Live at The Apollo (2004) s16e03 Episode Script

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
your host for tonight
Zoe Lyons!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening, Apollo.
CHEERING
Look at your beautiful faces,
absolutely gorgeous to be here.
What a time to be alive, my friends.
What things we have learned. Who
knew that there were women out there
prepared to sleep with Matt Hancock?
LAUGHTER AND CHEERING
Without full PPE as well,
that's just like, "What?!
"You're actually touching it?! Wow!"
Adverts have started to annoy me,
they're too jolly.
They don't reflect my inner self.
They don't. Too jolly. Too jolly.
They're trying to sell you a world
that doesn't really exist - too jolly,
too optimistic, you know?
"The best a man can get." "Are you beach
body ready?" "Because you're worth it."
Those adverts don't speak to a
woman of my age in my situation.
They don't. They don't.
I'd love to turn on the telly
and see an advert that just went,
"Have you been
sitting at home all day
"..crying in your knickers
and eating biscuits?
"Well, this is the cream for you."
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
"Shame from L'Oreal.
"Cos you knew this would happen,
didn't you?"
My proper guilty secret, if I'm very
honest with you, right, is I
Late at night when I come home
from gigs I like to watch
It's usually Channel 5, usually from
America, programmes about people
having ridiculous plastic surgery
that they don't need. Anybody else?
SOME CHEERING
Just stupid, cos you don't need
You don't need to engage, do you?
There's no cognition required.
If you're like me, you can
just sit there in your chair,
vest on, one nut out
LAUGHTER
I'm usually eating with my fist,
like that.
Just watching it, going,
"God, look
"Look at these losers.
"I mean, how you let yourself
get like that? Honestly."
I was watching one the other night,
it was brilliant,
there was a woman on there,
she's probably my age
sort of middle aged woman,
quite beautiful, very
beautiful woman,
sort of Californian-beautiful,
sort of tanned and taut.
Tanned and
You could bounce a penny off her.
Don't, it's illegal, but you could.
That's, you know, tanned and taut.
And she had what she had
what you would describe,
probably, in this feminist era,
she had what you'd call um,
uha cracking rack.
You'd look at her and go,
"Good boobies. You got good boobies there,
well done, girl.
"They're good boobies.
You've got a good boobie.
You're sort of a grapefruit-sized boobie,"
which I always think is a sufficient amount
of boobie, isn't it? It is, isn't it?
Who's ever eaten a whole
grapefruit? You don't, do you?
There's always a bit left over. It's
enough boobie is what I'm saying.
Anyway, she wasn't happy with the
grapefruit, she wanted the next size up,
which I don't know in the sort
of fruit scale of boobie,
I'm guessing a cantaloupe.
That's what she wanted,
she wanted the cantaloupe boobie.
And that's what she got put in,
the doctor put in the cantaloupe boobies.
And they always have a
little follow-up programme
a couple of weeks later, don't they,
when the bandages come off?
The doctor said to her,
"How do you feel now, Tiffany,
with your bigger boobies?"
And she said,
"I got to be honest, Doctor.
"I just feel so confident."
And I sat there
Confident?
To do what?
Float?
I mean, that's what she's gained,
isn't it, buoyancy?
She's just harder to drown,
that is it.
I've started sea swimming as well,
very on trend, I know,
very on trend, sea swimming.
I refuse to call it wild swimming
cos I'm not a fucking salmon.
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
I'm not returning to the place
of my spawning. I'm just swimming,
that's literally all I'm doing.
You do two things in water -
you swim or don't swim,
that's what you do.
You don't go for a wild walk, do
you? "I'm just going wild walking.
"Out with nature,
walking in the wild." No.
It's just swimming. Swimming.
I do it badly, I do it badly.
It's a lot of It's very popular
with the older ladies where I live,
the wild swimming, the sea swimming.
It's predominantly middle aged
women, round about my age,
we gather of a morning
like bison around a watering hole.
