The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep.#511: "Pro Wrestler William Regal"

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

William Regal, English retired professional wrestler, known for his over 20 years spent in WWE, as both a performer and an on-screen authority, and for his time performing in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and All Elite Wrestling (AEW). Recorded Dec 1st, 2022 via Zoom at the Quiet House in Bisbee, AZ with Doug Stanhope (@dougstanhope) and William Regal. Produced and Edited by Chaille. Still time to grab tickets at The Plaza for New Year's Eve with Doug Stanhope - https://www.plazahotelcasino.com/entertainment/doug-stanhope/ . Football Sunday in the sports book is a bonus this time around. See you in Vegas. We have no idea what the future holds so get on the Mailing List at https://www.dougstanhope.com/. When we know, we'll let you know. LINKS -Visit the Stanhope Store - http://www.dougstanhope.com/store/ Closing song, “The Stanhope Rag”, written and performed by Scotty Conant for Doug Stanhope and used with permission – Available on Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/scottyconant Photo Credit - EgglesterSupport the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast

Good night. Hello. How are you? Of the wrestling world, which I would say, this is the second time I met you was just this time in Atlanta. You were there the time before, I believe. Yes, a few years ago, yeah. And then we were on Twitter. You tweeted something, and I guess somebody asked, hey, I'd love to hear you two on a podcast to hear how your wrestling world and comedy worlds collided.

So here we are. Here we are. And I would imagine it's pretty much the same thing because we just rode. I believe you use the term road hogs. That's what we are. Road dogs, road hogs. Road dogs, road hogs, road dogs. Yeah, that's what we do.

So, yeah, we are roughly the same age. I don't know shit about wrestling since I was probably 13 years old. Believe me, I'm glad about that. So I'm going to talk about wrestling. Yeah. I won't go into, uh, is it fake or not? Don't worry. But I did, I did read your Wikipedia page. And as you know, anytime you do an interview with someone who's only read your Wikipedia page, it's fucking terrible. But I did read your Wikipedia page, and I'm sure you're sick of talking about it. Right.

And I'm sure you have a million other stories that are just as good or better. But when I read that during your WCW days, which was late 90s, you pissed on a flight attendant on a flight to Japan. No, I said it was on a flight back from Japan. I got on a plane in Tokyo. I got on a plane in Tokyo and at the time I was, you know, I was bang at it. I was caning it pretty severely. And somebody had given me some pills that I'd never taken before, but they worked.

You know, when you get new anything, it works, right right it wears off after a while but these were new and um i got i'd in narita airport i'd had a few few lagers and uh and then i i took these pills thinking i was gonna Well, it gets blown out of proportion, this story. But as most stories do, what actually happened was I went to the toilet. Remember them old years ago? You used to have those concertina doors. They're not like that anymore. So I'm having a gypsies or a pee, as you call it. And my foot, because I'm not in the best of states,

is stopping the door shutting. And a flight attendant came up to me and said, excuse me, sir. And I turned around and I peed on a foot. So the next thing, the plane gets landed. The plane gets landed in Alaska, in Anchorage. So I didn't find out this until a long time later because there was a, like, I got suspended for seven weeks

and then they had to do all kinds of, you know, investigating on this. It wasn't actually landed because of me. There was several things going on in his plane including one of them um the main reason why he got landed um there was a british paparazzi fella in the back of the plane and he just flipped out and started hitting everybody he started like chinning people like just just jumping up, knitting people. So I was just one of the people that there was a, I've never named him, but there was a few other wrestlers that weren't acting well. They'd thrown over a drinks trolley.

All I'd done basically was gone, oh, like, you know, if anybody taps you on your shoulder. Let me just step in and and mention this is pre 9-11 so flying oh yeah different world back then different world yeah so i just turned around and basically peed on my foot next thing i know the plane's landed i'm getting asked to leave i'm just a casualty of many things that's happened on this plane. The plane was one of them, like just nutty things all going on in this plane. So I get, like I pass out because I've been drinking and I'm taking all these pills.

And I wake up in a jail cell and I've got no idea where I am. And I'm in an orange jumpsuit with like a pair of these you know silly shoes on and I didn't know that Alaska um or Anchorage has a gang problem I didn't know that I didn't know that at all it was it was news to me because he's not expecting. So there's a lot of African-American lads all in there, all staring at me because I'm like half passed out and I've woke up and, you know, I don't think I'm anything, but I'm six foot three and I'm, you know, 260 or whatever it is at the time.

I've stood up and said, what's going on, fellas? Because they're all staring at me and they just started laughing so eventually one of the the the cops come over and said i said where am i because i got no idea where i am i'm supposed to be in detroit is this a holding cell yeah it's a holding cell but we're like we're 30 people in it or all gang members so i said like like what's where am i because i've got no idea no clue because i i took a load of muscle relaxers and and i've been drinking and uh it's just to what what do you call them like a prison we call i i hate to say a screw a screw yeah well we call them pigs in england like you know like so

he said to me you're in anchorage and i went where he went anchorage, Alaska. And I went, keep it fucking serious. Where am I? Because I'm thinking he's making it up, right? And so he said, you're in Anchorage. And so I thought, oh, right. And you were going to Los Angeles, yes? I was going to Detroit. Detroit. I was supposed to land in Detroit early hours of Monday morning and do a show on live TV on Monday night.

That was either Northwest or Delta. Northwest probably back in the day. Whatever it was, yeah. Whatever it was, I ended up in Alaska anyway. So I just sat down with these fellas and I'm having a, you know, chatting away. I've got, you know, okay, well, you're in gangs and stuff. And I used to get up to a bit of no good when I was younger.

So we got on swimmingly, to be honest with you, me and these lads that were in this cell. Then I get two fellas come to the cell and said, right, can you come with us? Right now, one of those guys that was in that cell is on a podcast, some hip hop podcast, talking about that time. This giant fucking Brit wound up in jail with them in Alaska. This giant fucking Brit wound up in jail with them in Alaska. Right. So what I find out is the FBI, they've took me into a room, and they said, look, you did this, and their terms were you urinated

on a flight attendant's foot. But you're going to go back in the cell. They might have been called stewardesses back then. Stewardess. Yeah, they could have been, yeah. So they put me back in the cell. Next thing I know, I'm getting handcuffed to this geezer and this other fella on the other side.

When I say geezer, I just mean fella because in England, geezer means anybody. Yeah. Anybody who's a fella. I did picture an elderly man. Yeah, no, there's no elderly man. A specific one, too, that used to drink day shift at Chilkoot Charlie's in Anchorage.

Go ahead. So up until this point, this is the only thing I've seen of Anchorage is a jail cell because I just landed, got took off the plane. I, you know, I'm off my nut. I've got no idea where I am. And you have no memory of the incident? No, no, none whatsoever.

None whatsoever. So the only reason I know about the incident is because the company I worked for at the time investigated it thoroughly and found out what had happened. And anyway. Johnny Dollar. Never mind. That's an inside reference.

