Dom Joly: How to Make Comedy That Lasts 25 Years (Trigger Happy TV)

0:00I've never had a plan and I've never known what I want to do, but I've always known what I don't want to do. The one thing I've learned is that comedy cannot be built on committee. The only thing you know is what makes you laugh.

0:14Dom Joly: Welcome back to What's The Trick? I am your host, Ben Hanlon, and this is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. And today is a funny one. I'm with Dom Jolly. Most of you will know him from Trigger Happy TV, one of the most iconic hidden camera shows ever made. But a bit of background about Dom. Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, grew up during the Civil War, came to England, studied politics and became a diplomat for the European Commission in Prague. from there he became a political producer at itn at westminster and this is where i suppose the comedy started because whilst he was interviewing politicians about serious subjects on parliament square in the background he started to get his mates to muck about and have fights and do all sorts of things and that tickled him and it got a bit of traction but itn cottoned on to what he was doing and they fired him uh but maybe that was the best thing that ever happened to him because from there he carried on down that route he grabbed a camera and he started making these sketches on his own he got noticed by a few different tv networks and eventually channel four spotted him and said we want this show that became trigger happy and that was in 2000 25 years ago he's doing an anniversary this year and what i didn't realize is there was only six six half hours a series and only two series so they didn't do loads there was a couple christmas specials but it sold to 80 odd countries worldwide, which is unbelievable.

1:42Dom Joly: And so I want to talk to you about that. But then since then, just to bring you up to speed, he's done shows for the BBC. He did Full Britannia on ITV. He was in I'm a Celeb. He had his own chat show at one point. And now, most recently, he does travel writing. But he does travel writing in a very Dom Jolly way, as you'll hear. He's done something like The Dark Tourist and The Conspiracy Tourist, which is just his take on travel writing. So we talk about that. But I suppose the reason I wanted to interview Dom is I've always found his work incredibly funny. And I wanted to know where that came from.

2:12Dom Joly: Where do the ideas start? And also, how did they make Trigger happy? Because it seems so raw and of its time. I really want to dig into some of the most famous sketches there. And then we talk about creativity in general and the rest of his career. So there's loads and loads in here that I think you're going to really find interesting. a few things as well just to mention we recorded this in Cheltenham we're near where Dom lives it's a little bit of naughty language at times so if you've got any young ears listening maybe don't have this on the speaker and we kick things off in this chat by me asking him why would he mess up his career as a journalist and do all these things and so we start there the moment he got fired so enjoy this one this is what's the trick with Dom Jolly it's a really good question for a start because actually i've told that story so many times but no one's actually asked me why would you do that because and actually it's been one of the big problems with my life but i think one of the big things that's made my life really interesting is that i've never had a plan and i've never known what i want to do but i've always known what i don't want to do um and so i've always had this really weird so for instance i'm i'm totally into music I was interested in comedy I was obsessed with politics but I was obsessed with politics in about just being in the thick of it about being just part of it but I wasn't like political and it wasn't like oh the moment I thought oh okay is this going to be my life for the rest of my life I just thought no I would never be able to I'm not going to last this because I've got a kind of self-destruct button and I've got a kind of I can't hang I just get bored yeah that was what so was it were you thinking ah do you know what this job's not for life let's have a bit of fun and i wasn't thinking i mean it's really easy to look back at things and think oh there was the plan get into politics do a serious base then start to mold it with some pranky stuff which will eventually lead to you making a prank show of course not it was like life is about the only thing i've learned lots of things but it's about there's moments of luck and you've got to jump on that luck when it happens moments of opportunity i don't know why i did it it just i did it because i'm a very much seize the day person i'm a very much right here right now and i just thought that's going to make me laugh and i've never thought more than six months or a month ahead yeah so you've you've done that you you've almost pushed the self-destruct button from itn got so many times yeah and yeah and then you kind of got fired i think you've said before I did, yeah.

4:45Dom Joly: And then you've already talked about this before. You went and bought a camera. You and Sam started making some content. Yeah. What I want to know is where did the idea for Trigger Happy come? Did it come as a fully formed pitch or was it a series of just mark of brow? No, it wasn't quite that. You've missed out a bit. So between being fired from ITN, because I had this political knowledge, I still thought, I don't want to be in news, but I want to make political documentaries. And I sent my CV off to various places I wanted to make. and one of them again by chance went to this production company called lawless and they were making the first mark thomas comedy product and mark thomas you know he's a stand-up still still around it was the first kind of michael moore type show and they were going to take the mickey with stunts out of politicians and they wanted someone not in comedy but who had a political background and they saw my cv and thought oh this guy yeah can help us set up mps and stuff like that and I got there thinking it was a serious job and the moment I realized what we were doing was essentially what I'd been doing at ITN I thought oh my god I'd pay you to do that yeah and so again that was like I'd not thought that's what I wanted to do but I ended up by my actions ending up there and then I got released from that and I uh I wasn't fired but you know the show was finished and then I went to the Paramount Comedy Channel and that's where I had my second bit of luck paramount comedy channel at the time was insane it was just showing american shows friends frasier things like that i remember and the guy who ran the marketing for that thought what are we making here we're making a channel that's funny and he had a 200 grand a year budget to advertise paramount comedy channel it's funny and he saw what i was doing and he said why not just go out and make funny stuff get in the news and that's advertising that we're funny and so i decided to I started to chase Peter Mandelson around.

6:30I was an early adopter. I knew he was a wrong one. And I started chasing Peter Mandelson around with an underworld fan club because he was the Prince of Darkness. And we'd bring our own Pat with us to make sure we got the photos. And I put a millennium dome in his garden and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, long story short, we started making these political stunts and they were doing really well. And they'd play them in between the shows. They're called interstitials. We'd make these little three-minute shows called War of the Flea. War of the Flea is a great title it's from a terrorist thing and it's basically if you're a dog let's say the dog is the state and the flea is the idiot punk one bite from a flea will do nothing but a thousand bites from a flea on a dog kills the dog so that was kind of what we were we were pathetic punks anyway so Channel 4 sees the stuff we're doing they go we love this will you make a one-off for Channel 4 and the best thing that ever happened to me was I wanted to go to Channel 4 and make a kind of satirical, you know, look at me, I'm taking on the powers that be.

7:30Dom Joly: And it would have been good, but it would have been niche. Like comedy punk kind of. Yeah, but more like, look, I've got a brain. This is like satire, you know, and most people be like, who cares? And the person who commissioned us called Caroline Leddy had just been making Brass Eye, Chris Morris, and, you know, the greatest show ever pretty much. And she'd spent so much time in court. When she saw us and knew what we were doing, she was like, oh, I can't do that anymore. oh, can you not just make what you're doing, but just make it funny. Like, don't make it about anything. And that, to me, was like so liberating because Trigger Happy was just about nothing.

