THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.166 - DARREN HARRIOTT

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Adam talks with British comedian Darren Harriott about tech gripes and childhood gadgets before talk turns to Darren's childhood in the West Midlands, the events that lead to him leaving behind gang life and his relationship with his troubled father.Conversation recorded remotely on May 26th, 2021PLEASE BE AWARE - THIS EPISODE CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF SUICIDECOPING WHEN SOMEONE DIES BY SUICIDE (CRUSE BEREAVEMENT CENTRE)Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for his work on this episodePodcast artwork by Helen GreenJET NOISE EXPLAINED - 2021 (EASTERN DAILY PRESS)RELATED LINKSDARREN HARRIOTT ON BEING FROM THE BLACK COUNTRY (STAND UP FOR LIVE COMEDY) - 2020 (YOUTUBE)DARREN HARRIOTT ON GENDER (FROM LIVE AT THE APOLLO) - 2018 (FACEBOOK)DARREN HARRIOTT: BLACK LABEL - 2019 (RADIO 4)DARREN HARRIOTT ON INSTAGRAMDARREN HARRIOTT ON TWITTER Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how are you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here.

A lot of planes today. What is going on? That is the longest plane noise I've ever heard and it's just not stopping. What's the deal, Rosie? Are there planes just circling around here now? Oh, I tell you what it is. I can see them now. It's fighter jets. Or at least not commercial planes. I don't know what they're doing. If it's some sort of demonstration of strength from the city of Norwich. I'll just check that World War III hasn't kicked off.

Go on BBC News. NHS in England to get £5.9 billion to cut waiting lists. Petrol prices to hit record high, says the RAC. Hundreds refused entry as vaccine passports enforced in Scotland. Doesn't say anything about World War III today. Flippin' heck, we've got... That was hardcore. Jets directly above us. It was like the sky was coming apart.

Have you read the Stephen King time-travelling book? The name of which I can never remember, and it's the date of Kennedy's assassination, which is what it's all about. And still, I can't remember the actual date. I mean, I know it was 1963, but what's the actual date? Oh yeah, it's 11-22-63 is the name of the Stephen King book. But when they're jumping around in time in that book, one of the parallel timelines that they travel to is all screwed up and there's weird ripping sounds coming from the sky. That's what it felt like just now with those jets. Oh, anyway, how are you doing, podcats?

I'm out here on a farm track towards the end of October 2021 with my best dog friend, Rosie, who is on good form. And just as I said that, she squatted in front of me to deposit some dog turds onto nature. The circle of turds. Oh, it's quite nippy out here. I don't want it to rain, because after I've recorded this intro, I'm just about to cycle off to Norwich Station on my pink Brompton and travel to Birmingham to do a book show tonight, which is appropriate because my guest for podcast number 166 is British comedian Darren Harriot, who grew up in that part of the world. Darren Fax. Darren, currently aged 33,

grew up in Oldbury, near Birmingham. After school, he took on jobs as a nightclub bouncer and live event security guard. Darren was one of the people providing security the day that Princess Katie and Lully Willie got married. Oh, happy times. Meanwhile, Darren was getting into stand-up comedy, and in the mid-2010s, aged around 26,

he moved to London to pursue a life as a professional stand-up more aggressively. By the end of 2017, Darren had been nominated as Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe for his debut show, Defiant, billed as being about failure, strong opinions and death. Although that sounds like one of those summaries that you come up with in two minutes just before the flyers go to print. It's very jetty today. I apologise if you don't like the sound of jets. It wasn't long before Darren was invited to appear on the UK's biggest stand-up TV showcase, Live at the Apollo, and he found

himself on stage at the legendary Hammersmith venue where, just a few years before, he'd been one of the security staff. In fact, several of his former security colleagues were on duty that night and cheered him on. It's like a film. In the last few years, Darren has become an increasingly familiar face on British TV panel shows, as well as continuing to perform live and appear on the radio. You can still hear his excellent Radio 4 series Black Label on BBC Sounds. That series was recorded in 2019 and features material from Darren's first couple of stand-up shows, in which he talked about growing up in the black country his association with local gangs and his relationship with his troubled father subjects we also covered in this

conversation which was recorded remotely in late may of this year 2021 and as you will hear this was our second attempt at a podcast ramble we We actually met back in 2018 when Darren Star was on the rise, but it was good to be able to catch up and see how his perspective on some of the more difficult events of his youth had shifted and where he was at with them now. Speaking of which, I should say that the subject of suicide comes up in this conversation. Parts of Darren's story are certainly harsh and sad, but Darren is able to talk about them with impressive, not detachment exactly, but kind of matter-of-factness and a lack of self-pity. a lack of self-pity.

And his characteristic giant grin is never too far away. Although you won't see that because this is audio only. But I saw it on Zoom and it was nice. I'll be back at the end for another short slice of waffle. But right now, with Darren Harriot, here we go. Ramble Chat, that's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat.

Yes, yes, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, I admit him. I admit him. I admit him, I admit him, I admit him And now I'm pressing admit Hello There he is How's it going?

I'm good man, how are you? Yeah, good thanks I have a question you might know Yes Do you know how I get the beeping off my emails to start? Good question It does my head in How do you do it? They're beeping off my emails to start. Good question. It does my head in.

How do you do it? I would say that is, are you on a Mac or a PC? I'm on a Mac, yeah. It says, click on the Apple menu. Yeah. Select system preferences. Click on notifications. Ah, there we go, notifications. Click on the name of the app whose behavior you would like to modify

alerts uh badge icon pop i'm just gonna switch it all off i could do a whole genius bar podcast with me just googling the answers to things that is great i'm never gonna switch that back on i hate that noise so much it's so weird isn't it like it bugs me as well and it always goes off when i'm podcasting and i always try and make some reference to it and say oh that's the person i was just talking about emailing me oh yeah but i've only got that one joke and i've done that now several times but it never occurred to me to just find out how to turn it off and turn it off but now i've done that you know so thanks man you've already improved my day what else should i improve

look at us let's fix another problem in our lives that we just put up with and don't actually sit down and figure out what's in your uh top three anxieties that you're happy to talk about on a podcast at the moment major or minor uh i think the email alert was number one email alert number one that's number one well they don't you don't get a charge with the new phone anymore which is very annoying i brought the new iphone and you don't get a charger with i had no idea really no they you don't get them on the new iphone 12 or the 12 max is the 12 yeah what is so great about the 12 uh it's got three cameras on the back oh i mean i i went from an 8 to a 12 i really jumped the gun i learned to walk and then

