Being Alive Is Just a Miserable and Lonely Experience

Speaker 1 Here Comes the Guillotine contains offensive language, mature content, and adult themes. It is not suitable for a younger audience.

Speaker 2 I had a real strange interaction with Frankie on the way to the studio yesterday, and then I forgot about it. I went home.
I was listening to frank skinner's podcast the normal universe version the

Speaker 2 earth 616 version of us

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 and i was laughing in glasgow city centre and then uh as i was laughing a guy coming across the road who had a very kind of

Speaker 2 do you know how some people have a mohawk but there's a campus to it the kind of liberty spikes uh okay colour he had a plain black mohawk and it wasn't a very spiky but it was completely shaved at the sides.

Speaker 2 And he went, You fucking laughing at me, you cunt.

Speaker 2 And I thought, Wow, that that's that's Glaswegian masculinity, it's just gossamer thin. That if you see somebody laughing, it must be an attack on you.

Speaker 2 It's absolutely hair trigger, and that's like as a young guy. Once you get to people who suck at 60, like

Speaker 2 it's absolutely all bets are off. Yeah, you don't know what it's going to be like.

Speaker 2 I remember changing hands with the kid, like when Thor was little, changing hands and putting him on the other side of me'cause I'd made eye contact with an old guy on the other side of the road and he looked like he was up for a fucking square go

Speaker 2 in the middle of the road.

Speaker 2 I thought well this might be on here. What's fucking God's going to be here? Yeah I'll put myself between my child and him.

Speaker 2 I was walking down Great Western.

Speaker 2 It wasn't a violent reaction. I just wonder.
I know that there is some kind of like

Speaker 2 protective housing things on kind of near there, but I was on Great Western Road like next to the park and then I was coming down the road. And a guy I had my headphones on anthrax,

Speaker 2 and a guy waved his phone out at me, and I went, alright, and he went, is if is this, is this the right time?

Speaker 2 Which you can't really say for a phone because they are connected to the internet and they know what time it is.

Speaker 2 But he was showing me it, and it was completely black. And I thought, oh, he's he's recognized me from BBC Scotland's up for it or something.
And he's having a prank. And I went, what?

Speaker 2 And he went, Is this the right time? And I went, There's that's not on, you're not showing me anything there.

Speaker 2 And he went, I don't understand your question, I don't understand your answer to my question. I don't understand your question, would have been amazing.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's what I finally said to him. And I went, Oh, turn, make sure you turn it on.
And then he turned it on, and I turned it on and I went, Yep, that's the right time.

Speaker 2 And he went, Oh, for fuck's sake. And then he like kind of

Speaker 2 don't stop, bro. He's fucking, you've just got to go, sure is

Speaker 2 nothing at all. It's the right time.

Speaker 2 Keep walking, speed up,

Speaker 2 don't fucking

Speaker 2 stop and compare notes with this fucking maniac.

Speaker 2 That's what my mum said when I told her. She went, You can't be speaking to these people.
Ah, my dad. Do you know what I mean? This is your dad advice.
Right, just keep fucking going, head down.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, that's I've kind of got better at that. I got abducted by a junkie when I was a wee guy.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you've seen that routine I used to do about it, but I got um, when I was a wee guy, a guy stopped me and then took me away for a wee while and stuff.

Speaker 2 I was like 18, so kind of old enough to too old to be kidnapped, uh, really.

Speaker 2 I could, I say abduction, but really, he just convinced me to follow him about, and then he took me somewhere I didn't know him. It was quite, quite scary and stuff.
But, um,

Speaker 2 yeah, I've got better at just ignoring these people, but fucking hell, man, people make Glasgow, don't they?

Speaker 2 In a pejorative sense,

Speaker 2 fucking it's absolutely wild. I had a guy the other day go,

Speaker 2 oh

Speaker 2 i heard frankie boy was in here in the garage right but i'm obviously there i'm obviously standing in the nightclub the garage that's the way to just in a fucking really shit really shit garage right

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 and uh the guy's like so he can't he can't go oh hello i'm gonna get a selfie or whatever he can't do that it's got to be some weird fucking pantomime some declarative so there's only me and him and the fucking teller in there right yeah it's like i heard frankie Boyle was in here, blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 And then it starts to be a sort of, oh, right, this is him. And then I just like totally ignored him.
And like, he goes,

Speaker 2 as I'm leaving, he goes, oh, fucking, we're not good enough to talk to now. We're all fucking tramps, are we? Right? Which is obviously like his unconscious.

Speaker 2 And I said, no, you need to say hello. Yeah.
rather than whatever this.

Speaker 2 And I made a gesture with my hand to encapsulate his performance. Whatever this is,

Speaker 2 just say hello. And I left it in there.