I've got, I'm handcuffed to these two fellas all in orange jumpsuits. And we get put in, well, more than two. There was a line of us. There was a lot of us and we get took to this um we get took to this court so i'm sat there thinking there's obviously been some mistake because i've got no idea what i've done right but i've but i've kicked out by now and they know that they've given you no hint at this point no no hints no hint whatsoever now you you know the the deal when you kick out and you you can be as you can be proper out of it proper off your nut and then

there's a point where you just kick out well i've kicked out by now right i've kicked out but i've got no idea what i'm doing now when you say kicked out i know that point where you're completely fucked but you have all your your senses intact people don't understand that you're fucked up so where you later on would say oh sorry i was really shit-faced they go oh you didn't seem shit-faced which can work against you where you really need the excuse you need the excuse well i'm i i'm sort of like you're just blacked out it's just another day and at this time of my life this is in the 90s not like i i'd been i was bang at it a lot you know what i mean like at late 90s i was i was taking a lot of pills and and and drinking a lot and doing a lot of

things right you know it was just part and parcel of being what it's that thing when you get to that I don't know if it's like I watched a Keith Moon documentary once and there was a fella called Dougal

who used to look after him and they said like what do you think happened to him? And he said, well, after a while, once you've got everything you've got, I mean, I've started wrestling.

I don't want to talk about wrestling, but I started full time at 16 wrestling on the carnival in a resort town in Blackpool. Yep. Within a, I've traveled around the world a bit, but then I'm in a big company in america i'm going to japan i'm getting paid more than i ever thought i get paid you start looking for something that

isn't there basically that that's how i i didn't have a drink till i was you know apart from at christmas i never had a drink till i was 20. Wow. It was just like I was too busy trying to get doing my job. But anyway, I'm handcuffed to these geezers and we're all getting loaded into this paddy wagon. And next thing, I'm in court in Alaska and I'm sat there and I'm about, I don't know, probably six people deep. So I'm sort of right in the middle of this line of row of convicts,

all chained together, all handcuffed together. And the judge is going along and he's going, oh, well, you've done that and you've done that. And I'm like, oh. well you've done that and you've done i'm gone i'm like what were you even were you even remotely in tune with the american justice system from television at least not a clue no the closest i got to it keep me on track here but the closest i got to it was probably around about the same time but just a little bit before i was in orlando and i used to go out a lot when i was in orlando and i i was i was always a big e person at the time i liked it well florida

is always a good place to be if you want to yeah yeah dabble but i i also I mean, a back pocket full of Charlie. So I've got a back pocket full of Charlie, a front pocket full of E's. We're crossing the road at that. Where's that downtown thing where all the bars is? Is it stationed? There's like a station. Yeah, I got Chaley and Tracy both here that are from Anchorage. No, no, he's talking about Orlando.

I think you're talking about where the, where the, this is, this is things that have happened. Like I went to cross a road. I'm off me, not on whatever I'm on at the time, which is,

you know, Charlie and some ease as well. Some ecstasy. And, and I'd never seen a bike cop before a bicycle cop yes so he he as i'm crossing the bads across the road he went oh sir excuse me you can't do that and i just started laughing in his face because i thought it was i come from a town called blackpool which is a resort town i know blackpool right where were lots of people go on, like,

what we call stag and end nights, which are like... Bachelor parties. Bachelor parties. And I thought he was somebody dressed up, so I just start laughing at him, right? And I got some American friends going, no, no, this is serious, because he's got the little shorts on, like Reno 9.

Well, I've never seen one before. And I'm just going, fuck off out of it. You know, like I'm telling him to fuck off out of it. And they're going, no, no, this is serious. And I'm going, what's he going to do to me? You know, because when you're off your nut, especially at my size, I was like, and younger, in my 20s, I'm like, what's he going to do to me? Luckily, my friends took me out of this.

So I don't know a lot about American law and system. All right. So you're in the docket in Alaska. I'm in the docket. And this judge is going along, going all these different people's things. And the fellow next to me, what I find out later, he's the paparazzi guy that's kicked off on the back of the plane. Where was he from?

He's from London. He's British. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And he's kicked, whatever he's been doing, he's from London he's British okay yeah yeah and he's kicked he's whatever he's been doing he's kicked off and he's getting

a bit you know like he's hit a few people and whatever else so I'm sort of just sat there going

oh he's he's fucked no he's he's fucked I'm still thinking it's a mistake about me because I've got

no clue what I've done I'm just thinking they're going to get to me and go, oh, you shouldn't be here, Mr. Matthews. You should be off. You're a mistake. I've got no clue. Then they got to me and said, Mr. Matthews, yes, you urinated on a flight attendant. And I'm like, all right.

And then they moved on to the next person. But I'm still thinking this is not right. Like, you know, I wouldn't do that. I sit to pee. It couldn't have been me. Yeah, it couldn't have been me. So eventually I end up back in jail. Is this all in the course of a day?

This is all in the course of a day, yeah. So I end up back in jail again and then they uh the fbi come to see me and and and they're actually they were pretty decent like they were saying look whatever you you've got to get your the bag from the the uh airport and you can go home basically. So I ended up going home thinking that my life's ruined and whatever else. I ended up with seven weeks off, off work. I got suspended. And,

but then they, they, they sort of, um, there used to be a police officer from Charlotte, a fellow called Doug Dillinger, worked for the Charlotte police. He was a detective there. Somehow he managed to wangle his way.

Then he never worked in the Charlotte police officer as a police officer and worked for the wrestling company I worked for. Somehow he had a, he had a great gig. He had a double, double gig going. So he investigated it all. And he, the, the, the, the the lady who who had peed on her foot

she just said oh no he obviously didn't do it on purpose he just had his foot stuck in the door and so that that's what happened that that's that's it gets he got blown out of proportion greatly at the time um you know and according to people had the just stood up and started started peeing all over people but that's what what happened i mean that that's the same story for i was gonna i was gonna say yeah what stories do you have because i i know when i was doing interviews on press junkets i could always tell the ones that only read my wikipedia page and have no idea who i am and my wikipedia page i don't know if it's still there but it it said one time uh he took ecstasy from a stranger on stage uh which i don't know how that wound up like I've done drugs on stage a shitload of times.

I don't know how this one incident, maybe because it was, you know, like a review from the Fringe Festival or something. But so that would come up. So, and I always go, fucking, that's like the weakest story ever. Someone threw a pill on stage and I took it? Yeah.

How's that rare? Oh, yeah. Please hold. threw a pill on stage and I took it. Yeah. How's that rare? Oh yeah. Please hold. So what stories do you think of that should be there that aren't? Well, I've told this story before, but it never seems to get to my audience. Yeah.

I can't see you by the way you disappeared oh oh sign that says don't drink and oh sorry i moved that because i because i'm staring at my own face and it's disconcerting i forgot you could see me i go if we're just doing this audio i don't need to look at my ugly squash this whole fucking time the thing that i we can we can, we can go on forever with stories. Yeah. No,

tell the story that you've told before. Right. So in 19, this is before I moved to America in 1992, I got into, I was for a few short months. I was a international drug smuggler. And,

um, because if you went out of the country to bring steroids back into England, as long as you had a receipt for 200 pounds. Oh, God, David, I was hoping this was an exclusive. William Regal did steroids. No, no, no, no. Well, I did a little bit in my younger days. But no, this was a smuggling incident.

