S3 EP12: Alan Davies

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Podcasts, there are millions of them.

Some might say too many.

I have one already.

I don't have any, because there are enough.

Politics, business, sport, you name it, there's a podcast about it, and they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day.

But nobody is covering the most important topic of all.

Why is that?

Are they scared?

Too afraid of being censored by the man?

Possibly, but not us.

We're here to ask the only question that matters.

We'll try and say it at the same time, Max.

What did you do yesterday?

What did you do yesterday?

What did you do yesterday?

That's it.

All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday, nothing more.

Day before yesterday, Max?

Nope.

The greatest and most interesting day of your life?

Unless it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it.

I'm Max Rushdon.

And I'm David O'Daugherty.

Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Hello and welcome to today's episode of What Did You Do Yesterday?

I'm Max Rushton.

Alongside me, in it for life, David O'Connor.

I, for the tape, as you say, we have just recorded this.

I am described in it by our guest today, the wonderful Alan Davies, as a man who hasn't looked at himself in the mirror, I think, did he say, for 10 years?

Something like that.

How did you feel when that, how did you feel at that description?

Do you know what?

When he said it initially, I was sort of proud because it implies a sort of non-vanity.

But then I think he might have been getting at something else.

That, in fact, I look like something that's just emerged from a pond.

But it makes it sound like a spiky episode, and it's not.

It's lovely.

I'm surprised you asked him how many times.

you know, if Jonathan Creek was coming back.

I didn't know he was

such a fan.

Alan Davies, you will know him.

Well, you'll know him from variety of different things.

Yeah.

He's been on QI forever.

Wonderful stand-up comedian.

He's back on tour in the autumn with his new show.

Tickets are available from AlanDavies.live.

Dot Live is a thing now.

That's good, isn't it?

That's really good.

Because then you know it's live, isn't it?

Do you think when you pass from this mortal coil, you change it to dot dead?

He's also publicizing.

The reason he really came on was to publicize his book,

which is called White Male Stand-Up.

And yeah, he's been doing the spicy publicity round for that.

He speaks about that

during the podcast.

To people maybe from other countries that don't know, like small boats

does sound like an adorable children's cartoon or something.

You know, a bit like Paw Patrol or something, where like it's a dinghy that's friends with a...

And that's generally not what the Sunday Express are talking about.

That's that's all you need to know.

Yeah, we get into that.

Yeah, that

is true.

I've forgotten about that bit.

Anyway, here is what Alan Davies did yesterday.

Alan Davies, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Hello, thank you.

Now, David, I don't know if you're aware of a lot of Alan, but he is what I would say is a very accomplished and a very sensible footballer.

There's no higher compliment I can give.

Wow.

I've never heard a footballer described as sensible before, and I've been a follower of the game for over 50 years.

Now I'm the captain sensible.

Is that not the same role that Max plays?

So is it possible that you two can play on the same team?

Because you both occupy, I would imagine, shouting a lot at people role.

Well, we rarely do play in the so we have played in many games together but not in the same team and that's a fair observation although max shouts much more than me yeah in fact max passes comment on nearly every pass that's made in the game

usually my favorite is love that yeah love that

and the other one is this is a good one all football players will know this one don't mind that yeah

or people have different ways of saying they're available for a pass don't they if you want if you want

if you need, you know, Gordon, Max, who goes, or me, or me,

always saying you're available.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're absolutely right.

But I would say we're both positive forces on a football bitch.

Sensible because the key is to play within yourself.

And that's what both Alan and I do.

Whenever you've seen me, Max, I'm at full stretch.

Yeah.

Anyway, doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter because I didn't play football yesterday.

So, yeah, we don't care.

What time, Alan, did you wake up yesterday?

About 6.35.

Okay.

Wow.

And do you know how I know that?

Because I've made some notes.

Great.

Great.

Made some notes about my day because one of the issues I have at 59 now, memory is weakening.

My memory is weakening.

I don't know what's happening, what synapses are being used for, or if they're just shutting down forever, or if they're being repurposed elsewhere.

They're not functioning as well as they once did.

But 6.35, and then I looked at my phone, which I tend to do.

I have it by the bed.

What I usually look at is: I want to see if it's transfer windows on, then it's all about have Arsenal signed any players.

I check that about six or seven times a minute.

But was 6.35 an alarm, or was that just the natural Ann and Davies?

I just wake up.

That was quite late for me.

I wake up quite early, often.

Often, I just need a wee, honestly.

Then I struggle to get back to sleep because Katie, Katie, my wife, sleeps so soundly

and really gets all the bedding organized and everything organized, and the temperature of the room, and everything's just dandy over that side.

And I'm usually got not enough covers, or too many, or too hot, or too cold, can never get the right pillow combination.

We've just ordered a new mattress

because I like to think the problem is not in my head.

I think, oh no, it'll be the mattress.

It's not a mental health issue.

As he checks the Arsenal transfer speculation six times every minute.

It's nothing to do with me.

It's just nature and its cycles.

And once you've looked at that phone, you're doomed.

The brain goes, ping, great, phone action.

Alan, I blame Helen, my partner, because she gets up for 7.30 for work and Pilates.

So I now consequently get up at 7.30, even during the Edinburgh Fringe when she's not around, because it's got so deep into my sleep cycle.

Do you have anyone to blame for the 630?

You know what I mean?

Were you a dairy farmer growing up?

No.

No, but I have a great grandfather who was a dairyman.

So it's in you.

It's in there.

It could go that far back.

It's in the DNA.

The body keeps the score, right?

This is their family trauma.

That and several great uncles who were killed in the First World War.

So how long do you lie in bed scrolling to see?

You have got Eze, like you've got him from Spurs.

Don't worry about it.

I mean, that transfer, that was one of the shortest periods between the speculation and the signing ever.

But the Victor Gyokarez transfer, that was a two or three, but that was like a 12-week series on Netflix.

Get it into that.

So yesterday, 6.35, you were up.

And then how long are you?

I look at the news a little bit.

I see if Trump says anything funny.

And then I to let the dog out into the garden because we found a dog walker.

Katie won't walk our dog and nor will the kids because she's very aggressive towards other dogs.

So I'm the only one or Walker and I've given up now seven days a week with this animal.

So I'm down to about three days a week with her.

A nice young woman called Marlisa comes to our back gate, but the back gate's got to be unlocked.

Right.

Got to be unlocked and then she can come in and get the dog who thinks that she is the greatest human she's ever met and leaps up all around her and she puts a haughty lead round her face and a muzzle over her and takes her out to terrorise every whatever a poodle it is that's wandering around Hampstead Heath.

What dog is this?

We thought Hampstead Heath would be the best place for a dog.

It turned out to be worse than crofts.

It's a cross between a Springer Spaniel, so very, very, very, very fast and very inquisitive, and a husky.

So

just a lethal prey driver.

Wow.

Not an animal to keep as a pet.

It chases absolutely everything that moves.

I stopped wearing a watch because if the sun should shine on my watch and the light flashes off it and it's halfway up a tree, I look around and she's trying to get up the tree.

She's thinking, there must be a way up this.

There must be.

She's five now.

You can't get up trees.

There must be.

All the squirrels have gone up there.

Is she thick?

Is she thick?

Do you think she's in

the protection mode?

Yeah, but what's her game then?

What's the plan?

I think she's clear Hampstead Heath of all animals.

All animals

all animals yeah

all dogs must go

there are three dogs that she likes one is called gaia and is enormous and looks like an extra from star wars looks like one of the ones that would have been in the bar in star wars in the band next to jabber the hut playing the recorder

something like that you know bassoon or something

And then there's another one who's called Casper, who is well over 57 varieties.

I mean, honestly, this looks like it's been experimented on and has escaped

and then there's another one that's called Polly who's a grey setter.

So exactly the same as a red setter but this lovely kind of mottled grey colour.

She's pretty sexy.

I can understand why Poppy, my dog, floricks around with Polly.

And Polly's also fantastically fast.

A fast speed is everything for these animals.

The faster the better.

Like Trump likes a strong man.

You know, it's not interested in the little dogs.

Daddy, oh, a terrible vision of Trump trumping a hardcore gay club

with a muzzle

choosing a path

up the nearest oak tree.

