THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.175 - TIM KEY

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Adam talks with British comedian, writer and actor Tim Key about TV quizzes, meeting boxing legends on holiday, the weirdness of lockdown, a health scare that Tim went through a few years back and there's a few more memories from the trip to New York Adam took with Tim and Alex Horne in January 2020. Tim also reads poetry over improvised plaintive piano provided by Adam's 17 year old son Nat.THIS CONVERSATION CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE and was recorded face to face in London on January 14th, 2022Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for his work on this episode.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSTICKETS FOR BUG 62 AT BFI SOUTHBANKTIM KEY - MULBERRY AT REGENTS PARK OPEN AIR THEATRE (19th June, 2022)HE USED THOUGHT AS A WIFE by TIM KEY - 2021 (WATERSTONES)HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH by TIM KEY - 2022 (WATERSTONES)TIM KEY - MULBERRY (AT SOHO THEATRE) - 2022 (GUARDIAN REVIEW by RACHAEL HEALY)TIM KEY'S LATE NIGHT POETRY PROGRAMME - SCIENCE - 2014 (BBC SOUNDS)NAVALNY - 2022 (BBC iPLAYER) 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. Come on, Rosie.

Come on. If you're going to do a shit, then do a shit. But don't hang around. Times are wasting. I don't care what you're saying I understand But we do have to get this done Come on, sweet girl

Come on No, thank you I would not like to go with you today I'm going to stay at home Come on, Rosie What are you going to do at home? People get angry if you're not on the podcast I'm sorry, but I can't help you i do not wish to go

it's too windy today i'll see you later then ta-ta last chance come on okay yeah good one rosie has scampered off there used to be the mere mention of a walk would be enough to get her boinging around now sometimes, well, as you just heard, there has to be a process of negotiation and coaxing and she'll stand

quite still for a while and seem absolutely determined not to go with you and then you kind of say, go on, please and seem absolutely determined not to go with you. And then you kind of say, go on, please. Or give her a nudge, maybe, you know, just sort of gently tug her towards the direction of the walk. And then she goes, yeah, all right, screw it.

And off we go. Anyway, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buxton here, in case you didn't realise. And I'm glad that you joined me for another podcast, just a few days after the last one dropped. As I said in the previous episode with Alex Horne, I thought that these two episodes would make a good pair. So I wanted to put them out one after the other fairly quickly. And here are my intro notes for today's guest returning to the podcast, Tim Key. You've seen Tim as sidekick Simon alongside Steve Coogan in various Alan Partridge adventures. Is that his most high profile credit? Maybe. He's been in some films. He's done a lot. You got sidekick Simon. You got

a starring role in the recent comedy series The Witchfinder alongside Daisy May Cooper. And of course you'll have seen tim pop up in all sorts of things from inside number nine plebs and peep show to a choice selection of the uk's finest panel shows eight out of ten cat stars countdown house of games and of course taskmaster. Oh yum yum yum. With his old friend the aforementioned Alex Horne. Left to his own devices Tim continues to cultivate his matey but volatile poet character which he performs live and which forms the basis of another show that brightened my lockdown. Tim Key's late night poetry programme on BBC Radio 4. He started doing that a while back.

There's been several series, but I blazed through them all in mid-2020. The shows, which also feature regular Key collaborators, Tom Basden and Katie Wicks, are sort of slightly surreal sitcoms revolving around the frequently irascible poet. I've put a link to one of my favourite episodes of Tim Key's Late Night Poetry programme in the description, along with other key links. Oh, look at this, Rosie. We don't come here very often, do we? This is a hill. And we are now looking out over the valley near where we live.

It's a beautiful day. You know what I might do? I might just sit down on a grass tuft and complete my intro. Here's some spring sounds for you. Mixed in with quite a bit of traffic. Oh, it's nice though. Okay, my conversation with Tim was recorded face to face oh exciting on a visit to london in mid-january of this year 2022 tim came up to my hotel room and i set up my mics in a kind of alcove over by the window which looked out over google's vast new death star

building still being constructed behind King's Cross station. I was feeling a bit bleary because the night before I had met Tim for a drink and accompanied him to a comedy gig that he was doing in the basement of a pub also in the King's Cross area. It was a great set from Tim and contained some of the lockdown themed material that appeared in his book. He used thought as a wife, published at the end of 2020. A second volume in a similar vein was published earlier this year, 2022. It's called Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, and elements from both those books can be found in Tim's current one-man show, Mulberry. Now, I saw him performing Mulberry at the beginning of its run at the Soho Theatre back in February.

And it was, well, it was definitely the best time I've had in the last two years, going out that is, and probably one of the funniest live shows I've ever seen. There, I've said it. In fact, I just bought tickets to see the show again at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre on June the 19th. Link in the description. My conversation with Tim included chat about TV quizzes, meeting famous boxing legends on holiday,

and, of course, lockdown. We also talked about a health scare that Tim went through a few years back, and we shared a few more memories from the trip to New York that we took with Alex Horne at the beginning of 2020. But we began by exchanging notes on being the oldest people at the comedy gig the night before. I'll be back at the end for a bit more waffle and a recommendation, but right now, with Tim Key, here we go. Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that

Come on, let's chew the bat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 think I was the oldest person in there. So, at the gig? Yeah, in the whole room. And maybe in the whole pub. Well, I've got to say, because I could see you at the back because you were a bit lit, and you did look really old. Yeah.

I think, horrible thing to say about anyone, but a bigger mask might have been good. A bag? You don't want to invite someone to a gig and put them in a body bag and prop them up. Did you consider finding the second oldest person and being a bit closer to them just to cook the books a bit I suppose I was on stage well that's the thing isn't it

you were the next youngest person and then you were about 10 years older than everyone else so I was like 2 decades older than everyone now hang on I'm going to adjust the volume on here a little bit yeah good idea uh okay do you want me to move this table a bit yeah touch would be good yeah that's good then i can still lean back against this piece of furniture yeah yeah this

is a nice hotel room it's not too bad is it? This is right at the top, so the window is small. Sure. But it was a last-minute booking at quite a nice hotel in the King's Cross area. Yeah. What do you think, price-wise? I think you're looking at... It's not bottom of the barrel, certainly. I think you're paying...

Per night? Yeah. You're not an idiot. I think you're paying £140 night? Yeah. Yeah. You're not an idiot. I think you're paying 140 a night. Close. Yeah? A little bit less. Is it?

Yeah. 130? Yeah. Yeah. Not bad. It's pretty good. I mean, you've got a telly. You've got the...

I never watch the telly. No? No, just on the laptop. Oh. I literally never turn on a tv in a hotel room oh other way around me really and what do you watch just any old shit that's on yeah yes have you ever i don't care what's on i you know i'll just whatever they give me yeah yeah i'm a big fan of um you know terrestrial television auntie basically okay you know, terrestrial television auntie, basically. Okay. You know, she still serves up some good stuff.