So if you had a... I actually didn't do that many, believe it or not, and I pretty much stopped when I came to America. But if you had a receipt for £200, you could bring in as much as you wanted. Well, I'd been to India in 1992 and just happened next door to the, I wouldn't say it was a nice hotel, but I was in India for a month and it was, I can use an old gag here, but it was five stars. You could see four of them through the hole in the roof. It wasn't exactly the nicest of places. But next door, there was a pharmacy,

and I went in there one day just looking for some cream because I'd been wrestling on there. This was 1992 India, and the mats that we used to wrestle. Oh, don't get me started with the fucking Indian mats. Right, right, right. So I went looking for some stuff. There was a little fellow next to me and he said, oh, can I have some such and such?

And I did know a bit about steroids at the time. And I went to the pharmacist. I said, do you have many of those? And he went, oh, as much as you want. So I knew the £200 thing. So I ended up getting, I had to buy two suitcases full of, I bought two suitcases to fill because £200 in India, £200 in English pounds went a long way.

So I came back through India, plus the promoter, the Indian, like this is in New Delhi, the airport there, it was so corrupt that you had to pay to get a job there, right? Because they fleece everybody that comes through the airport. Basically, they stop you at customs. And if you've got any money, they say, right, you've got to give us your money. And you have to pay to get a job there. This was then.

I don't know that now. This is 92. So the promoter that I was working for was a very famous Indian wrestler and also a Bollywood star. Well, he put somebody in charge of looking after me, and so I got treated very well there. I got two suitcases full of steroids, and I never even went through customs.

I just got tucked straight and put on the plane because he had – He peed on every flight attendant. They just think. Yeah. Yeah. So I go and get on the plane. I come home. I walk in my house in Blackpool.

I call the fellow who owned the gym. He's dead now. So it don't matter if, you know, if I won't say his name anyway, but he's brown bread now. So I come in with two suitcases full. I call him up. It's cost me 200 pound. I know the price of them in England.

I said, come round my house. I said, I've got something for you. He said, and I told him what it was. He said, I'll give you five grand for it. So, you know, 200 English pound turned into five grand within the matter of me, 20 minutes of me walking in my front door. So you're around 26 now? I'm 24 at the time. Right.

So it's actually 23 at the time. So, you know, I was married at 18 you met my wife yes christina and your son bailey yeah i i got married at a we were living together when i was 17 i bought an house it was only a little like townhouse but i bought an house at 18 as well as wrestling wrestling still in blackpool yeah i i need you know I was always grafting and trying to make money. I always had... Schemes. Scheme.

Yeah, you have to because the money wasn't... I was wrestling full-time, but the money wasn't good. But if you have two suitcases full of steroids, you make connections, don't you? Five count, five grand, right? It's a big chunk of cash, right? So I come in and do that. Well, a month later, I'm going to Egypt for a week.

So I go to Egypt for a week, and I spent the most of the majority of the time going around all these pharmacies because now this fella that I've just sold these, these steroids to for five grand, give me a list of what you could get in. He'd done the research of what you could get in, in the pharmacies. I just want to stop you. Cause this is one of those times.

I don't know if you found it in your book, where looking back you go, how did you do research in 1992 without the internet? Because Doug Davis seemed to know how to do it. Yeah, yeah. Just when I was writing, I go, yeah, when I moved to Hollywood in 85 and I like, wait, I wouldn't have been able to use a cell phone. How did I call people back then? Did you just have a pocket full of changes? Anyway, go ahead.

So he's told me to get this certain type. It was different than the ones I brought back from India, but it wasn't as easy because I went into just one, one pharmacy in India, and they've supplied me with everything. So I go into many, many pharmacies in Egypt in the five days, and I got one suitcase full. And it was still four grand's worth because it was a higher quality steroid. So as we're leaving, we wrestle three shows there in five days, and I'm leaving. Now, it was in no day. I don't know if you'll remember this, but people listening,

it's a different world now, isn't it? Absolutely. You just turned up at the airport, and also because always on these tours, when I went outside of Britain, they always had somebody to look after you. The promoter put somebody with you to, you know, spoke the language and look after you. We're in a line going through security at airport. And you can see the bags going through.

This is in Cairo, yeah. So you can see the bags going through. And there's a couple of the lads with me. Two of them have got cases full. One of them, my close friend, Dave, full. One of them, my, my, my close friend, Dave, I tried to get him to bring a case through and he was having none of it. Cause he,

he's just not, he won't, he won't have anything. He's not like that way inclined. He's not, he's not a, he was the headliner. Yeah.

He's just, he's just not a crook in any way is right. So, and, and, and that's just the way it was. And I said, bring one back and I'll give you the money for it. You know, I'll make you a chunk of money.

And he was like, no, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. So he's behind me. And then a couple of other fellas who've got cases full of stuff. Three fellas in front of me. He just put his bag on the conveyor belt it's gone through the

machine now I can see the actual screen because in those days it wasn't like it is now, there was just a fella an Egyptian fella, sat looking at the screen and I'm not paying any attention because as far as I know it's all legal

as long as I've got £200 receipts for what I've spent. And the fellow in England who owned the gym that I had, that I used to go to, he'd offered me five grand for this case before I even left. So if you can get me a full case full of this particular drug you can have five grand so it's it's a fair fair amount of profit i on two and two 200 pound absolutely so this fellow's gone through the next thing the alarms are going off this fellow's three front i don't know this fellow three people in front of me the alarms are going off the security running out from everywhere with wooden batons. Cricket bats. Start battering this fella to death.

And I mean, smashing, just smashing the life out of him. And so I turned to the fella with us and I went, trying to be cute, cool, you know, like Ray Winston in a film, like a gangster film. Because when I was younger, I used to hang around with, not only wrestling was my deal, but I hung around with a lot of people that were up to a lot of no good. And it was just life in Blackpool.

And I said to this fella that's like looking after us, I said, what's going on here? And so he said, and I mean, when I say battering this fellow to death, they were battering this fellow to death with sticks. I mean, smashing the life out of him in front of us. There's blood flying everywhere. They're just smashing him and dragging him away right at airport security yeah so in front of the hordes in front of everybody yeah so i i said tried to say as as cool as a cucumber like well what's going on here and he

went well he said what happens he said people come over here and buy stuff from pharmacies and it's a lot cheaper here. And he's understanding what they're saying, right? He said he's got a load of insulin in his bag. And he said the problem with that, he said, the reason it's so cheap in this country is because the Egyptian government sponsor the pharmacies. So if you take something out of this country, you're basically stealing from the Egyptian government. As he's finished that sentence, you can see my bag going through the thing. And you can see 500 vials of this stuff called primabolan all lined up in this bag of mine so no one's looking at the screen because they're all watching

the ass beating no they've already finished with him they've dragged him away but this is just in in like in minutes my bag's going through well the people with the sticks have gone so the next thing is the people the security people come running out with machine guns so i'm surrounded now with 20 fellas with machine guns all pointed at my head right and i'm not making this up all pointed at my head and i'm just a lot of going off and this fella's gone, oh, this is not good. This fella who's with us is going, this ain't good at all. And I said, well, I've got a receiver. He said, it doesn't matter. He said, you're stealing from the Egyptian government.

