Dom Joly

0:00Today's episode is supported by Saily. Now, Saily is a travel tool that I think a lot of you are going to find really useful, especially if you travel internationally as much as many of you do. Saily is an eSIM app that gives you instant internet access when you arrive in a new country. If you're anything like me, you'll know that slightly stressful moment when you land somewhere new and you suddenly realise you've got no signal, you're trying to download directions, message someone, check a booking, and you're either relying on patchy airport Wi-Fi or worrying about huge roaming charges. What Saley does is solve that.

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1:12That's code TRAVELDIARIES. You can also find the link in the episode description here or head to salee.com forward slash TRAVELDIARIES for more details. Thank you to Salee.

1:30Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first episode of a brand new season of the Travel Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Holly Rubinstein, and here each week I invite a very special guest to take us through the seven defining chapters of their travel life, from their all-time favorite destination and hidden gem to what's at the top of their bucket list. Before we get started, if you enjoy this podcast please remember to hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening it's completely free to do so and it means that you'll get a fresh dose of wanderlust in your library each week by doing it you're really helping the show to grow and continue to bring you fabulous guests thank you in advance well i am so happy to be back with you all it's been a while thank you for being so patient over the last few months while i took a bit of maternity leave being with my little boy Casper who is seven months old now.

2:25I can't believe it. Time has flown. It's been such a busy time and he's of course already begun his own travel diaries which I'll fill you in on a little bit next week. Some incredible hotels and family travel finds. But this season guys it's going to be epic. I promise you it's going to be long and it's going going to be jam-packed with some extraordinary guests. I am so excited. So let's get started. Let's get into today's show.

2:55Hello! What? No, I'm in the supermarket! That, of course, was one of the most iconic comedy sketches of the early 2000s, the giant mobile phone from Trigger Happy TV. The man behind it was, of course, today's guest, Dom Jolly. And at the height of the show's fame, people all over the country would shout, hello, into their phones in homage to that sketch. I'm sure many of you remember. Can you believe it's been 25 years? So Dom is now back on the road, taking these iconic characters with him to celebrate that, tour running all the way through to 2027. And while Dom became famous for comedy, of course, travel has actually long been one of the biggest passions of his life.

3:40He's visited 108 countries, pretty incredible, and it shaped Dom's life long before his career. He grew up in the hills above Beirut in Lebanon with what he describes as a front row panoramic view of the entire civil war. And some of his earliest travel memories involve extraordinary road trips through the country and across the mountains into Syria. I should add that this episode was recorded before the bombing of Lebanon and Beirut in particular had really begun and I've no doubt I mean I've seen it on his Instagram that this has been of course heartbreaking for Dom who you'll hear holds Lebanon so dear to his heart that's why we don't really talk about that in the episode today.

4:22I spoke to Dom a few weeks ago at the London Marriott County Hall on the beautiful South Bank in a suite that had genuinely one of the best views in London. The Westminster Suite overlooking the River, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, such a setting. If you're looking for a place to watch the fireworks at New Year's Eve, that is your hot ticket to where to go. And in today's episode, Dom's travels take us everywhere from Prague and Cambodia to North Korea, the lakes of Canada, and so much more. I know you are going to love this one. So buckle up and let's get started. Here's Dom.

5:02Dom Jolly welcome to the Travel Diaries podcast it is so so lovely to see you today how are you thank you very much for having me on how is it always being introduced with your full name is that as in Dom Jolly yeah Dom Jolly that's actually a really good question well firstly well firstly Jolly is a weird name to have as a comedian isn't it I mean people honestly ask me is that your real name? And I go yeah Mr Tickle was taken so I went for Jolly but also when I was when I was like going up a lot to do Trigger Happy and stuff and my kids were young and they were at school Parker my daughter came to me once and she goes Dad are you Dom Jolly?

5:41And I said what? And she goes are you Dom Jolly? Because all the kids at school are saying is your dad Dom Jolly? Just one word Yeah yeah it was one word and so she thought so I was dad at home but then I went to London and became this thing called Dom Jolly Like the dollar Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I suppose, yeah, you've made it if you've got one name, haven't you? And my name is in... Has basically become that. It's become one thing. It's sort of Dom Jolly. It's another word for twat, really. So it's fine, yeah. You are one of the most travelled people that we've had on the podcast. Well, that's quite a high honour for the travel diaries.

6:15The internet says over 108 countries. Does that sound about right? It's exactly 108. I know you're not supposed to count, and it's incredibly naff. and I'm annoyed that things like, I've been to all 50 states, that doesn't count. You know, because that to me feels like 50 countries. I think so, yeah, because they're so diverse. But yeah, no, I have been to a lot. I mean, this is perfect for me. I love this. I love talking about travel. I'm a travel bore. Yeah, which is amazing. Because obviously we all got to know you first through comedy, but travel has now been a huge focus in your life. It's pretty much, I mean, if I could do anything, I would just, I mean, I write travel books and that is the thing I think the single thing that gives me the most pleasure is deciding I like to travel for a reason so I sort of think of a theme so my first book was the dark tourist for instance and I I'd nick that whole holy off a guy called PJ O 'Rourke who used to be the Rolling Stones foreign correspondent which has got to be the greatest job in the world and he wrote a book in the 80s called Holidays in Hell and I remember he went to Lebanon and he just turned up in Lebanon and so it was called a ramble through Lebanon he just sort of wandered around and he nailed Lebanon like which is a very complicated place to define much better than people that have been there for years and I always just thought because I grew up in Lebanon which we'll probably get to and it was a place that everyone thinks oh my god it's a terrible it's a war zone but actually you know it looks like California I can go skiing it's the best food in the world I can go to the beach so I always used to wonder are there other places in the world that are equally nice.

7:45And so I did that book called The Dark Tourist. So, and I went off on holidays to places you wouldn't normally go to holiday to. So yeah, I love travel. The dark tourism, I think, is absolutely kind of fascinating. Actually something that we as people who love travel should be embracing and shining a light on because ultimately it's shining a light on the places that deserve it, need it. It's interesting because I mean, firstly, when I started writing for things like the Sunday Times, places like that won't let you do dark tourism now because you can't travel right in newspapers or anywhere that isn't, you know, if it's on the red list, you're not allowed to fly there and you can't get travel insurance.

8:18It's no interest to them because there's no PR or sponsors. So that's killed that a little bit. And also there is an element of dark tourism where you've got to be careful you're not going into, you know, you're not going there just to sort of gloat on other people's unhappiness. But I think there is a kind of responsible dark tourism. I think I'm a responsible dark tourist. I hope so, yeah. Yeah. Well, before we get on to that, we'll go back to the very beginning. If we must. We must, because our Travel Diaries chapters start with chapter one. Oh, well done. Okay. Obviously, as you might expect.