Speaker 2 But I think if you are approaching people, you don't know. Hello is a great one.
Hello is a great start. If that guy had said, sorry to interrupt you, could you help me with something?

Speaker 2 I would have been, ah, okay. But to just go, is this the right time? Yeah.
I don't, I mean,

Speaker 2 it's a kind of aggressive thing of I'm not going to perform basic civility. You often find it in Cosweek and shops as well.
That kind of thing of, would you think I'm a fucking shop assistant?

Speaker 2 Think I'm going to put it in my back? Yeah, brick.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I like, I had, I always had a shout out to House of Fraser, which Susie Informed is has been taken over by Sports Direct.

Speaker 2 That can't be true. It is true.
Sports Direct. I trust Susie complicitly.
So Mike Ashley, I guess, has bought House of Fraser as part of some

Speaker 2 business wangle.

Speaker 2 I hated House of Fraser when I was a wee guy. That was my least favourite place to go to.
It just smells of menopause, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 It smells of it it's just like when you're a child and you go there and it's like there's nothing there for you there's nothing there it's all listen there's some great stuff now i'm an adult and i have a a house you know a flat that i can kind of uh you know i'm sure there's some great homewear or a a house coat or something or some

Speaker 2 uh perfume you know that i could enjoy but

Speaker 2 When you're a wee guy and you're being and it's so big and there's so many bits and you're just getting carted about. I just remember once.
It's just dead ends, a shop full of dead ends.

Speaker 2 It's a cul-de-sac in Porio.

Speaker 2 And fuck me. I just remember crying one time.
I was just like, I can't be in here anymore.

Speaker 2 I can't be in House of Fraser anymore. And even now, I think about it, and I have negative for it.
And now Mike Ashley's involved as well. What would it take?

Speaker 2 I was thinking for walking into House of Fraser to be like walking into the toy shop in Home Alone 2. And I think it would take like a heavy blow from a plank

Speaker 2 slapped right across your temple. You think it needs a concussion? Yeah.

Speaker 2 The brain damage.

Speaker 2 I don't think there's anything. Even

Speaker 2 there's just a distinct lack of joy. It's a kind of luxury experience, isn't it? It's a kind of joy.

Speaker 2 But without the luxury experience. So if you went to Selfie Dues or something, they'd be like, oh, let me ram that up for you, sir.
Let me get a fucking bowl. You know, whereas House of Frays.

Speaker 2 Like Harrods or something, you know, there's a kind of, oh, there's a big gold thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah. There's a statue that's that's completely gold, that's not really for buying.

Speaker 2 The backstory to this, I've not told you, is I went to House of Fraser yesterday to buy some perfume as a gift for someone,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 they've just disappeared for 15 minutes. I sat down

Speaker 2 in their shop for 50 minutes, and they came back and went, Girl, this is rapping, isn't he here? Do you want to come back?

Speaker 2 I don't know if I've done such a house. She was a perfectly nice.

Speaker 2 Actually, I've travested yeah that lady there she was perfectly nice but she wasn't for wrapping it herself or finding presumably one of the other two dozen people that wrap stuff in that shop in one of the hundreds of counters with wrapping paper and you were just going to get it in a poly bag

Speaker 2 and you're like well that's not what you're selling if you were selling the thing

Speaker 2 I would just buy it online yeah you're selling a fucking

Speaker 2 experience yeah a smile who's this for what's what are you doing the rest of your day? You know, all that kind of stuff. That I went and got in John Lewis.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Being alive is such a miserable, lonely experience, and all we're asking for is the lubrication of

Speaker 2 civility and manners. Yeah, but those are long gone.
I was always more of a Debenhams guy. Can I say not gone in John Lewis? You know, John Lewis stayed with

Speaker 2 me. So he went to John Lewis instead.

Speaker 2 Shutting the Gucci lasses are off today,

Speaker 2 do you think this is because John Lewis is owned by the people who work there? That's a good start. Yeah,

Speaker 2 when you work there, you have shares, don't you? Imagine they start the revolution. Do you know what I mean? John Lewis are like, this is fucking great.

Speaker 2 They go on a joint Christmas with House of Fraser, and between them, they realize that communism is the way forward.

Speaker 2 Ultra-leftist department still, John Lewis. I think it would be, I don't see why not.

Speaker 2 Because if they went, wow, this is great, we all have our share in this big company and we can sell it or whatever, but we all have ownership.

Speaker 2 Maybe we should have this for public transport or water or other

Speaker 2 basic human needs, then we could actually achieve something.

Speaker 2 I would like to see, I'd like

Speaker 2 if the advert was maybe a call for some kind of communist revolution. They're all like, well, they're all ready in all these little cells.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 So there's the Gucci girls, there's the people who are on.