Okay, so that's nice.

You just do three days, you do three days.

It's like, you know, a mum coming back to work.

I'm going to three days.

You've gone down to three days a week.

And I do love it.

I love being out in the woods with a dog.

I love the silence in the woods.

I know the whole area quite well.

We live by Hampstead Heath.

I lived in Islington for many years and Stoke, Newington.

And when we had the kids, we thought, well, come up to the heath.

I grew up near Epping Forest.

Katie grew up in Northumberland.

And being outside in the greenery is a big part of our childhoods.

And so I take a lot of pleasure from it.

But if you've got this snapping, snarling, constantly anxious, I see dogs.

thinking about approaching her.

And I can't say to them, just don't come over here.

There's nothing here for you.

She doesn't want to be friends with you

people can give off that can't they but dogs somehow can't that's dogs still think no you do you do it'll be great darr o'brien had a tough to train dog and he sent it off for a month to we don't know some sort of brain reconditioning clinic and the dog has just come back now hello dara great to see you i've made you breakfast wasn't it that they'd run out of people so dara's dog actually did sas undercover with Aunt Middleton.

It was like Dara O'Brien's dog and, you know, some old well-awake boxer.

And that's what happened.

What they do, those people, is they give repeated electric shocks until the dog is scared to do anything.

No.

That's how you want to roll.

Oh, O'Brien, finally, the truth's come out.

It's always given, as my daughter would say, given animal torturer, hasn't he?

I'll mop the wheat.

I imagine if there's something under that desk, could he stick a pin in it?

It's just a guinea pig as well.

It's just a guinea pig to buzz.

So Sandy Parsons doesn't.

He just sticks a needle in a guinea pig.

Let me just get through this.

Okay.

So

we give the dog away.

Yeah, dog goes out for an hour.

Right, okay.

Yesterday, my youngest son, who's nine, goes to cricket camp every day.

He's cricket mad.

He loves cricket.

And so we've got to get him.

Katie came down, made him a sandwich to take with with him I made him a little bit of breakfast and then I went on my exercise bike right okay oh wow for 15 minutes okay now I've had an exercise bike for a few years and I've recently returned to getting on it trying to get on it each day so far I've done six

six days and I've already reduced the minutes are you doing proper spin are you doing proper hardcore 15 minutes or just a poodle I'm doing a bit of a poodle really I say I do about four or five kilometers okay but I know David i'm talking to a serious cyclist to think five kilometers what is that done that before i put my shoes on you know i do a little bit of something which is good for my uh patella tendinitis i'm listening to an e-book at the moment that passes the time i like an e-book oh yeah i've got the uh craig brown's book mom darling about princess margaret which is quite entertaining So I put that in and did a bit of that and then I had to take him out to cricket camp.

How is the patella tendinitis going?

I can't remember how many knee supports you you wear on a pitch.

I got patella tendinitis really badly in 2003 when I was doing a play in the West End.

It's the only time I've ever done a play in the West End.

And the stage was a raked stage, which means it sloped downhill, basically.

And I was on stage for the entire play.

And because I was on this thing, it was putting a strain on patella tendon in both knees.

So I was in excruciating pain, strapping them up and i was saying to them this is hurting too much and they had all kinds of bandages and sports strappings and they sent me for all kinds of weird therapies like cupping therapy with some bloke who i understood had done something to princess diana once and so therefore

would be ideal actually ended up with an old-fashioned nhs physiotherapist getting a bit of bandage and pulling the kneecap to one side so it was no longer rubbing on the tendon and saying your thigh muscles are not strong enough they're not holding the kneecap in the right place you need to do plies

you might have seen me max in during games of football if i'm in goal doing some plie maneuvers

is that a ballet that's a ballet

yeah then that's one of the things to keep enough strength to hold my kneecap in the right place and the exercise bite is another one of those so was that theater was it like one of those old snooker tables you had as a kid and by the end of the play everybody was just just rolled

In the end, they rebuilt the set flat.

And I remember the stage crew were livid about that.

I remember one of them was a Scottish guy who was going back to Dundee for the weekend.

And when he told me that all the reasons that he was going back to Dundee and how annoyed he was about rebuilding the set and what an absolute see you next Tuesday I was, the only word I understood was Dundee in that entire festival.

He was angry about it.

Well, I said, I'm so sorry, but I can't do it.

So, anyway, I don't have it now because I do exercises.

Interestingly, on that, them saying you had no thighs, I once during the Soccer M Glory years, I went to St.

George's Park and did a medical.

You know, like a footballer does a medical.

I wonder what a medical is.

I did a medical.

Now, is this on a treadmill with an oxygen mask on?

I did that.

I did treadmill, oxygen masks.

I did all these tests.

And there were two tests.

One where you do a sort of quad hamstring test.

And I registered naught on hamstrings.

Like I literally had no hamstrings.

Oh, wow.

And the other one was a standing jump.

And when I stood still on it, they said, looking at your balance, you shouldn't be able to stand up.

No one has failed at medical.

I failed so many times.

So they didn't sign me.

No, it was very upsetting.

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Okay, so we've done our cycle.

We've listened to a bit of Princess Margaret.

How is Princess Margaret getting on at this stage of the book?

Every ambition and every dream in her life is thwarted by a protocol.

Oh, yeah.

She can't be an actress.

She can't marry this bloke.

She can't do a lot of the things she wants to do.

So she's leaning quite heavily on fags and booze.

I mean, honestly, when I read about her, I think this woman would have found a home on the comedy circuit in the 1980s.

A bit sharp-tongued, likable.

Smoking and drinking.

She would have loved it at the fringe.

Imagine that.

Just welcome her up, folks.

She's just doing her first first five minutes and then looking down at the piece of paper it's princess margaret

any other royals in today any other royals are there i bet we'd tell you something you know about joan rivers come here can we talk

so Alan, is she the one that used to appear at Wimbledon sometimes?

That would be the only time an Irish.

Oh, that's Princess Anne, isn't it?

I think she might have been...

she was a sort of more smiley version of Princess.

Princess Anne was the one that had the incredible sort of psychobilly, the long fringe that was pull-backed over a bouffon.

She is the one who Trump, I think, has modelled his hairdo on.

Why can't he get all of his face painted?

If you're going to go like that, it really is like a clown, where there's a line where he's just not bothered doing it.

But I do like the idea of him.

He does the Royal Family of saying, I'll have a Grade Four at the size of Princess Anne on the front.

If you could do that,

that would be great.

Have you had any breakfast yet?

Have you had a cup of tea yet, Alan?

Have you consumed that?

He's had nothing.

No, and I could decaf coffee.

Yeah.

I came back.

I hadn't had any breakfast.

Well, hang on.

On the way to cricket camp, are you and your son, are you listening to anything?

Is he saying, can we have the radio one breakfast show on or what's the vibe?

Are you talking about it?

No, it's quite a short drive.

Okay.

Obviously, the majority of of breakfast radio is unlistenable.

Sometimes I put radio four on if they've got a minister on and they're just going to imply that everything he says is an outright lie and asking the same question over and over again.

Why does every interview go that way?

But no, we didn't.

I just dropped him off.

I came back, I found some rice cakes and I had some hummus and some taramaslata.

This isn't a normal breakfast where it was in the fridge.

Wow, that's a rotten breakfast.

I thought I'm having that.

Your sort of hummus and taramasalata ratio to rice cake.

Are you spreading or dipping?

Great question.

I'm dipping with the fridge door open, standing in the fridge.

All right, you're just standing in the fridge.

You can assume that I'm alone in there.

Are you in a health kick at the moment or is this just Classic Allen Davies breakfast?

No, that's not indicative of a health kick.

That's just the sort of food I like.

Yeah.

All right.

So you stand in the fridge eating this.

Are you going at pace?

Or are you taking your time?

When I think about it, I was actually going at quite a lick.

I got through half a tub of taramasilata pretty quickly.

And how many rice cakes?

I think I had four of them.

Four rice cakes.

I like them.

I remember the first one I ever had, I went on a flight to Australia in 1988.

And it's the first time I'd been to Australia.

My family were out there.

My mum's sister had emigrated in the 60s.

I've got cousins there.

My grandmother was there.

So me and my sister went.

