veins and i was hooked you know in the proper sense of that it [ __ ] my life everything fell apart like a junkie how can i get more of that i want a gig three night i want to give five nights a week for no money i've got a creative director we're talking about multi multi-million pound accounts advertising is you work till 8 pm you have pizza on your birthday under your table you sleep at the office i'm running off to do unpaid gigs in manchester my relationship with my girlfriend fell apart my bill started to not be paid i started to look thin because i suffered with my nerves in the beginning
i'm throwing up [ __ ] like both ends it's the closest thing to a drug addiction that i've ever experienced i would have not seen my mum for a year to chase this dream it was i was hooked with on that laugh i'm like this is what i'm born to do i just [ __ ] know it how can i monetize it basically how why were you hooked on the laugh why did the laugh matter so much to you it's a rush it's a rush anyone is i've not taken any serious drugs but anyone that's taken any recreational drugs which is a bad analogy because they're not actually addictive but coffee for example i can't live my life without without it why are you addicted this is as absurd as asking me why i'm addicted to coffee because i go i wake up i feel alive and i have an amazing day the same laugh goes in buzz uh serotonin pupils dilated afterwards i want to tell everyone about the gig i was taking [ __ ] footage into work and showing it to people and playing it in the office look at me that's me look look come and look at me in this grainy footage i mean that's so embarrassing that i did that i just i couldn't i just couldn't believe it i couldn't believe i was getting laughs from strangers it was straight to the ego straight to the cortex everyone has that but do you have you ever considered that you might have that might have mattered more to you maybe because of your childhood or whatever than other people that that sense of like that validation and that yeah i mean maybe i mean i'd had plenty of validation at work i'd had the whole office cheer i've rung the bell when we've won big pitches i've got the rush in the meeting but it nothing it it's the difference i'm trying not to talk about drugs all the time it's the difference between going from a beer to mdma right i don't recommend any hard drugs obviously particularly people that work with their brains you're a fool if you mess with
the equipment but you can't compare them when you say everyone has that not everyone stood on stage to a thousand people and seen people standing and clapping that is different it's of a different category of ego rush very dangerous what problems does it give you well initially all has come with it initially that my life felt my life fell apart like a junkies i was down to 10 stone at one point um so it come to the point where i had to say this needs to not be a drug this needs to be a food and i left the agency and then i was you know off still today though right so all all things come with their their costs what is the cost today of that that career and that rush and that i suppose the worst thing is the travel that is a genuine negative one since min has been born my daughter um i actually quite like traveling i like being in the back of a car i love watching movies i love reading and i love eating on the move so all the things that most people hate i just happen to quite enjoy just pure i don't know why because i'm always on the go i like being forced to sit still and watch a movie so i love flights for example the longer the better um you still [ __ ] yourself now when you get when you're about yes big time but so far as so far as missing part of your child growing massive negative doing a is there's a there's a guilt thing in your gut and you know you do cry a bit after facetiming that particularly when it's a baby so that's the biggest negative i can think of but once you're with a woman or a man that gets it there's no negative in your relationship i was with a couple of girls before who would make me feel bad about being away whereas lindsay's kicking me out the door she's focused on the business we're a team that's well paid [ __ ] off see you later don't call home if you're stressed i'm cool with it that's what you need man
you need someone who gets it i do [ __ ] myself though still yes do you know when you know the the um a modium scale goes up depending on how much of my show it is so if you booked a show for me today where you're going to introduce me and i'm going to do 20 minutes stand up and you've got 2 000 people in the room there would be nerves there a fair bit of nerves but mostly i'm ready to knock the gig the [ __ ] out with my first punch if you've put an event on and michael mcintyre is closing and you're hosting it and you to me at the last minute i said russ i've decided to do two halves can you do 20 minutes at the top i chip myself because they're not there for me they're there for you and him and i've got a conversion job to do right and the risk is massive and then michael's fans are your fans and that's when the nerves kick in when i'm doing royal variety show or live at the apollo where people have responded to a tv ticket not me that's when the nerves go back to old school style nerves how how do you uh what's the battle you have with those nerves and in terms of your cognition and before you go on stage what are the tips you can give people a lot of people there's two there's two ways to to to work on that um the first thing is the actual practical thing on the night i would say um just work with breathing and mindfulness and all the stuff you've probably read a thousand times the other thing to do is if you can find a way to do it it depends which stage your career you're at if you're at the stage of the career like me and you a lot i'm not trying to be offensive a lot of people are sucking addicts a lot of the time so we're constantly walking into the rooms where people think we're legends it's never going to be a difficult gig now and again something comes up well you're the tadpole and you you don't have the hardware in place and [ __ ] bill gates is speaking before you oprah's hosting it and all of a sudden you're who's this guy you're having a day of who's this guy