Speaker 2 Let me try and get them. I don't think they're called the Gucci girls.
They are called the Gucci girls, my friend. I was in there yesterday.
Shooting the Gucci girls. I am one of the Gucci girls.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're called the Gucci girls. So if you're on the stock, you're the Mark Jacobs girls or whatever.
Do you know what I mean? That's those things. Because they're all in little

Speaker 2 bits. So they just, they're no selling for John Lewis.
They're selling

Speaker 2 for the people that have set up that we still clinique. Is Clinique could do some real fucking damage, man.

Speaker 2 On the leftist landscape?

Speaker 2 Yeah, on the anarcho-syndicalist terror circuit. Temporary autonomous zone set up just for the Gucci girls.

Speaker 2 And also, like, fucking MI5 would spot them by their amazing skin. Like, I've got a shot.
Look at that.

Speaker 2 But maybe... You'd have to put on fake acne and stuff.
Just to be not recognised. Just to blend in before your fucking murderous assault on parliament.
Before the CIA juntas you.

Speaker 2 No, they they they settle your junta. There'd be guys with very highly developed noses like Somalis and stuff like that working for MI5 just trying to track these women down.
A Somali

Speaker 2 is that a Somali and Somali.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a Somalia. Yeah, but they would be Somalis.
I think Smellis are just you'll get confus I get confused because Somali sounds like smelly but it's actually wine instead of perfume.

Speaker 2 What's a perfume person called?

Speaker 2 A perfumer perfumerie. Yeah, differently.

Speaker 2 Perfumer, I think.

Speaker 2 In Elden Ring, there's a there's an enemy type called the depraved perfumer. Oh wow.

Speaker 2 Which if I was in the universe, I think I'd become a depraved perfumer. They can kind of throw out perfumes.

Speaker 2 Sounds like the writer's making an attack on someone they had to work with who was flatulent.

Speaker 2 God, that guy is an absolute depraved perfumer. It's just absolutely absolutely cropped.
I still know this when we try to

Speaker 2 render a great ex.

Speaker 2 I think that about.

Speaker 2 We were talking about this. Not about Elden Ring.
Not about being a perfumer. I was thinking, in terms of

Speaker 2 gastrointestinal issues, we went to Deshoum yesterday. The new Glasgow Deshum.
More expensive than the other Deshums. £140 for three people for lunch.
Is it really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, and we had like curry, rice, a couple of sides. Pop a dumbs, they weren't real pop-a-doms.

Speaker 2 I think they were real pop-a-doms, and soft drinks, so we weren't drinking, so I would categorize that as very expensive. Yeah, that's like

Speaker 2 an extreme luxury, I would say.

Speaker 2 My mum, I was saying this when we were there, because I reckon I said that I felt guilty in a sense because I said, I was all going to shoot that new place.

Speaker 2 But my mum, just the very night before, it's a very mum-heavy episode. I hung out with my mum two days ago.

Speaker 2 My mum said that

Speaker 2 she went there and it took ages. And she's a woman in the

Speaker 2 second half of her life, I would say.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I guess everybody's in the second half of their life. Really hoping you come to the point soon.

Speaker 2 She had filled service and she moaned about it and then she got free.

Speaker 2 She's going to go back and get a free curry, I think. Her food took exactly 40 minutes.
So it was nice.

Speaker 2 But if you're looking to make a decision out there, that was what, £45 a headish

Speaker 2 and a 40-minute wait for food. The guy who served this was very nice.
He was delightful. He was a fan of the pod.
He was a guillotine.

Speaker 2 And he looked a bit like Nico Raskin, the Rangers holding midfielder. I think it was.
He was a taller. Better looking version of Nico Raskin.
He always looks a bit like a boy turning into a werewolf.

Speaker 2 Kind of, what was the name of that we got in the monsters? Eddie Munster? He has an Eddie Munster vibe, but he also has a fucking.

Speaker 2 Did you ever see the Carry On film where they were like they had werewolves? Is it a Goth Carry-On film? Yeah, it's Carry-On Haunting. It's called Carry Haunt.

Speaker 2 It's a kind of Frankenstein werewolf-y vampire-y one, and uh Kenneth Williams goes, It's frying tonight.

Speaker 2 That's all I remember. But there are werewolves in it that look very like Nico Raskin.
I think for Halloween, which is coming up, we should do a watch-along on the YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 We should carry on haunting watch-along.

Speaker 2 It's really weird because you know, in comedy, when they do horror or they do, which is what's so beautiful about Inside Number Nine and stuff, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 When comedy takes that on, it has a really odd edge to it. It's one of my favourite tones.

Speaker 2 Like, when you watch Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, and you're like, what am I supposed to feel? Carry on screaming. That's funny.

