594 - RUSSELL KANE - Guard Rabbits, Cancel Culture, & How He’s HACKED His Biological Age!

26:16I'm a big fan of eBay. So am I, Stevie, especially the eBay app. It seems like you can find absolutely anything on there. I mean, I use it for so many different things, from window wipers to my car, to just really cool flannel shirts that I wear every week on this show. And do you remember my old brown one with the zip that I liked? I do, and you couldn't find it because you lost it and then couldn't buy it again from the same place. I was spending ages trying to find it online, and then I downloaded the eBay app, and I found it in about 20 minutes. True story. Oh, mate, I literally just scroll through it and window shop even when I'm not looking for anything specific, and I'll always find something I want.

26:49Yeah, going back to my shirt, there was about four or five different photos on there, and it arrived exactly how it looked in the photos. I was buzzing. Well, you know when you're buying on eBay, you'll always find some hidden gems. Yep, when you find great deals, you can't help but say, when it's eBay. You're bang into your animals, aren't you? Was it last year you released Pet Selector? Yeah, that's going great guns, that. Yeah, so is that a kid's book? It's a kid's book. It's a kid's guide to dog and cat breeds. Because there wasn't one. Right. You can get like a slightly dry National Geographic kid's book.

27:22And the Dalmatian was bred for blah, blah, blah. But there was no guide that was engaging for children. Right. So yeah, it's just 20 of each cat breeds or dog. Well, I might need you because I'm in the market for a dog. Yeah. But I don't know what dog to get. and the listeners keep telling me my favourite kind of dog is an Australian what's it called? Labradoodle. No. Australian. I don't know. The one from Bluey, the Australian sheep dog. When I got one blue eye and one blue. They're one of them. But everyone's saying I can't have them because I'm not home enough. That's right. And that's why I wrote Pet Selected because the most important thing when you're selecting an animal to show your life is to match to that animal.

27:59And people never match. There's three things you need to match. Can you afford it? and keep up with the cost. But also the most important thing to match is your energy and temperament. What energy and time resources do you have left over at the end of the day? We go, wish I could be spending these buckets of time and energy I have left. If so, get yourself an Australian sheepdog because you'll be walking for two hours a day. So that should drain your energy off. So what, what? Come rain or shine, come hangover, come depression, you'll be walking two hours a day. Yeah, that's not for me then. That.

28:35So I've got three chihuahuas. They're fucking done in five minutes. Save me home. I'm fucking tired. My legs are like sausages. Straight back home. There you go. That's what you need. They're Mexican. We're going to build a wall. Shout out, losers. How old are you, three chihuahuas? They're all one. They're all one. So they must be rapid. You must have your hands full. Because of the size of them, it's easy to walk. The only thing with a chihuahua is in case people are thinking, I should really look at the chihuahua. It's not a beginner's breed. so far as training with the psychology. How many chihuahuas have you met that aren't twats?

29:09Honestly, can you think of any? No. How are yours? Obviously, I know my shit backwards. They don't even bark a new person walking into the house. They don't greet me in the morning. They know, no touch, no talk, no eye contact until they are calm and submissive. Then they get all the love. Really? Yeah. And you taught them that? Dog training is so simple. People overthink it. you must disagree with the behaviour you don't want more of and agree with the behaviour you do want more of that's it so how do you stop them from shitting inside straight away how do you what's the technique well the first thing it depends what age of dog we're talking about well when do you get yours puppies no no no they're all re-homed from various places it depends what age I mean puppy training is just about being consistent crate training is amazing so you have like a metal crate that the dogs live in which is what they would do in the wild they would make a burrow just enough for them to turn around at the end and no dog unless it is been locked in for days or is medically unwell will ever shit in its crate ever they just don't it's like us mine's just bad example on it lads fucking shat in the porch mate I fucking went down a K hole shit myself in the porch I had a key in my hand I thought it was shit trickling out and uh no but most most animals won't shit in their bed right Essex men aside yeah and uh so what The solution is simple.

30:30For the first three weeks, which is the amount of time you will need to take off work if you're thinking about getting a puppy, which is why I don't fucking do it, that dog is either in a crate or you're watching it. There is no, there's nothing else. There's no, he's just running around for fun. No, no, no. He's in a crate or you're going to supervise play and follow him around. The second, as you're following around, the bum does it, outside. Good boy. They'll get it pretty quick. You've got to watch it. How can it have a mistake if it's in the crate or being watched? cannot have a mistake. It's impossible.

31:01Fucking hell. The only way a dog has an accident is if you just let it, like a bellend, run about your whole house. Which I would do. See, the first month, the first two weeks of my dog's life, they live in, they bang in the busiest room of the house in a crate surrounded by us, reaching in, lots of love. What if you miss out having a shit? What do you do then? Well, they wouldn't shit in their own crate, so you're having to take the dog out every hour, right on the grass or the lawn or everything. Right. So have you had a whole variety of pets then? Have you owned a whole variety of pets? I've had obviously dogs and cats.

31:30I'm bipetual. I like dogs and cats equally. I've had obviously all the shit you have when you're a kid. Lizards, snakes, insects. That's not common. Yeah, with Norwich boys, we've never had that. No. There's never been a fucking lizard in Norfolk. You're cousins that you keep in the basement. Cousin Brian, did you come up? It's time to rank me off. Gandhi would have liked us. And the first house I moved into, I tell this story to the kids because I'm touring the book. It had in big bold letters, you had to double sign it on the tenant agreement, no cats or dogs. I signed it, got a house rabbit.