Next thing, I assume he was the head of security, police, I don't know. He comes walking over. And this fella who's with us, because it's it's all they all know each other and they're all cousins and they you know they've got the airport sewn up he walks over to him and he said uh starts talking to him and he comes over to me and he went uh he wants a present and i said what he said how much money you got on you and they hadn't they'd paid us by check or they'd actually they'd had it drafted into our bank accounts that the actual wrestling money i was getting so if i've gone well i've got whatever 40 pounds or something left with me my friend who

didn't want to have anything to do with it i said dave can you lend me some money he was going you prick he said i don't want nothing to do with this and you'reave can you lend me some money he was going you prick he said i don't want nothing to do with this and you're dragging me into this so he's giving me some money now there's two fellas behind me who've got a case full as well they haven't even got there yet they haven't got to the security so they're panicking a bit but i'm i'm at the time and to a degree still do i put a stone face on if you can't. And I've always known that there's an old saying in England, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

So I'm just, you know, it's on me. I take it on the chin. It's got to be what it is, right? So he's gone. Have you got, so I've bungled this money, which turned out to be 90 pounds english pounds you went hang on a minute he took the the fellow who was looking after us took this money and went over to the chief of police or security and just went started talking to him and he went okay go through

and he just let us through and i got onto onto the plane, and I just melted into the sea, and I thought, that's the end of my international drug smuggling days. So that was the end of that. Not long after that, everything worked out, and I ended up coming to America, so I've never had to do any of that stuff since. I did a gig in, what's, not Cabo, somewhere in Mexico. Begins with a C.

Anyway, I did a gig for Timeshare. No, no, not Cosmo. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Anyway, I went to do this Timeshare, American Timeshare salesman in Mexico. And the guy that booked me said, I could never move back to the States

because the graft here, I got pulled over in a blackout drunk on Christmas Eve. He said, I could never move back to the States because the graft here, like I got pulled over in a blackout drunk on Christmas Eve, and I just paid the guy 50 bucks, and he just waved me on. I can't go back to America. The corruption works so well in your favor here. Yeah. So that worked out for you. Well, you know, the biggest con ever,

which I think is the greatest kind of all time is timeshares and timeshares was started by a lad from blackpool called pete seed um in the early 70s he went over to the blackpool for the listener here blackpool from what i remember i was there in 2012 and it's it's Hampton Beach was, if you know New England. It's this dated beach town that still has old arcades. It just screams like Mad Men era, but Britain, and it hasn't changed that I know of. Yeah, I mean, they spent money on it, but it's full of rogues,

and everybody's, if you're in any kind of resort town, everybody's a grafter. They're all at it. They're all, you know, because it's just part of life. You're all, where I lived, it's full of circus people because there's two circuses there. It's full of carnival workers. It's full of theatricals.

It's full of drag queens. It's full of everything, which I loved. You know what I mean? I loved the whole thing. So this fellow called Pete Seed went over to Tenerife and started the timeshare thing. And, I mean, if you think about it, the timeshare thing is the greatest kind of all time.

What are you selling? You're selling two weeks a year that everybody's paying a full whack for of property. So it's a really smart thing. And he started it all off. He's like, there used to be the when I first went there I wasn't from Blackpool I moved there when I was 16 to

start full time wrestling because there was a company there but there used to be the things called mock auctions where I hate to interrupt but when you started at 16 those first years what were you making um five pounds a job like seven dollars fifty or what is it eight dollars a job at the moment

all right yeah and and then i i got five pounds a job when i was 16 but english class english working class work uh life is which which is what i am you you finish school at 16 there's no there was no in in those days in those days there was no chance of any further education you went into the trade of your father or the local factory or whatever you were just churned out and sent to center work in in manual jobs well my my family were all bricklayers well i i knew from being four years old i wasn't going to be a bricklayer i was going to be either a wrestling was on tv every week in britain british wrestling i either want to be a wrestler, a clown, or a comedian. And I've always felt like I got, fortunately, I got to do all three by doing the job that I do.

Again, we'll get back to the Blackpool. How quickly before you were kind of famous in Blackpool, in your own hometown? I was never famous in Britain. I was never famous in britain um i i was never famous i don't consider me felt self-famous anyway it was just once i was 20 i got to travel the world for the next four years i was i went to 19 coaches wouldn't you be famous just for that for having left the the mold having been the guy that got away from bricklaying and actually is doing something?

Well. Probably in a cunty way, knowing the Brits. They'd go, oh, Mr. O, I'm going to body slam someone. Well, I ended up never talking about it because when I moved to Blackpool, I started wrestling. When you go home, what do you talk to people who do normal jobs? What have you done this week?

Well, I've wrestled on such and such. It's like when I come to America. When I go home now to Blackpool, all my friends are doing whatever they're doing. Where have you been this week oh uh you i'm the quietest person in the room what do you do oh yes um like oh well initially you were like that you weren't a braggart when you were younger no now i obviously and that's i'm sure why we connect but you're a comic you're a comic you're not a wrestler wrestler wrestlers have

always had this thing we're the only i'm i'm the only like i'm in the only job where people who've never met you before will completely welcome no not not gonna take me but will completely insult the line of work that you're in without ever meeting you. They will, without, you think about this, they will never say this to any other, if you're a comic, they'll say, they might say to you, oh, tell us a joke. Yes.

To me, it's, oh, it's a lot of bollocks at wrestling. It's a lot of fake, it's fake. It's a lot of nonsense. Whereas I'm thinking you wouldn't say that to anybody else. So I've always had that way of thinking. I just never tell. Well, now journalists get that all the time. Right. It's all fake.

Right. So I've never been above myself, and I just realized that it's my job, and I don't talk about it. I never wear wrestling shirts. I don't go, unless you know what I am, I wouldn't tell you. Okay. All right. As a comedian, they always ask you when I play the UK,

what's the biggest difference between UK and US audiences? The US, if someone was on a flight next to you that you weren't peeing on and you said, I'm a wrestler, would you get a different response from the average U.S. person that you would from Blackpool? Yeah, because then within two seconds, they'd say, oh, but that wrestling's fake. And it bothers me because if you if you're not

a wrestling fan i i don't want to i really don't want to talk about wrestling yeah no but i i want to bring up a message you sent me i'm not a fake wrestler i'm a professional wrestler who fixes matches you sent me i wanted to read it but i don't have it up but i can remember it well enough because when you came to see me uh we talked uh through a email uh a week before and i said just remind me that day because my memory is shit and you wrote me back i i was a wrestler in fixed matches for 30 years but had several real concussions and brain bleeds, et cetera. I understand. I'm not, you know, there's plenty of fake wrestlers about. I'm not one of them.

I can really wrestle and I hit people very, very hard in safe places. I wouldn't, I'm not your typical wrestler, which is just the people that taught me in Britain. That was the way they taught me. I've continued that with my career. That's all the 30-year career that I had as a wrestler, which finished in 2013.

