Episode 308 - Craig Ferguson

We'd like to thank the good people at Monarch. Monarch. If you want to get control of your money and have a partner that's going to help you control your finances, deal with your debt, set goals, just kind of have a little financial advisor right in your pocket, Monarch is for you. I appreciate how Monarch makes it easy to use. Finances is difficult to begin with. You don't want an app that's going to be a big mess. My go-to would be Monarch. It's a great finance app and you can rest easy knowing that you're starting off the new year on the right foot. Look, it's time. You always get this kind of feeling in the new year where you're like, let me get control of my budgets. Let me maybe start an emergency fund. Maybe I should be saving for college. How do I just take every aspect of your financial life, put it in one place and get control? Monarch is your friend. Unlike other personal finance apps, Monarch is built to make you proactive, not just reactive. So you can actually plan. It gives you data visualizations from Sankey diagrams, pie charts, line charts, and bar charts, investment tracking, individual and partner filters. You can share your Monarch account with your partner and your financial advisor at no extra charge and view your assets together or individually. Monarch helped users save over $200 a month on average after joining. Eight out of 10 members feel more in control of their finances with Monarch. And eight out of 10 members say Monarch gives them a clearer picture of where their money's going. That's the thing I appreciate about Monarch. It helps you not just kind of catch up to what you're doing and what you're spending, but actually plan it all out, not just for today, but for tomorrow and into the future. Like I said, you can start planning for retirement, your children's education, buying a home, whatever your cool goals are going to be. Get it all in place. Monarch is there to help you along the way. You can set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use the code PAPA at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with the code PAPA. P-A-P-A. And now back to the show. Prime Video biedt het best in entertainment. This should be fun. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista gaan helemaal los in de hilarische nieuwe actiefilm The Wrecking Crew. Inbegrepen bij Prime. Yeah, I'm pumped. So be brave, be just Why do you think talk shows don't work on streaming services? I think they probably would i mean the thing what you have to do with with the late night show look everybody talks to me about the fucking success of the late night show it was touch and go for two years we were going to stay on the fucking air conan was the same conan they were given they were given him i think a three week fucking up like at the beginning yeah but what happened was the people that made television then the executives that made television then were people who made television they weren't people who balanced books right they weren't accountants they were tv people they were tv people so they were like how are we going to make this show work so it was a different mindset to to make that like i think a talk show talk show would work on streaming but you gotta fucking commit you know you're gonna have to run that fucker for two years until it becomes a habit for people. Right, right. And they don't have that kind of... Maybe they don't have the bandwidth for that. They don't need to do it because they can make money other ways. But if they were program makers, they'd be like, well, what we're going to have to do is take a hit on this financially until it works. Nobody wants to fucking hear that. It's breaking bread. Alright, here we go. You look really sharp. I've been thinking about three-piece suits lately. You know, I've gone... I'll tell you why I'm doing that. Well, two reasons. Maybe more than two. We'll see how many I end up with at the end of this. But first of all, I'm doing the promotional car wash through New York. You know where you do all of our morning shows? So I'm doing that through New York for Scrabble, which is a game show, which I host. And the thing about hosting a game show is I absolutely insist you must wear a suit if you're hosting a game show. Yeah, I'm with you. I must. Because then people know who's in charge. That's right. You know, it's like, well, who's the host? The guy in the suit, because everyone else is wearing pastels. Yeah. And then, also, I have discovered, and you might be interested in this, the vest, very slimming garment. I know. It is the Spanx for men, although I think there are actually Spanx for men. There are. But you know what I mean. Yeah, it looks sharp. I think so. I know. Maybe a little like a detective. I'd like to wear a holster with a gun. Oh, it would be cool just to have the strap. Or even just an empty holster. Like an empty holster because they took my badge and my gun. I want your badge and your gun, Ferguson. Don't check my boot. And your other gun. And your other gun. I literally have been thinking it's just time because it doesn't seem like the world has grown-ups in it. No. And I think it's we're the grown-ups. It's time to dress it and act it out in the wild. 63 years old. 63 years old. Yeah. When my father was my age, he had been retired for three years. I know. That's crazy. I know. And I'm like, you need to get my run in. Right, exactly. I don't do carbs, thanks. I'm on tour with more dates. Yeah. Do you feel like ever retiring? No, I tried it. You did? I did. I tried it when I was about, I don't know. after i finished in late night and in 2014 december 2014 i went fucking nuts so i went you know i i did two tours i did a half a dozen television shows i did like you know a bunch of things and then in 2018 i thought i'm so fucking tired yeah i'm burnt out so i tried retiring and it went great for about two years two years and then there was something called covid and Everybody retired. Yeah. For another year. And then I was in Scotland because I thought, well, I'll go to Scotland and live a quiet life. Yeah. I got a little bored. Yeah, that's right. I then got really bored. Yeah, I would think. Fuck this. I'm going back to live in New York. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I have friends that were texting last night and they were in Florida and they're like, we should retire. Everyone should retire. Can you let them in, Joe? Don't worry if anything goes off. I thought that was a chicken or something. I thought, do you have a chicken? You're an eccentric guy, Tom. Yeah, man. If actually somebody said to me, have you done Tom's podcast recently? He has a chicken. I'd be like, that motherfucker, I bet he does. Thank you for that. It'll be funny, and he'll do a whole bit about, you've got to have a chicken. You think you don't want a chicken? Come on. I think you can make it work. I would not be surprised if you had a chicken. You know what? Joe, write it down. Yeah. I love that on the East Coast, your guy is Joe, or on the West Coast, your guy is Joe. I know. I like Joes. Joes are solid. You know, they tend to be. Yeah. Do I know many Joes? Well, I know West Coast Joe. I've just met East Coast Joe. Yeah. I like Joe as a lady's name as well. I knew a couple of Joes back in the day. It sounds to me, the name Joe, when it's a woman, sounds like a 1960s Carnaby Street. You know what I mean? Yeah. I have one of my... Are friends with the Beatles? One of my favorite aunts is Josephine. And they call her Jo. And was she friends with the Beatles? She was friends with the Beatles. Just George. It was like after they'd gotten a little hippie-ish. I remember very much. I remember Josephine used to call her Jo. She has a nephew who has a chicken. I