32:10Loophole. I've got a French lock rabbit there about this big. If you get hand reared from when they're born, they are like super cuddly. They're just like cats and dogs. They're a bit thicker, but they still like sit on your lap and you get loads of affection. What's a snake like? depends which species of rice what's the one you had garter snake big boy no just egg crickets and worms how are you getting any enjoyment out of that what's it doing when you're 11 fucking feeding an insect to snakes were you never 11 I spend most of my time torturing insects and setting them on fire let alone feeding them to a fucking snake heaven that's it fucking eat it fucking hell but it's the house what people don't realise about rabbits is you can train them to use litter trays because a rabbit will always poo and wee in a corner for safety.

32:58So you watch the corner that your rabbit has picked and you can buy a triangular-shaped litter tray, goes in the corner, fill it with a special litter, you've got a litter-trained rabbit. Don't get me wrong, it's still like a Maltese will drop out now and again when it's stressed. But mostly it uses the litter tray. Anyway, I was living in Walthamstow at the time, an urban up-and-coming part of London, and I came home from work and my window was fucking smashed out and I'd been robbed and I knew I'd left my laptop on the table and some cash in the kitchen, went out to the kitchen, laptop was there, cash was there.

33:32The burglar had smashed the window, come in through the lounge and then let themselves out through the front door. I was like, well, I could not work out what happened. So the next thing I need to check my rabbit's okay because during the day it slept in the bathroom with its toys and another litter tray. And as I approached the bathroom, the rabbit, who was obviously still disturbed from the smashing, did what rabbits do in the wild to signal to each other. This is why they're called Thumper. they beat their feet on the floor to communicate at distance. But a French lops foot is like that. They also growl if they're scared.

34:04So this burglar has broken in and heard... Fucking fucked off. I had a guard rabbit, mate. True story. Fucking hell. It's only because the rabbit was still doing it that I worked it out because I shat myself and opened it and then Barbara made my rabbit. She was there. Scary, no? Yeah. Yeah. I only lived two, three years though, so. Fucking hell. You're from Enfield, right? Did I get that right? Yes, I was born in Enfield, but I've lived a lot in Essex as well. Okay, Enfield, they had the famous poltergeist. Yeah. You heard about that? Green Street. The house was about 15 minutes walk from my house.

34:40That's what I was going to ask. Walk. I lived in Brimsdown Avenue. Yeah. And that joined to Green Street. So it was literally like that. It's only because they're long streets it would have taken me that long to walk. But it is literally the road that joins them all. Was this quite a big thing then? when you were younger? No. Was it not? No, not really. I think it was a generation before, but then it's become a big thing again because of the documentaries. I never really knew about it. Did you not? I'd heard sort of rough. Yeah. I've probably heard about it at school maybe, but it's more once I'd moved to Essex and moved out.

35:11It's what the film Conjuring 2 is based on, I think. I've not seen it. I'm not really that kind of guy. But are you a man that believes in all that kind of world? um so far as believing in ghosts and messages from the other side I don't believe in any of that because I completed my education and it's obviously bollocks grow the fuck up what about aliens then well aliens are a mathematical almost certainty are they of course but we've never seen one though have we technology to travel between stars is not a mathematical certainty that will happen in the age of the universe I don't think anyone knows the answer to that But we live on what's called a Goldilocks planet.

35:50Have you heard that term before? Yeah, I heard it. That means we're just the right distance from our star to have liquid water. Yeah. So if you look up in the sky, every single one of those white stars is a sun just like ours. And all of them have bits of rock spinning around them, most of them, that are planets. Right. Billions upon billions of infinite varieties of our self-same sun. It is inconceivable that some of them don't have a bit of rock the right distance away from liquid water, just based on probability alone. It's almost certain there is some form of light. It could just be plasm.

36:27It could just be a fucking jelly with no awareness. It could be a seven out of ten. I've asked an astrophysicist this. So far as intelligence you might encounter in the universe, from like a piece of slime on the floor, up to a super intelligent being, we're only about a seven. We're very clever. I'm a four. Yeah, you're a four. Anyone from Essex, shout out. What comes after five? So if you think about the probability of that, if there's a, let's just, there isn't, there's probably almost infinite, let's say there's a billion, billion, billion, billion stars and all of them have bits of rock. Are you telling me, no, no, we're the only one, the arrogance of saying we're the only one with the right temperature.

37:05As soon as there's liquid water, there's life. Right. So do you think any of them fuckers have come here? Like, do you reckon, has there ever been an alien come to Earth? I don't think the universe is old enough. So the way they can track the history of the big... Feel free to tweet me because I'm probably mangling some of this science. But broadly speaking, we know there was some sort of explosion. So the closer you are to the middle of that explosion, the younger you are. And the ones further out of, obviously, if you think of an explosion, those particles have been travelling the longest. And some particles are just leaving.

37:35So the oldest societies will be at the very edge of the universe because they've been expanding for the longest. So we're talking, they could be a billion light years away. That's how it would take light one billion years. If I turn my torch on and it was powerful enough, it'll be a billion years for you. Yeah, seen it. So to develop the technology to travel a distance that would take light a billion years, and we know we can't go faster than the speed of light unless someone has cracked a new law, it's probably not been invented yet if it can be invented. The only way we would get around that is if somehow finds a way to fold time, space and travel through black holes and use them as wormholes.

