Matt Brittin to be the next DG, SNL UK launches on Sky, and Bob Monkhouse’s famous joke books are back in the news

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

0:00

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

0:08

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

0:12

That's right.

0:20

Hey. Hey.

0:21

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

0:21

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

0:25

News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

0:32

Hello and welcome to Insiders, a podcast all about the world of television with

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me, Peter Fincham, and me, Jimmy Mulville.

0:52

This is the podcast for people who love TV and want to know a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes.

0:55

Yes.

1:01

So, Jimmy, it's. It's Wednesday morning. Was when we record.

1:01

Yes.

1:05

And good morning, by the way. Good morning.

1:05

Right.

1:08

And. And we still can't confirm that the next Director General of the BBC is Matt Britton.

1:08

No. They're drawing it out, aren't they?

1:14

They are drawing.

1:16

When did it start? When did it. When did the murmuring start?

1:16

I. I mean, I think it's absolutely symptomatic of the modern news management age that the name gets out there in a sort of. Oh, yeah, he floated. He'.

1:19

Didn't they do this, say if there's anything, anything lurking in the cupboard?

1:31

Well, I think it's a bit like the vicar in church. He says, is there anybody who wants to say why he shouldn't be director of the BBC? Exactly. In case somebody's kind of rushing out of the woodwork and said, no, actually, he murdered his mother or something, or

1:34

the love child somewhere.

1:48

Yeah.

1:50

He didn't pay his TV license.

1:50

Is there.

1:52

Is there something lurking in the.

1:53

Well, nothing has come out. He gets very compressed. But still, then we got. I think I read at the weekend that it was confirmed that he was going to be.

1:55

So they've made an announcement. They're going to make an announcement, basically.

2:05

And yet still it is not been announced. And I. I kind of wonder why

2:08

you get a Pope a bit quicker than this, couldn't you?

2:12

Yes, you can. Yeah. But he's so. I don't think we can quite assume he's going to be the director General. He's. He's got a very interesting background. He went to Cambridge.

2:15

Did he?

2:25

You and I did, yes. He went to a college called Robinson College. You remember Robinson College?

2:25

No, it wasn't, it didn't exist when you and I, when you and I were there.

2:29

It was a building site.

2:32

They were all called after Jesus.

2:33

Right. Robinson was named, did you know this, after a man who made his fortune in.

2:34

Was he called Robinson?

2:41

Yes, yes. But he made his fortune in TV rentals. So that's kind of interesting that this.

2:42

I know he fell asleep when he

2:47

was alumni of Robinson College should end up as a director general of the BBC because that's the origin.

2:48

There's a whole new episode. What, what, what will they call new, new colleges at Cambridge?

2:53

Will they.

2:58

You know. Yeah.

2:58

And anybody's got enough. Anybody's got enough money to bestow on it. So then, then he's. He's also known for being a rower which when we were there, I mean it was different sort of people who went rowing because that meant very early morning, very hard work, very athletic, have

3:00

steak and eggs for their breakfast.

3:19

We were people who got up at lunchtime, went down to the. That was an early. That was early Rising for review. Yeah, that was on a good day. Yeah. So he's obviously very, you know, very fit. Fit, hard working guy, broad shoulders. I would imagine he represented Cambridge three times at the boat race.

3:21

Did he win?

3:36

He. He went to the Olympics.

3:37

Did he win. Did he win the boat race?

3:39

No, they lost every time. Lost everything.

3:41

He lost three times in a row. In a row. Pardon?

3:42

The. This is about. What is it about eight people in a boat, isn't it? How many is it?

3:45

Well, it's not about. It was an exact number. They count them as they get in. There are eight.

3:48

I always thought I'd have quite been quite good at being the cox because that really. Because that wasn't very. That's big or aphrodic and all you need to do is sit in the end. I think you're shout at the road.

3:53

I think you're too big to be the cox in those days the cox was little. Very, very perfectly formed and they got kind of pipey voices.

