Russell Kane: “Today’s the Day I Change My Life”

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. My dad was a steroid injecting, bodybuilding, doorman, weightlifting, BNP voting, Papa Dom in one hand, BNP manifesto in the other. Are you serious? I'll tell you what's wrong with this country, boy. Yes, more mint sauce, please, Abdul. Immigration. Still now, I'm still kept that bilingual status of Ponce and Chav. I was a straight boy who was skinny and camp. Anything had even a touch of effeminacy about it, he would have had an opinion. That's what I was scared of hearing. Laugh and the world laughs with you, crying you're a ****. I was a junkie, but the drug I was taking was stand-up comedy.

0:45Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project conceived entirely to let me spend more time with interesting people than I would ever get on the radio. Russell Cain, welcome. Thank you very much. It's lovely to see you. You've added a new dimension to your portfolio career. I've added a couple since I've seen you. You have, haven't you? I've added three. Yes, you've done the memoir and the children's book. What's the other one? The other children's book? No. Well, I'm moving in. I'm trying serious acting this year for the first time. I didn't know that. What are you doing? Shakespeare.

1:14Where? Starring role. What? Romeo and Juliet. What? See, I already don't know whether you're taking the piss or not. I'm not taking the piss. You're not taking it. You promise? I'm more disappointed that your briefing document doesn't feature it but I will put that into my performance and my emotions we're here to talk about the new book that's why we're here to talk about when Brian met Terry who are you playing in Romeo and Juliet? have a guess is it Romeo? where are you doing this? we're doing it at the new Vic I know the new Vic on the cut up in Waterloo no that's the old Vic the new Vic is further down the cut that's the young Vic so the new Vic is a thing right in the middle of the country there is another Vic and around the country you have all these amazing regional theatres, Chichester, Bath, Royal Exchange, Bolton Octagon, Shakespeare North and a lot of the things that end up in London where we're talking, most things have to start and prove themselves in well respected regional theatres The Punch did in Nottingham, didn't it?

2:10It started in Nottingham So it's part of the reason we're here talking about a kids book today every time I finish a humongous tour I always explore something that I enjoy doing anyway, something I trained as a writer that's what I was trained at so I always planned to start writing books I just got caught up in this whole stand-up comedy thing the same with acting I've toured two of my own plays already two of my own comedy plays I did one in Edinburgh I have performed at the RSC just one night only yeah still counts but I've always said to myself while I'm still young enough to have that growth learning energy I want to do real Shakespeare for real and I went to watch some shakespeare and i was clapping at the end crying standing ovation at this not too tame theater production and i was seen by the cast showing my love for 12th night and the director sent me a dm saying you'd make a great shakespearean actor meet me for a coffee well that was enough tickling of my ego and accidental coming upon where my headspace was for me to take the meeting now 99 of people want me to play because i have been approached before puck bottom malvolio i'm already a clown for a living so if i'm going to take a year route to explore this i want to be as uncomfortable and as and grow as much and surprise as much as possible because if i want to do more acting and be seen as an actor because i've gone so far in the stand-up comedy i'm quite recognizable now so even if i crop up in midsummer night murders or eastenders everyone's like but that's that comedian can't can't take it seriously uh but if you do shakespeare in this country it shows people you're not just on some vanity project or looking for an income stream shows you're passionate about the craft which i really really am so i said what if romeo instead of 17 or 14 or they are in the place was 41 what if he's some toxic male racking up his bedpost still living at home with his 70 year old mother toxic relationship with the other council a state opposite the Capulets hate each other, generational drug dealing hate and he falls in love with the one woman also at that age which presents other challenges for women, you know, 39, 40, not yet married.

4:19You fall in love with the one woman that if your family find out you're with, you're probably going to get at least a dusting up maybe more and that is Romeo and Juliet proceed from there with very little change needed to the text interestingly very little. In fact some of the lines take on an interesting ironic cadence when you're saying I'm the youngest Romeo of that name. Young man, come here. It's like someone calls you a young man now. You feel like they're sort of taking the piss or saying something ironic. So it's so exciting and scary and exposing and I cannot flippin' wait. When does it start?

4:54Rehearsal's August, on stage September. And then obviously the target is to move it on somewhere. London, New York, Chicago, wherever I can take it. How exciting. Congratulations, break a leg. So it's set in circumstances, it's not dissimilar to your childhood yeah it's an aged up someone said it was interesting because i went to all these posh i go to all these posh arti-farti events that i love i'm a real culture vulture i dug my way out of the council estate with literature penguin classics shaped shovels and i just everyone was doing their like wine swilling a pining and i went oh imagine watching a romeo and juliet when they were older and this guy went well it wouldn't work would it because if you read the verse it's the muscular verse of a teenage boy being impulsive and declaring his love and not understanding the reality of the world and i felt have you met my uncles they're 20 years older than me they still live like that they're still benedon still racking up birds still going into the cubicles of the toilets of pubs and doing things they shouldn't they're 60 you described your dad once as being like a bonsai tree didn't you fully grown but still small right that's what you're talking about that's what i'm talking exploring that type of masculinity that won't actually impinge on the world properly that won't engage with the world won't engage with women properly and what happens when a big old romantic knuckle dragger we'll have to swear fuck boy like that what happens if he finally gets cupid's arrow through the heart what does that look and sound like i wanted to know so um with me and that genius that is jimmy fairhurst that runs not too tame theater we're going to try and find out juliet to be revealed very very soon This is really exciting.

6:27It's not true to my true teenage years, or Juliet would be played by my forearm after it had been numbed. You sat on it for a while. Maybe paint the nails. Well, to knit together a couple of those things, the passion for culture that emanates out of you today and the role that your dad played in your early life, which you chronicled in Son of a Silverback, your memoir which came out a few years ago, it wasn't just that it wasn't a very cultured household. It was that culture was the enemy in your household growing up. It wasn't that active. That might be overstating it slightly. It was like we all spoke French at home and everyone around us is telling us how good German is.

