Live at The Apollo (2004) s18e02 Episode Script

Ria Lina, Lucy Beaumont, Josh Pugh

1
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
your host for tonight - Ria Lina!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Welcome to Live At The Apollo!
CHEERING
Are we well?
AUDIENCE: Yes!
Oh, wonderful.
Tell me, has anyone ever
had a mother?
WHOOPING
Excellent.
My mum's amazing.
I love that woman.
But I keep letting her down.
Now I know how husbands feel.
Are you a husband?
Do better!
When I tell people my mum is Asian,
they immediately picture
this tiny little woman
who might have been a nurse
or a carer or a nanny.
But that's not true at all.
My mum actually graduated
from high school at 16.
That's two years early
in any system.
She then went to university
and studied physics
before becoming
a computer programmer.
That's amazing for not just a woman
but for a woman of colour.
There is genuinely a picture of her
in the online
Computer History Museum,
the caption of which reads:
"This is a woman."
So, as you can imagine,
those were some difficult footsteps
to follow in
because they wereso tiny!
Teeny-tiny!
Hey, where do tiny physicists
get their feet measured?
Quarks.
But I do love that woman,
of course I do.
And I want to make her proud.
So, last year, I successfully
completed my first marriage.
LAUGHTER
Thank you. Thank you so much.
I mean, it did take me 18 years,
which I know is a long time,
all right? But then, you know what?
My mum's still married to my dad,
and I think they're going to die
trying, sowho's the winner?
I think the take-home point is
that I finished what I started
because I am not a quitter.
But it turned out,
after 18 years of marriage,
that my ex-husband - who was
more than 20 years older than me -
was also not a quitter.
So I had to divorce him
because he wouldn'tdie.
And what's the first thing
that happens when you break up
from a long-term relationship, huh?
If you're a woman, all your
friends gather around, don't they?
They all gather around.
"Oh, honey, honey, babe, babe
"Honey, honey,
babes, babes, babes, babes"
And they tell you how much they
never liked him in the first place.
You couldn't have told me
that sooner?
Like, I don't know,
when you introduced us?
Or, oh, I don't know,
maybe at the wedding?
There's a whole bit in the wedding
where we specifically ask you,
"Is this a good idea?"
Where were you, huh? Oh, too busy
eating the chicken, weren't you?
Mm, yum, yum, yum. Free chicken.
Everybody knows
wedding chicken is the best.
Who doesn't love a fricassee
when it's overpriced,
mass-produced, and two time zones
away from being out of date?
I felt bad because I thought
the food made you ill.
But it wasn't salmonella, was it?
It was the guilt.
But what happens if you're a guy and
you break up from a relationship?
What do your friends do?
Absolutely nothing - because they
don't even know you've broken up!
You guys need to talk
to each other more.
Do better!
I think, though, I mean,
to be fair to my husband's friends,
I think the reason
they didn't realise we'd broken up
is because, even though
we're divorced
we still live together.
I know, it's a party
in nobody's pants.
Well, sometimes his, but at least I
don't have to clean it up any more.
It's because of
the cost-of-living crisis.
That's why we just can't afford
two separate households.
The only difference is, instead
of sleeping next to each other,
now we're in bunk beds.
It's the longest I've been on top
in years.
I was actually supposed to move out
before the pandemic but then it hit,
and he was like, "Ooh, can you stay?
I need to shield."
And I said, "Of course I will."
And I did.
And I stayed and did everything that
was needed outside of the house.
I walked the dog, I took out the
trash, I did all of the shopping.
But then, when I came home,
he would have the nerve to make me
strip down at the front door.
I mean, I knew that man
was a pervert
when he taught me English
in high school, but
My ex-husband and I
became single at the same time
because that's how divorce works.
And here's an interesting thing.
When a heterosexual couple
breaks up,
who usually pairs off first, huh?
It's the man. No idea why
Lower standards.
Scientists can't fathom it
They can't be alone.
More research is needed
Desperation.