And I just stopped eating meat.

I stopped eating meat in about 1986.

And so I ordered a vegetarian meal.

And I was the only person on the flight who'd ordered a vegetarian meal.

A steward, or a stewardess, I forget which, came out and said, Special meal, special meal, and shouted across the whole of the economy section of the plane.

Hundreds of people.

You had to really put your hand up.

And everyone else is resentful.

They're hungry.

Why is he getting his food first?

And they came down with a tray like this, very unsmiling, and gave me a tray with a rice cake on it.

Oh, this isn't an item that you eat by itself.

Not on a 24-hour flight.

It's not going to get you through, is it?

I think from pictures, the era of history that I would love to be in is that era of sort of late 60s airplane travel where there's a...

chef in a full chef hat just walking down the aisle with chops on tongs and just throwing everyone smoking cigars

There's a man playing the piano in the corridor, and there's a stage with a variety actor.

David Niven's there.

You're sitting on a Chesterfield sofa as well, aren't you?

Well, they're lugged in.

It's not attached to anything.

Yeah, it does look nice.

We're in the Pullman carriage.

Why weren't these windows open?

Okay, so we're four rice cakes, we're half a tub of taramasalata.

I'm saying it's a disappointing breakfast, but you've enjoyed it, and that's the key.

I've enjoyed it.

And then the dog comes back from her walk.

Okay.

And when she comes home, it's as if she hasn't seen us for years.

She's at the back door.

I'm back.

I'm back.

And she sees I'm eating taramaslata out of a tub.

And she knows that she's getting that tub.

She knows.

So this is exciting in the kitchen.

Just the two of us.

I give her the tub.

She takes it and she goes off down the end of the garden with it.

I mean, looks it to death.

My daughter appeared.

Cesia as well.

She turned up.

She makes her own breakfast.

She's taller than me now.

She's 15.

Okay.

Right.

Hi, Dad.

Hi.

Sleep well.

Yes.

About it.

Is that a positive interaction?

There they go.

That's a good one.

Alan, what I want to know is, Poppy, who's the boss of Poppy?

Is Poppy protecting you, or how does Poppy greet the daughter with suspicion then?

Or is Poppy just equally dislike everyone the same amount?

No, she likes all people.

Too much.

Honestly, if a total stranger came in the back gate, she would greet them in the same way.

But if they had a dog with them,

the shit would hit the fan.

Wow.

I mean, she would lose it instantaneously.

But any burglar, come on, come on in.

Let me show you around.

So the mistake the burglar would make would be to break in in a dog costume would be the one way she would stop a burglar.

We worked with a guy once on Jonathan Creek and he was in the AD's department.

He used to be in the police, but he used to be in the drug squad.

So he was good for stories, you know, in lulls in filming, in which there are many.

And one day he's told us about going on a raid.

They had a briefing meeting early in the morning, I mean early morning raid.

And he said, right, this house, they've got dogs.

So we've got a couple of guys in who are going to go first to deal with the dogs.

And then we follow in.

So, oh, okay.

So they've got these two guys, and he said to them, How do you deal with the dogs?

What do you do?

And the guy didn't say anything, he just held up an axe.

And it was Daro Brian,

and he's telling me and a couple of other actors, and someone from the make-up department.

And really, it would have been a brilliant cut to our faces, just in silence, open-mouthed.

This sounds like the grimmest day at work ever, the one you joined the AD AD department.

His directorial debut with the remake of 101 Dalmatians, it never made it to the screens.

Cruella gets her way.

That's the name of it.

Yeah.

So the scene is you, your daughter, the excitable dog.

Yeah.

Where do we go now?

I've got to come up to the room I'm in now that I'm talking to you from because I have to do interviews.

to publicize my forthcoming book,

White Male Stand-up, out on September the 9th, and my upcoming tour, Think Ahead, going around the country from September the 19th.

Done that, thanks.

And

the first interview I have to do is with a journalist from the Mail on Sunday, and it's all about drinks.

So the questions are things like, what was the first drink you had?

What's your favorite drink?

What other drinks do you like?

Yeah.

Like by question three, they're screwed, aren't they?

So is that one of those interviews where everyone there is going, why the fuck are we doing this?

It was actually quite good fun.

She was a nice woman.

And we had quite a laugh for half an hour with a few stories about going to the pub as, you know, a 16-year-old or the first time I had Guinness, which was in Dublin.

And I became a lifelong lover of Guinness because

I was in a theatre in Dublin seeing a play and they said, at the end of the play, please leave the theatre because the Proclaimers are doing a gig in here after the play.

And so I was with my then-girlfriend, and we were there because she knew a couple of the actors in the play.

I said, So, we're going to stay and watch the Proclaimers, right?

And she said, I'm not.

If you want to, you can stay.

So, I stayed.

I hid in the toilet or something.

And hundreds of kids came in.

And this is 30 years ago, right?

Proclaimers are young guys, absolutely fantastic set.

They did every song with a banger.

Irish girls are pretty, and the roof comes off the place, you know.

And I went to the bar, and every single person was drinking Guinness.

And so they said to me, What do you want?

And I said, Guinness.

And I loved loved it.

And I'd had several of them, and I've had several more since.

So, that was one of the stories I told this person.

And that will fill a page in a magazine, you magazine, or something.

And at the bottom, it will say, He's got a book out, he's going on tour.

And I have to do lots of those in the next few weeks.

Do you do them all in a row yesterday?

Was it just the drinks one?

I had to do that one.

Then I had to do a research chat for Saturday Kitchen.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Because I'm going on saturday kitchen how does a research chat on that go that goes so because i now here's the thing about saturday kitchen you know the thing that they say your food is this your food heaven or your food hell well this is the thing are we going to make alan's obviously you'd say my food hell and then you just say something you really like do you know what i really hate is a glass of pinot and a slow-cooked ragu yeah and three nights away from my children so whatever you do that's not what i want yeah oh i wish i'd spoken to you beforehand right i wasn't smart enough to do that two things happen One was I've never watched Saturday Kitchen in my life, obviously.

Why would I do that?

Yeah.

Saturday morning is always, someone's got a football fixture on or there's something going on.

That's the day I do have to take the dog out.

I didn't know about food heaven and food hell.

I came up with Turkish delight and then I couldn't think of anything else.

It's not bad.

That is not bad.

I don't like it.

No, I'm not.

I don't like it.

And then I said to her, and this sounded quite ungrateful.

and probably they won't use it but I said you know if you go to like a big swanky charity night when you're supposed to hand over loads of money and they give you tiny portions, and at the end, you get a tiny dessert that's very, very intense flavor of something in a little square with a smear of fruit coolie next to it.

That, that I don't like.

And there was a sort of silence on the end of the phone.

It's this woman had no idea what I was talking about.

And I said, This isn't working, is it?

I don't eat meat, and that was my hell.

Would be, you know, they can't do that.

God, that would be a real.

People would be very shocked at Saturday Kitchen if the beloved Alan Davis was forced to eat a horse live on television.

That he's had to kill with an axe, police style, beforehand

with a little Turkish delight balanced on a horse's head.

There you are, Alan.

It's a horse meat, casserole, and a Turkish delight.

Okay, How long is that research chat?

That went on for ages.

What else are they asking you?

Oh, I can't even remember.

So they kept telling me the names of chefs, and this chef's going to be on, and that chef's going to be on.

And,

God, I don't know.

I was really sorry.

You'll get a chance to talk about your book when so-and-so is making you something to eat.

Then they said to me, Will you taste wine?

And I said, I certainly hope so.

I can't remember if it was Saturday kitchen or Sunday brunch where the presenter turned and said, You know, after the break, we'll be cooking sardines with Richard Blackwood.

And I just thought it's such a brilliant.

How's nobody taken a step back and gone, what are we doing?

What is this?

What's happening here?

So, do you have to do any cooking?

Are they saying, you know, will you have to chop up a courgette in this?

I haven't been asked to do any cooking since I was asked to make profiteroles with Simon Rimmer and I made a cock and balls on the tray.

And he had to lean across and basically emasculate me.

No one's given me any utensils since.

But I don't know what I've got to do.

These programs, you're desperate to flog your book and flog your tickets.

You know, your publicist is getting you into so many things.

