Arthur Smith: I got arrested for breach of the peace and possession of a megaphone

10:30James O'Brien:Yeah, I was meant to be interviewing him on Loose Ends. Of course. And he turned up and he didn't like the look of me. He had sort of two, I don't know, bodyguards or minders with him. And I went to shake his hand and he wouldn't shake my hand. It's not a great start. No, and then he just turned around and left. Good grief. And it was live at the time. So we had to fill in eight minutes. But the comedian Ross Noble was on. And I said, well, why don't I just ask the questions I prepared for Engelbert Humperdinck to Ross Noble, who was, of course, absolutely brilliant. And it was one of the funniest eight minutes he's ever been on radio, I should think.

11:06Arthur Smith:Engelbert who what is the deal I mean do you slide in and out because you were not I don't think a show off as a child and you need to have a bit of of a show off thing going on I mean you became a bit of a clown didn't you later while also yeah but do you have in your mind too Pete is there a dichotomy at the heart of your personality Arthur is there Brian and then Arthur or is it

11:29James O'Brien:I was always a bit of a one for seeking attention you were it was a good way of making friends and stopping bullies and whatnot.

11:37Arthur Smith:Yeah.

11:37James O'Brien:Although it's funny, there's so many comedians I know who have got some trauma in their childhood, like, you know, their mother died young or their dad abused them or whatever. There's so many comedians and I always feel that if my parents hadn't been so nice to me, I'd have been a better comedian.

11:58Arthur Smith:Because it is, as we mentioned earlier, it's got a warm glow, all of the descriptions I've read of your childhood. up to and including your dad being, it says in my notes, a typical diamond geezer. Sort of probably a touch of the Dixon of Doc Greens, I suppose, knowing everybody around the area. And you'd also be known as Sid Smith's boy, wouldn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

12:19James O'Brien:In fact, I did a show about him, a live show, and then I did it on Radio 4 as well. And I sort of dressed up as a copper and pretended to be Dixon of Doc Green a bit for that. Yeah, because he was very like that, the sort of likeable old guy on the beat. And he had some great stories when he wrote his memoir about some of the adventures he had. There was a really funny one about this drunken woman wanting to kiss him. Because he was a good-looking lad, and he was quite at one with the ladies before he met my mum, and possibly after, I don't know. But someone took a picture of it, and I've got this brilliant picture of a very drunken little woman trying to grab hold of me dad, you know, and he's a copper, and he's looking so embarrassed he doesn't know what to do.

13:11James O'Brien:And he ended up saying apparently, look, if you don't stop, I'm going to have to arrest you. And she said, yeah, yeah, arrest me. So he had to arrest her.

13:20Arthur Smith:Like I say, he never really liked arresting people. It's an early enthusiasm for stories then, I think. Not just your dad's, but also other people in the community. Would you go in the pub? Would you go in the pub with your dad?

13:33James O'Brien:Well, he used to play cricket and football. And, yeah, they'd go to the pub after and we'd sort of sit outside in the garden or something. Although he was never a big drinker, my dad. He, you know, and he didn't really like wine. He liked half a pint of beer or something. My mother was more of a wine person. Although it's funny to think they didn't really have wine when I was growing up in this country. I always remember I once interviewed Dennis Healy. And I remember him saying that the first time he'd ever had wine was when he was 40 or something. Or when he went to Italy. Right. In the war.

14:13James O'Brien:Yeah, he was on the landings there in Italy. And it was the first time he'd ever had wine. And it's true. I don't remember as kids. My mum ended up liking wine, but it was quite a rare thing then. It was just sort of beer was the only one, I suppose scotch and etc.

14:31Arthur Smith:What else would socialising involve? I mean, you'd be running around with your mates and your brothers, but would you do much as a family? Would you have days out?

14:38James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah, we used to... I remember we went on holiday down to Folkestone and stayed in a caravan and used to walk down onto the beach, and I liked hiding under the caravan and pretending I'd got, you know, and trying to pretend that I'd gone missing, although they always knew I was under the caravan. And we had holidays down in Devon a couple of times in fairly sort of modest places. My mother never went abroad till she was 40 because I suppose that generation, yeah, the ones who'd been in the war obviously had been abroad, but most people had you know, didn't have cheap air flights then and what not so yeah, the first time my mother went abroad was when she came to visit me when I was living in Paris when she was 40 and I was what, 20 or something What

15:35Arthur Smith:were you doing in Paris?

15:37James O'Brien:Well as part of my degree

15:39Arthur Smith:That's when you were at UEA

15:41James O'Brien:University of East Anglia That's right and I did a course called comparative literature. And part of that was to learn French to honours level. Alors, j 'ai passé une année à Paris dans un lycée là-bas. So I was an English assistant in a school in Paris, which was a really, it was a fantastic year. It was so exciting and learning the language. And I was teaching these classes because I was meant to be the assistant, but the teachers just used to say, all right, you take them, I'm going off to the staff room. So I was kind of thrust in front of, and I was only about two years older than most of them.

