Alan Davies (3:37)

Yeah.

Jenny Kleeman (3:37)

So why is that? Because in the book you say that when there's those forms you fill in and you have to say what your job is, you'll put stand up comic. So it's clearly something deep in your soul. But you haven't done it in a big way over the past 10 years.

Alan Davies (3:50)

That's true. I haven't toured for 10 years. I am on tour this autumn. Tickets available from some other website. But no, I did. I mean, I've kept my hand in with Stand Up. I had a period. There was a period between 2001, I think, and 2011 where I didn't do it at all. And partly that was to do with not having any material and thinking and becoming paranoid about being recognized and fame. And I was having a damaged and troubled time. But what was really happening, of course, was my really damaged and troubled time was suppressed and hidden from the world. So that was an issue. Then I got back into it and I loved it again. But then I stopped for a bit. We had a third child. He had quite an impact on things. And I'd started to do a writing course and I started to write my last memoir, Just Ignore him. Then Covid, and then Stand up kind of re emerged, really, in 20, 21, 22. And then I thought, well, I'm 60 next year. If I don't go on tour soon, I might die. So that is a good motivator because I used to think as a stand up in my twenties, your diary would be full of gigs for about three or four months ahead, and then after that your life was just empty. And that seemed great in my 20s because none of us wanted to be, you know, in the rat race we all were. Proud to not have a proper job and all those kind of attitudes. And now everything is about. My stand up tour is called Think Ahead and everything's about thinking ahead because that's what you do as a parent and that's what you do when you get older and that's what you do when you've been ill, as I have been. So I thought I better get on tour and that's what I'm doing.

Jenny Kleeman (5:37)

So it's not because stand up has become more difficult over the past 10 or 20 years in terms of how dangerous it can be that you could be cancelled for saying the wrong thing. You're not scared of all of that?

Alan Davies (5:51)

Well, it's a possibility. I mean, it's, you know, it could happen. I don't think I've got too many skeletons in my cupboard. But you don't know what you might get cancelled for. But I've never really been a contentious comedian or sought to antagonize or trip people up or thought it's my role to be that person. I've always been quite the people pleaser. I think stand up's become more difficult for me because I've decided at this point in my life to talk about some of the things from my childhood and early life which I'd always shied away from as content for stand up. I've always thought of stand up as quite skin deep. I've always been quite a people pleaser in that respect. So it's more difficult because of the subject matter I want to take on. But I haven't felt as though the world's changing and attitudes are changing and I've never felt like some old dinosaur. Stand up still a meritocracy. Stand up is still the person who gets the biggest laughs will get booked the next time around. It's you and the audience. And I think for most comedians that's the number one appeal of it.

Jenny Kleeman (7:05)

But the stakes are very high. When you do stand up, you can, you know, I can't imagine doing it. I think it would be absolutely terrifying. And there's a bit in your book where you write about going to the Comedy Store and trying to wing it and it doesn't go well. I mean, how does it feel when it's not going well?

Alan Davies (7:20)

It was awful that night and that's why I put it in the book. I decided to put some of the most terrible things that have ever happened to me or I've ever done in the book rather than do one of these books where, you know, it's A trip through my TV career. And here's another anecdote about so and so. And there is some of that, if there are good ones. But I wanted it to be much more unvarnished than that. And some version of honest or truthful that includes all aspects of my life. And that night I went on at the store. This is 1999. I was really recognizable both from Jonathan Creek and also from doing Abbey national commercials, which I had paranoia about. And I'd sold out, you know, taken the shilling from the man and I was supposed to be on the left. And suddenly I was very much the face of, you know, a fucking bank. And I made no inquiries at all about their attitudes to arms trade or petrochemicals or anything else. I just took the shilling anyway. I went on thinking I could wing it down the store. It was my stomping ground. I always went down a storm. I loved it at the Comedy Store. And people started shouting things out about Jonathan Creek or Abbey national or Caroline Quentin or Wilkins. And I just couldn't manage it. And I didn't do stand up again for 10 years. And then I think that I became. That was a bad idea. I realized later, and I realized in the writing of this book that stand up was very important for me as an outlet, as a creative outlet. And without it, I think I became a bit unwell kind of mentally. And I think creativity and having an outlet of that sort is important for everybody, not just people who do it for a living. But I really became. I sort of realized that in the writing of this.