would have baked you bread, but I was on a flight from L.A. last night. That's all right. I like that the bread is here. It is here. It's for you. And I appreciate it. And I will take it because the last time I did the podcast, I was traveling. Right. And I couldn't take the bread. But today, because I live in New York, I take the bread, I go home, slice it up, toast. This is from Vesuvio Bakery on Prince Street. Nice. So they kind of stand in. I literally baked you bread yesterday in L.A. Right. put it in my luggage and it was like i don't know if it's gonna fit your underpants it was close and i knew that was gonna be your first question that for me i'm like i'll take it it squashed it right and it's in my it's at the hotel and it's too flat it was too embarrassing can i ask you a question about new york yeah because uh i love new york too i was i'm from here and i'm in la now and my wife and I, you know, our kids are grown and we have a lot of family and friends. It's time. Come on back. Yeah, we're thinking about all that kind of stuff. Do it. What do you do with all your stuff? That is a challenge. Yeah. I will not deny it because I moved from a castle in Scotland to a two-bedroom apartment. Yeah, you had to have something. I have walls that I'm painting the whole wall and a couple of storage units. So, yeah, it's a challenge. yeah but here's the other thing i will say about aging now you're a bit younger than me tom but you're getting older too yeah and here's the thing i've noticed about aging stuff matters less you can give away more and more and more of it yeah i i've really noticed this i'm like the um we're doing some estate planning man this is at the point we're at in life yeah on a podcast i'm going estate planning we may talk about capital gains tax in a minute as well i this is i'm like yeah go ahead because i knew you too do state planning and i was like just give give i was like saying well give everything away now i don't need anything i know i don't need anything i know i i made all the i ticked all those boxes they're done yeah but i've just put a sauna in the backyard and i don't see that fitting into a two-bedroom apartment in new york no it doesn't but what you do is you will join a facility in New York where you'll go and you'll get in the sauna with a bunch of old meshuganas like you and you'll complain about young people and you'll share phlegm and stories. And body hair. And you'll wear towels and it looks like an old mafia movie and you're like... Did the coffee make it? Are you happy? Are you happy being back in New York? I love New York City. Did you live here before? Yeah, I came. that when i first ever came to america when i was 13 1975 then i must have told you this story i don't know i came over and then i don't remember i don't remember that's why i record it whenever my friends say did i tell you this i'm like i have to hear things three times yeah just go for it it's all gonna be new let me tell you this i watched the documentary about um leonard nimoy uh you know it's called becoming spock yeah his son made it it's a beautiful documentary and it's a very touching tribute to his father. And if you watch it, you're like, wow, what a remarkable and lovely and interesting man Leonard Nimoy was. And I watched it with my wife a couple of years ago, and I said, gosh, what a lovely man. I really wish I'd had him on late night. And we looked it up. He's on twice. That's such a grind, though. I remember hearing Letterman be like, he got pulled over by the cops on his way home from the show. and you know they see it's Dave used to get in trouble a lot driving quick back into Connecticut and they said so who he started schmoozing to get out of the ticket and they're like so who's on the show tonight couldn't tell him that night couldn't tell him Megan used to say that to me when I would go home she would say who was on the show I'd be like Leonard Nimoy it's funny you kind of go into a mode where it's recording so you don't, I think. Especially when you do so many of them. Oh, right. Like, imagine you did the podcast every day. Yeah. You'd get, like, you don't need to record it. Somebody else is recording it. Right. This is recording it. Oh, that's interesting that it's recording it so you don't. You don't have to. I think that may be something to do with it. Or maybe I'm just a selfish asshole or something like that. Maybe that, too. What's more fun, Scrabble or Monopoly? Oh, you know, I think for me, honestly, it's Scrabble. Yeah. Because Monopoly is a little too much like life. It's money. Suddenly you're going to jail. Suddenly you owe a lot of money. Suddenly, you know, the shit happens. And Scrabble is kind of like, oh, look, an X on a triple letter square. When we play it in our house, I mean, obviously you can't do this on TV. When you're hosting Scrabble on TV, you can't do this. But when we play Scrabble at home, which we do. We do too. would you do the uh 20 extra points for a dirty word no oh that you should do that that's great yeah i need things i need and i was thinking about this on the way over i need things like that they're going to break it up a little bit because my wife has mastered all of the scrabble the two letter words she has all like the ins and outs all the strategy q a t cut yeah q i she's gotten very mean she yells at me and my mom when we play and it's time for an intervention or something we stopped playing oh we stopped playing because she got she got too aggressive but if we can shake it up with some dirty words and stuff like that dirty word dirty word scrabble well it has to be a dirty word that that's very difficult i mean you have then you have to justify like church is a dirty word it's slang for bum in france or something you know i mean it's like you have to justify the dirty words how many did you do hasbro are delighted the fact i'm giving all these tips on how to adopt their game it is it is one of the greatest games honestly i totally i play i mean honestly when they ask me to do it i'm like oh hard yes i play it on my phone all the time right oh you do your phone yeah yeah i do on the phone and i i used to play against bots because i quite because the bots will play you back right away. Right. But then you think, well, there's no real satisfaction in beating a bot or getting beat by a bot because it's just like plugging into it. Yeah. So you have to wait and actually play people. And you can tell the difference. You can. Yeah. Yeah. Because the bots are called things like conquistador. And then the real people are like, Margaret 42, a picture of a woman with her grandchildren. And you're like, okay, yeah, right, I'll play you. my friend had one in hawaii where it was on a wall like the big giant tiles and you can put them up on the wall that's how we do it in the in the game show we have this huge electronic scrabble board it's the size of a building amazing it's fantastic fun chuck woolery did the first one i believe so yeah yeah he was a cool dating game yeah well didn't he yeah was it a dating game No, it wasn't the dating game. It was Love Connection. Love Connection. Yeah. If anybody out there listens to our program and you want to listen to it maybe in an even better way, you should join our Patreon. It's only $5 a month. You get commercial free episodes and you get extended episodes. And you also get bonus content. We always kind of screw around here and talk afterwards. We do some post-game wrap-up shows and things like that. Sometimes our guests will linger. The Patreon is a great way to support the podcast and also increase your love and joy of this whole experience. We're trying to figure out how we can get you bread through Patreon. We've tried a couple times. It's turned into a horrible