16:23James O'Brien:And it was quite a posh school. Although it was a state school, they don't really have public schools in France. So I had the son of Giscard d 'Estaing in one of my classes. And Giscard d 'Estaing was the president, obviously. But I always remember going in and writing, bear in mind this is the 70s, and writing on the blackboard one morning, English food is the best in the world. Which, of course, all these poncy French went, wah, dégueulasse! And I learnt that disgusting in French is dégueulasse. Love it. And then I always remember asking, I mean, I thought English food, well, it was pretty grim in the 70s compared to now.

17:05James O'Brien:And I always remember asking, well, what things do you think are really disgusting? and one of them was de la gelée, jelly. They thought that was an absolutely appalling, disgraceful thing as food. And I got my mum, you couldn't buy jelly in Paris, but I got my mum to send some packets over and I took them all in a load of jelly and then it just ended up all over the walls and I got in trouble with the caretaker.

17:32Arthur Smith:So what I'm sensing then is that growing up there were no limits on what you could think about. There was no message about knowing your place or anything like that. Was it your oyster? Well, I suppose I was...

17:47James O'Brien:I mean, my father was always a bit... He doffed his cap to posh people a bit. And I never really met any posh people until I went to university. And I became aware of the class system a bit more then, shall we say.

18:03Arthur Smith:Not at grammar school, because I'd have thought at grammar school there'd be a fairly broad mix.

18:06James O'Brien:Well, no, it was mostly working class boys at the grammar school.

18:12Arthur Smith:And when you did, I mean, were you aware of it as being a big moment, that 11 plus?

18:17James O'Brien:Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember the day I got past 11 plus. And I always remember I had an interview at Rhone Grammar School for Boys, it was. And I'd been warned that they might ask me, what do you want to do when you grow up sort of thing? and I had no idea, Rob. I mean, I still don't know, to be honest. And I said I wanted to be a surveyor. I wanted to be a surveyor without having any idea. It's good that I didn't ask what that involved. Yeah, a chartered surveyor. I mean, I still don't know what a chartered surveyor does to you.

18:56Arthur Smith:Do they count the bricks? I mean it. If you're building something, the chartered surveyor will tell you how many bricks you're going to have. Oh, right. Maybe, I don't know. We're going to get letters from the Institute. It's outrageous misrepresentation.

19:14Arthur Smith:It's sport's greatest soap opera, and we've got your VIP pass to all the drama. This is Up to Speed, your new Formula One podcast, with me, Will Buxton, Naomi Schiff, David Coulthard, and Jolie Sharp. Expect unfiltered race reactions, behind-the-scenes insights, and blockbuster interviews. This week we're speaking to four-time world champion, the benchmark Max Verstappen. He's going to be talking about the new cars, how long he'll stay in Formula One, and about me beating him on track. Don't miss it.

19:45James O'Brien:When the race weekend's over, we're here to keep you up to speed.

19:49Arthur Smith:New episodes every Monday and Thursday. Watch and listen on Global Player, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:56James O'Brien:Up to speed.

20:03Arthur Smith:Had you discovered, I mean, hiding under caravans, having brothers, had you discovered a pleasure in making people laugh at this point? Oh, yes. From as long as?

20:14James O'Brien:Yeah, I mean, I remember a particular incident when I must have been about eight or nine or something. And we had a Canadian teacher, I remember, at my primary school, Southwark Park Primary School. and she announced we were going to do a version of Peter Pan in front of the school and the parents. And I was very excited about that. And I remember I went home and actually wrote my version of Peter Pan, which obviously was unperformable. But Miss Marshall, the teacher, said, well, you can play any part you want. So I thought, well, I'll be Captain Hook. You wouldn't want to be Peter Pan. That would be boring.

20:55James O'Brien:so obviously my mum got me a coat hanger and whatnot and I remember I was determined to frighten everybody when I came on as Captain Hook and I came on being furious and looking and they all just started laughing and however hard I tried to frighten them they all laughed louder and I remember thinking oh yeah I quite like this sound of laughter

21:20Arthur Smith:maybe I'll go for that a bit more then you get to grammar school and you managed to do what quite a lot of funny people don't manage to do, which is to be funny, but not to be... but not to sort of not study. You can be... Because quite often it's the school reports would say, he's too busy trying to make the class laugh. You managed to ride both those horses.

21:41James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah, I did study. Well, again, because my mother was always very encouraging. And you enjoyed it, I think.

21:46Arthur Smith:Because, I mean, you're writing later and your enthusiasm for poetry, you were indulging it.

21:50James O'Brien:yeah yeah i had a good time at school and then you know went on to university and that was a brilliant time as well which is again you know it's an interviewer's nightmare this a really

22:01Arthur Smith:well-adjusted happy family nice life a general gradient of yeah i know we need to put in something

22:07James O'Brien:really bad some trauma we need some trauma yeah it was at that point and when i became uh well let's back up a bit to head boy because i mean again just to prove the point you became fucking

22:17Arthur Smith:head boy as well. I know.