It's a mystery!
And, lo and behold, we both
downloaded some dating apps
and he met someone
almost immediately.
And she's a wonderful woman.
The only thing is, she lives
more than an hour away from us.
He has to take two trains
to go see her.
And I said, "Oh, old man.
"So you could figure out
how to download the dating app
"on to your phone,
but you couldn't figure out
"how to set your search radius
to something sensible?"
And he said,
"Ha-ha, the joke's on you.
"I'm over 60.
Those trains are free."
Not that I'm against online dating.
I do love this online dating,
by the way.
I do love online dating.
It's totally blown my mind.
I met my husband in person,
all right?
This online dating stuff,
it's incredible.
You can just download it
on to your phone.
It's so clean, it's so clinical.
You just swipe right
if you want to shag 'em.
Left if you don't want to shag 'em.
You can swipe up
if you want a super-shag 'em.
I can go through hundreds of men
in a sitting.
I can literally shop for dick
while I shit.
You don't know
the true meaning of satisfaction
until you've curled one out
to make room for that one.
I think I genuinely love my phone
now more than I love my kids.
"Mummy, will you play with us?"
"Oh, honey, honey, honey. Can you
tell me when I'm ovulating, huh?
"Can you bring wine to the door
in under 20 minutes? Hm?
"You're great,
but you're no Snapchat.
"Go work on your personality, OK?
Mummy's dong-scrolling."
I think I haven't found the right
dating app that's for me yet
because each dating app
has its own niche, its own angle.
The first one I downloaded
was Tinder.
Because when you're married, that's
the only one you've ever heard of.
It was one of the original ones.
And 10, 12 years ago,
when it first came out,
it was the place that
you could go to find love.
I know Tinder marriages
that are ten years strong now.
But that's not what Tinder is any
more. The marketplace has changed.
Tinder now is the app
that you go to if, like myself,
you've just been married
for 18 years
and you just want to know
what it feels like
to have gonorrhoea.
So I tried Tinder.
Didn't work for me.
Then I think I overcorrected
because then I ended up on an app
called Hinge.
Don't know if you know Hinge.
It's the trendy app.
It's quite pleased with itself
because Hinge has an algorithm.
It has an algorithm,
and what this algorithm does is
it watches you for the first couple
of days that you're on the app,
because then, after that,
when it knows you well enough,
it likes to suggest people to you.
I found this out five days in when
it suddenly suggested Steve to me.
Now, I don't know
what I did wrong
LAUGHTER
The first couple of days
that I was on the app,
maybe I swiped in my sleep.
Maybe a raccoon
got hold of my phone.
All I know is
Steve has no teeth!
I know my last guy
couldn't eat solid food
but that doesn't mean it's my type.
So I had to give up on Hinge
as well.
And then someone came up to me and
they said, "Ria, Ria, Ria,
"but you're a feminist,
you're a feminist.
"Why aren't you on the feminist
dating appBumble?"
I went, "There's a feminist dating
app? Tell me more.
"Yes, indeed I am a feminist.
"Tell me, what does this wondrous
feminist dating app do?
"Does it make the men pay 17% more
for it to address the wage gap?
"Huh?
CHEERING
"Or
"Or maybe it pays for my childcare
costs so I can go on a date?
"Does it do that? Huh? Huh?
"Or does it make my doctor believe
me when I tell him
"something's wrong?
Does it do that?!"
CHEERING
"Tell me, what does this wondrous
feminist dating app do?"
It turns out the only difference
between Bumble and every other app
that is out there is that when
the woman matches the guy
..she talks first.
That's it. She starts
the conversation.
Cos, ladies, that's what we've been
struggling with
for hundreds of years!
Trying to get a word in edgewise.
Really? That's it?
You're telling me that this date
doesn't happen unless I talk first?
What kind of feminism is that?!
Where I'm still doing all the work!
That's like every important
conversation in the last 18 years
of my marriage.
It didn't start unless I started it.