38:18But there's no evidence anyone's done that. How do you think, this is a fucking heavy question, but how do you think the world started? Why do you think we're here? Because that's one, whenever I try and think about that in my head, my head goes, I can't do it. Well, we don't know the answer. But for our specific universe, the Milky Way and all of that, our galaxy rather, there is evidence that there was some almighty explosion from a very dense center. So really, just like a bomb, a really big fucking bomb with loads of energy. And all the bits of shrapnel going like that through space. And as they stopped, some of the burning hot balls of energy, stars, are so heavy and dense that they pull in bits of rock spinning around them.

38:58that's just happened in almost infinite number of times that's it and then the rest is down to accident there's liquid water how actual life started like the first single cell bacteria I don't have the expertise or knowledge to speculate on that we just know that where you find water you get cellular life and then it's just the accident of evolution you're not a religious man not at all no me neither I'm very spiritual I have lots of wonder from the universe on a dance floor. I can fucking, I connected your heart, man. I fucking love you. Like, I'm extremely spiritual. Yeah. But within the realms of the scientific laws of reality, I don't think I need a deity for me to draw my values.

39:46You know, people go, where do you get your values from? It's like, what are you telling me? You'd be fucking raping and murdering if you didn't believe in God. That's not a value, mate. That's just a fucking bouncer stopping you being a nonce. We're going back to grovey now, aren't we? What are the scientific laws around being spiritual? Because I automatically link religion and being spiritual because I'm not remotely either. I think you can have a sense of wonder and awe in a way that is hard to put into words and a faith in things like love. We can't see love. We cannot see it. I can put your head in this.

40:18You could be in love. You could have never felt love. Your brains will look exactly the same in a scanner. We can measure dopamine. We can measure oxytocin. We can sort of talk about these hormones, but love is not a thing. yet we all believe in it. So there's an example of a spiritual dimension of life, which I hope you do have. Are you married? I am. There you go then. You believe in something you cannot see or prove. Fair enough. Yeah. That's a great answer. Can you prove your wife loves you? Have you seen a scan? No. So you have faith in her love for you and have you got children? Yeah. So that's faith, isn't it?

40:47So there you go. There you go. Home, hands up. That's a good point. And I think you can look up into space and ask questions like that and have a sort of an expansiveness in your heart and a wonder of where we come from. Are you asking that to yourself when you do that? We might be having, the conversation we're having now is essentially a conversation with a spiritual dimension because it's about the deep excitement and wonder of being alive, of I've applied to Ibiza tomorrow to be with friends. I'm not doing that in a logistics, intellectual way. It's more than just emotion. there's a there's a between men as well when we're out there's something more going on than just having a laugh and connecting there's a spiritual aspect to being with the lads do you know what i mean like your soul your best self what is your soul is that essence the inner part of you if we all if i was dead now my body everything would be the same my body would be the same i would look the same but i'm not there so what who am i am i a collection of neurons am i greater than the sum of my parts so that's what spirit or the soul is is when two things come together and create something greater than they would a part like you guys so what do you i don't know how we're getting here but what do you think happens after death then do you think that's it could put it done i do i'm afraid yeah i do but i don't think but i think my spirituality is so for example the show that won me that award in Edinburgh was about my dad yeah who i spoke about in the past tense from 2003 when he died to two, in the present tense rather, from 2003 when he died to 2010, my dad is, my dad does.

42:26I still do it sometimes now. I remember this. It's the first thing I ever saw of yours back in the day, yeah. So how can, you can all think of someone now who's passed. Yeah. So they're not dead, are they? Because they're alive in memory. It's unique to human beings. We can have a photo on the wall and it's almost, okay, we can't hug them or touch them, but they're alive. Charles Dickens is still alive. Queen Victoria is still alive in memory and discussion. That is what I think happens after death. I think you can exist in spirit because you can exist in the hearts of others and how you're loved and remembered.

43:02That's what I love about that. You got kids? No. There's a Disney film. What's the one sitting in Mexico? Oh, I know what you mean. Ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a. Yeah, I know what you mean, yeah. That one. It's all about Mexico. What's it called? It's the one with a colour... What? Coco. Yeah. Great film. All she does is provide drinks, coffee or cocoa. Anything drink-based, we've got you covered. And cocoa is, I love the concept of cocoa because the Mexican people have something called an ofreda where they put all pictures of the generations that have gone before and they have a Day of the Dead each year.

43:38I've heard about this, yeah. And you could have like three layers on your Day of the Dead and their faith is so long as someone is remembered, they're still alive in spirit. So my great grandma, I had a strong relationship with her. But as soon as the last person dies that remembers you, that is the end of your human existence. Right. So you could live for another 200 years after you've passed. Yeah. All the things you create, you exist online. You never know how your material is going to be used. You might go on to write books or create things. Your grandchildren might have such a relationship with you that they talk about it to their granddad.

44:09You should have met my granddad. So that's you in four or five, six generations. That's what can happen after death. that's something to believe in and fight for yeah is that your values that's your legacy is how you're remembered and the feeling and the memory of what you leave behind comedy in a sense and the comedy show finishes and the curtain comes down and it's passed how how people leave the theater feeling that's also a sort of spiritual experience because how can i be laughing the next day and experiencing something still yeah it still exists the show still exists that i saw so theater is a sort of like a short form of the life cycle.