mess. so far it is not able to input food digest food and send food but we're working on it and in the meantime you can join us at patreon.com breaking bread with tom papa and join the club today's podcast is brought to you by nambe.com nambe the makers of this and the makers of this This is all stuff that Nambe and Tom Papa designed. It's a new line of bread tools. I sure you heard me talk about it a lot And we designed these beautiful beautiful bread tools baking tools You don have to bake bread It could be for anything Here my secret recipe and they fantastic and they beautiful and people love them and you will love them too. It's also brought to you by the good people at TomPapa.com. My whole tour, the 2026 tour is on sale. We're going everywhere. We're going to Florida. We're going to California. We're going to Minneapolis. We're going to south carolina we're going to portland maine a whole bunch of things i mean i can't even uh think about it right now because i've been on a plane for the last 10 days but go to tompapa.com and uh look up all that good stuff and i'll see you out there in 2026 the idea of the poem it's uh i think it's based on the ramses ii who built the the giant the i think the the great pyramid of kiosk it's really about mortality like built the biggest monument you want, the biggest thing you want, you're going to be lost in the sand, just like everybody else. You can write your name on every building. You can have a super yacht bigger than anyone else, but here comes the fucking horseman, motherfucker, and you can't escape. It's funny how I watch these dude bros that are injecting themselves with blood from Okapis in order to, you know, because this is going to balance your leg. Good luck. I better just enjoy it while you can it doesn't matter is there anything after this? after this? I don't know I suspect were you raised with religion? I was, I was raised with Scottish Protestantism which is an odd kind of mean spirit kind of enlightenment thing I actually, as I find myself getting older I go, that wasn't that bad they're kind of like no the church is fine just paint it white that's fine no crucifixes no one cross maybe you know no heaters it's a it's a funny kind of thing i'm very uh interested in religion but i always have been yeah i find it fascinating because i i you know i guess i think probably like Most stand-ups, real stand-ups, you're kind of looking for something. Well, it's definitely, I mean, that whole thing of achieving things and realizing that that wasn't it. That's kind of it with life. Yeah. And, you know, the thing that religion gives you is, yeah, you're right. Yeah. It is much bigger. Yeah. And there's something else at play. And these little games that you're playing, you're right. If you're feeling not satisfied and it's not really. Maybe there's something else. Right. Maybe there's something else. I mean, I'm not a religious person, but I'm certainly not an atheist because it seems like an unscientific stance to me. Like, I absolutely know what there is. Well, what's your evidence? There's no proof that there is a God. I don't deny that for a second. But, you know, can you prove there isn't? Yeah, exactly. I remember having a conversation with some asshole a while ago. But the idea that somehow the theory of evolution was proof that there was, you know, there was no God. And I'm like, how does that work? Like there was a, I think it's C.S. Lewis, who was a Christian apologist, who said, because something took millions of years to happen, evolution, is it any less of a miracle? Right. You know, I mean, because it doesn't fit in your idea of time. Right. So I'm not disparaging about people who believe in things. I think it's cruel to oppress people or push people around or have dogma. Right, manipulate it. Dogma, I'm not into at all. But the idea of some kind of religion, why not? I'm okay with that. Did you raise your kids with it? Yeah, me neither. Nah, they got their own thing going on. How are you doing with that? How's it working out? You know, it's funny. I look at my own kids, though, and then what I do is I look at how I was when I was their age, and I go, they are doing fucking great. I'm so proud of them. They are so much better than I was. So much better. Yeah, they weren't rock stars. They weren't going bonkers. No, they weren't. They were. I mean, my oldest kid, it's funny, I talked to him the other day. When I was his age, I got divorced. Oh, really? Yeah, I got married when I was 21 and divorced when I was 24. Wow, right. Is that how old he is, 24? He's 24, yeah. I have a 23. My daughter's 23. And is she single? And she's single. And she's not divorced? Not divorced, no. All right, but she hasn't got married yet. Mm-mm. All right, well, there you are. Yeah. But wait, you have daughters. I have daughters. Which means? Both sons? Both sons, yeah. But that means at a certain point, usually it happens earlier if you have girls, you'll be looking at grandparentness, right? Yeah. My sister, my younger sister's son had the first baby in the family from me and my siblings. So you're a great uncle now. Yeah. And watching her, it's just like all that stuff, you know, that being a grandparent is the greatest and it's the sweetest. and you know yeah it's all true this little kid just showed up and they're just all oh that's great their life is completely i can't another dimension yeah yeah i love that that's great i mean i don't it's not in my life at the moment yeah yeah yeah i just are they dating it's actually it's not my life what isn't well their lives is not my life so i i think when you become a parent I remember this when my first boy was born. Very quickly, within a couple of months, you go from being the star in the movie of your own life to a supporting player in the movie of someone else's life. It's almost like your career in Hollywood. You go from Craig Ferguson in to Craig Ferguson as the detective inspector. And Craig Ferguson. As himself. Right. as grumpy old man no it's true i had that moment last summer we we get together with my family and it's like my sisters and all their kids and my kids and my parents and we do the summer thing together and it's lovely and it's you know we all get together and keeps the family whatever uh and i realized that shift it was all these kids are like you know 20s 30s uh they don't care that I'm on TV. We all love each other and it's fun and whatever. But as the conversations are going and the stuff and I'm like, and what about... And I was like, oh no, I'm a little less relevant with what's the... You know what I mean? Yeah, but I think there's a weird kind of deification of youth, which is, I think, a byproduct of what happened economically in the United States in the 1950s. When the first baby boomer generation is coming up and after the end of the Second World War, in the 50s and the ad men era, you get this push to get people to buy products while they're young. Because if somebody buys a Ford when they're young or Coca-Cola when they're young, they're going to stay with Coca-Cola, they're going to stay with Ford. So in the media, youth became the most desirable commodity because that's the dollar that you can rely on. Right. So what happens is as they age, the youth remained the target market. You used to get that on television. They would say, well, how is your demographic with 18 to 22-year-olds? I'm like, I don't give a fuck about 18 to 22-year-olds. It's not my business. But they would say, well, how is the show performing with them? I'm like, I don't care. But I think what it is is it became about that. It's an odd little hangover. Because, you know, you look at human history before that. It's not like surviving youth was well done youth. Yeah, everyone was dead