8:03It was just about what makes me and Sam laugh. All of Trigger Happy, if you watch it, there's a lot of shaky cam. And that's just because I'm making Sam laugh. That's all it's about. It's me showing off to Sam.

8:13Dom Joly: So you had this commissioner at Channel 4 say, go and make something funny. And then, was that a commission there? And then you went and go and made some test aversion. No, so we made a thing. There was a thing called Comedy Lab. and basically it said, if you hadn't had a proper TV show before, you could make a TV show. And they said, make half an hour. And I said, I don't want to make half an hour. Again, it was like quite a cool move. I said, I don't think we've got half an hour yet. It'll be loose. Because I'd made enough to know that we didn't know what we were doing yet. I said, I want to make 15 minutes.

8:43But I want it to be... And so give the other 15 minutes to someone else, which they did. I can't remember who it was, but they didn't make it. Sorry. And so we just made 15 minutes, but it was so tight. yeah for me it's all about being in the edit and i just spent ages in the edit just making sure that every second you just like you don't want to turn off and that's what it was about and and then we put that in and then gave it to them and i just thought that was it for me i just thought i am so excited like we've been on telly we've been on channel four yeah you know i took a picture of the telly when my credits came up and that was it really i just thought i wasn't going any further and then four weeks later we get a call from channel four and we go in and they literally essentially say here's a million pounds go and make six half hours and that's that's what happened and we just we didn't go back to channel for for a year we just went off and filmed and filmed

9:31Dom Joly: no one just i mean it was insane when you look back so coming up with trigger happy then you've got six half hours to fill yeah how how does and i hope you don't just go we just rolled and i i'm a genius and i did it straight away but what was the writing process where did the ideas come from so firstly there's no writing process because the whole point and this is what i think people don't realize about trig happy is like you can't write anything because how can you write something when the whole point of it is you're approaching people you've never met before you can't have a script because you don't know where it's going to go so i i am going to say this now i have a weird genius which i never used to think i had a genius because i never thought it was a genius because it was just something i can do but i really love making stuff up on the spot that's i'm not i can never do lines i can't do scripts but i love that moment where you're like you've got someone and you've just got to keep it going and make it and i i see that moment when we used to have this thing called the traffic light system you look in someone's eyes and red meant broad more like they're going to kill you away orange i've got to work but a green you thought i can say anything at this stage yeah and i've got them and then you start playing with it and you start teasing out so so the writing process wasn't if there was any sort of thing in trig happy it would be we would come in sam and i both had vespers and we'd come in from quite close together we'd go to our office in charing cross and i would either have had a thought or we would think about it as examples i'd be driving in i would see a milkman which you never see a milkman anymore but i would see a milkman and i think oh milkman we haven't done anything with a milkman and i think do i and so we think okay and i go i think we should do something with a milkman sam and so milkman i remember like we went to we then would go to a costume place find a milkman's outfit get a milk float and that would probably be the whole day and we'd think all right let's go to the pub and then the next day we've got it all and then we'd go out with the milkman trying to do stuff and actually the milkman ended up as a flip joke because the milkman i didn't do anything funny with it at all but then i suddenly thought fuck what if three massive cats like raided a milkman's float and stole all his milk so like four days later we find out where a milkman does his round three of us dressed as cats and it's five in the morning we wait for the milkman to leave to go to a door and we just run up and we just pick up crates of milk and run away and then i put some beautiful i think i put rocket man belt and john on top boom that's trigger happy but i don't know where that comes from it just made me laugh they had like a writing room for like yeah 20 people coming out of ideas we had nothing it was just me and sam in a pub and i i remember like the greatest one the snail like i love the snail that snail sums up trig abbey you know so why you explain that for someone who hasn't seen it yeah so i just well it's the perfect trig happy sketch it's basically you see an english street scene it's not abbey road as some people think it is because that's our most famous zebra crossing it's red cliff gardens in fulham road you see a zebra crossing you see cars approaching and suddenly out the left hand frame comes me in a tight brown body costume dressed as a snail but i'm walking yeah yeah and i stop at the edge of the road beautiful bowie music playing from diamond dogs and because we're in britain everyone stops and then instead of walking across this is the weird non-logic of trig happy i then get down on the floor and I crawl very slowly across the road and in America like you know four rednecks would have got out of a pickup truck and beaten me to death or whatever but it's England everyone just sits there and waits and then when I get to the other side I stand up and I walk off again quite normally so there's no logic to that joke and we hadn't even thought about it it's not we just I remember being in a pub and you get into that vibe where you just think you're just thinking about jokes all the time and i suddenly went to sam snail zebra crossing he knew what i was saying and he said oh that'd be brilliant i ring someone up i said i need a snail costume four days later we're there but we didn't even walk through the snail we didn't think what's gonna sam would just i'd just say right i'm going and sam would film we'd never plan and would you film that all day until the best what no you get one or two and done well that was the one we used was the very first one we did and it was amazing but actually weirdly with that one we were so i I was so adrenalized because I knew it was amazing.

13:51I knew it just looked incredible. I knew it was going to define trigger happy. I went up to Sam and I just said, I think that was it. He said, it was it. Like, that was amazing that we got it. I said, I've got to do it again. He said, you don't need to. I said, I'm going to. And we did it again. And the second time, the first car that stopped was a police car. And a plainclothes police car and two policemen came out and arrested me as the snail. And that was all. In the tour I'm doing, I show the footage of the. proper arrested as well oh yeah yeah like marched off in handcuffs dressed as a snail you know i know this looks odd officer like you know that is great but uh but most of the time because everything was made up on the spot i know you're supposed to just redo jokes over and over again till you get it right but for me because we never planned sometimes we'd plan a joke i mean i

14:39Dom Joly: was going to ask you how do you know when an idea is funny or not but i i can tell it's actually quite a very binary thing for you if he makes you and sam laugh it's in and if not it's out because sam was like not a cameraman i met him at paramount comedy channel i'd got this job to try and go and annoy peter mandelton and stuff and i went to the pub that night the engineer in in uh primrose hill with my girlfriend and i'm sitting there to her going it's insane they basically give me their budget to go and do funny stuff but i can't afford like a proper cameraman and stuff like that because they're not going to wander around with me.