8:50Yeah, that was the foreword. A little long, but no one reads foreword, so it's fine. And we begin with your earliest childhood travel memory. What would that be? So I grew up in Lebanon for reasons way too complicated to explain. And ironically, back in the day, we used to go... My dad was, I think, a frustrated archaeologist. he took over the family business but deep down he was kind of obsessed with Freya Stark and his middle name was Leonard after Leonard Woolley who's an archaeologist he was really into that and we loved Syria and so we used to drive into Syria at least three times a year so I think my very first travel moment I remember was driving we'd go on a family expedition there'd be three cars the dogs everything we'd drive over the hills of above Beirut down to the Bakar valley into Syria.

9:40There used to be an amazing border crossing in the just north of Baalbek where we'd have to wait on a bridge while you went through the sort of silly, not silly, but you know, the long bureaucratic visa process. And I remember sitting on that bridge looking into the river and there was a snake in the river, tiny snake. I remember thinking that's so exciting. I couldn't get my head around snake in a river. And then we went into Syria and we'd always end up in Palmyra, which I know people call Palmyra, but it's Palmyra, which is probably one of my favourite places in the world. It's this incredible oasis town, and it's got an Arab castle on the hill.

10:19It's got Roman, beautiful Roman remains. Could you try again? Right, this is not a joke. This is my really naggy watch. It's very neurotic. When I play tennis, it tells me that, it says, it looks like you've had a fall. It's like, no, it's It's just the way I play tennis. But anyway, we ended up at Palmyra, and we used to stay at this hotel called Hotel Zenobia. And Zenobia was kind of like the Syrian bodicea. She fought the Romans. And Hotel Zenobia was just an awful, very basic Syrian hotel, but we loved it. And so that's my first memories is Palmyra, really. Just imagine a massive, a sort of small oasis town with an enormous Roman ruins all around it.

11:02It's so beautiful. ISIS, when they took over Palmyra, started blowing up some of the temples. I was going to ask, is it intact at all? Yeah, it's still pretty intact. They did blow up quite a lot of stuff. But it still is, I think, one of the most astonishing places in the world, yeah. And what would you do when you were there? So we would sit, we would drink Syrian beer, which is fantastic, which we would also use as shampoo. For some reason, it was really good as shampoo. And then we'd drive out into the desert. we had this place, I did a documentary actually called Dom Jolly's Excellent Adventure and I went back there there were these amazing cliffs and at the base of the cliffs you had to climb up, there were these caves and we used to go, we'd have a picnic there and I wrote my name in that cave when I was a kid and so I went back to try and find it for no reason but I did find it and then I also remember that we'd always go at Easter this might be wrong for horse racing fans but whenever the Grand National is and so we used to I remember driving up a big sand dune to try and get the BBC World Service to listen to the Grand National so we were kind of odd like that but saying a sand dune makes you think that the Syrian desert is like the Sahara and it's not it's actually quite it's sort of it's not sand it's more kind of rubble I don't know okay right more gritty gritty yeah it's a gritty desert but I love it and then there's a massive salt lake just outside or salt flat outside Palmyra so I remember playing football on that and playing cricket on that we were very like expat family you know oh well yeah yes and no and that most expats I guess don't go on the holidays to Syria so I guess well certainly not now I mean the irony the irony is that we used to leave Lebanon to go to Syria for you know like to get away from the war like you know and peace and quiet now it's well not Syria's all right now but it's the flip side then the one thing I really really remember and actually it's probably the most it's the first it happened really early on and actually it was the thing that sort of excited me the most but also still gives me anxiety dreams we we drove out of palmyra and i think we were going to the salt lake and we were halfway there and there was a bedouin encampment and obviously bedouin move around and they just put their tents down and they're incredibly hospitable and we had gone to the lake we played cricket or something and we were driving back it was getting dark and We had to get back to Palmyra because it's quite tricky to get back before it was dark.

13:25And they stopped us and invited us in for coffee. And we said, of course, because you don't say no. And we went in and we sat. But they just went on and on and on. And finally, we just said, we've got to go. And they wouldn't really let us go. And we had to just insist in the end. And they chased us in a little pickup truck, jumped out in front of our car, pulled out a handgun, and forced us back to have more coffee. I really remember this. And all I remember is my mum having a box of sweets saying, give them a sweet. So I remember being terrified, but also thinking, God, this is like, because I read Tintin at the time, and I thought, this is straight out of Tintin, this.

14:04It's great. Why do you think they pulled out the gun? Do you know what? It's very odd, because this is like promulgating. Surreal. It's also promulgating a lot of myths about Arabs, which is not true. You know, it's not everywhere you go that they got guns and stuff, but it was just a very weird, I don't know. They were just very, very keen on their coffee. They just hadn't spoken to other people for a very long time. Do you know what? I genuinely don't know why they did that. But they didn't shoot us. That was nice. Thank goodness. You mentioned that you grew up in an eminence about your childhood in Beirut.

14:36And it was this juxtap... Above Beirut, yeah. Above Beirut. Yeah. In the kind of suburbs? No, in the hills above Beirut. In the hills, wow. So we were at 520 metres. and our house, so it was in the Maronite hills in a place called Ein Saadi, which is below Brumana, which is the big kind of hilltop retreat. And yeah, we had a terrace that just overlooked all of Beirut, which allowed us essentially a kind of front row panoramic view of the entire Civil War. Wow. Yeah. And what was that like? Well, it's always odd being asked that question because it was just my reality. So unless I could dip into the multiverse, I don't know what it wouldn't be like, but it was very strange.

15:16I mean, Lebanon was and still is, I think, my favorite country on earth. I cannot explain to people how beautiful Lebanon is for such a small country. I wrote a book called The Downhill Hiking Club in which I walked the length of Lebanon, so I know it really well. And it's such a small country, but topographically, it's so varied. You've got these beautiful, what used to be Phoenician city-states, you know, Byblos and Beirut and Sidon and Tyre. You've got the Mediterranean. You've got Beirut itself, just a magnificent city. And then you've got hills going straight up to really high mountains where you can ski.

15:55Where I grew up, it looked like the south of France, pine forests. The food is just, I think, exceptional. And then you go over those hills and down into the Bacar Valley, which is this incredible place where Romans made wine. And you've got Baalbek, one of the great Roman sites of the world. I mean, yeah, I should be working for the Lebanese Tourist Board. I love Lebanon. But my parents grew up there in idyllic times. You know, my mum didn't grow up there. She went out there part of the foreign office. But the 50s, the 60s, it was like the Switzerland of the Middle East, the Paris of the Middle East, all those cliches.

16:27Incredible place. Very chic. Very chic, very cool, very like international jet club, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then obviously the Civil War hit in 75 when I was eight. so I always felt I'd been like my brothers and sisters had all like grown up and gone to school there in the great times and just as I was getting there this thing happened and it was just vicious and it ripped the country apart and so I had a very weird childhood from then on because half the time would be me stuck in our lovely house but stuck while this war raged around us and then I'd be sent off to boarding school at seven you know which is really normal in England and so I'd sort of half my life would be with future members of Radiohead and the Tory cabinet and then I'd go back to a civil war so a lot of that has probably got to do with my weird take on life.