Speaker 2 I would watch that. I would like to watch that and

Speaker 2 discuss.

Speaker 2 Here comes a guillotine film club. We're not watching Fellane, we're watching Gothic camp sex comedies from the 70s in Britain.

Speaker 2 I was saying this the other day though, like cinema and T V maybe to an extent aren't great at doing comedy.

Speaker 2 Like you go and email, you enjoy a comedy, you go back and watch and it often dates very quickly and um

Speaker 2 It is good at doing unsettling and and kind of you know David Lynch and fucking I'm in your house right now. Yeah, I'm watching you sleep Why don't you phone me? You know like

Speaker 2 or even Rob Roy where Tim Ross comes upon Eric Stoltz and goes oh interesting to see you out here with your thousand pounds

Speaker 2 You know, and it's just like creepy weird stuff is actually quite good on cinema. And that film Weapons, that's what he said.
Oh, yeah, yeah, weapons is class, isn't it? Do we talk about it?

Speaker 2 It's all those kind of creepy moments. Do we talk about that in this? Don't know.

Speaker 2 No, we haven't talked about it. Yeah, I saw Weapons in Amsterdam when I was there.
And what a fucking film that is. I saw Nimax, it was fucking terrifying.

Speaker 2 It was so loud.

Speaker 2 It's absolutely fucking... Do you get scared by stuff like that?

Speaker 2 But also in that, what I liked about it was the real life stuff is so horrible. So, his other film is like that as well.

Speaker 2 Barbarian, he's quite good at doing bad people and picking out bad details about them, and that unbalances everything. So, a lot of kind of stuff, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 Comes from, oh, here's this nice setup of some nice teenager trying to fucking have a cabin in the woods fucking bank holidays. They want to have sex and so should be punished by an invincible zombie.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 with him, there's just bets light swing weapons even though there's a dad picking his son up and he goes like how is school today kid he's got a little kid and he goes how was school today kiss any supermodels and you're just like fuck what grim detail his dad is this awful fucking human being if you haven't seen it no spoilers well minimal spoilers but all the children in a school don't show up one day except one of them

Speaker 2 and that's the film and it's like a community kind of reckoning with what happens where are these children Who's done this?

Speaker 2 I mean, no spoilers, but it would have been a lot easier to find those children than the made-it-looking movie because where they were was the exact fucking

Speaker 2 anyone would have looked yeah, yeah. I mean, more people should have gone that house is kind of creepy into it.

Speaker 2 It's a creepy house. Also, that is the house.
We're the only fucking kid who hasn't disappeared in it. Maybe let's go and search the basement for the other kids.

Speaker 2 But I'll allow it. I'll allow it, you're right.
It's a good movie. And the thing about Barbarian was it was it's about like

Speaker 2 a Airbnb gone wrong.

Speaker 2 She's in this house with this guy and then it's like, hey, what's going on? But then it's

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 a spoiler. Is it? Yeah.
Bleep that out, Anthony, please.

Speaker 2 Use a foghorn from a cruise ship.

Speaker 2 He's coming in with some mailbags. That's the new thing, Jim.

Speaker 2 Get a jerry loose.

Speaker 2 Lady

Speaker 2 1940s radio mailbag.

Speaker 2 Hi, we're gonna be talking through your problems and offering some solutions. Here, and here comes the guild team.
Welcome to HCTG Radio, coming at you live from Glasgow Scotland.

Speaker 2 Sponsored by Wheat Flakes. Sponsored by

Speaker 2 Weapons. The new film with an easily solved problem.
Do you know the horrible thing for me is I have this.

Speaker 2 Before we get to the mailbag, I have this thing where I get really bad nightmares after I watch horror films. Like, I really enjoy watching them at at the time, and I'm looking through my finger.

Speaker 2 I can't bear to watch this. Like, Long Legs really got me.
The end of that really freaked me out a wee bit. Everybody said that was the worst bit, and I was like, it wasn't.

Speaker 2 It was such a cool thing to do. And what I'm learning more about horrors is, or the good ones anyway, is they kind of let you off the hook at the end.
Do you know what I mean? Like,

Speaker 2 the end of weapons, no spoilers, is an absolute hoot.

Speaker 2 And the end of

Speaker 2 Long Legs is this horrible thing where you're like, don't show me that. Do not fucking show me that, and it lasts way too long.

Speaker 2 And you're like, I know what he's, I know what's gonna happen, and then it switches to a song by T-Rex going,

Speaker 2 and you're like, Oh, I'm okay, I'm safe. And I think a good horror maker and a good comedian goes at the end of it, goes, It's all right, go home, happy, like, everyone's okay.

