Russell Kane

0:04Hello and welcome to The Midpoint with me Gabby Logan. Today I'm chatting to comedian, presenter and writer Russell Kane. He never saw stand-up as a career option, but now you just can't imagine him doing anything else. Russell got hooked on making people laugh and decided to leave his job in advertising to pursue his newfound dream. In the years since, his relentless determination and energy on stage have seen him become one of the most recognisable comedians in Britain. Russell isn't someone who holds back on anything, and his online rants even have their own name, Kanings, so perhaps that's what you know him for best.

0:39He also presents not one but two podcasts and has presented TV shows such as The Apprentice, You're Fired and The One Show. Away from comedy, Russell strikes me as a very curious person and I know that longevity is something he's particularly interested in, not least because alongside his wife Lindsay and his best friend, he runs a supplement business called Cholt. This was born out of his own interest in biohacking and wanting to feel younger for longer, basically making the most out of his middle years. So there's loads to talk about. Let's get started.

1:15Russell Kane, welcome to The Midpoint. And I've got so many things to get into with you. It's been a long time. We used to spend Sunday mornings together quite regularly, didn't we? Yes, I'm going to say yes, because my memory is so ruined. I've already done two Ibiza this year and I'm going to do a third. Do you know what's happening now? I keep waking up and making really bad diary mistakes. So I got an email this morning. It said, what are your logistics for Friday? And I'm like, what's going on Friday? I've got recovery with hangover after Divina's in my diary. That's what I've got in. Apparently I'm filming Bargain Hunt.

1:51So I just keep making massive. It's really bad. I don't know if I'm really busy or it's early onset. It's one of the two. we were supposed to do this together we're apart today we're in our own locations shall we say you look like you're at home because there's a lot of books I'm in the library yeah we'll get on to your love of books oh my gosh it's every wall yeah yeah amazing there was two ways out of the council estate read or sell illegal playstations and the reading has served you well yeah just so that we can clear up the I used to do a Sunday morning show on 5 Live we had a brilliant producer called Isabel Williams She was a massive fan of yours.

2:30And I'd have a slot where an up-and-coming or established comedian would come in and do half-an-hour paper reviews. And you used to come in and do that. Come in and chat. Yeah, so just to remind you. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Because you might have been thinking, gosh, did I once sit as a pundit on Match of the Day? And I can't remember it. And, you know, it wasn't that. We know I didn't do that because I know absolutely nothing about football, unfortunately. I've tried so many times to get into the football. I've, like, tried to force myself to go to football, thinking eventually I'll just, I'll catch it like I do with everything else.

2:59like things that I'm not interested in, I do them enough and then I start to enjoy them. Maybe some brilliant football biographies. Maybe. It's just the game itself. Not enough happens. But if you knew the characters, you'd like it maybe. Mate, who's the one? There's George Lamb, who used to host. I can't remember which programme it was. It was quite a big football one on TV. And I was like, look, I'm really rubbish on football. They went, no, but that's what's going to work. It'll be so funny, it'll work in your favour. And I went, all right, great. So I went on and it was like, you know, Lots of men stood around in a circle, like old school Top Gear style.

3:33And the first question was, so obviously with the restructuring of League 3 and the promotion, it was like someone was speaking Swahili. I had nothing. Already in about three minutes, our conversation has gone on three or four different tangents. Which actually, this is good because one of the things I want to talk to you about and you've talked about is adults ADHD diagnosis, right? And I don't want to get massively into your particular kind of story because you obviously suspected that the way your brain works, that even though you read copious amounts of books, which if you could sit down and read for hours and hours, one would think, well, how's your attention?

4:10Got any kind of deficit there? But you went on a journey which was very interesting, I think, and it will be interesting to a lot of our listeners, because we haven't really got into this kind of later life diagnosis. Why did you embark on that? Well, because I kept making fun of it and then I kept getting in trouble for making fun of it, I thought if I get diagnosed with it, I'll be able to say whatever I like. That was honestly, that's as far as my thought process went. So I'm friends like obviously you've got Rosie Jones. She can do as much humour as she likes about her condition. You've got other people that can do that.

4:41I thought, right, there's loads of comedy and making fun of ADHD. So I should probably get diagnosed with it to give me a licence to kill. because all that ever happens is people tell me that I've got it whilst I make fun of people that say they've got it. So I thought that was really interesting to explore with stand-up, the sort of paradox and the contradictions, and it's all the stuff that works in stand-up. So I went, and I think I'd been sat in the chair about a minute before the guy was like, we don't really need to proceed any further, you know, on my hands and legs and knees. I'm a strange case in that I can't stop moving.

5:10I'm extremely hyperactive. My mind roves on millions of subjects. But as soon as someone says, right, you need to do that, I'll complete it on time, on budget and with no loss of focus whatsoever, regardless of the type or nature of the job. I can just focus on the things I choose to focus on. So to me, that's just a human brain. But everything's been pathologised within an inch of its life. My favourite question when I was at my... I was obviously diagnosed in record time. Usain Bolt did a salute at the end. Sporting reference there. Love it. He said to me... Exactly. He said to me, do you struggle to focus on things that don't interest you?