Once they've got you, they keep you there for so long.

You're there for an hour and a half.

You're pretty much on camera all the time.

So you've got to try not to look like you'd rather be anywhere else.

And usually everyone's really nice.

And, you know, the hosts of these shows, they're normally every bit as affable and charming as they appear.

You know, they're not faking it.

You know, they are are nice.

But, oh, God, it's, yeah.

But I once went on it, and I won't say who it was, very beautiful presenter.

And I thought, oh, we're going to be sat next to her for an hour and a half.

You know, could be worse.

And she just was on her phone for the entire time.

I mean, the entire time she literally didn't look across at me once I was sitting next to her.

Just totally blanked me out.

I thought, well, so this is worse than my daughter.

I mean, we've got my parents.

I think it was the last time I was on Sunday Brunch.

I was with Dua Lipa, who's now the biggest singer in pop and plays stadiums.

I was probably just a 43-year-old man at the time.

Somehow I got into that thing of like, and what do you do?

Do you do any acting at all?

Just like a sort of elderly person you meet at Christmas.

You know what I mean?

And you write your own songs.

And my nieces, let's just say, texts began to flow in from the younger members of the Adority family that I had disgraced us in a way that, yeah, they've never forgiven me.

Sorry, Doof.

But that happens like in ad breaks.

I remember like in Soccer AM, and it never really crossed my mind because you came on Soccer AM in the glory years, Alan, that somebody would be on the sofa going, oh, it's a Saturday morning.

I can't be asked with this.

You know, I just wouldn't even register for it because it was my bubble.

And I was like, this is, you know, we weren't making you eat a dead horse with Turkey's license.

You never know on that show.

No, and also there's a lot going on on that show.

and a lot of the content was funny.

And you're talking about football.

Sometimes it's too much.

Let's get the guy on, let's interview him about his book, give him a sandwich, and let him go

in the ad breaks.

Sometimes you would have you'd be sitting in the adverts, and it would be, you know, a random footballer like Brett Ormerod sitting next to Mr.

T

and you know, Mickey Barnby, Nikki Barnby, and you know, an indie band who really hung over saying nothing to each other.

And me and Helen desperately just trying to sort of what's the small talk in the ad breaks that's going to just sort of keep these guys going it's just max

who was the most monosyllabic there's a famous Bruce Willis appearance on the one show where he answers yes and no to all of their questions who is the least plused person you ever had on soccer AM in the Glory years oh it's a good question I it would be one of those bands that I couldn't name

not because I don't want to name them I just hip-hop stars would come on and being a hip-hop star is all about being I'm the best person in the world and they were great, they were always great.

And obviously, I'm asking Flo Ryder about rap music, I mean, it's just ridiculous, but like I'm doing it, and he's up for it.

But if you've got anyone on who is an indie band, and the whole part of being an indie band is to be horizontal and not give a shit, yeah, so you're an Everton fan, you're asking the bassist of the cribs who might have been lovely, it's just an example.

You know, what do you think about Howard Kendall?

And they're like, Oh,

you're like, oh, you know, cut to something else.

Anyway, where are we, Addie?

You've had this chat with Saturday Kitchen, And so now I go on there in a few days, Tom, not this next week, and I'll eat everything and drink everything and be jolly.

I would have completely forgotten the research chat, and I will be reminded of the research chat when I arrived.

Now, there's a story about you, and something, what you don't remember our conversation.

I literally couldn't remember it the next day because I tried to talk to Max and David about it.

And then after that, then I had to do an interview with the Daily Express.

Oh, yeah, about small boats, small boats.

What's your favorite size boats, Alan?

How they relate to the late Princess Diana,

their twin obsessions.

If they could get Diana on a small boat, they really would have a front page.

And the journalist interviewing me for the Express had stepped in at the last minute for the person that was meant to be doing it, and so therefore hadn't seen my new book, didn't appear to know really who I was, apart from

are we going to bring back Jonathan Creek?

And

it's been nine years since we made the last one, and we'd made them for 20 years before that.

And these things, it isn't Doctor Who.

I have not regenerated, and neither, more importantly, as the now quite elderly writer.

Leave the man alone, he's enjoying his retirement.

My first book that I wrote, which was about 15 years ago, it was called My Favorite People, and I wrote about heroes growing up or people who at different points in my sort of teens and 20s were inspirational.

And then they kind of fall out of favor and are replaced by someone else.

It seemed like a good idea for a book.

In the end, it didn't really work.

Too many different subject matters, too many different stories didn't hang together.

But the reason I mentioned it, one of the people that I mentioned was in 1979 when I was 13 was Margaret Thatcher.

For one day when she won the general election, I remember ringing my dad, knowing that he wanted her to to win and saying we won and he's at work he's in it works as an accountant in the city the idea that he wouldn't have heard the outcome of the general election yeah

so i was trying to please him and then subsequently i thought that she was became quite a divisive figure and i was i was at university when the miners strike was on and i went on some big c and d marches and there really was no middle ground with Margaret Thatcher, you either with her or against her.

And

ultimately, I thought thought quite a damaging figure.

But I couldn't understand why the Dad Express journalist was asking me about her.

And then I thought, oh, she's probably just getting a few bits off Wikipedia or something about me.

I don't know where she's getting her stuff.

Stepped in at the last minute.

She hasn't read the book.

And so we got through it.

We got through the interview.

She was very professional.

We had a bit of a chat.

I have no idea what it will look like in the paper, as long as it says at the bottom, he's got a book out and he's going on to election.

Alan Davies still loves loves Thatcher after all these years.

And Jonathan Creek exclusive.

Exactly.

Yeah, coming.

And she goes, Well, still, things are divided.

I said, I think we've gone through a period where there was a more of a consensus.

And in recent years, there's been more of a divisive movement in politics.

There's more of a tendency to try and divide us.

We've got far more in common.

I know it's a bit of a platitude or a cliché.

But I think it's the case.

And I don't like people who want to sow division and reap division, gain popularity amongst half the people at the, you know, this is not an approach that I approve, you know, so to be tiptoeing around the subject.

So we were definitely hurtling towards how do you feel about small boats?

I'm not sure.

Desperately trying to head off that conversation because it does not feature in my book or in my live show.

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Right, so Express done.

Done.

What's next?

Let me have a look.

What did I do next?

Katie and Susie, my daughter, went to John Lewis.

Oh, right.

What did they get him?

They had to take a radio back.

What was wrong with the radio?

We have one of these sort of technical internet-savvy radios.

And we did a reboot and a software update.

And then the thing just was flashing.

God, that's something wild was going on on in there.

And I do imagine hundreds of little people running about going, oh no, we've lost the blue thing.

So they took it back and they plugged it in in John Lewis and they looked at it and they said, basically, it's fucked.

So,

and they're going to give us a new one.

I mean, what an outcome.

Alan, no one in John Lewis has ever said it's fucked.

If there's one shop in the history of the world where no one has ever kicked a radio, I've gone, throw this shit in the river.

It's absolutely fucked.

I've gone a wonderful purchase.

We regret sincerely that this was the one that didn't work.

Of course.

I mean, I thought it would be funny.

They said that we've never knowingly sold anything that's fucked.

Yeah.

That is the tagline, isn't it?

So to listeners who may not know, John Lewis is the posh English department store.

And its slogan, slogan, which I've been staring at for the 15 years I've been going to John Lewis is never knowingly undersold.

What the fuck does that mean?

Well, it means that never knowingly.

Okay, it's hard to explain.

You won't find anything that we stock cheaper somewhere else.

And if you do,

we'll reduce the price.

I don't know if anyone's ever tested that.

And given the whatever the, I don't know how you say it, Sheen or Shine or whatever that Chinese website is, where they'll sell you anything i mean this is kind of the internet pound land innit this is swamping they are never knowing the undersoul but they wouldn't put that on their website their motto is if you are our rivals we will you to death

in chinese characters

beckham's got it tattooed on his arm

i guess it's easy if the main thing you sell as john lewis is like burberry tents and you know wax jacket caravans and stuff it's generally not something that's being stocked in the lower order shops but I think it was good until the internet and now it must be really annoying when they you know but I don't it's not quite like you go and there's a grand piano and you say my mate Dave says he can get me one for a tenner like I think I don't know you have to probably present some paperwork this radio was we found out the thing I liked about this radio that we discovered when it had a malfunction was that it's made in south end so the new one's only got to come from south end it'll be here in a minute.