44:47That really, you've just, what you said there reminded me of a Macklemore lyric and it says, you die twice, once when they bury you in the grave, the second time is the last time somebody mentions your name. Dave, if you're a stand-up comic, you die a third time, which is in Maidstone on a Wednesday.

45:02So you said you sort of - It's like Lionel Messi today, mate. Straight fucking, straight in. See, I can do a football. I've never seen Messi do that. Messi's not a fucking idiot. So, going back to your stand-up and how you got into it, where was that spark? Because you're not from a comedy background. You didn't particularly have an interest in it. And then all of a sudden, you were really good at it. I've got like an X-Man origin story. Right. So, I was just mandem in the ends. Even though I had a brain, I went to a comprehensive. And anyone who goes to a comprehensive, there's one very dangerous thing to do.

45:39And that's to be seen to be achieving academically. You're going to get bullied. Right. So I was very bright at primary school, then pushed it all down to survive. It did help me develop my sense of humour. So I didn't know it, but I was, it's like wax on, wax off. In Karate Kid, where he doesn't realise he's learning karate. I didn't realise I was using comedy, defending myself against the bullies, and just trying to get some pussy before I was 16, which of course never fucking happened. I left school without even kissing a girl. Right. But the desire for female attention, wax on, wax off, trained the humour.

46:14So I left school with barely any GCSEs even though I was secretly bright but I knew not to show it and then I got in the habit of well this is great I don't have to revise it's a fucking easy life. Left school full chav over the actual chav over the park. Really? But with my dad I couldn't go off the rails so it was just lazy chav rather than criminal chav. Yeah. So what's chav mean to you? Just a peasant with no goals who wants to sign on. Right. Was that just to fit in with the people around you or just? I enjoyed it. I enjoyed just doing fuck all and going, I literally just wanted to dance every weekend to house music.

46:49And I actually said, it sounds so wrong when I say it, but it wasn't done in like a suicidal way. I used to say, I've got no interest in living past 40. I fucking love partying. I just want to, I want to go out like Jim Morrison. I just want to fucking party till I drop. That was my game plan. I knew to sign up to A-levels because that's another two years of just killing time in the shitty peasant college that was down the road from me. So I left my A-levels with a D and two Ns. An N is near to being graded. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, N. And so that would have been my end of my story.

47:24I wouldn't be sat here today showing off. I would have probably gone on a building site or something like that. I don't think I would have ended up in prison just because my dad was such a fucking silver back knuckle dragger, bouncer type authoritarian. But I wouldn't have done anything. and I just, life is talent. You do need talent. You can't just choose to be a basketball player. You've got to naturally be able to have a good aim and be tall. That's only 5%. It's about 80 % work like a psychotic fucker, hard work. So that's 85%. And the bit that no one ever talks about, but should, is luck.

48:0015 % of work is blind fucking luck. look, I'm here today because I was bored one day. I read some DMs, never, I wasn't familiar with your work. Yeah. Pure chance that I'm here. That's an example for you, yeah? Right. I didn't go through my agent. No. I saw your DM by accident. So here's an example of your hard work meeting the luck of me seeing the message, right? So luck is part of this business. Yeah. So the lucky thing, so to me to go from, let's just smoke weed by the dog shit bin and die at 40, to go from that to I'm going to get a first in English. I was dancing next to a speaker, 6 a.m., under Vauxhall arches, Strawberry Sunday house music, fucking tooth over the top of the air.

48:45And this girl comes across, alcohol, nothing illegal. And this girl comes across the dance floor at me, fucking about two inches taller than me, like, drop-dead gorgeous, obviously a model. Bearing in mind I'm someone, by this point I'd had one girlfriend. I'm 18. Yeah. One girl had kissed me. Literally, I hadn't even snogged anything other than the one girl who'd recently dumped me. This girl comes across the dance floor, puts her phone number in my hand. I like the way you dance because I love dancing. It's like something from an American movie from the 90s. Went home 7am, obviously couldn't sleep because I was so excited from the dinner and dance I'd been to.

49:23Called her, she was up. Bang, we fell straight in love. But it was one of those sort of techno house music, swirling, chaotic teenage relationships. She was 18. I was 19. And then summer finished. And she said, I'm going to uni. And it was in London. So it's great. So when we're getting in from the nightclub, I didn't have to go to my nan's who I was living with at the time or my mum's. We could go back to hers, fucking shag noisily and all that stuff. Yeah. But what it meant was we were waking up on the Monday morning and I put my shitty Burton suit on. I was working in a watch shop at the time, selling jewellery to rich fuckers.

49:59I was already pissed off and hated my life. So I was like that in my shit suit on a train, like an old man with no goals. And she's like, yeah, I'm going to sit on the ground. I don't have a lecture till two. So we're going to drink beer and maybe read some books in the sunlight on the quadrant. And I'll never forget it. This didn't happen gradually. That September, I went to work and I was like, oh my God, I've been conned. just because of my postcode and where I'm from, I've been conned out of being one of them. It's fraud, isn't it? It's no one ever taught me. Yeah, you can go and sit on the grass for three years and get up at 10 and do a degree and do posh things.