by 40. But it's an interesting thing now because the market is shifted because... Because everyone's old. And everyone's old. And the older ones are the ones with the money. The young people don't have money any longer. Yeah, I heard that. You know, it's an interesting little thing because you hear young people say, well, we don't have the money. I didn't have any money when I was young. either. I got some money now, but I don't have money then. Yeah. I was listening to some podcasts the other night and they were talking about the shift that's coming in like the next 20 years with all the boomers who have all of the money. Yeah. All that wealth is going to go to the younger people. Yeah. It's going to be a big shift in who has the money. It'll be great. It's going to be great yeah i'm really excited about it i hope i hope i'm around to see what happens whoa um we do a thing on this program called an uncomfortable moment oh i do them a lot and even when i'm not here yeah all right uh we have our like you have an ipad thank you that's that is embracing your dotage right there there's it as a modern device yeah also says i'm modern but i'm old ipad it's like a phone but it's really big well i need to i need to show it to you it's cool i have one you want to know what's so funny is uh the reason i have the ipad other than this yeah is i have it on turner classic movies oh yeah and when i get when i'm on the road i just open it up and i watch whatever movie is on there for like 10 minutes yeah just see like 1940s movie do you ever watch old movies and go they're all dead they're all dead all of them in crowd scenes all dead i know i know i love them though do you ever go on uh like youtube and watch colorized restored film from like 1910 and 1898 and all that all gone they're all gone yeah that baby grew up died i love all the i grew up exactly i love that i love the language of old films yeah Just the economy of words, in and out. Words were much more expensive back then. Yeah, I know. It was a different system. A whole different way of doing it. As you pointed out, I'm using East Coast Joe here. And you talk fondly about my West Coast Joe, Joe Bolter. I love Joe. He was the front end of my Panama Meme horse. Yeah, you always talk about how much you love him. Do I always talk about it? Oh, that. It seems like you were a little abusive at times. That's AI. This is the guy with the ice bath for his feet. Look, that's me doing a thing, and then that's Joe. Wait, that isn't me. I didn't even do that. That's not my face. Look at that nose. You AI'd that. That's crazy. And also, what I love about this is that's so not you, but that is so Joe. That is Joe. Even if you're nice to him, that's the way he looks at you. Well, he's a father now, so he's like that on the inside as well. He's having his second. Yeah, I heard. I know. He's going to have another one. It's so funny to me, I think, of Joe having... Yeah, there he is. There's the horse. The front end of the horse. There he is, right there. Your show was so creative. Thank you. I think I stole a lot of it from old British pantomime, to be honest. It was an old British music hall. The dancing horse. I think the robot skeleton was a little more kind of our thing. There wasn't a lot of robot skeletons back in the day. Hey, what's that over there? It's a robot skeleton. But all the latest news. But it was good. You were taking swings and you were like, it seemed watching it that you were doing it for yourself. You were doing it for your staff. Yeah, we were entertaining ourselves because no one was paying any attention. like the network wasn't paying any attention and you know and dave was busy doing his show so and he was on another coast so we kind of did what we liked yeah yeah it was kind of like we really were the you know we got to the kids in the attic we go yeah fuck it all right let's see what we can do yeah i mean very quickly i noticed that they weren't paying attention there was a couple of times i fucked up in the first few weeks uh-huh i like i made a mistake or i just like froze in the monologue or something like that and and then after the show nobody said anything and i was like okay let's see what else they didn't say yeah how many years was it 10 10 10 from january 2005 till december 2014 right so 10 years bar a couple of weeks are you surprised that that slot isn't coming back and that and that all these are things are shifting i think that's broadcast television isn't it broadcast television is changing beyond recognition to what i remember it yeah but things do change i mean that that happens i'm not like oh no it's a terrible thing yeah things stuff change like the sound came in the movies and you know it worked out as it right okay it'll be fine why do you think talk shows don't work on streaming services since some people i think they probably would i mean the thing what you have to do with with the late night show look everybody talks to me about the fucking success of the late night show it was touch and go for two years we were going to stay on the fucking air conan was the same conan they were given they were giving him i think a three week fucking up like at the beginning yeah but what happened was the people that made television and the executives that made television then were people who made television they weren't people who balanced books right they weren't accountants they were tv people they were tv people so they were like how are we going to make this show work so it was a different mindset to to make stuff like i think a talk show talk show would work on streaming but you gotta fucking commit you know You're going to have to run that fucker for two years until it becomes a habit for people. Right, right. And they don't have that kind of – maybe they don't have the bandwidth for that. They don't need to do it because they can make money other ways. But if they were program makers, they'd be like, well, what we're going to have to do is take a hit on this financially until it works. Right. Nobody wants to fucking hear that. No. I know. Everything has to open like a hit film now. it seems odd to me but i mean it stuff that i mean if you look at stuff that even recently look at movies like the scott pilgrim movie i think is a good example which was a complete box office disaster and now it's like oh it's a great time and all these people are in it and blah blah and you go yeah well where the fuck were you when you come out right you know you weren't anywhere near it yeah um and i think that there's nothing wrong with that maybe they didn't know about it they had seen it maybe they just didn't appeal in the marketing campaign was shit or maybe it just had to become yeah it had some life right yeah just let it let it be and let it happen so i think that if streaming if your business doesn't not know anything wrong with streaming but i think if your business model requires success immediately then show business might not be for you right talk to any fucking stand-up who's lasted more than 10 minutes because you can come out the gate and do great it takes a long time you're actively on tour now always something how's your writing right now? where's your head at? are you enjoying it? yeah the stand-up stuff I no longer occasionally I'll sit down and write a bit to get it to a place where I can get it on a stage and write it properly. But stand-up isn't really a writing job, I don't think. Writing is a writing job. That's what Carlin at the end said, called himself a writer. Yeah, yeah. He got to the point of he would write it all out and memorize it, and it started tipping over to his books and his writing. I think George was kind of like, I mean, Charles Dickens was like that as well. Dickens would write