5:46And I'm like, yeah, of course. I don't want to be friends with someone who focuses on things that don't interest them. That's a serial killer. You know, that's a psychopath. So I think sometimes some of these ways we diagnose it are a bit suspect because there isn't a human being who isn't bored by things that bore them. It doesn't even make sense as a question. I think the other thing, Russell, which I think you've also looked into in your comedy is why so many people are so desperate to get that diagnosis later in life, because you kind of know yourself by then. So why do people need a label later?

6:19I don't know why they do. I didn't. As I said, it was a cynical exercise in wanting to explore something theatrically that one is not allowed to do because you've triggered me and I've got it in the world we live in. So I thought, well, I know I know I fulfill the categories because I've done a little fun online surveys. Well, I think there's two different reasons. A lot of people at children, raising ADHD shouldn't make fun of it. You know, babies have got it and then they're shoving an iPhone in a newborn's face. You know, new mothers are virtually crowning with an iPad ready at the cervix so the screen can instantly be thrust in a baby's face.

6:54You know, if a child's brain is growing and you flash repetitive blue light and short form content in its growing brain, it's probably going to learn the pattern of short form, repetitive content, blue light. poirot um so this doesn't come from a place where i've got it right my daughter is in the other room having anxiety attack yeah lick it licking a youtube screen and having anxiety age nine so i've made all of these mistakes i just think we need to face up to the fact that if you scroll these poison boxes adults and children alike your attention will suffer full stop it's not we're not recognizing it more and diagnosing it more these days and more aware speak to primary school teachers.

7:34Concentration has gone down and it's gone down because we are not learning how to sit with a slow task for a long period of time in childhood. And even adults are forgetting how to do that. And this isn't your first rant on this, right? And your canings, if you like, your YouTube kind of rants, which you said actually can engender more ticket sales than you doing an appearance on some kind of BBC One primetime show. When you do this about this subject, do you find people kind of push back and say, oh, it is medical, you don't understand? Or is there a lot of empathy for what you're saying? Well, they used to.

8:11I don't think they can because I clearly have so many of the challenges. It's like I'm riding about five horses at once, in my mind. The difference between me is I'm quite comfortable riding five horses and I'm able to sort of navigate them. But I know that's not normal. but I don't think I mean I've got a routine at the moment this is it is a joke but it's sort of true I think it's more abnormal to not have a label so if we go around a circle someone will be like yeah I've got I'm on the autistic spectrum I've got anxiety I've got ADHD I suffer with veganism and uh and and the last person will go I don't have anything what's wrong with you you freak get out on the flip side of that because there will be people who are going well I now have to take medication.

8:53Now, if you need to have medication or you want to take medication to try and quieten your ADHD because it's causing you problems, I guess that's why you would go and get a diagnosis later in life. Of course. If you haven't learned to cope or you haven't learned ways to cope with it. You might do, or you might be looking, this is terribly cynical of me, but I think sometimes, certainly some men I know are looking for hangers to go, well, you see, yes, I did that with the lads in Latvia at the weekend and I'm not proud of what I did but that's me ADHD babe. Me ADHD makes me make impulsive decisions putting 500 euros into that girl's bikini and that was me I've literally heard things that are about five sentences away from that and that's what puts my back up.

9:38Now we're not taking it like my friends have got children that have got severe concentration issues and need to take Ritalin and I clearly am like screws not wired properly but we need to get more serious about what is driving this concentration deficit. We need to face up to this. I pray to God, and I don't even have much religion, that Macron makes social media illegal for 15 and under. That would be a good start. But it's the smartphone itself that is the issue biomechanically for the brain, in my opinion. Social media is bad for anxiety and eating disorders. My 19-year-old son is brilliant in lots and lots of different ways, but he's cooking while scrolling.

10:23Yeah. It's like, put the thing down. Just move it. When was the last time you queued or had a sit-down wee without your phone? Honestly, it just doesn't happen. I don't take my phone to the toilet. Well, you're in a minority. I promise you, 90 % of men now do sit-down wees. Men are sitting down to pee so they can scroll. And I'm one of them. This doesn't come from a place of judgment. I'm not like fashioning wooden toys and doing Latin classes in the garden. I'm a wreck. I'm a phone addicted wreck. So how do you deal with your daughter Mina then? So let's go back to you as a kid. Yeah. Because clearly this is something that you've had your life, your whole life, right?

11:00I don't think so, no. Because I went to part of my diagnosis journey, Channel 5 special while sobbing down the camera, please, was they had to phone my mum because the parents as he was. But my mum has memories of me with my pens, doing my homework, studying, reading and focus. This is something that's got worse as I've gone on in life. And there's a brilliant I think it was in The Guardian yesterday. There was an author who gave his recipe for how he's just knocked out four bestsellers. He got rid of his smart. He had no phone for a year. He just got rid of it. He had a landline snail mail and he had emails on a laptop.

11:38and his productivity went up, his concentration went up. But now that he's selling his books, his publicists are like, get your bloody phone back. Of course, we need it. Listen, as I said, I'm not getting any of this right. I'm in the dog poo rolling around analysing the faeces. Interesting the way you're framing this a lot because you're very careful to kind of not want to look like you know all the answers. And a bit of that, I think, wouldn't have been the case 20 years ago if we were having this conversation. You'd have been less careful about that. But this plays right into your podcast because it's all about not wanting to be kind of offensive to people in a way that are cancelled or, you know, feel like you're kind of...