That's not a feminist dating app.
I'll tell you what a feminist
dating app is.
A feminist dating app is one where,
when the woman matches the guy,
he can't talk to anybody else
..until she says he can!
I'm going to design that app myself
and I'm going to call it Marriage.
Oh. Who's on the dating apps?
Give me a cheer.
CHEERING
Did we do a survey?
Did we only sit single people
in the balcony? What is that?
In case their pheromones disrupt
the recording.
"Ria's single. She's on the prowl.
Put them far, far away.
"She's working."
Really? All right. Give me a cheer
if you're in a happy relationship.
CHEERING
Wow. Almost all of the stalls.
Just a small pocket over there
that went, "Happy? Hmm."
Bless you.
Well, then, I'd like to speak to
everyone in the room, but, you know,
obviously, those of you in
the balconies
that relate to this, but I think
to everyone here,
we need to talk about dick pics.
We need to clear up some
confusion about dick pics.
To be clear, nobody wants
an unsolicited dick pic.
CHEERING
If you own a penis
And I mean attached to your body,
not in a jar on the shelf.
LAUGHTER
..never, ever, ever send a picture
of that to somebody
without their permission.
Because let's be honest, the penis
is not a pretty appendage.
That needs to come
with a trigger warning.
"The following image may
contain nuts."
"Objects may be closer
than they appear."
Nobody wants an unsolicited
dick pic. Disagree!
AUDIENCE OOHS
And that's why
they put you in the balcony.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You know what? He is that far away,
and even if he sent me a pic now,
it would still look just as small.
It must be hard to take a dick pic
with just the one hand when
you need the other one to split
the hairs so you can find it.
Hey, mate, can you hold the light
a bit higher?
Hang on, hang on. Hold it just
a bit high No, above the balls.
I'm going to throw you a bone,
because you can't throw me one.
LAUGHTER
Nobody wants
an unsolicited dick pic.
But a solicited dick pic
I don't want to point any fingers,
but some young women out there are
making online dating
a little bit difficult
for those of us, because they're
making men scared to share -
with permission, to be clear! OK?
I actually don't fully understand
why you wouldn't want to see
a picture of their penis in advance.
Why would you not want to see
a picture of what could potentially
be the last penis you ever
see in your life?
That could be your forever penis.
Why are you happy to see a picture
of their pets but not what's
in their pants? Huh?
Because you know you'd be happy
to stroke their pets.
I've just been married for 18 years.
I don't want to waste two weeks
dating him to find out
that he's "all personality".
I need the goods up front.
That's why I do my food shopping
in store and not online,
because I want to see what I'm going
to be putting in my mouth later.
Not getting a dick pick up front
is like having
your fruit and veg delivered.
You have no right to complain if it
shows up covered in strange bruises.
And it's so much easier
now on a mobile phone.
When I was dating my husband,
I had to go home with him
just to see his dick tapestry.
That's right. He was so old,
he had a dick tapestry.
I didn't mind. It was hung.
LAUGHTER
And you can learn so much about
a guy from his dick pic.
Is he a natural redhead?
Is there coffee in the background
to suggest there might be breakfast?
If it's taken in his bathroom,
how clean is the bathroom?
How much effort is he putting
into his dick pic, huh?
Is he just sending it to you on
WhatsApp, or does it arrive
in the post, printed on a nice
greeting card?
Are you one of those men?
Didn't think so.
Also, the amount of effort a man
puts into his dick pic is directly
proportional to the amount
of effort they're going to put
into your relationship. OK?
I was chatting to a man online.
I said, "Send me a dick pic."
He said, "I don't have one."
I said, "Everybody has a dick pic.
"When Apple downloaded that U2 album
on everyone's phones, they sent
"a dick pic along with it
as consolation."
I have thousands on my phone in
a folder called Dictionary Corner.
Which says a lot more about
my taste in music than it does
about my sex life.
But he didn't have one.
So he said, "Hang on a second."