50:36I just thought, no, you're a peasant. You go to work, that's who you are. You go and do a shit job that you hate and you die early. There's no option. But there was a fucking option. She said, no one ever told me. No one ever tells any lads from council estates. Right. But by the accident of me dating a posh girl and having my face rubbed in the life I could have been living. I went down to lunch that day and I felt something break. Now, some people would have gone in the other direction. I'm suicidal and had a nervous breakdown. But it was like someone reached around and went, mate, you haven't plugged these in.

51:09Bang. I was like Bradley Cooper, fucking limitless. Pupils dilated and I wrote, today's the day I changed my life. Today. How old were you, sorry? 19. Went home. across the park to my nans who I was living with proper council flat single box room no wardrobe hooks stuck on the wall for my clothes I had to use a disability lift to get in the bath I had a built up toilet with all the fucking disabled shit stains over it's about as bleak as you can imagine and I said to my nan I'm going to redo my a-levels I'm going to go to college researched there was this place for people that are over 18 that want to redo their a-levels got an a-level sent through a box because we couldn't afford the internet sociology I thought I'm angry about sociology I might as well study it opened it up six months later bearing in mind this is a three-year part-time course or two-year full-time six months later I was at Enfield College in my own chair as a because I had to enroll as an external student sat the sociology a-level exam highest a grade that year quickest a grade I'd go to the House of Commons I met speaker of the House of Commons I won an award for academic achievement and I couldn't turn it off then I couldn't go right well I've got that now let's enjoy uni I was like I'm gonna do that again I'm gonna outperform every fucking tough cunt I meet that's had a head start over and over and fucking over again it was like someone had just woken me up got to uni yeah and I didn't know anyone was didn't know Jane Austen was didn't know Oscar Wilde was I had to catch up so as well as doing the English degree I was having to get up at six in the morning and read extra books like something you know when you see rocky punching me in the basement rocky one running up the steps and all that yeah that yeah academically yeah that's what i did right because you've got to remember you can't just suddenly switch your brain on at 20 you haven't read any of the shakespeare or any you haven't read any of it they've all done that yeah in their posh private schools or their decent comps so i was having to fake it because i had the natural intelligence i was passing all the degrees i was on when knowledge was new to everyone but i I didn't have the base.

53:10I also didn't have the vocabulary. So someone would go, so what's Jane Austen saying here when she describes Elizabeth Bennet as impudent? What does impudent mean? I never heard that word. I don't know what it means. No one knows what it means. So they all knew what it meant because they've all read, studied books like it when they did their GCSEs or A-levels. So I was like, I've got a problem here. How am I going to get my, I want to do English and be a man. I need to get my vocabulary up. I was so ashamed of this. I've only admitted it in recent years. This is what I did. Every time I encountered a word, a posh word that I didn't know the meaning of, I wrote it on an index card.

53:46And the reason I use impudent is it was word number one out of 5 ,000 cards. I wrote impudent down. Now, we did have internet at the college, but I can be arsed. So I taught myself the diacritic alphabet, which is when you see the little symbols above words that you don't know how to pronounce them. Because if you see impudent and you come from my background, how do you pronounce it? Impudent? Impudent? Impudent? Make a dick of yourself pretty easy. So I had to learn the impudent from the first syllable. So I can still see myself writing the little mark. Then I'd write the cognates underneath it, impudently, impudence.

54:20So I knew all the variants. And these cards got like that. And I would, when I'm on the toilet, when I'm walking. And as soon as the word occurred to me naturally in my thought. To use it. I threw the card away. Oh, right. It was now part of me. I kept all the cards. And then about 10 years, maybe 15 years ago, I burnt them in case. I thought, if anyone ever finds these, they're going to know I faked my vocabulary. That's what I thought. But now I look back and think, you didn't fake jack shit. You were just caught up. Yeah, you know it now. So hung up, such a chip on my shoulder, I was so ashamed of how far behind the line I'd started that I hid the work that I'd done to catch up.

54:57I wasn't telling people I was getting up and reading those extra authors. I kept it. It was shameful to me. But now I look back and think it was admirable. Yeah, yeah. Were you using those words in your stand-up then when you started? Well, that comes a lot later. So this is a good 10 years before I'm in stand-up. Yeah. But I would use them in essays. Right. Or I would use them in a discussion in the class. Yeah. So I think that's a contrapuntal thing, and I'd slip it in and see how people reacted. Right. The problem is when you sound like me, or indeed the other Russell, Russell Brand, for all his faults, there's a prejudice.

55:30It's like we shouldn't use those words. if you were interviewing Peter Hitchens here, and he went, I went down to the cafe downstairs and it was rather obstreperous, which means noisy and chaotic. No one would go, oh, look at him, showing off using the word obstreperous. You would just say, well, of course he would do that. Yeah, if I said it, the listeners would kick off. They think you're doing it to show off. Yeah. Like you don't have the right to use polysyllabic academic words. It's a prejudice that's put upon you, even though you're a white bloke, you're living under a form of prejudice.

56:02Yeah. I'm over all that shit now. And I was over it long before I did stand up. Right. But what happens is when you learn new words, you don't remember whether you learned them from the cards. Then they're truly part of you. I can't tell you which words I learned where. Once they're absorbed, like learning French or German. They're just in. But does knowing those words, and you've obviously changed your life for loads of reasons, but those words and that dialogue, did that benefit your comedy? Yeah, in the English degree. No. No, learning French when you're a kid benefits you academically across the board because it trains the way your brain uses language and associates thought.