12:12And this is definitely something that is new in, you know, relative terms, obviously, and probably led... I just don't think 20 years ago you'd have been couching this in quite the way you are. You'd have gone for it. You'd have eviscerated, you know. Maybe if it was something I didn't do, but I genuinely do the things I'm mocking on this occasion. Genuinely. I'm not just like doing that to soften what I'm saying. I genuinely scroll whilst cooking. I genuinely struggle to put my phone down. The last thing I do, instead of reading a chapter of the amazing book I'm reading, I'll put that down and then I'll watch someone having a fight outside a pub on my phone before I...

12:51That's me. Some of the films are so good. But that's not me softening what I'm saying by pretending to be just like you. Okay, so all those millions of books. I'm in the trenches. those books behind you now you're in a different trench and all around you how do they you know they i'm supposed that most of them have been read but how do you sit and read a book anymore well i do that all the time i mean i i'm reading a yeah i'm reading matt haig's humans at the moment what a brilliant book um i read i go fiction non-fiction fiction not in my hand and i always have an audiobook running in my ear as well for when i'm you know like tidying up or doing washing or doing all my chores.

13:28I'm a complete manic. Stimuli junkie. Yeah, I just love stories. Men particularly don't read enough fiction. It blows my mind when my men don't read fiction. And men almost never read fiction by women. I was speaking to Elizabeth Day about it. This was news to me. Some of my favourite authors, Iris Murdoch. Iris Murdoch, I'd studied at university. Margaret Atwood, obviously, I absolutely love. And why should we read? Men are like, well, I want to read about World War II. I'd rather read a book about World War II. Well, I would rather read a Ben McIntyre thriller about World War II. And the reason is this.

14:07When I want facts and figures and information and real facts, I do go to nonfiction. But when I want truth, I go to fiction. Because you cannot beat wearing the skin of someone else for 400 pages and seeing the world through their eyes. and the more different they are this is not like lefty, like read a novelist read a novel by a black female author like get out of your comfort zone well it's just more, it's like you travel further if I read a novel by a Nigerian female author I've talked about saving money on an air miles I'm in Nigeria but I've always been that way I love stories, I love telling stories I love drinking stories in but you weren't as a kid encouraged to think education was for you were you?

14:51you didn't excel at your A-level You didn't go to university straight away. Correct. It wasn't something that was around you. So have you made it something that your daughter feels, you know, is absolutely for her? Yes. She came home from the hospital on the first night. They're literally just like a milk slug, vegetable piece of meat on a mattress with fluids coming out both ends. And she still had a story on that first night. It was a picture book. I've read every single night from the only night she wasn't read to was the night she was born by C-section. has been spent in a hospital. And we still go up for story time.

15:27If we're here, all three of us go up, me and my wife and Minna. Is your wife Lindsay a reader? She is now. I've totally broken her. I've changed her as a human being. She's a house music raving reader. So the ADHD, we can tick that off in terms of a topic that I was desperate to get into because you've brilliantly attacked that. The other thing that has to be kind of quite close to the start of our chat is you're lying. let's say what it is, lying about your age for a while. Yeah. Because that ties in, obviously, turned into a brilliant show that you did, but also ties in beautifully to this podcast.

16:00You're 50 this year, and we can say that. So you took how many years? Five years of your age, was it? So this, I mean, we're going back now. What happened was I was really, I was still doing my day job and new and everything. And I've been doing this biohacking stuff for years, for about 20 odd years. So I'm really, when I'm reading nonfiction, I read science mostly. And I go to the original papers and chase all the references and check who's paid for the studies. And I just refuse to believe that aging is predestined. So I got really interested in how I'm not talking about Botox and filler and the vanity side of aging.

16:36Hair is the only vanity thing I'm interested in. I'm talking about slowing down cellular aging on a mitochondrial level. I was already doing that and doing various bits and pieces. and I've built up this almost Brian Johnson type regime over the years. Aside from the supplements, what were you doing that people weren't doing 20 years ago? Diet, eat all food groups, don't exclude any food groups, but I don't eat anything processed. I eat as much as I can all of the time whenever I can and I try to move for 60 minutes every single day and I do an 80-minute show. Human beings were born to move. Do not be in a relationship with someone you don't love and doesn't share your values with a rubbish sex life.

17:15end that relationship it's aging you you should be i don't want to use inappropriate language but you should be shagging all the time dating all the time doesn't matter whether you're together 10 20 years you should be sleeping eight hours a night and your relationship should be stress-free and it's easier said than done for a lot of people isn't it the the relationship part of it especially when you get to this age because you might have had all of that right 10 15 years ago 20 years ago but you might have got to a stage where it's not quite what it was and it's and And it tracks exactly the same when you rip your shirt off and look in the mirror and go, my belly was there 10, 15 years ago.