17:16Yeah it's fascinating I mean did England seem kind of impossibly tame in comparison to your life there? Well there was a time there was a part of me you know I'd get I would get really worried at times I got very anxious because it's horrible just constantly being shelled and like being frightened but on the other hand I think it's a little bit what war correspondents get or people that soldiers almost you get you become almost an adrenaline junkie that even though it's not good for you and it's not good for the nerves and it's worrying there's something incredibly thrilling about living in that sort of atmosphere and so coming to England in the 70s I remember the first place I went to was Cheltenham where I now live.

17:59And it was for my granny's 90th birthday and it was pouring with rain. And Cheltenham back then was honestly like God's waiting room is where people came back from the empire to die. And I remember just looking around this place thinking if I lived here, I'd kill myself. And now I live in Cheltenham, which has changed. Now, what does that mean? What would a therapist say? It would say that I was probably deep down looking for some kind of security. Or more importantly, I think, because I don't believe therapists because they're idiots. I think what I was doing was trying to give my kids a secure stability that I didn't have and sometimes I look at them and think you cosseted little, you know, you've had too easy a life and famously you were at the same high school a pacifist Quaker, was it a junior school actually?

18:48No, it was a Quaker high school Quaker high school called Brumana High School where Osama bin Laden also attended Yes, so I can't really talk about travel without that coming up. And it's fair enough because I looked this up the other day. I was looking up something about me because I was trying to write something and I wondered what ChatGPT would say about me. One of the first things it said was that I went to school with Osama bin Laden and that I'd been dining out on it for 15 years. So even ChatGPT thinks I've been overdoing it. But you know what? If you find out you went to school with Osama bin Laden, you're going to talk about it.

19:19Of course. When I did that documentary and I went into Syria, the idea for that was to go back and look at my youth and then go off into Syria and when we arrived in Lebanon the director said I know you went to school in in Lebanon before you got sent off to boarding school so we thought it'd be fun if we went and had a look around your school we've had a fixer he's organized it and stuff yeah I thought that'd be great and my school is beautiful it was like half an hour above our house in a place called Brumana which is where people from And Beirut, mostly Christians, went up in the summer because it was cooler.

19:54And it's a very beautiful place. And I think in about 1865, some Quakers from Darlington, don't ask me why, decided to build this beautiful Quaker school called Brumada High School in the hills above Beirut. I've no idea what they were doing there, but they did. And they set it up. So it was an English high school, but sort of run along American high school lines. and it went from about the age of two to 18. Right. And when I got there, I was walking around, you know, filming. There's nothing better than going back to your old school with a film crew. It just makes it look like you've made it and I'm wandering around giving it the big I am.

20:30And suddenly this really angry woman starts running towards us across the tennis courts and she's screaming, who are you? What are you doing here? And I was like, who's this? Turns out it's the headmistress and of course the fixer, the fixer had just done a very Lebanese thing, taken the$500 and just buggered off. like he hadn't done anything. So they had no idea who we were. Oh, gosh. So I tried to explain. I said, I'm really sorry. I'm a comedian in England. We're making this documentary. And I went to school here. So I thought it would be quite fun. She goes, why? And I go, well, I'm an old boy.

20:59She goes, who cares? And I go, well, I got a little bit hissy. I was like, well, I'm probably your most famous old boy, to be honest. And she just looked at me like I was something on the bottom of her shoe. She goes, you're not our most famous old boy. I go, really? Who is? And she goes, Osama bin Laden. And I went, all right, fair enough. You win. so many questions because they now deny he went there, which he would. So you don't have any recollection of him? Well, no. People ask me, were you mates? No, of course I wasn't mates. I was six. I was six. He was 18. It was one year. He didn't put his arm round me and take me round the playground pointing at tall buildings going, soon Dom, soon we will do great things.

21:36No, not at all. But I'm like, Quakers are pacifists. You can imagine why they're not keen to tell people he went there. You know, imagine what do you say to prospective parents coming round? You know, maybe you have heard of some of our more famous alumni, you know, Dom Jolly, Osama Bin Laden. It's a terrible failure of the Quaker pacifist schooling systems. It's odd. The problem it's really given me is going to America. I mean, going to America was hard enough for me anyway, being born in Beirut. If you look me up online, I'm a comedy terrorist, did a show called Trigger Happy. Oh, God. Now, because I've travelled so much, I've been to North Korea, Libya, Iran, Lebanon.

22:18They looked me up. I went to school with Osama bin Laden. I mean, I get bent over in immigration, you know, before I've even touched ground. So that's the worst thing. Yeah, don't go to school with Osama bin Laden if you want to go to America. Really? At the border control? Oh, my God. They're on you? Well, so when 9-11 happened, Bush put in this thing where basically if you were – it didn't matter what – because I'm British, totally British. But if you're born in one of, I think, 14, the sort of axis of evil countries, you were taken aside and taken for ages. I got to a stage where there were two bits.

22:48One where I was coming into Washington, D.C., and the woman took me aside and she looks through all my stuff and looks online and stuff. She goes, I see here you speak French. I said, yeah. She goes, why do you speak French? And I go, why? I don't know. All I could think about was that Bill Hicks sketch where he's reading a book and the waitress in a waffle house. and the waitress comes up and says, why are you reading a book? He goes, I've been asked what I'm reading, but not why I'm reading it. I guess I don't want to be a Waffle House waitress. So that was quite good. But the worst one was I landed in Dallas, not Dulles, but Dallas.

23:23And I have two British passports. One because I go to politically incompatible countries. And you have to remember to take the good one to America, not the one with all the bad ones. and I took the wrong one to America. So, of course, this guy opens it up. The first thing he sees is Iran, yeah? Very topical. He goes, Iran. You've been to Iran. Now, I went to Iran for my book, The Dark Tourist, because I wanted to go skiing in Iran. I thought that was a great story. And he goes, why did you go to Iran, sir? And so I thought I could explain. I'm a travel writer. I was doing a story, but I just, you don't want to.

24:00So in the end, I said, well, I went on a skiing holiday. And you could see this guy's little pea brain thinking, I've got one. He goes, I believe Iran is a desert country, sir. I don't think they do any skiing there. So I had to explain to him. And it took about four hours. Being a travel writer of any form, if you go to anywhere interesting, you are the bane of all immigration people. It's the irony that you love traveling so much and yet no one likes you. I found it... I was banned at one stage from both Israel and Libya. Libya because I'd been to Israel and Israel because I'd been to Libya.

24:34I'm like, make your fucking mind up. Sorry, I don't know if we can swear, but yeah. This episode is supported by Sovereign Luxury Travel. And if you're dreaming of a luxury family break in Greece, let me put Sani and Sovereign on your radar. Sani is a beautiful resort on the Halkidiki Peninsula in northern Greece, about an hour from Thessaloniki Airport. And it's one of those places that genuinely works for everyone. It's brilliant for families because there's so much to do with activities, beaches and loads of space to roam. But it still feels really elevated and relaxing for the grown-ups too.