But there are quite a lot of shops.

There was a shop called Simpson Cycles near me that I'd go in and got my kids' bikes in there and get my bike fixed sometimes.

And they went under because people would

stand in there and you'd watch people come in and they'd want to buy a lock or something, and they'd come in and photograph something.

He said to me, The bloke, people come in, they photograph it, and then they order it online while they're still in the shop.

They save themselves two quid or something, they're still in the shop.

And they went bust.

So I'm against it.

So they go to John Lewis.

You got the house where it's you and the dog now.

Yeah.

Well, I successfully sold on eBay a portable typewriter that I have owned since the 80s and haven't typed on since 1991.

Is it a murder she wrote type?

It's a typewriter that has moved house with me about eight times.

I tend to, I'm a bit of a hoarder, to say the least.

Every now and then I'll put a few things on eBay, and this thing suddenly gets an email.

Oh, you've sold it.

Have I?

Wow.

So someone wants it.

Do they?

Oh shit.

Now I've got to find a box and get some bubble wrap and tape it up and take it up to the post office and get my QR code scanned.

And it got sent off to somewhere in Nottinghamshire.

I was rewarded with 25 quid for you know that two hours work.

That's the reason I have 18 bikes is because I've bought a lot of bikes on eBay, but particularly with bikes, because you have to fully reduce them right down and put them in a box.

And there's a certain way you put the bubble wrap and all the rest inside.

Yeah, so instead, my life is just being coming more and more filled with bicycles and other tat.

I need to take inspiration from this.

Was there a bidding war for it?

No.

Was it Tom Hanks?

Did Tom Hanks buy it?

I know he's very interested in typewriters.

Just one interested party.

But there is a sense of achievement, Alan, in getting it out of the house and wrapped and danced.

That's worth more than the £25.

Yeah, and somebody who wants it has now got it.

Yeah.

So, yay.

Only a little bit of pollution with the every van

careering around the Nottinghamshire countryside because he's got 700 drops to do before four o'clock.

Throws it over a fence, it smashes into a field.

This happened to us once.

My wife's from Corbridge in Northumberland, which is a little, very nice little village, really.

And we ordered an extractor fan for the bathroom.

Our cottage, we have a little cottage up there, two up, two down cottage.

It's down an alleyway.

It's almost impossible to find.

He couldn't find it, the delivery guy.

And so we got back in touch with the people we'd got it from.

It hasn't come.

They sent us another one.

And then a few days later, my brother-in-law said, oh, so-and-so lives up the road.

His cousin says there was an extractor fan left on their doorstep.

And because it was such a little village, it found its way to us.

Almost as if the delivery guy said, I'll just leave on us.

I'll put this on someone's doorstep.

It'll get there.

Yeah.

Which it wouldn't have worked in London town.

What time have we got to?

And I don't, I mean, you've had a significant amount of taramasalata, but I feel like you need more sustenance.

Well, I just went back to the fridge

and I found a lump of tofu,

which

it's hard to explain.

It's sort of smoked with sesame seeds on it.

And I really like this stuff.

I can eat a block of this stuff.

Lump is sort of quite hard to gauge.

How big is a lump?

I'd say if you imagine two cigarette packets side by side.

That's how tofu is sold in cigarette packets of tofu.

Blink your eyes and that's become tofu and then it's been vacuum packed in plastic.

Obviously, very important that everything has to be vacuum packed in the

so the ongoing environmental crisis can continue.

Something's going on with the human race where we're definitely determined to erect the place and we don't know why we're doing it.

There's something's making us do it.

Also in the fridge I found another plastic tub which had some sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella balls in it.

The mozzarella balls are beloved of my nine-year-old, but he was at cricket camp and he did not see me eat the last four of those.

Do we eat them standing at the fridge by the light of the fridge?

Yeah, there's a little bit between the fridge and the sink, there's a little bit of worktop there with a kettle on it.

And I'm often to be found there, you know, behaving as if I've broken in into my own house.

Is the fridge door open?

Because the fridge door might start beeping at some point, or do you close the fridge door?

It does beep.

The fridge door does beep sometimes.

Did it beep yesterday?

Did beep a little bit.

Do you take a bite of each or do you do it in order?

Your tofu cigarette boxes, then you're not so relevant.

I was breaking off bits of tofu and wiping it around the inside of the tub.

Got it.

Whether it's a nice sort of tomatoey, cheesy, oily.

Yeah.

I can't imagine any other person doing this.

I don't think I would do this in front of people.

Thinking back, most guests have lunched, I have certainly eaten not all their meals by the fridge.

Trevor Nelson did microwave all of his meals and I think James Acaster ate a lot of beetroots by the fridge, if I remember correctly.

Oh no, now that's good you should mention that because I also found another couple of rice cakes and I like a bit of mature cheddar cheese

with sliced beetroot on the top.

I have a very large jar of sliced beetroot.

I don't think there's it possible to have too big a jar.

I mean bearing in mind you know the restrictions of the fridge.

You haven't taken a shelf out of the fridge to accommodate the beetroot the two kilo jar of

do you think that Poppy's anger issues may stem from all of this weird food

that she keeps dancing up to the house being like, Finally, a dead rabbit.

And would you like some smoked sesame tofu, Poppy?

You're absolutely grand.

Thank you.

We'll wait until all the carrots have gone really bendy and then she has those.

It's sad when you can fold a carrot, isn't it?

That is a sad time.

I'll still eat those.

I'll find a way to get those prepared.

And I'll eat those, but I have to conceal them.

If I'm making, which I occasionally do, what I consider to be the world's greatest veggie cottage pie.

And when we say to the kids, they say, what's for tea?

And I say, I've made a cottage pie.

The grown, the collective grown.

It's like a dropped catch at Lord's.

Alan, I've got a question.

Has there been tension with the 15-year-old over the summer over

get a job or do something useful?

Because it's that grey area when you're 15.

You can just sort of be at a loose end a lot of the time.

Have you put her to work?

We were away quite a lot.

We went on holiday to Sardinia for nine days, which I recommend.

Love it there.

And we went to the fringe for two weeks and all the family came.

And they took the elder two to see your show, David.

Oh, my.

They loved it.

They didn't know who you were.

And, you know, don't want to be rude but when you come out it's unpromising

it's got dod on the back curtain in gaffer tape

there's a little chair that they recognize from a classroom at school and the man comes out who hasn't looked at himself in a full-length mirror practice in his entire adult life

and he's got a keyboard but then when he starts speaking he's so engaging and charming and everything he says is funny and the little songs they loved it.

So it's very nice for me to kind of curate the fringe for them a bit and be able to say, I'm going to take you to see someone you're going to like.

And they don't know who it is, you know.

And so very much enjoyed that.

And we were there for a couple of weeks.

We're leaning on her a bit to do her homework and practice her piano.

And teenagers now, they're very phone addicted.

And also, I think COVID had a bit of a hit on them, you know, because they didn't go out so much.

Sure.

They don't go out and knock around with other 14 and 15-year-olds like I used to do.

I couldn't wait to get out of the house.

Yeah, so there has to be an appointment with someone.

You've got to go meet in so-and-so at such and such a time.

I mean, today, Susie's friend came around at 10 and she's gone out.

There will be a Pizza Express involved, I imagine, or a Wagga Mummers, or

probably a milkshake somewhere along the line, and then another 50 quid spent in Space NK.

But the idea of her getting a job, and that is a long way off.

But I'm angling for foreign secretary ultimately.

You're telling me that you won't be hiding in the toilets to see the proclaimers after a play, then?

I've taken her to some gigs, actually.

I mean, a lot of them are big gigs.

You know, I took her to Taylor Swift.

Her mum took her to Beyoncé.

But she wanted to go and see Olivia Rodrigo.

Know who Olivia Rodrigo is.

Anyway,

she's an absolute pocket dynamo.

She's a kind of like Avril Levine a little bit with about eight dancers and amazing projections.

And I'm sitting there in the audience, a 58-year-old.

There's a few other dads around,

but she's on her feet with her friend, and they know every word to every song.