Dramas and things like that? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter about the genre. I don't have a favourite genre. I've got a favourite channel. BBC Two. They've got good quizzes. Yeah.

Yeah, then they've got... The dramas are absolutely fine. They can be quite boring, the dramas. Yes, that's the thing, isn the dramas are absolutely fine they can be quite boring the dramas yes that's the thing is yeah they can be how about when you say quizzes yeah would you stray from bbc one on a saturday and watch something like moneyball well moneyball i haven't seen moneyball hang on have i seen moneyball which one is that moneyball yeah oh you're looking it up yeah it's like a kind of roulette. It hinges around the excitement of watching a large steel ball on rails roll beneath different sections of an LED board above

that have different outcomes, if you can imagine that. Well, I can't, but there'll be a lot of people listening who can. In this game of skill, contestants must press a button to lock the launcher setting the height the ball will be dropped from the higher the ball drops the longer it'll keep rolling underneath the led board tensions run high as the ball rolls back and forth until it comes to rest on an amount of cash or the dreaded danger sign. Eek. So you're literally talking about a whole quiz that I think lasts for an hour or something, which is just a steel ball rolling left and right on a rail

and then coming to rest underneath. I mean, you've come to London to talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the... I did watch that in a hotel in London. Having said I don't watch TV in hotel rooms. There's something about quizzes.

I do watch The Chase. It's part of a sub-genre. There's a sub-genre of quizzes out there where you're up against a square. Uh-huh. And those guys are rotating squares on the top of a pyramid. And on BBC Two, you've just got a flat four squares with eggheads and then I'm sure there's other ones

where you fight squares they're having a bit of resurgence it's a good time to be a square it used to be not very cool it's okay to call people squares isn't it? I'm thinking I'm riffling through all the possible associations riffle through all the possible associations.

Riffle through as much as you like. I think they wear their squared fairly on their sleeves, don't they? Yeah. They're squares. I mean, well, not squares. They would maybe say they're what would they say? Brain boxes. Quizzers is what they are. Yes. Quizzers, eggheads,

brainiacs. Brainiacs is good, yeah. I was trying to think of what other game shows you could spin out of everyday games. Oh, great. Like, for an hour. Okay, great. So an everyday game that you have and you turn it into a glitzy Saturday night game show. Exactly.

Oh, right. Okay, so whether you could put Guess Who onto Saturday night. Which you totally could. That's a brilliant idea. Yeah. I've got coin toss. Life-changing sums of money rest on the landing of a coin in this smart, fun and thrillingly unpredictable game of wits, dexterity and mainly chance. Yeah, I think that's a good game. Talk me through the coin.

I mean, is the coin like an iconic coin, which is also the, is also in the credits, and also it's wheeled out, and there's a coin? Or is it more your everyday Joe comes on and brings a coin, and maybe brings a coin that's special to them? Man, that is all good stuff. Yeah, well, no, it always will be for me. Are you around? I mean, can you work on this?

Well, my stuff at the moment is more looking at my live stuff a bit and then trying to write maybe a vehicle for myself. But... This wouldn't take that long. This seems like that stuff sort of fits in around things, doesn't it? I could definitely have a consultation with you about coin toss. I think that's very good. All the things you just said.

I think it would be a giant coin yeah and it would have the face of the host who's the host by the way alan sugar it's got to be someone financial lord sugar lord sugar someone financial he is one of the main financial people i don't like all of his jokes and And I think if I was ever asked to do the Celebrity Apprentice, I think I'd find that a very frustrating process because I think the way they would edit that show is if he did one of his jokes and you said something like, oh, well done, that's funny, I think they're getting rid of that and they're cutting to a different celebrity

who's just laughing like a drain at Sugar's gear even if I made a point of doing it every time he did one of his jokes and I'm slow hand clapping him and going yeah well done Sugar have you got any live stuff coming up Sugar? I think they're getting rid of all of that so I think I'd getting rid of all of that. So I think I'd have a miserable time on it.

Which is annoying, because I think I could come up with some good stuff. Good leadership. I could come up with some good leadership. Yeah, he's notoriously humorless and gets into... When I used to be on Twitter, I used to see him getting in rows with people, or people getting in rows with him. Like Richard Herring wound him up and stuff and he never took it well he doesn't take it well i think i think that's the problem with someone like him is he's almost like a sort of a fable in that you know you can have all the money in the world but it's not going to make your stuff zing and he's all he wants in life is for his stuff to just zing

and he does that show and 90 of it is him sat in his um little you know funny chair in the boardroom trying to do his little jokes and it's just here's another idea what's in the box watch as contestants are pitted against each other using all their powers of guesswork and imagination as they try to correctly guess what's in the box. Is it an apple? A roller skate? A pillow?

Host, Nassim Hamed. Nassim Hamed. Hang on, that's the boxer. Prince Nassim. Yeah, Prince Nassim. I sold him a yo-yo once. You saw him do a yo-yo? I sold him a yo-yo.

Oh, you sold him a yo-yo once. You saw him do a yo-yo? I sold him a yo-yo. Oh, you sold him a yo-yo? Yeah. How come? I was working in Hamleys in 2001, and Prince Nassim came in, and another short guy. Yes. I went on a holiday, family holiday, to Cyprus one time. Sure. And it was off-season. Oh.

Very windy and cold. Oh, I did that once. Yeah, did you? Yeah, it's pretty bleak, isn't it? It's bleak. I went on a lad's holiday two weeks after the season had finished. Yeah, because it's so much cheaper. It was really cheap. It was getting so windy. So what happened in Cyprus? Prince Nassim was one of the other guests. Oh, fantastic. The hotel was sparsely populated, and we'd sit down eagerly by the pool trying to make the best of the freezing week, you know, all sat in our puffer jackets. And over on the other side of the pool is this family,

and he was the patriarch in the middle. Daddy. Daddy. And they had a boom box, and they were living it up, and they were dancing and having a good time. Yo-yos? There may have been yo-yos, yeah. There would have been yo-yos.

Probably. Was it post-2001? Yeah. In about his yo-yo. This was 2013 or something like that. He would have been pretty good by then. i didn't immediately recognize him but then he checked this out came over to me yes his son had recognized me from hot fuzz or something that's fantastic so naz comes over and and gives me a big grin and he was very sort of statesman like talking of alan sugar oh yeah he was a kind of tony soprano-esque magnanimous and warm and hey hello how you doing it's beautiful

what a guy to meet yeah it was pretty good that's nice when you when you see someone like that you dream of the switcheroo yeah because you're not going over to nas no imagine imagine the version of nas who doesn't know who you are and you stumble across You dream of the switcheroo. Yeah. Because you're not going over to Naz. No. Imagine. Imagine the version of Naz who doesn't know who you are and you stumble across with your little shorts on. And my puffer jacket. The last thing you need if you're trying to meet Prince Nazeem Hamid is the odd puffer jacket and shorts combo.