And he went into the back and he
plopped it out on the sink
And I say "plopped" because that's
the noise it would have made
in the state that it was in.
..and he took a picture.
Didn't even do the washing-up!
Swipe left.
In fact, if anything, I think
the dick pics are more important
than face pics when it comes to
online dating
because what do face pics lead to?
Catfishing.
I went on a date with a guy
once who used photos
that were more than 15 years old.
I said, "Why did you use
photos that were so old?"
He says, "Cos that's
when I looked best."
And I said, "Then that's when you
should have dated me."
The only time I want to see a
face pic when I'm online dating you
is in your dick pic,
with a today's paper
so I know it's recent.
If anything, I want an app
that just leads with dick pics.
OK? Just dick pic up there.
Then you can tell me underneath it
what it is you do for a living.
Then underneath that, you can answer
all those stupid questions, OK?
Penis, pension, personality.
That's how I want to online date.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It's beautiful, people.
Are you ready for your first act?
CHEERING
Then please go wild and crazy
and welcome to the stage,
the amazing Lucy Beaumont!
SHE COUGHS
I'm asthmatic.
That is so scary.
Everyone just walks through it.
It's really You can't see.
Hello.
Are you all all right?
CHEERING
Oh, good.
It's lovely to be here in London.
I'm from Yorkshire.
CHEERING
No, you can't all be from Yorkshire.
If you haven't been to Yorkshire,
it's full of warm-hearted,
confrontational people.
LAUGHTER
I'm in London a lot, you know,
and it's still the only place
where someone takes the piss
out of my accent.
I was with a friend and this guy
overhead
me talking, and he went to me,
"Whoa!
"Where are you from?" Like that.
And I said,
"Hull, on the east coast."
And he said,
"Say 'east coast' again."
I went, "East coast." Like that.
And he went, "Aw, bless you."
And he had no legs.
LAUGHTER
But, like Do you know?
But you know what London's like.
You know, sometimes it's just nice
to get out of the city.
And I've been working down here
for a while, and I got a train back
up to Hull and I went
and got a pasty,
you know, when I got out
at the station, from Greggs.
And the woman went to me,
"And what can I do for you,
my little angel?"
And she handed me it, and she went,
"Now you take good care,
"me darling." And I took it
and I got in a taxi, and he went,
"Don't be fucking eating
"that in here!"
And I thought,
"Ooh, it's good to be home."
A lot of Northern cities now,
they've had a lot of regeneration,
like, they're sort of done it
themselves, you know,
sort of like There's a lot of
places a bit like
East End of London, sort of thing.
And I was in Hull, down this place
called Humber Street, and it's got
an independent, modern art gallery.
And I thought, "Oh, has it
lost its roots a bit?"
And I went in cos they've got
Well, they had a sculpture
of an upside down vagina
smoking a cigarette.
It's true.
And I went in and I said,
"Oh, how much is it to get in?"
And she said, "£12.50." I was
like, "Oh!" Like that.
And there was a woman mopping
the floor next to me and she said,
"I'll do that round
the back for a fiver."
LAUGHTER
Do a lot of you have children?
SCATTERED CHEERING
It's awful, in't it?
Is anyone thinking about it?
Don't do it.
Obviously, like, it's unconditional
love, you know, like, it really is.
But if you had your time again,
you wouldn't do it.
And I've learned a lot about young
people since I've been a parent.
I've learned that if a child
under the age of seven says
that they like olives,
they're a twat.
LAUGHTER
My daughter, she's
Oh, she's lovely.
She's really well spoken.
She sounds like
a young Princess Margaret.
But there's just a bit of
a language barrier every
now and again. Like, I was making
a buffet the other day
and I said, "Ooh, I'm in
hosting mode.
"You know, I'm the hostess with
the mostest."
I was like, "Hosting mode!"
And she looked at her dad and she
said, "What is she saying?"
I've tried to bring her up quite
spiritual, you know,
so I was burning sage, you know,
in the living room to get
away negative energy.