Jenny Kleeman (9:08)

Do you think it takes a particular kind of person to be a stand up? Is there some unifying characteristic of all stand ups or. Because again, for me it just seems like the most terrifying exposing thing.

Alan Davies (9:20)

I don't know what happens now for young comedians, but I imagine it's the same. There are various characteristics that are essential, monumental ego is really important. So the idea of being the one person in the room talking, that alone is weird. And it's happening. This is what's happening. Now it's just me. And I'm happy with that. What I'm used to, I'm comfortable with that. The circuit, when I went onto it in the late 80s, there wasn't a route through to fame and fortune. There were some people who'd been on the circuit, had become well known. Ben Elton in particular from hosting Friday Night Live. Harry Enfield, who was on that show. That bunch had broken through on Channel 4. That was still pretty back corner of the TV world. This wasn't Des O' Connor and Saturday night and this was still a weird bunch of weirdos. There was nobody. Now, comedians who start out can see a route through the comedy circuit and the Comedy store to Michael McIntyre or to Lee Mac or to any number of people who are selling astronomical amounts of tickets, huge television profiles and yet connected up to the circuit that I came from. So no one was setting out to be one of those people. It was a very odd bunch of straight people, came from all walks of life, all kinds of backgrounds. Some people from fringe theater backgrounds, some people from cabaret, some from street performing, some people who had a job. I remember working a lot with Kevin Day and he was a civil servant for years and didn't want to do it. Joe Brand I worked with for years, who was a psychiatric nurse for 19 years and wanted to do comedy. My good friend Keith Dover was working at Ford's in Dagenham for years whilst going out in the evening and doing gigs. And so people came from all those places and just wanted to get off their job and onto the stage. And they didn't have an ambition to become rich and famous, they just had an ambition to do stand up. And the circuit could absorb anybody. And it absorbed a lot of addictive personalities. Quite a lot of what is now known as neurodiversity wasn't a thing then. Ricky Grover was one of my favorite comedians and one of his best jokes was he said, I missed dyslexia by a year. I was just thick. And because, you know, those kind of diagnoses didn't happen in his day or mine. And nowadays you can't move without a comedian bumping into you and telling you that they've been diagnosed with ADHD or something. In fact, most of the shows at Edinburgh seem to be about either childhood abuse or their recent diagnosis.

Jenny Kleeman (12:17)

I want to talk to you about the title of your book. It's never easy finding titles for books, or maybe you find it easy, but this one is like particularly provocative. Is it provocative? Is that the right word for it? Where did it come from? Because this book is about obviously your time as a stand up, but there are lots of women stand ups in it. Jo Brand is in it, Carolina Hearn is in it. So it wasn't a time when there were only men doing it. Why did you go for that title?

Alan Davies (12:42)