22:19James O'Brien:It's just ridiculous. And I was voted on by, it wasn't a choice of the staff, it was the other boys in the school voted me to be head boy. It's even worse, isn't it?

22:30Arthur Smith:I know, yeah. It's a wonderful thing.

22:31James O'Brien:I can't quite imagine it now.

22:33Arthur Smith:Was there any point, even by them, if you're in the upper six and someone else had asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, did you ever have any kind of vague desires? I mean, you certainly weren't going to follow your father into the force. No, I mean, he didn't want me to either. I bet he didn't.

22:47James O'Brien:No, no, no. One of your brothers became a doctor, I think.

22:50Arthur Smith:So again, the evidence that the house, the home must have been replaced.

22:53James O'Brien:Well, my older brother, I mean, he's quite an achiever. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and practiced for a little bit, but then he became the editor of the British Medical Journal. And I mean, even now, he's quite a big name in medicine, and he's quite a kind of radical thinker. and my younger brother my younger brother did a bit of stand up for a bit as well and he was very good but you know there wasn't the money enough money you know he had his family and what not and he so now he does a lot of amateur plays and he's a brilliant actor actually but he works for the home office I always think he must be a spy or something but he denies it they all do don't they

23:39Arthur Smith:what I mean did you ever have any clearer ambitions? Was there anything you quite fancied or were you just going to treat life like a box of chocolates?

23:49James O'Brien:Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was at UEA and you had to go and meet, what was it called? Careers Advice or something. And I remember thinking, I've got no bloody idea what I want to do. Well, I thought being a teacher, to be honest, I thought I might become a teacher. And I did actually spend some time teaching English as a foreign language, apart from in Paris. I then did it in... Well, I was also a dustman and a road sweeper for a few years because I left university in the late 70s. But that was to support the comedy, I think, rather than... Yeah, well, I wasn't really... Yeah, yeah, because I was in...

24:29James O'Brien:I went up with a review group and we used to... I mean, it wasn't really stand-up then in London or, you know, the only stand-up was kind of blokes in... wheel tappers and shunters type. Yeah, frilly shirts and they were all doing... Stan Bowles. Not Stan Bowles. He was a footballer. No, Stan... What's his name? Stan Boardman. Boardman. Yeah, sorry.

24:54Arthur Smith:Yeah. Let's talk about that then. So you get to Norwich, you get to UEA. Was that, I mean, a fairly frictionless passage? You'd have spoken to your English teachers. They'd have said you've got a great talent for writing. This course that Malcolm Bradbury was... a key part of, was a very, very big deal in the early 70s.

25:13James O'Brien:Yeah, he was the first person to set up a creative... I mean, I wasn't doing creative writing.

25:16Arthur Smith:No, I know, but you're still taught by him, I think.

25:19James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah, I was, and he used to give me a lift in in the mornings, I remember, in my second year when I was living in some slum, and he used to see me walk along the road and gave me a lift in. And, in fact, when I did this radio series called Sentimental Journeys, where I took him to Indiana University as one of the things where he'd spent the time studying. And he'd written a novel around it as well. So, yeah, and there was an element of creativity. For example, I was told that instead of writing an essay about the form of the sonnet, I could just write a sonnet.

25:58Arthur Smith:Okay.

25:59James O'Brien:So, which was actually quite a challenge. Have you ever written a sonnet, James? I have actually but this is

26:05Arthur Smith:have you? well I've written I write one at school yeah I found it the other day it's alright actually but it's like like a kind of pastiche almost but they're hard to write because you've got to get the syllables right yeah yeah and all the rhyme scheme yeah drop the two lines did you love literature? did you like feel things move inside you when you were yeah

26:26James O'Brien:particularly poetry right and I got I got a bit obsessed with I remember doing a seminar are called Dante, Beckett and Elliot. Bloody hell. Yeah, because of course Beckett and Elliot both refer to Dante a lot. Yeah. And then I got to, and I read, you know, The Divine Comedy. And in fact, I remember I was trying to get off with an Italian girl at one time. So I deliberately learnt the opening lines of the Inferno to impress her. but she copped off with my best friend instead. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la dirita via alla smarita. I bet it's worked since.

27:15James O'Brien:No, because I think, to be honest, to her it sounded like to be or not to be, easy question. Where the snowblad in the mind...

27:26Arthur Smith:actually, I mean, did you ever, did you encounter any snobbery as a consequence of your, what did you call yourself, your wrinkled and sallow complexion and your sort of very Bermondsey tones?

27:38James O'Brien:Oh yeah, I think so. Well, I mean, also it had the effect, I mean, I quite often, I was quite often like the bit of rough in a way. So I had several girlfriends who were all quite posh who liked me as a bit of rough really and I remember meeting their families and feeling slightly that I was condescended to shall we say.