Speaker 2 You gotta give them optimism, the fucking optimism, clapping seals, the fucking morons.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I just outlined that, we're all gonna fucking die within the next 50 years. Anyway, here's some sex stuff.
Like I'm wanking you off in a fucking brothel. Good night.

Speaker 2 Listen, it's the oldest job in the world. Is it for a reason?

Speaker 2 What

Speaker 2 are jacking people off?

Speaker 2 Anyway, we've got some.

Speaker 2 Don't know why I'm so excited by this, but I was just heading home south side there and lo and behold I saw Frankie strutting his stuff just as as I was snorting away at him in the podcast, talking about Jay-Z shoving his camera ring up somebody's ass.

Speaker 2 And I had to stifle the urge to hook my horn, wave, and tell him how funny it was. Maybe I need to get out more.
That's from Bev.

Speaker 2 There's a certain type of cafe in the South Side All Internet, it's a bit like a horror movie because everyone's of a certain age and demographic to recognise me, and they'll just turn around in silent Glasgow style,

Speaker 2 register me

Speaker 2 with like Inception. Yeah.
When everybody just goes, you're not.

Speaker 2 You're not part of the dream. Exactly.
I'm not part of their dream. I'm not part of what they hoped.
The future would hold.

Speaker 2 That's a good film. Tell you two films I've watched that really

Speaker 2 feel dated now because they changed everything but hold up Inception

Speaker 2 Anchorman. I think they both kind of changed the landscape cinematically in America anyway.
But I think both of of them, Anchorman made me feel like I was 13 again and

Speaker 2 Inception, I was like, this is a really good film. It's a good film.
Anyway, there you go, Bev. If you see anybody that you recognise in the street, I would start the interaction with, hello.

Speaker 2 Oh, don't start this. No, that's only if you absolutely have to.
If they have headphones on, you have to leave them alone. I need to think of a rhyme for it or something.

Speaker 2 Headphones on, leave them alone. That almost rhymes.

Speaker 2 for the airport headphones on no interaction

Speaker 2 headphones off

Speaker 2 fuck off please don't fuck off please fuck off no

Speaker 2 thanks for that bev uh yeah i like that bit about uh jay-z having a camera on his ring and he spies on people which is one of the funnier conspiracy theories that i've seen recently hi all at the guillotine studio long time listener first time emailer I have spent a long time enjoying your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Not only do I enjoy the comedy aspect of the pod, but as you more openly discuss past and present political and philosophical issues, it has made me more interested in expanding my knowledge on those subjects to both understand and allow me to be more involved in the discussions on the pod, but also in life as a whole, as it is an important part of life to understand.

Speaker 2 So, my question is: what resources, books, etc., would you recommend to begin my journey in becoming more politically educated? Or if it's even worth it, given we'll all probably be dead in 10 years?

Speaker 2 Love the pod. Thanks all.
All the best. Alan.

Speaker 2 I've become interested in thinking. That's what Alan's saying.

Speaker 2 You need at some point.

Speaker 2 I would recommend the bookshop and the library. But

Speaker 2 do you think of things that people

Speaker 2 are more niche? I've listened to that guy, Matt Christman's Kush vlogs.

Speaker 2 Kush vlogs. His Kush vlog is called.
And it's him.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Does he get high?

Speaker 2 Has Kush something to do with being high? Yeah. Okay.
Daddy Kush.

Speaker 2 He's not high on it. He's generally sings every song under his breath.

Speaker 2 Sometimes he reads like a seminal sci-fi book or something, just gives you his take on it. I guess he's like a

Speaker 2 Marxist who knows everything about history.

Speaker 2 So it's really fascinating because he'll sort of go, someone will go on his Twitch stream, which is what it is, I guess, someone will go, why did the Spanish Civil War end the way it did?

Speaker 2 And he'll go, oh, you gotta look at all the forces that created the Spanish Civil War. And fucking like, we just go from

Speaker 2 20 years before till 10 years after through every fucking permutation of what could have happened and all that stuff, which I absolutely do not have the mind or capacity to ever do myself.

Speaker 2 And it's good to have someone who can do that, that you could listen to. And he often has, he's got quite an anti-internet take and quite an anti, I guess, anti-mass culture kind of take.

Speaker 2 This thing he calls like the grill pill, which is basically devoting yourself to a kind of skill or something offline. What's grill pill? Just getting good at cooking meat?

Speaker 2 Well, in his case, that, but it sort of could be anything. It could be lifting weights, juggling, reading a book or whatever but he sort of talks about

Speaker 2 I was listening one yesterday and it's like the

Speaker 2 difference between like different types of media and how remember we're talking on here about how his thing about how art is tainted by its interaction with commerce so he's like in books you can still get those moments of genius or whatever because they just have to make much less money and there's only one person involved whereas once you get to a a film, there's a lot of money involved.