There were far, far more men. But you're absolutely right, Joe and Caroline were two of the best, most loved by me as well as the audiences. It was a working title and it was what we were called. I remember starting out on the circuit in the late 80s and being in a restaurant and someone was bemoaning the fact that the circuit was filling up with white male stand ups. And I remember thinking, oh shit, that's me. One of those ones. And what they meant was, it used to be a wacky world of cabaret and ex street performers and jugglers and double acts and singing groups. There was an act called Randolph the Remarkable, wonderful comedian. He would get on stage in a pair of pantaloons. He was bare chested, he had an enormous belly and his finale was he would fall forwards onto a washing up bowl and the washing up bowl would stick to his stomach. And that was his act. Randolph the Remarkable. That was the kind of act that was there at the time and all kinds of other people. Ainsley Harriot was doing the Calypso Twins. There were lots of different sorts of acts and then gradually, one by one, they fell away and most were replaced by yet another white male stand up. And. And it became the kind of dominant form of comedy through the 90s. And so I was very aware quite early on that people weren't quite sure that what they wanted was comedy clubs full of white male stand ups. But I was one and Eddie Izzard was one and I suppose Harry Hill was one and maybe Bill Bailey was one. They all felt very different to me. Lots of them were culled by extreme cocaine addiction in the 90s, so that opened up a lot of space. And then of course, now I talk about it in my act. I talk about how when I auditioned for Jonathan Creek, I was one of 38 white men to audition for Jonathan Creek. I was the 38th. When we did the Qi pilot, there were five men, white men. And for most of the first eight series there were white men and Joe. And nowadays, I mean, honestly, the BBC had to actually say to the producers, particularly of Mock the Week, you do have to book someone other than just all these blokes, they didn't want it. And now it's a very different world. And, you know, they've made it a requirement to find space for people from all backgrounds and there are quotas, but also there are loads of really funny women. So that's. It's a very, very different environment now. It's all the better, really. And it's just. This was the time that's what we were. That's what I thought of myself as. So it's not a manifesto for white men and it's not. It's not. White men are Great. You know, I mean, some of them are obviously, a lot of them, you know, lead the Reform Party. And it's not written for them either. It's just. That's what I was called. I was the other title, I could have called it Angry Boy, because throughout the book I refer to. It follows on from my last memoir, Just Ignore him, which was about being abused by a father as a child and losing my mother. And it's quite a sad book. It's a very sad book, but it was meant to be. And then I started to do stand up, and I thought that I still had the idea when I was in my twenties that the future was in front of you and the past was behind you, that time is linear, you're just going to somewhere else. And it took me a long time to realize that you just carry everything with you wherever you go, and that the present, the past, and probably the future is with you wherever you sit. And that you better have a reckoning. At some point. You're gonna have to turn around and face that. Otherwise it's gonna fuck up your marriage, your kids, your family life, your future. It will get you, and you have to deal with it. And so, you know, my principal rage is about people who do things for kids. And I've tried to write a book, and this is a kind of second part of that book which says, first of all, you can do the things you want to do despite that. And secondly, someone will listen to you. And if you say, what's happened to you, Someone will listen to you. Because lots of people wrote to me after my last book and said, I've told someone for the first time. Several people who I know well, some of them really famous, said to me, oh, that happened to me when I was a kid, you know, so it's an incredible amount of secrecy around it. So this is a book about doing the thing that I wanted to do, trying to do it, and realizing as I was going along that I was kind of swimming in a sort of a quicksand.

Jenny Kleeman (17:54)

It's your third book, and it was your second book where you wrote about the abuse that you suffered as a child, which you didn't mention at all in your first book. And at the beginning of this, you talk about how your dad was interviewed for a documentary where you were talking about the subject in your first book. I mean, how do you feel about your first book now, looking back on it, given that it was a kind of memoir and written at a time when you weren't telling the full story?

Alan Davies (18:20)