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26:43The second chapter of our travel diaries is the first place you fell in love with it. Now, it feels like, obviously, Lebanon was your first love. Well, Lebanon doesn't count, though. No, because you grew up there. Yeah, I mean, Lebanon is my first love, my ever love, my always love. It really is. And not the one that got away. So Lebanon, but I take that as a kind of side one. I think the first place I remember falling in love with was Rome. We went to Rome quite early. And weirdly, I've only found too much detail, but I was conceived in Rome. One of my middle names is Romulus. And I was conceived in room 36 of Hotel Inglaterra at the base of the Spanish steps.

27:20so much, too much detail from my mum. But I have been to the room just to have a look. I don't know who's been to the room where they're conceived, but I have. If you're staying in room 36 in Hotel Inglaterra, hello. But I just remember going to Rome and it was the first, I think it was probably the, you know, I grew up in Lebanon and I think it was the first probably trip to Europe I went. And I must have been only four or five. And my parents loved Rome, obviously. and I just remember it was incredible I just remember wandering around and it was so different from Beirut obviously and it was just everything about it I remember the I remember going to a fountain where you had to rub a wild boar's nose and throw coins in and the food oh my god I mean food is a big part of travel for me it's why I love Lebanon so much but I remember that was the first time I just gored we went to a place outside Rome called the Pinrose I remember this so vividly it was pouring with rain it was like in tuscany it was like a tuscan storm and we were sitting in this hotel that had a 12 course meal like incredible meal and i remember eating this food and i remember exactly when it was because it was the um uh montreal olympics it must be 1976 and i remember looking out the window and there was this tuscan hunter like it was something out of a painting he was a hunter he was on a horse and he was like riding up this long uh sort of tree-lined avenue towards the hotel because he wants to get out of the rain i just remember all that it was like it was like honestly it was like a movie scene yeah i was i just i was obsessed with italy yeah and do you still love it now i do i the i really love being it i really infuriates me i don't speak enough languages i speak some languages but i think you speak quite a lot of languages i do but i don't speak italian and it really annoys me yeah i do How did you end up speaking Czech?

29:13Because I was a diplomat, quite astonishingly. You had quite a few former lives before comedy. I got sent off... So I was a runner at MTV making sandwiches, and I forgot that I'd applied to be an intern at the European Commission when I was at university, because I speak languages. Anyway, this thing went through its long bureaucratic process, and I suddenly got a phone call saying, you've got the job, can you join us at our delegation, which was the EC's European Commission's embassy, in Prague just after the Velvet Revolution. So I arrived in Prague at one of those times when normally wherever you go in the world, however much you love it, there's some tosser will come up to you and go, you just arrived.

29:55And you go, yeah, it's amazing. And I go, yeah, should have been here two years ago. Then it was, now it's ruined. There's always, it's ruined, guy, you know, like that. This was the only time in the world where I've been, where I knew I was there right here, right now at the right time. It was three months after the Velvet Revolution. Prague still didn't have any advertising. It had no stag parties. Václav Havel was in charge. Lou Reed and Frank Zappa were honorary consuls. It was this crazy utopian time for about nine months because all the opposition had been intellectual, so there were no professional politicians.

30:30It was incredible. And, yeah, I was a diplomat there, and I sort of got fast-tracked to learn Czech, the most useless language to learn in the world because even then it was Czechoslovakia. then it split up. So like even less people spoke Czech. So the only time I've ever used it since was I was working at Wimbledon and I tried I guess that's what you were going to say. And I tried to show off to Jana Novotna. So yeah, so one of my favourite expressions, Bohusel Nerozimim Czeski, which means unfortunately I don't understand Czech. I love that. Bohusel is such a great word. But yeah. I love Prague.

31:05I think it is one of the best cities in Europe. I would totally, I'd hard agree. I mean obviously I think it went through a period where it got almost Dubai'd in a way if that's a term that I can use it became briefly a sort of bit too stag capital yeah but it was A it was not damaged in World War II which is astonishing so that so intact so the view from the castle the Khladni Chad looking down is incredible they're famous that castle's famous for a great thing do you know what it is? no one of the most sort of imaginative types of execution so they used to execute people by defenestrating them, throwing them out windows.

31:41That's a Czech invention. Well done, Prague. Beer and defenestration here. From the castle itself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't use that in the Czech tourist slogans. It's weird. But no, I love Prague. So I got there and it's just this magical city. Like it's a total medieval cobbled city and it was totally unruined. And it was, it's just, it's magical is the word I use for it. Every corner you turn is beautiful. Beautiful, yeah. So how did you get from that life to comedy and Trigger Happy TV? I mean, it's a really long story, so I'll tell it very quickly. Essentially, I always wanted to get into telly.

32:22I got a job at MTV. I thought, this is great. And then suddenly this thing from my past flew me off to Prague. So I remember going down from making sandwiches at MTV, and I said, I've got a job. And they said, oh, where are you going? I go, I'm off to Prague to be a diplomat. So I went to Prague, spent a year just mucking about. People used to come to my office occasionally. I had no idea what I was doing. They'd give me these long things, and I'd nod and say, I shall refer that back to Brussels, and then just throw a file in the cupboard, never do anything. When I came back from Prague, it looked really good on the CV, like, you know, diplomat in Prague.

32:52And so with that, I got a job in Parliament. I got a job for a guy called Andrew Roth, who made Roth's Parliamentary Profiles, because I'm a political nerd. I'm not political. I don't want to be a politician, but I love being in the thick of it. And then I got a job at ITN as a producer. on a really nerdy political program called House to House. And I spent two years in Westminster hanging around. And I realized that, because it's funny now, because all the people I work with there, I can see them where they are now 30 years later. So you sort of think that's where I would be, you know, like that.

33:24But I just knew that wasn't me. I never wanted to get up early or wear a suit. Those were my two things. And so in the end, I got fired from ITN because I was interviewing David Mellor, the then culture secretary. And I got some people in the background to play football. and they were supposed to pass me the ball, but instead they kicked it and it smashed David Miller in the face, which I thought was what the country wanted. And ITN basically realized I was mucking about it. They fired me and I wanted to make political documentaries. So I sent my CV to people like Michael Cockrell and stuff. And one of them by chance went to this production company that was making a show called Mark Thomas Comedy Product.

33:57And that was like an early Michael Moore satire show where we were taking on MPs. And I was a researcher on that. And, you know, day two were like taking weird things through McDonald's drive-thrus and setting up MPs. And I just thought, this is me. So much fun. So when that finished, I went to a Paramount comedy channel and I started taking on Cool Britannia. I started putting like millennium domes in Peter Mandelson's garden. I was on to him very early. We used to follow him around London. He was known as the Prince of Darkness. And we used to follow him around as a fan club. I'd dress as the devil and we'd have Frankenstein holding signs saying, we love you.

34:35And we got on the front page of every newspaper. And so that made a lot of noise. And Channel 4 saw it and said, oh, we like what you're doing. Would you like to do it? And I said, yes, I would. And I want to make this clever satire program. And the woman that found me said, I've just made Brass Eye of Chris Morris. I can't. I don't want to go through more court stuff. Is there any way you could do what you're doing, but just make it funny? Like about nothing. and that's the greatest thing that ever happened to me because otherwise I would have made a niche satire program but Trigger Happy was just the only rule was like does this make me and Sam laugh and that's all it was What a joy and it was such a phenomenon It was crazy 85 I think I don't know, I'll just make it up now but I think it is 85 And how quickly did your life change and where Overnight It's actually the 25th anniversary now so I'm doing a tour about it.