instead of getting on a plane i just got a jet pack and just completely took off yeah i don't know what the difference is other than it's just got three cameras on the back. I mean, I can't really tell any difference. I thought I turned off my alerts. It's just pinged at me. Oh, don't say that. I thought we saw... See, I've got pings in, like, text messages,

but I don't know how to get the text messages off. I feel like this is the most boomer conversation. I'm sorry, people listening, but... How are you supposed to charge your your iphone 12 then well what they really want you to do is buy the new one which was exactly what i did i brought this new iphone charger and it doesn't go into the phone it's sort of go you sit the phone on it and it charges it that one the wireless pad the wireless pad this thing yeah yeah i don't know what the point is of it really because it's still got the bottom usb port in it does and no one uses that anymore

yeah but you don't have to physically plug it in yourself last thing at night i feel like it's i've you know you spend all this money on all this tech apple tech i don't think it's, you know, you spend all this money on all this tech, Apple tech. I don't think it's as futuristic as I'd hoped. No. I feel like a lot of it is just the same, but with a new screen or a new look. I remember, like, back in the day, you'd get a, you know, somebody had a new phone when I was at school. And it was like, oh, your phone looks like a desktop. It's like a keyboard. It had all these buttons on and all this other stuff and now they're all just the same with like an extra camera on the back or a better

screen they haven't even bothered with the uh the whole remember when the whole thing was we need to make it as thin as possible yeah that was it we want thin phones thin tiny they're they're all the same now it's you know i see that um there's a new i think it's a new nokia i think it was i saw an advert for the other day and it's a flip phone and i was like oh no they're running out of ideas now where they're like we're gonna bring back the flip phone no one needs that anymore well they'll be going around on all those same ideas forever really until the next thing is implants when it becomes biotech that's the next frontier then it'll be it'll all be about like whereabouts have you had your tech implanted has your body rejected it did you accidentally shit it out that kind of thing but before then yes you're right it

was always how small it was that was the big fetish thing and then there was the foldy phones recently wasn't there foldy ones yeah like with one screen but you can fold the screen in half have you ever met anyone who has one of those no no i mean it's so strange when you meet somebody who doesn't have an iphone like my friends i can't remember what it's called huawei my friend had before okay I was like, what? Why? And he goes, oh, the tech's so much better. And I guarantee the tech is so much better. But whenever I speak to most people, they always go, oh, it's AirDrop.

AirDrop is like the game changer for Apple. Because I don't appreciate it because it's just a thing that we're used to. But everyone says that they don't have anything like airdrop all these other um networks i'm like oh so that's that's where all the money that's where all our money's going into nice quick airdrop uh great as a 52 year old man i don't rely on airdrop every single day of my life i mean occasionally it's useful and it is a fun thing but it's not a game changer for me i think the only reason we have airdrop is because they make it so hard to use any sort of usbs or cables that's the thing they're moving

towards a wireless universe which is in theory a good thing but the apple dominance in the market does seem to be i don't know it seems to be slipping mind you if I'm saying it then it's almost certainly wrong and whatever I say always bet the opposite of what Adam says exactly that's a good it's a good way of figuring out like if I make a prediction okay we can be pretty certain it's going to be the opposite of that how old are you Darren at 32 32 so you're quite a bit younger than I am you're 20 years younger than i am yeah so your references will be massively different than mine but what were the things you remember being blown away by as you were growing up as you were a 10 year old or an adolescent being blown away by

like bits of tech either either sort of you know just games or whatever it might be i remember uh well we had a playstation i remember having a playstation ps1 ps2 back in like the 90s but i remember the nintendo 64 was like something i remember because it had four controllers and four people could play at once on a split screen even now talking about it it's so crazy to think of now that i think about it was so messy because it's just a big computer there's all these wires and there's four screens and we're all playing on these you know tiny screens and i remember that blowing me away um i remember when phones started having cameras on in school um that was and it was like you know seven second clips what else blew me away what what blew you away that you can remember well digital watches that's how old i am okay

when someone came in to watch yeah and they had a digital watch there was a show on at the time i think it was called the gemini man i'm gonna check the gemini man because i haven't thought about this for years but the gemini man he was um a laid-back denim-clad motorcycle riding secret agent called sam casey while diving to retrieve a fallen soviet spy satellite he was exposed to radiation in an underwater explosion, which rendered him invisible. It's one of the dangers of working underwater. I like that.

You didn't get that in Chernobyl. Hey, guys! Turns out I've got a great superpower. No, it was much more melty than that in Chernobyl. Yeah. In reality. But anyway, he had a digital watch this guy in the gemini man and it would make him vanish somehow they managed to mod his uh he used a watch to control his invisibility

but he could only be invisible for 15 minutes or else he would die i like that so he had a special watch and it was a digital watch it was one of the first time i'd seen a digital watch and i just thought wow that is absolutely cool he's basically got a computer on his wrist and then when people started turning up at school with them i couldn't believe it and it was the the little red led was it led i don't know what it was it was it was a red display and then when someone turned up with the calculator with the calculator one oh that was a game changer it's unbelievable and then because these things were happening every few months and then when someone came in and they had space invaders on their watch and you could play that because I absolutely loved all that, you know, Pong and...

Space Invaders on your watch. Space Invaders on your watch, on your watch, on your watch. That's an interest. That's tough. That must be really tough to play on your watch. Absolutely. Now that I think about it. Totally infuriating and not fun at all.

But you'd beg to be able to borrow the guy's watch and have a go. Game Boy was crazy. Yeah. When that first came out, Game Boy. Because it just introduced... I mean, the idea of being able to play like Mario on the go. I think Game Boy was a great one. Tamagotchi was another one.

Did you have a Tamagotchi? Tamagotchi was crazy. I did. I remember having a Tamagotchi. It didn't last very long. Youagotchi? Tamagotchi was crazy. I did. I remember having a Tamagotchi. It didn't last very long. You killed it. I remember I had to restart it a few times. Yeah.