Speaker 2 And then you get to like prestige TV, and it's like, well, someone leaves halfway through a movie, they've still paid. Whereas with TV, they've kind of got to watch the next episode.

Speaker 2 So it all starts to become more and more immediate. And his

Speaker 2 basic posits this theory that basically for something to really qualify as art, you have to be confused or bored at some point.

Speaker 2 So he's like, well, if you've watched David Lynch and something like that. This podcast is.

Speaker 2 We're high art by these standards.

Speaker 2 we're born out heart and standards but it is that thing isn't it so i read thomas pynchin's novels right

Speaker 2 and i've read and reread them and there are points where you become like very confused yeah i don't know what this is and and sometimes and although not often but him is deliberately alienating um

Speaker 2 but a typical thing with me is i'll read the start two or three times and go what the fuck's going on here and so the start of vineland which they've just made into this Leonardo DiCaprio movie apparently the Paul Thomas Anderson thing is this guy who every year to qualify for his mental illness I guess like um pension turns up to this bar in grill somewhere dresses up as a woman and dives through their window right

Speaker 2 um but

Speaker 2 he turns up and this time they've fixed the glass to like

Speaker 2 resist and he bounces off it right but you reading that scene for the first time you just what the the fuck is this guy doing turning up?

Speaker 2 And then, you know, and so it's almost like you have to approach it a few times and then you go, all right, I'm into the rhythm of the thing, and then I can, or maybe that's the way my mind works, but then I'm like, right now I can read it, and then I know kind of what's happening.

Speaker 2 And then you can get a much deeper artistic experience because things aren't immediately obvious. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And with the immediacy, you know, I mean, I say this a lot, but I mean, if you read like modern popular fiction, it's almost like a Wikipedia synopsis at the start of it.

Speaker 2 So we've gone from, oh, we gradually find out that this is a married couple, and we gradually find out that they lost a way and we gradually find out this, that, and the other,

Speaker 2 to like this thing going, Susie had worked in such and such for 10 years and then she left because she felt like this and blah, blah, blah. And the whole thing of like, show don't tell

Speaker 2 has completely gone from like popular literature. And people don't like it.

Speaker 2 People don't like that. People don't like having it go, ah.

Speaker 2 To work things out.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Most people are fairly stupid.
Well, it's like, you know, you give a dog a treat and a kind of toy, right? And it's got to work to get it out. And now where the dog is

Speaker 2 just open the packet, cut it open like a packet of crisps in a fucking boozle and let me lap it up.

Speaker 2 Put my head in a vase with my jaw open and then just squeeze a sachet of jelly, like gelatin, into my gub and don't make me chew it just let it slide down my neck into my belly i don't want to i don't want to lick marrow or bone i don't want to chew in i don't want to find it and i don't want to play went and i just want it in me is how most people and that explains quite a lot of the the top ten best-selling books but most

Speaker 2 sort of has the complexity of a a musical basically I mean it's just very obvious kind of big set pieces often this is how I feel but you know when you write for TV now then little bits of writing for TV, there's a lot of pressure to.

Speaker 2 So, this is the joke among like fucking screenwriters and stuff. Always start at a funeral and have all the characters there and have a voiceover to go, this is my uncle Peter.

Speaker 2 He's always like this when he has a drink, and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 And just tell everybody what it is.

Speaker 2 And also repeat it. So you're sometimes going, oh, are they just repeating things? And so people go, I got to to go because I'm a teacher, you know? And they've got to state very obvious motives.

Speaker 2 So I've seen more and more of this in television now where they're going, well, I guess I'm looking for the murderer because she was my wife. And I'm a detective.

Speaker 2 So I guess I'd better go and find out who killed my wife.

Speaker 2 But not only will they say that, they'll fucking repeat it.

Speaker 2 Sure, hope I find my wife's killer because that would give me closure. And you're just like, fuck, who is this for?

Speaker 2 And, you know, if you make it. Exactly.

Speaker 2 If you're making it for for people who aren't watching, that's the fucking end point. Yeah, and maybe you've reached the end point of that

Speaker 2 of filming TV at the point where you go, we're making this to be played in the background, like one of those kind of like you know, you get a fire on Netflix or something.

Speaker 2 We're the kind of equivalent of that.

Speaker 2 It's more like when you're on TikTok, people have this thing where they'll show you a video, but they'll also have a guy playing a game underneath it where they have to like run down a track and collect coins and jump.

Speaker 2 And it's like you, that'll give give you the two-screen experience on one screen.

Speaker 2 Oh, what? Do you know what I'm talking about? And are they playing

Speaker 2 the game? Are they playing the game? No, no, no, no, it's unrelated. They'll have a guy running, or they'll have like a family guy clip in the corner, and that's just

Speaker 2 people's brains are broke, Frank.