56:40You wouldn't necessarily then go and start saying bonjour on stage at the comedy store. You're likely to have a more expansive, the part of your brain that deals with language processing is going to be stronger, like the biceps is going to be bigger. So help me in a sort of sideways way. In a literal way, it wouldn't help me because you'll notice I've not used any long-sounding or academic words today. And the reason is my favourite speakers and writers are the opposite of that. So I like Haruki Murakami or Ernest Hemingway that uses the simplest language to convey the deepest thoughts. Whereas some thinkers in stand-up like to use the longest words on top of the shallow thoughts.

57:20I'm not interested in that. Neither am I interested in long words on top of deep thoughts. I think clear, concise language. We had a big discussion about existence, the universe, space, and the meaning of life without any academic language that can't be accessed by the general listener. Yeah. So it wouldn't help me in that sense. Right. So the reason I'm giving you that massive long story is to show you I couldn't turn off this overachieving plugged in thing. Left uni again with a first, again with an award, and I walked straight into my dream job, advertising, marketing, thinking up headlines, puns, working with big brands, Vodafone, Craft, Nestle, across the Land Rover, Manchester United Football Club, big campaigns, exciting stuff.

58:07And that was it. But they were doing this thing where we go and watch comedy once a month. And, of course, I went with them one week and I was like, definitely fucking funnier than that. Everyone's telling me to try it. So I did, and then the rest is history. But I did that five years, I did the advertising, and that taught me about structure, how to tell a story and how not to be upset when everyone thinks your idea is shit and you need to put it in the bin so I've been trained as a writer very useful when you're a stand up I have no ego over my routines when they don't work I just go fuck it then even at the start have you bombed on stage even if it's a show that I love and I've made six episodes and it gets axed I'm like bothered next what how I'd be so when you're trained the training like people in the SAS right yeah put them in the corner and a fight kicks off in the pub do they shit themselves no do you know why because their bodies and minds are trained for combat right so i'm trained to edit yeah and be absolutely brutal with text or any sort of material or any creative material i'm trained to kill your darlings they call it yeah yeah so that's you have to you can't work in advertising how did you go from like overachieving so much and like with the degrees getting the firsts and stuff yeah to then when you go into advertising or then stand up how do you take anything negative after being so good constantly you're going to be a shit comedian at the start yeah yeah yeah so it's not about being good it's about being um relentless no one had to quote mike to paraphrase mike tyson you're better off being someone that can take a punch rather than someone that can throw a punch as long as you can throw half a punch what would you rather be in the boxing ring the best puncher in the world or the best at taking punches in the world I'd rather be the best puncher, I think.

59:51Right. So you're going to fight me, the best person who can take the punches. You're fucked. Eventually you're going to get tired and I will defeat you. Feel like Homer Simpson. Eventually you're going down. Yeah, right. You're going to go down to the person that can be punched more because they cannot be knocked out. Stand-up is the same. It's not about winning every night. It's about going, fucking bothered, next cunt. Do you remember your first time bombing then? Yes, of course. And because I'd started late and I thought I was this prodigy genius type character, I didn't realise you can't cut out the five years learning your craft.

1:00:21Right. And I was smashing all these pub gigs after work. I was like, fucking hell. Get headhunted by an agent while I'm still at work. Win a big competition for new amateur comedians called Laughing Horse New Actors of the Year. I'm not going to need to leave work. I'm earning£200 a week. Finally got booked to play one of the big clubs up the creek, Greenwich. Got booed off. Did you? Booed off. How did that feel? Cried. Did you? Yeah. What, backstage? no no I made it to the taxi you know when you you're like run and I was like alright woke up the next day got over myself and this is what I want to teach people aged 18 to 25 who've not been taught it by their parents resilience and growth is in those moments so turn around if you've just trodden a dog shit turn around is there anything in the shit I can use what have I learnt by treading in shit someone's fucking left a diamond in that shit there's a diamond in every shit you tread in and that night i learned something i won't bore you something mechanical about stand-up you just got to keep doing that it's the same as evolution it's the same answer to the question how do we exist is relentless experiment over time leading to the finished result that's why you're sat there as a human being because evolution just kept experimenting experiment and stand-ups the same how did it feel going to the gig won after the bomb.

1:01:46Horrible. I was changed. Were you? I was changed. Battle hardened. No, I was changed in the fact I knew that's what can happen. Right. So that takes about three or four years to get over. That's it. All stand-ups. All stand-ups take about five years before they can walk on stage like that. Do you have any nerves at all when you go out now? Of course. What, even now? Not so much. Obviously, something like this, no. Yeah. And probably not up to about 6 ,000, 7 ,000 seats, probably not much if it's all my own audience. Right. There is adrenaline and excitement and sort of a box I'm going to knock these cunts and come on like that.

1:02:28Once it goes beyond that, even if everyone's there to see me, once we start to get into 7 ,000, 8 ,000 seats, that does get you on the toilet a bit just because of the sheer size of it. But it's not self-doubt nerves. the self-doubt nerves kick in when you're booked to do stand-up but no one is there to see you or even worse no one is there to see stand-up but the person doing the event thinks stand-up can be quite a nice feature of their night so we're going to get you to do 20 minutes they are expecting you but it's not about stand-up tonight good luck that's when you shoot yourself right what about music festivals do you do them?