It's, you know, I'm seven. You know, I can't have responsibility at that age. You can't expect me to look after something then. I just did not understand the point of a Tamagotchi. I understood that you, here was the the thing you had to keep it alive by kind of playing with it otherwise what i mean what was it that's it that's all it is you know when you look at especially kids toys you i always remember the um you know the the dolls aimed at girls and it was like you look after the doll it cries a bit of pee comes out of it

and all that and i think tamagotchi was just a less messy version of that yeah appealing to the heartening human desire to look after things that's exactly i always feel very lucky to have been a child of the sort of 90s and the early noughties because you just like you know similar to how you feel how you saw the sort of 90s and the early noughties because you like you know similar to how you feel how you saw the progression of things like i remember me and my mates would try and make music and we were listening back on cassettes and then i remember cds and then i remember oh there's a sony erickson walkman phone which you put the songs on as mp3s and you can listen to your music as an mp3 what and then you start downloading that was pre-ipod was it yes yeah as far as i remember yeah because it was all limewire and kazaa and all those um sort of free sites and i remember we would all download all these songs

and it was around the same time when you were there you would pay to get ringtones and i remember the ringtones used to be that's money you get monotone ringtones which were terrible and then within like two years it wasn't monotone anymore it was the actual song polyphonic polyphonic now that i think about it it was just like an extra higher it just felt like you had like an extra hi-hat and a bit more drums but yeah game changers game changers and then by the time i left it was like you could just put you know a clip of an actual song as a ringtone but barely anyone did that really and now i think we've gone the opposite way with youth maybe because of social media no one calls each other anymore but it's all you know if you if you see somebody with an actual ringtone who's like 18 it's it's strange to hear because i don't hear ringtones anymore my phone is always on silent like i miss calls

all the time i will answer it if i'm looking at my phone i'll answer it if i miss it i can call you back but i think the uh the whole ringtone trend is uh is gone now that's gonna maybe it'll be a retro thing to have ringtones again and then you'll be able to buy those books that you used to be able to buy like they used to have books in actual shops that were just full of numbers and codes so that you could program your phone to play a ringtone that was your favorite song you know what i mean so you buy a book and and hopefully it would have i don't know knocking on heaven's door that's a good uh modern reference for you that's a classic and then you then you have to sit there for an afternoon

laboriously programming in like one two two two three w, you know, and then at the end of it, it's me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. But as you say now, it's just. Mm. Mm. Mm. I'm checking my account at the memory bank. The memory bank. The memory bank.

We're thanking you for banking on your memories. I'd like to take out a happy memory thanks. The Memory Bank, the Memory Bank. Oh, sorry, but you're very overdrawn. I will repay with interest when I get back up on my happy feet. The Memory Bank, the Memory Bank. I'm very sorry, but we're closing your account.

My what? Where am I? The Memory Bank, The Memory Bank. I'm very sorry, but we're closing your account. My what? Where am I? The Memory Bank. The Memory Bank. We're the nice bank. Would you like to bank with us? We actually spoke and recorded a conversation a few years ago. Regular listeners to this podcast will be familiar with my occasional propensity to let things slip through the cracks for various reasons. occasional propensity to let things slip through the cracks for various reasons and i thought that rather than go back and just edit the conversation we had in 2018 which did have some um technical problems anyway i thought let's just check in because a lot's happened i don't know if you know darren but uh it's been a long three years in all sorts of ways.

Does it feel that way to you? Yeah, I think I feel like I've come a long way since then. Yeah. When we spoke, you said you were hoping to move out of the place that you were sharing in Wembley. And you said there was a bad smell in there. And your dream was to have your own fridge. Got my own fridge. Got my own fridge.

I've done it. Yeah, yeah. I moved out uh i've been here now for like two years so i moved out about a year after we did that podcast and uh it's so much better living by yourself oh wow it's amazing like everything just feels better my mental health um i i you know i was alone during all of the sort of lockdown um and then i started to feel quite quite lucky because i felt like i was i didn't have to necessarily worry about people in the house because i remember being in the house share and because there was so many people in and out i could you know i would have been stressed during lockdown because they they wouldn't have followed rules people would have been in and out and all that sort of stuff so it was nice to just you know sort of have be alone and um try and figure out

some stuff during all of that and yeah i just felt much better also it's you know it's a sense of accomplishment that i um i didn't know i would feel because i you know when i moved in 2014 i was a security guard a really struggling comedian stroke security guard and um i managed to get myself in a position to live alone in london now which is really nice and you had sort of a five-year plan as i recall am i right in saying that if you you told yourself that if you hadn't made it in five years or even if you had made it maybe then you were gonna move back to birmingham and live with your nan yep that's it uh it's been here seven years uh i think i'm in a position where i can move now back which is really nice but um i don't know i feel like

i feel like i'm right on the edge of something because london you know london it's a hub man it's busy it's hive and you know i would love to live with my nan and move back with my family and see everyone all the time and all that sort of stuff but i think i think i've maybe got one more year here i think one more year and then i think i can buy that house uh in birmingham on the black country um but you know i said that three years ago and they're sucking you in yeah yeah remind me again how you made the transition from working as a security guard and a bouncer when you were what in your early 20s is this yes like yeah to actually starting to do comedy like how did that happen so i was always

doing comedy with it i started i did my first ever gig when i was 18 um i did a few i did gigs sure but i wasn't like writing and all that sort of stuff it was just you know i liked comedy but i just did not have that kind of you know dedication to sit down and work at it and so throughout the years i was doing various jobs and a lot of the jobs that I would do I would end up leaving because you know there was we always got to that brick wall of um we need you in Friday to do this shift and I'd be like I can't I've got to do a gig in Derby for no money and they're like well if you don't do it you're gonna leave and I'd be like gonna have to go and so they never worked out for me those sort of jobs and luckily I was living with

my mum and then security I heard security was like a zero hour contract thing you're not tied into any contracts you can work when you want and that just appealed to me because there's no way I could have done comedy and worked a full-time job and yeah so I did that and then I was doing security in Birmingham luckily one of the companies I worked for they had offices all around in London included and um yeah and then 2014 summertime 2014 I just decided I was depressed I was upset about my career after all these years of doing comedy and I just said right I gotta go to London everyone tells me gotta go to London London's where it is London's where it happens for people I saw what was going on with Joe Lycett because he was from Brom and I knew him

and I was like oh well Joe did it you know for a bit I should maybe go down there and I should do it and I just packed my things and I went to London uh on my birthday my 26th birthday with about I think I had 600 pounds in my bank account which I remember i had that because that was my rent for uh my next month's rent that was all i had yeah and um about a year later i got signed to an agent who i'm still with and then the following year after that in 2016 i did a edinburgh like a compilation show the reserve which paid for me and then the following year around august september time i found out i was doing live at the apollo for the first time and then doing live at the apollo that was the reason why i was able to

just go okay i'm able to go full time um before then in 2016 i did russell howard's stand-up show that he had on comedy central which was great when i did it funnily i was i was working at a university um university of westminster and i came on the TV on one of my shifts. No way. Just this big TV. I saw it, and I saw the episode, and I heard Russell go, and I turned the TV channel over as quickly as I could because the last thing I needed was those students.