we're all we can all have a who's this guy dave and the only way to practice that is to put yourself in more who's this guy moments regularly so how i do that as soon as my tour finishes i book the smallest hardest weirdest they might have bad lighting they might have no microphone they might be half sold and i'm unlisted unlisted unannounced unexpected and i walk on to tiny clubs full of drunk men 50 year old ukip dads all of those places i put myself in those all the time because the risk is high the nerves are the same but the consequence is zero so i'm constantly training the muscle of convert the people who don't know who i am keeping it sharp the whole time so whatever business you're in you'll be able to think of an equivalent way of doing that so set up smaller situations where you're having to keep that muscle because the danger is the more successful you get you lose the muscle of walking into a room full of skeptics and if you lose that muscle that's the money making muscle so practice it i keep mine tight at all times i constantly put myself in unbilled unlisted unideal situations when you walk onto a stage when you're at my level which i would call myself quite recognizable you can't say i'm like michael mcintyre or chris rock or someone but i'm sort of known as a stand-up so what that means is when i walk on stage at the comedy store late show 400 people drunk off their tits work dues hindus i'm unbilled unexpected unlisted the room splits into three straight away it splits into oh my god it's him [ __ ] what a treat we've got him for 20 quid to the middle who's that am i supposed to know that is is he good i don't know i think i've seen him and the final group can't stand this [ __ ] that's the only group i'm playing to win a little bit in the middle group they're the only people i'm interested in because that's where the muscle
building exercises and then when you go on stage to your audience they get you like that yeah yeah but if you come with that conversion energy to your own audience you must be you don't need it that's the problem all you got to do is put your foot out and they're like it's his foot he's amazing that's the problem yeah that's the problem you get flabby easy in all businesses so you talked about your relationships there in your current partner i um i heard you got married for nine months yes yeah sorry i realized what you mean yeah no i did i was i was married bef i was married but i'm currently i'm trying to enjoy my middle marriage that's what i say today okay no i was uh so we were just we realized we were just mates there was a romance there we had a lot in common we were both into this same world and we were sort of living together and we got married and we were like that was a mistake and then we just weren't married and it was totally amicable no no fighting no problems at all but you talked about the understanding that your current partner has current wife yeah so my former partner the one who was married for nine months had that as well which is why so we thought we should probably get married but we realize marriage needs more than that um so yeah so lindsay is more lindsay doesn't get jealous unless i do something [ __ ] like follow a glamour model in the instant and like a bikini pic in which i get my ass kicked but still do because i'm neanderthal and uh um so unless i do something stupid like that which i rightly get in trouble for or like change my flight in ibiza and go to a boat party which i also tried to do and got my ass kicked for um so but if i'm on the road and doing autographs afterwards and there's all girls in the picture or something i've never ever like lindsay's just not even a flicker she gets it that's the job is you're everyone's friend if the girls
fancier in the audience even better that means another maldives holiday type thing that's the way she's in business mode she isn't on a bit of an entrepreneur lindsay she's got two businesses and she sees my business as a business and she never ever guilt me i've been i might be away for four nights i won't some days i've gone [ __ ] i didn't phone home i didn't text i didn't even now and again all i have to do is do a good night and she knows that my head might be full there's never any fallout never and that just makes the trust and the bonds it's just of course i then do call home it just works because of that you're someone that will get a lot of attention because it's i mean it's your job right it's like holding you literally to seek attention as much yeah and women they love funny guys right so god you know probably i don't know if it's gonna get in trouble but you know that you could have a lot of different partners if you wanted to i could be harvesting 24 7. that's what i mean i probably would have fractured pelvis by now if i hadn't got married people are going to hate this question because they think i'm encouraging it but i'm here to play devil's advocate okay why aren't you well um i fell deeply in love and got married and i'm just again you get back to the childhood undivorced parents it's just what i modeled on this i've never had a problem with saying to a girl um the relationship's done my head's starting to be turned let's move on and as much as it breaks my heart if i ever felt that way i would obviously with a marriage in a child i would sit down to li to lindsay and say this an issue here i've started to have these thoughts how can we work on it and we'd work something out so that's just my way i operate hardly any men do sorry girls for my sex if only men did i mean but they don't so i'm trying to a man should go
i haven't done anything but i'm having these thoughts what does it mean does it mean we're not in love does it mean sexually our relationship's not exciting is there something we can do that some games we can play to mimic that i don't know whatever couples need to just have that conversation because if you pretend men and women aren't having those thoughts you're naive so you need to keep the relationship alive that's the way to do to do it why why am i married well a 45 remember and b i i'd been i'm more serial monogamist so i've gone from age 16 to 30 odd baby the girl for three years break up get straight with another girl literally the next week break up on anywhere between nine months to three year relationships never had a one night stand i'd never been single i'd never been on a lad's holiday so when i split up a bit weird but my mum was like you are not gonna find a sustainable relationship because of all these reasons you said you're gonna get a lot of female attention you're always gonna wonder what it's like she went i was you i'd have a year on your own so i set the clock and i was like panani master in action and we're not cynically not cynically shagging that's going to be the promo clip but not cynically shagging but being sing it's more to more to it than just shagging it was like just being enough living in a flat on your own i bought that's banging flat in london i've still got i use it as my london residence and i just thought you still got it yeah it's your wife now well we stayed there all the time and uh she's a and i'm like i can i can come on live i've never lived on my own before i'd always live with a woman always live with a girl and uh it was just nice i'd just be in my pajamas and have a career and then i could i could or i would i would just think i'm gonna go out on the pool after the gig and that gets boring quick unless you've got some sort of um issue like sex edition issue and you're addicted to