I feel very strange about it. Some of it's all right. My first book was called My Favorite People and I had this idea that when you're a teenager or in your 20s, you're very influenced by everything that's around you. If you see a film, you think, that's the best film I've ever seen. This is the best record I've ever heard. That's the funniest comedian I've ever seen. And if you say to people when they're in there, you know our age, you say, what's your favorite book or favorite film? It may well be something they saw at that age. So I was very convinced about how we're changing all the time. So I wrote about heroes and I wrote 44 chapters. Loads of them were about sport. Should have taken all them out. That's a separate book. Incredibly boring for people who are not interested in sport. It was about five books at once. Didn't get a lot of help from the editor because they wanted to stick my face on the front and it's a celebrity outback, right? And then that's fine. Does it really matter what the content is? Didn't get any traction. One journalist wrote about it and they said, probably ghost written, which. Which really, really upset me because I typed it like this for months. And then we made a three part documentary for Channel 4 based on the book. We interviewed a lot of the people who were in the book, people like Billy Bragg or Neil Kinnock or Lord Tebbitt. We interviewed loads of interesting people and my dad was interviewed and I know that the director of the documentary definitely could tell that something was up. And he kept asking me about my dad and I wouldn't answer him and I wasn't able to say it, you know. And so the book was kind of all around the target and not on target. Then years later, I went to Goldsmith College and I did a Master's in Creative Writing and we used to have authors come and talk to us. It was brilliant. I loved it. I loved being a student at 50. I really liked going back to college. I mean, Frank Skinner said to me once, lessons are good. That was as a motto. And I so agreed with him. And we had Claire Keegan come to the course and she's a fantastic writer, Claire Keegan, if you're not familiar with her, she's brilliant. Her short stories are amazing. And she had an hour with us sometimes she'd do a weekend retreat. She had one hour and she said to us, go towards the loss. And it really stayed with me. And the loss for each person in the room means something else. Everybody has their idea of what the loss is, and I knew what the loss was for me. And if you're not going towards the loss, you're not doing it right. And she said she had a great mistrust of people who said, I love writing. It pours out of me. And she said, if it's easy, again, you're not doing it right. And I found her to be really inspirational. Claire Keegan. And that was one of the great things about that course, was you meet other writers and then writers would recommend other writers to you. And I found myself in this world of books and privacy, and I began to write about my father and workshop it in this little room with six other students. And Blake Morrison is one of our tutors. And they would talk there. We were talking about the writing and I thought, this is really like a safe space. And anyway, I did not go towards the loss for that first book. And it kind of collapsed. It didn't sell. The documentary series was pretty good, actually. The guy who made it was brilliant and the soundtrack he put together was great, but it wasn't really to do with me somehow. So when I did just ignore him, that was what I think of as a proper me. And this is sort of part two.

Jenny Kleeman (22:02)

So you're in that safe space when you're developing, just ignore him. But then it goes out into the world. Is that not terrifying?

Alan Davies (22:11)

Absolutely. I was terrified. I was really frightened. You're very, very frightened. If you're a victim of abuse, you'll just carry the fear with you. You don't tell anybody. It's very strange. The average amount of time. There's a website called 1in6.org, which I recommend on this subject. The average amount of time for a male victim of childhood abuse to tell their story is 25 years, average. So some people get it out earlier, some people are carrying it for 40 or 50 years, some people take it to the grave. And I agreed to give an interview to a newspaper. And they were going to run an interview and they were going to do parts of the book, extracts of the book. And I said, I don't want to talk about the abuse. I don't want to talk about the abuse. And they said, fine, fine. So I did an interview, all fine. And I was getting the paper delivered the next day, and I didn't sleep all night. And I heard it. Our guy delivers the paper at the weekend, he throws it from the road and it hits the front door. So I heard it hit the front door and I went down at five in the morning and I opened it up and there's a picture of me. Nice photo. That's good. And the first question, it was framed as a Q and A. And the first question was, you were abused as a child by your father. Why have you chosen to write about this now? You never asked that question of me. And then they put an answer as if I'd answered that, in which I would have said, I'm not answering that. It's in the book. So I felt quite betrayed by that and I was really upset about it. But of course, the reason I was really upset partly because it was naughty of them. But I was so frightened of it coming out. I was so frightened of the story. I was so frightened of what people would think. I don't know. It's hard to explain because it's not even really conscious, your fear. It's really inside you. It's from the seabed, it's from the base of you. It's kicking up the whole of everything and clouding all the waters. And I've spent all my professional life trying to make sure everyone's. I can't even buy a stamp in the post office without getting a laugh. I mean, I'm a nightmare to go for. Shopkeepers must think, oh God, here he comes. Just laugh of whatever he says. Everyone's an audience, you know, It's a real affliction. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one Tapping ridiculously fast.

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Jenny Kleeman (28:33)

It's interesting also because not only are you dealing with all of this, but you are dealing with all of this as a famous person and you know, there's parts of the book where you talk about being Jonathan Creek and famous from the Abbey, national commercials. And at a time where, you know, if you were watching television at all, people knew who, who you were was shouting things at you all the time. You don't seem to, you didn't seem to be enjoying being famous very much. Is that right?