You know, how weird would that be? What? Yeah. What? Is that you uh and it was nice it was nice because it slowly it slowly built up I think uh and everything everything that happened for me started happening when I was in London right as soon as I moved to London it was just I came here with like a dedication you know one I knew London you know it's quite expensive and I never lived alone as well i left my mom's house so it was just me for the first time on my own and i had to try and juggle security shifts with doing comedy and the problem i had was that

a lot of the security shifts that i did because of the company it was all gigs oh yeah so i saw a lot of music gigs and the problem with music gigs of course is the times are comedy gig times right so i would start shift at five till half ten and you know obviously i'd want to do a gig so i was quite lucky about a year and a half before i finally quit that i got a job working at the university doing night shifts so it was 10 p.m till 6 6 a.m. And so I could do a gig in London for around, you know, half eight, nine at a push. Then I'd do a Superman change in the Burger King toilets down by Piccadilly, change into my security clothes and then head there and do the night shift at the university. And, you know, I've still sort of pinched myself every day that I managed to make that work. Yeah.

How any of that really worked. wow that's impressive man you obviously had a lot of drive and a lot of energy i was listening to your radio four shows black label oh thanks really good man i really enjoyed them and lots of stuff in there that i didn't realize about you a lot of which you've talked about in your stand-up over the years, but I didn't realize that you were actually part of a gang when you were in Birmingham. And you're funny about it, especially the name of the gang. What was the name of the gang?

TerrorClanKillers. With an A-Z. Killaz. Yeah, with an A-Z. K az k-i-l-l-a-z who sat down and thought of the name did you have a meeting i remember a few of my friends in the gang really liked tck for some reason i don't know why but tck they have that in their head and then it just became about fitting words for it so okay i remember terror clan killers one of the alternatives was total control crew crew so cringy crew spelt with a k yeah we didn't really like that one too much you could have been the cool kids the cool kids exactly that's way better but it should be pointed out that other gangs around at the time

included the burger bar crew and the johnson crew yeah they were so scary the burger bar crew especially in the early noughties were responsible for so many shootings oh my god um there was a really famous shooting still in birmingham on new year's eve these two girls got shot with an uzi an uzi yeah it was like an uzi machine gun they sprayed it so it was new year's eve they were partying at like the johnson's rival place or whatever and these guys drove past looking for someone and they just like sprayed it and uh these two girls uh charlene ellish and leticia shakespeare everyone knows the names because it was just such a big story such a tragic story of what happened and I remember being 14 and you know with every gang there's always one person or two people in that gang who are not gangsters like I wasn't a. I never really had that life.

Even though my dad passed away when I was a kid and it was rough and all that, I never grew up in, like, a really rough upbringing or anything like that. Like, that really hit me, that did. It just caught me off guard. Yeah, I'm sure. Previous to that, though,

did you have any awareness that that kind of stuff was going on, that people in those gangs were really involved in stuff that was so dark yeah so there was a radio station it was a pirate radio station think corrupt fm almost the exact same pretty much it was called passion fm in birmingham and there was different crews and every crew would come on like monday at 2 a.m would be this crew everybody would listen in and all that sort of stuff, but a lot of those gangs were rapping and MCing, were like legit gangsters, and we wanted to be one of those gangs, more for the music at first, and then I remember one of my friends pulled out

a knife, he'd got a knife from his cousin, and then my other friend had a knife, and then it was like, well we've all just got to get knives, because I'm not going to be the only one without a knife, so I ended up getting a knife from like this local like hardware store that just had really crazy flip knives. And I remember getting one of them as well. And I knew that two of the guys in the gang were very, they all had really bad tempers, you know. I think I had a temper as well. The one thing that I know that we all had in common that we just didn't speak about was we all just didn't have dads. There was no father figures in any of our...

All six of us didn't have dads. Didn't have dads, didn't have good... Well, my dad was dead. My other friend's dad was in prison. My other friend's dad never met his dad ever. Didn't know who his dad was. Another person's dad was an alcoholic, drug addict. One was, like, abusive.

So we all really put a lot of value and stock into this tck gang because we felt like we were all protected and also we were all we were all poor kids we were all free school meal kids uh very you know working class kids but i had quite a lucky escape out of the gang because they beat me up so they they put me in hospital on new year's eve um new year's eve 2001 to 2004 which at the time you know it was embarrassing you know macho toughness was all it was like a part of my thing and they they beat me up and this is you aged 15 or something yeah 15 16 yeah no 16 because it was my last year of school and i remember it because you know you got to imagine these guys were some of my best friends at school and then we fell out over a song i was a producer

so i made a song they used it i said they couldn't use it they used it we got into an argument they beat me up it was as simple and as stupid as that where did they use it it was supposed to be used for some other people i think and i sent it to them to listen to and they liked it and they ended up recording like a track with it or something like that and i remember being like you can't do that because it's not finished and it's supposed to be for so and so and they said shut up and then i was like you shut up and then we met up and then they just beat me up and yeah it's like the fleetwood max story and i felt i felt so lucky because i could have been stabbed yeah easily like they they

will carry knives i could have been stabbed i was beaten up pretty badly i had to spend the night in um hospital jesus had you ever been beaten up before then no not not beaten up now so i had to deal with all that as well and then so it happened in december obviously, January 1st. I didn't go back to school until maybe nearer the end of January because I just wanted to wait for some of the bruising to go down because I was still bruised. The last thing I needed was to go to school. Everybody knew what had happened. But, you know, I couldn't turn up with, like, black eyes.