Did you ever box? Pardon me? Have you done some boxing? No. Hang on a minute uh i once had a session with a personal trainer yeah and he he took it in that direction for a bit with the big yeah gloves oh you know the guy yeah yeah anthony i had to do that a little bit they make you do this stuff i quite liked it it. It made me feel rocky-ish. Yeah, I didn't mind it. The worst one he made me do was, I think it's called the bear crawl.

Bear crawl. I think that's what it is, where you have to just run across the gym studio on all fours and then run back again. And then he's sort of yelling at me and I'm sort of, you know, 38. And he's sort of yelling at me. And I'm sort of, you know, 38. And then eventually you just fall on your belly. And you've done really well.

In my mind, I'd done really well. I'd gone backwards and forwards about three times. And you just sense this guy just shaking his head above you. Yeah. Because you haven't done what he needed you to do. You can't have a personal trainer. No, no, I had one. Burpees? You mustn't have one. Burpees, yeah.

I mean, that is pure sadness, isn't it? Yeah. It's all pure sadness. I mean, the thing is, I think I must have put on so much weight doing that stuff because you're so sad when you get home that you feel entitled to do basically whatever with your fridge. I sort of, I basically unplug my oven and take it into the fridge and see you salute it's really true

it's horrible in those places yeah afterwards the sadness and thinking, well, I mean, I've earned quite a lot of snack treats now, so I'm going to claim them. If you're doing a, I can't even remember how long those sessions were. I mean, they felt like an eternity, but let's say it's 40 minutes. Yeah. Well, for me, your starting point is at least three wagon wheels and maybe a burger. I mean, maybe they're going in

it maybe i'm just getting a lot of round food maybe you're just getting two wagon wheels and a beef patty in between yeah yeah yeah that's nice i saw a photograph of you maybe a promotional photograph you're in a suit you're at a desk you've got a pack of fig rolls on the go oh yeah i do yeah yeah i went and did a um a photo shoot um where i really like this guy i can't remember his name um maybe he's called johnny but he just took loads of photos and i took an enormous bag of clothes and did about eight photo shoots to then work out what the project might be when I get to that photo shoot so that one weirdly I think will be my next my next show is going to be that the fig roll stuff oh really I think I just had this nice um vinyl of Hancock and he's wearing a hat and stuff and uh

I'm sort of uh I like Icock. Do you listen to Hancock? Not that much. Pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Well, absolutely. I think I was put off by people like Paul Merton just being so excessively reverential. Yeah, you can't, yeah. I think it's nice to just like it rather than sort of shove it down people's throats as well.

He's quite into it, wasn't he? I mean, you can like something without actually remaking it on tv i feel as if there's a time in my life where i'm gonna really it's gonna click you know jeeves and worcester that's gonna click for me hancock's gonna click jeeves and worcester hasn't clicked not yet what the the books yeah oh they'll click don't worry about that well exactly because people i really admire and like are always talking about these things that I so far have not clicked with. I wouldn't worry about that. They're clicking. Okay.

They're clicking. But I haven't really made Catch-22 click. Okay. But maybe that'll click if I give it another 10 years and then give it another go. Catch-22, Yossarian, and all that lot. Yeah. Catch-22, isossarian and all that lot. Yeah. Catch-22, is that where... Oh, no, I'm thinking of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Yeah, that didn't click. Did that not click? I don't know why this stuff doesn't click, but, I mean, I guess if everything clicked for everyone, then it'd be pretty frustrating. Catch-22 is Joseph Heller. But that's a war thing, right? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I'm okay with like the sort of pub quiz side of it i could answer questions like that yeah i know it's bi and things i can pick to the front yeah but it's more than that isn't it with a book if you want to get under the skin of it slaughterhouse fives good because it's so short kurt vonnegut yeah do you have people on your books who uh have you got friends maybe your wife who can just blaze blaze yep she's a blazer she uh no she is when she gets going but she she works too hard she doesn't leave her herself enough time to sit down and just have a good old read but i'll tell you who is a blazer now having not read any books for the first 15 years of his life is my son my eldest blazer

blazing and he is he's like richard ayawadi who if you if you ever see richard ayawadi he's always got like dostoevsky or something right i've seen him is that not a prop no no he's just working his way through every kind of classic book from the 18th and 19th century yeah have you ever done that have you ever clicked with a dostoevsky no but my son has and he's working his way through this kind of seemingly ridiculous list of books you must read before you die through that i don't know if he's actually going through a formal list but that seems to be the have you touched that list what have you read anything on that list well you know stuff at school i suppose i was made to read Catcher in the Rye and things like that.

That's a good book. Yeah. That's what got me back into it as an adult, reading that one. That was a solid click. It's a fairly easy read. It's short. It's manageable. It's not too long.

No. A book of that size, that's nice when you're holding that. You're thinking, I've got a chance here. When you get a book that's that size you're like this could beat me yeah exactly when you're up to a thousand pages forget about it um yeah forget about it what's the biggest one you've taken down haven't what's the biggest one oh man i think i've taken down a couple of big animals like what grapes of wrath how big is that um i don't think it's don't think it's a thousand but i reckon you're probably staring down the

barrel of 800 700 that's massive brilliant book are there podcasts where two people like talk about books that they've both read because i think this this is the opposite, isn't it? So far, we're both naming books and the other one hasn't read them. Yeah. And this is a deviation from two other deviations as well. Oh, yeah, sure. Well, you were talking about the image of me having a fig roll. Yeah.

I was going to ask you about what other biscuits you like. And what are your go-tos if it's not a fig roll? Dark chocolate digestive. Oh, yeah. Yeah. How about the choco leibniz yeah i mean that's an area that's an area where you start going down that road and

i don't i don't know how you come back yeah well you reckon once you're on the leibniz you're drinking scotch at 9am and i'm thinking, yeah, I actually do think that. I think sometimes I tap the Leibniz. And even as I'm leaving the supermarket, I'm thinking, I think my internal monologue is, I shouldn't have the Leibniz. Because the thing about the Leibniz is, there's a couple of things going on when you crack open a Leibniz. If it's the same, there's obviously lots of different ones.

The one I would go for is a dark chocolate, you know, smeared over a kind of nice simple biscuit. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know what they're doing in there, whether they've got government subsidies or something, but that's thick chocolate. And you can bite the chocolate off, you know, on the edge. And, you know, on the edge.

And, you know, you can almost have a mouthful before you even got to the biscuit. So the Leibniz, I'd say, is a pretty incendiary treat. It's a dangerous choice. Check out this description, which is kind of poetic. Discover the Choco Leibniz milk. It's a crisp butter biscuit, squarely set into a milk chocolate tablet. Yeah, I think that that is, you know,

from the point of view of you and I, we both write and stuff like that, and we're both trying to talk about leibniz. And then you read that, that is a poem. Because I think that's just so beautifully put. That is a leibniz. That's how you describe a leibniz. And then you read that, that is a poem. Because I think that's just so beautifully put. That is a Leibniz. That's how you describe a Leibniz. Set in a chocolate tablet.