lots of different women i'm not that type of like dominant guy that needs to [ __ ] a thousand women to prove i've walked the earth um i moy without getting too personal i do enjoy i'm a highly sexed individual very unfortunately for lindy incredibly high sex drive like a 19 year old lad but it's sex i enjoy not conquering women so i can quench that first with one woman over and over again but i did want to know what it was like to you know to be single to be free and part of that i'm sure it's the same for a woman for a man is to go what's it like to have a one night stand or to be to be a have this rock star lifestyle and sleep with loads of women the difference i did it was if i was going out after a gig or if a girl would dm'd me and we were going out or whatever just missed tinder um i would say this is where i'm at this is what i do for a living i'm single i i do love making love and i love going out but there is no relationship here i would never went to bed with a woman dangling any fake carrots ever i think it's a form of i don't want to use language too strongly there's a sort of con a consent tweak in there if you're lying if you're in a power position like me and saying go let's see where it goes but you just want to [ __ ] i think that's wrong i think it's morally wrong i think you should say this is what it is i want to party with you can you handle it and news flash most women are looking for that too so i had a wicked time for for a year and then one of those girls was lindsay and that's just something different happened and we saw we saw each other again and again and again and then boom married i i asked this question because i was i was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night who's an entrepreneur and he's continually failed in marriage and we were going back and forward about whether about the importance of meaningful relationships and i was making the case that they're incredibly important i sent him a ted talk
about which shows that they did a study on men over i think about 100 years and showed that the men that were in committed relationships lived longer had way better health were way happier they studied men for 100 years i think it's the only 100 year study they've done of this type and he was basically saying well you know women that you know they just don't understand that i'm ambitious and stuff well is he wrong is he right how is he true he's statistically true and also people that believe in god live longer i'm not a god i'm total atheist for you i mean that would be the curve but you won't expect to know right tell me about jesus stephen there are it's people that believe in god live longer and so i think it's not the case that um faith keeps you alive or that a relationship keeps you alive as far as i understand the science there's a neuro-protective and cardiovascular benefit of literally doing what we're doing today just hanging out basically and the most reliable way to hang out and check in with someone on a really regular basis is to have someone you're married to are you okay take your stress levels down or even better get together every sunday with a bunch of people who actually give a [ __ ] about whether your skin whether you've got cancer with your wife's left you who are going to look out for you and sadly in our society religion is the only thing that forces people on a friday saturday or sunday to get together if you're going mosque every friday is it if you're a mosque if you're going mosque once a week and you're you're praying next to that man next year he's probably going to notice if you're down it's as simple as that there's nothing magic about marriage but the homo sapiens i believe that our cortisol levels drop and our dopamine levels rise when someone gives a [ __ ] about us it would make sense on an evolutionary level if you look at the way chimps are that when one of them gets excluded from the
group because they have a fight and they're going you know you see them on the documentary yeah yeah they never live long because why would you where is the evolutionary drive of your genes to past seeds and eggs on if you're the type of person who can't bring the pack forward so there would be a strong evolutionary argument for single people to die before attached to people for non-religious people to die before atheists so atheists like us have to make sure we really have strong friendship groups and i wish wish wish we could get humanism off the ground every sunday there's readings there's your local richard dawkins is doing a science reading we all have a bit of tea and cake our kids all play together and then we all go home wouldn't that be amazing and why doesn't it exist it's solved a lot of problems because if you were depressed i would pick up on it if i'm seeing you every week everything you've said is backed by everything i've studied and i've read a chapter in my book called the journey back to human which describes this it was inspired a lot by johanna hari you wrote lost connections yes and um about getting back to our tribes and when you look at the way we're living our lives today it's it's just the antithesis of human and religion and relationship is the only way you can keep those human elements in so far as your your friends who keep having failed marriages marriages fail for lots of different reasons so you so for for men who keep getting three-year relationships and splitting up if if it's the same reason every time if the eye is roving and he just wants to [ __ ] other women i mean we need to speak about this in real language that men use sorry if you find it offensive switch off but a lot of the time a man gets two three years in the novel he wears off