17:49But you know what? Life's tough. So I'm going to what I'm going to have is a visceral fat around my organs and die early because it's quite hard, isn't it? All right. Bye then. So that's all I hear when you tell me that, because me and Lindsay work hard on our relationship as hard. I don't work really hard on stage. Then come home and not try with my wife. So would you think if somebody is thinking they're listening to this thinking, well, I don't have sex with my partner all the time and I'm not. are they not working hard enough or is it time to move on and work harder with somebody else it could be either human beings right if you put a human being in solitary confinement they will be mentally ill within 48 hours right within a week you will be really suffering and within a month you might have damage you never come back from that's how wired we are to bond sideways everyone thinks they're this independent person i love my own company i love solitude but it's within the framework of other human beings.

18:40So communication, yeah, I get that. Because the thing I'm thinking of is three of my relatives who lived to be over 100 who spent the last, well, one of them we are pretty sure was gay and he never had a relationship because he wasn't allowed to be openly gay at the time. So he died at 105, had all his faculties, didn't live in a care home. Was he going away for weekends throughout his life? He might well have had a relationship we didn't know about. But the other two, my two aunties, had very full and busy lives, but there was definitely no sex going on. Well, interestingly, and this will make you laugh, the stats are different for men and women.

19:11So men are more profoundly affected by having no social contact. Right. You think that men are the miserable, more independent of the species, and we are. But ironically, if you look at unmarried men versus unmarried women, unmarried women's longevity is unaffected. Unmarried men die early. They die a lot earlier than married men. There's a real disconnect, isn't there, in terms of there are a lot more older women looking for a man, basically. There are men to have. So you misunderstand me. Life isn't just about sex and your partner. Connection, sexual connection is the best, is the gold standard.

19:44Sexual connection with a sweetheart who you love and gaze at, like you met yesterday, is the gold standard. But there are loads of other types of connection. For example, religious people live longer than atheists. Hard for us atheists to hear. Correct. And it's the same everywhere. where parts of the world where quirks of geography force miserable old men to be surrounded by cousins, the gap between female and longevity disappears. So any type of connection. But of course, the best connection, in my opinion, is emotional and sexual connection with someone you adore. And that has to be worked at because you get a couple of three years of going at it like bunnies.

20:20And after that, it's about effort and dating and making changes and doing a spiritual and emotional work on you. So it sounds so W asterisk Anki, but if you don't do it, you will end up in front of Emmerdale, not having sex, living with a mate. That's what will happen.

20:57so biohacking going back to the beginning of the list of things that you're doing is something you've been doing for it sounds like a couple of decades well we had professor rose ann kenney on the podcast who is a professor of longevity and longitudinal studies and her brilliant book age proof um is fantastic and and all the things you say i mean not quite in those terms necessarily but all the things you say are those factors that come into the blue zones don't they you know those community purpose you know having relationships but also in terms of the food and genetic kind of biohacking have you delved further have you looked into your you know dna and what you might Well, I come from my dad's side of the family, all really unhealthy and die early and all go have schizophrenia and kill themselves and stuff.

21:39And then my mum's side of the family is all like immortal. For example, my granddad passed away last week and he was on his last day of life. He had breakfast, cup of tea, toast, said goodbye, fell asleep. So I'm a family of two halves. They still don't know. They think it's 60-40 nature nurture. So we're only 40 percent genetic destiny. they know that from looking at twins so that's quite liberating really you're 60 percent in control and a lot of it is from these not not one of them is more important than the other it's the entourage just like a metaphor for the career like if i just did stage work but you need a bit of stage a bit of tv a bit of podcast which is the most important well they're all important they all pay the bills and they all come together and you end up with gabby wanting to speak to them What's the 60 minutes a day that you would prefer to do if you were doing exercise?

22:30I like to do 40 minutes weights and 20 minutes cardio, but I am going to up that, I think, to 30 minutes cardio. So I'm going to go up to one hour, 10 now, just because it's just not knackering me out. Yeah, you're so fit now. So I think I'll do 40 minutes mixed weights, obviously varying the parts of the body, and then cardio. I've got a treadmill at home, but I don't need any of that. I can be in a travel lodge room. I've got resistance bands I can run on the spot I do pull-ups hanging off the bathroom door using a towel obviously push-ups for the chest and you need these they're like big elastic bands they fit in my case I often talk on this podcast about my hotel workout which involves a chair I love a hotel workout involves a chair you can do so much with a chair do you ever with a perfectly nice state-of-the-art gym beneath you totally shun it and still do a workout in your room because you can yeah I love the pleasure of not using the really good gym beneath me and doing a because I just love exercising on my own.

23:25It's my meditation. So my wife likes to like have a bath. Some people like to do breath work on a hill. I love to exercise on my own. I've never joined a gym. I cannot exercise with people watching me. I've never had a personal trainer except one on Zoom who tells me what to do. And then I cancel the call and then go and do the exercise. I love to be on my own. I can I can work out without music. It's like yesterday there was a problem with something. I've got a gym at home and there's a problem with something in the music system. So I put my AirPods in but I was doing a new program and I realised halfway through that I hadn't had any music playing and I was just in pure silence doing quite heavy weights and quite a difficult set of exercises and I thought I actually quite like this, it's quite nice not having anything at all, just listening to it yeah, and moving at the same time, you know that's weird to move and not have any noise at all.