15:15And I'm telling you, so how am I going to do it? And Sam is literally washing glasses behind the bar and he leans over. He's been listening. He goes, I swear. And he goes, I can do that. And I go, what? He goes, I can do that. I go, what? Have you heard what I'm saying? I go, are you a cameraman? He said, yep. He wasn't a cameraman. He was an art student. But he's so on the spectrum. I said, well, come on Monday. We use this camera and come and show me you can use it. He read the whole manual and did it. He never knew how to use it. and that's my whole point my whole career has been sliding doors like if I hadn't walked into that pub that day

15:48Dom Joly: wouldn't have happened but also Sam ends up grabbing a camera and obviously there's a lot of elements to Trigger Happy but the camera was a big part of how it was shot and how it was executed to a show that ends up getting sold to 70 countries around the world 85 85 but from a standing start from a guy behind the pub it's absolutely crazy the whole thing is crazy but so many elements of it like a year before we made Trigger Happy we wouldn't be able to make it just that year this camera the vx 1000 was released which was a thousand a thousand pounds which is a lot of money uh and it was now looking at the quality it's terrible but it was just good enough quality to put on channel four before that we would have to hire a cameraman a sound man yeah they would have had lunch breaks they we wouldn't have hung out with them sam and i just literally we just spent a year driving around london every day i grew up weirdly i've always liked reality like i'm not into drama i'm not into sitcoms i don't like plays i always used to watch documentaries and i used to love the first thing i ever watched was really early candy camera i saw when i was growing up in lebanon like from the 60s like black and white if you're smart in comedy you're supposed to go and write a sitcom or be a standout i didn't i really wanted to do that i knew i could do it but i wanted to make it beautiful and there were no rules and i think we were the equivalent if i'm blowing smoke out of my own ass which i will we were the fulcrum between like old school telly and youtube because we were like a thing but also with hidden camera like hidden camera was just not a thing and then when social media launched hidden cameras now the biggest format in the world but almost all of it as you probably know it's faked you can smell it a mile off a lot of it's faked because they don't spend the time because they can't.

17:31Dom Joly: No, they don't spend the time and TV won't just let you have a camera and go anymore. They're like, oh, well, what if you don't get anyone? Or it's like, well, we'll go back tomorrow. Oh, we can't go back tomorrow. No, well, you get given a budget and the budgets are smaller and smaller and they say, look, you need to have everything ready within two months. You're like, two months? Like, yeah. And it feels, but what was interesting from a magic point of view, which I think is the same when Trigger Happy, is the great thing about hidden camera when it's done right is that you get a human person's reaction that's unscripted, unplanned, and it's like you took the spotlight off the performer and put it on the audience I'd like to say that I mean I'm still I always say that because it makes me sound like I'm not a narcissist but again it was about me it was about me being funny but I think the one thing Trigger Happy was not about was being cruel like I don't think anyone that I ever did any joke to came away upset what they always what we always wanted was them going away going what was that about you know like I just wanted to add a weird moment of surrealism to their day I mean there's one that keeps jumping, keeps popping into my head, which is, and it's because of the time, it's almost the suspense, the buildup and then the release.

18:37Dom Joly: When I think you gave somebody a shot, is it a shopping trolley? Oh, I love that. And you said, I'm paraphrasing, you said, millionth shopper. Millionth shopper, you've got a minute or 30 seconds, go in the store, fill up the trolley, whatever you fill up is yours. And the moment they run in the store, you run off, everybody runs off, but the camera stands still. Yeah, yeah. And you're watching essentially as a viewer, an empty doorway for 30 seconds. Well, you're not. actually to be fair you cut so we had i was obsessed i don't know why with the millionth person that started with we took one of those public toilets you know that there's the ones that just sit there there and we had millionth so we waited for someone to go inside the moment it closed we put a banner above saying congratulations millionth toilet user and we had a the mayor we had a paparazzi we had a dolly bird with a champagne and we had all this sort of stuff and when they came out, we're all cheering.

19:27And me dressed as a showbiz character. Congratulations, you're all. And you could see just like, and they're trying to wipe their hands. So we did that, that worked. Then we did millionth sex shop customer, which was insane. Like that was so difficult to get anyone to sign. In the end, we had to pay someone when he came out. He wouldn't sign, but we gave him 500 quid and that's a lot of porn mags. So he did do it. But then we did the, you're right, the millionth shopper. And I think that's originally where the idea, I think I've seen real things where they go, you're the millionth shopper and you get given a check.

19:56So we have the same thing, the mayor, everyone. And the guy comes in, we go, you've won the millionth shopper and therefore you've got, we gave him a golden trolley with a massive clock on it that was ticking down to 30 seconds. I don't even know if it worked. And then basically said, anything you can take, I think I said bar alcohol, I don't know why, you can have. So he rushes in, because I think everyone's thought, if I had a minute in a store, what would I do?

20:20Dom Joly: What was interesting? Supermarket sweep. Yeah, yeah. But this was such a shit supermarket. It was some convenience store up in, I think it was in Edgeware or whatever. What was interesting, so then you see him run in, you cut to the, we used the store, we always loved using the store CCTV and it's him just racing up and down the aisles. But what's interesting is the guy thought he went straight for the razor blades and the deodorants. He just piled because that was the most expensive thing. Anyway, and then you cut to us running away and then he comes out with it and he looks around. And of course, I always watch that thinking we should have had one extra beat, which should have been a policeman turning up and arresting him for shoplifting.

20:58But that felt mean. But it's kind of funny. But there's a moment where he comes out and he goes, I've done it. And then he looks around and everyone's just gone. and then he realises that this thing is not a thing and then there's just that moment where he just walks off into normal. I don't know. I can't explain why it's funny.