And she's quite sharp.
And she said, "Don't, Mum.
My dad will disappear."
LAUGHTER
I'm married to a comedian.
Did you know? Jon Richardson.
Oh, yeah, good. You know who he is.
CHEERING
Do you know, because I'm going on
tour, my management company,
they took a Facebook advert out
and someone said,
"Don't read the comments."
So I did.
There was just one that bothered me.
And this guy had put, without trying
to be too crude,
"How many
WHISPERS: "..dicks..
ALOUD: "..has she had to
WHISPERS: "..suck
ALOUD: "..to get the career
she's got?"
I mean, the answer's one, but
That's weird to applause that,
in't it?
It's only weird for my grandad,
who's watching.
That's not
You've made that weird for an
87-year-old.
But the thing, cos, like, I don't
know if ever you've noticed,
but I've started to do a bit
of telly now and I'm in this weird
stage where I'm getting recognised
but I'm not used to it yet.
I walked in a pub last night
and there was a woman staring at me
and I thought, "What are you
fucking looking at?"
And then I realised, "Ooh, it's me."
I did You know Michael McIntyre's
The Wheel?
Have you seen it,
the game show?
I lost someone £98,000.
I know!
If you've seen the show, you know,
they go back down in the ground.
When he went down, he turned to me
and said, "I've had a lovely day.
"Thank you."
I would have slapped me!
OK. We're both vegan now.
I'm a vegan that likes steak.
For the iron.
And Jon's a vegan
when he's interviewed on TV.
It's a weird life for him, though.
You know, seeing it
through his eyes
The situations we're getting
Cos he's been on TV ten years.
And we went and did this gig,
you know, in a school.
And then we packed up and he turned
to me and he said, "I've got to go."
I was like, "All right, then, just
wait till you get in."
He was like, "I've got to go now."
And he didn't even let me get out.
He got on the backseat,
and luckily we had a bucket
because we'd been to the seaside.
We've got blacked-out windows.
And I got out and there was two
of his fans waiting for him, and
they said, "We've come all the way
"from Rotherham to see Jon."
They said, "Where is he?"
I said,
"He's shitting in a bucket in"
"..the back of the car."
And they said at
the same time, "We'll wait."
Yeah. But we're both vegan.
WHISPERS: Sort of.
And then when we go
When we go out for a nice meal,
I'll order the steak,
for the iron.
And he'll order butternut squash,
and then he'll be looking
at my steak and he's not listening
to what I'm saying.
And so what I do
right at the end, I go,
"Oh, I can't eat that last bit.
"Oh, what a waste." Like that.
And then we just swap the plates
round. And it's all in silence.
And he eats this bit of steak,
and the look on his face
after he's eaten it is like
You know those Facebook adverts
that go viral of the deaf baby
when it gets a hearing aid?
It hears its mother talk.
That's what it's like.
My mum, she came
to visit me recently.
She spoils my middle class
bubble sometimes.
She came round, and it was just
when my daughter had lost a tooth,
and my daughter turned to her
and she said, "Nanny, what will
"the tooth fairy do with my tooth?"
And my mum said, "Well, she's going
to take all your white teeth
"and all my black teeth and make
a piano out of them."
And she said to me, "Lucy, like,
you know, I don't want to, like,
"sort of, you know, get involved
with your parenting,
"but I just want you to know,
I think you're bringing her up
"a little bit spoiled and, you know,
that's not how you were brought up."
And it bothered me, that,
you know, and I was thinking
about it, and I was bathing my
daughter that night and I said,
"Come on, then. It's time to
get out."
And she said, "No." Like that.
I said, "Come on, it's time
to get out." She said, "No."
And I took the water out and all
the toys, and she was shivering.
I said, "Come on." And then it just
all came out of me,
all my '80s Hull upbringing,
finally.
And I said, "Right." I said,
"For Christmas, all you're going to
"get in your sack is two lumps
of coal and a tangerine,
"and it's going to get wrapped
"around your ribcage and rot
your insides.