24:13It shouldn't be though, it shouldn't be but it is. To be honest if I'm sat on an exercise doing a what bike session then i'd like to listen to even if it's a podcast i like to listen to something yes it's the monotony of that i like some sort of you know like 80s sci-fi movie i'm like training my 50 year old body whilst data is going is going in so this i've been studying shakes shakespearean versifications for an hour how to use iambic pentameter to really push the meaning through with a view to going on stage and performing shakespeare for the first time next year so So I'm sort of training my brain for Shakespeare whilst doing extremely lightweights because I've buggered my back dancing.

24:50Two things. I'm not going to have to pick up on the Shakespeare, but just going back to the beginning of this, when you talk about reducing your age and you were talking about biohacking, there was no sense at that point. It wasn't because you feeling you weren't where you wanted to be in your career and you felt you weren't going to get the opportunities. Because usually that's a woman's game. It was because of that. It was exactly because of that. I'm not getting my violin out. I had a perfectly happy childhood. and I had no notion that we were poor and never went without. I was never hit. I've never been abused.

25:18I've had a perfect life. But my first home was a mother and baby shelter. That's just a fact. So I come from just one above homeless. My dad would visit until we got housed. And then I was on a counsellor stay and it was drugs and rough and all that. So I got to 30 years old. When you're that working class, it takes 30 to work out what you're going to do because you're not exposed to ballet and fencing and French when you're 11. So you don't, you know, I'm not on the middle class yo sushi of cultural pursuits where I can taste little things. Hey, I'm 18 now. Let's begin. So I got to 30 and I was like, oh, my God, I've been making people laugh my whole life.

25:53I'm supposed to do this. Oh, sugar, I'm 30. What am I going to do? Everyone like Jack Whitehall's about 12, Russell Howard's two. I'm screwed here. So and this is a young person's business. Youth is valued. Men are under a lot more pressure now than they were 30. That's the irony of what's happened. If only feminism had equalised women. Instead, it seems men have gone, I fancy some of that body fascism. Do you mind if we come and join you? So men have sunk to liposuction, steroids, eating disorders and physical suicide based on their appearance and hair transplant. So we're just as messed up now.

26:30And I was like, I need to stay young here. And then because I already had a youthful energy, the channels that were coming for me were like teenagers TV. And I never lied. what happened was people would be like, how old are you? And they were estimating like 10, 15 years younger than my age. So I would go five years younger and they'd still be like, really? Are you that old? My God. And then, of course, once you start the lie, you can't get out of it. But backstage, I was saying to comedians, well, this is my real age. I'll just say that for work. So you weren't really kind of, it wasn't there.

27:03Not backstage. Sarah Millican and everything. We put on my 30th birthday party in Edinburgh. I invited Terry. I had a big 30th, but for my real 30th. But for the TV people, I was so naive. Of course, that went on for about six months. They're like a shiny new young thing, don't they? So you were the shiny new young thing. And I got away with it. It was in the Daily Mail. Within six months of telling that lie, it was in the Daily Mail. I was an idiot. I didn't realise how cruel and cynical people are. Someone went and sold it. But I was glad. I was like, yeah, I am this age. Then I wrote a show about why I'd done it and the male experience of beauty and toured it, called it Right Man, Wrong Age.

27:41Now I've gone the other way. I can't wait to be a 50. I love watching people's jaws on the floor. Yeah, I was going to say, because people go, no way. I've got no Botox. For legally, because of my other business, I can't use anything. I put Botox here because I've got a scar in my neck and an issue here, but it's not that. It lifts the scar away on the neck. So you see these muscles? So these muscles are called, oh, what are they called? I forget what they're called, right? Neck muscles. Yeah, no, they've got a special name. And if you relax them, it helps. I've got a scar here where I took stitches out early for filming and a bit of what I call me Noel Edmonds.

28:17And for that, but I have all of my lines. I've got no filler, no Botox. And the reason is I want to be able to say that I'm doing this naturally. So 50 comes, I think, in the summertime time, August time? August the 19th, I'll be on the dance floor in amnesia. and 50 is a different as you've said i've read in many articles 50 is and midlife is is not what it was anyway and you are kind of an example of that but it was interesting last night or yesterday i was dropping my son up at the airport i was listening to some evil geniuses to to kind of get your voice firmly planted in my head which i love it's a great idea of a podcast and ruben said to me he's 19 he said russle kane just does not look his age does he he looks so young and which I thought for a 19 year old boy to say that was quite interesting because we we kind of look at each other in midlife, don't we go?

29:04Oh, they're looking well. They're looking well. Yeah. You don't think you think kids think that everybody kind of looks old, you know, when you're 19, everybody. Very true. Yeah. But this stuff works as well as the basic pillars of wellness, which we've already discussed. Sleep, stress. I don't like the word diet and exercise. Food, movement, relationships, evidence based supplementation. If you're doing all of those, it will turbocharge you to another level. That's what the, now what Brian Johnson does, the crazy guy on Netflix, I salute him because he's given up his life for science to teach amateurs like me.