21:13Dom Joly: He just lets go and walks away. And just like, that didn't happen. Yeah, and I just think, and in his head, he's just had the weirdest experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I kind of love because unfortunately, obviously I presume we did ask him for permission, but when we started, before we made Trigger Happy, that guy would have just walked off. And I just love the idea. that's where it all comes from with him going home that night and his girlfriend saying do you have a nice day he goes yeah yeah i did actually a bit weird you know and then telling that story hello it's ben and for regular listeners you will know this is our very short commercial break and every week i say a commercial break but it's not a commercial break because i've got no sponsors so it's me just having a little chat with you for a minute uh so first of all this is dom uh really funny funny chat this was and i think the social media clips are gonna be funny because we're actually going to use some of the trigger happy skits as well but um if you if you like him dom we can go and support him so you can go and follow him on instagram real dom jolly uh he also as he says trigger happy is coming back live uh the 25th anniversary tour so if you think you want to go and spend a night with him and sit not a night with him you know what i mean uh go and see him live uh go and look that up the 25th anniversary tour trigger happy and also he has the first thursday day of every month he does a live speakeasy in Cheltenham which is Dom Jolly's speakeasy so it's him comedians music acts variety acts that's a fun night out as well if you're near the Cheltenham area go and check that out and I suppose as I have no sponsors I'll sponsor myself if that works tell you what I'm up to in case you're wondering what is he actually doing these days as I'm recording this now if you're watching this on YouTube you can see I'm in a hotel room in Belfast so well as because today uh this afternoon I am going to do a keynote for about 250 people in HR and I'm going to do my keynote about human connection I share my stories as a performer and how we can all connect uh when we're communicating so I'm doing that today tomorrow I fly back to London and I'm hosting an awards in the evening and then Friday I record another podcast and then I uh go down to Brighton to host another awards so that's what I do a lot of the time i'm on the road performing doing speaking or hosting awards so if that's something you're interested in go and have a look at benhanlin.com and see what i'm up to so there we go and then the other thing i want to talk about is this podcast thank you by the way if you're a new listener you're so welcome hello um this has been something i'm building from the ground up and i'm trying to build this into the biggest creativity podcast in the world and all of you are helping one listener at a time so just a few things to share um last week's episode pulp kitchen if you haven't listened to it those guys are so the pulp kitchen podcast they're so into film and we learn a lot about film and they give some great recommendations so if you're a film buff honestly you'll love that one amelia saw dell's episode i think is a hidden gem um because she really nails personal brand and i think if you're a creative especially in your thing everything about growing a business she absolutely helps us out in that episode as well and if you're enjoying comedy chat scott bennett was brilliant such a good guy and he tells us essentially how he's built his career from scratch um all i'd like to do if you're enjoying these hit subscribe give it five stars if you've got the time to write a review all these things help with algorithms um but my main request that i ask especially if you're new this would be incredible but if you're enjoying this episode and you think you've got a friend that's into comedy just get your whatsapp or your messenger out and just share this link with them and say hey give this a listener listen and if we can share this one listener at a time we will keep growing this which would be amazing and if you want to put it on your own social media and share it that would be so important so great but anyway that's enough from me by the way as well i say this every time because it also is true uh getting dms from you is lovely and we've been having some lovely conversations people have been talking to me about the episodes and things like that so you can always dm me at ben hamlin and i'll try and dm you all back um and we'll just keep chatting about it and i'll keep going so there we go uh enough from me let's get back into what's the trick with dom jolly how do you collaborate in a way to get what you want yeah but not also make the rest of the team or everyone you're working with uh not get on board with you as well there's a balance to it right well firstly i'm not a tosser like everyone pretty much i mean if you're watching this and you know denying that that's fine but almost everyone i've ever worked with i think would work with me again because i really i hate people that treat junior members of staff badly bully all that stuff but i find it very difficult when trigger happy happened one of the joys of trigger happy was because we weren't known we were nothing no one got involved they were like just off you go and do it what's weird is the moment you become successful rather than people thinking well if you know if it ain't broke yeah he's got the magic form yeah yeah leave it alone instead suddenly everyone piles in and because your success and your whatever you're good at is based on a very tenuous thing that you don't really understand when people start like piling in you either do two things you either say go fuck yourself i'm doing it my way yeah and that alienates everyone in every way or you make even worse mistake which i did make with itv when i did full britannia where i think you know what maybe these people know better than me and you end up with like fucking cartoon music canned laughter like all this stuff that i didn't want but i thought you know what let's play the game because you've not played the game and it's terrible and the one thing i've learned is that comedy cannot be built on committee yeah like comedy is is what you the only thing you know is what makes you laugh and possibly like someone like sam makes us laugh if you're trying to either guess what makes people laugh or you're trying to like please everyone you end up with how they decorated the the the euro star you get gray and yellow no one wants gray and yellow because at the end of the day if you make something and it doesn't work and it wasn't even you doing that you think why but if you just do what you think works and it doesn't work then at least it was your call but you know something happened similar in my show where a decision was made on what would and then that series was not as good as the previous series and that ended up getting cancelled right and that's life and that's show business yeah see you later um but you almost in hindsight you go hold on i wish i'd have doubled down on my instincts but you're the young guy you've been doing this two minutes yeah and you're in a building where they're giving you millions of pounds and people have been doing it 20 years yeah and it's nice you know in your you know 50s now to look back and go come on i should have stuck but it's very hard when you are the the young gun at the table do you know what i mean 100 and i did stick by my gardens for a long time but then i also did learn for a bit i've got a very nice wife who's canadian she knows that i'm combative and she's like you know what maybe maybe you should listen like maybe because a lot of when you're fighting at the beginning it's because you're insecure you don't know what you're doing and and so when someone gives you advice you think they're criticizing you because deep down you think i'm not good enough and so you fight against that but then once you get to a level where you can believe that you are good that's when you should think why not try and listen to other people and i tried to do that it both sides didn't work the real problem is money you you end up at the beginning you don't give a shit because you're just you can't believe you're on telly you can't believe you're doing this stuff but what's incredible is how quickly you can go from 30 years of living a nice life but suddenly you get big money and you're like fuck you get used to that in six months and you think i can't go back my kids are now at this school and i can't do that and you start making decisions for the wrong reasons You start doing stuff for money, not because you just love it.

28:59And my, any success I had, which is why trying to analyze this is completely pointless, was just me going, fuck it, that just sounds funny or let's do it.

29:07Dom Joly: Yeah. But then you grow up and you've got to pay rent and all that stuff. Yeah. And that affects a lot of that. It's very difficult to be an older punk, you know. Yeah, yeah. So which is why I love having spent all my money now and thinking, fuck, what am I going to do now? The hunger is back. Like, it's amazing. It makes you do creative things. Hunger is an energy. I'm paraphrasing John Lydon, but it is like, it's amazing. Like there's nothing makes you more creative and thinking I need this. And do you think you've deliberately made yourself hungry again over the years? No, I've just spent way too much money.

29:40I've had an amazing time. All I wanted to do was make sure that my kids were looked after and I had a brilliant life. And they did. And my kids are now off on their own and they'll do great. But I didn't, I never put anything aside. I never like saved anything. I never, I've never thought about the future. I've never thought about the future from when I was, you know, like when we were doing Trig Happy or when I got fired from ITN. I'm always just like, whatever's next, let's do it. The problem is once you get in your 50s, you do start to get mortal. And you start thinking, well, the wave will not always come or the wave will always be slightly smaller.

30:11Maybe it won't. I don't know. But you suddenly think and you feel reliant on it. I think other people are reliant on you. If it was just me, I don't give a shit. I love what I do. I've had a every day I wake up, I do something amazing that I love. but I've got bills to pay. That's the only issue in my life.

30:26Dom Joly: Tell you what, let's talk about the transitions then. So Trigger Happy stopped after two seasons. Take us back to that moment. I know exactly what it was. I think the most important thing I've learned in all of show business is never make any form of massive career decision straight after you finish doing something. Whether you're recording an album or you're making a TV show, the moment you've finished, you literally, I remember like, it almost feels like you're holding your body together that every time I finished a series, I sort of collapse. You know, like I have two weeks where I go down.