you know these stories and then go and perform them oh really? yeah well he would read them I guess he would give readings like he would do Charles Dickens tonight we'll read you know Christmas Carol and he would go and do it and Mark Twain did that as well you know it is a there's a kind of move there's always been that because there's still a lot of stuff in these fucking all those Greeks were throwing down a strong 10 at the afternoon. Like, I'm just going to work on this thing to play Socrates is in it It going to it hilarious You guys have got got to see i forgot that piece you stole my socrates bit fuck you yeah david sadaris does that he goes out on tour he does and he's great i know and then by the end it's all edited and then he publishes it's so brilliant that's very smart because you get a feel for it yeah but not everyone was there's also i I've written books as well, and there is a different feeling to crafting prose and enjoying the sense of that. But it's not the same as performance. It's not the same thing. No, no. But you do lock it in. You lock jokes in, if you know any of that. I mean, you get a joke, and you're like, oh, my, bang. When it goes bang one night, it's going to be that every fucking night. Right. Oh, yeah, because it's that old Groucho Marx thing. If it gets a laugh, leave it in. and so leave it in I mean you work around it what I always hate is one of the reasons why I doubt I'll ever do another stand up special is after you record it you've got about three months before it goes out where you can still do that material and it gets better it always gets better when I go do like a corporate date and these people don't know you necessarily it's like they're just working for this company and they have to sit through your act I've been that guy many times Yeah, which is great. They can go great. But I'll break out bits that are 20 years old. Yeah. And they kill in a way that is so much deeper than anything in the last 10 years because they just have grown. There's something about old bits that can literally mature. I feel the same way about my genitalia. People say that. You know, there's something about old bits that still satisfy. in many ways better than they were originally yeah and actually you think they're great but nobody else really does that's all you people are just surprised when they uh when they hear them uh can i ask you a question okay uh how do you respond when you hear a conspiracy theory from a friend i think that conspiracy theories when i hear people talking my i have a few people in my life that are quite kind of well you know what this really is i think it's a sign of great optimism i think it's a sign of hopefulness that that because i don't have any conspiracy theories because i know people are kind of mostly fucking stupid you know if you ever meet a politician like And you're like, whoa, fucking hell. You're the, wow. Exactly. And so you know what these guys are up to? You know what these guys are up to? Fuck all. That's what these guys are up to. They're trying to get from one day to the next. Yeah, get a little money, get a beach house. Exactly. Yeah. So I think conspiracy theories in an odd way, it's a kind of twisted optimism. And I have great affection for it. I kind of admire it in an odd way because it makes me feel like there's hopefulness inside conspiracy theories. Because they're thinking this can't be it. There's clever people that will do things. Right. But there's no clever people. Yeah. And nobody's coming. That's what happened during the pandemic, during COVID. I realized these people are so adamant about it must be Fauci or it must be this. they want something they want it simplified right they want to say that's the bad guy that let's right it's a little they caused it rather than the chaos it's a faith just thing it's kind of like no no this is because you know entity abc deity abc wants it to be this right right it's a search for meaning right exactly in a terrifying existence i understand i do too it's much scary to think this shit no one has control over any of this fucking train is just prowling along yeah it's really yeah do you have you ever had people that got into the conspiracy things so far that you couldn't talk to them any longer nah i'll talk to anybody that's good yeah all right do you have that do you feel like i will not talk to you not not out of uh not out of uh avarice or i my i had one uncle who got into it was like the beginning of the fox news kind of right brainwashing and he got so angry at everything and he was such a fun-loving beautiful guy but he got so angry that we ran out of things we could talk about right i remember when he came to the house we're like well we could talk about the weather and we're like oh man it's beautiful day yeah well the freaking climate change and i was like oh shit we can't even talk about the weather it got so bad i avoid uh sure for sure but yeah you know yeah i get it and i wasn't i wasn't really like out to avoid him but he just got you couldn't talk to him was the problem i think the thing about that is that that to me that's someone that wants to talk about something that they want to talk about you know it's like i want to talk about this thing over and over again And I'm like, well, that's kind of boring. So I'm going to – I just saw a guy over here. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, yeah, sure. What's a lie that you told as a kid that you got away with that still bugs you? There was once when I stole a candy bar from my Uncle Jack's shop. He didn't notice. He had a little grocery store. and you know it's one of those weird things, it worked away like a little fucking nugget right away, now years and years and years later I was like I was in rehab and I was like I was talking to this you know you're kind of cleaning out your life a little bit and trying to figure out why you ended up in fucking rehab and I was talking to my counsellor and I said you know one thing that really bugs me is what, like still a candy bar from Uncle Jack's shop when I was about eight years old and nobody ever caught me. And he's like, you know, I know you think that's probably small, but it's clearly not. When you go find your Uncle Jack and give him the money. And I did. You did? Yeah. Did it help? No, I think he needed more. Yeah. No, but yeah, I'm free. But it helped you. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, you gotta get that shit out. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's just a little thing. You just carry it. Especially when you're a kid and you get away with something that you know is wrong. And I remember I got that candy bar and I went to a nearby, there was a little kind of underpass nearby our house. And I went around the back of it where the kids used to hang out. It was just me and my own. And I ate it. A little fat Scottish boy eating a stolen candy bar, like crying. Right? I wonder which one of these guys is going to end up a stand-up comedian. Just confused but kind but evil. So tasty. So tasty. So wrong. It's so funny. What is one of the things that a critic said or someone wrote about you that was a negative thing that stayed with you? that's still in your head was there any any even though they were wrong or silly but i don't i remember when i started in late night there was a guy the new york post said i just remember it doesn't bother me but i just as you ask the question it occurs to me the new york post i got hammered weirdly enough this is interesting i got trashed when i started in late night on all the press for being shit at the monologue really i was like he can't fucking do it and i'm like okay uh and i was like uh you know look i'm not saying i'm the best ever to do a monologue in