7:08It's not that we reject the German language as a concept. It's just unknown. It's just other. It's not part of us, boy. But your dad would have a negative attitude to some things that he didn't understand or not. If anything had even a touch of effeminacy about it, he would have had an opinion. My dad was a steroid injecting, bodybuilding, doorman, weightlifting, BNP voting, pop a dom in one hand, BNP manifesto in the other. I'll tell you what's wrong with this country, boy. Yes, more mint sauce, please, Abdul. Immigration, one of them. And if I was learning dance or, you know, the fact I wasn't, I had never had a girlfriend and never even kissed a girl at school, I think he was starting to panic.

7:51Obviously, men of that generation are just scared of gay men, of which I probably assumed I was going to become one, I imagine. I didn't in the end. Whoever was messing with my DNA has decided to make me straight. How cruel of you. But you did become a vegetarian, which was almost as bad in his mind. Well, that was interesting because he was so, I don't want to say right-wing like he was some horrible racist activist. He wasn't. He was just your working-class Tory man who was a white working-class Tory man type thing with now and again sort of BNP leanings, but never voted for them. but when I was so scared it's because of what the meat on the table represents, if you don't come from my background you have to understand the lamb leg picked up from Costco that could break the axle of the transit van with all of the jellies mint sauces around it carved by the alpha male served steaming slab by slab to the sun, there's something ritualistic about it, there's something religious about it, so for me to go home I'm eating vegetable I knew it.

8:54I knew university would change you. That's what I was scared of hearing. And I hadn't changed. I was proud that I hadn't changed. My friends were still my friends. My nan was still my nan. Still now, I'm still kept that bilingual status of pons and chav.

9:10And so I waited two weeks and I was sort of shoving my meat around the plate because I was going home for Sunday lunch from uni. And then I just told him. And I thought my dad's grammar was really interesting. I said, well, I'm vegetarian at the moment, Dad. And there was a pause. and he said who did it to you who did it to you like i've been radicalized by you know vegan isis or something what did you say i said i did it no one did it to me dad i just it's something that you know i'm experimenting with for health for ethical reasons for green reasons um yeah and it was just an interesting example of any when i also because my first car i was driving around a second-hand Prius.

9:50It's one of the last interactions we had before his premature death. I had this Prius and it wound him up. Diesel is the man's fuel. Are you serious? Not even petrol. Diesel, boy. He had a Mercedes Diesel. Yeah, Merck. Second-hand Merck. Called it Christine. Powered by diesel. And I drove the Prius. Jap crap, boy, that is. That is Jap crap with a battery in it. It's not a car. And then the only accident I've ever had in my entire life touch wood uh i there was a car upturned on the i was coming back late and there was a car upturned on the motorway upside down and sideways on i didn't stand a chance but i didn't hit it i went out of the way and i couldn't quite get control of the car and i just clipped it on the central reservation pulled safely over car was a write-off got towed home at 6 a.m and my dad was waiting on the driveway as the tow vehicle drove me in and he looked at me and he went, it's zero emissions now, isn't it, boy?

10:47It's worth the wait, though. It's worth staying up for, wasn't it? He loved that. It's not a bad line. We were just from different planets. Yes. Well, we'll circle back to that, but there is a poignancy, isn't there, to the fact that he didn't witness your success. You mentioned his premature passing. The timing was just ridiculous. The month I started stand-up was the month he died. Yeah. It's bizarre. But there was a sort of the king is dead, long live the king element about it. It's a horrible thing to say. It makes it sound like I didn't love or respect my dad. I was very, very lucky to have the dad I had, extremely.

11:19That's why I'm sat here today, because even a whiff of weed came down the stairs. I don't even want to know what would have happened to me if a stolen item appeared in the house, if I disrespected a girl or abused it. You know, it was very, very strict on those values, and there was temptation all around me on my postcode. In fact, I believe EN3 became the stab capital. I never even saw her again. I was never involved in anything. I was never hurt. I never hurt anyone because there was this house of lords floating, as it were. And so, yeah, a strict, yes, overly strict, yes, overly domineering, yes, emotionally absent, probably depressed, angry man.

11:59But I tell you what, I'm very successful for that discipline. Now, the way to raise kids is probably somewhere in between what I got and what they're getting now. But, I mean, do you think you would have earned his approval had he seen what has happened subsequently? my mum always tells me he was proud i used to have a routine about it he's proud of me in private like as soon as i came back and went i passed my a levels i'll be in the shed he was down the pub apparently he was like you should see what my boy's doing yeah he's only gone and got a first at uni you know i can't even spell i can't my dad could my dad didn't really have he could just about write and you know he's reading and writing wasn't great and i've got a first at uni and apparently he's broadcasting down the pub he just couldn't he couldn't let me know funny isn't it um when did you first become aware of german then if everyone's speaking french at home when did you become aware of this other world late late i wish i'd love to whenever i listen to other people like me their story is and of course my mum and dad were working class but from an early age 10 or 11 i discovered dickens in the library and i started reading and I wish I used to sort of almost not outright lie.

13:08I used to imply that was the case because obviously I'm older now, so they've got enough distance. But I was embarrassed about how recent it was. Like there was something fake about it. Like there was it was so bad. Last time I spoke to you, maybe I wasn't at the point where I could reveal this, but I am now. So I had this big argument with my dad when I was 19. funnily enough about race and politics and i went and moved in with my nan who was this wild alcoholic mental vodka soaked stick who lived in her dressing gown shit mum to my mum shit mum to all her kids but a very appealing rebellious character as a nan she wasn't right wing or left wing she just didn't give a fuck she was free so what everyone else did she did the opposite just to spite them she probably had some horrific bipolar mental illness so everyone around my way you got a trade, you got a job.