And then I still work in the industry, but I'm not, there's a big difference, right? I look at what I did as if you asked a boxer, if a boxer put on an exhibition match, they're still hitting each other, but they're not hitting each other as hard as they could do. Yeah. But I'm not a fake boxer.

It's a big difference. Did you ever come into positions where you were wrestling with someone who you would consider a fake wrestler? That's like, ow, why'd you hit me so hard? Yes. Lots of times. And what are they going to do about it?

All right. Yeah. But now I don't want to go down the wrestling road. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's why I don't like going into wrestling. If people ask me what I do, you must get it.

You fly so much. The other day, there was two fellas behind me, and they've never met before, and they're just having these conversations. I'm thinking, I've got no conversation with anybody because they want to ask you what you do, how much you earn. And I just say, I cut them off and I just go, if they ever talk to me, I just go, I rob banks.

I've always tried to come up with the proper response for that. And it shuts them up. It's always worked. It shuts them up. I used to have ones that would, you oh i uh i i sell uh amway right or something and then without question they can come up with oh so and they segue into something that you go ah shit i would i would i had all my like my my my defense built up in case this person tries to talk to me how how do I get out of it?

And they find a way, a circuitous way to get you to talk about it. And then you fucking end up talking about yourself. Well, I've the headphones, uh, like the, the,

I don't even listen to my own headphones. I get the noise over the years. Just, just the, the ones in the plane, just so i thought they're not gonna anything not to talk to people yes because i just don't want to you know like what and again when i go home when i go home and my friends are working in night you know i have a lot my friends working because blackpool there's ridiculous amount of nightclubs and they're all, you know,

I can say this, but there's a few of them are crooks and different things and circus people. They don't want to talk about what they do. No shit. We just have a laugh and we talk normal. When I'm around normal, and don't mean that in a bad way but normal people what am i going to talk about what or if if when i when i first went to america or when i first started traveling overseas from from from england when you go back it's a it's a

very typical british working class thing oh as soon you say, and you're not being big, if you're not big headed, if you go, well, I've just been to India. Oh, he's been to India. Oh, he'll buy the drinks. Yes, absolutely. And when I went to America, it was even worse. So I just, my friends are my friends. They don't even bring it up.

It's the ones who you find out your friends are when you start making it a bit i'm sure you've found what when i when i come home uh after tour here they go how's your tour i go good and they just then they talk about whatever local gossip they don't they don't know comedy as much as i don't know wrestling right but but i'm sure that you have people who dig you out about it as far as on the road yes but not at home not making loads of money oh he'll buy the drinks because he's buying and i just learned i it actually when i first came to america um i got really homesick for for the first few years because traveling and going back to blackpool was one thing like for the for 20 to 20

from the age of 20 to 24 i traveled like 19 countries and i was away a lot but once i came to america and then where did you go first in america yes or i i went to atlanta where i'm still now atlanta okay i just kept quiet and I did my thing. Do you mind? Can we pause this a second? Yeah, please hold. Sorry. Excuse me about that.

No, no. It's usually me that has to leave twice during a podcast. So I'm sure you found it with with your friends when you first started i don't know i've read your books and moving to la and you come home and it's oh he'll buy the drinks he's he's mr moneybags he's living in la i had the same kind of experience you find out who your friends are yeah and then your real friends don't ask you any questions. You just get on with life and you just end up talking normal stuff. Well, it was one of those things with me.

You get to a place in your life where your real friends can buy their own fucking drinks. Yeah. Yeah. And you're 45 and you still don't have a job. Yeah. Well, I just had it recently. I was back in the UK recently and a great friend of mine from Liverpool

is a boxing trainer. He came and took me out. I did a show there, like a talk show thing. And he took me out and there was a few of us there. And it was like, I went to pay, you know, like I just always feel like because i've been fortunate and i've done well out of the job it's been very good to me um i'll offer to pay and he was like no no no i'll pay and he wasn't there was no because he's my real friend and he

was like it's just a bit of food but most But most people you find out what I found out myself when I was talking to you before about when I got homesick. I was homesick, but then I go home and realize that nothing's the same. Yeah, you get to a place where you only feel comfortable around your own for the most part. Yeah. Because there's no, oh, oh you sell insurance that's like comedy in this fashion like there's no bridge you can that's why i watch football yeah eagles are 11 point uh favorites tonight what do you think like i don't give a shit about football i watch it but like football sports is that's my go-to at an airport bar for a conversation if someone has to have one

because i have nothing else well that that's another thing with me i i talked to you the other week about it i don't watch any sports i don't play cards i don't play dominoes i don't have a great deal of conversation with anybody like i even with wrestlers you know like i i just don't really have a lot of uh like my thing is old british comedy and i keep lizards and and it my conversation runs dry very quickly with people and and i feel a bit awkward around people because it's just i do my job and and and that's it you know like it but when i go back with my friends in blackpool i enjoy listening to them because they're all a lot of them are what what we say in blackpool or or in england bang at it where they're all up to no good and and i find that which are always the best stories yeah always the best stories

because they're not normal people and and that's what i want to be around i want to be around those kind of people you you wrote a book in 2005 yeah that was right uh just a couple years after you retired from wrestling in the ring no i i oh yeah i hadn't retired from wrestling in the ring. No, I hadn't retired from wrestling in the ring. I didn't retire until 2013. What happened was I went to India again for the WWE. Oh, that's right. You got sick as shit, right? I got sick.

Yeah, I got really – and still to this day, I don't know what it was. Some kind of infection in my heart, and I was off for a year. But then I came back, and then I kept wrestling until 2013. But they asked me, I wouldn't have wrote a book if they'd asked me, what am I going to write a book about? But they asked me, there was a big thing at the time that all these wrestlers that were working for WWE in the early 2000s writing books. And they asked me,

they said, you've had interest in life. And I was okay. But then it got put on hold a bit because of the year that I had off. And then I came back. They said I was, you know, I'd like,

my art was working at 30%. And I got over it anyway. So I came back and I wrote a book. So, well, the last two paragraphs are not me. Everything else is me just dictating to somebody, and then I edited it all. But the last two paragraphs, because it was, they put it on shelf for a year. I had to dictate to somebody.

And so it doesn't sound like me, the last two paragraphs, the last two, sorry, not paragraphs, last two chapters. All right. As I was going through your career, if you wrote a book in 2005, how much different would that book be today? If you were writing it today and how much do you go oh i can't really write another book because i kind of covered a lot of the good shit in the

first book my i i haven't my first book i wrote whenever 2016 nothing's changed but you a lot has changed since 2005 well well it hasn't because all the good stuff that happened to me was before really I came to America. All the interesting stuff when I was up to all kinds of stuff and then the odd little bit when I came. Because once I came to America, I was working for big companies and all you see is airports, hotels, arenas. Airports, hotels, arenas. Airports, hotels, arenas.

Same for me, except for the arena part. Right. And it was just like now there's nothing different. Whereas all the interesting, what I thought was interesting, happened to me from the years of 16 till I was probably 30. And then it just, you become, I don't know.