late night I'm up there you know right exactly you're right so so I I remember in the New York Post they trashed for that they trashed everybody trashed me for the monologue at the beginning that's what I was saying about the streaming thing you gotta fucking you gotta pass through the fire to get to the other side right that had to be sorry to interrupt but that had to be such a challenge You've got to be really locked in and confident or have some allies with you. It's so hard to... That's stand-up. The monologue is... It is stand-up. And to have people's things in your head, to still go through it while you have these negative perceptions in your head. You've got to really believe in yourself. It could wipe a lot of people out. Well, I think it used to wipe a lot of people out. And I think stand-ups like you and I or the ones that I like and respect have passed through that fire. What I think is quite interesting is the trend or the model for stand-ups now is positive reinforcement. So there may be stand-ups that would be a lot better if they went through the fire. Right, right, right. You know, I mean, and so, but there are things like, I think even here at the cellar, they do stand-up classes. Right. You know. I mean, in a way, it's beautiful. But also, it's not my experience. Right. But I remember in the post, to answer your question, the guy at the post, Tom something, I can't remember his name. But he said, he said that everything was bad, and then he said my hair was bad. he said his hair so bad it looks like he's wearing a wig and I was like maybe the monologue wasn't that great that night maybe I wasn't so good when I started out late night but my hair is and always has been fucking awesome I have top tier 90 sitcom hair that is Jack Kennedy fucking hair right there that is Irish boat trash hair rock solid yeah there's nothing fucking going wrong with him typing with his little ball patch yeah it looked like a wig like well you know what you've just devalued your entire argument but i do remember but is it funny you remember i remember the hair thing i mean i remember everybody trashing me at the beginning anyway but they sure or they used to god isn't that crazy like i don't know what happens yeah it just becomes like a trend just to like let's rip this person apart oh my god well it's much more interesting to write negative stuff than it is to write yeah positive stuff is one of the things that i really like about your stand-up actually that you will do you have a technique which which a lot of us use where you don't like things and you point out the absurd but you will also point out things that are positive which is really interesting that bit you know i always talk to you about this bit about being in shape like why do need to be in shape you know you're the guy who works in the cancer but it's such a it's such a beautiful piece of positivity oh yeah in a piece of stand-up that's like unless you know what you're looking at that's why i'm like you know when people say you know they'll they'll look at a picasso and it's like a few lines and uh and they go i could fucking do that and go yeah but you fucking didn't did you right you fucking didn't do that and and it took him 50 fucking years to figure out you only had to do that yeah you know yeah so it it's kind of like understanding the art is part of enjoying the art yeah and but it changes the art you enjoy yeah no completely like because if i if i like even like if i was to look at leno when i was 20 years old i'd be like you fuck airline peanuts fuck you and hey watch watch leno and i've done gigs with jay and Arsenio Hall we were doing these gigs like old late night and I'm watching these guys and I'm like they're great I mean great and they're both kind of 80s comedians but Jesus Christ I mean Jay in particular I'm like wow I mean you see him it's like fucking wow amazing 50 years of doing it it's quite a thing to see but unless you maybe you need to know a little bit about it to actually get the most out of it right exactly your uh your wife is an art right she's yeah yeah she's she was an art dealer she was an art dealer did it um were you into art before you met her and did it did it uh did you learn a lot from being in that world learned a lot from her i was always kind of into art was currency when i was in um scotland i was a kid i was about 18 years old 19 years old i lived in the west end of glasgow no one had any no one had any money right but what the the fashion was was literacy uh and knowledge of of great art whether it was uh written or it was just a it was a a very kind of it wasn't an academic environment everyone was getting drunk and shagging i mean it was it was like pub culture but but the conversation currency was all about knowledge so beautiful you had to have it so great yeah it's crazy it was kind of like the it was kind of like the uh the way i felt when i whenever when i went to russia for the first time when i was in moscow and i was like oh these people are like glaswegians they're they're drunk and literate right love to talk about it right yeah it is the coolest fascinating so you had a working knowledge of art did that help you um uh date her did you throw a couple out when you first met yeah did you i know i think what helped was the fact that her grandfather was a street orphan from edinburgh so she'd been around my type before oh really yeah it was a scottish scottish thing and her family so she knew she knew a bit about yeah yeah art is real i just went to the lacma in uh oh nice in la yeah which it's so funny it's like here in new york right it's like it's everywhere here yeah and it's you only go when you have someone from out of town that needs something to do like you're there i could go every day and you never do it well i i have started i've noticed i live in the upper east side now and i've i've started i'll go to the museum and look at the french impressionists oh really yeah just wander in just to be in their company yeah and it's kind of like actually i went there when they had the van gogh exhibition on and at the starry night yeah starry night thing yeah and it was there and i i'd seen the image many times before yeah and i you know when i was in paris i went to see the mona lisa and you know you go there and you go it's small and it's behind glass starry night yeah that's got its own fucking life source that thing it's like you stand next to that thing yeah it's like give if you just fucking suspend a little bit of cynicism in your body for a second it'll knock your fucking hair back it's amazing really the visceral power of great art it's insane it's wonderful we were walking through and there was like all this um some pretty well-known stuff and there was this uh you know Klimt oh yeah yeah the lady is usually like yeah which is usually like big pieces yeah there was a piece like the size of this right just of a just as a woman with a fur collar right and it literally was this big I couldn't walk away from it that's funny that right yeah just like I just could not get away you buy art do you do you like no my wife's mother was an artist right and uh and we have some stuff like and we keep saying like we should our friend uh buys from students emerging students that are that are really good uh but we've never bought we just have all of her mother's stuff around so it'd be great to replace it well look if you're moving to new york you're gonna have limited wall space yeah that's right slow down a little we'd have to give away all that stuff yeah yeah but it's worth it you can also go uh the museum and and see you go to all the museums it's all here and you all get you get to go and see all of it i know it's freaking great you don't have to get in the car to go do it no no no you don't and also i've noticed i remember years ago my manager in la when i first moved to los angeles my manager was a new yorker and he's we were talking one day he was yakking about something and and he said that when he got old he wanted to live in new york city he said that be the greatest city to get old in because you can walk in the park and go to the museums and as long as you got a really good coat nobody knows you old Seinfeld said the same thing. Oh, did he? He said he looked around LA and was like, they don't do good grownups here. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. New York, there's adults and they've got to kind of figure it out. over there is who's that Garrison Keillor said about LA everyone is in their mid 30s even the children are in their mid 30s he's another one in New York in his later years I don't know it makes sense to me look if Bowie lived in New York then clearly you should live in New York it's so simple I mean there you are that's what it is It's really true. Yeah. It's so simple. I can live anywhere in the world, but I quite like going to the comedy store and maybe go up to the museum. Yeah, I know. I know. My problem is I've got two daughters, and one loves L.A., and one loves New York. Oh, my God. This is like a Neil Simon play. Yeah, so we're going to have to bounce back and forth, I guess. You know, I think you probably... What age is the daughter that loves L.A.? 20. Okay, so... She's going to graduate from school next year. Right. Is she in L.A. still? She comes back to... She goes to school here but comes to L.A. Oh, but the school is here? Mm-hmm. Fucking make hay while the sun shines. Stay here. Yeah, but she's made it very clear, when this is over, I'm back. L.A. is a very different place when your parents aren't there. Very true. It's a sweet life for her when she comes to LA. The pool. Breaking bread, dad, talk, papa. My dad's done pretty well for himself over the years. It's really true. She really is living. Anyway, so you've got a one-bedroom in Silver Lake. Fucking good luck. Actually, no Silver Lake now. Glendale, further out. Echo Park. that's the best wisdom anyone's given me in quite some time it's a very different city when your family's not there yeah it might not be the same at all although I gotta say when I moved to LA I was in my early 30s my parents weren't there I loved it there and I still love LA I do love LA but I like to go and enjoy it and see the friends I have there and I still have a lot of friends there and I like being there but I live here. I feel better here. And it is something to do with what Seinfeld says. It's something about grown-ups as well. And not everybody is in fucking show business. I know, yeah. And that really helps. Just being at the gym and seeing early in the morning. Being in the gym and watching guys put on a tie to go to work. And they're not agents. Exactly. They're going to do who knows what. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is pretty great. I also, I like the doctors here. As you get older and you can go see, you know, like doctors. My eye doctor's here. Oh, yeah. I make appointments just to come in here to be with my eye doctor. I started with a new doctor here. And he's like, when you start with a new doctor, you have to do the whole thing, the question you from the very beginning and who you are and what you know. And so he knows what age I am. He's done my blood type. We've done the finger. We've done all that kind of stuff. Yeah. and he's asking me all these things and he said when did you last fall over and i'm like jesus uh when i was drunk i guess in 1992 i guess is the last time he went okay and he's going along he said well you know as people get older okay and then he asked so in your blood work should i do an std panel uh and i'm like pick a fucking side man when did you last fall over should i do an std no don't do an std panel because if you have to ask someone when did you last fall over the likelihood is well you said no you said you hadn't fallen over so he's like oh he might be a done so that's the level of virility that you can actually make it from one spot to the next maybe that's what it is what's your favorite part about being a grown-up um i think there's a sense of i'm beginning to get a whiff of this um and i've noticed it in very old people i kind of not give a fuckness that I'm quite surprised. A kind of iconoclism, which I aspire to as a young punk rocker, but actually really, it takes a bit of time. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, when people really have opinions and they walk up and down and say things and you go, yeah, fuck you. Who are you fucking kidding? You know what I mean? It's like I used to believe that, you know, intelligence, respectability worth um all of these things had a had a look or a a feel or an age and i and i don't believe a fucking word of it now i tell you i did this thing actually it will be announced by the time this goes out so i've been shooting this thing for cnn oh yeah where i go around america and talking to all different people really yeah oh that's great i'm very i'm hopeful about it i i haven't seen we haven't finished making it yet but is that a title yeah it's called american on purpose nice and i it's it's named after a book that i wrote uh a hundred years ago but um it's really i wanted to make a documentary we made five hours and i wanted to make a documentary series that celebrated america i think a lot of times now people think america even americans think America is the administration, whether in the past or the current or something. And there's a little tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater a little bit. And what I kind of wanted to make was a show that was not jingoistic, but not ironic, but was celebratory for America. And, you know, and CNN came to me and they said, well, you know, we have interest in making this show. and I said well I want to be clear the show that I make for you will be the same show I would be making if I was doing it for Fox News and they were like that's what we want we want you to make the show that you want to make and I was like okay so I made this show and part of it I was down in the Everglades with the guys who live in the Gladesmen oh no guys not just guys the people who live in the Glades and some native people there and some people who have been there only for a couple of hundred years and you know and i loved them uh it was great and i thought i could and i said i remember saying look if i ever get in real trouble can i come here they're like sure because nobody will fucking find you there like yep nobody's gonna get you here yeah and there's a there's a thing about america which i i fucking love and it still very much exists America is not New York and LA this is garnish America is America and one of the things I love about America is the ability to disappear into it I mean I wonder sometimes if that's not what I'm looking for when you go on tour when you find yourself in the Chuckle Hut in Wichita or whatever it is and I like being amongst that I like being in America and when I see these British documentaries and I see a lot of that because I still have family there and I still go there and I see the BBC and you get these fucking assholes from North London saying, well the thing about America is, oh! You don't fucking, you live in a country the size of fucking Massachusetts you know, and like what is the thing about, there is no thing about America and it's such a kind of vast complicated massive idea of a place yeah that when you say there's no thing do you think there's a spirit yes i think there's a spirit and i think the spirit is ineffable kind of unnameable it has i'm