35:30And one of the reasons we're doing the 25th anniversary is because I genuinely, at the time, it all happened. It was literally like, it happened, it was a hit, everything went crazy for four years, and then I was like excreted from show business. It's kind of like, and it was like... It's such a weird industry. And I was like, what was that? So it's only looking back that I can start to appreciate it. But I remember the moment I realised my life changed was the first Trigger Happy went out on the 14th of January 2000. I remember that because Victor Lewis Smith, who was my favourite TV critic in the Evening Standard, wrote, I mean, the single greatest review of a show I've ever read.

36:05And he said I'd turned the humble practical joke into an art form, which I loved. He also said, without doubt, the greatest comedy show of the millennium so far. Now, we were 14 days into the millennium, so that was fine. But now I just take this so far off. But anyway, so it went out on Friday, 14th of Jan. And the Monday I was on a train. I think I was going to Oxford. and that ringtone went off and no one knew I was on the train. Three people stood up in the carriage and went, hello, I'm on a train. And I was like, holy shit, what has happened? And I had no rule book and I didn't deal with it very well.

36:41I wasn't very good at being famous. I like being famous, but not that level of fame. It was crazy. It must have been intense. Because what I liked was I was always a sort of outsider. I was a little sort of punky idiot. I was like snapping at the heels and suddenly we were the establishment. We were like this big hit, tall poppy stuff. I hated that. Do you think that's why when it comes to your travel choices then that you'd like to go for the more obscure destinations? Not at all. I just don't, you know, I don't do beaches and I... You don't do beaches? Well, no, not really. You're not a flying flop guy from time to time.

37:14No, no, I like, I mean, I like jumping off cliffs is my favourite thing, into rivers. Really? Yeah, and lakes. Like in Canada, I do a lot of that. And I just like, I like travels with a purpose. I like traveling to see something. And I'm very politically minded. I mean, tourists was all about this. There's a weird thing where I think, why do I want to go? Why do I want to go to, well, Chernobyl. I went to Chernobyl. It's really interesting. But why do I want to go to Vietnam or Cambodia to see the killing fields? And there's something odd. I sort of feel where something extraordinary has happened in life.

37:50It sort of hangs in the air. It's a way of sort of touching history. So I can't explain it. I'm fascinated by going to places, especially places that had an effect on me growing up, Chernobyl being one, Cambodia. I remember when Lebanon and the Civil War was going on, our rival for the headlines was the sort of whole, you know, the Cambodian killing field stuff. And Cambodia's very similar, an ex-French colony, a place where it's beautiful. The food is amazing, incredible ruins. But this place went crazy. and now when you went to Cambodia, because they killed all the intellectuals, anyone sort of smart over 50 thought, well, what the hell were you doing?

38:29You must have been part of it. And I ended up going to a war crimes, I bluffed my way into a war crimes trial, which was the weirdest thing ever. I was in Phnom Penh and my guide said, there's a war crimes trial and I've been reading this book called The Bridge, no, The Gate. It's an incredible book about this awful man that used to smash babies against trees and awful. And he'd finally been caught. And I'd just been reading about this guy. And it was the most evil man I'd ever read about. And he was being tried. It was his trial. And he's being tried. And this is the kind of thing I love when I'm writing a travel book.

39:01It kind of was just like it all fell into place. So I end up going into the war crimes trial. And I can't get in because I'm wearing shorts. And you have to wear trousers in war crimes trials. I didn't know that. And so the guard outside gives me his trousers. But he's Cambodian. He's about the size of my child. so I'm squeezing myself into these tiny trousers so I'm really tight and I waddle into the war crimes trial and I sit and there's this sort of bench of judges and there's really thick glass and then there's a kind of people watching and I look like where is this monster and I notice him and it's just this meek looking man sitting there in a suit he looked like a tiny accountant and it really reminded me of that famous quote about Adolf Eichmann, who was the Nazi who went off to Argentina and Israel kidnapped and put on trial in Jerusalem.

39:53And, you know, this man was so evil, yet he looked like an accountant. And that's where the term the banality of evil comes from, which is just incredible. You expect monsters to look like monsters, and they don't. Yeah. And there was a moment where I'm in this place thinking, what am I doing here? Like, I'm a squirrel. He looked like, why am I in a war crimes tribunal? And he took, Deutsch, this guy was called Dooch, he turns and looks and our eyes met. It was one of the most astonishing moments. You just think, I've genuinely looked into the face of probably the most evil man I've ever met. So it's things like that.

40:27It's not your normal family holiday. Hey kids, we're going to a war crimes tribunal. But when you are choosing destinations that fit within that remit. Are you looking for experiences like that alongside discovering the beauty of the country or the food culture or music culture? Or are you particularly interested in the weirdnesses of it? I'm definitely interested in the weirdnesses. And I'm always looking... So my books are normally themed. So as a great plug for all my books, I'll start off. Dark Taurus, for instance, it was like, I want to go to places that you'd not normally go on holiday with.

41:08So I went skiing in Iran because that just feels weird. But you can ski an hour outside Tehran. Incredible ski. The Shah was really into skiing. And he built two massive ski resorts. Really good skiing. And it's just crazy. You're up there. But when I got there, you can't ski together because it's Iran. So there's a big fence down the middle. Men on one side. Men on one side. Women on the other. But when you get to the top, everyone was mixing. And I said to my guide, why? And he said, mullahs don't snowboard. It was amazing. So Iran was great. And then I went on a coach trip around North Korea because you think no one goes to North Korea.

41:40That is the most insane place I ever went. So what do you reckon was the single most bizarre experience you had while you were there? So North Korea is like, I think one of the problems with travel is that travel is about taking yourself outside your comfort zone, going to something unusual. And I think we're so globalised now, we're so sort of homogenised that it's very difficult to go anywhere really where you're not a mile from a Starbucks. North Korea is the last bastion. It's the closest you'll come to space travel. It's so, even if you look at a satellite image of the Korean Peninsula from space, South Korea's all lit up.

42:21North Korea's just dark. It's just not on the grid. So I went there because I was a foreign correspondent for The Independent at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and I met a guy who took organized tours to North Korea. and that's the only way you can go in. And you're not supposed to go in as a journalist, but technically I wasn't a journalist. I was, but I was also a man who dressed as a squirrel. So I went in as a squirrel man. And the irony is that the people going to North Korea are the most hardened travellers who want to go somewhere no one's been before. Final Frontier. Yeah, and they're independent travellers whose idea of hell is a package tour.