That's maybe that's why I run out of gas. Like the, the silly shit becomes as boring as the conversation is everything else. The guy at the airport. I've had people ask me all the time. What are you going to write another book? I said, and what,

and tell them that I go every every single night don't know where i am in whatever country or whatever um city i just go to my room and read a book it'd be a load of bollocks it'd be an absolute complete load of bollocks because that's all i do now because i i don't, you know, like, what do I do? I'm not going to, I certainly wouldn't be one of these people because there's certain wrestling books out there that would write about every match they'd ever had. I mean, that's just, oh. Yeah, that's how your Wikipedia page reads a lot.

I had to do a lot of skimming. Well, just to let you know, I've had nothing. I've never put a single word in that Wikipedia. No, no. Most of it's all over. I'm terrified to look at mine because it's just going to be more dog shit like that. And I don't want that in the back of my brain somewhere. Have you tried to change yours?

I would have read your book. If I knew you had a book out before I read your Wikipedia page, I would have read it before we did this interview. Have you read your Wikipedia page? Not recently. Right. I tried. There was a point years ago.

I couldn't even change my Wikipedia page. Somebody else had read it, and I couldn't even change it. I remember years ago. There was such a lot of and i couldn't even change it i remember it was such a lot of things that weren't right about it and i was like oh hang on and i thought i don't know in its infancy like anyone could change it so my fans would go on and say i was born a hermaphrodite and that i was a cast member of the View on ABC. Just silly shit. And then I guess they started, like, making you prove it. I don't know.

But I stopped looking because, again, what? I took ecstasy on stage? Yeah, I don't look it. No idea. No interest. The last time I looked at it, I was just like, oh, they haven't got a clue who's writing this. They've missed out the fact that I went here or I did this or I did that.

And it's just basically, it's just what they've seen off the... Fortunately, as a wrestler, I was on TV weekly. They've based my whole life off what they, the, the, the character of William Regal is, or I used to be Stephen Regal in WCW when I, the other company I worked for when I first gained your money, they based my entire life off that,

where it's nothing to do with that at all. It's that's the character I play on a TV show, and it's just completely nuts and bollocks. I have so many questions, but your answers are so goddamn long. Sorry about that. I do go on. I'm fucking with you. I'm fucking with you.

Come on. I've got brain injuries. You know that. I just rab it on. I just go on and go on. No, no. Well, you were married. You've been married since 86.

Yes. How much was the strain of your 90s years, which, again, same age, same kind of lifestyle for those years, was that a strain, or was she complicit, or did you just turn a blind eye? No, I think the thing that's kept us together is because I've never been at home much. That's absolutely true, yes. Absence does keep a relationship together.

Yeah, I mean, if you were stuck with the same person constantly, I don't know. My wife will have a different story hey bingo how are you love i'm sweating absence you okay yeah i'm good good good you don't have to whisper when you're on the podcast okay okay yeah she doesn't want to interrupt no you're on the microphone, honey. Right. This is, I suppose, a wrestling thing, but when I was 16, I was being a wrestler. And as you know, being a comic,

if you're something that isn't normal, you end up doing a lot of things. And I ended up at 16, I'd never had a girlfriend until i left school on may the 18th 1984 i was resting already when i was 15 every weekend but um i left home 10 days after your birth eight days after your birthday. Yeah. So eight. And then I had to go back for two weeks to do my exams. I still have no idea what I did for my exams. I've never been of no use to me whatsoever. I know I did metal work and biology. So if you ever need your cat welding, then I'm your man.

So I left home. Well, because I was, you know, as a comic or as a wrestler or as anything that's… Yeah, run away with the circus. Basically, it's all the same thing. Run away with the circus. So I had all these… I'd never had a girlfriend at school,

but all of a sudden I've got all these young ladies wanting me. And in England, the legal age is 16. And I had all kinds of, the older wrestlers were setting me up with young ladies. This is a whole different topic. But I just, and then i ended up working a night club when i was 17 uh i lied about my age and said i was 18 and i and because that was the the legal age you had to be a bouncer and and so i was a bouncer in a nightclub and that was in the 80s

that was your id was your word, yeah, yeah. So there was all, I mean, there's a name, a small show. When I lived in Vegas, I turned 21, and that day I showed the bartender where I was already a regular in Vegas my real ID. He's like, you motherfucker. You could have cost me my job. When I was 17,

I used to, I had, I had through the wrestling and through the nightclub world, I had a lot of old, a lot older young ladies. What? Not young. Some of them took a liking to a 16 and 17 year old lad that,

that was me. One of them used to, she was in her thirties. So she was in her seventies now. Yeah. I was just going to ask you like how, when you were that young, what's the oldest woman that you were with where you go, oh my God, I can't believe I slept with an old lady who now is a child. Right. So I was 17.

She was well in her 30s. It was just because she used to come in this nightclub. I used to work in the tangerine club in Blackpool, the kind of club that you had to wipe your feet on the way out. It wasn't exactly the greatest of clubs and uh one night i'm sure that's a staple somewhere but i've never heard it so i'm laughing so one night i uh i go to a the opera house in blackpool which to see my friends who were double-act called Cannon and Ball. And I'm sat with my wife. I'd met my wife by the time we were going out.

We were living together, I think. And in the row in front of us, there's this lady called Yvonne who, when I was 17, she sort of mothered me. And she'd do me washing for me and cook me a meal and when you're 17 that's what you do right i mean yeah you know she thought i was 18 but you know it didn't matter in england because it was 16 um and um my wife said to her i'm trying to ignore it and my wife said oh that's yvonne and i went oh wasn't till we left the theater but I found out that she was my she was my um brother-in-law who was 12 at the time's Sunday school teacher and and and to be honest she was a right dirty cow but you know when when when you're living in a a little and i was living in a 6 by 12 room

before i met my wife uh because then we moved into a flat to get uh like an apartment together when we were 17 but before i met her you know some old ladies well she she wasn't old you know she was just experienced let's put it that way when she's uh she's doing your washing for you and cooking you're a proper meal when you you're living off fish and chips and and getting five pounds a day or ten pounds a day by the time I was 17, wrestling, making no money, working all the time. You know, it was a different thing. And I had, it was, because it was, I'm sure you have your thing in comedy,

but in wrestling, there was a lot of young ladies that just liked to be around wrestlers and were quite happy. Yeah. If you sang karaoke, if you were three feet above the rest of the crowd on a stage, someone's going to fuck you. And I wasn't picky when I was a kid. Well, I got to a point met my wife um she used to be the babysitter

of the of the people of the house that i used to live with and uh we just i i was sick of being with like just one one night stands to be honest with you and and and and then we met and i i thought the world of it and we that was it. We've been together ever since. And that was how we ended up meeting. She's 18 months older than me. She used to babysit for them, and that's how we ended up living together, and so be it. And I'm very glad that I did that because she's kept me on the she's looked after me

and kept me on the straight and narrow i've uh i'm just gonna shit i just i should have written a goddamn question down i want to speed round through some final questions with a crossover with wrestlers because again i haven't watched wrestlers since i was a kid but you were a kid at the same time was there crossover with u.s wrestling and uk because i know it's very hard with comedy there's very little crossover like if i'm gonna do a joke on stage in the uk about a shitty comedian either i have to like lie like i know michael mcintyre i think is his name he's like the shitty jay lenoe guy he's about as funny as a burning off yeah but i don't know him so if i was going to use that as a reference it would be pandering to the crowd and so i never

really had a lot of references like you had to be familiar with Andre the Giant. Yeah. This is the 80s. Was Hulk Hogan 80s? I guess this is late 70s. Ivan Putski was my guy. That was the late 80s. Right. So we had our own wrestling in Britain, and I grew up on it.