4:03

Yes. Need to be quite bossy. Anyway, look, we're being bit frivolous about Matt Britton. He then went to Google where he's had a highly distinguished career and then he's been enjoying what he describes corporate beast, hasn't he's been a corporate beast. He's then Enjoying what he describes as a mini gap year since the end of 2024.

4:15

What did he do in his gap year?

4:32

Is another way of saying I've been unemployed since.

4:33

What did he do in his gap year?

4:35

He grew a beard. He grew a beard when. Single sculling. He bought a single sculling boat. The boating is a theme here.

4:37

Yeah.

4:43

And he plans to learn scuba divorce. He's had plenty of time to learn that by now.

4:44

Well, well, you'll have to put that on hold.

4:47

So he actually had the whole of 2025 and quite a bit of 26 off. Ooh, that's going to be a shock when you turn up on day one as the Director General of the BBC. Your in tray is sort of brimming with.

4:50

Well, it'll take him a while to get into the building because you have to go through the process of being vetted and show your driving license and all that stuff.

5:02

But look, I think we should come back to this.

5:10

When will he start, you think?

5:12

Well, I believe very soon because obviously he's been on his gap year so he's going to leave a job as people often have to. But I kind of feel we should come back to this when we do know that he's actually going to be the Director General of the bb. And I suppose the debate about Matt Britton and I mean, come on, everybody's going to wish him well. We all want the BBC.

5:13

He sounds like a nice. People who work with him at Google said he's a. You've got one of the best CEOs about to arrive.

5:29

He's overcome the disadvantage of going to Robinson College and done very well in Robinson.

5:36

He has. And, and, and I think what, but what is in. Seriously, what's interesting is they've gone outside of the usual suspects and they've appointed somebody from a different world.

5:40

I mean, that's the big gamble. That's the big gamble because Google is many things, but it certainly isn't a public service organization. And the BBC is a public service organization sort of to the tips of its fingertips. Can you, can you. And I know this from when I joined the BBC in 2005, I think it was, I control the BBC one. I never worked in a place like the BBC.

5:51

We never worked.

6:16

Never worked really. I'd been in the independent sector. Exactly. But, but, but the culture shock is a big one because suddenly most organizations at one level or other are defined by commercial imperative, by the need to make a profit in order to invest, in order to grow, in order to keep going, you get to the BBC and that simply isn't the case. You spend money to make programs as a service to the audience. But even though there's a commercial arm of the BBC, BBC studios, most of the time if you're in the main part of the BBC, you're not looking at a proposal for a program or a service sort of thing and thinking, will we make a return on this? Because that's not what you're doing.

6:16

The other thing psychologically is he's been very senior, I mean running Google across the UK and Europe, a global giant is kind of, he's been managing Man City. And now as Amal Rajan said you know, on the podcast last week, the BBC is still huge. It's still, you know, very important to the British creative economy and it is the biggest public service broadcaster in the world. But comparatively now it's a smaller beast in the jungle. But what I'm saying is that Matt Britton is now going to be managing a smaller club in the BBC but

7:03

he's the boss of the whole thing. He wasn't the boss of Google, he was the president of Google in Europe, the Middle east and Africa.

7:43

That's pretty big.

7:48

That's a big footPR print. That's a lot. Absolutely. Yeah. But ultimately I, I, I, I'm not in any way kind of underestimating the importance of that role. But the action in Google terms is going on in America. Yeah, of course it is. That's where the strategy set, that's where the company is based, it's an American company. So, so he's gone from being, having a huge swathe of the world under him to basically being, you know, yes, you're right, the Director General. The BBC is a fundamentally British organization but he sure as hell the boss. In other words, the buck stops with him in a way that it may not have done quite the same men have done.

7:49

Well, as you say, he's not been appointed yet but Tim, David made. I thought it was a really good speech at the RTS last week when you said you were going to come.

8:29

I know.

8:38

And then you didn't put it in your diary. Yeah, yeah. You're gonna need someone to help you with the diary.