1:03:01yeah yeah Reading, Leeds, Latitude I'm doing Lost Village this year that's what I've got to fly home from my beef for one night right They're great because apart from the, I've not done the Glastonbury one, but I've heard it's a bit tricky, that one. But a lot of them are people looking for a break or there's only so much you can jump around to music. So they tend to be quite receptive. Different festivals have different followings for their alternative stages. What's Reading and Leeds like? Because we're doing Happy Hour Live there. Which tent though? The stand-up set? It's a new, it's the office stage.

1:03:32Yeah, the new one. Yeah, not the stand-up. It's like four podcasts. That is the good stage. Is it? Yeah, because the age of it, because the age of the punters is like 12 or something. Yeah. They don't really watch stand-up. So the stand-up stage amongst that age group is getting a little bit smaller, whereas I'm going to unbox an object live. Oh, here I am, I'm taking something out of a box. That's our show solid. Yeah, we'll do that. Oh, we've just been sending some products, I'm going to say something bitchy about them and then buy a Lamborghini off the ads revenue. If you had to boil your whole career down and pick your mountain, your top of your mountain, the best thing you've ever done.

1:04:10Yep, Edinburgh Comedy Award. No doubt about it. You won that quite early. 2010. So far. Yeah. So far. I can't think of anything that... It would be hard to top that. I mean, if I won a BAFTA or something like that, it would be lovely. But I don't think it would match. Because without sounding immodest, I know myself now. I know what I can achieve. The rest comes down to luck. Do I make the right programme? do I meet the right co-writer does it work great you won a BAFTA great I'd fucking love to win a BAFTA or an Oscar or something like that I would fucking love to don't get me wrong but it wouldn't be the moment I realized I could be something in the world that was when I won that award that's when I went what was that award what was Edinburgh Comedy Award right Perrier Award whatever does that mean best show in the Edinburgh yeah that's when I went from just fucking you know you're a nobody you're just having a lucky streak to fuck I can do something meaningful with my life when you Google me in 100 years even if it's one line there'll be fucking something there and I don't think you can beat the power of I don't mean self-love in an egotistical way I mean that moment you start to rate yourself and love yourself as a human being however you do that it could be through fatherhood it could be through providing acts of service it could be through discovering faith it could be through getting married whatever that moment is and for me it was the establishment, which is mostly Oxford and Cambridge, going, no, you're good at what you do.

1:05:36You're so good. You're going to win the same award that Stephen Fry has won, that Lee Evans has won, that Al Murray has won. It would be hard to top that from where I jumped from and landed by winning that. There's loads of other things bigger that I could do. I'm starting from a platform of extreme privilege and recognition already, so they would probably mean slightly less. What about if you went on to win an award now for something new? Like if you do this, would you be Romeo and Juliet? Not so much the acting, but definitely for writing. Like my children's book, done really well. And I've got the next one's coming out in April.

1:06:12That's for even younger readers, aged four to seven. So I'd love to get a recognition in that. You've got to remember that's how I started out. My aspiration at the beginning was to be a writer. That's the linear, isn't it? I think so, yeah. that's the I wouldn't everyone's like what would you have to do if you went back to your day job and I'd I'd love that I love it I fucking loved do you still like comedy do you still like would you in your spare time are you going to sit there and watch other stand-up comedy very rarely right I tend to go to books and film yeah podcasts and radio that said in the last two or three years my wife has changed that we started finding a few comedians that we can actually laugh at who do you like watch together and I find it useful.

1:06:56It's not that I'm arrogant and don't want to watch anyone else, but because I know all the aspects and how it all works, they have to be doing something wildly different to me for me to forget myself. So that would be either Tim Vine knocking out one-liners or someone like Bill Burr saying horribly offensive things that I wouldn't dare to say, or Stuart Lee doing sort of cerebral anticomiton. I like all three of those performers. as they couldn't be more different. What they've got in common is they're wildly different from what I do. So I find it quite hard to enjoy a man or woman with a microphone doing stories about their life.

1:07:34It's like, boy, that's what I do. A chef doesn't want to get home and cook, do you know what I mean? Do you like John Kearns? I love John Kearns. Yes, very much. I've actually, weirdly though, Sean Walsh I really rate, and he's the closest thing to what I do where I do go and watch it. Paul Chowdhury makes me laugh. Yeah. But Stuart Lee I just went to. He's the most recent thing I've been to watch. finally mate because obviously you're one of the Britain's most known comics do you worry about cancel culture and the way that's going and what's your opinion on that I'd be lying if I said I don't think about it yeah but it's not it's going to be something like this that makes it happen to me it's not going to be something I say on stage really why is that then because I'm not in control of what you put out yeah and you could cut off a beginning bit that gives context yeah and put out an offensive bit.

1:08:23So for example, I did a podcast about fatherhood the other week. Yeah. And I was talking about when my wife tried to breastfeed and couldn't, how sad it was for her. And she felt sort of a little bit bullied by the culture. Breast is best and all that. Yeah. And I said, what I turned, turns out what was best is a woman whose mental health isn't crumbling because she's failing at breastfeeding and feels like a failure. Right. So breast isn't always best. I think a woman who's not having a breakdown was best for her. Right. They just put out me saying breast is not best. Which is fucking in that, you know, men shouldn't be talking about breastfeeding anyway, according to the culture.