Speaker 2 This is why people are buying

Speaker 2 cozy crime. I've just started reading James Elroy novels, and they're like not cozy at all.
They're very uncozy crime.

Speaker 2 What's the opposite of cozy?

Speaker 2 Exposed. Raw.

Speaker 2 Rawness is the opposite of cosiness, I think. I have a line I keep thinking something, which is someone talking about, oh, I'd like to write something cozy, and the other person goes, oh,

Speaker 2 you just get bored and introduce sodomy or something. And they go, there's nothing cozier than the anus.

Speaker 2 And you just think, but that would unbalance my cozy crime. No, I don't know.
Okay, that. But are you kind of describing yourself there?

Speaker 2 The anus? No. I'm not saying that you're an anus.
I'd like to write something cozy. No, you are writing a crime hang, and you're probably going to put sodomy in it at some point.

Speaker 2 If I know you, there's no sodomy. Like, I'm just mentally.
I'm mentally. Anything with a priest in it has a degree of sodomy.
Sorry to docks, you're

Speaker 2 a good character.

Speaker 2 It's a vicar. It's a vicar.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no,

Speaker 2 I think I'm clear. Okay.
Sodomy clear. Or whatever.
You know, you can do what you want.

Speaker 2 I guess the question is,

Speaker 2 what can I read that will make me wake up a wee bit? You know,

Speaker 2 I'm playing a video game just now called Disco Elysium, and I remember playing it the first time a few years ago before I was kind of more, I mean, it wasn't that long ago it came out, but I was less politically aware when it came out, and I didn't really understand a lot of terms

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 what communism meant or what liberalism meant or what a centrist was or like really what a fascist was. And in the game, and whereas most

Speaker 2 role-playing games would say, oh, you could be a cleric or a barbarian or a fighter. In this, you can be.

Speaker 2 There's four different quests that are the four different strands of the kind of political spectrum. And you can pursue it.
And you're responding.

Speaker 2 basically you're a policeman who wakes up and they can't remember anything about the world or their life or who they are or what their face looks like and you need to learn everything and

Speaker 2 it's really it's really handy for me to kind of figure out

Speaker 2 a lot of stuff politically'cause you just you could just answer stuff and then it comes up, oh, you are a fascist if you keep if you keep telling women to shut up or hating gay people or hating, you know, there's like a racist lorry driver in it and you can befriend him if you want if you're a racist or you can you can embarrass him with your

Speaker 2 partner lieutenant kitsurugi i had a heart attack trying to get my tie off the ceiling finding the first two two moves or something yeah you can immediately game over if you don't have a good uh um physical reaction there's a bit where you sit down with the trade union leader uh mr evrat who's helping you look for your gun that you've lost.

Speaker 2 And if the chair that he makes you sit on is quite uncomfortable, and you can die by sitting on the chair that's uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 You can ask this woman out, and she rejects you, and you fucking sort of die of shame, basically.

Speaker 2 And is that not like I've sat in a few chairs that have made me go, I'm dead now. Most chairs? Yeah.
I've spoken to a few women who've made me go, I'm dead now.

Speaker 2 I would recommend on a basic level, Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power, and any other Noam Chomsky books that are on specific things that

Speaker 2 you would be interested in. He

Speaker 2 kind of prides himself on writing in the most legible style possible and he really hates post-modern hussars. Well, no, you know, critical theory, he thinks it's just a complete fucking joke.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 he means specifically that he thinks that post the gulags and the fucking Mao stuff in China being discovered, or pre-that, everybody's like, oh, the zeros are communists, right?

Speaker 2 And then they're like, oh, God, the gulags, and then they're all the most anti-Salin people that you could imagine and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And his theory is, which I'm not convinced by, but his theory is that those people decided never again would their opinions be understood enough to be critiqued.

Speaker 2 So they never said anything as comprehensible as, yay, go Stalin, ever again. And they retreated into...

Speaker 2 So he says he met Lacan or something like that, he says just a complete charlatan who basically went to him, yeah, it's just snake oil. Um whether that's true or not, I don't know.

Speaker 2 But I just think a good tip would be just read loads of different types of stuff, read stuff for different times, read stuff for different countries, read stuff for different kind of political points of view.

Speaker 2 You know, I read a book by a Japanese guy, what was his name? His name's Yuki Omishima.

Speaker 2 He's that guy who was like a kind of gay fascist who k attempted to s take over he attempted to kind of have a coup, a military coup, it failed and he committed suicide and he wrote some pretty rough um sci-fi and um more realistic novels before he died and um you know I don't agree with him on a lot of stuff but it's an interesting point of view.