My parents grew up on it, and my grandfather grew up on it. My grandfather was a wrestler. I remember telling my dad, Andre the Giant, you know, there's seven wonders of the world. He's the eighth. Like, it was like a real title. Like, he's that big. He's like the Great Wall of China. He's in the same thing. And my dad would just smile and nod.

Yeah, yeah, well, there was no crossover until probably with an underground crew. I didn't see American wrestling until two years after I was already wrestling. All right, so that's what year? The end of 1985. All right, see, I have no idea who was that was probably hulk hogan era well well well he was um but we didn't get much of wwe we got nwa from charlotte which was dusty

roads and the four horsemen and and that kind of people all right the movie the wrestler what do you think about the movie the wrestler here i'm going never never watched it i watched two minutes of it some one day i was in a dressing room this was when i was still wrestling and i saw two people just slapping themselves in the faces which may has not made no sense to me whatsoever because if anybody even got close to slapping me in the face i would chin him straight away i would knock him out all right the documentary beyond the mat have you ever seen that i've seen that and and that didn't um again i come from a time because of the years the early 80s when and because of the wrestlers that taught me and because of the style I did,

I didn't like the expose of the wrestling business. It's like the, remember years ago when that show, and it still gets shown, the Masked Magician, when he exposed all the Vegas tricks. Yeah, I remember that. Right, so what did Penn and Teller do? They just reinvented the trick. Well, that's the concept of the way I was taught to wrestle. If they expose a trick, reinvent the trick.

Nice. I don't want anybody seeing through what, or didn't want anybody seeing through what I did. So when I saw the wrestler, it's not, I've never lived that life. I've had a great life out of wrestling. I wouldn't change a second of it. I started on the carnival. I was happy working on the carnival when I was 16 and 17. Then I got to work on all these really great shows with all these great wrestlers in England. Then from 20 to 24, I got to travel the world and,

and, and see the world as a wrestler. Then in 24, when I was 24, I got hired to come to America and I've worked in big companies. So that's not been my world. So I never watched it. I,

like I said, I saw one clip of it and I was like, that's not my life.'s it's it i don't know how to explain like to to to make to explain it to you but i i understand i just did a podcast where i had to break down movies about stand-up comedy from a comics perspective and i but i get it it's not my life who these are these are the questions that i hate do you have a favorite wrestler um when they ask me if i have a favorite comic david tell hands down but there's always new people and i don't really pay attention so david tell is my so so uh wrest, it would be,

number one would be a British wrestler called Terry Rudge. And I wrestled him a lot when I was younger and very fortunate. And he was a pro's pro. And they used to put him on to give wrestling credibility. So you could not see through it. It's like close-up card magic. You could not see through it. It's like close-up card magic. You could not see through any of his. It wasn't phony pro wrestling.

It was believable pro wrestling, and he was a big mentor to me. Who's the other two? As far as wrestlers, Fit Finlay is from Ireland who works now for WWE in America as a trainer because he's so good. He makes everything, like everything he does, looks as good as it should do.

I really hope our Twitter feeds blow up with them saying, no, that's not the best wrestler this is. Yeah, that's not the best wrestler this is. Yeah, that's their problem. And the last question, present company excluded, who's your favorite comedian and how do you know me? Right. Favorite comedian is a British comedian called Mick Miller. Mick is a old school, he's a gag teller,

but he didn't tell, he's just very unusual in the way he tells his gags. And the reason being, because he lived in Blackpool, he travels the world now on cruise ships and whatever. Never a good sign for a comic or a wrestler if you're working right but times change uh he was famous in the 80s and he i used to go and watch him live a lot and i learned how to learn how to um make he could can completely control an audience Who's the last comedian you saw in Atlanta before me a couple weeks ago? Well, the last comedian I've ever seen to in Atlanta, which was you and Eddie Izzard, which was years ago. But you are number two, and the reason being,

and I'm just telling you that, is because I agree with everything you say. That's a dangerous move. Yeah, but that probably shows you my mindset. From when I first started watching you because my friend in britain robbie's brookside um see yeah that's the name drop you needed to have because robbie brookside would be very upset if you didn't give him credit right he's my he's my closest friend he told me about you and he said you're like him and and i watched you and all the points that you bring up i'm not i've got no politics and no religion you know i'm but everything that i've ever heard you

say and i think it was from that the first thing i saw of you was on hbo when you did the have you ever tried to sleep sober i knew knew you were going to say that. That's how I know Johnny Depp. That's how I know Marilyn Manson. It's always that one bit. Right. Because if you've got a brain like us, that's 24-hour party people, basically.

It's like you can't, you understand. Yeah, you're never off work. I've never slept i've never slept you know you know i like there's not a fucking deduction that i can't say i can't there's not a deduction i can't tell the irs wasn't work related because my brain is never not fucking working i can't take a vacation that's how i am with the wrestling and that's why i've got the job that i've got and that's why people i keep a job it doesn't matter what if i quit comedy i would still be thinking about should i have quit comedy i would never be able to retire mentally oh can i just mention something um my wife when she was a bit starstruck when she met you, twice she's met you. She is the hugest Johnny Depp fan.

And, I mean, the hugest, and she's always dropping in. She was hoping last week that he just would happen to be, or two weeks ago, happen to be in the dressing room at at at at atlanta when we saw each other she's a huge me too i was hoping he'd be there yeah but but it's it's um you and him because you make more sense to me uh and are funny with it but you make every every point you make i agree with and you are very funny uh mick miller is a gag teller but but you do you are a big fan of comedy yes i'm a huge fan of comedy yeah well except for michael mcintyre i should have i should have asked you what wrestlers you hate and what comics you hate.

It would have been more fun. But you get to an age where you don't talk shit about your own. Michael McIntyre, you know, when you talked about, you summed it up perfectly the other week. You know, when you get these people who, you're telling a joke and they're going, woo, woo, woo.

And then the clapping, they're not really laughing. Yeah. Well, that's Michael McIntyre to me is about, I've never seen him. I just know that's the guy they talk shit about. It's middle, it's middle class comedy.