14:01You didn't read poncy books and go to uni. Weirdly, that became my rebellion. My nan always said to me, just fucking do it. Do fucking whatever. In fact, her catchphrase, I don't know how salty the language we can be on here, but she lived by laugh and the world laughs with you, cry in your a**. She said that at least twice a week. If I came home moaning, she would say that. I don't know whether I got the origin myth then. I was living there when the origin myth happened it wasn't gradual it was an overnight marvel superhero bitten by a spider moment i was at a rave next to a speaker couldn't afford the taxi home so we had to stay till six in the morning till the when the tube started like raving i looked like you know i was auditioning to play stephen hawking in a movie that's the type of state i was in and this girl about a foot taller than me clearly a model comes over to me puts her phone number in my hand couldn't believe it fell in love starts a relationship she starts uni in the september right the first day i woke up at halls to put on my torn burton suit to go on a train to work in a shop on a job i hated full of anger that i now recognize as marxist anger i didn't know what it was and watched her i'm just gonna meet ollie we know our first lectures at 12 so we're gonna be reading penguin classics on the lawn and i got to work and i thought game's rigged i am no different from the collection of cells sitting on the lawn in fact i'm brighter than most of those guys i just don't have the knowledge why am i doing a job moaning like a 40 year old man literally feeling suicidal hating my life living for the weekend so i can get off my tits when all they've done they've been encouraged and read a few books i went to the cigarette room for my break even i didn't smoke but i went there every day and i opened my diary which was just a functional diary go here collect dry clean and i wrote today's the day i change my life i'm going to do my a levels i'm going to go to uni i went home that night of course we couldn't afford internet it was just about existed but we didn't have it and i looked up i think with the national extensions college where you can do A-levels out of a box for people that are 18 or over.

16:13I was exactly 18. And I thought, I'm going to do sociology A-level. That's clearly where my anger is. Of course, that was the worst fucking thing I could have done. Once I started learning about feminism, racism and class, I realised I've been shortchanged by the people that run the game. I was just a tool to go into the system. And I was like, fuck that. Got the fastest ever A-grade. Three months from enrolment to A-grade. I went to the House of Commons to collect an award from Betty Boothroyd. my mum's still got the picture and then of course I couldn't, once I did that it was like, you know when people describe a moment of a nervous breakdown when they collapse in the street whatever the opposite of that is it was like someone reached around and went excuse me mate, you do realise that's not plugged in what's not plugged in?

16:55Bradley Cooper limitless, pupils dilated every book went in Jane Austen, Zola, Flaubert Dickens, Trollope, I'm 19 first class honours degree straight out into an advertising agency

17:12Hello from me, crime journalist Andy Hughes I'm one of the hosts of The Crime Agents This is true crime like you've never heard before And I'm the ex-cop Neil Basu Well ex-cop isn't really doing it justice, isn't Neil? I mean you did head up every major department of Europe's biggest police force, the mighty Met You're no slouch in the crime department yourself after 20 years as an investigative reporter and also as an undercover journalist On this podcast, we tackle the major crime stories in the news, like the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as delving into some of the most famous cases in criminal history, like the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