Squarely set into a milk chocolate tablet. Squarely set, yeah. It's beautiful. And it continues. It's a classic. Framed with 46 perfectly formed teeth. Yeah. Those are the little crenellations on the butter biscuit base.

Do they credit the author? No, they don't. I reckon that's someone moonlighting. I reckon that's a sort of Sebastian Fuchs or something. Aha, or Salman Rushdie or something. Someone, the big name has written that. Yeah. Sebastian Fuchs.

You can't kid us some that's not just been written by someone in the office they farmed that out they must have got some money in leibniz they farmed that out and they've got a pro to write that yeah that's bob dylan it's pretty good isn't it it's so good this is a poem um yeah this is set in lockdown i decided to spend some time in the hall bit in between the bathroom and the bedroom it was not a bad area i got some crisps and sat on a cushion. I plugged my phone into the plug socket. Yes, this area had everything. The paint around the socket was neatly done. A tradesman had

clearly taken a pride in his or her work. Fucking wonderful. I checked my phone. Instagram. I checked my phone, Instagram, Twitter, the date. Battery 63% and rising. I snaffled a frazzle. What a time to be alive. Last year, you had a book out written in the lockdown. And it was part one of your kind of lockdown memoirs, is that fair to say?

Well, I mean, it was never meant to be part one. It was meant to be part, well, full, part four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was meant to be the only book. But you never know with those lockdowns, do you? They sprung another one on you and you carried on writing? Yeah. Whoa.

The first one was called He Used Thought as a Wife. Yeah. Fourth book? That was my fourth book, yeah. The new one, as we speak, out in a couple of months, although this will be going out after it has become available, is called Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. And so broadly speaking, the difference between the two is what so the first one locked down started writing and then realized that a book might emerge and all the

first book is based around me and my flat and because we were locked down if you remember and i started i remember having a conversation with my mum and dad. And it was obviously like a lot of these conversations in lockdown. It was crazy. Everyone's just trying to get their head around it. And I think when I put the phone down, I just sort of wrote it up. And I like writing. And I knew I had other stuff to be getting on with.

But I started just being very reactive to the stuff that was happening. So then I started writing conversations that I was having and then making up conversations and then writing poems about the mad stuff that was happening because it was all so sort of new and odd

and literally they were doing things like closing pubs and then you had to be socially you had to be distant from people by two meters i remember and it wasn't really like i mean i don't know how much people have come to terms with how bananas it was because at the time you're just trying to get your head around it and then as soon as you're unlocked you just try and forget about it yeah Yeah. But it was loopy. Anyway. I mean, you're talking about it as if the whole situation has gone away,

which of course it hasn't. I know. It sort of lingers. But that's why I think the first book is sort of more, there's something additional about the first book to the second book because the first book has this hit of everyone literally in the world but suddenly being confronted with this really odd situation this madness and i'm not really talking about the pandemic so much as the lockdowns like

i don't really touch upon the pandemic i don't think too much in the book because obviously everyone has a different relationship to that. As in, either you're sort of not really touched by the pandemic, or you may have lost someone from the pandemic. But the lockdown was just something that, in the meantime, we all got on with. And, yeah, in the end, the book became a kind of... Once I was sort of up and running, I realised that all of it should then be set inside. And so the whole book is just 12 weeks of conversations set inside my flat. And me, the character of me in the book, Key, he's called Key,

gradually, I think, losing his mind and, you know, hallucinating a bit and talking to himself a bit and talking to mice and just basically unraveling and i think it was like i think what was happening is i was writing that and that was staving off me going mad in real life yeah okay and when you say the character of key is that that a similar proposition to the person you are on stage if you're doing stand-up and the person you are in tim key's late night poetry program yeah yeah so i don't know what exactly that entails but i think i sort of i think what it means is i can really kind of um have my cake and eat it there's a lot of me in it tons of me like i'm talking to my parents and they're my parents.

They're all versions of people in my life, I think. But yeah, the guy in the book has got the same job as me. The guy in the book is actually writing the book in the book. And the guy in the book lives in the flat that I live in and has the concerns that I have. But then also the guy in the book is able to kind of punch his hand through a wall and stuff and have these moments of kind of sort of cartoonish violence and things.

Yeah. And he's able to be incredibly unreasonable or I can suddenly make him incredibly sympathetic. He's quite kind of a combustible, mad figure, I suppose. A version of me but more i think it'd be i think i wouldn't be able to write a book which was a book which was my experiences of the first lockdown by yeah that'd be kind of a mad proposition and then so what about the next book so basically that's the first book yeah and that's all set inside and then the second thing the second lockdown we released the book last december and that was that done then that second lockdown came and it was a different um different set of emotions

much more to do with so not last december but december. Yeah. Was it? December. So that book, yeah, that book came out December 2020. Right. We made it pretty quickly. Yeah. And then in January 2021, the next lockdown started. Lockdown three. Lockdown three. Yeah.

And then that was more of a case of, there's a large chunk of, are you kidding me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's happening again. Because it wasn't like lockdown one looking back on that that was the good old days lockdown one was kind of epic yeah and kind of historical and there were things to be taken from it i mean because it was interesting and everyone was getting used to as a sort of a shared experience thing. Also, a slight element of maybe everyone or lots of people did need a slight pause for a moment,

which you would never have had in your life. But lockdown three, no one wanted to go back into a lockdown. Anyway, I started writing poems again. And then same as with the first book, I just had one idea for a conversation. And then I thought with the first book, I just had one idea for a conversation. Yeah. And then I thought, yeah, okay, if it's going to be three months, then I'm going to write another book.

And so that one, because in the third lockdown, you're able to walk around more. Yes. That one is all based outside. So the first one is really claustrophobic. Great. And the third one, I never go into my flat. Now, would you like to read, or can I ask you to read a thing?

I can read a poem, yeah. Yeah, do that. Yeah. So this is the poem from the first book. Harry Kane stood on the training pitch. Coach explained again. Football's cancelled, Harry. For now. Harry was gaping hard. He pointed to the football again. Football. I know, Harry. Coach showed him some headlines on his iPhone.

Harry blinked. He pointed at the football again. He pointed at his shin pads. He pointed to the sky. Coach put an arm around him. They wandered back up to the hut. Um, well, I mean, it's quite sad. I think I watched, um, did you watch the Tottenham Hotspur documentary? No. It's crazy.

I mean, that is the mad thing about the lockdown, when you sort of take a moment to consider that everyone did it there's some mad people doing that lockdown and then this documentary they find out and people tell them that there's going to be the lockdown. They're explaining what's going to happen. And then you get this mad conversation where Harry Kane is just at lunch and they're just four footballers from across the globe and he's just sort of explaining that there's going to be a lockdown. But it's mad.