and he's like i just what's it going to be like a different woman so the cost as well the resistance or the uncomfortable parts of the relationship remain yeah but the upside decreases if it's sex a lot for a lot of men like so i feel so sorry for girls that but why did why did my man she what was it i wasn't doing it's hard to face the fact that some men maybe 60 70 of men who split up with you just want to shag someone else it's let's just put on so i'm sure many women but i don't speak for women so i'm not being sexist i'm just not speaking for women let get a woman on here ask her why she splits up with someone every three year so you need to if you're a man that has those urges you need to find a woman that you can work with that can keep you sexually excited and do whatever you need to do just you've got to do it and and you've you need a woman you can talk about those things with and a lot of it can be role playing verb dirty talk verbal fantasies whatever these are practical tips a lot of couples never cross these boundaries because they're too shy so you split up with someone because you wanted to get dressed up as a policeman and potentially with someone else and you were too cringe to tell her but that could have been the thing that converted it it could be as simple as as going to a club separately dancing with uh with other people then going home together in the night have you tried until you have that conversation as a couple and admit you're having those thoughts you will split up or worse cheat and ruin that woman's life and ruin her faith in men or if you're any what i'm sure it's exactly the same if you're a gay gay man as well you'll ruin that boy you've spelled if you're in his life so far as what why women are with men who knows and that's not for me to say but i do think a lot of the times we're reluctant to admit it's such a basic sexual reason i bet i i suspect it is the case and we'll make any i just felt bored
we've grown apart you know i just wasn't it would say any old [ __ ] just to not admit i like looking at girls on instagram i want to go on holiday on my own tough conversation to have right because it feels like an attack on but you build it in as fun yeah you'd be like three years in i'm gonna be straight with you i really really love you as long as you love if you don't love a girl just tell her you you definitely need to split up but if you love her but i have sexual urges that is resolvable guys i think quite often hoochie and this is a presumption i don't know the truth they will take the path of least resistance so they look over at their partner and they think if i have this conversation this is going to blow up and she's going to scream in my face i think i can just go and grab that apple without exactly without resistance so they just reach out for the apple because that conversation feels like more psychological discomfort then yeah i don't i just don't don't go shagging other people to end your your relationship we all do that they literally cheat to end the relationship we've all had moments i have in past relationships where i've found myself in a bar contemplating it talking to a girl and as soon as that happens i know either i don't love this girl or something's going wrong in the bedroom it's normally one of those things can you love someone and she is the type of question you'd ask me probably yes yeah you think so probably in the same in the same way i would i can adore my daughter and would die for her but would i go and work on a project for a month with no phone contact at a pivotal d vet point of her life yes i could because i can compartmentalize i imagine women are exactly the same i in fact i suspect a woman can be profoundly in love with a man who's not giving her attention or making her feel special or sexually exciting her and she can have sex with someone else feel awful and still profoundly love her
husband one of the things you said is you said you uh you're 45 46 when in august yeah yeah of course maybe almost baby not long you look about 31. like if you told me you were 31 32 i'd probably believe you yeah um how have you done that so first of all it's got me into trouble um because what happened was when i started doing all this biohacking and stuff like that what's biohacking it's where your work you're using the current science available to try and hack your own biology to survive on less sleep in a way that doesn't damage your health for example i've not cracked that one to not lose your hair working on that one or to slow down the aging process so not so that you can live to 120 not that it's a common misconception but that so you can have the bit of your life between 30 and 70 in a more sustained younger state that's what you're trying to do you're trying to have better middle-aged years not be 120 year old what you'd like to be is 120 year old that's like an 80 year old now what you're trying to do is stretch particularly i did my first gig at 28 so i quickly realized i need to find some solutions here because i'm high energy lee evans act i talk about my mum my dad i'm a late bloomer i've got what i'm gonna i would end up having a wife much younger than me i need to have the body of a 30 year old man quick so i started studying i mean i was 30 at the time you know what i mean i need to keep it here um so the trouble it got me into is when stuff started to work dramatically work i would sit down in interviews like this with journalists and people will go how old are you russell when i was they were guests trying to get a compliment and they would they started to guess four years younger five years younger than 10 years younger than 15 years younger like you have today