17:54Check out The Crime Agents on Global Player, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:03Was it the watch shop you were working at? That was when you were selling expensive watches. that's when I was hating my life I was going to say it's the worst thing but you're selling stuff you're never going to be able to afford it was alright when I was selling to Middle Eastern and Arab clients but what got me was when it was some like posh dad from Surrey it's your graduation watch Jeremy pick a watch and I was like we know there's no difference it's not fair it's not fair it wasn't fair my mum and dad didn't have the education to show me what to do it wasn't their fault so when my dad sent me to public school after he died mum said he he he wanted you to have the golden ticket that he saw other people have that he never had himself and i found that i found that very moving at the time it's that idea that you can gift the the vocabulary of of class you can actually don't have to be born into it you can achieve it and i was gifted it you fucking grabbed it for yourself books that's the that's the thing i always tell young people because i'm going into schools a lot at the moment not just with the books that I speak to young men is you can go anywhere in the world and access any brain for a fiver or under some of it's free on a kindle subscription you must must must cultivate the habit of reading when you said you knew you were brighter than some of them on the on the um on the lawn at university how did you know acuity of mind dexterousness of thought association quickness of response so they could say something about vickenstein and schopenhauer and all these people i hadn't absorbed yet but my brain could move faster and in a pure sense i could that that you said you said that and you knew you were getting it i knew i not not i didn't understand the intellectual material they were talking about right but i knew that my wit operated at a certain speed where i was able to riposte in conversation or work things out about a context that guy over there he's cheating you're not i could just tell by how fast i learned things there's a core there's a reason why wit is is a synonym isn't it for intelligence and for of course yeah yeah because you need a quick wit is right you know not just being funny it's being clever and also when i put which apparently is an adhd trait when i put my mind to something i'm quite good at learning it so i'm quite quick on holiday with languages right for example and then i lose it all but then i'm when soon as i go to a new place i'm you know i taught myself the devangaria alphabet when i went to India just so I could read the road signs and I just thought well what happens if I try and learn sociology turns out it was easy and literature is my thing not so good on maths and stuff but yeah what so I mean to back up slightly then school was was what a waste of time up to 11 it was brilliant right and from 11 till 16 I would say my value system inverted so that I could appeal to those who run the show meaning who's the toughest who tries weed first who's lost their virginity first who can lift the biggest weights these days it would be influencers and all of this stuff so yeah and that's the same for all working class particularly boys probably girls there's a temporary inversion of the value system between the ages of about 10 and 18 and by the time you realize oh actually it would be better to get a degree it's too late you some of you sometimes you're pregnant already yeah and and what in that context i'm just sort of trying to think about whether or not teachers would have seen you as someone whose potential was going yes they did and i didn't i was offered head boy and i just wasn't interested so that so it is a genuine road to damascus moment then when you just you just i was i was i was yes i was at the local comp but my mum got me into the church comp which was slightly better it was well respected it's still you know full of you know three people from my year are dead from addiction so it was still like a normal working class school but even when i was naturally bright in english to apply yourself marked you out really to the some of the more dangerous characters so you wanted to be you're allowed to be quite bright i had humor which i kept on developing i do believe that humor is developed sometimes as partly genetic sure partly survival funnily enough i went on bbc breakfast recently and is it nagaman chase she opened up with a thank you very much so why do you think you're funny she tried to hit me with one of those and i just said i'm funny to survive those of us that are younger siblings or the youngest in the year you'll find an unusual concentration of comedians or funny people who were born in august or are the youngest of older siblings of the same gender that's not a coincidence something kicks in to survive is punch or be funny and there's the class dimension as well because had you developed an enthusiasm for jane austen in the environment you've just described you would have got you would have got punched also i wanted to get laid like i'm i'm i was a straight boy who's skinny in camp i working class girls are just not going to bang me it just wasn't going to happen i didn't even kiss a girl at school i left school with my kiss ginity in who doesn't even get a kiss 17 and i hadn't been kissed there was the brief flirtation with muscle building yeah my dad because that's because my dad my dad was a bodybuilder so i bought all of the muscle mags and he came home and went that's what the queers buy those magazines boy you bought gay mags and just dismissed it funnily enough i have got into my fitness older in life but not for aesthetic reasons for anti-aging reasons yes you did look very well well i've just i'm the cover of men's fitness this month are you i'm the cover flipping out well with your top off top i am the cover of men's fitness april feel free to flash to that in the edit i think we could do actually that might be quite nice but that's accidental i'm not i'm not trying to get big i'm just trying to because it's another thing that happens if you don't come from a privileged background for whatever reason you sort of find out what you're supposed to do at 30 rather than 16 so i'm 10 years so i i can't afford to physically age much beyond about 38 it's a late start yeah and therefore you want to you want to have a longer yeah period of of of creativity or fertility or whatever it is professional fulfillment so so you you go to Middlesex to do writing to do English and English English with and you're allowed to if you pass the exam cross over to the creative writing component in the final year which is be a punishment for serious scholars but for me I knew that if I could get a vote like a academic proof of my writing ability I'm probably going to have have more vocational success getting into journalism or advertising so when did that kick in that not that that ambition because it's not sociology so so where before arriving at Middlesex did you start thinking to yourself I'm going to write stuff I always loved writing stories and writing funny stories for my friends and my mum when I was little and I would always make up short stories and even though we were like just a mandem over the most unlikely crew over the park like next to the dog ship bin skinning up and I sometimes would bring a short story looking back it is bizarre but my friends just accepted me as i want but it would be a funny short story about some adventure we've had under a bridge like with some rizzler or something but i would write it up so something i've always loved doing telling stories right there's many ways to tell stories you can write them you can perform them you can act them which is what i'm exploring at the moment you can you can journalistically tell a story absolutely um you know hunter s thompson's one of my favorite writers so yeah i think that was always there and then when i got on the course as much as i enjoyed sort of masturbating over the you know hegemony and the marxist literary theory of dickens so i would like to write a 20 000 word story and have people that really know their stuff comment on it um but the way a degree so you did yeah so the way those work just so you know you don't just get to run around writing you have to write your play but then you have to do like a 10 000 word essay critiquing yourself picking apart your own process i cannot tell you how well that sets you up for life if you're okay with ripping your own stuff to shit when you go into the workplace and you work through the weekend on the advertising idea for lucasade that you're sure is the solution and your creative director comes in on monday goes i don't like it you have no ego because you literally learned it at uni how to pick apart critique and kill your own darlings like therapy for the intellect i suppose it's if we me and you worked on an idea all weekend for a new podcast we're really enthusiastic and we went into global and they don't like it i probably feel less emotional disappointment than most right because i trained in going okay then what what's next which idea is next why don't you like it what can i learn from your criticism of my work how can i expand your criticism teach it to me i might disagree but i guarantee i'm going to learn something that's all it was or over and over again with poetry with plays so once i dropped into the ad agency again i was on placement with people who have been to Oxford and Cambridge, people with the same.

26:55This was your first job after university? Straight out. So on a scheme, a graduate scheme, sort of? I was enrolled to start training as a primary school teacher that September. Because I thought I can write and teach kids. And I love writing for kids as we go on to discuss. That age group, 8 to 11, I think that's where it's at. You can't change teenagers. You can just help protect them and give them some tools. You can change 7 to 11-year-olds. you can really get some muscular morality in there through literature and teaching and everything. Teachers are amazing. And I wanted to be one. And I thought I can do my creative writing at the same time.

27:30I can become a novelist. And my tutor's exact words were, if you're sure, Russell, I'll sign the form, but they'll be lucky to have you. Then I got to the August. I had all my books. What did they mean when they said that? Meaning I should probably aim higher. Like what? I could do anything if I wanted was the implication. So for some people, and obviously teachers are hugely important people, but for some people, as they approached the end of university, teaching took on a bit of a safety net feeling. It was kind of... I think they were teachers and they felt that me going, I want to earn 20 grand a year, they were like, you can earn a lot of money and be creative.

28:08You could probably do something. And I was like, no, I want to teach. I'm really passionate. Sure. And then my teacher, who's a poet, she writes fictions under the name Maggie Butt, a great name. she writes poetry under maggie brooks she and the another novelist that taught me sue g an award winning novelist they was like look there's an ad agency with one place you're got a highest grade on the degree just go there for a couple of weeks in the summer see what you think travel cards only sleep under the desk that type thing yeah it was me and three others one was oxford educated and literally in line to become a baronet the other the other was like had done an advertising course had ogilvy dna and i was just a fucking peasant nobody with a degree from tottenham campus right um but what i love about creativity is democratic yes it is if three people stand up and make a painting there's no debate three people get up and try to be funny there's no debate if they try and hold a note there's no debate it's it punches through there are prejudices around the reception of it of course black artists have to fight harder and all that i'm aware of that i know my privilege however the democracy of getting into that ad agency i can't and the brief was for a website it was a work marketplace where people have services to offer you could be a copywriter you could be a journo uh and then people that want the briefs are filled put it on there and they match people up like a dating agency so we all had to go away and pick up headlines so i I went straight to my desk and I was pitching for this thing called smarter work where you pitch for your jobs to be done.