Like, it's the same conversations that we had in real, you know, not in a football ground, where I remember my friend John explaining to me I mean I'm like I'm reverting to being a five-year-old because I don't know what a lockdown is and I'm sort of vaguely watching the news but that hasn't they haven't told us about lockdown yet and he says I've heard they're gonna they're gonna close the pubs and it's not possible to get your head around that because they've never closed the pubs. They've never closed the shops and closed the streets and told people you can't

leave your house. So when you first hear it, it's a mad, mad thing to hear. And I'm like saying, what do you mean they're going to close the pubs? They're closing them. They reckon they'll close them for a month. Everyone in their houses. I'm like, are you joking? It's such a stupid concept. And it only really makes sense when you get it from every angle and it's on the BBC News site and you go, oh, okay. Yeah, this is real. And then there's some links to things

what does this actually mean and then you have the Prime Minister sort of going right then lads we're going to have a lockdown and you're like oh okay but the first time you hear it is just insane it doesn't make any sense

it's gobbledygook and then you have a character in there called Bonson. Yeah. And he has a sidekick called Moggeth. Yeah. And was that the first time you'd written about Bonson? No. The first time I wrote about him was,

and I'm not a very political person, the first poem I ever wrote about though that lot was do you remember when um reese mogg lounged yeah on the bench yeah yeah yeah so this was on the in the bench in the house of commons yeah and i don't think i'm very good at like expressing myself in a sort of political way but there's something where you're just watching that and you're thinking this can't be right yeah yeah this this guy has just got an absolute um contempt yes it was he became the poster boy and it was in itself an image that could be a poster that just defined the concept of contempt particularly kind of class yeah contempt and i think i wrote a poem about

it i can't remember what it was but i think in my poem he was a bit it was a bit longer along the bench and started to sort of drip down and going it was going through the tiles a bit i think and even if like even if he himself in his mind was not being contemptuous the fact that someone intelligent would not immediately know that that image would project contempt to everyone who saw it. Yeah, I agree. It feels like he's an intelligent person. So he knows what emotion that's going to cause amongst people. So it's actually kind of quite a confrontational thing to do. Yeah, really weird. It's kind of a goad to the people, sort of saying, well, what do you want to say about the fact that I'm lounging on this bench?

It's of a piece with the drinks parties. Yeah, those drinks parties. Can you read a Bonston poem? What I can do is read a poem about the parties. Oh, yeah, okay. Because I wrote this one yesterday. So this is

you know, sort of a party poem I suppose. Bonson waddled out into the garden. The sun was hot, hot, hot. Its rays bounced off the side of the house that he rented and burned into his scruffy, urine-coloured hair. He put his fists on his thick hips and surveyed the proceedings.

He liked what he saw, put it that way. Starfers, unwinding, that's the headline news. Caps flying off Beard Alsace. Senior politicians wrestling, policy makers unfolding Twister, finding a flat bit of lawn to peg it down. Bonson smiled, his tennis shorts bulging with pride. Moggith handed him a couple of Swedish meatball wraps and ladled some punch down his throat. Oh Moggith, you see the vibe? There was a government-affiliated DJ playing chilled Tory beats, and Bonson's trotters started jiggling on the turf.

He checked his watch. Well, that's me, I reckon. Moggith almost choked on his ballmers. You ain't fucking off already, are you? Bonson winked and did a under-the-thumb gesture. He smashed a tin opener against a bottle of Bollinger. Right, I'm off your horrible lot. They booed, some had their tops off, some had coke down their chests don't do anything I wouldn't do, chaps

narrow it down, boss the laughter grew and grew it swept Bonson back through his French windows it rose over the walls and drifted like poison across the city the two other things that I would like to talk about... Talk chunks. Oh, yeah, talk chunks. Talk chunk one, leg cancer.

Yeah, yeah. Talk chunk two, New York trip. Yeah, sure, yeah. OK. Are you ready for a tonal swerve i mean i'm born ready for tonal swerves all right then i'll come with you leg cancer oh wow really yeah yeah when was it um i reckon that was 2000 and 2018, I think. Yeah.

Because I went to see you in Norwich at the Playhouse. Yeah. And then afterwards you came back to mine. Yeah. And we sat up having some amaretto, I think. Yeah, would have been. With ice, maybe. Maybe.

Yeah, there was blocks of something in there. It was ice. Oh, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, there was blocks of something in there. It was ice. Oh, cool. And you told me this story about this lesion on your leg that someone had spotted at a gig when you were wearing shorts. It was a really, really fresh story. Yeah. Because I went to a, I did a gig, and a doctor got in touch with our agent, to be fair, Chiggy, and said, love the show last night,

but I would recommend that Tim gets his leg checked out. And I had a birthmark on my leg. That you'd always had? I'd always had it. Anyway, I went and got it checked out. And the doctor was like, yeah, we need to refer you to a specialist. She referred me to a specialist.

And the specialist said, yeah, I need to cut that out today. And then I said to the doctor, well, I mean, can we do it on Monday? Because I need to go to Norwich. And he said, yeah. The other thing he did was invited lots of people into the room. I think it was sort of quite interesting. Cancer students. I mean, everyone.

I think there was like the person who worked in Smith's. Just anyone. Check this out. This guy's been walking around with this on his leg. Were you, what was your mental state at this point? Are you very sad or just sort of thinking, oh, it's under control? I was rattled. Yeah, yeah.

So I remember like thinking, well, Norwich was the last date of the tour. Yeah. And I thought, well, I'll finish the tour then, and then I suppose it's, off it comes. Uh-huh. But that's why when I got to Norwich, I was glad you were there because I could do the show, and then I don't know whether I told you before,

I don't think I had, but I thought, well, that's good because we'll go and have a drink and I'll explain what's happened. Yeah. I think otherwise it would have been quite, I don't know, I think it would have been quite difficult. Anyway, on the Monday I got it removed and it's sort of okay. You know, they just kind of whip it out. And I walked home. What are they doing? Are they sort of shaving off a few layers or when they whip it out?

Well, it's like when you go to the dentist. They didn't give me a general anaesthetic. It's the first time I've had that, I think, where you have a local anaesthetic to do something where there's an actual sort of knife. It's a bit weird. So they just cut it out. I'm not really a sort of looker in those situations, so I don't know what they did. But I'm kind of interested in crater size.

Yeah, I know you're interested, and that's cool. But I didn't look. Yeah, I didn't look, so I don't know what they did. But I'm kind of interested in crater size. I know you're interested and that's cool. But I didn't look. Yeah, I didn't look. So I don't know, do I? You didn't even take a peek? I didn't look. So then I go and do latitude in my little shorts. I remember that.

So then I went back and then they said they needed to do another further excision, I think. Had you had a conversation, though, with anyone, like, about worst case scenarios and what you were... No, I don't think so. But they, I mean, I knew they were looking to see whether it was a, you know, melanoma, like if it was a sort of... A spreading thing or just a thing that could be removed and left alone. So then I went in with... They said I should go in with a pal. So I went in with Alex Horne from...