30:56You need to just go off, fuck off on holiday for a month, forget about everything, relax, decompress, then come back, then make your decision. I finished Trigger Happy. I was like, they said, we want you to make three more series. And in hindsight, I should have said, you twat, you don't know how lucky you are to have found the thing you're good at and make the golden goose. I should have said, I'll make you one series of Trigger Happy every three years. And in between, and I'll do all my weird stuff. Instead, I was like someone leaving a band. I was like, no, that's it. We've made the two albums.

31:25We're off. They said, we'll pay you insane amounts of money to make two Christmas specials. So I said, fine, because I'm a whore. And then I went off to the BBC. That's how it works. So creatively, you were just a bit burnt out

31:35Dom Joly: at that moment was the point in your head. A bit burnt out is my wife. I mean, I've blanked it out. I wasn't creatively burnt out. I was burnt out. I was hospitalized at the end of each Trigger Happy series with clinical depression because i was so like up down every day doing that with no idea what you're doing and just like the weight of it although it was brilliant and literally hospitalized and do you think the weight of it is because this you're the face so if this works you get the rewards but if anything's wrong the weight of it is that i'm a complicated person i'm english so i repress everything and i genuinely think and this sounds poncy but to access that area of your brain which clearly i did somehow to to think about weird sometimes brilliant things for trig happy you access an area of your brain which is great but i think to access that area means you also access the flip side and i think it you can either just stay in your normal brain and just be okay with everything or you have moments of just genius and joy but i think you have to pay it on the other side like letting yourself go a bit crazy it's a little bit like that yeah it's it's like tripping really like it's taking it's like it's like taking it's like sort of doing russian roulette with acid without like taking acid don't do acid i haven't done acid i don't need to and so let's talk about the transition so because obviously we talked a lot about sugar happy but your career has done lots of other things you've got writing for papers books yeah you're presenting loads of things and that evolving that constant evolution and something i feel bad at sometimes is that I get really jealous when I see certain people that have found their passion and they love music and they want to be a musician that's all they want to do for the rest of their life is just playing music till they fall down dead and I like magic I love magic but I always feel like I'm evolving and I look at you and you have evolved I love this this discussion because it basically comes down to what I call the 10 ,000 hours syndrome you know there's that thing where I met a guy I was a for one of my weird jobs I was a foreign correspondent at the Beijing Olympics and I meet Matthew Saeed who writes for the Times.

33:40He's an amazing...

33:40Dom Joly: Oh, Rebel Ideas, Matthew. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing guy, real intro. But he started off, he represented Britain as a ping pong player. That's right, I've read his books. Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas. Yeah, and he just said, you know, I grew up in a little suburb and we had a table tennis table and he said all we did was play that and he said that was the 10 ,000 hours. And I basically said, do you think anyone, if they just played table tennis for 10 ,000 hours, could get good? He said, yeah, of course. and so my thinking about my life has always been I've never known what I wanted to do and now looking back I could probably think oh that actually probably was something you could have stuck at yeah and I've had the most amazing life like I've had been massive in comedy I've directed music videos I've been in bands I've written I've been a foreign correspondent I've written 10 books I've done all these great things but there's a part of me thinking is that you being jack of all trades master of none because you've had a great time but at the end of the day you're not great at anything and my my my alternative to that is always sasha baron cone because sasha and i started together on paramount and sasha and ali g hit just as triggered as a bit and sasha just went for it like like he just that was what he did you know and i got trigger happy in america and i didn't want to do it and i said no and in the end i just went and did some cameos on it there's part of me thinking should i have just cracked on and become the world's greatest hidden camera person i probably could have been to be honest i don't know i can't live that life like that's a multiverse so firstly you should not beat yourself up about it because it's too fucking late like you are what you are yeah and i think at the end of the day as long as you can live your life and you don't die in abject poverty like to do more and more varied things and evolve is what life's about yeah and is it from your point of view so i i have this balance of am i getting bored with the thing so i'm moving on or am i trying to preempt evolution so it's kind of like okay the person i am now at 40 is different to the person well i think you're a smart smart i was gonna say kid be a fucking 40 but you're you're smart and i'm smart like and so i constantly was trying to preempt like part of probably knocking trigger happy on the head was me thinking like every album because i always think in band terms because i love music like you know you kind of want to finish just you just want to finish with a great album and then just go and live in ohio for the rest of your life and no one ever hears from you that's what's cool you know instead i did that and then went on i'm a celebrity so like that was not cool but it's it's yeah i don't think you should beat yourself up about it yeah i think it means you think about stuff a lot uh and sometimes it's a lot easier being thick like it's a lot easier being thick and not thinking about stuff but then it's you just can't think like that and i'll tell you what um if you were doing it all again yeah if you were a young dom jolly you had all this energy and you wanted to be a bit punky and do this hidden cameras how would you go about it now in 2026 would you think you because that route of well very weirdly i am going about it now because trig abby's 25 years old uh i don't look back too much but i did think because sam who i made trig happy would went off to la to do ads and stuff and now he's back and for the 25th anniversary 14th of jan 2000 was the first trig happy show so i thought i do want to mark it because i didn't really enjoy it at the time It was such a whirlwind.

36:54I enjoyed it. But you didn't have that moment, you think, where you look around and think, oh, this is it, you know.

37:00Dom Joly: And is that because you're worried about the next thing? No, because I just don't. I think in your mind, you always think, if you're in a band, you think there's going to be that moment where you sign the record deal, you know, like, and that's it, we've done it. But I think the truth of these things is that it never kind of happens like that. It's always, is that, have we actually signed and then what are we doing next? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you kind of think there are going to be these moments where you can just sit around and enjoy the view. And there wasn't. It took me a long time to realize, fuck, that was incredible what we did.

37:28And I enjoyed moments of it. And so 25 years was a really nice way of getting all the people I made it with together. And we got back together in a pub and we just had an amazing night. And then we came up with this idea for a live show and we did four shows. And really, that was about Sam found a box of rushes. That was incredible. We found the very first thing we ever filmed for Trigger Happy, which was me on Wimbledon Common dressed as a Womble having a nervous breakdown littering. And that was like, it was almost all of Trigger Happy in that one scene. And so we did this show and they were brilliant, really good fun.

37:59But we did film a couple of new things because people were saying to us, oh, you couldn't do it now. And suddenly I thought, oh, my God, we could do it now. And so we thought, what do we do? Like, do we go back to Channel 4 and say, hello, I'm back, you know, can we do a 25th anniversary? And then I just thought, my kids, I've never watched, I've never seen my kids watch telly. So you didn't even go to Channel 4 and have the conversation?

38:20Dom Joly: No, I haven't been anywhere. a lot of those games almost what's amazing about your comedy and those skits you could take almost any of them yeah and it's still relevant i'm i really i'm not blowing smoke out my house but i can put and i know that because i've done it now i can put 10 trigger happy beautifully edited clips in front of an audience and i guarantee you that'll get a bigger laugh than anything you can provide there's something about trigger happy because it was so beautifully made and you know I did it. I put beautiful music on it. It's like listening to a beautifully produced Pink Floyd album.