28:00Arthur Smith:But not in college people like Malcolm Bradbury could see. Oh yeah yeah no he wasn't anything like that yeah yeah. Because you are I mean it's a word that nobody really welcomes but you are a proper intellectual I mean. No. But you are I mean Because there's two types of student in this kind of context. There's two types of clever student. There's the ones that have to sort of gird their loins and get into the library and do the work. And then there's the ones that actually do love getting lost in Dante and getting lost in Becky or getting lost in Elliot. And you, I think, were very much in the second category.

28:32Arthur Smith:Well, thank you, James. I take that as a compliment. It is intended as a compliment, but also as a description. You possibly could perhaps have pursued academia, not just teaching. could you have stayed at university if you hadn't discovered some of the stuff that we're about to get on to

28:48James O'Brien:well funnily enough I remember I nearly I applied for some post as a lecturer in where was it in Poland or somewhere and I I think I got down to the last two I had to do some interview over the phone or something and who knows I mean I didn't get the job But who knows, if I had got it, perhaps I'd now be the head of some university in Poland.

29:19Arthur Smith:But I sense that there was no fire in your belly to pursue any of this. I mean, no.

29:24James O'Brien:Or indeed to pursue anything. Well, no, I liked entertaining. You know, my last year at UEA, me and a group of friends went up and did a review, as it was then, like a sketch comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival in 1977.

29:43Arthur Smith:And was that very different from anything you'd done before? I mean, did you sort of find just... Because I remember the first year I went to Edinburgh and I thought, good Lord, there's lots of other people who are a bit more like me than anyone else I've ever... Yeah, yeah, that's true. Any other environment I've ever been in.

29:59James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was so exciting doing Edinburgh then the first time. But there wasn't really any stand-up comedy then at Edinburgh. there were about 60 comedy shows and most of them were university reviews and sketches and songs. Yeah, that sort of thing. And how much of it did you write? Can you remember? Most of it, actually. You did? It was your... I mean, we wrote together, but I tended to have written most of it. And at the same time, not long after that, I was in a band. I was in... The results. Oh, well done. Blimey, you've really done your homework. Were you ever in a band, James? No, sadly.

30:35James O'Brien:No, no. Yeah, I was the singer in a band and we, you know, we did tour, well, toured, you know, we did gigs in London and just outside. And but then it all got like all bands. We all got annoyed with each other and it broke up. And anyway, I wanted to stick with comedy, really. What were you getting out of it? Do you think?

30:56Arthur Smith:I mean, six quid. No, in terms of like what appetite it was feeding.

31:05James O'Brien:well I suppose entertaining showing off I mean I was never a great singer and I did find that I used to do longer and longer introductions to the songs and so that's

31:18Arthur Smith:I mean it throws

31:19James O'Brien:a head to the Leonard Cohen

31:20Arthur Smith:show a bit

31:21James O'Brien:doesn't it that

31:22Arthur Smith:yeah I suppose so

31:23James O'Brien:yeah I mean I'm not a great singer but then no one was Leonard Cohen really and I did do yeah a couple of Leonard Arthur Smith sings Leonard Cohen shows so I did them partly because I thought it seemed to promise the grimmest evening of entertainment imaginable. And that, you know, whatever I did would be better than what it sounded like it was going to be.

31:47Arthur Smith:You did a bit of writing for the student newspaper. You got involved in politics. I mean, what was your politics? Because, again, you know, it could have gone either way, couldn't it? There's plenty of people from your kind of background who ended up going very right wing. I'd sense there's a bit... I know you never did. I know you well enough to know that. But there's a sense of public duty a bit coming from your family. There's certainly a sense of community coming from your dad's job.

32:11James O'Brien:Yeah, I mean, I didn't ever consider going into politics, but I guess I was always sort of of the left. And I mean, I had a flirtation with anarchy at one point. I was quite intrigued by, you know, property is theft. And I sort of veered briefly towards communism, I suppose, but I've always basically been a kind of middle-of-the-road socialist, I suppose. No, I've never tipped into the right.

32:41Arthur Smith:So you leave UEA, you're back to London, effectively, and this is the period where you're working on the bins and sweeping the roads while doing gigs at night. Tell me about the first time you walked out onto a stage on your own.

32:58James O'Brien:oh well that was probably actually at the it was yeah it was uh just oh because we got a radio series with the uh with the review company and then i remember meeting people and then they and it was all obviously oxbridge were all the producers and they just they decided to have um a pub near the BBC where people could do and that's where I did my first ever solo I suppose which went quite well but then I remember it was only a couple of years later when the comedy store started and that's when alternative comedy and I'd been to see Alexi Sale and was kind of wildly impressed by him and so I did an open spot at the comedy store and I remember I was terribly nervous and it went okay, but then the comedy store briefly closed down before it reopened around the corner.

33:55James O'Brien:And when it reopened, by the time it reopened, I was already gigging all around London, particularly as a compere. Okay. Rather than doing solo spots.

34:05Arthur Smith:So it happened quite quickly.