Alan Davies (29:00)

Yeah, I didn't like it at all. There's a story in the book. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are pros and cons and I really love doing stand up comedy, working on the radio, acting. These are all the things I wanted to do. And sometimes it's a real boost to the ego to be recognized. And it's really, really nice when people want to come to your shows and they say, oh, we love your program and all of that's great, but there are sometimes we just don't want it and you can't turn it off and no one gives you a talk. You know, when you're about to say yes to a primetime Saturday night television series with 12 million viewers, you don't get sent into a room with someone from HR to say, are you sure he was to do this? We've got, I don't know, Nicholas Ball or someone's here, he was in Hazel. He's going to talk to you about what? It's like you just one morning, I mean, literally overnight, people start just staring. My friends would say, who I go to Arsenal with, I'd say, it's really weird walking behind you because every time you go past someone, they start whispering about you and pointing and that's. You've got no idea what's going on behind you all the time. So I became there's a story in the book about, I went on Jonathan Ross had a five nights a week chat show in the early 90s. And I was invited to go on and do two minutes of stand up, but I had enough of an ego even then to say, no, I want to be interviewed like all the other proper people, but what the hell are they going to interview me about, right? I've been doing stand up for five minutes. So I do my two minutes goes, okay, it's live on Channel four. Crapping myself, hands shaking like this. Finish the two minutes and then I need to go good night and run off. And instead of which Jonathan, who I revered because we used to watch him when I was a student, Jonathan Ross is coming towards me live on telly and he's going to start talking to me as me and I Immediately just became mumbling and talking, diffident and. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, just like comedy. So the contrast between what I was like and what I was presenting was so marked and was exposed live on Channel four. Please do not swear at that moment. But that's one of the things that I hadn't really thought of that until I started properly writing about it.

Jenny Kleeman (31:34)

Are you more comfortable with it now? Used to it now.

Alan Davies (31:37)

More used to it now. And it's not what I think about. I think of it as something that happened then. And, you know, we've got three kids, Katie and I, and we're very. That's your focus all the time. There's so many things to think about with their schools and what's happening and their extracurricular obsessions. And so there's ballet and then there's guitar and then there's cricket and football all at the same time. So there's a lot to do. It's very, very different life from sitting on your own in your own flat, contemplating yourself, you know, videotaping your appearances on television obsessively, every single one of them, and keeping them in boxes, which Katie would happily, you know, burn. So life's a bit different when you've got someone other than yourself to see.

Jenny Kleeman (32:29)

Think about when you're doing stand up. Kind of by definition, you're standing up there on your own, it's just you. But a lot of the work that people really know you for, you've been in partnerships, you've been in teams, you know, QI panel show, you've got, you know, Stephen Fry, Sandy Toxvig or with Caroline Quinton, other co stars on Jonathan Creek. Is it easy to be funny when you've got somebody to bounce things off? Or is it easy to be funny when you're in control of all of it yourself?

Alan Davies (33:01)

I think it's most stand ups would tell you that they really would just like to have the microphone for themselves.

Jenny Kleeman (33:07)

Thank you very much.

Alan Davies (33:09)