29:37So I don't judge him. He's like someone that fires themselves into space to never come back to teach us about interstellar travel. The geezer has no life basically. But the stuff, the data he's yielding is very useful for people like me that want to still get wonky four times on Ibiza and going party in the middle of the week. So you have some balance then? You're not Brian Johnson because you do kind of go on. I party a lot more than people my age. I wouldn't say I have balance. I probably am a little bit still imbalanced in the going out and having it direction. Because your wife's so much younger than you, do you think?

30:10I just love dancing. But is that a factor? Do you think because she's... No, I think it's the other way around. I just love... I was born dancing. I love dancing. I love Ibiza. I love club. I love R &B. I love expressing myself with my body. I just love dancing. Do you think there's an age where that might get a bit awkward? Brucie is on my wall for a reason. Okay. Have you been asked on that? Have you been asked to do Strictly? Well, I just did the comic relief one this year, and I think that's enough for me. Is that not the doorway? Is that not the gate opening now? It would be if I wasn't so against doing it.

30:50I'm just just not for me at the moment that I mean, maybe that is the ADHD. I don't think I could give up 12 weeks of that. It's a brilliant program and I love watching it. But I think I would get bored quite quickly for comic relief. I was a new professional dancer called Johnny. So for that to work, Rachel Paris and I had to do this Latin dance up to quite a high standard. And I was like, yeah, I'll never, ever, ever do strictly. I'm off to, when we finish this, off for acupuncture to try and repair my back, which is still not right. It's just not for me. And I'm grinding on some woman I'm not married to.

31:26I'm not interested in it. I only want to grind on Lindsay. Learning new skills is something you can add into that kind of biohacking. Correct. So as well as the reading, which takes your mind into many different avenues and places, no doubt. Is there anything you do as a hobby that's new or anything that you want to pursue? it can't be a hobby if it's new if you know what i mean so i try new things every year i try to i always try to challenge myself so next year well i can't say anything yet because it's not in the bag but i am determined to end up high profile on stage acting shakespeare in 2026 that's completely although i have written a verse play before and indeed i managed to get it on at the rsc it was like a mick take out of shakespeare and i and i have performed verse and i've acted really I've not really done it I'm not a trained actor I'm just spat out of a council estate and then by accident doing stand-up that's my CV and so I'm determined to learn it properly and do it at 50 and that is going to be a massive massive challenge for me just the memory alone one of the costs of being so passionate about Ibiza is going to be a challenge house keys would be a start let alone a soliloquy that's a brilliant challenge i mean that that is certainly kind of a beat cycle every year so doesn't it that is i did um synchronized swimming the other year uh i've done every year i do something completely wild and and different what does your daughter make of you she's a bit of a carbon copy unfortunately for my poor wife it is it is a clone i'm afraid because she's that age she's 10 or 11 she's nine she's she's gonna have to grow into her energy and of course the other the other main problem with that do you know this thing we just sorry to circle back but going hand in glove with this challenge we've got about concentration and ipad so we live in a world now where we're overexposed to the digital and underexposed to the real world and i was speaking to my audience last last night actually i was on stage in Aylesbury and I said put your hands up if you walk to school from the age of 11 and every single person born before about 91 walked to school and every single person who had children born after then or who were was a person after then was driven and dropped at school because the world is too dangerous and someone's coming for my babies which is what we believe because it's shown and it's not a coincidence that 24-hour rolling news started in 1990 now we're both in the media and we both convey the news and we have to keep people's interest in so I realize I'm a bit hypocritical here but the fact is the juiciest stories are disasters or something happening to kids so I think what's happening to parents like me is we've got a false impression of how dangerous the streets are and someone actually did the maths it's in a brilliant book called free range kids very very funny brilliant book and she said my daughter if I was to just leave her walking around the block i'd have to wait 750 000 years for this mythical monster to jump out of a bush but that's enough for me to drive her everywhere and take away the challenge of walking exploring problem solving navigating dealing with bullies dealing with uh missing a bus how do i get home how do i all of those skills are gone not learned so this is where we get anxious 18 year olds because they've not experienced enough micro damage to the fibers of their psychological muscles to grow robust psychological software when they're adults.

35:02Same tracks with physical. Least allergic children in the UK, farms and dirty houses. Most allergic children, city clean houses. Because the children on the farms have eaten just enough poo so that when they encounter poo as adults, they don't get sick. Whereas I was like nuclear sterilising Minna's bottle till she was about one. Why? The dog was licking her hand. It was totally pointless. yeah and as you say those those robust kind of kids who've experienced all those things just you know problems come at them and they're not insurmountable they're not gonna they're not gonna kill them i think it's also kind of ties in with this there's obsession when you talked about their kind of how how long it would take for a child to get abducted or killed there's this obsession with serial killers which i've noted i have not listened to the serial killer podcast because it just doesn't really interest me but i noticed my teenagers know so the names of so many serial killers.

35:53What's that about? And not only that, but they also wear the glasses of Jeffrey Dahmer for teenagers. Why are teenage boys dressing like Jeffrey Dahmer? Am I so out of touch in 19-year-old women? I can't get aroused unless he looks like a gay cannibal. No. Lads, if you are listening, no women want to shag Alfred from Guess Who. Please stop growing handlebar moustaches and growing ironic mullets. Please.