34:06James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went professional when I sort of stopped doing teaching and everything else about the time I was 30. Right. When I was, funny enough, I spent my 30th birthday in Copenhagen when I was in a Danish, in a pantomime in Denmark. You're meant to say, oh, no, you weren't. Well, that's a bit obvious. No, I really was. It was a woman who'd married, an actress who'd married a Danish guy and moved to Copenhagen but didn't want to kind of give up performance. So she introduced pantomimes and still does it to this day every year. Really? It's in English. And of course, it's quite intriguing to Danish people.

34:52James O'Brien:In fact, everyone. I mean, pantomime is a pretty much uniquely British thing. They don't do pantomimes. They're not like that anywhere else. And so a lot of the people who used to come along and watch the panto were Danish kids studying English. And then so you'd say, oh, yes, he is. And then you sort of pointed them and I had to look through their notes and go, oh, no, he isn't.

35:23Arthur Smith:You've never you've never you've always quite like having a mixed bag of projects going on. I mean, that starts now. Tell me a bit about why comparing, why comparing suited you and why you suited comparing more than other acts, more than other.

35:39James O'Brien:Well, it was partly because I didn't really have a sort of distinct 20 minutes. which is I was and also I I was quite good at interacting with the audience and whatnot, you know, I'd I mean I don't I mean now it's Compulsory for compares to just come on and go. What's your name? What do you do? I mean, I didn't really do that, but I I mean I do things like get the all I'd say to the audience I do a panto things here. I'm gonna do a bit from a panto So I come on and say, hello, everybody, and you'll have to shout back as loud as you can, fuck off, Arthur, I hate audience participation. And then they do that, and then I'd pick out an individual and say, right, now you didn't do it, so you've got to go fuck off, Arthur, I hate audience participation, and I want you to add on to the end of the text with a hey, nonny, hey, nonny, hey, nonny, no, and fuck off Jacob Rees-Mogg, or whoever it was then, who was Jacob Rees-Mogg.

36:39James O'Brien:He's a good friend of yours, isn't he, Jacob Rees-Mogg?

36:41Arthur Smith:Yeah, we're very... I'm sitting after this, actually. We're off down the dock and duck. And so you... I mean, so what you've got then from quite an early stage is a relationship with the room, which you think all comics have, but some relationships are stronger than others.

36:57James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah. You've got... You know, you've got to read the room, as they say. You've got to kind of listen to what they're laughing at and, yeah, I mean, get involved with them too. I mean, talk to them sometimes or just, yeah, feel the atmosphere, read the room.

37:13Arthur Smith:So if I'm thinking in terms of milestones, you've got obviously deciding that you're going to be able to make a living doing this and nothing else. You're going to knock all the other stuff on the head. How else do you measure success during this period? Because, you know, the world for a comic now is very different from the world that you were in. You mentioned that alternative comedy was essentially new. And it's not alternative comedy anymore. Well, comedy in the sense that people my age understand comedy. It was still relatively new. There were clubs. There was the Comedy Store. There was the Tunnel Club.

37:46Arthur Smith:Oh, yeah. But there weren't, you know, you didn't have jonglers like we had a few years ago or clubs popping up.

37:52James O'Brien:No, no, there was jonglers was fairly early on. Was it fairly early on? In the early 80s, yeah, because I used to take it in terms one weekend I'd be at the Comedy Store and the next weekend I'd be at jonglers. So you're measuring success by gigs, really. Yeah, and then I got invited, I fronted a couple of television shows. How did that come about? Well, I just got asked to do them because they'd seen me compare them. I didn't, I never really, I don't know, I always felt constricted by emceeing on TV. You know, there were only certain things you could say and you had to dress in a certain way.

38:26James O'Brien:I always much preferred the live side of things. So, well, then I wrote a play that I did wrote a couple of plays. And the second, well, two of them went into the West End, one of them briefly. And the other one, which I co-wrote with a guy called Chris England.

38:43Arthur Smith:This is an evening with Gary Lineker.

38:44James O'Brien:An evening with Gary Lineker. I saw when I was at college.

38:47Arthur Smith:Oh, did you? Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, yeah. Was that going on all the time? How old were you when that came out?

38:54James O'Brien:Let's think. It must be 1992. So I was 36 or something.

38:59Arthur Smith:Okay, so this would be, you're writing comedy, you're writing sketches, you're writing plays. You've got, you're just never sort of putting all your eggs in one basket. That's what I'm trying to pin down. Yeah, you're right.

39:10James O'Brien:Well, that's why you can't pin it down. Exactly. Yeah, no, I was always... I quite fancy that.

39:15Arthur Smith:I've got an idea. I'm going to do that. I'll say yes to that, so I can't do that. And I've been offered that, but I'm not really enjoying it, so I won't do that again.

39:20James O'Brien:Yeah, because, for example, I do these late night tours of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Yeah, I've never been on one of these, but I've heard a lot about them. Yeah, they're quite, well, I got arrested at the end of one of them. Because for breach of the peace and possession of a megaphone. And then, yeah, what else is it?