38:55Not that I'm Pink Floyd, but I know it works. I'm not modest about that. It's great. It's about doing it again without it being pastiche or nostalgia. And my kids never watched telly. I never got into YouTube. I've never kind of did it. I just did other things. And I suddenly thought, fuck it, let's just set up a YouTube channel. And there's something quite punky

39:15Dom Joly: about you know 50 something 250 something men literally setting up a youtube channel and part of i think what we're going to do is called mugwuffin part of what we're going to do is almost discuss the the ridiculousness of us doing that how why are we doing this how do we do it sam asks his kids like is this working and they're just like that's fucking terrible so like a behind the scenes yeah i think so yeah a bit like that but also i think i'm interested in you know i could just show old clips but that's pointless so actually we're filming new clips but actually what we're doing is exactly what this is about we literally sit there and think what's a good thing like as an example i've got this idea for a guy called crypto guy yeah i'm obsessed with crypto because no one really knows so i've got this character who's slowly developed who's a guy who lives in swindon because swindon makes me laugh he goes to dubai for two weeks but now thinks he's the crypto king of dubai and he now drives around drive-thrus around swindon which is me in a sort of crypto shell suit trying to pay with non-existent cryptocurrencies like cilantro yacht monkey yeah captain sandy so that was the joke and so we started doing it it's fucking great but the first thing we did was awful he didn't have the outfit and i'm just going up trying to get people to help me pay and so we show the progression like we show like we went out and i can hear sam going this is not funny and then i'm like nah that's shit and i kind of like that it breaks it all down yeah but also it does help you show where how ideas come no that's that sounds and if people want to go and watch that that is on what i don't fucking know oh would they no no is it on youtube now no not yet i mean if when you watch this we probably cancelled the whole project because we got bored but the idea at the moment is where it's going to drop as the kids say on april the first april fool's day the first one when it's called mugwuffin and the live tour so i'm i was gonna ask you you know what to expect in that but in essence it sounds like it's come out giving away all the stories yeah the live tour here really but organically it's gonna be yeah you talk about the things and the rushes and all the material that you didn't i kind of take them through the history of trigger happy from sam found all the rushes for the pilot which is great most people haven't seen the pilot so we analyze what makes a trigger happy sketch basically and then we talk about some of the weird things that happen behind the scenes some of the things that went wrong uh you know being arrested by the police of the snail uh lots of things that go wrong and then really just answering all the questions that people always ask me which is uh you know how did the mobile phone happen there's a whole story around that uh what's the weirdest thing did you ever get beaten up did you have to get consents consents an amazing story yeah i mean jesus christ the main reason people didn't sign consent forms is because they were having affairs there's an insane amount of people wandering around with someone and they were like oh i love trigger happy am i in it and they didn't realize and then they go oh fuck were you filming obviously they go this isn't my wife you know so last couple of questions about creativity i want to talk about some books for a few minutes as well so um when you're seeing like somebody who's got lots of ideas all the time about i'm going to do this project or this project yeah how do you know when to go for an idea and when to park it and go no that's not right i'm going to not do that one well i'd love to i'd love to say i have the the freedom to do that when i go for an idea normally it's when someone gives me some money to go and do it and then i think okay have i just done this for the money like what i try and do is you know i i'm a corporate whore i don't mind i'll do corporates i'll do ads to me it's like not that i'm a medieval painter but in the old days a medieval painter would be paid by a rich family to paint his wife and make her look beautiful yeah and they take the money and then they go and do their own art that's the way i look at it money is less and less around now in in media so i'll take an ad or i'll do something corporate that pays the bills to allow me to go and do something yeah so as an example but i create most of the things i want to do i'm not waiting for someone to ask me i i i know what i want to do i just need to find a way to pay it one of the big things i've done in the last 12 years i've written seven travel books i've been to 108 countries i've been to north korea i've weekended in chernobyl i've been skiing in iran i've been monster hunting in the congo now that's great and my books are you know they've been translated into other languages uh one of them dark tourist is a travel classic but it's not cheap going off to these places and i i need someone to pay for me so if i can find a way for someone to do that that's great well let's talk about the books then because um you write as you just said travel books yeah and i've thought guides yeah i'm not writing the rough and they're all got really interesting twists and your spins but i thought that was interesting like what in my head i went well how do you come up with an idea for a travel book and how do you get it made so let's take i think it'd be better if we start with the dark tourist yeah which which is my best book okay well there we go and uh so let's we'll start there and do you want to just give a top line pitch of what that is just to give people clarity on that yeah so the dark tourist is basically me going off on holidays to places you'd never think of going on holidays too uh so a coach trip of north korea around north korea i went skiing in iran i went spend a weekend in chernobyl i went to the killing fields in cambodia and i went on a road trip around america on an assassination vacation where i went to visit sites of assassinations because i'm really into assassinations and really it was just uh i knew that growing up in beirut for instance like i knew lebanon was an incredible country like i could go skiing in the evening uh beach in the morning beautiful beautiful place that looks like california best food in the world but there was a civil war going on so obviously occasionally it's awful and people go oh my god it must be terrible but i thought yeah but you know and i milk that but actually it's brilliant and i used to so firstly i think i'm attracted to places like that for an adrenaline rush but also i knew that places that all you know about is the war are probably also amazing and i kept wondering why i liked going on those sort of trips and then one day i picked up the guardian and there's a country called Guyana and in 1979 I think this guy called Jim Jones ran a massive cult and he was ran out of San Francisco and he took 900 followers to a place he built in the jungle in Guyana called Jonestown and basically he was about to get done by the American government and so he gave everyone stuff to drink cyanide and they all killed themselves and he put it in Kool-Aid that's where the expression and so these 900 people just all committed suicide or were murdered and this place is in the middle of nowhere in the most inhospitable country in Guyana and Guyana like no one fucking goes there and I remember reading about the minister of tourism for Guyana's thinking how do we get people to come here and he suddenly thought why don't we turn that place into a hotel and the guardian went this is a disgusting example of this thing called dark tourism and I read that and I thought I'm a dark tourist I would go there and so i thought that's what i'm going to do and that the name for the book came up and so i just went off and and the book itself is easy because i don't have to write a narrative art i just make myself the story let's break that down so you come up with it you read this thing in the garden you thought i've got that that's an idea do you go to a publisher and go here's an idea yeah give me some money yeah so i'd written three books before that but they'd all been kind of pastiches or a fake autobiography they were i didn't really know what i wanted to write but I'd written a lot for the Sunday Times like proper travel and I went to my publisher and I said I think I've got this is it and they said what is it and I said it's called The Dark Tourist and basically I want to go on six different trips on a holiday to places you wouldn't go on holiday to and they said like where and the moment I said skiing I had three in my mind skiing in Iran Chernobyl and North Korea they were like off you go I didn't get a lot of money for it but I got a proper advance which meant I could pay to go off so this is what so travel books when you're so you're going and all you know is the holiday you've booked you haven't got a plot in your head or a sub content or a narrative it's more just this is who i am this is what i'm fascinated in yeah so i i know exactly you know so north korea like there's no choice you can only go in as part of this really controlled tour and so i turn up and basically my whole writing the iphone when i started writing my travel books the iphone had just come out and that changed my life because i've written in notebooks i have such bad writing I'm a left-hander I can't even read my own writing right but then the iPhone so I take my iPhone wherever I am and I got my notes and I open it up I land in in Iran and I've got Iran and basically for three weeks I just everything I I love people watching listening in or stuff I get in trouble because I travel on my not trouble trouble but I just get into weird situations and I'm and I just the joy of it is most people go on holiday thinking I want a good time yeah for me on my trips if i have a good time that's a bonus but actually it doesn't make very interesting reading no the worse your holiday goes the more trouble you get into the better the book's going to be frankly yeah to you being shot in the head that's the perfect end or they're difficult to write the book and i just as i go i'm literally someone if i have a funny conversation i'll write that down immediately if i'm eavesdropping i write it down whatever happens i'm writing and so when i finish say iran i've been there three weeks i come back i email my notes back to me and i've got 15 000 words on iran so i've got 15 000 words on each country so when i start my book it's not like a blank page yeah i've literally got my travel and then i just go through it i'm the story so i'd have to think of narrative art and i just it's almost all true i mean travel writing is exaggerating or sometimes taking three things that happened and putting them in one bit but it all happens yeah and i just it's the thing i like the most if i could do anything if i could just i need to kill bill bryson first and probably michael palin but if i can do that and i could earn my living travel writing that's all i'd do there you go um and so and when you write you just sit all day and do it you're quite good at that yeah i'm really good i very weird for someone that's not very you know i can't i'm on the go all the time but i uh yeah i find it incredibly easy to write especially about myself because i probably it's narcissism i don't know if i can write a novel but yeah writing it i try and write 3 000 words a day uh and it just pours out and i normally write my book in one go so three months i'll do the whole book i'll go through it twice and that's it like i'm i'm a good writer like i love it i really love it nice uh and that is the dark tourist i'm going to order that dark tourist is good and then uh i did scary monsters where i went around the world hunting monsters then i did uh what else did i do i did hezbollah hiking club i had to change the name to downhill hiking club i walked across lebanon for 27 days then i did the conspiracy tourist where i hung out with conspiracy heads around the world which was a nightmare took a flat earther to the edge of the flat earth and my new book it's a break from all of that it's about happiness it's called the soul tourist in desperate pursuit of happiness and i've been how does a middle-aged misanthropic curmudgeonly ex-goth find happiness so i went around the world looking for it and didn't find it did you find it now i did actually but you have to read the book okay this has been really good by the way i've done a lot of these this one's been like it's made me think i think you and i've had quite similar like experiences so it's quite interesting thank you yeah i feel like an elderly uh hidden camera uncle helping out a younger younger jetta um but the thing is genuinely i want to sit and i mean i'll give you a bit of my process i only want to sit with people who i'm genuinely interested in because i think if you're I can't fake it.