8:38

But I knew you were going and you could report back and it said, tell us about Tim's speech.

8:46

Well, it was a very good valedictory speech. He was very self deprecating. He made jokes about himself. You know, it's how, how people leave is often how we judge them. And he's I think he's left really well. He's left really well, Tim. And, you know, I've. He had a lot of warmth in the room. People were there, they asked very good questions. And he basically said, you know, I wish my successor well. And what I wish him is luck. You need a little bit of luck in this job. He said, it can get you in 10 days or it can leave you alone for 10 years. You know, it's when things go wrong, like with George Entwistle. Now, I don't know whether people recall George Entwistle, who's a very senior guy, head of what's called knowledge at the BBC. Then he was promoted to being the Director General. Very nice guy. And he lasted about as long as Liz Truss did as Prime Minister because the Jimmy Savile thing kicked off on his watch. He was unprepared. He went on to day program, I think, and was skewered by John Humphries because he hadn't been briefed. And he was left twisting in the wind and it was all over. And that happened within like.

8:50

But he. He said five weeks. I do remember this. I do remember this. But he felt so sorry for him. He acquired the nickname, rather unfairly, Incurious George. And the reason he acquired this nickname was that he explained, I think, on the Today program that because he was on the knowledge side of the BBC and, you know, clearly not. Well, no, no, bear with me. Go back to the whole kind of. And educate, inform and entertain. Yeah, he's on. On that side.

9:56

Yes.

10:22

When at Christmas, the BBC put out a couple of programs as great tributes to Jimmy Savile. That's the entertainment side.

10:22

Yes.

10:31

He said, I made a point of not asking anything about them.

10:31

Yes.

10:35

Which got him this nickname in Curious George. Now to circle back to Matt Britton within the BBC. There is a logic to that. You keep a Chinese wall between the news people and you still say that.

10:36

Can you still say wall?

10:50

You keep it. You keep some sort of barrier between the entertainment people, the news people, and BBC people would sort of say, yes, you know, we understand that. That's very. To the outside world, seems completely balmy. So when I say Matt Britton, you know he's going to have to immerse himself quickly in a culture that will be quite different to Google. That's the sort of thing I mean. And I remember it myself when I joined the BBC. And you find over, you know, decades, the BBC has built up ways of doing things that if you're come from the commercial World. They seem a bit weird, I'm honest. And you could come unstuck doing that. And I mean, I. Obviously, I agree with what Tim Davies said. If it is Matt Britton, we wish him well. He needs luck. Yeah. George Entwistle was a good man and nice man. He hit a bit of really bad luck very early on, but.

10:52

And he was a BBC.

11:54

Okay. So that's the problem because he saw things through bb, A BBC lens. He hadn't worked out how it looked from the outside world looking back in. So Matt Britton should have that advantage. He's only ever looked at the BBC from the outside in, but he's now going to learn to look at it from the inside out, which is quite a different thing.

11:57

It was interesting that, you know, that he was given challenge. He was given the fellowship of the Royal Television Society a little while ago before he was.

12:18

I got a fellowship for the RTS.

12:27

We've all got one of those 30 or 40 years. Well, I. Yes, but I mean we, we've, you know, we've just lived a long time in television that in the end they give it to you out of sympathy. So you're right.

12:30

He said he loved TV and said the industry was one I've been trying to get into. Very, very.

12:41

You don't get a fellowship for the Royal Television to get into tv.

12:47

Most people who've been trying to get into television for a long time don't start with Director General of the BBC

12:51

and they don't start with a bit of a.

12:56

At Hatrick. Yeah.

12:58

And they don't start with a fellowship in the Royal Television Society. What the. What the. Is going on with. So. And he's got. And he. Then he got a cbe, which is fair enough.

12:59

I mean, I don't know much about his viewing taste, but he listed Moran Wise, not the Nine o' Clock News, Thunderbirds and Doctor who is shows that shaped him.