39:40Arthur Smith:Well, what's the tension then between enjoying yourself and wanting also to entertain other people? That's probably where the alchemy is for you. Yeah. With enjoying yourself being perhaps a slightly higher priority than it is for a lot of people.

39:53James O'Brien:Well, no, I mean, I wouldn't be enjoying myself if no one was laughing. No, I guess not.

39:58Arthur Smith:But you might be enjoying success even if you weren't enjoying yourself. Yeah, yeah. Which is not for you, I sense.

40:07James O'Brien:Yeah, no, it isn't. Yeah, that's why I didn't really like fronting these TV shows. Although, you know, I quite like doing some TV things. I don't discount doing TV. I used to do things for the one show where I'd go and... Yes, of course. Or I'd spend the night in some dead famous person's house on my own. That was quite fascinating. I remember Henry Moores and, you know, I was just alone in his house and I went walking around all these fantastic statues everywhere and I was sort of wandering around at two o 'clock in the morning looking at them.

40:42Arthur Smith:Whose idea was that?

40:43James O'Brien:Not that particular one, but that strand. It was someone at the one show. Yeah, well, I mean, I think before me, Hardeep Sinkoli had been doing it. But as we know, he disgraced himself.

40:57Arthur Smith:And so you're on sort of various producers. Are you an acquired taste, do you think? Because I'm not sure you are. I can't imagine anybody thinking, because you hear it sometimes, surprisingly, when someone says, oh, no, I don't like them. I can't quite imagine anyone not liking you. Well, there must be some.

41:13James O'Brien:I must have a few enemies, don't I? I used to have a big run-in with Victor Lewis Smith.

41:19Arthur Smith:But that was his shtick, wasn't it?

41:21James O'Brien:Yeah, he was a kind of... He tried to actually start an actual physical fight with me once, I remember. Blimey.

41:30Arthur Smith:So you got successful plays. You did the... You did My Summer with Des, would have been a sitcom on the telly. Well, it wasn't a sitcom, it was a one-off. Sorry, a play on the telly. Yeah, with Rachel Weisz. Yeah, and Neil Morrissey. That's right, yeah. You probably felt more comfortable in radio than TV.

41:51James O'Brien:Yeah, probably. I mean, as I say, I've got a face for radio.

41:55Arthur Smith:Well, haven't we both? But you kind of found yourself getting some lovely gigs, actually, didn't you? Yeah. Which is why I ask whose idea it was. Were you knocking on doors or were you waiting for people to come to you?

42:05James O'Brien:No, I've never really knocked on doors that much. I got asked by a brilliant friend of mine Sarah Jane at Radio 4 who asked me to do this series yeah which I mentioned earlier where I took people away to places that had some significance for them or they grew up there or you know and then some of the ones are amazing I took Arthur Scargill to Cuba to Havana amazing yeah and Stephanie Cole do you remember we went to India and we went to all these strange Indian places. It was fantastic. And yeah, Dennis Healy to Naples. Barbara Castle. Do you remember? Yeah, of course. She was great. We went up to where she grew up.

42:50James O'Brien:And oh yeah, and Val Doonican. But never Englebert Humperdinck.

42:57Arthur Smith:Never Englebert Humperdinck. You never had then a kind of plan. When I first did Knocking About with comics, I didn't understand why they held the word plan in such disdain. They'd sometimes almost say it as an insult. They'd say, he's got a plan or she's got a plan.

43:13James O'Brien:Yeah, no, no. I don't think it really goes with comedy somehow. Your only plan is to make people laugh at your next gig. Yes.

43:22Arthur Smith:And so you measure your success by your, A, your enjoyment, and B, your kind of busyness.

43:30James O'Brien:Yeah. Well, I'm not as busy as I used to be, but then fair enough. I am 71 now. I'm debating whether or not to do Edinburgh. I mean, it's always Edinburgh is where you kind of start on a show, on a new show. I've got a few ideas, and I may do Edinburgh, and I'm doing Leicester in a week or two, where I'm doing a tryout. And I don't really know what I'm trying out, to be honest.

43:54Arthur Smith:Do you have a typical fan? I mean, have you got people who've been with you since, not necessarily since 1977, but certainly since the 1980s?

44:02James O'Brien:Well, yeah, I get, yeah, yeah, I sometimes get sort of letters and emails and messages from people. Yeah, I don't know if I've got a typical sort of fan.

44:17Arthur Smith:Yeah. What did mum and dad make of it when it kicked off, when the career kind of became something? Well, my dad was super proud.

44:25James O'Brien:Was he? Oh, he was absolutely thrilled by it all. and I was so pleased that he saw me having success before he died and whatnot. My mother was okay with it. And they, I mean, we used to do, when I was, in fact, in the evening with Gary Lineker, when we first did it, the first tryouts were in Bath. And my mum and dad by then had retired to Bath. And they put up the whole, you know, all of us, there was sort of five in the cast and two others, you know. And they just put everyone up and were just delightful. and my mum cooked everyone dinner all the time. And so, no, my dad was really excited. I remember one time when there was an amateur production of an evening with Gary Lineker, which I heard about subsequently, that my mum and dad had gone to see it.