"There's children in Africa dying!"
I said, "Are you going to get out
now?" And she said, "No."
And I said, "Do you want an olive?"
And she said, "Yes."
Just before I go, I just want
to tell you, I've done a show called
Would I Lie To You?
You know that, don't you?
Oh, I love it. I've finally found
the show for me, cos
the researcher said, "We've never
had so many mad stories."
And there's, like,
loads I want to do.
Like, there was a time a crow
tried to pick me up.
No, it's true. Honestly.
I felt its talons,
you know, gripping.
And then there was another time
I was just walking down the street
and a slice of raw mushroom
fell out my sleeve.
I know.
And there was another time I was on
the tube, on the Northern Line,
and a gang of youths got on
and parted a chocolate Wagon Wheel
and stuck it to my forehead.
LAUGHTER
And I've been looking, you know
This happened quite a while ago.
I've been looking all this time,
you know, has anyone else
had that level of public
humiliation?
And the closest I've ever seen
was I did a gig in Scunthorpe
and I was going past in a taxi,
and there was a woman at the bus
stop, you know, with one of them,
like, massive rollers,
like, just in a fringe?
And a lad walked past and put
a saveloy through it.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Goodnight.
CHEERING
The wonderful Lucy Beaumont!
Are you ready for your second act?
Then please go wild and crazy
for the fabulous Josh Pugh.
Hello, everybody. Good evening.
Good evening. Thank you so much.
I'm Josh.
Big news about me.
I've got a dog.
He's a good dog.
He's a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.
Yeah. Don't judge. I walk him with
my shirt on.
But no trousers.
Just how I do it.
He's a good dog, right, but bless
him, he's scared of the Hoover.
My dog is scared of the Hoover.
Every time I get the Hoover
out, my dog panics.
But I suppose it's understandable,
really.
Like, imagine it from his point
of view.
Like, to us as humans,
we know it's a Hoover, don't we?
But to him it's just a noisy
robot that keeps attacking
his owner's dick.
LAUGHTER
It's a Henry.
I like the eye contact.
It's powerful, I'll tell you that.
Straight into the mains.
Bagless. Both of us now,
to be honest.
Got a wife as well.
Should say that
before the dog stuff, really.
Very happy. Been together our entire
adult lives.
Very happy. But a part of me wonders
sometimes if I've still got it,
you know, if I could still
attract a woman.
I'll tell you what I mean. The other
day I was walking down the street.
There's a lady parked up in the car.
I thought, "She's giving me
the eye.
"OK, I'll be polite."
So I gave her the eye back
and then she locked the car doors.
LAUGHTER
Yeah. Didn't trust herself.
I've still got it, ladies.
It's a gift. It's a gift,
and a curse. And a curse at times.
Any married people in?
CHEERING
Yeah, you loving it?
SCATTERED CHEERING
OK.
It's good being married.
What I would say is it's not
like the films.
That's what I'd say. Like,
in the films, whenever
there's a couple, you always hear
what the other person has said.
First time, every time.
That is not real life, is it?
From what I can tell, about 80%
of being married is just one of us
screaming, "What?" from the top
of the staircase.
The other 20% is her accusing me
of mumbling.
And that's our entire lives.
"You get your ears tested!"
"YOU get YOUR ears tested!"
It's exhausting.
She's always telling me I've got
things wrong with me, my wife.
Always telling me I've got different
things going on.
She's not medically trained.
That doesn't seem to be holding her
back at all.
She keeps telling me at the minute,
like, I've got ADHD.
She keeps saying to me, "Josh,
I think you've got ADHD.
"I think you should get tested.
I think you've got ADHD."
Well, I think that's quite
an arrogant thing to tell somebody
they've got if you're not a doctor.
Break that down for a second.
Like, you've told me a story,
I've lost interest in that story
..and your first thought is
that I must have some kind of
neurological condition.
The arrogance of that!