and i thought this is showbiz [ __ ] that i'm gonna knock a few years off because the one prejudice people are still allowed to have not book you cause you're old can't wait till old life matters starts because i'm going to be [ __ ] behind no but seriously why can we why is it okay to make redundant and underpay and exclude people based on their chronological age but that prejudice alive and well um so i i thought i lied i lied my ass off and of course i was really unsophisticated about it i was like celebrating my real birthday with comedians and friends and then lying to the observer or the mirror how much did you lie by five years oh not bad i forgive you um but so that was a story that was a tabloid story in two newspapers and i and a lot of jokes were made on tv a comedy awards ceremony so i was quite mocked for it so as a comedian eminem style i took that wrote a show about it called right man wrong age took it on tour owned it no one said a word since and now i talk about it all the time i think it's quite funny really it's quite human i mean what the [ __ ] if so if i don't know what whatever the thing is in your profession maybe it's age as well it's been aged for me when i was 18 everyone wrote about me because i would like i'd made a hundred pounds when i was 18 and i realized that in my industry your age and the achievement are the most important things so when if i was 18 i've made a hundred quid they had me on bbc this 18 year old's made a hundred quid right and i realized that by when i get to 25 i actually need to have made about 100 million for them to consider me the same way yeah so i'm like super slowly changing my birthday every year i'm like oh 27. i'm like i need to be a billionaire right so but from a business sense it might be exaggerating turnover to seek investment then revealing real turnover afterwards but say okay we were winning this anyway that type thing so i was exaggerating turnover to attract investment um but i didn't realize it was a massive issue because people come to stand up
comedians for authenticity and realness particularly my type of stand-up so anyway i owned that chucked it back that's all good how i've done it is just there's loads of places you can go to i started with dave asprey and bulletproof and all of those things although i do think drinking butter is way over the top but it's moving towards a lower carb not keto nothing extreme i don't believe in anything extreme that's hard to stick to but certainly i don't believe we're supposed to eat white bread and cereal and [ __ ] like that working with what we build to do would be the most basic way without spending money anyone that's watching this can start we woke up on the savannah this morning you and i it's time to go hunting there ain't going to be food there we probably would have eaten at 2 p.m no doubt about it human beings are built to have anywhere between 16 hour to 2 day fasting gaps no doubt about it and sure enough now we look at this on a cellular level we can see what happens so i ate at um last night i went very late so i didn't eat till nearly 11 p.m by now as i'm speaking to you not only do i have an intense [ __ ] focused high from only having had coffee and water which has got to be a good thing there's um autophagy going on in my cells so the cells are eating up their own bits of dead protein and [ __ ] just out of sheer desperation for something to eat that's the first thing that happens apoptosis is the proper name for it the cells that the [ __ ] ones just die and burn off like the crust at the edge if you pour food on the edge of that situation as far as i understand the science i'm sure people will refine what i'm saying i'm trying to distill what i've learned for the layman you you keep all that crap in so unfortunately we're pro fasting is brilliant i don't buy into many fads but the science here you can see under a microscope
so intermittent fasting and eating lower carb is something anyone can do someone on 10 grand a year can do that tomorrow so eat more like leafy green vegetables i think if you're on 10 grand you are probably into yeah exactly but eat more leafy green vegetables breakfast is i think the easiest one to skip because you produce a hormone in the night that suppresses appetite anyway otherwise you'd wake up hungry all night if you are waking up hungry or diets [ __ ] change it so you don't i won't wake up hungry so we're brought up to wake up not hungry and eat a bowl of cocoa pops and then boom the insulin goes up insulins you don't want your insulin high and the only way to do that is sugar and carbohydrate so lower your carbohydrate 120 gram net a day anyone can do that still rice if you like bread eat bread but eat wholemeal bread that's the two most basic things you can do now so far as the more intense chemicals i can tell you what i'm on i would take phytation in the morning which is a synalytic activator something that's that stops cell um decrease and senescence like aging in cells once a week i will probably also take another synalytic activator a chloroquine is called i take pqq every morning that's the little pink one i do take nmn which is really expensive but the the life force in the cells that keep us going is called nats nad and that's what causes aging aging is not inevitable it's your cells we're a combination of digital and analog information so every time you rewrite a cell it gets rewritten a little bit less well and then you get wrinkles and gray hair and you start forgetting and you die so if you can help the cells be more accurate in writing you can stay younger not just in how you look but generally so i do take nmn every day that's the big one and that that is a precursor to creating nad in the body and i've i mean i have no botox i have no filler
in my face i do use stuff from boots and moisturizer and i do go for like a posh facial now and again but there's nothing artificial in my skin um this is a great point moment to cut to my podcast sponsor nmn loads of people make it okay um if you're looking for a good one in the uk go on amazon i think it's double wood he's good it's expensive though man you're looking at six pounds a day for a substantive yeah five six pounds a day but if you think if you're spending if you're lucky enough to be spending that on on a coffee take a flask buy an mn instead i bought my own coffee today so what i will do is my pet hate is watching a video like this listen to podcasters and people not listing grams and brands afterwards and all the top guys david sinclair's the guy you want to read by the way if you read one book it will change your life it's why we age and why we don't have to david sinclair he does all the science but he always refuses to give like geeky levels of endorsement what i take because his inbox always crashes so what i will do is i will i will send you exactly what i take on a daily basis you need to check with your physician and you need to make sure everything's right for you obviously but nmn is definitely the one that encourages nad production and helps the cells copy themselves and slow down aging resveratrol very very very important so i take a um 750 milligrams of nmm and i take a gram of resveratrol every morning don't go on amazon and buy resveratrol the brown stuff you need trans resveratrol the ultra refined stuff you need a gram of it a day vita fair is is a good brand what about hair hair they've still not starting to get grazed yeah they're still not solved why we go gray or because baldness is a genetic program