36:33Your hair's only going one way, which seems to be up and up. You've got magnificent hair. What did you do to get that? Hard work. Because my granddad had a full head of hair, I just thought, I'll never go bald. That's the urban myth, isn't it? That if your granddad on your mom's side... It is an urban myth. I started to go thin at the crown. So what I've used, I've used PRP, which is where they take blood out of your arm, spin it round and inject the plasma. I use minoxidil twice a day, which makes the hair that you've got stronger. And I use topical finasteride once a day, which tackles the hormonal cause of male pattern boredness.

37:09That's taken me five years to fill in the gap I was combing over. And on the sixth year, there is no gap now. It's just a bit what I call monk Elvis. Elvis at the front, Monk at the back. It's fantastic. And slightly tinted at the front. Oh, yeah, yeah. My colourist, Lara, gives me autumnal streaks. Because you can really tell if a man colours his hair because it's like solid black Lego hair. So she puts all these little bits in and that's the other reason people misguess my age because my hair doesn't look coloured because it's muddled in tone, you see. Oh, fantastic. And this is just a slight hint at a bit of vanity whereas all the other stuff is kind of more solid stuff, shall we say, about biohacking.

37:53Yeah, the vanity is, you know, I'm chasing, I would like to do a Ben Shepard cover on Men's Health. Why not? Why not? I'm a human being. Was I torso of the week in heat last year? Yes. Yes, I was. Did it? Do you know the first time I was torso of the week, I had a novel come out in the same week. How many novelists? I torso of the week. Ian McEwan, where's your six pack? I mentioned Evil Genius which is if anybody hasn't heard it's on BBC Sounds as a podcast which you take a historical character and decide whether they were perhaps misjudged one way or the other maybe the Cray Twins were kinder and gentler than we thought but it's also it tied in with something I just mentioned before which is the kind of cancel culture isn't it how has that affected your comedy so I mean when Radio 4 because I was just like such a fanboy of Radio 4 said they wanted to make this Evil Genius show.

38:48Once you get that Radio 4 stamp, you can get away with a lot more exploring because remember, if posh people are consuming material, they're safe. It's only the working classes that need to be protected. So there's two ways we do. We have like a reverse episode where we start from someone like Bernard Manning or Margaret Thatcher. And I'm always barrister for the opposition, so I'm always selling the good. Or we start from Picasso and I'm explaining how he was actually a paedophile. But it's Picasso, so let's stroke our chins in the gallery. But R. Kelly can rot in jail forever. But Picasso's different because it was higher art.

39:22But R. Kelly's a black male, rot in prison. But Picasso, European male genius. Up go the paintings. That to me is unfair and fascinating. Would you get rid of all of his art? I mean, would you get rid of him from galleries? I wouldn't get rid of him from galleries, but I would love a more honest conversation about why some people are allowed to get away with... I'm hyper focusing on one crime here, the sexual and emotional abuse of underage women. Why it's fine in some arts, and we continue to read their books and admire their paintings, but in others, normally working class pursuits, sport, music, it's a harder cancel, quicker.

40:04Basic prejudice, basically. Is that a common theme for you throughout the people you've looked at? Yeah, it tracks with gender as well. you'll find women are more persecuted and brought down for the things that men have done. So I find it interesting. And it's also very funny if they've been dead long enough to get into, you know, how evil Henry VIII was. As long as they're dead, you can't be sued. But the longer they've been dead, you know, time plus tragedy equals comedy. The less likely you are to be contacted on social media by a relative. Correct. So Boudicca, for example. Boudicca, this great medieval British queen.

40:39she used to she invaded colchester and chelms had conquered it then took the females beheaded them detached their breasts and put the breasts into the hole where the head came from and yet we and we could we hail her as this amazing but that was just not necessary even by the time standards of the time that's that's overkill pardon the pun so i just love getting into evil or genius i've really enjoyed making it for tv not a lot of people realize we make the tv series as well so catch up on that or wherever you get your sky content if indeed you do get it but it was good being able to bring visual material and visual resources to someone like einstein for example very complicated character yeah lots going on in his private life does it make you look at the modern world uh with people kind of through that prism and look at people think yeah you wouldn't fare so well on an episode of this in 150 years time well i often say the things so when you're speaking to other, like us two having a conversation, you're like, are you scared of being cancelled?

41:36And it's like, I don't, there's not much cancelling actually goes on. You have to sort of go to prison or like my namesake, end up in court sort of thing for it to turn really serious. Or you have to, like what's happened to Greg Wallace, have people coming forward, really serious allegations, just accidentally saying the wrong thing on TV. I think everyone, oh, he's been cancelled, but I'm going to go and see him at the arena next week. and watching him earn 300 grand talking about what it's like being cancelled. I don't think Ricky Gervais has been cancelled. And he can say whatever he likes.

42:09And too right as well, if people find it funny and he can explore it comedically, who am I or anyone else to judge? And I often say to my Terrys, Garys and Daves in the front row with their knuckles on the stage, if I was to take my exact set I performed last night back to 1975 and perform it, I probably would have been booed and closed down because the things I was talking about, the language I was using, the explicit. I ended up doing a routine about gay relationships last night. I wouldn't have been able to perform that in 1966 without being shut down by Mary Whitehouse. So it's not that we can say less.