45:16James O'Brien:And my dad had said, my son wrote this, you know. And they didn't quite believe him. But then they did end up believing him. and went backstage and met them all. Oh, no, he was really pleased with it because he never wanted me to be a copper or anything like that. No, it's nice, though.

45:36Arthur Smith:It's quite liberating in a way to have parents who are relaxed about your future.

45:40James O'Brien:Yeah, and of course my elder brother who was sort of super successful from the word go, so that was useful. They could bank that. They could bank that and then let Ryan do whatever he wanted to do.

45:54Arthur Smith:talk to me a bit about how seriously you take the writing because i love some of the stuff you've said about the relationship between punchlines and poetry i find it on the radio and i could say the same thing twice in slightly different ways yeah and feel a completely different

46:09James O'Brien:response yeah well i i think it's funny because i i quite often i mean i know a lot of poetry by heart. And I quite often do poems in stand-up shows. And they go together really well. It's partly because, yeah, it's the order of the words is crucial in poetry and in stand-up. You know, you can do a gag and then just slightly change the order of words in the punchline and it suddenly will get a laugh when it didn't before. and in that sense I think poetry and stand-up are similar and also they're leading to a kind of conclusion of some sort of punchline or a feeling that the poem gives you. And you can't explain it.

47:00Arthur Smith:You can explain what you've just explained but you can't explain why that change of that word. No, not really, no.

47:07James O'Brien:It's just the way people hear things differently, yeah. Give us a poem then. All right, this is, when I went to Paris, I had a bit of a broken heart, and this is a poem I wrote. So here we are in Paris in spring, the lovers all love, the cloche hard all sing, but every morning through the eight o 'clock blue, the postman comes with nothing from you. There is the Art de Triomphe, the Boulevard Saint-Michel, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, but no you. So I dip my croissant in my café au lait, I open the window and call in the day. But in spite of the Seine, the birds and the sun, it's no fun in Paris buying garlic for one.

47:48James O'Brien:There is the River Seine, the Pont de la Tour, the Tour Panace, but no you. So I heave myself on the Cleanian core line, and the busker there he sings so fine that I'm lost in the world of the Metro men till I see you're not there and it hurts again. there is the Quartier Latin the Rue des Princes the Boulevard Saint-Denis the Louvre shut on Tuesdays but no you I ain't gonna live in Paris no more get the 957 from the Gare du Nord but whenever, wherever the train may go you won't be there to kiss me hello there'll be France, England, America every place, all of them without you

48:41Arthur Smith:oh i'm interested in the tension between what i would call silly and serious and again you've managed to sort of fill both haven't you really i do yeah i mean looking at the at the background and at the love of poetry and you you worked on that anthology didn't you a few years ago sit down comedy and you do comic verse in your shows as well as stuff that you've memorised were you aware of a need to be both silly and serious when you were sort of working and were there ever moments of thinking perhaps you now are at an age where you should be doing more serious stuff than silly stuff did you ever want to write a play that wasn't funny intentionally

49:29James O'Brien:well yeah perhaps I'd quite like to but I don't know if it's within my powers really you know I'm always looking for the laugh whether I want to or not it kind of comes that way well I haven't said that I've written poetry that is that is not at all comic and

49:50Arthur Smith:I'm looking for the thread and I can't find it I'm looking for the thread that runs through everything is it curiosity is it I mean because some of the stuff that you've done when you talk about taking Arthur Scargill to Cuba or taking Dennis Healy to Italy this is not obviously fertile comic territory but it's rich territory what are you getting out of that?

50:14James O'Brien:Well I suppose with Dennis Healy I was discovering what it was like to be on the beach You're fascinated by him

50:22Arthur Smith:and how he's reacting to what's going on there's a real curiosity

50:27James O'Brien:and also enjoying what's he like as a personality and actually he was amazing Dennis Healy I mean, he liked to drink, that's for sure. And then wherever we went, he seemed to make friends with people. And he was utterly charming. Less so Arthur Scargill, I have to say. I'm not that shocked by this revelation. Arthur Scargill was one of these people who was always right about everything. You know, one of those people who always knows the answer to everything. And why does anybody ever try and challenge them? And I mean, I come to the conclusion, really, I don't know anything. you know what was it was it plato and said i know only one thing and that is that i know nothing yeah that'll do um what about fame what's your what's your relation because it's not something

51:15Arthur Smith:you particularly saw but it kind of went with the territory and yours yours has gone in ebbs and

51:19James O'Brien:flows hasn't it yeah in a way yeah i mean i being a little bit famous is quite nice yes uh but i think being a lot famous it must be awful and i mean i was quite famous for a bit when i was doing grumpy old men. I was just coming to that