42:55Yeah. And yet they're on a coach trip because you're so controlled. And every day you would go to the dullest things on earth. But because you're in North Korea, it's amazing. Like the first morning, we went to the Museum of Agricultural Scythes and Lathes. Like a whole morning. But it was amazing because it was so shit. It was fantastic. And it was just so weird. Yeah. And then an afternoon, just looking at the dear leader's mother's tomb. You're just like, that's nice. But North Korea is weird for so many reasons. It's like I've been to a lot of places under dictatorships and authoritarian places.

43:28And once you get away from the official guides, people will come up and talk to you honestly. North Korea was like a cult. Like everyone there. They put you in the middle of Pyongyang in a hotel on an island to control you. And the only thing on the island, there were two things. There was a cinema, which we weren't allowed to go into, but had just hosted the first international Pyongyang film festival. Now, they couldn't decide what film would be allowed. So finally, the only film they thought they could allow was Mr. Bean. Mr Bean gets everywhere like whatever you go so they played Mr Bean the movie but just in case people didn't understand it they had a guy at the side of the cinema with a loud hailer explaining in Korean what was going on and then next to that was a nine hole golf course, the only golf course in North Korea and when I got there, there was a glass case and a cushion and a golf ball on it, I knew what was coming and I said oh, what's that?

44:28and they said, oh, the dear leader just came the other day and he'd never played golf before, but you'll never guess what, nine holes in one. And they say that and you're like, come on. And they go, oh, yes. And you go, oh, well done. It's crazy. So did you press them for, like you say, do you say like, oh, come on, because you're there, do you feel like you haven't got to play along? It's very difficult on so many levels. Yes, you definitely press them to an extent and then you realise they believed it or if they didn't believe it, they're not going to tell you. Secondly, you were told very clearly that if you did something to disrespect North Korea or did something bad, that your guide would suffer the consequences of it.

45:10That's incredible pressure. Now, as it turned out, I hated our guide. He was a deeply unpleasant man that was definitely working for the government. So I thought, fuck you. So I don't know if writing my book did anything to him, but it's no loss to the North Korean people. but yeah the whole place is so complex on every level you're not quite sure what's real or not you got on the on the Pyongyang tube and we went two stops and it was perfectly clean everyone was standing there you've got propaganda blaring it's like a Bond film constantly blaring out and then we went a third stop and the guy who took me Simon who'd been like 80 times was like oh my god that's the first time we've been more than two stops and before that they thought the whole thing was a showpiece and that there were only two stops and there wasn't an underground system it's such a because i remember michael palin did his documentary about it and he went much later than me but yes yeah yeah yeah later than you exactly johnny come lately he uh went to that airport didn't he and it was just it was empty at the whole place it was like a pretend airport but the whole place is pretend and facade it's just really really weird we went down to the dmz which is the demilitarized zone and you get to that famous place where there's a hut which is over the border and there's a table in the middle of the hut and so when people have official meetings they go into the hut and they don't cross the border but they stare at each other and chat and then on each side of the cement barrier which you can hop over both sides choose their tallest soldiers and they come face to face staring at each other so anyway I'm there watching this whole thing and I look up and there's an observation tower in South Korea and I can see American soldiers with cameras with zoom lenses taking our pictures.

46:55And I thought, oh Christ, this is going to make my next entry to America. It's like Osama bin Laden born in Beirut. And then they just slipped this photo. And this was you in North Korea, sir. No, I think it's the most crazy place I've ever been in the world. That sounds so fascinating. It is totally fascinating. But then you've got to be aware that you're in this country which you're finding fascinating but you can leave and these people can't and so part of you thinking should I be enjoying this? I mean I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the total surreality of surrealness of being in this sort of place.

47:31That didn't mean I was gloating or I was pleased people lived under it but I think you have to experience it. You have to talk about it. Completely. And I think my books are funny but they're not taking the piss. They're funny because travel is inherently funny. There are lots of funny things, but I think they also make really serious points. And I think you can be funny about a place without being disrespectful or not taking it seriously. Yeah, completely. Well, chapter three, moving on, is a place where you learn the most about yourself. Jesus. Where did I learn the most about myself? I don't think I've learned anything about myself, really.

48:05I suppose, actually, this will be a good opportunity to plug my new book. Okay. Because that's what it's about. My new book is called The Soul Tourist in Desperate Pursuit of Happiness. and I thought firstly my book before that was on conspiracy theories I hung out with conspiracy theorists around the world and I've spent two years arguing with these idiots sorry critical thinkers uh and I just had enough and I needed like a sort of a break I needed something fresh and I just thought wellness is such a big thing and you know all these people going off eat pray love all that kind of stuff and I thought actually that'd be and again if we're talking about themes to my books.

48:40I always try and think of something, a theme. And so I thought, okay, if I did a book on wellness and people going off to find happiness, where would people go? The obvious one, India. Like, it's the first thing, everyone goes off to India. So I went to Rishikesh, which is where yoga was invented, more excitingly for me. And this is, again, what I love, is that I went for that, but actually ended up in the ashram where the Beatles went in 1968 and wrote the whole white album you know dear prudence is about uh prudence mia farah's sister prudence who was there and and took her singing so her meditation so seriously she wouldn't come out dear prudence won't you come out and play like all that was incredible so cool then i went to an ayurvedic place in bangalore and bangalore is like the sort of silicon valley of india so that was really interesting because the contrast between this kind of new modern india with all these Indians just doing incredibly well with like Silicon Valley type stuff and then full of idiot westerners like me sort of trying to do Ayurvedic stuff.

49:41To me that whole thing was like being in a, it was like being in Guantanamo Bay. Two men tied me to a table and poured oil on my forehead for four hours. I mean it was hell. Drinking butter? Drinking butter. Having your eyelids flushed. I mean honestly Did it make you feel better? No. I escaped. I broke, I actually broke out after seven days. Were you going into this pursuit of wellness with a critical eye, or were you actually trying to... So again, I think I was doing it in my way. I was going in with a generally sceptical, this is bollocks, I'm an ex-goth, I'm a grumpy misanthrop. But deep down, with a slight feeling of like, oh, it'd be lovely if one of these actually worked.

50:26I went to Denmark, it's often named as the happiest country in the world. I found out they've actually got a big PR department in their government, which is about maintaining that. And they rival Finland to go against each other. Finland has a high suicide rate as well. Because they're in perpetual darkness half a year. I have to say, I think Denmark is one of the greatest countries I've been to. I love Copenhagen. I went to Aarhus, whichever one goes in the middle of our street, which is the second. Denmark have just got it right. There's something incredible about them. Even weird things like their Jewish population in World War II.

50:59They were the only country that saved their entire Jewish population. There's something decent about Denmark. But they're so decent, they're so nice, that I don't quite trust it. I think they're all doing terrible things in the behind closed doors. No one can be that nice. But you know what, I really like Denmark. I checked myself into a Benedictine monastery. I again did a runner. One of the things I really came away from, that the secret of happiness for me is a Kim Cattrall from Sex and the Cities quote, which is, I've got to the age where I really don't want to spend more than an hour anywhere I don't want to be.