50:38Dom Joly: Yeah, because also if you're interested, it's like, well, actually, I've got an hour with you. What do I want to ask you? It's got to feel like a real conversation. Yeah. And actually, my last question, I've deliberately not mentioned the phone. Well done, actually. I noticed that. Yeah. And we don't even have... He's now going to, isn't he? No. But I'm not... I see him. But I'm not... Which mind going, hello, I'm on Ben Hanlon's podcast. No. But I'm not going to mention, how did you come up with some stupid... But how many times a day, still, 25 years on, and does it just be honest does it piss you off okay so three things uh firstly if you want to find out the story about the phone and it is an interesting story you've got to come to the live show because i talked the whole thing that's why i was because they do want to know and i bring the phone out and all that shit secondly i swear to you this is true i honestly swear i don't think there's been a single day in the last 25 years where someone at some stage in the day has not shouted aversion they always shout hello i'm on the phone which is something i never fucking said yeah that's what i never actually said hello i'm on the phone and yes i'm annoyed that my catchphrase is hello but i'm i can't i'm so lucky that i've done something that has punctured through and like the the mobile phone in trigger happy i used to put before the titles because it was something that even if you hadn't seen trigger happy you knew it like it went way bigger than trigger happy it was culturally yeah just culturally everywhere but it was so different from the rest of trigger happy which was basically me having a nervous breakdown dressed as a squirrel while listening to Jack Braille but it was kind of difficult the only thing that annoys me and it does annoy me uh so here come the comments but it's like one joke that's all you had one joke the phone I got one fucking joke there were 48 jokes in each trigger happy and each one is funnier than you so that's what annoys me people think it's just that and it is a bit annoying just sometimes people will you know i go on any radio show and the fucking dj like it'll be radio cornwall fm and i'm plugging my uh my my gig there uh and the guy will go uh hello i'm on the radio it's like and i'm just like i don't mind but in their eyes i can see they think it's the first time anyone's and i just it's a bit like i'm this is gonna be an older reference but rod hull and emu i can imagine rod hull occasionally just goes on a chat show and he just rings up he just goes you know what i'm just thinking maybe not bringing emu this time just doing me rod and my new stuff i've written a book and they're like do you mind bringing emu here so so i've still got the big mobile it's fine and people literally shout at you every day every every fucking day out of a car hello or get in the cab not got your phone if you want to charge it or in a supermarket it'll always be a bloke he'll go and a girl will be like well and then he'll go hello and then i can see him trying to find the ringtone to get up i'm watching all this shit go on it's fine it's good but you know what they're always friendly about it there's some twat in in benedorm at the moment who's doing it it's they're putting it on tiktok they're getting big views and he's some what i'd mind is he's not funny but he's got a sort of blow up phone and they put the ringtone and then they're like hello it's just not funny i don't know because originally the phone was not about being funny it wasn't a comment on phones it was actually a way of me interrupting things i hate It was me interrupting theatre and singing and poncy shit.

53:52But then it turned into a sort of treatise on how we behave in the way.

53:59Dom Joly: It was because that sound, that ringtone, every room in the country had that sound. Yeah, but you know how lucky I was. And again, this is what you'll hear on the phone. But I originally chose that. It was called Grand Vals. Because I hated that ringtone. I thought this would get rid of it. But between us filming the first lot and Trigapi going out, Nokia appeared. and by complete chance they chose Grand Vals and made it the Nokia tone. So it meant everyone had a Nokia then. So if you didn't change your ringtone, that went out. And so every time that ringtone went off, it was like a subliminal hand for Trigapi.