13:09

He's Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds is a good show for him to like though, because it's a. Because his job is about International Rescue. Anyway, we wish you well, my friend.

13:16

We do.

13:27

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

13:32

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

13:40

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

13:44

That's right.

13:53

Hei Hei.

13:53

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

13:54

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

13:58

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

14:05

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14:12

It was very exciting over the weekend. Yes, because a new sketch show was launched and we've been banging on about this for a long time, saying that sketch shows are due for a bit of a revival, that they're perfect because you can put them out on linear tv, then you can actually just dismantle them and put them out on social media and get lots and lots of attention that way too, that you get bang for your buck if you're a broadcaster. And there's sky, they've jumped in. Well, sky are obviously owned by Comcast, Comcast, own NBC. NBC do Saturday Night Live and have been doing so for 50 years on the lawn Michaels and now they've launched it on the uk. We all held our breath and what happened? What?

14:48

It was good.

15:25

It was good.

15:26

It was a lot better than it was really good. I thought it was funny. We haven't discussed this, have we? I mean, I'm a little review show, but no, I know all sketches a little bit patchy, but I thought considering everything and the risk of trying to redo snl, which is an American institution, I thought it was very, very strong. Start with some very funny sketches. But it. Then we talk about luck and we hope Matt Britton has luck. Luck. How delighted must the people behind SNL and Sky have been when the following day Donald Trump posts a clip from it.

15:27

Well, explain, explain.

16:06

So the very first sketch is Keir starmer, played by George 4ac. It's very funny, very funny. For he's agonizing about what to say to John. Donald Trump yeah. And. And he's being indecisive and says, all I want is him for. To like me. And, you know, and David Lammy's standing beside him, you know, egging him on. So it's a very simple but very funny sketch. Donald Trump posted it.

16:07

Yeah.

16:30

Now that is. That is publicity that SNL couldn't dream of. You know, that's the sort of feather in their cake.

16:31

It's fantastic. I know there was some. The, the most downloaded was the Tina Fey opening machine they got, who was a. She's an SNL alumna and she was great. And in the audience they had popping up, Nicola Coughlan for Ex Derry Girls. Bridget.

16:38

Graham Norton.

16:53

Graham Norton and Michael Cera.

16:54

Yes.

16:56

And they all chipped in with their little couple of minutes. So it felt very star studded.

16:57

You know what I found myself thinking? I wonder how much they paid Graham Norton to be there.

17:02

Well, the budget for each episode is 2 million.

17:05

Well, there you go.

17:08

2 million quid is a lot for a sketcher. But you know what? I. I was so pleased because I think it exceeded people's expectations. And it will get better because that was the first run out. There was a very funny sketch where they had David Attenborough, played by George Foricus. George Foricus, who said. Who began to. He said, hello, David Attenborough here. It's any minute now.

17:08

And then it was his last song

17:34

and then he said, I'm going to invite you to my last supper where I've cloned using my brother's Jurassic park cloning techniques. I brought my favorite people back from. And it was.

17:35

And you wanted to have scintillating conversation. All they wanted to talk about was what was on the menu.

17:45

It was a really funny sketch. And Jack Shep played Princess Diana and he. Upstate, everybody, because every time the camera, he just kept blinking and looking very kind of coy at the camera. It was just. It was. It was really good, actually.

17:50

I'm glad. And by the way, it got 226,000 viewers, which in that slot on Sky1 is a very, very.

18:07

Except that's not the significant number. No, no, I know.

18:13

Yeah, but it's an indication.

18:16

No, but no, it's not a TV hit. Right. It's a global social media hit. 1.9 billion what they call impressions. So it's across social media platforms. 1.9 billion.

18:18

It also got relatively well reviewed. I mean, the Guardians. Lucy Mangan said it could have been a lot worse.

18:34

Exactly.

18:40

Thanks, Lucy.

18:40

You could put that on my.

18:41

Yeah. If you had A play on in the West End, you might put out, you might put up.