51:35So whether you call it a French exit or an Irish exit, which is where you just slip out, that is my happiness. It's just thinking, right, enough of this, I'm out. So a lot of the book is me running away from things. But I loved it. It was interesting. And was there one that actually was the most profound for you in terms of, was there anything that gave you a perspective shift? or? Yeah, so the very weird thing was I was talking to my neighbour Dan, you know, having been all round the world, you see this is like it all comes back, and I was talking to my neighbour Dan in Cheltenham and I was telling him about all these places I'd been and he said, have you read Siddhartha?

52:10And I said, I've not read Siddhartha, Siddhartha's a book by Herman Hesse and it's basically a book, he said read it and I'm going to take you fly fishing and he said that is happiness so I thought, I don't want to read a book called Siddhartha and I certainly don't want to go fly fishing, it's full of sort of posh country twats that I don't like and I don't want to kill a fish even though I'll eat it because I'm a hypocrite. But anyway I read Siddhartha, it's tiny. And basically it's a book which essentially is quite a simple parable where this kid grows up by a river, he goes off to become a holy man and he just hates it and runs away, French exit.

52:43Then he goes to the city and gets hooked up with a rich courtesan and gets very rich, he hates that. And he ends up back at the river and realizes that's where he's happy. And I thought that's weird because I'm back in Cheltenham in a river because I went with Dan and I loved it. I just found I didn't catch anything so I didn't have to be unhappy about killing the fish but I found it so I was so engrossed in what I was doing. I was standing in the middle of the river you're kind of you're embraced by this river and you're sort of flicking this reel constantly. It's almost like you're concentrating on it so much.

53:17I'm like this is meditation basically but they're just not. So I understood all the spiritual things I did but it's all that spiritual bollocks you have to put around it. You just need to concentrate on something. Be with people you love. Have good chat. Be happy. It's not that difficult. So yeah, weirdly, I did find myself riffing on Siddhartha and Herman Hesse standing in the middle of a river in Wales fly fishing and I thought, wow, this is deep. Not the river, the book. Well, you mentioned Denmark there. Chapter 4 is the big question. question your all-time favorite destination what do you think you would pick today okay well I can't do that because this is like my favorite record it changes all the time yeah so I'm gonna cheat and I'm gonna I'm not a royalist I think the royal family should be abolished but I do think the royal family have one thing right they move on the season they move between four places Sandringham Balmoral Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace I think so you move so my family always play this thing if you could have four places you have a summer place a winter place a city place and a wild card love it yeah so okay so and again this changes a lot but at the moment I would city is Copenhagen okay I think Copenhagen is the greatest city I've been to I love Copenhagen on so many levels uh my summer place is Muskoka which are lakes north of Toronto and that if you asked all my family, I'm married to a Canadian, if you asked all my family where's our happy place, it's Muskoka.

54:50We go there in the summer, you rent a cottage, and cottage can mean small cottage to Kenny Bunkport stuff. And Canada has more lakes, I think, than anywhere else in the world. But these three lakes, Lake Muskoka, Lake Rosso, Lake Joe, are massive. And they're interlinked, and they are peppered with islands. And they've become over the years quite celeb-based, slightly ruined now the Beckhams went there and you think right that's it I'm not going anymore but it is still great and we'd go up there, park the car get on the boat and we wouldn't go anywhere but by boat for a month it's like Swallows and Amazons the kids would run off all day it's like going back to 1950s not in a racial political way but just in a everything's free, I love Muskoka so that's our number one place So do people, if you go there do people typically hire place, rent a place.

55:42Yes, if you went to Muskoka you'd rent a cottage and you can get these beautiful cottages and then the cottage always has a boathouse the boathouse is normally the same size as the cottage and you can sleep in it but it always has a terrace that you can jump off into the lake The lake is warm enough to swim in in the summer? Oh my god, but this is what people don't understand about that area, that Muskoka so that's an hour and a half north of Toronto and it's on the same latitude as Saint-Tropez. Canada, why Canada works is it has seasons that are absolutely defined. And it's 35 degrees every day.

56:13Amazing. June, July, August. It's perfect. It's amazing. Canada in the summer is heaven. So I love that. Winter Place, Zermatt. I'm obsessed with Zermatt. Lots of reasons. I filmed Trigger Happy there. I just like Zermatt. I'm Swiss originally. Jolly is a Swiss Huguenot name. Zermatt doesn't allow cars. Unfortunately, it's been ruined by Russians. Like Russians came in and made everything way too expensive. But hopefully they're all banned now. so maybe it's better but I just love Zermatt I think everything about Zermatt's great and then my wild card always changes but I think it's Morocco like I would love to have like a house in the Atlas Mountains I think somewhere like that so there you go oh what a great selection but I could change that all the time house in the Atlas Mountains that would be really good are you a big trekker?

57:00are you a big walker? yeah so well I'm not a big trekker but I did a book where I walked across Lebanon and I kind of got into that like we did 27 days walking across Lebanon And I'm very, I originally called it the Hezbollah Hiking Club, which is a great name. But then I had to change the name because it wasn't allowed to be sold in about six countries in the Middle East. So we changed it to the Downhill Hiking Club because I went with two friends. And we were all of us very unfit and not great hikers. And we kept being told by our guides, oh, no, no, no, downhill is much harder than uphill. And we kept saying, it absolutely is not.

57:35Uphill, you're just like, like that. And then if we go downhill, we were so happy. And they go, no, no, no, downhill, very bad for your knees. And I go, no, it's great. So that's why I called ourselves the Downhill Hiking Club. Also, because our lives were on the downhill as well. So, yeah, I love the Atlas Mountains because I love that you're near Marrakesh, which, although, again, has been slightly ruined. You're near a place called Taradant. You can go to Wazir Zart. So I love deserts. So you're in a sort of almost Italian-type mountain region, but you're like an hour from the desert, an hour from the sea.

58:07I kind of like Moroccan food. It's not like Lebanese, but I like it. I love Morocco. There's something very special about it. There's a real buzz about it, isn't it? It's a great country. The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place.

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58:50Chapter five then, Dom, is your hidden gem. I'll tell you what I really love, actually, and people don't go, is Sarajevo. Again, I went there for a weird reason, because I'm obsessed with assassinations. When I did the Dark Tourist book, I did a thing called Assassination Vacation, where I went on a road trip around America. Weirdly, my wife didn't join me. Where I went to various assassination sites, JFK and... I don't know, I found that, again, so fascinating. As you said, that kind of connecting with history. It's like touching history. Yeah, it's incredible. And I find that really interesting.

59:21And when, in 2014, it was the centenary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated in Sarajevo, and that obviously was the thing that supposedly started First World War. And I was fascinated by that. I'd read a book by Tim Butcher called The Trigger. I can't remember if I'd read it before I went or after. If you haven't read it, I think Tim Butcher is a fantastic travel writer. He wrote Blood River, but The Trigger is a great book. And he follows the whole journey of Gavrilo Pinchep coming to Sarajevo and doing the assassination. But Sarajevo, incredible. So I drove up from Split and I drove through Mostar, which is a fantastically interesting place.