Speaker 2 See if you're looking for like single books, A People's History of the United States by Harold Zinn is really really good um and again that's really comprehensible and easy to understand and you know takes you through a lot of major episodes in american history um

Speaker 2 james elroy's books on from kennedy from the from sort of the build-up to assassination of kennedy which is american tabloid um the next one's called code 6000 that ends with the uh assassination of robert kennedy and it's like a speculative history of how all that stuff might have happened and how the various forces uh within the american intelligence community and

Speaker 2 the mob might have meshed to do that kind of thing. And if you read those,

Speaker 2 and I think the third one's called Bloods Are Over or something, which is slightly more speculative, but it's also set in the American far right.

Speaker 2 If you read those, you'll get a good kind of

Speaker 2 understanding of that period from I think about 1960 to

Speaker 2 72 or whatever. I think that's worth doing.

Speaker 2 You just also need to go, if you hear something you're interested about, kind of go down the rabbit hole on it a wee bit and try and find, you know, whatever you're interested in.

Speaker 2 Like when I was a week, I was interested in comedy, I was interested in music, so I'd read loads of books about comedy and music. Whatever you're interested in, just read about it.

Speaker 2 Read a couple of books about it, and they might disagree with each other and then get to see different points of view.

Speaker 2 I read a book called The Reactionary Mind, which really changed the way I looked at things. And it's just basically the thesis is

Speaker 2 there isn't any really right-wing politics, it's always a reaction to, you know,

Speaker 2 requests or demands from underneath for more equality do you know what I mean so the Conservative Party which I'd always felt look the Conservative Party is kind of a kind of astroturfed kind of thing almost do you know what I mean there's not really that many members

Speaker 2 and it has this completely disproportionate power in modern British history and it's kind of

Speaker 2 that these things are set up in reaction to and the book goes all the way from I think the mid-18th century to now just going, look, this happened and then this happened in reaction.

Speaker 2 You know, and often what we think of as right-wing politics is simply

Speaker 2 the formulation that's agreed upon to try and stifle demands for equality. It's kind of just a big face screaming, no, forever.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it's a dead interest.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's almost... It's almost a kind of watertight argument.
Like, it's rare you read something and you go, I can't even really see a flaw in this.

Speaker 2 It's just let's keep things the way they are because it suits me. Yeah, because I'm getting the money.
Yeah. Well, there you go, Alan.
And is it worth it, given we'll all probably be dead in 10 years?

Speaker 2 I would say 10 years. It's always worth it.
You've got to do it anyway. Well, it's not 10 years for a start, but you've kind of got to do it anyway.
Yeah. You need to be alive.

Speaker 2 You might as well do something, you know, get something out of it.

Speaker 2 I mean, that whole thing of me not doing something because it's pointless. Everything's pointless.
I mean, that's the absurd nature of reality, but well, I don't know. Well, you see, poetry,

Speaker 2 well, the thing I was listening to yesterday, that Matt Keisman thing, he was saying you've got to think about like the medieval cathedral.

Speaker 2 So, those guys that start to build a cathedral on their own or whatever, and he's gone, by the time they die, they've built a buttress.

Speaker 2 But a fucking cathedral does happen eventually, and you've got to think about it like that. In 200 years, we could have a livable world for our descendants, it could be a fucking paradise of equality.

Speaker 2 Everything exists already for that to happen. We already have the environmental technology that would stop climate change.
It's not like we have to invent anything. It's not like COVID.

Speaker 2 We have to invent a vaccine. We have solar panels, we have wind power, we could replace fossil fuels.
We just have to

Speaker 2 head a few CEOs. Christopher, we always have to bring in the jokes.

Speaker 2 We always have to bring in the humour

Speaker 2 and undermine my serious points with things that neither of us

Speaker 2 could possibly agree with.

Speaker 2 Those aren't obviously a real

Speaker 2 what's the name of the podcast again?

Speaker 2 I think that

Speaker 2 the joking name, the joke comedy podcast, and the guillotines are for us.

Speaker 2 This guy getting played in court someday, do you know what I mean? And people are dissecting the irony in it. And they call, like, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 All these Stuart Lee will be giving evidence against us, going, oh, it's a standard technique.

Speaker 2 Ah, shit.

Speaker 3 Hey, Bruce Randy here. Thank you for listening to another episode of Here Comes the Guillotine with Frankie Boyle, Susie McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

Speaker 3 Make sure you check out Christopher and Susie on tour next year.

Speaker 2 They're heading out from March 2026.

Speaker 2 Yeah, have a great time and we'll speak to you next week.

Speaker 2 You can get all the episodes of Here Comes the Guillotine on Global Player right now.

Speaker 2 Search for Global Player on your app store or go to globalplayer.com.

Speaker 1 This is a Global Player original podcast.