29:51And I did the headline, when your to-do list needs to doing. It was the first thing I ever wrote. When your to-do list needs to doing. It just fucking blew everyone out of the water. It was lovely. It was funny and silly and catchy. And so, yeah, they hired me. Were you still angry at this point? That guy was a baronet in waiting. Did that piss you off? Yeah, I think anger is an interesting word because I don't think anger is negative. I think you can get angry in the gym in a good way. I didn't mean it was when I asked the question. It's a fuel. Yeah. So, yes, I still am. Yeah. I'm still like that.

30:24I'm not dimmed at all. I hope that comes across. I think we're safe. Yeah. Whatever happened in that smoke room when that radioactive spider bit me, my DNA changed. I cannot. I know people are struggling, right? and I know what it's like to struggle but I'm doing alright as a stand up I'm aware of that and all I've got to do is do a couple of Maldives buy a couple of watches and then go out on the road again in 12 months that's all I need to do, I can enjoy my life now I've got a 10 year old daughter, I can't I have to yet again go, but wait I'm going to prove myself to you again you can't do that, you didn't go to RADA how will you play Romeo, you're too old you didn't go to RADA I'm like, but can I and also the prospect that I might fail is also really appealing to me Have you ever?

31:15Failed all the time Just all the stand up you fail You mean things that don't land and jokes that don't work because you had a period that you've written about where things were really tough I think in that kind of sense. Any writer or performer fails at least twice a week I would say in any one year But not on a project level Russell All the time. Really? So things that never took off. Last year, probably four things I fully wrote and scripted. And it goes up like a firework. It doesn't do it. That's every year, all the time. And this is when we come back to the emotional strength that you have as a consequence of critiquing your own words.

31:55Try it in the bit. Enjoy the rejection. All I ever ask is a rejection letter. That's all I'm looking for. I love them. What I can't bear is a pitch followed by silence. Yeah, it's just rude. Reject me. Tell me I'm shit. Punch me. Don't fucking ignore me.

32:13was it satisfying was it nourishing the success in the advertising agency i loved it i go of course now by another accident and there's so much accident we don't talk about people always want to make sure if you just work hard and chase your dreams you'll get success that listeners is bullshit people don't want to admit the 15 to 20 percent luck bumped into a bunch james o 'brien in the cafe next guy no i'm on his it's luck luck luck luck luck uh of course i was so desperately trying to stay physically young to do my silly high energy stand-up act i think biologically there must be a way to stay at 35 there must be so i start doing all this weird and wonderful biohacking stuff that leads to a business my wife started which is actually trying to she's got a biohacking business and i'm now the copywriter and creative force on that so i've gone back to that world i was in a copyright meeting this this monday so i'm back there you know typefaces and headlines and ideas and brand personalities and i love it i love it the only reason i can't go back to it is because i'm a i'll be a little bit too well known it would be distracting but one day when i'm not as well known i probably will start an agency and go back to that there's a lot of very very um high profile successful novelists and similar who cut their teeth in there's no point being snobbish about it one of them taught me faye weldon was going to say faye weldon salmon rusty i think as well she was one of my teachers and they don't look down on it i mean they might see it as a stepping stone to something else but it's a it's an end in itself as well it's not just a means to it yeah he wrote the eclair headline i think yeah i think he did and faye weldon wrote go to work on an egg immortal um when did you start itching to do something else then in that when you're working at the agency when did stand-up start i didn't right what happened uh well i've always been that i know i'm being quite serious i don't know why i i'm always been like the funny one always pissing around i think it's because i've got so much to sell you've got me in serious mode but i'm always i can't you know just a joker just my just thinking funny i've always been the funny one in the group um but no one's ever said to me you should might you should be a stand-up comedian because when i grew up where i was growing up that was bernard manning jim davison yeah roy chubby brown malcolm and wise bruce full sight a lot of old-fashioned shite that i wasn't interested in okay um did you laugh at anything growing up was there anything laurel and hardy oh really stooges back to the basics well that's what my dad watched and young ones yeah yeah but i never watched stand-up i just by pure bad luck i just never really seen it and then i go to the one uni that doesn't have stand-up right so i end up in an ad agency with all these middle class people and you're so funny you need to try stand-up and a couple of other people had said it to me and i thought you know what i don't want to go to my grave without having done it yeah so to me it was more like you might do a bungee jump or you might do one pottery lesson or you might do one salsa class just to say you've tried everything got it and that's as far as i went i had no passion interest or knowledge of stand-up i didn't know i didn't even know there was two other russells performing or i definitely would have changed my first name i changed my surname because my real surname is unpronounceable i wished i changed my fucking first name i wish i wish i wish for obvious reasons um but i didn't um i didn't even know the edinburgh festival never heard of it i thought it was something to do with ballet i knew eddie murphy and robin williams that was about it so of course i went on stage didn't even where was this where did you do the comedy cafe on rivington street yeah open spot meaning you can go up and have a try on a wednesday in front of drunk city folk no one told me you have a beginning bit and then you have to have a punch line so i didn't have any you've never really watched anyone else do it before you went I went to Jonglers that week.