54:30It was amazing for me. And you didn't, hold on, you put that sound in before they picked it? Yeah. And Trigapi hadn't come out. It was, again, sliding doors moment.

54:38Dom Joly: But that sound has changed your life. Yeah, it has changed my life. I realised when my life had changed. Trig Happy went out on Friday, January the 14th, 2000. And the Monday, I didn't realize how big it had become. I'm on a train going to Oxford. I'm in a carriage. And no one, you know, I'm not used to anyone knowing who I was. No one sees me. That ringtone goes off. Three people stand up, yeah? And they go, hello, I'm on the train, which I did say. I was like, fucking hell. Yeah, you're in the cultural zeitgeist. No, I didn't know what it was. It completely freaked my brain. Don't, it's been a lovely chat.

55:11Dom Joly: I normally say it's a lovely chat but I genuinely enjoyed that thank you well we are through to my final fast five Ben's fast five are you ready fast five yeah Ben's fast five here we go it's called a format Dom I've got a new one I've never had a format that's my problem no well done can't end on me and you fighting because everyone's watched this for an hour but they're going fuck this we want Ben's fast five get to the format come on then I like you right the format is five questions relatively quick answer very original for a podcast okay we're going to start with my first question the high dogs fine the highlander question so like in the film highlander when he kills another immortal he gets to steal their skills and expertise oh yeah if you could steal anyone's skills or expertise on the planet yeah who would it be uh well you know flippant answer would be you know the head of golden sacks i could make some money but it'd probably be probably be a band probably be other david bowie prince or robert smith because because i think all three of them in their own ways were or were geniuses who have like moved me beyond anything else but also have managed to or did manage to sustain long interesting chameleon like careers and are good people great actually I'm not sure about Prince never met him but I've met the other two time capsule so there's a time capsule so there's a time capsule and the mythical them the man the government taking only one of your pieces of work but you know what it can either be a book or one skit from Trigger Happy, not the whole of Trigger Happy.

56:41Dom Joly: Yeah. But you can only keep one thing and the rest is going to be burnt to a cinder never seen again. What is the one thing you're keeping? I think I'm keeping one not from Trigger Happy, but from my, I think my favourite show, which is Well Shut Your Mouth. What makes me laugh, if I had to, people ask me like, what makes me laugh? What makes me laugh is travelling vast distances, making a massive effort to do something totally pointless. And I once went all the way to Newfoundland, landed in newfoundland drove five hours out into the barren frozen tundra that is all of newfoundland to find an eskimo i know we can't use that word but it was at that time an inuit sitting in the middle of a lake on a little bench ice fishing and i brought symbols with me camera gets ready sets up and i creep up behind him i hit the symbols the eskimo jumps i run away get back in the car drive back tost john's and fly home that was all we did and that to me is perfect comedy so it's that frightening an eskimo

57:40Dom Joly: that as well you talk about your youtube channel yeah people are doing these missions these days have you seen this i've seen so much so people are doing missions where they're like one guy this guy called max foch you'd quite like i love max foch he cooked curry on the side of a volcano yeah yeah but that what you've just said there yeah that is a 12 minute youtube video that oh i couldn't go absolutely bananas i mean again that whole story is in the live show and it's It's probably my best story. I'm doing it at the Albert Hall in a month's time. I'm very excited. That is very funny. Where can I find that clip?

58:12Dom Joly: It's on iPlayer, no? Yeah, it is on iPlayer. I made a show when I finished Trigapi. I went to BBC and I made a show called World Shut Your Mouth where I went around the world. Frankly, at that stage, we were just spending the money. We didn't do many jokes, but we did do that joke. That's brilliant. Right, Culture Vulture. What is the one thing, book, film, TV, song, any album, anything you've seen recently that you've loved? uh recently pluribus i think i've loved um it's very recent but pluribus is by the guy that made breaking bad and i can't work out yet whether i love it or not so pluribus is my is my brainy one but the truth is breaking bad is is uh um a blow deck i'm obsessed with blow deck blow deck is like my guilty it's like geography porn it's like a soap opera it's like real housewives all on a on a yacht.

59:05I just love Below Deck.

59:06Dom Joly: Just, it's the crew that work on yachts, right? Yeah. But it's all of the drama. But what I love is the crew are actually quite decent and happy, and the rich twats that go on and pay, you know, half a million quid for five days on this are just awful. It's kind of the way life should be. It's like, I love it. Great. And Magic Wand. I'm going to give you my Magic Wand. You can make something vanish from the world of, let me give you the world of TV. It's Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Actually, to be serious, well, Donald Trump, he'll vanish anyway, he'll be dead soon. I think I'd like to cancel canned laughter, because you know what canned laughter is?

59:41Canned laughter, most of it comes from an audio library, and most of it was recorded in the 1950s or 60s. So essentially, not only does canned laughter imply that the powers that be don't have trust in your comedy, that they're having to tell the audience, like, this is where you laugh. But not only that, you're listening to dead people laughing. it's just nonsense I never thought of it like that yeah it's just it's a canned laughter great

1:00:06Dom Joly: it's gone it's vanished good and my final question and the way I'm going to phrase it it seems that looking at your career you've had fun for a living I've definitely had a lot of fun yeah so Dom Jolly what is the trick to making a career out of having fun I think don't think too much about stuff seize the day my new book's about happiness and and I went to India you know to try and get into yoga and all that it totally didn't work but one of the big like overarching things that i found in all over the world like denmark's one of the happiest countries in the world to all sorts of places one of the things that was like a constant was being present like it was you know and that's if you're meditating you need to be present put your phone down but be here now like you literally could be run over by a bus tomorrow uh and no one just no one's gonna just you're not gonna care about lots of things in life when you come to your deathbed so just do it oh my god i've just i've just used the nike nike logos my pursuit to happen i'm not paid by nike sadly seize the day done thank you very much tom jolly lovely thank you very much so there we go that was dom jolly really really funny chat there um i've been reflecting on that conversation what is the thing i suppose that's been rising to the top for me i quite like this idea of do what you find is funny and I think we've heard this actually on some previous episodes in a way that we're always trying to second guess what the audience want from us but if we are the audience and we do what we think is funny then that becomes hopefully the thing that keeps us consistent so I'm definitely going to try and lean into that a bit more as I've said before if you're into comedy we did an episode with Scott Bennett but as always if you've got this far and you've enjoyed it please do hit that share to you to a friend that might be into this as well that'd be incredible i'll be back next week episode drops every friday i've got to go down the road now and give a keynote uh to some hr people have a lovely week everybody uh this has been what's the trick with dom jolly