I just wasn't going to do that at all. So I waited for the bruising to go down. And then I went back to school. And I just remember the last, what is it? February, March, April, May. I remember the last four months of school just being the most awkward, horrible time. Because the guys that were supposed to be my really good friends, I hated them. Didn't want to talk to them.

And so I had to kind of almost establish a new set of people to hang about with because i couldn't hang about with them anymore because it was just it just felt really awkward and i had a lot of anger from that it took me about seven years to truly no longer want revenge on them i mean i was i was already doing comedy and i still had that anger in me about them beating me up and what kind of things were you imagining though were you fantasizing about actually exacting your revenge oh yeah I went further than imagining it I actually was I knew so out of the the whole crew the one who beat me up was there was this guy who was really good friends with really good friends I mean he came to my nan's house i remember i sold i gave him my nintendo at the time or whatever like we're

friends like it was something like that we just had the best bond out of everyone in the gang and he did the most damage in the end he did gosh 21 he was my number one it was kind of like you know kill bill where she's got revenge on all these people and uh there's there's that one person that she's like oh bill's the number one well he was like my bill i'll get all the others i'll get all the others i know that one of them's got a shotgun in the bloody cereal i'll take care of that one now rip the eye out of the other one and all that sort of stuff but he was my one and i remember waiting outside his house so i knew where he lived in a park called smevik and i remember waiting across the road randomly it would just come to me i was just so angry I would just go

right I'm gonna go wait on his road turn around sit so he can't see me and then I'll wait there until he walks out of his house and then I'm gonna run up to him and I'm just gonna hit him that was my plan and then I sort of let it go a bit out of me and then I was about 20 I want to say I was in my early 20s and i was walking in the area and i saw him i hadn't seen him in years i haven't spoke to him since school and i heard that he had a child i heard he had a he'd become quite a young dad and i saw him walking down the street and he was walking with this little girl and this girl looked about three four and it was just cute it's just a dad walking was walking with this little girl and this girl looked about three four and

it was just cute it's just a dad walking holding hands with his little girl and she's smiling and i saw him and i went oh he's grown up he's a dad i mean i'm sure he doesn't think about me so you kidnapped the kid okay i kid i still punched him and taught the kid it's collateral and um yeah i just it it made me it actually made me think i need to grow up and like you know achieve something in my life because i'm still hanged up on this school yard sort of confrontation from you know five years before whatever it was and how was your um how was your mum dealing with it when you were going through this phase when you started hanging out with these people in the gang and stuff like that my mum was just working a lot she knew i wasn't in the right

crowd and stuff you you know you can always tell when your kid starts with stuff like that you know she knew the way i was dressing basically it was like you know the so solid crew 21 seconds video so it was basically that slits in the eyebrows gonna start wearing these weird headbands hoodies up and all that sort of stuff she knew that it but she didn't know what was going on she didn't know about a knife she only really found out that something really bad was happening when i got beaten up and she came to the hospital and she you know she's crying what's going on what's all you know it was rougher it was a tough time for her but she she didn't know that i was still so furious about it all and there was no way for her to really know because she knew when i was 18 that i'd started comedy so i guess you

know that they sound too conflicting, doesn't it? That I've got this anger in me that I'm waiting outside this guy's house because I literally want to kill him. And then I'm, you know, now trying to tell jokes. So I guess in her head, she never thought that I was still angry about it. Yeah. And do you think that there was anything she could have said to you at the time that would have changed your ways or really were you just on that path and there was nothing that she could really have done about it yeah i think at the time when it happened because when you're in school ego and the way that you

perceived and coolness was all we had we didn't't have money. We, you know, we struggled for a lot of things. But the fact that people thought that, you know, were cool or popular and all that sort of stuff, went everything to us because we didn't really have anything else. So the idea that people were like laughing at me or thought it was funny that I got beaten up by my friends. Right. The fact that I had missed school for two to three weeks that's why you didn't want them to see the black eyes that's why i didn't want them to see the black eyes because i just i didn't want them to see me looking weak and i definitely

didn't want them to see i didn't you know i didn't want the my ex-friends to see that uh what they had done but i knew that they i knew that they felt bad for a lot of it because they had said that they felt really bad about what had happened and what had gone down. But, you know, so young at that age and, you know. Sure. I imagine the answer is probably no. But were you in a position when you were with that unit when things were going well with your mates and in your gang were you in a position to talk about real things and to talk about how you felt about certain things that had happened to you about your

dads or whatever it might be or were those you just couldn't really have those conversations never had those conversations right no you never never spoke about feelings you gotta remember we were 14 year old kids obsessed with gangs and gangsters i mean we were just we you know i i we were like homophobes we were little kids who were just anything was was gay to us right you know if there was if somebody put their arm around my shoulder and tried to talk we're doing gay you know it was that sort of a it was that sort of thing and um i think it would have been really i mean it would have been great for us to have been able to have spoke about our feelings because everything we spoke about especially when it came to our dads our dads were always it was it was so it was so obvious that was the catalyst for

everything that was going on with us and but we only ever spoke about our dads in terms of like what they had done so like when i said all my friends dads one's never met his dad one was in prison my dad's dead my other dad was abusive that was it never got into any in depth never heard anything else about it um it would have been nice for us to sort of sit down and just chat and i i've got i've heard a few things about them since for some of them some of them's not good some of them have gone down the way that you know you'd think lots of prison last time i spoke to one from school who i was who was friends with them and friends with me in the middle but he was definitely more on their side it was like on the run from the police and all that sort of stuff and i've had a bit of feedback

from the main one who i was really good friends with the one that really really hurt me in the end whose house i was waiting out he told my friend that he was really proud of what i'm doing oh that's cool yeah which was really i you know i didn't expect it he said i was you know i'm really proud of darren it's really great what he's doing and you know big up to him and all that sort of stuff and yeah do you think that because of the kind of person that you are you were always going to get out or do you feel as if it was touch and go and actually things could have easily gone the other way i think i would have got out eventually the problem was we all had such short tempers and i'm so grateful that i grew up where i grew up because you know you hear of certain parts where there's so many rival gangs all in