The sun rising. You can see
the steam leaving our ample hides.
SHE HONKS
And then we dip ourselves in,
and I was watching us the other day,
watching herds of us
entering the water,
and I suddenly had the thought,
I thought, "Do you know what?
"I don't think it is
climate change
"..that's causing the sea
temperatures to rise.
"Sorry, Greta, babes, I think
you've got this one wrong."
I think what it is, is herds
of menopausal women just
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
..cooling themselves off
in the English Channel, honestly,
we're like nuclear hot-rods.
It's like Fukushima
off the coast of Hove some mornings.
I actually saw a mackerel breach
the water the other day and go,
"Is it me or is it off in there?"
And I love to travel.
I love to travel. I really do.
You know, I love to travel.
Like most people, we like to see
different places, experience
different things,
you know, and I-I
The hotel I stayed in
recently in London,
I checked into this hotel
in London and it was amazing.
It had what I can only
describe to you, my friends,
as a motivational carpet.
I have no other words for it.
I hadn't ever encountered anything
quite like it in my life before.
It went from the reception to the
rooms, right? Ran all the way.
And it had little motivational quotes
going all the way along this carpet.
You know, the sort of thing that
really makes your arse pucker.
"Grab life with both hands."
Ohfuckety off.
I don't know why they needed
the motivational carpet.
I mean, I personally have never
checked into a hotel before
and then lost the will to live
before I've even reached the room.
Maybe it's happened,
I don't know.
"Room 104." "Thank you so much,
that's so kind of you.
I mean, what is the point?
"Oh, that's quite jolly, isn't it?
"That's really perked me up.
Right, off we go."
Ridiculous quotes on this carpet.
You know - "What doesn't kill you
makes you stronger."
That's bullshit, innit?
One word - osteoporosis.
It's like when people say,
"He died doing what he loved."
No, he didn't. No, he didn't.
He loved doing what he loved
right up until the moment he knew
he was going to die doing it.
Then he hated it
with every fibre of his body.
I very much doubt anybody's ever
thrown themselves out of a plane,
had that horrific moment when they realised
the parachute has not opened and gone,
"I'm loving this!"
Third quote on this carpet -
"Don't be a tourist,
be a traveller."
It's a hotel in Central London!
Who do they think
was checking in, Marco Polo?
Having walked there across the
Gobi Desert on one flip-flop? No!
We're all tourists. We found it
on TripAdvisor. I mean
..we are all tourists now.
That is the way of the world.
We crawl around this Earth like ants
on a piece of fallen fruit.
There's not a patch of it
we haven't fingered, honestly.
You could spend three days trying
to get to the top of Machu Picchu.
I guarantee, the first thing you'd
lay eyes on is a lost Deliveroo driver.
It was the final quote on this
carpet that really caught my eye
and it really stuck with me,
it just said -
"If you hate your jobquit.
"Life's too short."
I thought, "How insensitive is that
"on a hotel carpet,
"given that the person who's going
to be looking at that every day
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
"..is going to be hoovering
the sodding thing."
I did notice I was getting a little
bit more nervous as a traveller
on recent flights I've taken. In
your 20s, you don't care, do you?
You're like that, "I'll live forever,
I'll live forever, me.
I'm going to live forever."
As you get older, you start
to really pay attention
to the safety announcements
on planes. It becomes more urgent.
You're more aware of your own mortality.
You know, they'll start the announcement,
I will definitely pay attention,
absolutely pay attention.
The glasses go on, the headphones
come off, book goes down,
notebook comes up. I'm like that.
Last flight I was on, it got to
that point We've all heard it
a thousand times, we've all heard it
a thousand times,
you put the little life jacket on,
right?
You put the little life jacket
on and she went, she said,
"And, of course, in the event
of landing on water
"..there is a whistle
"..to attract attention."
In the event of landing on water,
there is a whistle! A whistle!