Why do you need to go in with a pal? That doesn't bode well, does it? For emotional or physical support or both? Well, I think it's because they're going to tell me I've got cancer. Okay. So I went in with Alex. He's perfect for that because he's got a good sense of humour and stuff and he can sort of make things a bit lighter.

So the guy said, yeah, we've had a look at it, and it is, what's the two words, malignant and benign? Malignant. And, yeah, it was an interesting thing to hear because you do sort of just start, I mean, obviously there's a little element of, you're thinking, well, my life is going to be kind of disrupted. You're thinking, well, I hope I'm not in danger.

Also, you're thinking, this is like not a nice phone call to your parents to sort of go, I'm fine, but this is happening. Anyway, all fine. And I think I was kind of all, so all kind of under control and, you know, talked about it with everyone. And I was so, I think I was kind of on an even keel. But then I did go to Edinburgh after that. And I think I was like, I think I was kind of on an even keel. But then I did go to Edinburgh after that, and I think I was slightly rattled.

And then it was when I came back from Edinburgh that they actually did the second incision, actually, to make sure they'd removed everything. And that was a general anaesthetic. Then I had to have a course of medication, and that took a little bit of time to work out because there was two options, and that was the bit that fried my head the most. And then I started a course of oral chemotherapy,

and that lasted a year, and that was kind of, it was kind of okay. You know, I just had to take all these pills and things. And you weren't too badly affected by them? I don't know. There's definitely bits where you're kind of, you know, up and down. There was moments, I think, where you're in conversations and you're sort of feeling like a little bit behind. Okay.

Welcome to my life. Well, I think it was actually welcome to my already life as well so maybe i was about the same amount behind right but there's definitely bits where you think i'm not sure whether these pills are doing anything in my life yes you know because they had like side effects and they were very keen to point out there's lots of these side effects but i mean some of these side effects were like um quite big side effects like you know bleeding out of your ears and things and i never had any of those i just had a little bit of you know uh tiredness and a little bit of once i had a fever and then you have to go to a and e and they sort of put you on a drip and

but i i do think all of that stuff was fine. I feel like it's interesting being ill. It's sort of, once you get into it, I mean, A, I felt very fortunate in the grand scheme of things because obviously it's kind of quite a broad church, cancer, and I felt like there was not really much to complain about because mine looked very survivable and I used to have to go to this hospital Mount Vernon hospital in near Rickmansworth every month and they would check me up and they'd give me more pills and uh in a in a weird kind of way i sort of quite liked it that day because you just feel like you're in the right place like life is so chaotic and you always

never know whether you're doing the right thing or you're making the right choices or doing the right project or you know should i be making this thing or should I be maybe doing more of this stuff but it is quite good where once a month you think well I definitely know I should be in this waiting room and I definitely know that these people are the right people to be working with on this and so I just would meet these people, have this little conversation, then go, yeah, it's all looking good. And then I'd have to have like an MRI scan and a CT scan every couple of months. And yeah, after a year, finished my last pill,

had my last MRI and CT scan, and they said, you're good. Two fig rolls that day. Actually, that's not the half of it. Every hospital day was like, absolutely, the brakes are off. Yeah. I mean, no work for sure. And then I'd get to the train station in Buckinghamshire and I'd go to the train station in Buckinghamshire and I'd go to the Waitrose and I'd always get a Swiss bun.

You know that? Oh, yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, if you want to really enjoy a Swiss bun, have a melanoma. I think that's their new marketing slogan. Yeah. That's how I got into it.

Well, I'm so glad that you are cancer-free. Yeah, I went just before Christmas and had a bit of an MRI and a CT. And they said, yeah, you're good now for a year. Okay. So it is a thing. I mean, there on, after a certain age, it makes sense to check anyway whether you've had it before or not. But I guess once you have had it, you've got to keep on. Well, what they do is I think they go, well, we'll do an MRI and a CT every three months.

Then it's every six months. Yeah. And now it's a year. Okay. Yeah, they're pretty good. The doctor, Heather Shaw, she calls me boss. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Yeah, that stuff helps. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't sort of make it worth it, if that's what you're asking. But it takes the shine off it slightly. It adds the shine onto it. I like being called boss, too. Yeah, it's so nice being called boss. Or chief.

Yeah, I think she's called me chief. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really good. I'd hate to sit in on her talking to someone else and find out that she's doing that to other people. But I don't think it is. I think she's rewarding me. I can't imagine anyone more boss-like.

The pub sort of reopened a bit. This is the Scotch egg sort of vibes, you know, when you had to have a Scotch egg. Eat out to help out. Eat out to help out! Yeah, yeah, it was. The pub sort of reopened a bit. I ordered a lasagne and six pints and told the guy to leave me the fuck alone. Sometimes he'd come over and ask me to start eating my dinner.

I'd just tell him to go fuck himself and bring me another hamster the manager came over she made airplane noises as she fed me now before we even knew about the pandemic is that right or had there been whispers about a new virus in China? Yeah, but that didn't matter because that was just a news story. It was just a weird news story, wasn't it? There's been news stories before, you know, where you're told, well, there's going to be a war or an asteroid. Forget about it. Forget about it. Who cares?

I'm talking about January 2020. We were able to make a move. Yeah, we made a move. A lunge to New York. Yeah. In order to, and I talked to Alex Horne about this when he was on the podcast, and I'm imagining this episode with you as a kind of idea yeah he's great isn't he he's great how long have you known each other um i met him in 2001 so 20 years okay not that long i should have had you pegged as childhood friends or something halfway friends okay yeah but now you are thick as thieves thick as thieves i'm his son's godfather yeah yeah and i think we've established that you and alex don't really want to describe exactly what the project was that we were going to new york for because

it's something that may unfold over a course of that's very good years or even decades even decades yeah very good yeah you asked me if i would come along and help film and document the the whole process and i you know you leapt at the chance. Yeah, man. Because a lot of people weren't into it. So off we go, and we're on a trip to New York. It was great. You guys were dressed as the Blues Brothers in the restaurant,

in the airport when I turned up. You took a look at me, and you over at alex and said see i told you fleece but you wouldn't have it any other way anyway um so i was excited to go off and meet you guys and go on a little trip we were only there for three days or something. It wasn't long, yeah. Three or four days. Did we have a drink on the plane? Did we? Don't know.

I don't think so. Well, it was in the daytime, wasn't it? Daytime flight. Early morning. Maybe not. It was a morning flight. And then it was nice going to our Airbnb. Yeah.

So tell us, who found the Airbnb? Was that you or Alex? Who found the Airbnb? You did? Yeah. Ah, that was a great find. It was a reformed book did? Yeah. Ah, that was a great find. It was a reformed bookshop in, where was it?

I'll tell you exactly where it was. West 160th Street, Sugar Hill, up in, let's see. I reckon it's Harlem. It's bordering on Harlem. We were looking over onto a historic building, the Morris Jumel Mansion, Manhattan's oldest house, headquarters for both sides in the American Revolution.