the same area I grew up in the black country and if you in Birmingham if you start going to more uh the Birmingham gang sides like Aston and all those places where or like Handsworth where you really do get Berger Bar Johnson's fighting on a regular basis there is a good chance I would have been caught up in that because I remember I I told people before I said I carried a knife for a few months but if somebody had attacked me or rival gangs or any of that stuff I definitely would have pulled out the knife and there's a really good chance I could have stabbed somebody or slashed somebody over over like nothing I mean i remember going to under 15 14 clubs when i was like 12 30 me my friends would go uh i i remember we went to this nightclub in in aston in birmingham which was notorious back then for just gangs and just trouble and we heard it on the pirate radio

station and it says you know uh 6 p.m id not required which i thought was a really weird thing to say but i guess it was like a youth club thing and we all turned off we we went after school we all turned up we got ready to go and we're in there and it was full of our level celebrities like it was oh that's so and so from passion fm that's the dj so and so that's so and so and it was nice to put a face to all these people that we've been hearing on the pirate radio and about 10 minutes in these guys walk in and they've all got their hoods up and all this sort of stuff but we knew something was going down because they all walked in together so we were like oh is that what crew's that and this is

really dating it they walked up to everybody in the club and pulled a lighter out and put the lighter right to your face because they wanted to see what you look like there was no lights on the back of phones back then and i remember sort of you know dancing and just seeing these guys put lighters to faces and they put it up to my face and i was looking at the guy and he was just trying to see and he found whoever they were looking for. And they beat this guy up really, really bad. Like they found this guy. It kicked off. I remember me and my friend, this is how tough we were.

We were hiding behind a speaker just out of the way. What is going on? I mean, I was 15. And they beat this guy up and the ambulance had to come. And they kind of like stretched him. They had stretched the guy out and stuff. They really got to him. But there was lots of those moments and i'd be lying if i said that there wasn't a part of me that was like intrigued by

it or excited by some of it because it was like oh yeah this is kind of the world that we're in but right it's like you're living in a gangster movie or something exactly yeah yeah that is a sinister image those people coming in and with their little lighters and stuff holy moses that would be a scary scene in a movie it was just a lighter and just a really angry face and you just didn't know what to do with it yeah never forget that and you say how old were you when your dad passed away then i was 11 11 when my dad died yeah man yeah it was um so my dad died in March 2000 and then September 2000 I started high school big school you know so I didn't really have much time to deal with my dad's death and then next thing you know I'm in high school and you know going through

puberty new people friends you know what why I going to do for in my life my career and then that's when I've made friends with these people who we ended up starting a gang with maybe a year later after that and um because you know I felt like I had nowhere to go I couldn't talk to my mom I couldn't talk to my family about that sort of stuff you know everybody was just dealing with it the best they could and had you been close with your pa was he around when you were growing up it's weird because i i find stuff out about my dad every few years so my dad was a drug dealer uh and a drug addict and when i said drug addict it was like smoking weed he'd been smoking weed since he was you you know, 12. Rastafarian, so it wasn't even weed. It was just like super strong cannabis and all that.

And slowly his mind was deteriorating. I only found out a few years after his death that he was in and out of prison. I only have a handful of memories of my dad. And all amazing memories, all amazing. But everything that I have for my dad, it's always moments. Like, oh, I remember when my dad turned up at Christmas and got us his Nintendo 64. Ah, amazing.

Oh, I remember when my dad took me and all my cousins to Sega World. I remember when my dad turned up at my... It's stuff like that. It's never like, oh, yeah, we just sat down and watched TV and we just did. Because we never saw him that much. So this is something that I definitely want to look to find out more about but he was i'm sure there was like a year or two when i didn't see him potentially because i wouldn't know because he was in prison and i was a kid and then he died in prison is that right yeah he died in prison yeah so uh i remember i want to say it was around

christmas time 1999 my dad called my nan's house because i was always at my nan's with my brother and we had a chat on the phone and again oh dad hello oh how you doing you know all that sort of stuff really excited to hear from him and um it was weird because it definitely had a a finality in everything he was saying you know he was just like make sure you work hard you study hard look after your mom do all this sort of stuff and you know i'm a kid i'm like yeah dad i will you know yeah yeah i will you know all that and we had a really nice chat and i remember i um i hung up the phone after we spoke he asked for my brother my brother wasn't in and i hung up the phone after we spoke. He asked for my brother. My brother wasn't in, and I hung up the phone,

and then I tried to trace the number back, which was, what was it, 1471. I think it was the number or something like that. You trace it, and it gives you the number, and I remember I pressed it, and it said, this number is not, you're not able to trace this number. This number's untraceable or whatever it was, and I remember going downstairs

because it was two phones, downstairs phone, upstairs phone.able, or whatever it was, and I remember going downstairs, because it was two phones, downstairs phone, upstairs phone, I answered the upstairs house phone, went downstairs, my nan was in the front room, and I said to my nan, because she didn't know who I'd spoken to, I said, nan, what does it mean when you call, when you trace a number, and it says, this number is on, you know, untraceable, or whatever, and my nan went, is on you know untraceable or whatever and my nan went oh it means somebody's calling from maybe prison and i remember going oh and i didn't say anything and then that was when i clicked that my dad was calling from prison and he was in prison and then it was about three months after that we found out he died it uh he'd killed himself and my my mom said quite recently that he had asked her to come and visit with me and my brother to the prison not long before he died. And my mom said no.

She didn't want to take two young boys to a prison. I think she just felt like, I don't blame her for that, to be honest. It would be weird seeing my dad behind the glass and all that sort of stuff, especially because we didn't know what was going on. But, yeah, so we passed away March 2000. Man, I'm sorry. And I hope you don't mind me asking you these questions. That's hard. And how is that a sort of ongoing process of finding out and sort of processing all that stuff does it does it weigh

on you or are you the kind of person that can kind of compartmentalize it and just move on with your own life and not um think overthink about those kinds of things i think it weighs on me more now it weighs on me more now as an adult who is at the age where you think about having kids yes and you think about having a family and i know that i've not had a good example of a good dad in my life um well a typical sort of dad and i'm still dealing with issues of um you know you never feel like you're quite good enough. There's this thing where if somebody commits suicide, especially a parent,

you'll always go in your mind. You'll always think you're not good enough. You think, oh, well they, they went because you, you know, because you're just not good enough.