18:42

Not as bad as we thought it

18:47

was going to be. But actually, just to pick up one thing, you said, it'll get better. Well, I hope it'll get better. The, the, the watching. It took me back to making the 11 o' clock show for Channel 4 in the 1990s, which was a big thing when I was running talkback and a big opportunity. And yet it was also a bit of a nightmare because the, the relentless need to come up with topical comedy. We were doing it three nights a week, even with a big, well funded team. I mean, not too many episode by a very long way, but we had a perfectly good budget and we found it, you know, a lot of the time we were thinking, oh, we wish it could be funnier. Within the 11 o' clock show, if people remember it, we found,

18:48

as it

19:39

were, discovered some fantastic talent. In particular, Sasha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais both came through the 11 o'

19:39

clock show and Daisy Donovan had him.

19:45

Daisy Donovan and Ian Leeu co presented it. Other people as well. Lee Mack, I think was funny bunch, funny people, yeah. But boy, the pressure we were doing three nights a week was only half an hour, I think. So they're doing an hour once a week. The pressure is enormous. And, and it's not like making a panel show like you make with have I Got News for you where you've obviously need a script and you need gags, but then the rest of it's improvised. SNL is sketches and it's quite long sketches, which is their tradition. And, and I think it's good that they, that they run long. But, but it's, it's a hell of a thing to keep it up week in, week out. And I.

19:47

They've got a big writing team, though, and they've got some very, very good writers also.

20:28

They've committed very strongly to new people. A lot of those writing team, I was told, are people who are almost, if you like, straight out of the Edinburgh fringe. They are not kind of wizened old kind of gags. We've been doing it for years.

20:31

We're working with one or two of them on TV projects and they are. They're really funny and then. And I love that idea. This is why I think that, you know, that the, in a way, this generation, the access they have to just getting things onto YouTube themselves, not having to wait for permission from a broadcaster like we used to have to do to get onto a screen. They can get onto A screen from their bedroom and they can show us that they're funny and that's how they get attention. I think that's a really good thing. And I think that, you know, someone wrote that SNL is a. It's not a TV hit, it's a social media hit. And that these days for that generation is much more important.

20:45

American SNL plays on Sky, I think gets an unbelievably small audience. It gets about 6,000.

21:26

And the reason why it stayed on the air is because of its social media presence. And similarly with have I Got News for your on CNN is it does very well on a Saturday night. In fact, last week's show got the highest rating ever in its run. But more importantly for CNN, it does really well on its YouTube channel and on social media platforms. That's where we're heading.

21:33

There was another review in the Daily Telegraph, a guy called Ed Power who gave it, to be fair, he gave it a four star review. He said it was shockingly competent. Odd phrase. But he said even though the Secure Starmer sketch had a whiff of hastily written student sketch about it. But to me that's not a criticism. That's exactly the point.

21:55

That's good.

22:14

That's exact point. If you go all the way back to beyond the Fringe and the beginning of television satire, Sorry, that was the week that was. That had a whiff of hastily written student sketches about it because these guys were about two years out of university, you know, Peter Cook and so, you know, so they'd been pushed forward very young before the rough edges had been sort of polished off them and that was all part of the charm of it. And how nice. And we've talked about it before with the Mitchell and Web sketch show on Channel 4 essentially because that's like a sort of oasis in the desert of sketch shows. But Mitchell and Web are very, very established talent. How nice. And very much disguise credit that they've. They've taken the risk of people saying, oh, this isn't as good as the American one. No, we're not as good as the Americans at this. They've ignored that risk and said, go with it and go with overwhelmingly new talent. I mean, Tina Faser, obviously a kind of one off for obvious reasons, people like Graham Norton aren't going to be there every week. The talent who made us laugh and are very, very new to television and. But they look to me like the stars of the future.