And I'm sitting there thinking, you know what?

I used to really like Avril Levine back in the day.

I think I had a CD.

I thought I was a skater boy.

And in fact, I think I was in 1980.

My question is: on the Olivia Rodrigo to Beyoncé Spectrum, where does David Odaherty and his live show theatricals come in?

I think ultimately there's a much more rewarding long-term experience.

It's funny with Taylor Swift because I remember when he played Melbourne and my football team, you know, sort of the Melbourne University Old Boys, there were like 10 dads all like going, oh, God, I've got to go to Taylor Swift.

You think these tickets are worth so much?

And there were just so many dads going, I'm halfway through series four of The Wire.

I just want to stay in and watch that.

I've got to go to Taylor Swift.

And the other half of the people are just so excited to go.

Taylor Swift, the amazing thing about that concert, I've seen Taylor Swift twice now.

And honestly, the one a few years ago was better.

But anyway.

They said this, a really long concert.

I mean, it really went on a long time.

All the family went.

Katie took the boys home before the end because it's at Wembley.

And if you've ever been to Wembley, get out before the end.

Just get out before the end.

Don't get kettled with those horses.

But Susie didn't want to get out before the end.

So we stayed later and we watched them clear the pitch.

So they put about 60 massive bins on wheels.

They turned them on their sides.

And then I'm not kidding, it must have been 200 people with brooms, walked the length of the pitch, sweeping up a mountain of plastic cups into all these tipped-over bins.

We watched this for about 20 minutes, and I thought, this is every bit as entertaining as the show,

if not more so.

And

this is incredible.

The teamwork there.

Tell you what, say one thing for Taylor Swift.

She creates a lot of jobs.

There's a lot of people here getting some money.

So we watched that, and then I thought, well, okay, we could go now.

Crowds will have gone home.

That's it.

And we got outside, and it was still an hour to cube.

I would imagine while you're watching that sweep up going, all you're thinking is of David Platt once scored a goal from there against Greece in a qualifier.

Kenny Sansom used to run up and down that wig.

Alexis Sanchez put one in off the crossbar against Aston Villa.

That's what Taylor was thinking about.

Right, so we've re-energized with our tofu and our mozzarella and our sun-dried tomatoes.

We're ready to face the afternoon.

Yeah, well, I've taken, I've been at the post office and now I've got to go to the cricket club and pick my youngest up.

He finishes at three.

I've got to try and get there early to see a bit of him playing.

What's tended to happen lately is I get there about 2:15 or something, and he comes over and says, I'm out.

I've got 56.

Oh, yeah.

Yesterday, I got there and he was batting.

And I thought, I'm here, he's batting.

And he hit a six, he hit a four.

I mean, they're playing with a softball, lots of kids, like a kind of fun cricket camp sort of a vibe, you know.

But he can do it, you know, he can bowl, he can bat, he can feel, he absolutely loves it.

And then he smashed the ball straight to mid-off and was out court.

And he got to the boundary and he said, You're a jinx.

said, I've come here to see you, Pat.

And you've just hit it on the ground how many times?

But it's lovely over there.

He loves the cricket club.

Two women who are both cricketers, one of them plays for Middlesex who coach them.

They're brilliant.

The kids all love them.

One of them's the Aussie.

It's a really lovely atmosphere around the whole thing.

They're outdoors all day.

So I'm glad he's got the cricket bug.

He wants to play for England now.

That's what he says.

When he says, I I want to play, he says, I want to play for England.

He doesn't want to play for Middlesex.

I think it's accepted with football.

It's possibly not going to happen because he plays for this club called North West.

And then the under nines, there was an A in a B team last year because there's a lot of them.

And he was a pretty solid performer in the B team.

And I remember my nephew, my sister's eldest.

I said to him when he was about 16, what do you want to do?

What sort of thing are you thinking of for A-level?

What are you thinking about?

He goes, I want to play.

I want to play.

I want to be a footballer.

I said, do you?

he goes yeah i want to play for arsenal yeah yeah well i mean you know

join the queue mate okay so who are you playing for at the moment he lives in copthorne in west sussex

he goes copthorne bopthorne b okay why aren't you playing for copthorne a he goes oh no they're really good

you're gonna get around copthorne a and the Sussex County team or whatever are you going to elude Brighton and Hover Albion and Crystal Palace and whoever scouts in those areas?

I certainly remember like you know we on our street we'd be like well look Jack Cole is really good so he'll play first division me and Matt Walsh will probably play second division and Clive isn't that quick he's got skill but he'll probably play third division that was sort of the way we that's the way we ran it so obviously I've got two boys and the dream is get them the thickest Australian accents big mullets and they open the batting for England.

That's what I want.

My wife's surname is Bruce.

They can have that.

Their surnames can can be Bruce.

And there they are, just scoring runs for England, going, yeah, mate, I love it.

Obviously, I want them to do what they want as well.

They can live their own lives.

Look, I've never got the point of cricket.

It's just not a thing in Ireland.

But then I was living with Nish Kumar in Edinburgh.

And one evening did my gig in his orange India Board of Cricket Control cap.

And I went for food afterwards and wasn't really thinking, but I was in Kebab mahal and the guy just came over and handed me a naan bread and just pointed at the hat and gave me a thumbs up.

I'm all in now.

I love that sport.

Okay, Alan, so we take the boy home.

Do we go straight home?

Go straight home and then when he gets home we have a back garden.

We're very lucky in London to have a back garden.

I think it's definitely hinders a lot of potential cricketers not having one.

And he's straight out there.

Come Come on, let's play cricket.

So then you've got to play cricket with him for another hour or something.

Kate is back by now.

And presumably, you have a square.

You've got a groundsman with a heavy roller.

We've got a patch of astroturf at the back because the grass just doesn't.

Our house is in shadows of grass.

Two months of football in the garden, and there's nothing left.

So we relayed it twice and then gave up.

So what I find is if I bowl at him, if I ever manage to beat the bat, which is one in 100,

the ball will bounce over the stumps every single time.

It is impossible to get a length at which it will hit the stump.

Poppy stands up and she takes everything.

Even at your pace, you're standing up to the stunts, whipping off the bales.

Poppy

lies halfway between the bowler and the batsman, right in the middle of the bowl.

This is what this animal is like.

Just on a length.

Wow, that's tricky.

If she sees him, we've also got a goal net, which will be moving where the stumps are at the moment.

The goal net moves in.

If she sees him getting his boots on and going out she will go out ahead of him and shit in the goal mouth yeah yeah

i believe that's where the term shithousery actually comes from originally

so you made to bowl more alan or do you is it are you bowling for an hour he bowls me out And I put it down to the fact that the ball's coming at a different height and it just whizzes in around my shins.

Darren Goff, sort of skiddy bowler.

He's just terrible

at cricket.

He's better at batting.

He's better at field.

My best friend at school, Danny, he had emigrated to Australia.

This made me think of it when you were talking about your boys.

He bowled at his son for hundreds of hours in this patch of grass out at the back of their house.

And his son played for St George's in Sydney, which is a really reputable cricket club.

Once, Don Bradman's club,

he broke a record that had been set by Usman Khawaja.

He made 154 knot hour opening the batting for the under-12s.

Danny, my friend, was imagine it out.

He still sounded, he was from Gants Hill.

I was from Louton in Essex.

He sounds like he left Gants Hill yesterday.

Imagine it out.

He's lived in New South Wales since 1991.

Imagine him opening the batting, going out at Lourdes, opening the batting.

Imagine it.

That would be amazing.

Be absolutely amazing.

Why not?

Why couldn't he?

And then he got, once you get into under-13s, under 14s, the pressure, the intensity of it.

Oh, man.

If you make 20, that's a fail if you make 30 it's a start if you make 50 you've got to convert only the hardiest mentally toughest kids can survive that thing you know one of my nephews on katie's side of the family is in the army and he the basic training just sees off most of the wannabe recruits.

They turn up and I don't know how many of them there are, 20 or 30 of them.

One by one, they leave.