And that's why QI is quite interesting because, I mean, you couldn't get this line up now because we're not allowed to have it. There's one. I remember one show where we had Jimmy, Cara, me and Bill Bailey and Claudia Winkleman. And anyway, we got Stephen laughing about something and if you can get Stephen laughing, that's really good fun because he can't quite giggly and he can't get it back and he's really trying to get it back and that was really fun. And Jimmy Carr and Bill Bailey are fantastic comedians who fill theatres and do, but very happy to be playful and silly. And I think what happens on QI is a lot of the atmosphere that you get off stage. You know, this venue is often used for stand up and there's a room back there with sofas where we sit. And the atmosphere in that sort of room is more. Is kind of what QI is at, is like when it's at its best. And I, I really like the idea from the beginning because there was no opportunity to crowbar in anything pre written. It was all off the cuff. No one knew what was going on and you had to get the ball in the air and you had to collaborate and to create who knew what was going to come? And I liked that, I preferred that. So it was a different thing. Also, it came along for me at a time where I'd stopped doing stand up. And so those weeks doing QI every year with 600 people in the audience was my opportunity to be in front of an audience and to be silly and daft and playful and drive Stephen mad. And for a while I kind of kidded myself, well, I've got this thing every year where I do this live thing. But actually I realized, although it's fun and as you say, it's really nice to have all these other people around, it's not the same as taking the plunge and saying, well, it's on your mind. But I didn't really think, I do now. But I didn't really think of stand up at the beginning as saying what's on your mind. I would just say whatever made them laugh. And now I realize that, having got the skill to do that, now I can maybe say something that's worth saying.

Jenny Kleeman (35:26)

You mentioned how after your second book came out, lots of people got in touch with you, sharing their stories of what they went through as children. Some of them had never told anyone else or had felt emboldened to speak. Having read your story, did it feel like a big responsibility to have all these people coming to you?

Alan Davies (35:48)

I was, no, it didn't. I felt I always thank people for telling me, you know, just say thank you for, you know, I don't want anyone to feel like, oh, I'm sorry to trouble you, I don't want to bother you, but always say thank you for telling me. It's very important that people are able to say, I feel as though it wasn't the intention that I set out with. My intention was to write my story and for that to be. And I felt the book was the best place for it where I could really Control it and work on it and make it right and true. And to set down also the book, and a lot of it is about my mum and remembering my mum. And I mean I literally wrote down everything that I could actually remember and I wanted it to be for my kids as well. And I realized in the writing of that book and this book how much damage can be done for their lives. And so it's about clearing things, setting things down, organizing. Not really cathartic, but it's about organizing and working on it. Katie and I both, we've talked together about. We knew when we were getting married and starting a life together, we knew this thing had happened in my life, but we hadn't really thought through about how it might impact us. And as you'll read in this book, it had a very serious and negative effect. Right through into my 40s and 50s. I was still. I was going to fuck everything, you know. And you're battling it morning, noon and night. Dark thoughts. You go to a place constantly go to a place where everyone in this room would be happier if I wasn't here. That's the default position that you start the day with often. And it's awful what people do to kids. And so I just get upset. But I did. That's what came from it. And a couple of people who were, you know, help training therapists or talking to students who are studying psychiatry or these kind of people or in the health professions have said to me, I show your book to. I show your book to my students, I show it to them. And that means the world to me.

Jenny Kleeman (38:11)

I think for people who haven't been abused as children, it's difficult to. Of course you imagine that abuse must be awful, but you don't really imagine how it is that undercurrent throughout your adult life ever present, as you say. And I think that's what this book does so well, is kind of explain. This isn't just having gone through something terrible as a child, it's actively going through it constantly as an adult.

Alan Davies (38:38)

It's there all the time. And I started work on this stand up show that I'm touring in the autumn and then. And so I talk about it and, and I sort of say to the audience, it's not the actual physical experience. You know, your first sexual experience being with your father is not. It's uncomfortable. But you know, lots of sex is uncomfortable. Right. Often one or both of you is hoping it will be over soon. No, it creates an awkward laugh. Right. But that's where we are and then create talk or find a way to talk about it because the actual experience is awkward and uncomfortable. But what became most difficult was I never knew when it was going to happen. So someone going past my bedroom door, even now someone being outside my bedroom door might come, creates a kind of a tightening in my chest and shortness of breath and this kind of PTSD reaction. It's really odd. And I know what I really know. And one of the reasons why I wanted to do it was I know that if I play to audiences in theatres or maybe a thousand or even 2,000 people, I know there are lots of people sitting holding those experiences. And so it's nice to be able for them to, you know. Thank you.

Mia Sorrenti (40:14)

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volpatto and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, head over to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

Alan Davies (40:46)

Sa.