Like, can we maybe work on your
storytelling skills
before we put me on mind-altering
medication?
Should we try that first?
See how we get on?
She's a great person. I could never
be without her.
I could never be single. I was
single before I met her. I hated it.
I hated being single. Even my wife,
when I first met my wife, she didn't
like me at all,
didn't fancy me one little bit,
but I ground her down
and now we're married. And people
forget you can do that.
Like, that is an option.
Like, if you like somebody
and they don't like you back,
don't just give up straight away.
Like, don't get weird about it.
If you find yourself
going through their bins,
that's too farshe said.
But, like, my generation
My generation especially, we're
obsessed with this idea,
this notion of fate.
Like, you hear it all the time,
don't you?
"If it was meant to happen,
it'll happen."
But come on, we've got more control
over our lives than that, surely.
Like, if you're in the supermarket,
shopping with your kid,
and your kid wandered off,
you'd go and look for it.
You wouldn't be like,
"Guess it just wasn't meant to be.
"I'll just carry on shopping."
You get back and your partner's
like, "Where's the kid?"
"Just didn't work out. Yeah.
"Right person, wrong time.
We go again. We move forward."
I'm not a good husband,
if I'm honest. I'm not unfaithful or
controlling, but I am incompetent.
And that can really grind
a person down.
I don't know what this says
about me, but I'm not my
wife's emergency contact.
It's not a great sign, that, is it?
It's like, "I love you, Josh,
"but if the shit hits the fan,
I'm phoning my dad, you stay
"out of the way."
I just make mistakes.
That's all it is.
I make silly mistakes. The worst
mistake I've made in our marriage,
actually, my wife's favourite dinner
in the whole world, right,
is beef stew
in the slow cooker.
A very exotic woman.
That's her favourite dinner.
One day she gets up early for work.
She puts her beef stew
into the slow cooker.
She goes out to work.
She text me at lunchtime, saying,
"Can't wait for this beef stew.
"Really looking forward to it."
Gets in, five o'clock in
the evening,
rubbing her hands together.
"I can't wait for this beef stew.
"I've been looking forward
to this all day."
What neither of us realised was
that at about 12 o'clock that day,
I'd accidentally unplugged
the slow cooker
so that I could plug in Alexa
to ask how old Ronan Keating is.
She was furious.
She was like
"What were you thinking?!"
I was like, "I don't know.
Late 30s? Early 40s? I don't know"
LAUGHTER
He's 47. I've got to tell people.
I get stressed.
We're very fortunate.
A wonderful time in our life.
I became a dad 18 months ago.
CHEERING
He's actually nine years
old, but I've only
just started getting involved.
The hard work's done.
I'll step in now, I think.
No, he's a baby.
He's a wonderful boy.
It's stressful.
Very stressful. Not for me.
For my little boy.
It's very stressful being a baby.
His socks just fall off all day.
Just start the day, you look down,
his socks are off again.
Imagine if you were going
through that as adults.
Your mental health would be in
the gutter
if you were going through that.
I'm amazed it isn't more babies'
first words when they learn
to speak. Not Muma, Dada.
"What the fuck's going on with
these socks? Seriously?!"
Mad being a baby.
My little boy, he's 18 months old.
He's got three xylophones.
Why would anybody need three
xylophones?
There's professional xylophone
players with less xylophones
than this kid. I said to my wife,
"Why has he got three xylophones?"
She goes, "Oh, he likes
to play one in the bath."
Like some kind of eccentric
billionaire! What is going on here?
I'm enjoying being a dad.
It's changed my whole perspective,
to be honest, being a dad.
Like, growing up, I used to think
that I had an angry dad. Growing up,
I always thought I had an angry dad.
And now I'm a dad, I'm like,
"Oh, no, we just pushed a very
"reasonable man to breaking point."
Just He's just a lovely guy.
I think being a parent is a lot
like eating a pomegranate.
Like, there's really nice little
bits, but ultimately I'm not
sure it's worth it.