So I've always been battling that, uh, all my life. And then, um, there is that thought of, I've struggled with my own mental health and my own self-worth and suicidal thoughts and all that and then I think what if I have kids you know my kid's gonna get that I'm gonna have to

explain my dad's history to my kids and then you know are they gonna have problems because they you know I what happened after my dad died was I started reading lots about suicide and parents and statistics and all that sort of stuff a lot of that's out my head now it didn't really it didn't really help me back then do you remember coming across anything that did help was there anything that someone said to you or that you read that helped you get some perspective on it um you don't have to say i mean if there wasn't then don't worry but i remember my auntie tried her best to make me feel better once you just said darren look your dad just decided it was his time to go which doesn't really sound like it's that helpful but in a way it kind of changed my thoughts on my dad's death

it was like yeah he chose his time to go like in a way he had his own he was in control in a way which really helped me for a little bit uh when my auntie said that to me because you know my mom's not the type to say that um but i was you know i was reading up on statistics about parents that die and and then you know people were talking about suicide genes and all that sort of stuff. And I got into comedy. I remember my first gig, first ever gig I did at age 18. I remember being outside, sitting on the wall, looking at the venue I was about to do my first ever stage gig in. Looking at a picture on my phone of my dad. Just feeling really sad, really down.

Because I knew that I wasn't doing comedy for me. Well, in a way, I was doing it for me, because it was something new and exciting. But I knew that it was, in my own way, it was me trying to reach out to him, me trying to connect with him in some way. But I think... Well, I started therapy quite recently.'m only like four sessions in but it's

really helped to speak to somebody outside and just try and understand why I've had because I think a lot of my problems all stem from my dad's death in a way I think masculinity issues abandonment issues my issues with love and affection and all that sort of stuff i'm very i'm very i hide away from it i can't deal with it because i i i think it's because i don't remember it from him yes i remember having a great time with him and him being a great person but i don't remember affection i don't remember love from my dad i don't remember any of that sort of stuff i don't remember my dad's voice anymore so i think all of that has been building for the past 20 years and now that i'm in a position to to be a lot happier you know my career is going really well

i've got more money than i've ever had in my entire life i'm not broke anymore i'm not struggling and i still don't feel like i should have that level of happiness that I thought I would at this point so I started therapy to try and really help um help sort a lot of that out yeah yeah and it's been going great I'm glad man that's really good it is useful isn't it to talk to people about it to get another perspective on it because you tell yourself these stories in your head and it's so hard to contradict them even if you know that they're irrational even if you know that whole thing of not feeling worthy or whatever it's a thing you tell yourself and it's really hard to get out of it yeah and i can't imagine what it's like when you've had that kind of experience and

you've lost your power you've've lost someone you love like that. And so much of it doesn't make sense. And it's not easily explained. You know, how do you explain the things that drive a person to take their own life? It's hard, man. And anyway, I'm glad that you're sort of beginning the process of sorting through it. Not that it's ever sorted. You know, we never you're never going to have the day where it's like okay that's finished all done

happy now yeah you know it's a question of of managing it isn't it it's an ongoing process anyway i appreciate you talking with me about it so candidly i'm also aware that we're coming towards the end of your time what are you up to this afternoon i've got some shows tonight back back doing shows which has been it's been fun back doing gigs again yeah it's nice to be in a room with people again isn't it yeah it's been quite a mixture because some i think for the first week audiences were were great they were super supportive ah comedy's back and now they were that that first week grace is long gone long gone it's the ah it's a completely different game now as well because i think there's also a lot of anxiety at gigs from people because for a lot

of them they haven't been around this many people in you know a long time still yeah no one knows like am i okay to take my mask off are we sitting too close and yeah i also think people are getting slightly more drunk because the whole system of our comedy clubs has changed now it's it's all done on the mobile phones now so it's all you order drinks to your tables whereas before with intervals you kind of had to guess how much you were drinking yeah and normally you know most people they would just get one drink for the half whereas now they're just constantly sort of uh getting drinks and also it's really hot as well yes so people are just yeah more likely to get a bit crazier one of the gig i'm doing tonight is um is the tattershell on the boat oh yeah that's

westminster isn't it yeah that'll be that's always a fun gig but there's something about a ducked boat where people just think it's by nautical rules now like it's a completely different game so uh yeah i think that's gonna be really fun tonight tatashul castle that was where all the cool people hung out when i was we were at school down the road and uh so in the 80s that was that was where all the yeah super sexy girls hung out i can imagine still pretty cool yeah i'm sure and what's your outfit got your outfit picked out because you are you have got quite a sartorial flair to you i'm always impressed by your outfits on tv it's really nice to see someone who's doing

like who's mixing it up and doing some pretty adventurous stuff and i'm not being euphemistic by the way i think you look great but you're lucky you're tall you can carry off these outfits what are you going to wear tonight i'm not too sure i think i'm going to wear a leopard print if anything yes leopard print i've got a nice leopard print shirt i think i'm going to wear but i might i might so tomorrow i've got a lot more i've got a lot of gigs as well tomorrow i might have to do like a a t-shirt because i you know it's that thing comedy where you forget it's just going to get really hot on stage yeah and so there's a leopard print shirt behind me that i think i'm gonna wear or that one there yeah i can see them all hung on a rail and i'm slightly worried because i

you just start sweating really bad on there's nothing worse than seeing a comic on stage and you go oh you never planned your outfit properly because you see them just sweating in the middle of their set and it's just just, whew, whew. And it's not like Lee Evans where they're used to it. Like, Lee Evans used to it. Some audiences, there's nothing worse than, like, doing a gig, doing stand-up. And you can feel sweat go from your forehead down to your cheek. Because you just know you've got to wipe it.