35:52You did just have one little recce. One recce. And I was like, I definitely could do that. But I didn't. I refused to have punch. And when you have to have punch, like, why? Says who? Like, fuck off. Who? Why? So I would just tell a really funny story and then go, that's that bit finished. And oh, it's so brave and original. You're so postmodern. So I made, I won all these competitions where people thought I was original. I wasn't original. Back up a bit. Because you didn't, I mean, that night, obviously, it felt right. Something clicked. that first time because you did the second time and the third time you carried on i was very nervous i was sick before i went on and and i thought you know what i don't need this no i've got a good career and the guy there was a Australian comedian there with me and he said just stay try it you can't count tonight do another one because tonight will be a blur and he was absolutely right i went on it was fine i got a couple of laughs but the laughs i got reminded me of the adverts i watched when i was little the ones that scared me of hard drugs there was a heroin advert on when i was little anti-heroine advert i should say and it said uh this isn't just heroin it's marxism it said um you'll try heroin you'll be sick but you'll come back for more and eventually it'll take your life that was my exact experience with stand-up i went on there was hardly anything positive that night i had diarrhea i threw up it wasn't really that good but this laugh came in and i was like i was like what the what was that that feeling i never felt a rush like that in my life i went on the next night and i was like wow and i'm like oh shit i've got this amazing by now i'd been at the ad agency 18 months right i'd gone from 100 pounds a week placement i think i was on nearly 50k a year i was head of copy fucking 25 years old you're flying it's you know i'm gonna make creative director by the time i'm 30 i don't need anything to mess with this working class wet dream right now all my family i'm the only one paid to think i'm the only one sat on fluffy couches giving my opinion and collecting my pay packet don't mess with this russell i couldn't stop gosh i was sick but i came back for more yeah one gig a week two gig a week three gigs a week unpaid four gigs a week five going to Manchester from Fulham and then driving through the night to go back in the eight and then of course I lost my girlfriend I started to fall behind on my rent um because I wasn't winning getting the bonuses uh I started to lose my social life I started to lose my career I started to lose my respect I was a junkie but the drug I was taking was stand-up comedy it was the exact rhythm of an addict and I was addicted it's the right word I was an absolute maniacal compulsion showing people stupid little clips look at me look at me doing it on the phone look at me take distracting people from their desks when they were working on big accounts to take them to the boardroom to put myself on a screen to show grainy footage of me doing an unpaid spot at some club complete insane behavior completely consumed and in the end about two and a half years in my creative director went it's decision time okay who are you are you the next creative director of a big big agency are you someone that wants to trace a showbiz dream meaning you'll fail you fucking you mug and i thought i'm a very safe person it's the only time in my life i've taken a silly risk like that so i called my mum because i knew she would speak sense and i'm still shocked she said it she said go for it which is weird because i was the only one bringing money in she said go for it i had enough savings to last three months and i thought even if my agency wouldn't take me back i'm sure i could find a job i had three months to start making money um so i left and i was on like 60 70 grand a year whatever they offered me to like maybe 200 quid a week yeah and in the third month i got a job hosting some comedy shorts on channel five wow 35k i was like that's gonna get me through that and get me to next year and then and then you just start and i started winning competitions and then i got signed by a big agency we haven't talked about your mum much at all in fact until you mentioned her there so what sort of influence was she in in your earlier years she's verbally quite dexterous i suppose i hadn't really noticed it until recently it's my wife pointed it out to me but the way she phrases things are very dramatic if she'd like if you're walking up she's walking along with my auntie elaine and my auntie elaine dropped her mobile and it fell in the canal and she went and her phone slipped into the black abyss everything's like that yeah my migraine is i'm sliding down the wall i'm tired i'm gonna drag my wearied bones to the pub for a drop of alcohol so she's a poet that type of thing yeah hard worker resilient doesn't believe in moaning it's probably slightly too tough for her own good she had to be did she yeah maybe yeah just the toughness and presumably with a big side order a pride now given where you are yeah so what's happened to you she takes enormous pleasure oh god yeah i'm all i'm still over the fridge every new thing i do you've done so it was a quick rise it was a quick ascent you you made the decision you're on telly within three months and the awards i think are quite significant winning things must act the laughing horse it's called the i don't know if it still runs the laughing horse new act of the year and greg davies has won it you know it's been won by some decent people i won that when i was still just at work and that's what when an agent approached me and the agent said the same thing to me in the same month you need to decide who are you my creative director who are you and i thought i need to go to edinburgh and see what happens and i mean to coin a cliche you've never looked back really from that moment onwards it's been no i think during the three months i was like i've made a mistake here i had i literally had the bankruptcy websites i had the resources just in case i needed them to protect myself financially it went that close to the wire and then i started to get paid maybe like 150 200 pounds a set so if you do seven or eight of those a week you can sort of make your rent yeah um i've never been driven by money ever um and that's that is a bit of a money-making tip for people if you're driven by what you love doing the money tends to follow tends to what i don't know have you ever given any thought to who you would have because i i was adopted as a baby and so i've only realized quite recently that i've always carried that path not taken with me because there's the unadopted me that would have had an entirely different life do you know much about your no not really i've found out a little bit more about it but i wouldn't have you met your birth parents no i haven't do you want to not really i mean it's too late actually in one case i do know that much but i've never had any particular urge as i get older i'd like to know a little bit more about my roots but not necessarily the individuals but it means that i've always had an idea a vague idea of what i would be had i stayed in rural island with a teenage single mum and my life would have been very different do you ever have you ever wondered about what would have happened if you'd been born and raised in an environment where where where all the things that you've subsequently developed passion for had been commonplace if you'd been one of the people that all the time do you we've already spoken about it if my old man if my old man was carrying a birth defect a birth defect that kills you between the ages of 30 and 60 yeah he made it to 62 just because he was a gym bunny he could have gone at 30 i've had a very different life um i am someone that is quite the party animal and i think he kept a lid on those tendencies but it's funny what you're saying about identity and well i meant i meant more about what i mean what would you would you have been an oxford don or something like that oh you mean if i'd been into winning a posher background or intellectually no like culture i could have gone to yeah yeah i mean i i i i could if i'd have been given those books and pushed in the right way.

43:44That's what I mean. This is not my mum's fault. If you're listening mum, I hold no grudges. But when it was clear I was quite bright at primary school, there was talk of me sitting the entrance exam to Latimer, which is an academic school for high achievers around my way. Not the private Latimer. It's in North London. It's like a gateway for Oxford and Cambridge. It has all types of people. You just have to pass the exam. My mum was just a kid herself. And I was, I suppose I was about seven or eight. And there was a lady who worked at the deli counter in the co-op. In fact, I called her Cheese Lady because when I was in my buggies, she used to give me cubes of cheese.

44:19Jackie, Cheese Lady. And her son was a bit of a prodigy and he'd gone to Latimer. And my mum asked the Cheese Lady, should I send Russell there? And she said, I wouldn't. It's a pressure school. David's under a lot of pressure. So that was the end of that. The Cheese Lady at the co-op decided my fate. And I backed my mum up. I agreed. I was even at 11. I stand by my decision. I feel like I understood the facts and I bottled it basically. Should have gone there. Probably would have gone to Oxford and Cambridge. But yeah, it is what it is. I wouldn't change anything. No, I just wondered. I just wondered.