It's a bit like that with the cricket.

yeah so by the time you get to the australian first 11 these are the hardest gnarliest yeah old bastards you've ever yeah

and actually i don't know if you think it's i think working in football like the number of obviously you're as a kid your dream is to play not always but as mine was to be a footballer and i was obviously never good enough but i'm sort of pleased i wasn't because actually it doesn't seem like a really easy path to happiness whether you get to the absolute top of the game or you're a professional footballer but you don't earn enough to then actually live afterwards you have to get a proper job all those things i I think you're right.

Oh, and the injuries, you know, the peril, he had a problem.

He couldn't play for a bit.

And once you've lost your place, you're doomed, you know.

And for footballers, but also I know a couple of lads I know are dancers and the good dancers and professional dancers.

And if you're a dancer in London, particularly if you're a ballet dancer and you want to join, say, the Royal Ballet.

Everybody in the world wants to come.

There's a show, a Peaky Blinders dance show out at the moment.

It's going on tour.

It's really good.

Ballet Rombé are doing it.

This is one of the most long established and best ballet companies that you could see and they've been going 100 years or something right they look in the program and you're watching peaky blindness you sort of assume that all the dancers are from birmingham or or you know the black country somehow in your head that one's hungarian and that one's japanese and that one's korean and that one's from boston and you know they're just a multinational company so even if you're an elite level dancer you might end up getting a gig at the in the ballet company in Budapest or somewhere, you know.

Sounds like an express headline, doesn't it?

Peaky Blinders Ballet, and none of them are from Seleu.

It's a disgrace.

All I will say, though, is

like because at the moment in football, there's a 15 and a 16-year-old.

It's that guy from Arsenal and that guy from Manchester United, I think.

And I just think of there's a bit in a Wayne Rooney

documentary where he was 16 when he got into the Everton first team and realized after a couple of sessions, oh, I'm better than all of these people.

Like that must be a lovely moment when you're a child and you're suddenly the world is at your feet and you realize you can do it.

I think that must be nice now.

Yeah, I think so.

And also,

Max Dauman's pretty extraordinary.

The Liverpool lad, Rio, who they're now claimed as one of their own, they just got him off Chelsea, didn't they?

In the summer?

Chelsea's Academy has been pillaged by.

But fantastic talent, 16 years old.

But the one I remember is Seth Fabrigas got in the Arsenal team and he just looked like a foreign language exchange student.

He didn't have any physicality about him.

He didn't have the super speed.

Rooney had a lot of physical strength as a 16, 17 year old.

Fabrikas just had this kind of elusive, slippery way of working with the ball.

And he got into the Arsenal team and played with Dennis Bergkamp, who's twice his age.

And they skipped around the pitch playing one-twos with each other whilst the opposition just looked befuddled, like something out of a, if it was in the B-no, you know, they'd all have their legs back to front and

cross-eyed.

So it's just extraordinary to have that sort of talent.

We've played cricket for an hour.

Yeah.

Kate's baked some salmon and broccoli in the oven.

Oh, lovely.

In a teriyaki sauce.

There's a big pot of rice on the stove.

She's done red rice for me because I'm pre-diabetic and so I'm paranoid about white food converting into sugar.

Something I wish I'd known about 30 years ago.

So you walk right past this, open the fridge, stick your head in and eat six-week old celery in a turamazoo.

There's a pot of anchovies that are going to be off by tomorrow

and a half a jar of pesto sauce from 2023.

I think I'll eat those.

Shit, Alan, hang on.

If you are pre-diabetic, you've always been pretty healthy.

God, what hope is there, for example, me, where I've just been eating exactly what I want at all times for 49 years.

It's sort of some of it's down to who, you know, what you eat and some of it's just genetic shit.

Misfortune.

Yeah.

I had a lot of blood tests.

And I write about this in my book.

I had bladder cancer last year.

I had a tumor in my bladder, which they took out.

So I don't have it anymore.

By the time I knew I had cancer, it was in the bin kind of thing.

So it was incredibly lucky that they found this thing early and consequently had a lot of other blood tests.

So the good thing about being ill is you do get checked out.

This could happen to you.

There's a bit of a warning sign here.

This numbers come up.

Maybe you need to think about some.

What they say is, and they say this to virtually everybody who goes in to any GP surgery, before you've said hello, they say, lose 10% of your body weight.

Next.

That's annoying, isn't it?

With a lot of people, what they really mean is lose 50% of your body weight, but they don't like to say that because it's a bit too much.

It's just easy to just lop off half your body, wouldn't it?

That would just be the...

I'll cut a leg off.

Scarf down the middle.

I'll just do a cross-section from now.

I'll be fine.

So, this is dinner.

This is nice.

Do you sit around the table?

Lovely dinner with a family.

We try and keep the bickering down.

There's a lot of policing of them carping at one another and making sarcastic remarks.

We've got a 15, a 14, and a 9.

So the 9's really got to work hard to make space for himself around that table.

Could you see where the sarcasm has come from or not?

This is like earlier, we're talking about divided Britain to the Sunday Express.

Have you any idea how Britain is so divided?

I don't know what sort of influence I've had on them.

I'm dread to think.

We like to sit and eat together we value that time although we're not sure that they do and then there's a warfare about cleaning up afterwards usually the middle one somehow got himself into the locked in the toilet we none even notice him leave the room i don't know how he does that and katie's always like has he got his phone with him and then what she does is she rings him and then you can hear the phone ringing and then he hangs up and

so bit of that goes on and then the nine-year-old says let's play cricket so we have to go back out in the garden.

Katie's bowling has improved a lot over the last 12 months, from being zero to a decent standard.

The daughter won't come out even to field, absolutely not, won't do it, stays in the kitchen or Snapchat.

The 14-year-old comes out and plays cricket until the nine-year-old bowls him out and then celebrates like Dennis Lilly, and then he goes inside.

So, we do that for a bit, and then we go in and we like to watch TV together.

So, So we have to find things that we all like, which is not that easy.

We all love Dairy Girls, which I think was the best comedy show the last decade.

All of Ghosts, All of Friday Night Dinner, All of Friends.

And now we're watching 30 Rock.

We've been trying to find things to watch with them.

It's not easy.

You want to get everyone together.

People always ask me, oh, do they like Jonathan Creed?

And I say people, I mean, you know, journalists from the Daily Express.

And I say, no, they don't watch things with me in obviously, except Taskmaster, where I made a fool of myself every week, and they like that.

And I've just sort of remembered that 30 Rock is an absolutely brilliant comedy series.

And now it's about 20 years ago or something.

I can hardly believe how long ago it was.

Well, I'm sort of 2007, not that full.

And I've got the box set in a dusty old, back of a dusty old cupboard.

So we've started watching that with the kids.

And

it's so brilliant.

And they love it so much.

And the nine-year-old loves Tracy Jordan and that whole character.

So we watched a couple of episodes of that.

Then he goes to bed.

Katie took him upstairs.

Alan, have you tried them on?

So I would have been obsessed.

My parents would have done this with Faulty Towers and then I would have found young ones Black Adder.

Is Black Adder too slow moving for them?

Or is this sort of the nature of it being in a studio, does that mean that they aren't interested in it?

I can't understand why we've said to them, You should watch this, it's brilliant.

They look at

what

they like Johnny English.

I mean, they love Johnny English

so much, and they love the Incredibles, which is not obviously anything to do with this, but they love those things.

They watch these things on repeat.

When they were smaller, I'd come down in the morning and we would watch the new version of Thunderbirds, which is all done on a computer animation.

And I'd watch it with them, and I'd be saying, This is fine, but it's not Thunderbirds, right?

Yeah.

And then I showed them an old Thunderbirds, and they could not believe how long it took Thunderbird 2 to launch.

I mean,

it came out of a cave, and the palm trees went over, and it was

but in the new one, by now it's in orbit.

It's got

everything took so long.

So it's rather like trying to show them, you know, the original postman Pat, where the modern postman Pat's got a chopper and he's delivering those

images, you know.

Pat's under the pump.

There's a quite a nice but pretty boring sort of generic man who's in charge of him now.

Like, he's just not his own man.

Pat anymore.

He used to be the very symbol of independent work.

Yeah.

He's working for Amazon.

He's throwing parcels over walls.

He's being trapped by GPS by someone in Seoul, Korea.

So if you show them Black Adder, it's like you've made them listen to a Radio 4 play of the day.