Oh. And we were looking out onto that from this cool basement flat with bookshelves filled with classics of African-American literature and history and a an amazing collection of 50s and 60s jazz and blues and a record player. And you cook breakfast. Yes. I think I woke up before anyone on the first morning jet lag, you know, woke up at when it was still dark at about four or five. And I walked until the sun came up. Clear skies, very bright and bought some bagels and some eggs. We had scrambled eggs and listened to some jazz.

Beautiful. I'll always remember it. This time of year? Yeah. Literally two years ago now. That's right. We went to the strange food shop. What was that?

Seatown Supermarket in Washington Heights. What were we trying to get? Well, we were just getting supplies. Yeah. So breakfast we were fine because it was just scrambled eggs and bagels. Yeah. You can't screw those up. No.

But then one night when you and alex were out having dinner with a mate of yours and i cried off because i was feeling too knackered i went and picked up some food at the supermarket this is a side of you i didn't know what you cooked for yourself well no i got i got a pack of ready-made sushi of pre-prepared sushi and then i also just to back myself up in case it wasn't good, I got a sort of bean pot. You know, like a salad bean pot thing. Yeah.

Got back to the house. How do you remember this? I wrote it down. You didn't? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I keep a journal. Do you really? So I went and read the journal back before I talked to you today.

That's insane. So otherwise, of course, I wouldn't remember it. Hang on a minute. Why went and read the journal back before I talked to you today. That's insane. So otherwise, of course, I wouldn't remember it. Hang on a minute. Why do you keep the journal? Same reason as anyone keeps a journal. Okay, okay, okay. Come on. And I got...

Why is he keeping a journal? Is it to write, like, is he going to publish it? No, I think this is a big question. Why does anyone keep a journal? No, I don't is a big question. Why does anyone keep a journal? No, I don't imagine it being published. I imagine it being just a way of ensuring that I write something most days, keep my hand in. And when you write the journal, do you write it creatively?

Are you writing it with like a little, is it idiosyncratic? Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to write it as if it were, you know, because maybe some of it might be useful for other things. Yeah, totally. So I might go in and raid it and think, oh, yeah, I could turn that into something. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's like a notebook, I suppose. I'm envious that you do it. How long have you done it for? I'm surprised you don't. No, I've done it a couple of times. A couple of phases. Right. Yeah.

But you're always writing anyway, so that's a sort of... Yeah, I try to write most days, yeah. That's a kind of journalistic process in itself, I suppose. That's really good, though. I'm glad you do that. It is good. Do you do it every day? I do when I... I try to, yeah, yeah.

Where is it? On your laptop? On the laptop. So if I could... Can I give you a date and you just read it out? In the last three years, you could give me a date. OK, I want to give you... What are we on? Well, why don't we do january uh it's a question of whether we want it to be in the lockdown isn't it

um okay why don't we do um june the 1st 2020 june the 1st that's a month after my ma died so uh might be a bummer plus uh obviously i going to have to kind of censor this on the fly. Hang on, you're going June the 1st. Let's try it. Let's try it. June the 1st. All right. Wake feeling bad.

I feel okay in the first few minutes of being awake. But then memories of that last night with mum start to replay. How about we go for another day? How did going on the podcast promoting your book go? No, I made the guy cry. Why? June the 1st.

guy cry why june june june the first and you know it doesn't take much to make me cry on a podcast let's go let's go let's go october october the 8th you're going later that year oh no no let's go before then okay how about october the 8 8th, 2019? Because that's pre... That's the good old days. Yeah, okay. Or is it? Let's find out. October the 8th, did you say? Yeah.

Well, yeah. October the 8th. Train from Norwich to London. Oh, much better. 1.30pm, Sing 2, voiceover session 3. Good to see Garth, who is the director. His nice producer man, Greg, and the nice Irish fellow, Engineer, also met Garth's French PA.

Garth has a PA! He tells me that he spent the previous day with Bono, showing him bits and pieces from the film and asking for permission to use Where the Streets Have No Name and Stuck in a Moment with You. Bono, showing him bits and pieces from the film and asking for permission to use where the streets have no name and stuck in a moment with you. Bono said yes. My VO session is fine, though a few stumbles near the beginning with me tripping up on some not at all difficult words deepen my current concern that my mind is going. Garth is happy though and reiterates how pleased everyone is with my crazy dance instructor, and reiterates how pleased everyone is

with my crazy dance instructor character, Klaus, and how his part is continuing to expand. Fingers crossed that isn't an indication that the whole film is in terrible trouble. This is good. That was a good extract. Everyone seems to sort of, you know, everyone's alive and sort of, you know...

No pandemic. Mum's still alive that's interesting i wish i'd got that up my sleeve i can sort of imagine it do you read diaries published diaries yeah uh yes i do yes i do yeah david sedaris published his uh second volume of diaries last year and that was very entertaining and brian eno did a diary for just a year called a year with swollen appendices from 1995 that's very interesting and that appeals to me yeah a diary for a year that's really it's a good exercise and that that's what Louis did with his lockdown book.

Right. I think it was just 12 months from the beginning of the first lockdown. It's a good exercise because then you can be really forensic and feel as if it's not just a total waste of time. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. And Michael Palin, obviously I read his. Yeah, I just bought those he's got

several volumes the the best one for me was i think maybe the hollywood years oh yeah i really liked because i think that's that's the book i've got the python years is great fascinating obviously especially if you're a python fan but the hollywood years is good because he did a lot of other strange projects some of which didn't quite come together. Yeah. And I find that comforting when someone, when someone as talented and accomplished as him. Yeah.

Describes projects that just fizzled or were painful and took ages. And then no one liked when that emerged. And that kills me. That's done. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Have you got any

of those mate you know i heard this podcast uh so anyway oh yeah i was gonna say though about my sushi and my bean pot yeah i feel as if i need to tie up that... Yeah, of course you do. That thread. Yeah. The sushi was hard. Right. And cold. Right. Inedible. This is why I avoid that stuff.

I took a mouthful of it, and it was one of the few times in my life that I decided I'm not even going to swallow this, and I just went over to the bin, opened my mouth and... That's not the atom buxon I know. Let the food plop out. Spat it out. Didn't even spit, just let it fall out of my mouth.

Now, why didn't you spit it out? I guess, was it just for the trajectory? Yeah, I didn't need to spit it out. I just went and leaned over the bin, opened my mouth, just let it fall out of my mouth, this disgusting, cold, weird, plasticky sushi. So then I think, lucky i got the bean pot if there's any justice in this world the the backup bean pot works out so get the lid off yeah dig in

with uh with the spoon take a big old mouthful of beans in sort of sauce liquid yeah sauce liquid yeah so far so good it's fizzy pardon me It's fizzy. Pardon me? It's fizzy. Sparkling. Sparkling bean pot. And for a moment, I'm thinking... Nice idea, chaps. Yeah, I'm sort of thinking, is it supposed to be fizzy? Is it spicy?