44:52Is it something that fascinates me? I'm really into my science because of the biohacking. And what's becoming apparent is the mixture of genetics and environment are a lot more complicated than we first thought. I think we've gone about 20 or 30 years thinking it's all nurture. But the latest science is showing it could be as close to 60-40 genetically in favour of genetics. Now, 40 % is huge. And with epigenetics, you can push that another 20%, so it's like 70 % environment. But still, you've got to just put five newborn babies in a row once they're past eight days and they've reclaimed their birth weight.

45:31I can already tell. Extrovert, introvert, a bit naughty, a bit dairy. My daughter at three, four months old, she shouldn't have learnt that stuff. So we just can't. Twin studies are the answers. If you're interested in this stuff, go away and read the stories of adopted twins. Watch the documentary Three Identical Strangers. It's very unethical what they did to those lads. It's horrible. It's very instructive about the interplay between genetics, identity and fate.

46:06so when did you when is the next plateau of relaxation and achievement so you you get the channel five gig so you're all right when was the next milestone as it were what was the next well i knew i had to in my business the way you prove yourself as a if you want to be taken seriously as a comedian with critical as well as commercial you have to go to edinburgh to see if the arty farties like you now i knew enough about advertising to understand how structure and storytelling worked and i quickly worked out that the shows that do well in edinburgh they're the ones that had a theme and a thingness to them but if you're a new comedian who's barely got 50 minutes of material and it could be on airplane food or the nature of your relationship with your dad how do you gather that all together and pretend it has thingness the answer is three years of training in branding and marketing piece of piss for me so i looked at everything hunted for some common elements and i thought what i'm talking about here is pretension and class and how we put on a display versus who we really are that's it i'm going to call it the theory of pretension i'm going to develop a chemical or mathematical formula just a piss take for pretension and work out on a chalkboard just a holding device of course and i went up and did that and got nominated for the newcomer and then i just kept going back till i won the main thing and how how about your relationship or your your reaction with other comics because you hadn't how did you feel about them how did you interact with them what did you did you did you find some that you admired because you had no real hinterland of watching comedy so once you start i learned on the job really yeah and then what did you learn or what did you think of the other ones i just always think everyone's amazing and better than me do you was that insecurity of a sort it can be uh i don't see i don't like sink i just it's admiration go imagine being able to do what they can do uh but i'm i'm the bollock i'm gonna fucking go and smash it i wish i could do that as well it's more like that uh the best thing i ever did with my first management well i have to give a shout out to avalon i'm sure they don't like me anymore they were brilliant for me i loved i loved being with avalon they were really passionate about putting me as a support act so that I could learn.

48:21And they put me with two people who I'm not very much like. Thank God. Jenny Eclair, who I had to open for. I had to open for Jenny Eclair's audiences, which is largely women of a certain age they were at the time. And I look younger than my age. And then Lee Mack, who's really well-crafted, perfect jokes. I just learned so much. I just, I never, if any new comedians, here's a tip. If you're working with another comedian you admire, try not to use the sentence i wish i could stay and watch but i gotta get back i got yeah you were just you will not make it you must be absorbing them like terminator fucking two at the side of the stage like a lump of liquid metal i watched every minute of every performance every single time of jenny and lee if i could if i could unless i physically had to be somewhere to earn money i've just learned something because what you learn in watching the same thing you learn the variant what the variables and the non-variables and the things you can control i watched how they used their bodies lee max got a very unique way of pushing the material through to the extremity of his bodies if he's doing a welsh impression he'll carry on until he's just on the floor going like so will stewart lee linguistically i just stole from them there's no there's no other word for it and i must have absorbed it probably because no one ever uses those names when they're describing me no of course not but the people i've studied most are probably stuart lee lee mac to a completely unrelated individuals comedically tim vine jenny eclair sarah millican yeah i study people who are different to me because the universal i guess it's going to sound a bit pat but it's the universal language of laughter i think it's yes it's that finding the finding the you finding the global in the local i say yes but it's also and this is what i do in my in my mark when i got my marketing hat on if i'm going to launch a new water brand if i was launching cano water and i was launching it i wouldn't study water brands what would you do study i wouldn't study drinks right i'd go into a hat and pull out DIY stores how did DIY stores sell DIY and I'd study that for a week then I'd go back and study water is there any illogical unrelated thing which paradoxically somehow sheds light on this brand that always is always the mistake people make when they're creating something is they never look at the idea that doesn't make sense because they think well it doesn't make sense how can it

51:06idea that doesn't make sense is the big idea a couple of quick examples red bull i was around with it when the team were trying to launch red bull they put it into research you know when you see it on the apprentice where they do the customer research and it always goes horribly wrong everyone opened these cans some people like physically reached for bins and heaved at the smell of this drink it's it stinks it's too expensive and the cans too small what do you think the copywriter experiment and the correct and the art director experiment off the back of that shrunk the can made it more expensive made the taste stronger because if you're about to do a substance that's going to have an effect on you oh oh do you taste that we're going to be off our tits in 20 minutes that and of course it must give you wings if it's that strong yeah avis could not catch hertz no matter what they did free car they cannot catch hertz rent a car they cannot so they go into ogilvy where we we just can't we're fucking we're always second do you know what do you know what idea ogilvy presented you're second that's why you try harder they were first the idea that doesn't make sense so i studied jenny eclair not to look for the universal in the humor i was looked so if a female comedian's making menopause jokes to a female audience what if I had to talk about male testosterone to a male audience in that way what if I was to be as excoriating about my own vanishing masculinity in the same register I probably would never have thought of that if I hadn't studied how amazing Jenny is with her audiences that's incredible river jumping we called it at the agency is it?