1:08:59So to say that, so that it's very easy to be edited in a way that puts you in hot water. Yeah. But so far as, you can't say anything now, I feel like you can say more now. Right. Do you? Well, if you put us in a, put the, let's go back to 1975 and put the conversation we just had out on a projector in people's homes. Mate, you'd probably be arrested for some of the shit we said. For the swearing, for the indecency of the language, for saying things about the Queen or the Prime Minister. They couldn't talk about, up till 1967, you couldn't even talk about gay sex. That was illegal. So people forget how much you couldn't say back in the day.

1:09:39It's just... It feels like the online sentiment towards comedians like Ricky Gervais is turning massively now. Like, he was... I'm a big fan of him, but you see the comments now and everyone's just calling him out for stuff. But so? I hope I get cancelled so I can earn 200 grand a night like Ricky Gervais. It must be really difficult. I've been so cancelled, I can only do five arenas. It's bullshit. How has he been cancelled? Yeah, true. He's on Netflix. His art is alive and well. What's the afterlife? The office is on. Extras is running and he's touring to arenas. Where's the cancellation? Yeah.

1:10:17In what aspect has he been cancelled? Name me one aspect. It's just people online with the lynch mobs. What, so some bell-encle Terry in Luton doesn't like you? That's not being cancelled. Being cancelled is when you can't work. Like poor old fucking Greg Wallace, that's cancelled. Right. He's gone, he ain't working. Yeah. Ricky's working. So it's harder for stand-ups to be cancelled. As I say, doing things like this is riskier because things can be cut in a way that make you sound like you said something you haven't said. Yeah. but on stage I always got an interesting thing I'm with Jason Manford on this one when someone says well you can't you know you know it's like these days I've got one question for them what is it you want to say that you feel like you can't say and they go why it's a sheet because they know it's something probably illegal that they want to say so it's already covered off by law yeah very few things that you can't say that you that you want to say that you can't that are covered off by cancellation probably the trans debate is the only thing I can think of yeah where we it would be lovely for free men to have a frank discussion about gender identity, but we daren.

1:11:18So I'll give you that one. But other than that, I think everything else that these, you want to say is illegal and covered off by race, hate and hate speech already. It's not you'd be cancelled. You're just not allowed to break the law. You're not allowed to utter something that would lead to violence. That's the law of the land. So if you start using P words and N words, they're associated with physical violence and racial assault. So that's why you're not allowed to use them. It's not like to inconvenience your day. Yeah. There we go. It's been good fun. We've gone everywhere today. I thought we didn't have written down, but I loved it.

1:11:52What's next for you? Where can people follow you? Houston Station. Where can people come and see you? Go to russellcane.co.uk. Obviously, when's this going out? It's in a couple of weeks. So I restart in September. Just as you're watching this, I've just restarted on the road. It's not many UK dates left, but because I'm going to places I've already been, you might even get some circle, if not upper circle seats in some venues. What I'll say to people is this. I move a lot when I'm on stage, so there are no shit seats. So don't go on, the stalls are sold out. Fill the house. I'll put on a show.

1:12:28Then I've got Canada to tour as well, and I'm doing a few European countries. I'm all over. In Edmonton, everywhere. Same with Europe. I can't be arsed to list them, but it's on my website. and I'm doing 24 Evil Genius a year now. That takes up a lot of time. I've just started working on an ITV project. Don't know how that's going to pan out. I filmed one day on that. It's like a quiz show type thing. Nice. All the usual panel show stuff. I've got another kid's book coming out. I've got another one. I've got a right. What else? Children in Need I'm working on. Fucking hell. Have a day off. And Evil Animals as well with a spinoff from Evil Genius.

1:13:02Yeah. Well, go and enjoy Ibiza. This has been Jack Makes Happy Hour podcast for me, Jack Makes Stevie White and the brilliant Russell Kane. Russell, we always finish on the same question. We may have already covered it. What's the meaning of life? How many words am I allowed? As many as you want. The meaning of life is to learn yourself thoroughly first because you will not be able to get anywhere close to what life is about if you don't have fixed the relationship with yourself. If you haven't fixed your relationship with yourself, you won't form good relationships with other people. you won't form good relationships with alcohol and other substances include porn and everything else so you've got to get to a point where you look in the mirror and i know we're british we fucking hate language like this we're not talking about love yourself in an egotistical bellend way if you can't look in the mirror and like and love yourself you are fucked okay you are fucked you're going to be overweight or you're going to be addicted or you're going to be die single all those things are going to happen to you so the first thing to work on is to something that costs no money download some podcasts read fix your relationship with yourself then and only then can you live life in a meaningful way which is to love and connect and suck all of the marrow out of every bone of life have as much fun as possible with a smile on your face and then fucking die.

1:14:30Old, but healthy. Don't die old, but kill me at 60. I'm not interested in frail years. I want to be 99 with a fucking rod on smashing every girl in the nursing home. If Lindsay's dead, if not, I'll be smashing her. See you in a few days. Cheers, man. Nice one. Get some beef with me. Nice one. Cheers, man.

1:14:56Jack Mates Happy Hour.