To attract attention. Now, I think
for the first time in my life,
I really took in that whistle.
The fabric of that whistle, if you
will, the being of that whistle,
the ergonomics of that whistle.
There is a whistle!
To attract attention.
My brain had the very helpful
thought, it thought,
"Well, if we have landed on water,
"we have essentially fallen out of
the sky from 30 to 40,000 feet
"in a not insignificant metal tube
that may or may not be on fire.
"If that hasn't attracted
attention
"If everybody in the surrounding
area has managed not to notice"
SHE YELLS QUIETLY
"And you are THEN reliant on
"I got this."
CLEARS HER THROA
WEAK PEEP
"I was sure that was going to work.
"Put on your little blinky blinky
light thing, maybe they haven't seen
"the MASSIVE FLAMES BEHIND US!"
Can I politely suggest that the only
thing that would save you in that
situation is if you are lucky enough
to be on the same flight
as the woman with the big boobies
..and she went floating past
and you just use her as a life raft.
Ladies and gentlemen of Apollo,
are you ready for your
first act this evening?
CHEERING
Please raise the roof,
make her feel very, very welcome,
it's the wonderful Ria Lina!
CHEERING
Hello! Hello. Oh, thank you so much,
that was such a lovely,
warm welcome. You know what,
I'm going to be honest,
when I first started doing comedy,
that's not how they would greet me
when I first walked on stage.
I'd walk out and they'd go,
"Oh, a woman.
"This is going to be shit."
Well, let's address it.
Female comedy is different
to male comedy, isn't it?
It's because of the vagina.
It affects the acoustics.
I don't know what they were thinking,
putting me and Zoe on the same bill -
we might synchronise! The mess!
Not only am I a woman,
I have mixed race.
My mother comes from the
Philippines, my father is German,
which means I want to take over the world,
but just to give it a really good clean.
Do you know what, it is so lovely
being in a room full of people
I'm not related to cos I just
spent 18 months stuck in a house
with people I can't fuck.
I locked in with my ex-husband.
I mean, don't tell him he's my ex,
he doesn't know yet.
And my husband's older than me.
We have more than a 20 year age gap
which will always divide a room
when I tell them that because now all the
men are thinking, "Oh, he's a lucky guy."
Whereas all the women are thinking,
"I bet he had money!"
And, ladies, so did I.
What made lockdown worse is that we
were locked in with some children.
Sorry, not some children - our
children. It's not like I just
The alarms went off and I was like,
"You three, quick, get inside!
"I will love you."
I didn't mind lockdown
home schooling, either,
because it turns out the government
didn't care what your kids
were learning,
as long as they were learning.
So my children are fantastic
at laundry.
We have three children,
we have a girl and two boys.
The middle boy is my favourite.
Never gets the whole room,
that joke. You know who laughs?
The parents laugh
because they know it's true.
We got parents in?
SOME CHEERING
Four. Four parents
..that are still awake.
Everyone else
SHE SNORES
Parent's know it's true.
The people who don't laugh
are always the ones that go,
"That's not true,
"Parents don't have favourites."
I hate to break it to you,
but parents do have favourites,
and if you didn't know that,
you obviously weren't the one.
OK, I say favourite. It was actually
more of a bonding thing.
I just bonded with my
middle son a little bit faster
cos when he came out,
he came out looking like me,
right? He had dark hair,
a dark eyes. I knew he was mine.
And the reason that was important is
because when my daughter came out,
my daughter came out blonde. Blonde!
I did not work nine months
to make a kid everyone thinks
I'm the nanny of.
And not only was she blonde, she
weighed 9lbs, I mean, look at me!
9lbs?! They tried to hand me
a big white whale in the hospital!
"What is that?"
"It's your baby."
"No, no, no, no. Whatever that is,
it crawled up inside me,
"it ate my baby and it got
stuck on the way out."
Turns out it was my baby,
so I picked her up a week later.
What? I kept her. I named her
and everything, she's very useful.