not deifying it but at the same time i think the spirit that uh sends you to the moon can also send you to some very bad places as well in the same way as the the the personal spirit that can get you up on a stage and make you do a great piece of stand-up can also have you kill yourself right you know it's the same you know what i'm talking about so a spirit has darkness and you know that the but it is i i i love this place and i can't fathom why a person wouldn't yeah you know even for all i'm not blind to the problems no it's definitely flawed but there is there does in its best moments to me always feels like it doesn't matter who is involved there is this kind of undercurrent of yeah but we could be this yeah that thing aspirational yeah aspirational spirit maybe that's what it is and also the the the idea because it's an idea because america is the it's really the first post enlightenment country, the only post-alignment country, really. And I mean, it's like everybody else at the British are still like, well, the king says, the king? What are you, fucking 12? The fucking king? Well, he's got a magical hat. You know, what the fuck is there with you? You know, it's like, well, you know, he does a lot for tourism. The French don't have a king. They've got tourists. You know, everybody in fucking Orlando, you shit, your pets. There's so many tourists out there they have to build a special land for them so i i don't know i i kind of this sounds great i i hope that it works i've worked very hard on it and you know the thing is i wanted to make a show where uh you know i didn't take a side yeah i didn't take you know so but i i've got a sneaking suspicion i might just piss everybody off so see what's great that'd be great even if i do that At least there's a unification in that. Do you, when you drop in on these people, is it veer towards politics or is it just their life? No, no, I really not. I really try not to talk about, particularly current politics. Yeah. You know, I mean, you can talk, people talk about how they live and what they believe. But issue-based, you know, TikTok, Instagram, fucking yiggity-dack, boom, right now politics, nah. Yeah. Because that's, look, that's an oversubscribed market anyway. You can't fucking move in the world without that fucking coming at you. Yeah, no, exactly. And so I try to make it more... Evergreen. Yeah, well, yeah, and more kind of... Like the way I do stand-up, I never talk about politics in stand-up. I don't think you do either, do you? I just never touch it. No, I'll talk about the results of it in a vague way, of like the stress of the times or that kind of a thing right that's observational yeah but actually to to get in dig in there and say this guy's this and that guy's that no no no i hate i i hate them so much i'm like they don't get to they don't get to come into my act yeah i kind of feel the same way and it and it's an interesting thing because i feel like politics is what people talk about when they've got nothing to talk about. Including fucking politicians. Right. You know what I mean? You've got fucking nothing. Yeah. Maybe that's naive. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, have you ever read Plato's Republic? No. So I thought, you know, I'd heard so much about it. I actually read it. You did? Yeah, I read it three, four months ago. I was like, fuck it, I didn't read this thing. I read it. and it starts off and I'm going oh that's very clever very clever oh the ancient oh Plato very clever get about get about three quarters of a year and they're going this guy's a fucking lunatic really why? this guy's a fucking lunatic in what way? well the idea that you know he was very down on democracy because you know the democracy had voted that Socrates should kill himself and Socrates was his like his you know mentor and he loved Socrates and all that And certainly what they did to Socrates was very bad. But he said, you know, he said, democracy leads to tyrants. And I was like, mm-hmm. And so democracy, I like what Churchill said about democracy, which is a terrible idea, but it's the best one we've got. Right. But so the philosopher king is Plato's idea of the perfect. But it involves, you take the infant from the family when they're before they're like seven years old. and you take them to special places, and there's all this fucking way of, like, they're raised doing this, and then they... And I'm like, this is a fucking cult! You're out of your fucking mind! And what's interesting... But for years, I would never say I think Plato was a fucking lunatic, because I'd be frightened that people would call me stupid. That's right. And I'd say the same thing about Nietzsche. Nietzsche, a great philosopher. Nietzsche was a damaged, poor soul. come up with a very twisted idea right exactly one catchphrase yeah like this uber mensch the idea of the uber mensch you go the great man you go um did she hurt your feelings is that what it is fuck man and perspective you know i think that consider the fucking source yeah you know and so So what I like about and why I think really in my DNA I am an American is because I am an iconoclast and because the source of America is not really one person. So it's a lot, a lot of that. And it's still, we're still adding to it. Constantly. Still, the soup is still getting, well, let's try a little of this. Let's sum it up. Whoa, whoa. You know what I mean? This is it now. It's still going on. Right, exactly. And I feel like that, to me, is much more attractive. It just seems much more realistic as an observation. And it's just much more open-minded, which is, in its essence, what America is. At its best. At its best. Yeah, I think that's it. I'm looking forward to that. Well, I hope it works. Like I say, we haven't finished making it yet. And if it doesn't, you always have Scrabble. Well, what I like to do is say things. is that you know you have scrabble yeah you also have this giant idea yeah now can you put it on a triple letter square nothing negative to say about scrabble i love no completely yeah i mean i i really like it and i i don't know look maybe i'm just dumb but i like to take a break from dramatic fucking day and play again well this is the problem with scrabble is that it was that for me it was a nice escape and then my wife got so aggressive with it that now it's the most stressful thing i can do well introduce introduce dirty word only scrabble and then and then who's been in comedy clubs for 40 years that's right yeah who's been in green rooms with some of the most twisted minds in show business That's right. You can't challenge this word. You don't know this word. You don't know this word. Or, you know, just slang terms for weird sex acts and stuff like that. Look at that. It's awesome. I could talk to you forever. Me neither. And we'll continue on. Enjoy your bread. Thanks. I'm really looking forward to it, actually. I'm going to thinly slice it. Okay. I'm now on dairy-free butter. Oh, really? Yeah, because butter seems to give me the... Ah, that's so sad. Nah, you think that they're actually technology on dairy-free products is really fucking soaring forward. Really? Much more than AI. AI is bullshit, but dairy-free products, they're good. They're getting somewhere with that. Well, a little avocado with some olive oil is a good way to go, too. Yeah, I'll do that. All right. Yeah. You're the best. Yeah, a little pepper. A little of that Norwegian salt. Oh, yeah. There you go. Now we're talking. Are you trying to get us out of here? Yeah, okay. We've got to go. I can feel it. Yeah, I could feel you moving. Yeah, all right. Mom was like, kids, five minutes. Yeah, we got to go to it. We got to go to it. We're in the fucking car wash. Yeah. All right, you're the best.