1:00:01Really got badly hit in the war. It has this bridge that spans both religious sides of the place. People dive off the bridge. There's a Mostar diving club. It's incredible. And then you keep going and you get to Sarajevo. And Sarajevo is just fascinating. It reminded me of Beirut. You've got churches and minarets next to each other. You've got the remains of the, I think it's the 86 Winter Olympics up in the, where people used to use the bobsleigh run for snipers' nests. There's a lot of Beirut about it. It was just a mix of cultures. It was like where the east met west and stopped. No one goes to Sarajevo.

1:00:36It's an incredible place. So our penultimate chapter, chapter six, is the place that you'd never go back to. Swindon. Why? I'm banned. Officially banned. What did you do? I'm actually banned from two places. I'm banned from Swindon. Actually, I'm banned from three places, I think. Swindon, Western Supermare, and Hastings. What in the UK? Yeah, yeah. So Swindon, when I first moved to the Cotswolds, people always use that expression, it looks like Beirut. And it kind of annoys me. It's a bit lazy, because Beirut looks amazing. And so I realised that I'd sort of started to use Swindon as a sort of, I don't know, a kind of, what's the word?

1:01:20target. Anytime I'd say a bit like, oh, not as bad as Swindon. Like Slough. Yeah, kind of, yeah. So when I go off around the world, people would say, where's the most dangerous place you've been? And actually not joking, I'd say, well, I've been nowhere more dangerous than chucking out time in a market town in England. It's true, like there's more violence there. And I'd often say Swindon. So Swindon banned me, but then I'm banned from Western Supermare and Hastings, both peer-related incidents. Western Super Mayor I went and I was filming something in Western Super Mayor and I wrote a column where I wasn't that nice about it and the mayor of Western Super Mayor who I presume is called the Western Super Mayor Mayor he went crazy, he was so angry and they had some event their pier burnt down I think and they had a rebuilding thing and they had a charity day and it was crazy, they had a it was all Dom Jolly themed, they had a slug race where all the slugs were named after me and then it ended with a life-size effigy of me being set fire to by the mayor I'm like who is this guy like it's crazy yeah but my best one is Hastings and I kind of it's probably fair I woke up one morning and I read on Twitter that Hastings pier had burnt down and I've got like Twitter Tourette's I just post stuff without thinking and I posted what I thought was a funny thing and it didn't go down well at all and all I said was had a smashing night out in Hastings last night, got really pissed, can't remember much, but woke up smelling of petrol.

1:02:46That's all it was. And the Hastings local newspaper just splashed sick comedian boasts of burning down pier. So it's kind of, I don't get very excited about going to places in England, which is weird because I'm on a hundred date tour. See the plug there? So I have to go to all these places. And actually I do enjoy it. And I wrote a book called Such Miserable weather where I sort of you're never a tourist in your own in your own country and I thought I don't really get excited about traveling around and so I did make an effort and I went on a road trip just going to all the sort of places you probably wouldn't want to go to like the Pencil Museum in Keswick I don't know if you've been there that's three minutes of your life we should be adding to our bucket three minutes your life you'll never get back the lawnmower British Lawnmower Museum in Southport have you been there no that's quite good if you like lawnmowers my favorite bit is they have a picture of Charles Darwin.

1:03:40Charles Darwin in his day was clearly a bit of a dude, yeah, and now he'd be in Dubai with a Lamborghini, but that wasn't on option there. So he was wearing Victorian shades, and he'd got the latest lawnmower. It was like a horse-drawn lawnmower, and the Lawnmower Museum went crazy about this. There's like 10 lines of technical bump about this lawnmower, and then right at the bottom, and this is what I love about being English, it just said, also wrote Origin of the Species. So I don't know. So I kind of, I'm rude about England, but I kind of, I love England as well. And I've really enjoyed finding weird places to go to and stuff.

1:04:16So I don't really hate anywhere. Nowhere's really given me a bad memory. I had a very bad time in Nigeria. I found that quite tricky, but I think it's a sort of lazy thing that. I don't really know Nigeria well enough. I was there for a day. It's certainly the most times I've been asked to, I mean the corruption even at the airport level was just insane but I kind of like the experience but yeah I'm not rushing to go there again yeah how do they enforce being banned from Swindon is there an enforcement? that's a very good question I got a letter from the Western Supermare Mayor telling me in official terms and it was quite a formal it said for the rest of your natural life natural life?

1:05:01yeah it sort of felt like I was being sentenced to death But for your supernatural life you could go back and haunt them. I was not allowed back within but I don't know. I don't know if they have like guards looking for me. I think I'm doing a gig in Western Supermare so we shall see. I don't think it's taken seriously. I think the mayor's gone so maybe that's right. Well thank goodness. Otherwise what would have happened at that gig? Who knows? Well it'd be great. Come along and see. Oh Dom it's just been so fun chatting. We are on to the final chapter of your travel diaries chapter seven and that is the destination at the top of your travel bucket list where haven't you been that you'd love to go so Algeria I'm obsessed with Algeria I mean beyond obsessed like I like Morocco but Morocco is kind of over you know and I've done Morocco I've done everywhere Morocco Algeria I'm obsessed with for so many reasons I think growing up Algiers was very similar to Beirut and I had cousins who left Beirut went to Algiers so Algiers is this you know French colonial city in fact Algeria wasn't a colony Algeria was a department of France it was part of France.

1:06:04So Algiers itself has this amazing French style town, not unlike Beirut, but then right behind it, it has the Medina, which is the full North African experience. And then Algeria itself is incredible, an extraordinarily massive country, mostly desert, but it has a sort of 100 mile belt from the sea in, which is a bit like Lebanon, has pine trees, and it's green and it's beautiful. So yeah, I mean, lots of places. Constantine, which is this incredible hilltop city with a bridge going up there. And someone contacts me in Constantine and says, please come to my place. And then Timgad, which is just the place I so want to go to.

1:06:43I fly a hot air balloon and I want to fly a hot air balloon over Timgad. It's this almost perfectly preserved Roman city, like the ruins of it. But it's just incredible. I don't know why. Algeria, I'm just all about Algeria. You're just drawn to it. Yeah, and no one's, I feel it's on the cusp of about to being the new hit place and I want to get there before them. Before? Yeah. Oh, I hope you get there soon, Dom. Thank you so much. Thank you, that was great. It's been such a joy chatting to you. Those were your travel diaries. Thank you very much.

1:07:18Oh, well, a huge thank you to Dom for kicking off the season with us. I absolutely love that chat. If you want to see Dom's iconic characters in the flesh, he is currently on the road for the Trigger Happy TV 25th Anniversary Tour, 100 dates across the UK all the way through to 2027. You can find tickets and more information on his latest book, The Conspiracy Tourist, at domjolly.tv. I'll, of course, be back next week with a brand new guest, so don't forget to hit follow or subscribe on your podcast app so that you don't miss an episode. To find out who's joining me next week, come and follow me on Instagram.

1:07:56I'm at Holly Rubenstein. You'll also find me on TikTok at Holly Rubenstein as well. In the meantime, have a fabulous week and safe travels.

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