51:35Arthur Smith:because that's 2003 that kicked off and it pushed you, because people who enjoyed live comedy you'd have been very very well known in that world but grumpy old and people who love Radio 4 would have known you very very well. I mean you stood in for Ned sharing quite a lot on Loose Ends and you made your own programs but grumpy, it's funny this when I interview people who've got really big careers and have done loads of things there's no rhyme or reason to it is there? There's no justice to the thing that pushed you into an entirely new space and for you it was grumpy old man yeah yeah I got a phone call do you want to

52:07James O'Brien:come on and bang on about you yeah I know I mean I was only me what was it I must have been about 50 or late 40s even yeah and I got a phone call oh do you want to come on and bang about bang on about things that you find annoying oh that's quite easy and yeah and then that becomes hugely successful but did it did it change anything or were you already too well uh i've got more gigs you did uh i earned a bit more money for a bit although it seems to have all gone now but uh but uh yeah i did you know i got recognized a lot and which was you know mostly it was all right it was mostly you know people would ask for an autograph autographs then yeah these days it's selfies yeah but uh you know I was never too famous.

52:58James O'Brien:I think if you're someone as famous as, I don't know, Don French or wherever, when you just go out.

53:05Arthur Smith:You can't not be you. No, no, it must be awful.

53:08James O'Brien:I mean, the worst, I always think, must be in a member of the royal family. Because you can't go out without six big blokes with guns or something.

53:17Arthur Smith:They said Philip used to drive around in a black cab, didn't they, so that he could be vaguely anonymous. Oh, is that right? Because it wouldn't cross your mind. He's probably got a cap on. yeah yeah maybe he gave me a lift sometime he might have just hopped in the back of it

53:28James O'Brien:yeah there's that famous story isn't there about the Queen well she wasn't the Queen then but on was it VE Day yeah going out on her own that was the only time she ever did I always think of VE Day because my mum who was what 15 or 16 then walked up to walked up to Buckingham Palace with all the people I always think that must have been the best party London ever had just an extraordinary unleashing and unclenching

53:53Arthur Smith:Yeah, it must have been an amazing night. When I get the chronology right, I think you got very poorly just before you did Grumpy Old Man, back in the 90s. I never know what these words mean, but acute necrotising pancreatitis sounds awful. Yeah, I think it's fair to say it is.

54:13James O'Brien:Yeah, I was drinking too much back then. I wasn't really a kind of vodka on the cornflakes guy and I was never an unpleasant drunk. I was always quite amiable. That can be a problem, can't it?

54:27Arthur Smith:Because if you're an unpleasant drunk, the people around you can insist that you not be on that. Yeah, yeah.

54:31James O'Brien:Yeah.

54:32Arthur Smith:If you're an amiable drunk, you go away with it for longer.

54:34James O'Brien:Yeah, yeah. I think that's fair enough. And when I was comparing back in those days, there used to be a sort of joke that you should, it was all right to have a drink as a compare. You should only be one pint less pissed than the average member of the audience. Yeah. which was which given most of the audiences 11 pints yeah but yeah I woke up one night with a pulling pain in my stomach it felt like some kind of rat was trying to burrow its way out of me so I ended up in intensive care and I gave up drinking for sort of about 15 years I now have a little bit occasional glass of red although I haven't been drunk I can't remember what it's like being drunk I can't remember what it's like having a hangover but yeah I was very ill and then I got diabetes as a result of that so if you need any insulin James I'm your man I'll know where to come

55:32Arthur Smith:we're almost done I kind of wanted to know about why you come up with such disparate ideas but I think it's become clear in the course of this conversation so we mentioned the Leonard Cohen thing earlier we mentioned the plays that you've written the shows that you've done But what you really do is you have a thought.

55:51James O'Brien:And try and pursue it, yeah.

55:52Arthur Smith:And you quite fancy it. Yeah, yeah.

55:54James O'Brien:Like I did a whole art exhibition in Edinburgh one year. It was comedy art, though. Because I always think you never hear laughter in an art gallery, do you?

56:02Arthur Smith:No, it's true.

56:03James O'Brien:And so I kind of did a part art, part comedy exhibition one time. Yeah, I'm always up for trying something new.

56:10Arthur Smith:and I guess if little you, little Brian was to have a look at what you have done and where you've been and the journey that you've been on he probably wouldn't believe it he'd just think, bloody hell

56:25James O'Brien:yeah, little Brian, yeah little Brian stuck in the bomb sites of South London yeah, I think he'd be quite pleased

56:32Arthur Smith:I've got a list of gigs that you're doing so start at the end of this month you're in London, February, then Leicester Stoughton, is it? Stoughton? Just again, you're just doing things because you quite fancy them. Yeah, yeah. St. Ives, Christchurch, people can see presumably on your website where you are about to appear. And you don't know two things. A, what you'll be doing at any of them and B, whether anyone will bear any resemblance to any of the other ones.

56:59James O'Brien:Yeah, I think that's fair enough, yeah. Life is good. Yeah, thank you very much. Arthur Smith, thank you. Mon plaisir. Lovely stuff.

57:15James O'Brien:This has been a Global Player original production.