that's running like your height it's harder to hack it's to do with the testosterone hormone dhd that kicks in dht that kicks in um so your body after a while and the way it synthesizes testosterone in the scalp causes the follicles to die and fall off the only way to do that is to block dht but if you're a man it's a too it's a double-edged sword because if you start messing with your testosterone you can lower your sex drive lower your aggression i need lots of aggression in what i do when i go on stage and for exercise and things so i don't take things like um finisteride which we know works because i'd rather be jason statham like bald and horny than have loads of hair in a eunuch that said um i am losing my hair at the crown i have been for about two years the reason you can't see it today as much as you could two years ago i am using a derma roller um you can buy these cheaply on amazon make sure you buy one with individual titanium spikes if it's boasting hundreds of titanium spikes it's a shite one it means they've got a rolled out bit of titanium you want one if it's plastic it'll be about 190 200 spikes titanium and you'll be able to see each individual spike 0.5 millimeter once a day roll roll roll it's a little bit painful roll roll and roll at the temples here and then you would put on minoxidil 15 ideally duoden's a good one again very expensive you're looking at 340 quid a month um but it works what does it do you start to get first of all little pubi gray hairs and it just holds the wolf so you're not bald you don't have like 17 year old hair but as you can see i am no i am not bald and that's all i do the roller is the roll is about oh no the roll is about a tenner the minoxidil is expensive but you can get like a get it down to about 30 pounds a month but don't go below 15 and if you really want to do belt on braces how you shampoo is important get a really good caffeine shampoo like alpacin and you
want um a brush like it's like a round really cheap round plastic brush with the plastic bristles like boys would have gelled their hair with back in the day one of those and when the shower really scrubbed that shampoo in and leave it for five minutes so if you shave or you brush your teeth don't have your toothbrush and shave while the foam's there and then shower it out how did you get into all of this was it that book no no that's i've just researched myself the optimal methods for hair regrowth but for biohacking i've used david perlmutter the doctor a cardiovascular doctor about heart health and cholesterol and make trying to learn the safety of going higher fat i use dave asprey for a lot of the supplements your pqq and things like that and all the knowledge about high fat and biohacking and sleep and all that and i use david sinclair for the real real hardcore science on life extension it's a brilliant book it's just about accessible for the main reader but if you get into it you love it there's loads of stuff in there i don't do like the cold showers and things like that cold showers tell me about that i've uh i've heard about this but i just don't have the guts every day it just feels like it will ruin my day the most controversial thing about what i've said is i'm not recommending people go low carb i'm just saying it's what i do you might come from australasia and you might have different genetics that mean you if you eat a high fat diet it's incredibly dangerous check what your doctor recommends go and do your own research go to atlas biomed where you can get your own biome sequence by sending a bit of poo through the post it's fascinating and they send back your whole internal microbiome get your cholesterol tested three months in six months in see what it's doing my cholesterol of course is off the [ __ ] charts but so is my hdl cholesterol meaning my cholesterol ratio is good
do i have plaques in my arteries yes i do i've run a ct scan so you need to take your own call on that i mean if you're a student and you get hit by a car and you're 18 years old and we do an autopsy you will have plaque in your arteries babies have plaque in their arteries we all have blackener arteries i remain to be convinced that the fact i have cholesterol running around my blood actually is the thing that makes the plaque cholesterol that i'm in a minority i'm not medically trained i could be talking [ __ ] and i could be in the coffin when i'm 60. but i'm fascinated by it i'm a layman i'm on a journey you do your own reading the nhs recommendation certainly isn't eat high fat but i just don't buy the science it stinks to me so and plus i just i'm going on how i feel sure yeah probably the most important way um your podcast you have a podcast which um talks a lot about cancer culture yes what's um what's going on our society at the moment in terms of cancer culture it seems to be getting much more uh maybe because of algorithms and we're we're separate you know we're creating these echo chambers and we're defining you know this side is you know left and this is right and there's nothing in the middle but what's going on within society and uh i guess the question i'm going to come to eventually is how how do we fix it and can we fix it mm-hmm where are we [ __ ] i think we're probably a little bit [ __ ] for the time being because after loads of historic injustice and inequality and i hate the word woke i don't i almost don't want to be woke because it's such a [ __ ] word um i just think waking up to things you've not seen before the word wokes become politicized so i reject it as a term but we we need to swing the barometer a little bit this way until everyone's being represented properly then it will settle probably in our children's generation it will settle