Fizzy. Is it like just a kind of crazy bean pot? What does fizzy mean then? Is fizzy off? Fizzy is it started to ferment? I think that's what it was. When they talk about the great food cities, New York is up there.

So you've been unlucky or you've mismanaged New York here. Because we were only there a few days. And I do remember without keeping a diary, we went out to a restaurant, the three of us, the night before. And I don't think it set the world alight did it no it didn't we didn't have any amazingly memorable food while we were there except for breakfasts breakfasts were the highlight breakfasts breakfasts were fantastic yeah i'm happy with breakfasts breakfasts i'm going to talk to alex about this

that he seemed positive about the trip when you interviewed him. Yeah, big style. He's a positive guy. Yeah, that guy's insane. He doesn't overthink things. That's the thing with him. Oh, man. I just envy that so much. But you don't seem like a massive overthinker.

Oh, more than him, though. I mean, there's very little going on with Alex. Right. It's empty. Honestly, you just see him. He's like a sort of, you you know a character from a computer game he just sort of waddles around

eats dances whatever earn money earn money relax think of game for taskmaster yeah

no I'm not saying he's a robot I'm just saying there's very little yeah he's a joybot and he can't believe it like he looks at other people and he can't believe it like he

looks at other people and goes why on earth are they unhappy he cannot get his head around anything he has he has a great time you know he'll go out and sort of you know take the air come back in you know play with his kids another game for taskmaster you know it's not it's not um rocket science his life what an incredible gift to be born with. He's got a very good demeanour and a very good outlook on life, I think. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's very bright. Where are you off to now?

So I'll cycle home and then... Yeah, I'll walk back in. I'm going to walk to Kennington. I'm going to play football. Football? The most knackering of all the sports? It depends on your style of play. Right, OK.

You have to look at people's style of play. I'm a very languid footballer. OK. Yeah. I imagine you're a very busy footballer. I mean, I played football seven times, I think. You've never gone on up to ten. No.

And it was absolutely exhausting each time I did it. And it was only since I had children that I ever played football you've played football seven times yeah yeah you have a sport that you do play? badminton yeah I can see that I mean I know which shot I'm doing

to defeat you what down very fast no up very slow I'd be a bit worried about the down very fast because No, up very slow. I'd be a bit worried about the down very fast, because that's sort of where you're dwelling, isn't it? I think you're gaslighting me a bit there. You're trying to make me do it down fast.

When is the court booked for? This is a poem about love in lockdown. Two lovers, exiled from one another. They started doing the same things at all times. He would post her a bagel for breakfast and they would eat together. For lunch they would cook linguinis, slinging them into their pans at 12.45 on the dot. They'd run at five and stop in front of their respective oak trees. And in the evenings they'd start their movie at the exact same time and watch it with the exact same red wine in the exact same glasses.

And it was beautiful. At night they screwed their respective flatmates and all four had a WhatsApp group and it was an absolute disgrace. Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes.

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Continue. I took off my mask. No mouth. I put my mask back on. I was gutted. The old mouth gone. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Tim Key. A little bonus poem for you there. All those poems can be found, I think I'm right in saying, in Tim's books. He used thought as a wife, and here we go around the mulberry bush links to both of those in the description of the podcast I guess the Boris Johnson party one

wouldn't be in there because Tim had just written it when he read that anyway lots of Tim related links in the description what have we got links to the books links to tim's show at the regents park open air theater link to a review of that show mulberry when it was at the soho theater guardian review by rachel healy and link to tim key's late night poetry program on BBC Sounds. Also in the description, a link to a documentary I watched with my wife last night, in fact, referring to my notes now. If you're not already familiar with the story, Alexei Navalny is the Russian leader of the opposition to Vladimir Putin. And in August of 2020 he was poisoned while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow apparently with the nerve agent Novichok

everyone's least favorite chalk even worse than bounty apparently, poor taste. Coconut. The documentary focuses on the poisoning and the subsequent efforts by Navalny and some sympathetic data investigators and journalists to establish whether, as they suspected, the poisoning had been an assassination attempt by the Russian intelligence services or FSB acting on orders from Putin. Not spoiler because what they found was made public in late 2020 but it turns out that Navalny had indeed been poisoned by FSB agents and the scene in the documentary in which Navalny cold calls one of the scientists involved after his journalist friends have found the number and he pretends to be one of the bosses of this agent and asks him to confirm how the poisoning was carried out and why it failed is extraordinary it's an amazing scene that i think will probably go down as you know

one of the great documentary scenes of all time it's like watching a sort of particularly successful phone prank on youtube albeit with higher stakes but it's so outrageously successful, as far as getting information goes, that it's sort of funny. You can't really believe it's happening. But at the same time, what they're talking about and who authorised it and what it says about the Russian government is very weird and shocking, assuming it's real, of course, and we have every reason to believe that it is. I don't imagine things have gone well for the FSB

scientist involved in the call since then. Not that they've gone that much better for Alexei Navalny, who is currently still serving a two and a half year sentence at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges he says were fabricated to thwart his political ambitions. And in fact, he was recently sentenced just in the last few days to a further nine years in a maximum security penal colony after being found guilty of large-scale fraud and contempt by a Russian court. Navalny denies the fraud charges, possibly not his contempt for the court.

Fly past from the hairy bullet. Anyway, there is a link to that documentary, Navalny, on the BBC iPlayer in the description of this podcast. Okay, I've got to get back now. I've got to prepare for a bug show this Friday at the BFI South Bank. I think there might even still be tickets if you want to come along. The show gets repeated next week,

as I speak, Thursday and Friday. What are those dates? Thursday, well, this week it's Friday 29th, 8.45 at the BFI South Bank, Bug 62. Next week it is Thursday 5th of May and Friday 6th of May. Shows 8 45 p.m on all those nights I'll be showing some great music videos and um doing my stupid crap thank you very much indeed

to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his work on this episode. Thanks to my son Nat. He provided the piano pieces that you heard under Tim's poems, all improvised. The artwork for this podcast was created by the brilliant Helen Green. Thanks very much to everybody at ACAST for all their hard work keeping this podcast going and bringing in sponsors, etc. Much appreciated. But most of all, thanks to you, podcats, for continuing to listen. I really appreciate it so much, in fact, that I'm going to lean in and hug you. I'm going to give you a hug because I'm a big believer in hugging,

if it's appropriate and uh consensual so if you don't want to hug then you better switch off because here it comes all right mate yeah there it is it's over now alright Rosie do you want to say goodbye to the podcats beautiful pants Rosie

how dare you take care I love you bye Like and subscribe. Bye. Thank you. John started socially distancing by wearing stilts. He was slow and ponderous and couldn't get into any of the shops or his flat, but unless he bumped into some other cunt on stilts, he was as safe as ours was out there.