22:14

But the, but the snl, you know, template works because you have a big star hosting it. Yeah, so that's, that gets your publicity and then as you say this, I think a couple of these, few of these people will become major comedy stars as they head off into the future. A bit like, you know, when, when our friend and colleague Jeffrey Perkins did Friday Night Live, you know, they discovered Harry Enfield.

23:27

Yeah. And Frian Lorian, people. Well, it was effectively an SNL style show.

23:52

It was exactly snl. I'm glad because I now think that it will, it will reduce the level of fear in the commissioning editors lives of whether we should do sketch shows or not. I'm looking forward to some more sketches.

23:58

Next week's show is gonna be hosted by actor Jamie Dorman.

24:10

Very good looking man as a very funny trailer.

24:13

I haven't seen the trailer, but can I say I've played football with Jamie Dawn.

24:15

Have you?

24:18

Yeah. And he's a very competitive footballer. Yeah, yeah. I mean he plays, he plays a rough kick.

24:18

Are we going to have a game of top drums Jamie Dornan? Because I once had a, I once had a Zoom call with Jamie Dornan during COVID Yeah.

24:26

But I've tackled him.

24:33

All right. Okay. You got physical with him.

24:35

Actually, to be fair, I think he possibly tackled me.

24:37

Yeah, effortlessly. He was on Zoom with his business partner and we were talking about a project and because he's got his own company, North Nile, he's a really bright guy and we're having a very nice conversation. And I was excited because I just discovered on Zoom, because we were all on Zoom in those days all the time because of COVID that there's a, there's a little thing in, in the window if you, if you click on your face, it comes up and it gives the option to hide self view.

24:40

Yeah.

25:08

And I said to Jamie Dornan, it's so exciting. I can click hide self view and I don't have to look at myself when I'm talking.

25:08

I can look at a better looking man.

25:16

And he said, why would I do that? I said, well, if I look like you, I wouldn't do it, but I don't look like you anyway. He's a very good looking.

25:17

If you've only zoomed him, Jim, you won't know then. He's a bit shorter than you think.

25:25

All very handsome actors in my experience, which I always tell my wife when she's going on about how gorgeous an actress. I said, well, he's only, he's only 3 foot 4.

25:29

Tom Cruise syndrome. Tom.

25:39

Yeah. Oh, it was Killian Murphy. She was banging on about Killian Murphy. Once I've had Peaky Blinders, how gorgeous he was. I said, listen, he basically, when he gets off a chair, he's shorter than. When he's sitting on it, his legs dangle. And she said, that's pathetic. That's just you. Your insecurity, which is. She's not wrong. It's a sigh of relief and a big hooray.

25:41

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we got something else to talk about, which is also about comedy.

26:08

Oh, this is the most serious item we're talking about this week. I think this.

26:12

This is the most consequential story, and I'm sure, you know, our listeners will have read it because it's. Because actually, one aspect of this story, which is about Bob Monkhouse, by the way, in the repair shop, is why is it out there? How has that story got out there?

26:15

Well, let's tell a story.

26:29

Let's tell the story. So the story is that the repair shop. Wonderful program, good show, really charming, quintessentially BBC show. They restore all sorts. Yes. And some in a world of throwing things away, they like to restore the late comedians, Bob Monkhouse's joke book with two of them. And he's famous for having kept joke books. Some people say he noted down other people's jokes and then used them. But that's not the point of this story at all. He was a, you know, Bob Monkhouse was a television giant and a brilliant comedian.

26:30

Although just to stop you there for a minute, because in fact, he was renowned and Barry Cry once told me that he'd walk around with envelopes with 60 quid in them and if he saw you, and he'd say to Barry, barry, I'm using that line of yours here, get a drink on me. And he'd give him an envelope with 60 quid in it, and he was notorious for it. He was called the thief of bad gags.

27:01

Well, hang on, if he paid 60 quid, he's sort of not a thief. No, but it's a commercial transaction.

27:20

He was called the thief of bad gags. And, and, and when his. When his joke books were stolen from the BBC in 1995, they went missing for two years.

27:24

Yes.