to stop panicking gary davely and everyone with a union jack profile it will it will settle um what i find frustrating and toxic is we're living in a culture where you can be canceled overnight at middleton cancelled overnight sharon i was born cancelled overnight it doesn't matter who you are what your background is what color or gender you are you are at risk no one is safe trust me especially white men well anyone really i remember um i don't even know if i want to put it back out there but no reggie eights of it and he said something about jewish music producers yeah i remember just about survived that so i i i don't think anyone i think any in fact i think it's probably worse if you're of color because the right will be ready they'll be [ __ ] receive [ __ ] c so i would actually say no i would say i think everyone's at risk from this it's a rabid oh we got one of them particularly a lefty and cancelled him how can we live in a culture of instant black tradition say black and white after what is there but instant black and white cancelling where you can wake up in the morning and be gone that at the same time exists alongside how dare you use a label nothing has meaning we're in a post-modern world of amorphous fog where we don't even have pronouns nothing's real history is not real the things you've learned aren't real literature isn't literature nothing has a label no you're cancelled and i'm sure what yeah well which is it oh are we in a post-modern nothing means anything everything's up for grabs shifting meaning diverse culture which sounds quite exciting to me as a comedian or are we in a nazi germany executed the next morning both of those two together head [ __ ] i have this tweet saved in my drafts on twitter and it says and i didn't tweet it because i didn't have the nuts right because i was being i was like loki
being canceled for something i said at the time so i thought i'll just stagger this one out but it says the left will allow you to be non-binary in everything but your opinion right and it's kind of what you're saying there it's like we've got to the point where we understand things aren't binary right in sexuality and other points but my opinion has to be like if the stance i take on black lives matter doesn't perfectly i don't look like i'm wearing like as i said in the last podcast with anne the football kit shoes socks shirt then i am definitely of the right and i should be treated as such yeah and i i had it quite recently with the um dia sarah everett every tragedy because i made the point that the narrative and this is this key sentence that i just social media just didn't allow me to express then which narrative is most helpful and productive in creating the shift we need to see in male behavior which narrative is it the narrative that um which i saw a lot of which is it's it all men all men are the are the the problem is that the narrative which is most helpful and productive and so the the conversation i was trying to have is real politic what works in the real world yeah i'm not saying there's not a [ __ ] problem with men or they're not pigs or there's not like the patriarchy or there's not misogyny the stats say that i'm not the stats the stats say 97 of young women have experienced some form of sexual abuse or harassment my my point is about that which narrative is most productive and helpful you're a businessman you're like which model can we employ to get the best profit yeah because i i reflect i said well when tommy when tommy robertson ran around saying okay it's not all muslims but it's always muslims that are blowing up buildings whatever we would run them out of town because that's a deeply toxic way to think right and it's the same with black people like we get you know
locked up more so asserting that you know it's not all black people but it's some black people therefore the fear is all black people the way that i got to my logic i was like i have two nieces who are gonna go into the world who i love dearly what would i say to them they're four years old and three years old what advice would i say to them to help them a guard against predatory male behavior but also to help them in their life be productive and to work with 50 percent of the population it definitely wouldn't be lse right sit down you're gonna have to fear all men some of them the threat alessi is my niece is all men that's not for me wouldn't be a imagine the damage i would do to my niece i mean i don't know what to say you put it brilliantly i i i got finished off i got finished so badly on instagram i was [ __ ] are they finished me it's because part of the problem is having a discussion like this when a girl has just died if you and i to have this at university in two years time it's quite an interesting it's a very interesting conversation that needs to be had so i did do a stand-up response to it i did a one-minute thing but i waited 10 days smart i waited 10 days and then i did a rant about um why do we teach sex education so late why do we teach consent so late and i just made fun of the british education system not speaking to teenagers about sex enough because i think that's what the issue is um we don't teach our but at all boys whether they're whether they're predatory boys or not men aren't all about sex early enough from angels to sex offenders they should be taught in primary school not from porn no exactly that's where the problem is um but yeah so i think sometimes having trying to have a con i i do actually just disagree slightly with one thing she said
right at the top which was when you said oh um i need to have a binary opinion but but not have a binary sexuality because i i do think no you can have a non-binary opinion i we could be talking about jane austen and literature and we can say yeah but i can't think of a subject you and i can can have a conversation on where fashionable post-modernism nothing means anything doesn't apply on a major issue black lives matter yeah we could we could we could talk we could talk about now we're not we're not going to say whether black lives matter or not but we could have a discussion about rape does race exist on a genetic level we prove that it doesn't so what is race does we could we could chat and everyone could leave the electoral going i don't know what to think in a lecture or face to face or we could broadcast it now talk talk about race 100 talk about does race exist and this is why i love podcasts because you get context and nuance 180 characters in the middle of the black lives matter russell why haven't you posted the black tile you can't go well does racing exist people go racist silence is violence but you can still but what i mean is we can be post-modern fluffy and not say anything almost about anything but we still be canceled at the same time now those two things are both quite extreme yeah i mean they're opposites and that's making class cloak can close down debate and hamstrung people i like my um offensive people where i can hear them i don't like them on whatsapp groups hidden i was never against um nick griffin of the bnp going on question time i don't mind putting that out there a lot of people say you put him on there you legitimize his views what actually happened he looked like a total [ __ ] and now he's disappeared have the courage to know like i do think there is good and bad i don't think right-wing people are bad