52:45river jumping it's a brilliant way to brainstorm I can see why you're enjoying being back in that world so much with your wife's company it's all storytelling of course it is everything is storytelling it's all connecting as well isn't it and it's all getting people to do things whether it's to laugh or to buy a product yeah or to or to feel getting people to feel i suppose did you a final question about because i want to talk about the the the new um career the new the new book did you have boxes that you wanted to tick now now that you're up and running because the telly obviously follows but with and then the size of the venue that you would play because you've got a scientific approach to deconstructing comedy and art did you have that as well yeah so you want all right by this time next year i want to be this and that and the other as i was surprised at what fame felt like given what an attention junkie i am so i'm at a wedding i'm the first one up dancing with the nannas on a night out i would be center of the dance floor at the rave first with everyone looking at me natural extrovert love being looked at love being are you the guy who was good dancing yeah do you want a photo so i thought i'm gonna imagine how good famous i'm gonna love it hated it yeah hated being filmed eating a sandwich newspapers started to write about me and i i realized there and then that i want to do the biggest rooms possible but i don't necessarily want to be as recognized as possible okay took me a little while took me probably seven years and then of course it's once gene is out the there's only so far you can row back so i probably say no to some things that would surprise people um i don't want to overstate it i've just refused the opening meeting for strict so when you're in you've probably been asked for strictly they come to you for the first come just come in just come in for the meeting i've refused to even attend that because i just got no intention of doing it the jungle which i used to host is just i never say never if you're watching itv of course i'm not a snob i've got bills to pay and i'll be usually a tax bill i'll be in there you know deep throating a kangaroo phallus no problem but for now i've chosen to be able to go to the supermarket my dream combination is can go to the supermarket but can get a netflix series to number one yeah but it's dramatic or comedic can go to the supermarket but can sell a 5 000 seater i've already achieved that in stand-up i'm sort of in i'm in the sort of 800 seat to 5 000 seat range that's the range i'm in perfect it's perfect as well just dramaturgically because obviously i've played loads of rooms bigger than that i've done arenas multiple times for various fundraisers i've done festivals i think sometimes it's 12 000 people you do you have to wait for the laugh to roll in so it's a lot of fun but it's not as much fun as a 3 000 seater where i can hit the back of the room.

55:44I'm not throwing shade on any comic that does arena gigs I really am not but the ones that do nine Hammersmith Apollos rather than arena I see you and I respect that I respect that because you care more about that joke hitting the back of the wall than you do about just cashing the cheque or having a pissing contest in front of other comics Which brings us to when Brian met Terry which is makes a lot more sense now given some of the stuff that we've learned in the last hour about the wanting to be a teacher, the passion you've got for that particular catchment area of children, although this is aimed at younger children than that, but it's not it's about trying to give children something Right, well a writer is, I will always call myself a storyteller first and foremost, it's what I trained at, it's what I love my book, my bag today the guy from the publishing house had to try and carry it, it's five books in there I love stories what have you got on the go at the moment I've got it's Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead I'm reading Emma Louise Boynton who's a feminist writer that writes about female pleasure I've got a proof copy of that I'm reading it's very good Emma I injured my forearm reading the blowjob chapter I'm re-reading The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch and I'm reading Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen again I don't like rock music so let's read the biography of a rock it's a story and it's just an incredible story loads and I've always obviously I'm reading loads about acting because I'm training to act I'm reading Uta Hagen Stella Adler well enough about other people's books let's get you back to yours so the point is I always wanted to write books as soon as I got my profile enough to be able to vanity publish initially someone came to me do you want to write a novel I was like shit yeah so I wrote this novel it was a tremendous amount of fun but everyone wanted it to be funny and my fiction's quite thoughtful and serious so there's a bit of a disconnect still sold it still loved it then i got to write my memoir so i just love writing and then once minna was born my daughter i thought now i know what makes children laugh i'd love to write for children so it took a couple of years just because the comedy was a bit busy yeah and then quarto the publisher came to me and they were like we want you to write a non-fiction book and i was like oh i thought actually no i've got really i'd love to write a book about how to little boys become men and masculinity like a caitlin moran juniors for boys yeah no that's a good idea let's think about it and i had my cat on my lap terry and i was stroking it and they went what type of cat's that i went to burmese cat burmese what's that and i went have you got a friend like an attention seeking friend who has an orange juice and they were laughing and they went can you do that about any other breeds i went yeah my pug colin you know you might do farts in the corner they went write that so i wrote a breed guide for children called pet selector i thought that's specialist it went to bloody number one in kids books only for about two hours it just went up but it was i can say it went there it was on amazon i saw it there's jk rowling was about four beneath me i was like what the hell and each one you can read as a short a short story yes so that was very successful and that was for like seven to eleven year olds and i did a big i loved touring as i said i do believe that these conversations we're having about masculinity and men and boys the mistake we make is we keep talking about we need to go into secondary schools sadly it's too late all you can do now is bind the wound we need to go into primary schools that's where it's at um so i loved speaking to them about animals and all the benefits of the husbandry of an animal for a child is very important if you're just a seven year old you're the bottom of the food chain everyone tells you what to do but you've got a pet stick insect that's yours as i did called rambo that's something you're in charge of you're the boss you're the love you're the care the stakes are high for you that dies if you don't take care of it you get to practice adulting through the husbandry of an animal it's the emotional connection a child can have to a pet ant i'm not even joking would blow your mind so i wrote i wrote i wrote wrote to a tour and then they said how would you feel about doing a story about animals for even younger readers because there's an and we could talk about why but there is an absence of men passionate about writing for that age group i'm not saying there isn't you know there are some brilliant male authors but if you look at it it's julia donaldson's is that and i thought well that's my favorite age group to speak to three to seven year olds i speak their language i move like them i play like them i'm wild like them i'm impulsive like them and i was speaking to my publisher and they were like what would you do and i would you would you want to do a book about one of your pets and i said well it's a bit of a funny week for me because i'm a bit upset i thought terry was going to die my burmese cat and i like why and i said because we got a chihuahua and my cat just stopped eating and it nearly it was like collapsing i I thought he had cancer or leukemia.