27:34

And he.

27:35

And that was a big story.

27:35

He offered a reward. And David Renwick, the brilliant writer who wrote One Foot in the Grave and wrote Jonathan Creek, was also a writer on the Two Ronnies, and the joke was, Bob Monkhouse's joke books have been stolen. The police are treating it as a case of receiving stolen goods.

27:37

So that's a good joke.

27:55

So it was out there, Peter. But who cares? Comedians do it all the time.

27:56

Yeah, but leave aside. I mean, and let's not forget as well that Bob. Bob Monkhouse was a kind of. There was a time when the BBC schedule was full of programs with the. With Bob's name in them. Bob's full house. Bob's this, Bob that. He was so. He was like the Claudia Winkleman of his day. Was so dominant as a presenter and a very funny man. I once saw him, by the way, doing a charity auction. Yeah, he was fantastic.

28:00

Well, there were two.

28:23

Getting money out of people. Yeah.

28:25

But there were two Bob Monkhouses. I had a meeting with him once towards the end of his career where I wanted to do a late night show. It was a kind of game show, but with that twist. And I'd seen him do his club act. And his club act and his TV Persona were completely different. The club act was ruder and darker and funny, but very, very funny. Which we'll get onto, actually. Cause I think this is probably what is germane to our story. And I said to him, I'd quite like to do the late night show with your club Persona, not your TV Persona. He said, absolutely not. He said, I'm afraid on telev, I'm, you know, friendly Bob Monkhouse with a cheesy grin. And in the nightclubs, I'm much more of a loose lounge comedian. So he knew who he was. Bob.

28:26

Okay. Absolutely.

29:08

So the story.

29:09

Let's complete the story. So the story is that they were going to restore his joke books.

29:10

Yes.

29:14

And then.

29:15

Because they were falling into disrepair.

29:15

Yeah. And people looked at the great item and they were. They're worried about it. So the managing director, Ricochet, who make the show join a ball, she said, we plan to fix the joke book. But when we got it to the barn and saw it in its entirety, we realized it contains many jokes that were not appropriate for a program. We explained this to the family and returned the book to them. We didn't complete filming of the item, so it was never included in the program. So I guess the question here is, is. Is that. Is that, you know, a reasonably, you know, example of bringing a modern sensibility to bear on what were undoubtedly rather outdated jokes.

29:17

Yeah.

29:56

Or is that, frankly, political correctness gone mad because you didn't need to feature any of these jokes in the program. There are plenty of Bob Monkhouse jokes that are, by, by the way, brilliant and, and, and, and, you know, stand up today. So why, you might ask, are you bringing this sort of Retrospective kind of censorship to Bob Monkhouse' because some of these jokes are written down in his joke shop.

29:56

Well, you know, it's a good point, isn't it? First of all, yes. You don't read out those jokes which are dated and that's the point, isn't it?

30:29

It's easy to cut around them. Absolutely no problem.

30:38

But if you, if you look at history in that way, you know, he was, he was working in the 60s, 70s and 80s and in the 90s a bit. He died, I don't know, must be nearly 20 years ago. And they were of a type, these were comedians who were of their generation. When we judge history from our own perspective, it's like it's such a stupid, uninformed way of looking at a period. Instead of being judgmental, be curious saying, I wonder why they talked about those things. Because it was accepted. Because in those days we didn't have the consciousness that we have about minorities and people who because of their sex or because of their race or because of their gender are in some way disadvantaged. Fine. But this strikes me as being. It is, it's pathetic. It's stupid. Look at some of the jokes that they could have if they wanted to realize.

30:40

Probably his most famous joke, when I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everybody laughed. They're not laughing now. It's the way you tell them. By the way, I'm not claiming, I'm telling you that, that there's nothing offensive about that joke.

31:36

It's just a very clever joke and things like, you know, where, where do the homeless have 90% of their accidents?

31:46

Another clever joke. I still enjoy sex at 74, I live at 76, so it's no distance now. Oh God, that's mildly blue. But that's a good joke.