left-wing people are good in fact i think it's just as many [ __ ] across the spectrum i do think violence and hatred is bad full stop sorry i do it's a moral absolute moral category i would rather see the people who think it have their arguments exposed the biggest experiment we've ever seen of that is donald trump yeah where his [ __ ] just fell apart because most people saw he was a [ __ ] regardless of what he'll tell you and then you probably won't see someone like him for a long while now he was right and that sort of right-wing sentiment rose around the world at the same time like bolsonaro yeah even here in europe all at the same time and it almost feels like now it's falling a little bit away i don't like chastity belts and and gagging and things and that the when they were like donald trump's coming we won't give him a state visit nonsense i want red carpet i want streets lined and let him hear what we think let him see the way british people show they're unhappy don't sort of all mutter into your tea poses and send memes like in shoreditch [ __ ] let's go out there let's let's let's let's where's our pranksters where's simon brodkin doing a stunt on him that you know have the courage of your of your arguments the goodies always winning films and they will win on the earth i believe that i'm an optimist should anybody be cancelled d platformed chucked off immediately thrown out not in haste that's why i make evil genius it's a slow weighing up over the hour we take the good and the bad we have an intellectual discussion and it's very tongue-in-cheek and funny but it's a long discussion about the people's merits it's interesting as well the elitism of it as well why are picasso's paintings still hanging why the guy was a grade a nonce and misogynist why are his painting still up because it's so lofty and important we can't
quite bring ourselves to cancel it i mean i don't know if do we go here i mean i don't know what i think of that michael jackson documentary anyway but it's almost like michael jackson's so powerful and musically important that we dare not go there so there comes to a stage where we're not willing you know someone sort of cancel proof i mean if you're really really controversial look at the old testament he did some vile [ __ ] things stoning people like flooding people with fire burning gaze how has he not been cancelled old school god too powerful that's interesting i've never actually considered that some people are too michael jackson's a very good example because i don't want to give it my spotify is going to be empty i might just go over bump and grind being deleted all right do you know it's funny because i was actually thinking about michael jackson this week because i just absolutely adore the art yeah and have it the thought of having to separate mike the the artist from the art and that the artist could have been such a horrible predator it re something that helped you know the useful rule of thumb i've found is the closer the art is to the predation and the nature of the predation the more problematic it is so i find picasso very problematic because everything i'm looking at in the studio is in a gallery it's possibly a teenage girl's body i find michael jackson problematic because when he's talking about love and i want to be close to you and i want to touch this and that what's he singing about what am i dancing to yeah if someone writes beautiful romantic novels but they like harming animals in private less problematic because when i'm reading the novel i'm not absorbing animal harm sure am i absorbing pedophilia if the song is who's r kelly singing about bumble grind with whom an underage do you see what i mean yeah so what's what's next for you what are you working on what's um what's the next chapter of your life all about and as
far as you're concerned well uh as well as just doing tv all the time whoring it up on any show that will have me which i've been doing since i started it's about the theater's reopening um for now outdoor social distance performance so i'll be finding as many spaces where i can put a marquee over vented at the side just to get back out there and stay sharp i am working on a novel i always um i'm working on a sitcom i always am and i'm developing formats i always am i'm always hustling always trying i'm yet to get that format away where i own it and it's my ip i have with evil genius i have i have made a tv pilot of that with bbc studios i would love to sell that because i think that would work globally as a format very timely as well i have got my eye on things like that as well but mostly it's how can i get in front of people and make them laugh because that's what i want to do well uh you certainly are very good at that um it's it's a talent that you have that i'm like positively jealous of like just your natural ability to make people feel comfortable and to laugh it's a real i feel the same with you multi-million pound businesses i wish i had that i feel like i would have been more successful if i had that i told you for one year we both keep revenue no no no thank you for coming today no thank you so much it's been a real pleasure and i don't think people realize how much of a [ __ ] intellectual you are my first clue was all those books you had behind you in your zoom background when i did your podcast but i dug my way out the ghetto with books like that you're so [ __ ] smart and i don't think people realize that i think they think you're a comedian you're much more than a comedian you're [ __ ] genius at the same time it doesn't pay to look too smart when you're a comic true i'm ready to i love radio 4 but i want to be on itv one as well i disrespect us
listen thank you so much for your time today and um people people know where they can find you but your podcast evil genius is immense and it's very timely and needed in our society so thank you for doing that and i am trying to squeeze out stand up on channel four during the day so if you're ever at home or you've got a day off steph's packed lunch twice a week i'm on there doing that i never thought i'd do dates i'm telling you i [ __ ] i love it and i do stand up at 1pm world needs that too right now yeah thank you so much russell appreciate it thank you [Music] [Music]