It's really hard.
People give you mad advice as well
when you have a kid.
My little boy, actually, he was
about a week old,
I was holding him, and my
mum, actually, she said,
"Josh, just think, that little boy
you're holding there
"could go on to be anything
he wants to be.
"He could be a top doctor,
a politician, an astronaut."
I was like,
"Wow, that's incredible."
But also,
I wouldn't have thought so.
An astronaut?!
From me to an
astronaut in one generation.
That's a hell of a leap.
I went to the pub the other day,
it was a push door,
I was pulling it.
I thought the pub was closed.
I just went home.
LAUGHTER
I could see people inside. I was
like, "How have they got in there?
"What's going on?"
NASA are not
knocking down my door.
I don't think he'll be a politician
either because he's going
to go to the same shit school in
the Midlands that I went to.
And politicians, they all go
to the posh schools, don't they?
People don't like that. They say,
"Oh, politicians,
"they all go to the posh schools."
I think that's OK.
I think that's fine.
I don't think you'd want anybody
from my school being in charge
of the country.
Maybe this isn't very progressive,
but I think if you learned maths
in a portacabin, don't get
involved in Government.
I don't know. If you learned
about history from watching
Blackadder on a wheeled-in TV,
stay out of it.
I'm not a political guy, really.
But I did I watched Matt Hancock
in the jungle.
Did you see Matt Hancock
in the jungle?
What do you think to that guy?
Yeah. Absolute front wiper,
that guy, man. He's a
So, if you don't know, Matt Hancock,
he famously
broke lockdown restrictions
to cheat on his wife, right?
And his justification for doing
that was, he said, "I fell in love."
Oh, that makes it OK,
Matt. You fell in love.
What about those of us that lost
work, lost income, lost homes?
But you fell in love.
That makes it OK, does it?
What about those of us that lost
loved ones and relatives
and couldn't be at their bedside as
they took their last dying breath?
But you fell in love, Matt.
That makes it OK, does it?
What about those of us that were
so lonely during lockdown
that we ordered a sex doll
from China
and three days later when we tried
to send it back,
the seller wouldn't accept it
because, in their words,
the anus was damaged beyond
recognition?
But you fell in love, Matt.
That makes it OK, does it?
You guys were there, man. You were
there with me in the trenches.
It changes your relationship,
being a parent, having a kid,
you know, it really does.
My wife won't mind me telling you
this, but after we had our little
boy, we didn't have sex for ages,
like, so long.
Like, I didn't know edible lingerie
could go past its use-by date,
genuinely. I had to break it up,
give it to trick-or-treaters
because it's expensive stuff, right?
LAUGHTER
But getting back into it, right,
we started mixing things up.
We've started doing sexy talk.
Yeah.
I've not done well with
this sexy talk.
Long story short, one evening,
during the throes of passion,
I called my wife a dirty git.
That is not the right vibe,
let me tell you that.
That's something you say
to an old man that's pissed himself
at a bus stop,
not the love of your life.
The other thing we've tried,
we tried spanking.
I regret the spanking.
I was not good at
the spanking either.
By all accounts, my wife said
I was too tentative with it.
My wife said I spank like
I'm reassuring a nervous greyhound.
"You're OK. You're OK."
I regret the spanking, man. Should
not have done the spanking.
I know there's couples in here
tonight. My advice, right,
and I'll leave you on this.
My advice, if you're going to spank
each other, do it in the first
six months of getting together.
Don't let ten years
of resentment build up
..before you're bringing
that into the equation.
I was spanked with
a closed fist one evening.
I don't think that's right.
My name's been Josh Pugh, enjoy the
rest of your night.
Take it easy. Thank you so much.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The marvellous Josh Pugh!
Have you enjoyed yourself tonight?
Thank you so much for watching.
Give it up one more time
for Lucy Beaumont!
CHEERING
And Josh Pugh!
CHEERING
My name is Ria Lina. Goodnight!
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