Well, I mean, she can't
sew a sneaker for shit
She can do other things,
like colouring inside the lines.
Apparently, that's really important
if you're blonde.
UNCOMFORTABLE LAUGHTER
Oh, that's the controversial
joke for you?
That's the one you went,
"Oh, no. OK, no, no, no, no, no.
"Backing out of that one."
Can I just put your minds at rest?
I have told that joke
in the Netherlands.
I have told it in Denmark.
I've told that joke in Sweden.
Trust me, blondes don't get it.
So I had to tell my parents.
Don't know why I worried,
my father was thrilled. He was like,
GERMAN ACCENT: "She looks like
what? Ja, I knew we would triumph!"
Although, to be fair,
it was really my mother
that I was more worried about
telling. How do I tell the woman
who raised me to identify
as a strong Filipina woman
that her granddaughter
is whiter than rice?
Well, apparently, exactly like that,
because if there's one thing
an Asian woman loves, it's rice.
And she loves having a blonde
granddaughter,
she loves taking her out and, oh,
my gosh, the picture that it makes
because my mother's already
gone through the change.
Here's a fun fact for you - after
Asian women go through the change,
they don't die. They just shrink.
You're 12. You're 90. You're Yoda.
That's where my mother is now.
"Little old Asian grandmother am I."
And she loves taking my daughter out
just to see the reaction
that they get, because when
my daughter was little,
she had these insane blonde curls,
so every time they went out
together, it was like Halloween,
just Yoda and Shirley Temple
walking down the street.
My daughter was two,
they were the same size.
Nobody could tell who owned who. She
used to take my daughter shopping.
She loved taking her to Primark,
show her what her cousins are achieving.
I know that's rather uncomfortable
topic area. If you are feeling
at all uncomfortable about that last joke
or even maybe a little bit guilty,
it's a simple fix.
Just take off everything
that you bought on the high street,
leave in a little bag by the door.
I'll send it back to my cousins.
They'll resell it.
Everybody eats this week, huh?
Folks, you've been absolutely
lovely. My name is Ria Lina.
Please enjoy the rest of the show.
It's amazing. Thank you so much.
CHEERING AND WHISTLING
Ria Lina!
Let us keep that wonderful applause
going and welcome your next act.
It's the brilliant Tom Ward!
CHEERING
It's not a wig. Good evening.
Let's just deal with that
straight away so you can relax.
I've been doing the solo life
this year. Just me, unattached.
Yeah? What I've noticed about when
I'm when I'm doing this solo life,
when there's not a girlfriend
in my life, I buy a lot more.
I spend money plugging that void.
Yeah? I buy more clothes.
I see a lot of people wearing clothes
here tonight, my kind of people.
When I had a little glimpse, I thought,
"Yeah, yeah,
they're going to love the clothes stuff."
I love clothes.
My favourite thing is sunglasses.
Not technically clothes but,
you know, it's on your eyes.
It's covering something.
I like shades.
Yeah? I like getting them
from those really weird shops
that sell everything. You know
those, like, household shops
that sell all the stuff you need -
suitcases, nonstick pans,
women's nighties and then a
sunglasses carousel just outside,
there's a little man standing there
watching you while you try on
all the shades. And you're
looking at yourself in the little mirror
that's smaller than a human face.
That mirror is smaller
than a pair of sunglasses.
Got absolutely no idea
how they look on your head.
And that mirror gets around.
That mirror gets around.
They have that same size mirror
at the shoe shop.
Trying to get your whole
body in there.
So you can see how they look on you
as a total person.
"Well, I think they look nice,
"but I don't normally stand in
this position. It's hard to tell."
Backing away.
Most people accused of stealing
shoes were just trying to see
how they looked
from across the road.
Otherwise you get home later
that night, see yourself
for the first time in a full length
mirror with your shades
and your shoes on.
"Oh, no."