31:54

Oh, it's a good joke. But these are the kind of, I think this is the kind of, you know, pusillanimous attitude that some people have to. This is that it makes me sick. Actually. I think that the, the, that the fact is that now we're worried about offense and if you're offended, so what, you're offended. It's, it's obviously, it's not a BBC story, it's a ricochet story. Cause they made the decision somebody on their team felt uncomfortable by the remarks in the book. Some, some, some person said, I don't feel safe, I don't feel safe. I've just read a joke about a mother in law. Oh, for fuck's sake.

32:03

When the inventor of the drawing board messed things Up. What did he go back to exactly? It's like a joke. I think we need to be careful here, Jim. We could disappear into an abyss. No Bob Monkhouse jokes.

32:45

I think let's bring back Bob Monkhouse jokes. Well, actually, Jimmy Carr I think is the Bob Monkhouse.

32:56

I couldn't agree more.

33:03

Is that he says some jokes which are completely out there and they're really funny and you know, he's a very smart guy but you know, it's, I don't know, it leaves me a little bit speechless. This kind of thing. It's such a really. And also it's. Who leaked it?

33:04

That's what that, that, that's right. There's a link between this and Matt Britton to go right back to this conversation.

33:19

Right.

33:27

Which is these things are partly about the story and they're partly about how and why are they appearing in this way in the public domain. I'm guessing it's the people who supplied the joke book who were really upset. They also rightly realized that the newspapers.

33:27

But we don't know.

33:44

No, no, no, we don't know that. But they, whoever did must have rightly realized that the newspapers have got an endless appetite for stories that appear to embarrass the BBC. So, so, you know, to go back to our friend Matt Britton, this is the sort of thing that will happen almost every week. This is a minor BBC story. I read somebody comment saying this is one of the most shocking BBC scandals of recent years. No, it isn't. It's a tiny story and it's a ricochet story anyway. Yes, but the papers will dress it up as BBC, you know, political correctness gone mad, as it were. As a matter of fact, I've got some sympathy with this.

33:45

I do. Simply because of course they could have

34:24

restored these books without revealing sexism.

34:26

But they restore things all. They restore objects. I remember that. I, you know, I did a little bit of research about this. They've restored objects. A sea chest that was brought back from somebody who was in the East India Company. Well, the Eastern Company is quite rightly accused of doing all kinds of colonial abuses in India, causing famines, etc, Etc. Objects brought back from Africa, an African drum brought back from somebody who worked in Africa during the days of empire. Well, are we now endorsing people who made money from slavery on the repair shop? I mean, surely, you know, this hypocrisy for me is just. I, I guess the. Peter, I'm, I'm very rarely speechless, but I think this is ridiculous. Is that the repair shop need to. I mean, ricochet needs to have a word with themselves.

34:29

Thanks for explaining your speechlessness at length. Yes, it did seem to burn. Something to say.

35:17

I'm very articulate about my speechlessness.

35:23

Look, I think we agree. Return of snl. Good Thing.

35:26

Yeah.

35:32

Silly fuss about the repair shop and Bob Bunkhouse's joke. Bad thing.

35:33

Well, maybe SNL will do a sketch about it next week.

35:38

This is how our format should evolve. We're just saying good thing, bad thing.

35:41

Yeah.

35:44

Matt Britton, we hope. Good Thing sounds like a good solid bloke.

35:44

Yeah.

35:50

Good at rowing. Wasn't in the footlights like us, but it doesn't need to have been. So there you have it. Good thing. Bad thing. Could be one or the other that some are.

35:50

I think now. I think I'm gonna. You're looking at me, the nurse to come in now and give you your medication because clearly you're just rambling. I think we should end the podcast at this point, Peter. And you need to get some sugar.

36:03

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36:16

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36:26

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36:39

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36:46

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

36:52

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36:59

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37:03

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37:12

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37:13

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37:13

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37:17

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