Oh, Black Adder was okay because obviously there are some very, very funny moments, even if you're nearly asleep with boredom.

But when I showed them Rising Damp, they thought I'd set out to

cause them physical harm.

When I pulled out my Rising Dam DVD,

Just look, what the hell is this?

They actually said, My middle gun said to me, Did you used to watch this?

And I said, This is what we used to watch.

I haven't shown them the good life yet.

I'm not sure I could sit through that now.

No, but as I say, they love dairy girls off the charts love for dairy girls.

Yeah.

All the Friday night dinner, they loved it.

The teenage boy thinks the in-betweeners is the funniest thing that's ever happened to him.

You know,

always trying to find things.

And shit's creep.

They've watched all of that, been through that.

So now we've moved on to 30 Rocks.

Stathlets Flats.

That would be the other one of recent times.

Yeah, we tried that.

They like that.

But it's not quite for the nine-year-old friendly.

That Ian, the three and a half-year-old, is now on just watching the tube, like watching just YouTube videos of people who've spent 100 hours filming the London Underground and getting very upset if I don't watch the train entering the tunnel completely.

I can't believe you've seen Thomas the Tank.

It's Thomas the Tank not in his life.

This could be what you knew.

When he said he watched the tube, I presumed he was talking about watching the 80s music programme with people in the audience telling Sting to fuck off on it.

That's all I remember from the tube.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

So we've watched an episode and do people start to drift off then?

We've watched a couple of episodes, 30 Rock, and then the older ones are really waiting for the younger one to be taken to bed about nine o'clock.

So when he's gone, then the field is a bit more open for them to watch something else.

News night.

They want to watch the newsnight.

They're watching the full, all episodes of Panorama going right the way back to the beginning.

There's 2,000 episodes.

You can't miss one, otherwise you just don't get it, do you?

I do.

At the moment, there's one about the three-day week.

Cuban missile crisis coming.

Can't wait.

The 14-year-old suddenly announced the other day that he wants to watch all of the best films ever made.

And he's seen some online poll that says Fight Club is one of the best films ever made.

And can we watch Fight Club?

And I said, that's a very violent 18 certificate film.

Why do you want to watch that?

So anyway.

I let him watch it.

So we watched it.

It's Fight Club.

You know, they say the first rule is you can't talk about it you also can't talk about the film because if you talk about the film you ruin the film so if you haven't seen the film you know you can't katie and i've seen it we know what what's going to happen so we watched the second half of fight club and in the meantime i'm keeping half an eye on the carabao cup score lines and i noticed at one point that the score is grimsby town 2 manchester united 0

and i'm now getting very twitchy about switching over to the carabail cup footage because the idea of the death star being brought down really by a couple of not even jedis just sort of assistant jedis you've got one old spaceship they just happen to have spotted a weakness

and we turned on just in time for a penalty shootout that went to i think 24 26 spot kicks or something extraordinary went on for so long and i'm so desperate to go to bed i've got young kids i'm getting no sleep And obviously, I've got to watch it for work.

And so I'm just there going someone.

And obviously, I want Man United to lose.

But like, Grimsby have so many chances to win.

You know, just save this penalty, mate, please.

And he's quite short of the Grimsby keeper, and he's getting nowhere near any of them.

So when they finally lost, mate, I was so happy for so many reasons.

It went on forever.

And all these Manchester United boys, one after another, how much was he?

68 million.

He was 64 million.

He's 74 million.

They had them all one after another.

Yeah.

Going up.

Wonderful pitch invasion.

You know, I bet there were no trawlers out in the North Sea.

Everybody was in the ground.

You know, all the boats were in the harbour.

And they came on with inflatable fish, inflatable.

And it was a really, really lovely scene of, I mean, in fact, during the shootout, the two managers, one is this highly paid Portuguese guy, manager of Manchester United, who sat hiding in the dugout for the entire shootout that went on for 18 minutes.

And he just didn't watch a single, as if it it was intolerable for him and too much pressure i mean what the earth are you doing do your job you can't just hide in the dugout meanwhile the groomsby town manager and his coaches after every penalty they cut to them and they were actually laughing yeah let's have a great time yeah doesn't matter they're at a straight time they're uh boiling mussels in the tug out glutting fish yeah so hell of a lot of bags of chips and battered cod and haddock sold in Grimsby last night so that was the kind of the last thing we did at the end of the day was watch that.

And then we went up to bed.

Are you a good sleeper, Alan, or is it a way of getting to sleep, or do you just lie there, close your eyes, and bang?

Not a good sleeper.

I try and read for a bit.

I'm reading this book about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

It's called Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

And their lives were so extraordinary and unbelievable, really.

And much of it is very readable, but everything about them turns out to be a bit too much.

I've read 507 pages and I'm thinking, that's enough about them now, isn't it?

I've got 100 pages to go.

I don't mind a big book.

I recently finished reading Infinite Jest, which I was very delighted to manage to get through.

That's 1,100 pages of the tiniest print.

You know, I mean, if you went to the library and asked for a large print version, you'd get about eight volumes like the Encyclopedia Britannica.

What do you think the book should be?

Most of the things about Richard Burton, or like half the things?

What is it?

27% of the things that Richard Burton is.

You need it, like a kind of.

This is the best of the stuff.

And then there's additional content available on Patreon, you know.

Finite Jest is just a 300-page cut-down version of Infinite Jest.

Finite Jest.

I love that book, though.

That's a sort.

You really could go back to the beginning and start reading it again.

It's remarkable.

But then you're asleep, Alan, which is that's all we need from you.

I only wake up when I'm getting sick.

Some signal gets sent forward, get him up.

He needs a wee.

And what we do with this podcast now is we send this to the researchers at saturday kitchen and you told this story about an axe and a dog

feel like that was a good day feels like a good day to me to me it feels like a very busy very full day

the only point where i was like for fuck's sake was the five kilometers of cycling i mean that's to spar and back if i want a mars bar

which probably undermines the whole calorific effort involved in the cycle but let's get those ties.

The next time I see you, I want you to be in Chris Hoy's old trousers.

Yeah, they're the biggest.

I remember seeing a picture of Kenny Sansom in his club suit, and they had not made to measure those trousers.

How he got his thighs in them, I don't know, but he had really big thighs,

likes to Chris.

Thank you, Alan.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Arm.

Thanks, guys.

Nice to talk to you.

Well, that was what Alan Davies did yesterday.

I mean, I really, the Saturday Kitchen chat, I loved so much.

I have looked at myself in the mirror in the recent times.

Alex, you're really on this.

You're quite focused on this bit.

There's a mirror in this room.

Like, as soon as we finish recording this, I'm going to go over and just check myself out and be like, you look pretty good, David.

have a do you got a complex do you think you have an hour complex didn't think i did but then bloody jonathan creak told me that i did he conducted an investigation into it

i think you look i think you look great um and thank you alan we've been exchanging text messages of just things that i shout on a football pitch to each other

I've now got a complex that I talk too much because both Alan and Marsba have both said that I talk a lot.

I think it's constructive, but I'm nervous about it.

Yeah.

I got that.

There was a 10-second clip that someone once sent us of you playing football on a pitch in Melbourne.

And it did seem like you were commentating as much as

playing together.

Good pointing.

But you can talk your way into getting some man of the match awards because you're just sort of there, you know.

And that's, you can talk your way into playing well as well.

It is a thing that I've noticed when I play with very good players.

I have played with some ex-pros and things.

They generally generally say things like, Simple ball, good lad, you know, this kind of encouragement.

The thing is, I have the vernacular, but I don't have the ability alongside it.

Why are you saying good lad to me, you patronizing idiot?

You're just a car horse.

What are you doing?

Um, if you would like to get a touch of the podcast to give me a compliment

about how well I look.

About which pond do you think he came out of?

This is how which

algae-filled

body of water did David most

represent

to get in touch with the show.

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And please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform.

And if you didn't, please don't.

Hey, thanks, David.

Thanks for doing this episode and all the other ones.

Thanks, Max.

I

will continue doing it for my entire life till I am.dead.

You're Davidofdi.dead.

We'll be back soon.

Hello, Max Rushdom here.

You might remember me from Series 9, Episode 2 of Parenting Hell.

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Goodbye.