And you've got to sort of change your flow a little bit because it's the most uncomfortable feeling on stage is to feel that bit of sweat because you know everyone, they can all see it. People on the right-hand side or whatever, they could see this bit of sweat coming out of your face and I hate that feeling. So yeah, I might just have to do a t-shirt or something

because there's never air con. No. One of my overriding memories of appearing on panel shows when I used to do that a bit more than I do now was the feeling of a bead of sweat running down from my armpit down the side of my body. And it was so cold and it was so weird because it was like I didn't feel hot sat there on never mind the buzzcocks or whatever it was it wasn't like it was sweltering or anything it was pure just fear sweat and it was just going down and dripping down into my pants my number one worry on tv is why you rarely very rarely see me wearing like a denim top is the sweat under the armpits i i remember i did this one show that was like it was like a three-hour show it was like a chat thing

and uh i was wearing a denim jacket and i remember looking at the massive sweatpants and then i had to keep my arms closed the entire show and my hands in and then we took a break and i remember there's these new like sweat pads that you can get to put in that's supposed to soak up the sweat it just made it worse it was one of my least favorite experiences doing tv because i just knew that as soon as i opened my armpits there's somebody at home going j! What's going on here? Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website I see success.

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So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. continue. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Darren Harriet talking to me there.

Very grateful indeed to Darren for making the time, especially after I sort of screwed up the first attempt at a conversation with him back in 2018. Really nice to see him again and to talk to him. Posted a few links to some of his stuff in the description of this podcast, including links to that series Black Label that he did for Radio 4. I really recommend that. They're fairly short episodes, four of them available on BBC Sounds, where you'll

be able to hear, I suppose, a more comedic take on some of the things we spoke about. Anyway, thanks very much, Darren. Now, I've got to keep this outro fairly brief so i've got to get back not another jet um i've got to get back get on my brompton and pedal off to norwich station shut up Come to Norfolk, an ideal filming location, a sound person's paradise. Oh, well, I can't wait for it to go. I've got to get back, get on my Brompton and cycle to Norwich Station. One of the nice things in recent weeks touring around the country and doing these book shows has been getting back on the trains again. And if you're someone that has read

my book or listened to me bollock on in previous years, you'll probably know that I've got a sometimes conflicted relationship with trains. It tends to be, because I take the train a lot, it tends to be somewhere that I occasionally get into confrontations with members of the public or rail officials. In fact, there's not one but two stories of that kind in Ramble Book. With me being a bit of a dick, book, with me being a bit of a dick when I get stressed out on overcrowded or delayed trains, that kind of thing. But I've been having a really good experience taking the trains around the country in the last few weeks. Maybe I've just been lucky, or perhaps my attitude has shifted, so when there are delays,

I don't get perhaps quite as stressed out as I once did. And also, it just seems to me that the rail officials and the conductors, etc., that I come across, are just exceptionally nice at the moment. I met a conductor called Camilla the other day on the train. She took my ticket. We both had masks on. So there was a moment where she was staring at me in a strange way and I couldn't quite work out why, but she recognized my eyes and hat and maybe my pink Brompton. And she's a podcat, so she said hello and was very nice.

Hi, Camilla. How are you doing? Hope to see you again soon. Sorry about the jets. Buckles and the jets. Also, wanted to... Also, wanted to give a shout out. This is ridiculous. I also wanted to give a shout out to the woman who was working in the ticket office

in Cardiff Central when I was there the other day. I don't know her name. And I'm certain she didn't know who I was, but she was so nice. I think her name was, she wrote it down on a bit of paper, I'll explain why shortly, and I think her name was S, S-T something, S-Turton it looked like, but I wasn't, I'm not sure. Anyway, I'd done a show in Cardiff, lovely show at the gate, beautiful venue, recommended if you're ever in town. Thanks to all at the gate. Thanks to, there was a couple of people who worked there called Adam

and Joe. Hi Adam, hi Joe, thanks for looking after me. Thanks especially to Joe, who gave me a lovely little bit of artwork he'd created with me on the cover of the Scary Monsters album. Joe had changed it to Hairy Monsters. Anyway, the next morning, I go to Cardiff Central to get my train back to Norwich, put the ticket collection code in the machine, and it said, oh, you've already picked up your tickets. You would have picked them up in Norwich. It didn't say all this to me. I was divining these facts for myself with my mind. I picked them up in Norwich, but why haven't I got them then? So I go to the ticket office, explain the situation, say I'm not sure what's going on here. It says I've picked up the tickets, but I don't have them. And the woman

behind the window, who at first I thought, ah, this doesn't look good. She looks as if she's having a hard day and she's not too excited to help me. She said, well, you've probably left them in the machine in Norwich, in which case you'll have to buy a new ticket. And I was like, ah, okay. You know, and I was thinking about, well, I could show her the email that I got from train line after I booked the ticket and sort of start to moan about the fact, well, I paid my tickets. Can't you just, anyway, I didn't have to get to that point because she said, well, look, I'll call Norwich and see if they found any tickets in the machine. And I thought, well, that's nice of you, but I think we both know how that's going to go. So she goes off for a few minutes, comes back and says, yep, they found your tickets left in the machine or someone

handed them in. You see, this is the other thing, like a nice person found the tickets there uncollected in the machine. Because sometimes there's a few seconds gap between the first set of tickets and then the return tickets plop out. And that's what had happened. I forgot to wait for the second set, the returns. Someone had found them, handed them in. Thanks, whoever that was. And then when the woman from Cardiff phoned up Norwich, they had the tickets. They'd been handed in. And they scanned them and emailed over the scan to Cardiff Central.

And the woman in the ticket office printed out the scanned tickets and then stamped them with her special stamp and then wrote underneath, please allow travel. And she said, you know, this is a photocopy, so it's not an official document. And if the conductor says they're not going to accept it, then I'm afraid you'll have to buy another ticket. But it worked. it all worked fine and I got back to Norwich didn't have to buy another ticket which would have been at least 100 quid and it was just so great and she totally bailed me out and helped me and I'm so grateful and you know she went that extra mile and and I I really appreciated it it's just makes your day when something like that happens anyway so thanks

thanks team all right now I've got to get on my bike and head off to Norwich thanks very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his work on this episode. Thanks to Becca Tashinsky for additional production support. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to ACAST for all their work on keeping this show on the road. Thanks once again to Darren Harriet. And thanks to you, podcats. Sorry for this rushed exit. And sorry for the jets.

I'm just so sorry. I don't know what I can do. Next time I'm going to, I'll get some kind of RPG and deal with the situation next time. By which I mean, I'll just sit inside with a role playing game. RPG joke. Oh God. All right. Hey, quick hug. All right. Hey, quick hug. Till next time. Be careful. I love you. Bye! Bye. Thank you. you