Again, the class system is very different in Britain and America. Oh yeah. But middle, middle class comedy is very different in Britain and America. Oh, yeah. But middle-class comedy in Britain, to me, is just not funny. I find Mickey Flanagan funny, who's a British comedian. I find a lot, for whatever reason, a lot of people, the comics that I know, I do know a lot of comics in Britain, that they're not the biggest fans

of Peter Kay, but he makes me laugh because he's funny because he's a working class lad. Michael McIntyre is, oh Christ, I'd rather rip my own eyelids off and dip my head in hot soapy water than listen to that prick, honestly. And everybody I watch, when i watch these arena he sells out arenas i'm watching them and that it's you know that thing when people go oh that's hilarious what if it's hilarious why aren't you laughing that's that's the tears running your eyes yeah that that's the uh the comedy thing where comics are known to say,

oh, that's funny, but they don't laugh. Comics watching another comic, they don't laugh. Complete wankers. Complete wankers. A lot of them. There's always that, oh, shit, I wish I thought of that first. God damn it. That's so good.

It's like I hate you don't laugh. You hate at how great it is. Yeah. Michael Beckinside. Oh, God. Oh, God. But you can't knock success. The one thing is you can't knock success and he sells that arena.

So he's obviously doing something right for the right people. Yeah, when young people ask me for advice, I go, I would have told Dane Cook to quit comedy and start selling shoes because you're not funny at all. But funny is subjective. Yeah, it's subjective. It's like anything in life. It's like music, wrestling, comedy.

It's subjective. There's like a thing in my job where people talk about the best wrestler in the world that's a lot of bollocks there's no such thing as the best wrestler in the world because there's never gonna be because if just one just one person disagrees with you then you're not the Yeah. That's it. And your opinion is as good as anybody else's opinion. Absolutely. I used to worry about critics when I went to the UK because the UK is the only place I'd played where they actually critique comedy.

Comedy couldn't get on the fucking in a newspaper for the entire first decade I started. Who's that wanker who does that? I follow Chodl.com. Yeah. And it's the same fellow who does it all the time, who does the critiques. I don't know, but I'm talking about the Guardian. What a complete wanker he is.

I have no idea. wanker he is i mean he just no idea whoever's to me it seems whoever's giving him whatever free drinks or a bit of a bung in money he puts over and whoever he doesn't they're just shit that's like oh it's so see-through it's like so transparent when when you read it it's just like oh dear i forget my point oh wait no i was gonna ask you the question we ask in every green room uh who's the biggest douchebag that you ever had to deal with in wrestling in a green room we always ask the waitress in a green room at a comedy club who's the biggest div diva, douchebag, prima donna, asshole, whatever, that you ever had to deal with? What was your worst nightmare green room before the show?

Oh, I have to put up with this fucking guy? That's a tough one. I know. I hate superlative questions at this age. What's the worst heckler you ever had well there have been so many to pick one out but can I tell you the best heckle I've ever had yes right so I used to but delivered or received were you a top or a bottom on this heckle how I it it changed my entire standing in Belfast. So I used to go to Belfast and my old, again,

I've studied a lot of comedians, right? And a lot of my live event, what we call, there's TV wrestling, then there's live event wrestling. A lot of my live event wrestling was getting echoes off people and me just shutting them down. The best echo I ever had was in Belfast. And a fella said, just on the third row, said, Regal, you're worse than 400 years of tyranny.

And I just, I just, I just, I just clapped him. And from then on, I couldn't do any wrong. Every time I went to B to belfast it was like a it became a joke because they they really hated me but they just started like that i go right who's first i became like for the last few years of my career who's first who wants to send like and i just shut them up you know i mean and i'd shut, and I'd just shut them up. You know what I mean? And I'd shut them up, and I'd shut them up. But that was the changing point in my career in Belfast for the last few years.

This fellow said, you're worse than 400 years of tyranny. The other one is in Atlanta Airport. In Atlanta Airport, for some reason, when I first came to America the African American community liked that I did, my whole act was a lot of American bashing being British and it was easy

what we call in wrestling heat right and this is the early 90s and one day there was a security guard and he was just laughing as soon as he saw me he was laughing he went regal he said the only thing the only thing that's worse that's going to ever come out of england is a slave traders and i thought that was the great such a great line and and and like me and him going from then on, we got on great.

Every time I saw him, I used to laugh. He says, yeah, you're the only thing that's worse that's come out of England than the slave traders, which is a fantastic line. He couldn't get any better than that. Let's close on that, sir. Yeah, right. Yeah, we're at 90 minutes. Jesus.

You are fantastic. I always look forward to seeing you when we come to Atlanta. And you're welcome in Bisbee anytime. Please, I'd love to. That's actually where we could completely relax and not have to worry about what we say. Yeah, or having a show. I've never been to Bisbee. could completely relax and not have to worry about what we say. Yeah. Yeah.

Or having a show. I've never been to Bisbee. I think the closest I've been is different parts of Arizona, which are obviously the major parts. Yeah. Phoenix, obviously. But, yeah, this is a whole different territory. Yeah.

No one's going to ask you what you do right good and you you've got jake lamar stories which i want to hear yeah i accept he's been dead for a few years yeah but you know i mean all the best stories about the dead people yeah because you don't have to talk to a lawyer before you write about them in a book exactly yeah yeah what's the name of the book my book yes walking a gold mile that's it the the seafront in blackpool which is actually seven miles long is called the gold mile and and and and i've walked a golden mile i i'm not this sounds sentimental but i've walked a golden mile. And I'm not, it sounds sentimental bullshit, but I've walked a golden mile.

I dreamt of being a wrestler from being four years of age and all I've ever done for a living, apart from the odd nightclub, is be a wrestler. So what more could I ask for? I've walked a golden mile. And that may sound sentimental and a lot of nonsense, but I've had a hell of a life out of this wrestling job. I know exactly what you're talking about, and I concur.

It's been a pleasure, sir. Thank you very much indeed. And you have my phone number. Keep in touch. Yeah, please. And anytime you're close by here or I'm close by you i'll keep i'm always close by you because i'm a delta fanatic so i'm always in atlanta airport but i don't we miss each other a few times haven't we yes yes we have uh that that i i'm looking forward to the day

when we can just sit and just talk with no no. Yeah, and then be in bed by nine. Yeah. Talk over breakfast at the Moses. Yeah. You are a fucking legend, and I am happy to call you a friend. And the feeling's mutual. And the feeling's mutual. I'm so glad we got to meet because you're the kind of person that I could spend a lot of time with because most people aren't at our brain level.

If we watched wrestling, we would be following Bailey's career. Your son is wrestling now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we don't. We won't. You can just tell me that he won. No. And I'll go, oh, and I'll send a gift.

Hang on. Bingo has a question. Yes. Oh, Bingo wants to know if she did well when she tried to wrestle Bailey in the green room. He did okay. When he's around other people, he's just but when he when he's around other people he's very quiet he had he had a year in japan where they sort of the nobody has a clue what it's like in japan the they make them be very respectful and and so he's very quiet and respectful

and if they don't they get screamed and beaten and I probably shouldn't be saying this but that's just the way it is I'll go for the knees instead of the ankles next time okay we can't do your closing

tag we're about to close and I was going to say, take us out live. Now, go ahead. You have to stay on for a second. We're going to close out. And Bingo's going to take us out. We love you so much. Okay.

Bye-bye now. Bye-bye now. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី Thank you.