42:44It's just that you're old and it's now different things. So you've actually said that you can say more now. You can say more. It's just like, just use your common sense. Don't go and incite racial hatred or incite a sex crime on stage. Pretty much, if there's someone in a wheelchair in the front row of my show, their condition is going to get explored. They are going to be laughing. I'm going to be laughing and the audience is going to be laughing. The consent of what happens in a theatre is completely different to a clip dropped online which goes out to every phone in the land. That's when you need to use your brain a little bit better and think about what am I putting out.

43:22You mentioned, are you going for acupuncture? You're rubbing your back. Yes, I am, yeah. Have you got any other work for the rest of today? Or how does a day in the life of this brain work? Do you give it time to rest? Yes, I've got a few days off now because as the weather gets hotter, it becomes harder to sell tickets. So in fact, last night at Aylesbury was the last day of the third leg of this tour. This is something you've learnt over time, is it? You just don't try and get people going out to watch comedy in the summertime. Well, it's been the same since Morecambe and Wise days. You move to the festivals and things like that in the summer.

43:57So it's corporate work festivals, TV, radio. I'm doing some stuff for children in need at the weekend. I do take it a little bit easier. But then you've got your Latitudes, your Reading, your Leeds. You're all those. Comedy's become a big deal at festivals now. And you're touring later this year again, aren't you? Well, that's going out to Canada and Scandinavia and Paris and Berlin, probably Australasia. So if you're listening to this or you've got relatives in those countries, I'm coming. The Canadian dates are already on sale. my pet book I'm still touring I wrote a book about dog and cat breeds for children Pet Selector and there's a follow up book coming out next year as I say there's a few things coming but we're just a couple of months too early I can't talk about them it's really exciting stuff Should I be working out the quickest way to get to Stratford upon Avon is that what you're telling me If I do Shakespeare I want to go with someone that I love the RSC and I'm a friend of the RSC and I consume all of their content but there are some theatre companies is out there really ripping up the rule book on Shakespeare.

44:55Last year, my tour manager, when he's not tour managing me, he ops at various theatres. And there's this space called Shakespeare North, just outside Liverpool in a place called Prescott. It's a circular, beautiful, wooden Shakespearean theatre. It is unbelievable to have that in the north of England. And he got me free tickets to see Les Dennis as Malvolio in Twelfth Night. And I'm like, what's next? You know, Joe Pesquale as Hamlet. So I thought I'll go and have a watch, totally, with my nose in the air. But tickets were free. Took Lindsay. He was like, I can't follow it. I ain't, thanks, man.

45:31And it's one of the best thing I've watched a lot. I've never seen anything like it. Started in the foyer. Are these actors? Are these audience? In the car park, stuff was happening. You sat down. Les Dennis. I didn't really... I'm sorry, Les. I just didn't know you were such a good actor. I didn't... People are going to say that about me as well. hopefully, broke my heart. The way that they put the text across, the cuts that they made and the way they acted it and the way they used their breath, Not Too Tame, the company's called. So if I do anything with Shakespeare, it'll be with a group like that.

46:06I take it this is finished, this particular book. Yeah, Twelfth Night is done, but always check out what Not Too Tame are doing. They just did something called The Gods of Salford at the Lowry Theatre, which is the Greek gods have come down and they're all out. Zeus is dead mank and that. And all the population were children, child actors, aged 16 to 19 from council estates that have never acted before. Like an old school community theatre type project. And you think, well, I'll go there and I'll do my bit to support the needy children. I cried my eyes out. I was so engaged with this story. It was embarrassing.

46:43I was crying in the theatre. So that's what I like to do. That's what this current tour that I'm touring does. Yes, it's funny. yes you go out hurting but it's structured so that i do try to bring emotion at the end of the show that i'm touring it's about a guy i met on a plane who was dying from cancer it's one of the most profound encounters i've ever had that's how i finished my tour show and i think theater shakespeare can do that as well it can make you laugh and engage you make rather than watching someone amazing recite text in a way that posh people can appreciate there's an that's not what Shakespeare's supposed to be.

47:17Shakespeare's for working class Garys and Daves from the Elizabethan era. And I believe it, that it can do that again if you get it right. I'd love to be the person that works that out. Well, I don't doubt that you will with that passion and energy and drive and successful biohacking going on. I think we will all be enjoying it in 2026. Have a fantastic few months before your 50th birthday. And I can tell you, as a 52 year old, it's a great time of life. So, yeah, Yeah, you look like you're thriving. And thank you so much for your time. No, thank you. Thanks for having me. Sorry, I just talk and don't stop.

47:51That's kind of the joys of a podcast. You can. I suppose so.

48:01Well, Russell is a force of nature. I'm so glad I finally got to chat with him on the podcast. And don't forget his own podcasts, Evil Genius and Pack Your Bags, are out there for you to enjoy. And if you want to see his comedy genius in the flesh, She's touring again nationwide this autumn. And if you want to hear more comedians talking about the ups and downs of midlife, just scroll back through some of my previous episodes with the likes of Lee Mack, Susie Ruffell, Marcus Brigstock and Laura Smith. This episode was put together by Spiritland Creative and I'll be back next Wednesday. I hope you can join me then.