I feel like old-school man
is being phased out now, yeah,
old-school man. Heterosexuality
is hitting the skids now.
You feel that? It's had a good
knock. But there's new genres
now coming through. Any straights
in tonight, first of all?
SOME CHEERING
WEAKLY: "Yeah"
You hear that?
You can even hear it in the cheer.
Straight's old school now.
We'll talk about straight
in the future like a sort of charm,
like a charming thing. Little kids
will talk to their grandads.
"Grandpa, Grandpa, what? Why?
"What about the other holes,
Grandpa?"
"It was a different time.
"A man was a man
and a woman was a woman."
It's all changing now,
it's all up in the air.
It's great, it's exciting,
we've hit "refresh" on life,
haven't we? It's all brilliant now.
Straight is old school, even gay
and bisexual is old school now.
We've got new genres now
coming through every morning.
The ones I'm jealous of
are pansexuals.
They can't even see gender.
SOME CHEERING
Yeah, they got magic eyes.
Blinded by their own openness.
They can see other stuff.
Tesco Metro.
They know the difference
between Tesco and Sainsbury's,
but they cannot, for the life
of them, tell you the gender
of the person outside Tesco.
"There is a very
attractivebeing
"outside Tesco.
I rather fancy that being.
"I think the being likes me.
"Someone's going to put
something insomewhere.
"Doesn't matter who,
it doesn't matter where,
"cos every soul's a goal, baby."
APPLAUSE
You cannot get more sexually
progressive than that,
I mean, bisexuals must feel
very silly right now.
They used to be the number one edgy
genre and then pansexuals came along
and said, "Piss off,
I raise you blind."
I just wonder what else
they can't see.
Yeah? If they're blind to gender,
what else is a pansexual blind to?
Yeah? If a pansexual
was a witness to a murder,
how useful would they be
in the police inquiry?
"What did you see of the murder?"
"Well, there was a being.
"Doing some stabbing."
"A being?
Were they a man or a woman?"
"I can't see that sort of thing."
"You can't see that? What were they
racially - white, black, Asian?"
"Again, I'm far too progressive
to know.
"It was just an aura with a knife.
"They were stabbing the old person
I CAN see age, it's disgusting.
"My pansexuality really only extends
to young, sexy people, officer.
"Now, may I leave?"
I'll be honest with you, folks,
I was involved with a man a few years ago,
OK?
More than ten years ago,
I was involved with a man,
but because it's more than ten years ago,
I don't want to say I'm bisexual now. I
haven't been bummed in a decade. Yeah?
I feel like you need to renew
your certificates.
Can't just go around dining out on
former glories while practitioners
of bisexuality are out there,
front lines, out of order to them.
Consequences. And I feel like
that's happening a lot now.
A lot of straight people are trying
to claim they're a little bit more
gay than they are, just to seem
interesting. Yeah? "I'm a bit gay."
"Are you, though?
Have you been bummed?"
"I'm a bit gay."
"Yeah, come on, let's hear it."
I was talking to a guy at a party,
right? He told me he was bisexual
cos he'd had a couple
of gay thoughts.
Thoughts? I've had thoughts
about volunteering.
Have I volunteered? Have I fuck!
And therefore, I am not a volunteer,
it's quite straightforward.
I can't walk up to volunteers
outside a soup kitchen and say,
"Yeah, I've thought about
doing that.
"Me and you are one and the same.
Have a great day.
"I'm off to have fun
while we both volunteer."
It's out of order.
But, you know, to be honest,
when I was involved with this guy,
it wasn't about him being a guy,
it was about the connection we had.
Right? I didn't really
care about his gender,
which I guess makes
me a pansexual back then,
but it didn't stick,
so I'm more like a nonstick pan.
Thank you so much.
You've been absolutely amazing.
God bless you all. Bye-bye.
CHEERING
The brilliant Tom Ward!
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up
for Ria Lina and Tom Ward!
I've been Zoe Lyons.
Take care. Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE